PLANET IN PERIL

by Larry Powell The task of  building a safer, healthier planet, surely, will only begin anew once we have defeated this beastly pandemic. So, are there lessons we can learn from Covid that we can actually use to blunt the assault of that other existential threat - manmade climate change? Smoke obscures the sun in one of the increasing number of wildfires in recent years - infernos which are starting earlier, lasting longer and burning more intensely. A Wikimedia photo. The steps being implemented globally to counter the deadly virus, Covid 19, have surely been sweeping, drastic and unprecedented.  And rightly so. While we could argue over which crisis is more grave, one important reality seems clear. As with every other contagion to have attacked human civilization in past, Covid 19, too,   will pass.  Sadly, if we do not take steps which are similarly drastic to the ones now happening during the pandemic,  that will not be the case with the climate crisi

by Larry Powell These carcasses were spotted on a side road not far from the Decker Hutterite Colony. According to the farm newspaper, the Western Producer, some Canadian producers are killing their own hog stocks and disposing of them, without putting them on the market.  Many meat-plant workers have been infected with Covid-19 and several packing plants in Canada and the U.S. have closed, as a result. Packers are therefore not accepting as many hogs as before and supplies are backing up throughout the production chain.Piglets normally raised in Canada and sold to finishing operations in the 'States are said to be worthless. Photos by PinP. News reports suggest, only animals in eastern Canada are known to have been euthanized, so far.  However, I spotted and photographed two large dumpsters filled with the carcasses of mature hogs two days ago (see above). They were near the Decker Hutterite Colony in southwestern Manitoba, site of a major hog producing oper

The Wilderness Committee

Just months ago, billions of animals, including iconic kangaroos and cuddly koalas, perished in Australia's calamitous bushfires,  found by scientists to have been worsened by manmade climate change.   Now, researchers say, one of the Amazon's least-known species could be all but gone, too in scant decades. Its habitat is being relentlessly slashed and burned to make way for agriculture.  by Larry Powell The elusive short-eared dog  ( Atelocynus microtis ) .   This rare photo was  captured  on a camera-trap,   deep in the Amazon rainforest.  Photo credit:  Guido Ayala and Rob Wallace.  Most of us know there are wild dogs living in remote places of the world. Australia's dingo probably leaps to mind first.  But did you also know that a cousin of the dingo (above) has been roaming quietly through vast areas of Amazon rainforests, in Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil for a long time? Atelocynus microtis -  the "short-eared" dog  is the

Nature Research Will a changing climate make such events more frequent?  The answer? S ee footnote ! Lava flow from Kilauea south of Hawai'i Volcanoes Nat'l. Park. Photo by Ekrem Canli. A paper appearing in  Nature today,  suggests, t he 2018 eruption of the Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai’i may have been activated by extreme rainfall.  The findings indicate that rainfall should be taken into account when assessing volcanic hazards. Rainfall is known to trigger seismic events and can alter volcanic activity. However, observations of such effects are limited to the shallow subsurface of the volcano, and it is unknown whether rainfall can activate deep magma movement. The eruption of the Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai’i was complex and multi-stage, but its trigger has been unknown. From May to August 2018, rifts opened around Kīlauea and the summit exhibited explosive eruptions and caldera collapse.  Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung examined the impact of rainfall on the 20

by Larry Powell An Australian sun, shrouded in bushfire smoke. A public domain photo. As Kermit the frog famously said, “It isn’t easy being green.” And, in a world which is, by necessity, now consumed in the battle against a pandemic, it’s even harder. It’s almost as if that other “existential threat,” manmade climate change, has been forgotten, even tho it never really received the attention it deserved in the first place!   It’s both encouraging and bewildering to watch just how this latest, terrible and unprecedented chapter in our history, is playing out;   E ncouraging because so many of us are actually heeding the advice of our best minds in epidemiology by hand-washing, physical-distancing and self-isolating. This is surely saving countless lives from the deadly maw of the “Covid beast.” By contrast, our climatologists - who’ve been warning us for a generation that our planet is on a dangerous trajectory toward “hothouse Earth” if we don’t eliminate or drasticall

WORLD  LAND  TRUST Bush meat for sale in Togo. Photo by  PGskot As the news continues to be dominated by the Covid-19 crisis, CEO Jonathan Barnard reflects on the conversations about conservation that have arisen from the pandemic. Story here.