fragmentation

Transmission Lines And Wildlife Habitat Connectivity | Earth Wise

April 14, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electrical transmission lines and their support towers tend to be a blight on the landscape but are something modern society cannot avoid. Power transmission networks – with towers every 200 meters or so of line – are in place throughout the world’s developed nations. Another common feature of developed nations is the fragmentation of animal species caused by human activity breaking up their natural habitats.

It is important for biodiversity conservation for animals to get their environments connected. It turns out that transmission line infrastructure can provide an important tool for reconnecting wildlife habitats.

In a study conducted in Spain’s Andalusia region, scientists planted native shrubs and seedlings under six towers along power lines running through cereal cropland. The area of each tower base was 100 square meters.

Compared to four control sites, the researchers measured increased population density and diversity among arthropods and small mammals observed in the four-year study.

Enhancing connectivity through networks of habitat corridors or stepping-stone patches has become a key concept in conservation biology and landscape ecology. Renting or buying large parcels of land to connect protected natural areas to one another would be cost prohibitive but planting suitable native shrubs and other flora under existing transmission line networks can provide many of the same benefits.

In general, power companies pay rent to landowners – often farmers or agribusinesses – for the rights to place towers on their land. Because it is difficult to work the areas under towers with farm equipment, that space is typically unused, which opens the door to low-cost efforts by environmentalists.

**********

Web Links

Electrical transmission lines have power to enhance habitat connectivity for wildlife

Photo, posted April 29, 2018, courtesy of Georgi Todorov/digitalnovas.com via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

COVID-19 And The Wildlife Trade | Earth Wise

December 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Historically, many diseases have jumped from animals to people with serious consequences for the human host. In fact, coronaviruses alone have caused outbreaks in humans three times in the past 20 years: SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. The majority of human pathogens that caused substantial damage to human health and economies during the past three decades have originated from wildlife or livestock.

According to a team of researchers from the University of Göttingen and other international institutions, more epidemics from animal hosts are inevitable unless urgent action is taken. In order to help protect against future pandemics, which could be even more severe than the current one, the researchers published a series of suggestions for governments to consider in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

The research team calls for governments around the world to establish effective legislation to do three things: address the wildlife trade, protect habitats, and reduce the interaction between people, wildlife, and livestock.

The wildlife trade and habitat fragmentation both facilitate disease outbreaks by increasing the potential for contact between humans and animals. Animals in wildlife markets are often kept in crowded and unsanitary conditions, which creates fertile breeding grounds for pathogens to jump to humans. Animals and humans are also forced closer together when natural habitats are cleared or otherwise fragmented in order to meet the various needs of a growing global population.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, China, Vietnam, and South Korea have introduced regulations to better manage the wildlife trade as well as support wildlife conservation. According to the researchers, these actions serve as examples for other countries to consider. The status quo isn’t good enough.

**********

Web Links

COVID-19 highlights risks of wildlife trade

Photo, posted August 23, 2010, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region via Flickr. Photo credit: Rosie Walunas/USFWS.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Conservation In Vermont | Earth Wise

May 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In recent times, Vermont and neighboring states have been losing forest land to development at a rate of almost 1,500 acres per year. With forest fragmentation gaining ground across New England, conserving land for future generations of people, wildlife, and plants has become both increasingly important and increasingly difficult.

According to a new study published by researchers at the University of Vermont, the state has already protected a third of the highest priority targeted lands needed to protect and connect valuable wildlife habitats and corridors. The protected lands amount to 1.3 million acres.

Most of the currently conserved lands are forested. However, there are high-priority targeted surface water and riparian areas – ponds, rivers, shorelines, and wetlands – and not nearly enough of these have been protected. (Many animals require zones along waterways in which to travel between the habitats they need to survive).

The state of Vermont and a number of partners have laid out a comprehensive and thoughtful vision that would ensure that Vermont remains a good place for all forms of life in the future. The new study provides a crucial benchmark of current levels of forest protection to help prioritize future conservation actions.

Three groups dominate in responsibility for the state’s protected lands: the federal government, the state government, and private non-profit organizations. (Each of these account for roughly a third of existing protected lands).

Going forward, Vermont’s nonprofits will play an increasingly important role in land conservation, especially in continuing to protect those areas that are rich with species diversity. Nonprofits are engaging more and more deeply in restoring wetlands that were previously degraded, planting new forests along river shores, and protecting unique natural communities while also protecting working forests and farmland.

**********

Web Links

Vermont Has Conserved One Third of the Land Needed for an Ecologically Functional Future

Photo, posted June 15, 2014, courtesy of Wesley Carr via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Decline Of Earth’s Largest Freshwater Creatures

September 23, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

While nearly 70% of the globe is covered by water, only 2.5% of it is freshwater. The rest is saline and ocean-based. And only 1% of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it locked away in snowfields and glaciers.

Despite freshwater only making up a small fraction of all water on the planet, it’s home to one third of all vertebrate species. Some have survived hundreds of millions of years, but many of the world’s largest freshwater creatures – including fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals – may soon find themselves on the brink of extinction.

According to a study recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and international colleagues have quantified the global decline of freshwater megafauna for the first time. In four decades since 1970, the global populations of these freshwater giants have declined 88% – twice as much as the loss of vertebrate populations on land or in the oceans.

Freshwater megafauna include all freshwater animals that weigh 30 kilograms (about 66 pounds) or more, such as certain dolphins, beavers, crocodiles, turtles and sturgeons.

Overexploitation is one of the main threats to freshwater megafauna. (These animals are often targeted for their meat, eggs, and skin). The other main threat is the loss of free-flowing rivers. Many of the world’s large rivers are already highly fragmented, which impacts access to spawning and feeding grounds. The research team says another 3700 large dams are planned or under construction, including 800 in habitats rich with freshwater megafauna, including the Amazon, Congo, and Ganges river basins.

Current conservation measures are clearly failing our freshwater creatures.

**********