By ASHLEY STIMPSON , Science.  Excerpt: To botanists, there is perhaps no story more infamous than that of Centinela, an isolated 40-square-kilometer ridge on the western slope of the Andes Mountains. ...the area’s lush cloud forests were written off by conservation biologists in the 1990s after extensive deforestation wiped out much of the native vegetation. The tragedy inspired a new phrase, “Centinelan extinction,” to describe the disappearance of a species before it could be described by scientists. But recent announcements have provided a glimmer of hope amid the gloom. This month, scientists  published a description of a species new to science that persists in small remnant patches of forest .... Roads and agriculture crept across western Ecuador and untold tracts of forest were bulldozed to make way for cacao, coffee, and banana plantations on the fertile slopes. In 1991, two influential biologists, Cal Dodson and Alwyn Gentry of the Missouri Botanical Garden, published a semina

By Michael B. Mahon et al, Nature.  Abstract: Anthropogenic change is contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, which are significantly correlated with socioeconomic, environmental and ecological factors. Studies have shown that infectious disease risk is modified by changes to biodiversity, climate change, chemical pollution, landscape transformations and species introductions. However, it remains unclear which global change drivers most increase disease and under what contexts. Here we amassed a dataset from the literature that contains 2,938 observations of infectious disease responses to global change drivers across 1,497 host–parasite combinations, including plant, animal and human hosts. ...reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj5763 By Erin Saupe, Cooper Malanoski, et al, Science.  Excerpt: A polar bear floating on a tiny piece of sea ice has become the iconic image of the extinction risks of climate change. But not all threats to species from our warming planet are so easy to see. That’s why paleobiologist Erin Saupe, Ph.D. student Cooper Malanoski, and their colleagues turned to the fossil record. By understanding which species fell victim to climactic fluctuations in the past, they aimed to get a better sense of which organisms might be most vulnerable now. “Despite the threat that climate change poses to biodiversity, we do not yet fully understand how it causes animals to go extinct,” Saupe and Malanoski  explain in an article for  The Conversation . So, the team examined data from nearly 300,000 marine invertebrate fossils from the last 485 million years, using statistics to examine how traits of the animals and their environment link to their likelihood o

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/11/climate/climate-change-wildlife-solar.html By Catrin Einhorn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For pronghorn, those antelope-like creatures of the American West, this grassland north of Flagstaff is prime habitat. ...But for a nation racing to adopt renewable energy, the land is prime for something else: solar panels. ...Animals need humans to solve climate change. ...The good news for wildlife is that there are ways for solar developers to make installations less harmful and even beneficial for many species, like fences that let some animals pass, wildlife corridors, native plants that nurture pollinators, and more. ...“We’re faced with two truths: We have a climate change crisis, but we also have a biodiversity crisis,” said Meaghan Gade, a program manager at the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/after-mass-coral-die-off-florida-scientists-rethink-plan-to-save-ailing-reefs By WARREN CORNWALL , Science.  Excerpt: Four years ago, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled a $100 million coral moonshot. Over 2 decades, nearly half a million hand-reared coral colonies would be planted on seven ailing reefs in southern Florida, in a bid to revive them. ...Today, the project looks as ailing as the coral it was meant to save. A record-breaking underwater heat wave that swept the Caribbean and southern Florida in 2023 killed most of the transplanted colonies....

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/03/carbon-tree-planting-schemes-threaten-tropical-biodiversity-aoe By Patrick Greenfield , The Guardian. Excerpt: Monoculture tree-planting schemes are threatening tropical biodiversity while only offering modest climate benefit, ecologists have said, warning that ecosystems like the Amazon and Congo basin are being reduced to their carbon value. Amid a boom in the planting of single-species plantations to capture carbon, scientists have urged governments to prioritise the conservation and restoration of native forests over commercial monocultures, and cautioned that planting swathes of non-native trees in tropical regions threatens important flora and fauna for a negligible climate impact. Writing in  the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution , ecologists said the increasing popularity of commercial pine, eucalyptus and teak plantations in the tropics for carbon offsetting is having unintended consequences, such as drying out native

https://eos.org/articles/herbivore-diversity-helps-maintain-arctic-tundra-diversity By  Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt:  A long-term experiment in southwestern Greenland reveals that the presence of musk oxen and caribou helps stave off declines in Arctic tundra diversity brought on by climate change. ... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/coral-reefs-are-home-greatest-microbial-diversity-earth By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science.  Excerpt: Findings may inform understanding of reefs’ resilience to environmental changes. ...Coral reefs, bastions of marine biodiversity because of the abundant fish, invertebrates, and algae they support, are also home to Earth’s greatest microbial diversity, according to a new estimate. ...an international team of researchers ...sequenced DNA from more than 5000 samples of three coral species, two fish species, and plankton. The team identified a half-billion kinds of microbes, mostly bacteria. ...the team reports today in Nature Communications. ...When the researchers extrapolated those findings to estimate the total reef microbial diversity across the Pacific, it was equivalent to Earth’s total, previously estimated microbial diversity. ...they expect this high microbial diversity can help the reefs be more resilient in the face of heat waves, pollution,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/record-heat-over-great-barrier-reef-raises-fears-of-second-summer-of-coral-bleaching By  Graham Readfearn , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Ocean temperatures over parts of the  Great Barrier Reef  have reached record levels this month, sparking fears of a second summer in a row of mass coral bleaching. Data from the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) shows sea surface temperatures over the northern parts of the reef have been the highest for any November on a record going back to 1985. With the peak period for accumulated heat over the reef not expected until February, cooler weather conditions and cyclone activity before then could stave off a mass bleaching event. ...Last summer’s mass bleaching,  declared by the Great BarrierReef Marine Park Authority  (GBRMPA), was the first outbreak during a La Niña – a climate pattern that historically has kept ocean temperatures cool enough to avoid bleaching....  S

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/16/alaska-snow-crab-season-canelled-population-decline By Maya Yang , The Guardian.  Excerpt: ...The causes of the population collapse are being researched but likely include increased predation and stresses from warmer water, which the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes may have prompted the crabs to shift away from coasts. The fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will not happen. The winter harvest of smaller snow crab has also been cancelled for the first time. “In the Bering Sea, Alaska pollock, snow crab, and Pacific halibut have generally shifted away from the coast since the early 1980s … They have also moved northward by an average of 19 miles,” the federal  agency  said. ...“These are truly unprecedented and troubling times for Alaska’s iconic crab fisheries and for the hard-working fishermen and communities that depend on them,”  said  Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade associatio

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/28/nearly-half-worlds-bird-species-in-decline-as-destruction-of-avian-life-intensifies-aoe By  Phoebe Weston , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Nearly half of the planet’s bird species are in decline, according to a definitive report that paints the grimmest picture yet of the destruction of avian life. The  State of the World’s Birds report , which is released every four years by BirdLife International, shows that the expansion and intensification of agriculture is putting pressure on 73% of species. Logging, invasive species, exploitation of natural resources and climate breakdown are the other main threats. Globally, 49% of bird species are declining, one in eight are threatened with extinction and at least 187 species are confirmed or suspected to have gone extinct since 1500. Most of these have been endemic species living on islands, although there is an increase in birds now going extinct on larger land masses, particularly in tropical regi

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/02/the-last-hunt-greenland-split-over-protection-for-the-narwhal By Sofia Moutinho and Regin Winther Poulsen, The Guardian .  Excerpt: ... Narwhals are found in Arctic waters mostly around Greenland and Canada, and are estimated to number about 120,000 globally. These elusive animals face threats, including noise pollution from ships, which can disturb their navigation and ability to find food, as well as warming waters due to global heating. As the ice melts, they lose their habitat and food. Greenland’s government introduced quotas for hunting narwhal for the first time in 2004, and also banned the lucrative export of their tusks. Narwhal meat is now the hunters’ most commercially prized product, and is distributed around the country from the hunting districts to be sold in Facebook groups and supermarkets, where it can fetch 500 Danish kroner (£57) a kilo . Yet, despite hunting restrictions, populations are plummeting, according to

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/extinction-obituary-bramble-cay-melomys-climate-change-aoe By Hannah Seo, The Guardian.  Excerpt: No one knows how the Bramble Cay melomyses – rodents with large, liquid eyes and reddish-brown fur, small enough to fit in the palms of your hands – ended up on Bramble Cay. The cay is speck of land about 50km (31 miles) off the coast of Papua New Guinea , at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. ...in 2015, the Bramble Cay melomys became the first mammal to go extinct directly because of human-caused climate breakdown. ...Bramble Cay is only a little larger than an average US shopping mall. The highest point is about 10 feet above sea level. ... The tiny cay and its essentially trapped inhabitants were susceptible to even small changes in the surrounding ocean. Climate change and rising sea levels led to salt-water intrusions throughout the island, choking much of the flora – in the decade between 2004 and 2014, the volume of leafy

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe9039 By Justin L. Penn and Curtis Deutsch, Science Magazine.  Abstract: Global warming threatens marine biota with losses of unknown severity. Here, we quantify global and local extinction risks in the ocean across a range of climate futures on the basis of the ecophysiological limits of diverse animal species and calibration against the fossil record. With accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone become comparable to current direct human impacts within a century and culminate in a mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past. Polar species are at highest risk of extinction, but local biological richness declines more in the tropics. Reversing greenhouse gas emissions trends would diminish extinction risks by more than 70%, preserving marine biodiversity accumulated over the past ~50 million years of evolutionary history.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/global-land-degradation-serious-u-n-report-finds-restoration-offers-hope By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Restoring 5 billion hectares of land could increase crop yields, slow biodiversity decline, and help curb climate change. ...Reversing global land degradation can alleviate three big problems—the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, according to a U.N. report released today. The  Global Land Outlook 2  from the  United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) points out that 40% of Earth’s land has been compromised by development, deforestation, farming, and other human activities. But the report also offers a vision of benefits that could accrue by 2050 if humanity acts to restore landscapes and reverse this toll.…