natural habitats

Fireflies are in decline

June 10, 2024 By EarthWise 2 Comments

If you are seeing fewer fireflies each year, you’re not alone. Like many insects, firefly populations are in decline. A new study by researchers from the University of Kentucky, Bucknell University, Penn State University, and the USDA has shed some light on the precarious situation facing firefly populations across North America.

The research team used a mix of field surveys from citizen scientists and advanced machine learning techniques to analyze more than 24,000 surveys from the Firefly Watch citizen science initiative. The study, which was recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, identified the factors likely responsible for the declines in firefly populations.

The research team found that fireflies are sensitive to various environmental factors, from short-term weather conditions to longer climatic trends. Fireflies thrive in temperate and tropical climates. As global temperatures rise, these conditions become less predictable and less hospitable.

Light pollution is another threat to fireflies. Artificial light at night – from things like street lights and billboards – is particularly disruptive to fireflies as it interferes with their bioluminescent communication essential for mating.

Urban growth, including buildings, roads, and sidewalks, poses another significant threat to fireflies by overtaking their natural habitats and decreasing available breeding areas.

Additionally, certain agricultural practices seem to contribute to the decline of fireflies.

According to the research team, reducing light pollution, preserving natural habitats, and implementing wildlife-friendly agricultural practices are conservation measures that could help mitigate the decline of fireflies.

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Fading lights: Comprehensive study unveils multiple threats to North America’s firefly populations

Photo, posted July 12, 2021, courtesy of Bruce Hallman/USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wild pigs in the U.S.

November 17, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In the U.S., there are as many as nine million feral swine living in 38 states. A conservative estimate indicates that they cause about $1.5 billion in property and agricultural damage each year in this country.

Pigs were introduced to the United States centuries ago as a food source, but they quickly established wild populations. Feral domestic pigs bred with purebred Eurasian boar that were introduced for hunting, and these hybridized wild pigs spread across the landscape thanks to their prolific reproductive rates and willingness to eat just about anything.

When wild pigs forage, they upturn roots and soil with their snouts, damaging natural habitats and other animals. A 2021 study found that wild pigs are releasing over five million tons of carbon dioxide annually by uprooting carbon trapped in soil.

As a result, many programs were implemented nationwide to try to reduce populations, usually through lethal methods.

According to new research from the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, recent conservation efforts have proven effective at controlling wild pig populations in the Southeastern U.S. Within 24 months of the start of control efforts in the study area in South Carolina, the research team found a reduction of about 70% in relative abundance of pigs, and a corresponding decline in environmental rooting damage of about 99%.

Wild pigs are basically a human-caused problem, and controlling their populations will require continued cooperation and collaboration.

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Wild pig populations in U.S. can be managed

Wild Pigs And The Environment

Photo, posted January 28, 2013, courtesy of Don and Janet Beasley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Promoting Biodiversity In Agriculture | Earth Wise

September 13, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The organic foods industry is one of the fastest growing agricultural segments in the United States. According to the Organic Trade Association, U.S. organic sales reached $61.9 billion in 2020, a jump of more than 12% over the previous year.

Organic food has many benefits. Organic food is free of antibiotics, growth hormones, and GMOs, and is grown using fewer pesticides. Organic farming tends to be better for the environment by reducing pollution, conserving water, reducing soil erosion, increasing soil fertility, and using less energy. And it’s also better for the health of nearby wildlife as well as the people who live close to farms.

But when it comes to promoting biodiversity in agriculture, is organic farming the only alternative to conventional agriculture? It turns out it’s not – at least according to a new study recently published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

According to an international research team led by the University of Göttingen in Germany, a landscape mosaic of natural habitats and small-scale and diverse cultivated areas is the key to promoting biodiversity on a large scale in both conventional and organic agriculture.

According to the research team, areas cultivated to organic standards have one third more species, but don’t reach the yield level of conventional farming. This means that more land would need to be cultivated organically in order to produce the same amount of food. But as larger areas are cultivated, the advantages for biodiversity would disappear.

Landscapes with small fields, long edges, high crop diversity, and at least 20% near-natural habitats can promote biodiversity significantly more than just organic certification.

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U.S. Organic Industry Survey 2021

Promoting biodiversity-friendly landscapes – beyond organic farming

Photo, posted August 29, 2019, courtesy of Lance Cheung/USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And The Coronavirus | Earth Wise

March 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that our planet is heating up. Scientists have concluded that the changing climate is primarily the result of increased human-caused (or anthropogenic) greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the effects of global climate change include thawing permafrost, warming oceans, intensifying storms and wildfires, and rising seas.

In southern China, the surge in greenhouse gas emissions over the past century has driven the growth of forest habitat favored by bats, leading to the creation of a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses in that region.

According to a new study by researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK, climate change could have played a direct role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, revealed large-scale changes in the type of vegetation in the southern Chinese Yunnan province over the last century, as well as in the adjacent regions of Myanmar and Laos. Increases in temperature, sunlight, atmospheric carbon dioxide and other climatic changes have transformed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland. These changes have created ideal habitats for many bat species that predominantly live in forests.

According to the study, an additional 40 bat species moved into Yunnan province over the past century. This is the region where genetic data suggests SARS-CoV-2 may have arisen. Each bat species harbors an average of 2.7 coronaviruses.

The researchers urge policymakers to acknowledge the role that climate change plays in outbreaks of viral diseases and to work together to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

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Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2

Photo, posted July 21, 2013, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Ann Froschauer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Living On Trash | Earth Wise

March 16, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Litter is persistent and widespread in rivers worldwide. The world’s major rivers and estuaries are hotspots for plastic waste. Trash and microparticles wash down tributaries and build up before rivers enter oceans.

New research published in the journal Freshwater Biology has found that as this waste accumulates, aquatic river species like insects and snails are increasingly choosing to settle on plastic rather than on natural features like rocks and fallen branches.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham in the UK collected plastic waste from three rivers in eastern Britain along with rocks from the same rivers. Their analysis of all the macroinvertebrates on the items’ surfaces found that the surfaces of plastic waste items had nearly four times the diversity of the small animals as did the rocks. In addition, the more complex the plastic’s surface was, the higher the diversity.

The growing abundance of plastic waste coincides with a decline in natural habitat features in urban rivers. This is a result of increasing amounts of sedimentation from development that blankets riverbeds in silt and sand, restricting the supply and movement of rocks, fallen tree branches, and aquatic plants.

Clearly litter can serve as a place for various species to colonize, but trash is not a good environment for them. Trash can release toxic chemicals and entangle animals. Microplastics pose risks for the animals if ingested.

Estimates are that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year from rivers around the world. Natural habitats have become rare in urban rivers. River ecosystems built around piles of trash are not a good thing.

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As Plastic Pollution in Rivers Gets Worse, Species Are Increasingly Living on Litter

Photo, posted August 17, 2010, courtesy of Renee_McGurk 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.

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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.

Natural Habitats And Strawberry Farms | Earth Wise

April 22, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study led by researchers from the University of California – Davis, conserving natural habitat around strawberry fields can protect farmers’ yields, their bottom line, and the environment. The study also suggests that conserving natural habitat in this way has no detectable threat to food safety.

In this study, which was recently published in the journal Ecological Applications, the research team conducted surveys and experiments at 20 strawberry farms along California’s Central Coast. This region is responsible for 43% of the nation’s strawberry production.

The researchers found that strawberry farmers were better off with natural habitat, like forests, grasslands, wetlands, and shrubs, around their farms than without it. According to the study’s models, adding natural habitat can reduce crop damage costs by 23%. Removing natural habitat can increase costs by as much as 76%.

Importantly, the strawberry farms with natural habitat surrounding them showed no signs of increased fecal contamination. While bird feces were regularly encountered on the ground, only 2 of 10,000 strawberries examined show signs of direct fecal contamination. Those contaminated berries would be discarded during the hand-harvesting process.

These findings run contradictory to current best practice recommendations that support natural habitat removal around strawberry farms in order to decrease bird fecal contamination and crop damage. These food safety requirements were a consequence of the deadly outbreak of E. coli in 2006, which was traced back to spinach grown in this region.

It seems like our agricultural landscapes can both support and benefit from biodiversity.

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Natural habitat around farms a win for strawberry growers, birds and consumers

Photo, posted June 16, 2011, courtesy of the USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And Hawaii

December 18, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean. The islands are a world-renowned vacation spot, known for their white-sand beaches, lush flora, and near perfect weather. But stormier days may be ahead.