LONDON – A new report titled, World’s Forgotten Fishes released yesterday, highlights both the diversity found in the number of species of freshwater fish and the reality that many are becoming increasingly impacted environmentally, with one-third identified as being threatened with extinction.
The report was compiled by 16 conservation groups, Alliance for Freshwater Life, Alliance for Inland Fisheries, Conservation International, Fisheries Conservation Foundation, Freshwaters Illustrated, Global Wildlife Conservation, InFish, IUCN, IUCN SSC FFSG, Mahseer Trust, Shoal, Synchronicity Earth, The Nature Conservancy, World Fish Migration Foundation, WWF and Zoological Society of London.
The total number of freshwater species stands at 18,075, comprising 51% of all fish species, and one-quarter of all vertebrate species on the planet. The report details the environmental and industrial factors that combined are having a devastating effect on fish populations. Since 1970 migratory freshwater fish populations have declined by a staggering 94%. In just 2020, 16 species of freshwater fishes were declared extinct.
2020 was a bleak year for freshwater fish. It began with confirmation
of the extinction of the iconic Chinese paddlefish, an endemic giant
of the Yangtze river and ended with the IUCN Red List for
Threatened Species™ announcing the loss of 15 more species in the
Philippines. Overall, 80 freshwater fishes have been declared Extinct
by IUCN, while 10 more have been declared Extinct in the Wild
and 115 are classified as ‘Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct’.
The loss of a third of the population of freshwater fishes would have a pronounced impact on not only the wildlife ecospheres they are part of, but also communities worldwide, as over 200 million people depend on freshwater fisheries for their food source, and another 60 million earn their livings at fisheries.
The financial impacts can also not be understated, with fisheries being valued at over $38 billion annually. Recreational fishing annually generates over $100 billion, and just those fish purchased as pets for aquariums amount to over $30 billion each year.
In a press release from World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), Stuart Orr, WWF global Freshwater Lead stated, “Nowhere is the world’s nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes, and wetlands, and the clearest indicator of the damage we are doing is the rapid decline in freshwater fish populations. They are the aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine, and we must heed the warning.”
Orr continued, “Despite their importance to local communities and indigenous people across the globe, freshwater fish are invariably forgotten and not factored into development decisions about hydropower dams or water use or building on floodplains. Freshwater fish matter to the health of people and the freshwater ecosystems that all people and all life on land depend on. It’s time we remembered that.”
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – New research reported by Harvard University offers a new theory concerning the asteroid that brought about the demise of the dinosaurs.
The new theory suggests that the cause of the event that dramatically changed our planet 66 million years was not the result of a relatively nearby asteroid crashing into earth, but rather a part of a comet that came from the far edge of the solar system and the debris sphere known as the Oort cloud.
The theory is outlined in a study published in Scientific Reports, by Dr. Avi Loeb, Dr. Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard, and Amir Siraj ’21.
“Basically, Jupiter acts as a kind of pinball machine,” said Siraj, “Jupiter kicks these incoming long-period comets into orbits that bring them very close to the sun.”
“When you have these sungrazers, it’s not so much the melting that goes on, which is a pretty small fraction relative to the total mass, but the comet is so close to the sun that the part that’s closer to the sun feels a stronger gravitational pull than the part that is farther from the sun, causing a tidal force,” he said. “You get what’s called a tidal disruption event and so these large comets that come really close to the sun break up into smaller comets. And basically, on their way out, there’s a statistical chance that these smaller comets hit the Earth.”
“Our paper provides a basis for explaining the occurrence of this event,” Loeb said. “We are suggesting that, in fact, if you break up an object as it comes close to the sun, it could give rise to the appropriate event rate and also the kind of impact that killed the dinosaurs.”
WASHINGTON – Efforts to protect one of the earth’s most valuable assets and ecosystems, the rainforest, have recently received a boost with the addition of a new tool to its collective toolbox.
An upgrade to the existing monitoring system, Global Forest Watch which uses satellite imagery to detect when trees are removed, is no longer hampered by rainy weather and cloud cover. The system now incorporates the use of radar which allows researchers to detect when so much as a single tree is removed no matter what the weather is like.
Previously, those who illegally logged or cleared trees and were aware of monitoring would often wait until there was significant cloud cover or rain to remove trees. It could be weeks before the skies cleared enough for the removals to be seen.
The ability to monitor forests from afar and notify local authorities when the removal of trees is happening has been found to be a deterrent when it comes to illegal logging. A recent study published in the February issue of Nature highlights that real-time monitoring resulted in a decrease in deforestation.
Global Forest Watch also has developed a mobile app that allows forest monitors and defenders in the field and on the ground to access the data.
Global Forest Watch created by the World Resources Institute, a non-profit that conducts global research focused on seven areas: climate, energy, food, forests, water, cities, and ocean.
Mikaela Weisse, who helps run the Global Forest Watch site, told NPR in an interview, “If we can detect deforestation and other changes as soon as they’re happening,” Weisse said, “then there’s the possibility to send in law enforcement or what have you, to stop it before it goes further.”
SYDNEY – A new article published in the journal Science examines the past timing and impact that a reversal of the magnetic poles have had on the planet by studying the well-preserved remains of trees that were alive during that period.
The article is the work of Dr. Alan Cooper, an evolutionary biologist who works with Blue Sky Genetics and the South Australian Museum, and Dr. Chris Turney, an earth scientist at the University of New South Wales.
They examined the rings from the remains of New Zealand swamp kauri trees that had been preserved within peat bogs. Swamp kauri can live for as long as 2,000 years, and due to both their size and the moist soil they are rooted in, they eventually sink down into the boggy ground. This environment allows for the excellent preservation of the tree remains.
This image of an ancient kauri stump in the waka (canoe) house at Waitangi Treaty Grounds Paihia, Northland, New Zealand provides a reference for the size of these massive trees – Image credit: Sheila Thomson – CC BY 2.0
The swamp kauri, often referred to as “ancient kauri,” is highly sought for its timber for milling, but the areas where it is found also hold considerable cultural heritage and historical value – particularly for Māori. Any extraction of swamp kauri is overseen by the Ministry for Primary Industries, and subject to approval by local and regional councils under the Resource Management Act 1991, as well as the NZ Forests Acts of 1949.
Cooper and Turney found the remains of one particular tree to be very revealing. The tree’s lifespan covered approximately 1700 years and lived during the time of the most recent pole reversal, which they estimate to have occurred about 41,000 years ago.
In an interview with NPR, Cooper said, “The trees themselves are quite unique,” says Cooper. “They’re a time capsule in a way that you don’t really get anywhere else in the world.”
What they found within the tree’s rings was evidence of a higher level of a specific form of carbon that is created when the atmosphere is exposed to cosmic rays, created by solar flares. The strong magnetic field of the planet is what protects the earth from large amounts of cosmic rays getting through. When the magnetic field is lessened and more of this energy is allowed into the atmosphere, the amount of carbon increases. In this case, it directly relates to shifting or reversal of the magnetic poles of the planet.
Reversals like this are known to have occurred multiple times over millions of years. This most recent reversal is known as the Laschamp excursion, named for Laschamps lava flows in Clermont-Ferrand, France which contained bits of iron that were essentially pointed in the wrong direction and discovered in the 1960s. Iron molecules found within sediment all around the world corroborate this shift.
While some geologists have pointed out that certain die-offs of larger mammals seemingly correspond to pole reversals and a weakened magnet field, most researchers did not consider whether such events had much impact on life on the planet.
Cooper and Turney’s new research and the timeline of events it outlines when compared to other well-established timelines in archaeological and climate records, indicates such a shift may have had a much greater impact.
“We really think actually there’s quite considerable impacts going on here,” says Cooper.
“If you damage the ozone layer, as we’ve found out, you change the way in which the sun’s heat actually impacts the Earth. And as soon as you start doing that, you change weather patterns because wind directions and heating goes AWOL, goes all over the place.”
Strong solar flares occurring at a time when the magnetic field of the planet was majorly reduced, would have generated radioactivity making it dangerous and unhealthy to be outside during the day and could correspond to when early humans began living in caves.
While more research is needed, this new research is leading scientists to more closely examine the connection between life on the planet and how it is affected by the fluctuations in the magnetic field.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.