CRISPR CRITTERS

New technology offers fighting chance against grapevine killer

Taking aim at the glassy-winged sharpshooter

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: GRAPEVINE INFECTED WITH PIERCE'S DISEASE, WHICH IS TRANSMITTED BY THE GLASSY-WINGED SHARPSHOOTER. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Scientists at UC Riverside have a shot at eradicating a deadly threat to vineyards posed by the glassy-winged sharpshooter, just as its resistance to insecticide has been growing.

When the half-inch-long flying insect feeds on grapevines, it transmits bacteria that causes Pierce’s Disease. Once infected, a vine is likely to die within three years — a growing problem for California’s $58 billion wine industry. Currently, it can only be controlled with quarantines and increasingly less effective chemical sprays.

New gene-editing technology represents hope for controlling the sharpshooter. Scientists at UC Riverside demonstrated that this technology can make permanent physical changes in the insect. They also showed these changes were passed down to three or more generations of insects. 

A paper describing the team’s work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Our team established, for the first time, genetic approaches to controlling glassy-winged sharpshooters,” said Peter Atkinson, entomologist and paper co-author.

For this project, the researchers used CRISPR technology to knock out genes controlling the sharpshooters’ eye color. In one experiment, they turned the insects’ eyes white. In another, the eyes turned cinnabar, a blood-red color. Then, the team demonstrated these eye color changes were permanent, passed along to the offspring of the modified parents. 

CRISPR is based on the immune systems of bacteria. During attacks by viruses, bacteria save pieces of DNA from their invaders. When the viruses return, the bacteria recognize, cut, and destroy the viral DNA.

Scientists use CRISPR like “molecular scissors” to target specific DNA sequences.

“This is a great technology because it can be so specific to one insect, and not cause off-target effects on other insects, animals or humans,” said Inaiara de Souza Pacheco, UCR entomologist and lead study author. “It’s a much more environmentally friendly strategy for insect control than using chemicals.”

One of the interesting discoveries the team made is that sharpshooter eye color genes are located on non-sexual chromosomes. All animals have two types of chromosomes: sex and autosomal, or non-sexual.

“Knowing that white and cinnabar genes are on autosomal chromosomes demonstrates that the inheritance of these genes is not related to the gender of the insect,” Pacheco said. “This is important for developing control strategies.”

For example, in mosquitoes, it is exclusively the females that transmit viruses to humans. Identifying genes on sex chromosomes that favor female mosquitoes is important for mosquito-control strategies. Conversely, it’s important to know when key genes are not on sex chromosomes.

To demonstrate that CRISPR-made mutations pass through to subsequent generations, the team also had to establish how to get the sharpshooters to mate in pairs. “That’s not always straightforward in entomology, because insects sometimes need more than one other insect to get stimulated for mating,” Atkinson explained.

CAPTION

Glassy-winged sharpshooters with CRISPR-modified eyecolor.

CREDIT

Inaiara de Souza Pacheco/UC

Now that the team has demonstrated that CRISPR can work in these insects, they have a new goal.

“We’re using CRISPR to try and modify the mouth parts of the sharpshooter so they can’t pick up the bacteria that causes Pierce’s Disease,” said Rick Redak, UCR entomologist and paper co-author. 

There is high likelihood the team will succeed in modifying the mouths, given the efficiency with which they were able to change the genes for the sharpshooters’ eye color. The team injected the CRISPR molecules into recently laid eggs, and in some experiments as many of 100% of the eggs became nymphs with altered eye color. 

“It’s absolutely amazing because the success rate in other organisms is often 30% or lower,” said Linda Walling plant biologist and paper co-author. “The high rate of gene editing success in glassy-winged sharpshooters bodes well for our ability to develop new methods of insect control, as well as understanding the basic biology of this devastating pest.”

Atkinson also marvels how close the team is to its goal of creating insects that aren’t infectious. “Before CRISPR, generating specific mutations with such ease at such high frequencies was virtually impossible,” Atkinson said. “Now we are confident we can come up with ways to create insects unable to transmit this disease.”

“The outcome of this research is an example of the strength that the agriculture departments in UCR’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences bring to developing innovative pest control strategies,” he said.

In addition to scientists from UCR’s Department of Entomology, the research team included Walling from the Department of Botany & Plant Sciences and mycologist Jason Stajich from the Department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology. 

Their work was funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. 

The team is particularly encouraged by the results of their CRISPR experiments on sharpshooters, part of a class of insects for which other molecular control strategies have not previously been effective.

“It’s looking like sharpshooters will become a model organism for the Hemiptera, this big category of piercing, sucking insects,” said Redak. “Our model of using CRISPR for them could blow open our ability to control diseases they transmit to plants and possibly, to humans as well.”
  

CAPTION

Glassy-winged sharpshooter with cinnabar eye color.

CREDIT

Inaiara de Souza Pacheco/UCR

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-022-09990-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Efficient CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome modification of the glassy-winged sharpshooter Homalodisca vitripennis

Researchers discover overlooked Jurassic Park of lizards

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

 

IMAGE: COLLARED LIZARD IN COLORADO view more 

CREDIT: PAHCAL123 UNDER CC BY-SA 4.0 LICENSE

New research published today in eLife by researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) and the University of Bristol (UB) moves back the moment of the radiation of squamates ―the group of reptiles that includes lizards, snakes and worm lizards― to the Jurassic, a long time before current estimates.

Cerdanyola del Vallès, April 26, 2022.  The Squamata is the largest order of reptiles, including lizards, snakes and worm lizards. Squamates are all cold-blooded, and their skins are covered by horny scales. They are key parts of modern terrestrial faunas, especially in warmer climates, with an astonishing diversity of more than 10,000 species. However, understanding the evolutionary paths that forged their success are still poorly understood.

There is consensus that all the main squamate groups had arisen before the event that wiped out dinosaurs and other groups of reptiles at the end of the Mesozoic era. Before that global catastrophic event, through the Cretaceous, many terrestrial tetrapod groups like mammals, lizards and birds, apparently underwent a great diversification during the so-called Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, triggered by the rise of flowering plants. The scarcity of fossil remains of squamates through the Jurassic suggested that the main burst of squamate evolution happened in the Cretaceous (between 145 and 66 Myr.), when their fossil record dramatically improves.

Now, a new paper published in eLife, led by Arnau Bolet, paleontologist at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont and the University of Bristol, however, challenges this view by suggesting a much earlier radiation of squamates. Along with colleagues from the University of Bristol Michael Benton, Tom Stubbs and Jorge Herrera-Flores, their research concludes that this group of reptiles probably achieved a diverse array of adaptations in the Jurassic (between 201 and 145 Myr.), long before previously thought. “Even though Jurassic squamates are rare, reconstructed evolutionary trees show that all the main specializations of squamates evolved then, and it’s possible to distinguish adaptations of geckoes, iguanas, skinks, worm lizards, and snakes some 50 million years earlier than had been thought”, explains Michael Benton, co-author of the research.

But how could the scarce Jurassic fossils suggest an early burst in evolution? The key is in their anatomy. The few Jurassic squamates do not show primitive morphologies as would be expected, but they relate directly to the diverse modern groups. “Instead of finding a suite of generalized lizards on the stem of the squamate tree, what we found in the Jurassic were the first representatives of many modern groups, showing advanced morphological features”, says Arnau Bolet, lead author of the article.

The observed times of divergence, morphospace plots and evolutionary rates, all suggest that the Jurassic was a time of innovation in squamate evolution, during which the bases of the success of the group were established. According to these results, the apparent sudden increase in diversity observed in the Cretaceous could be related to an improved fossil record, capable of recording a larger number of species, or to a burst of origins of new species related to the new kinds of forests and insects.

Establishing the timing and mode of radiation of squamates is key for not only understanding the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems in the Mesozoic, but also for deciphering how the group achieved an astonishing diversity of more than 10,000 species, only rivalled by birds among tetrapods.

Original article:

• Bolet, A., Stubbs, T.L., Herrera-Flores, J., Benton, M.J. (2022). The Jurassic rise of squamates as supported by lepidosaur disparity and evolutionary rates. eLife. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66511

CAPTION

The fossil of Jurassic lizard Eichstaettisaurus

CREDIT

Jorge Herrera Flores

---

JOURNAL

eLife

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

The Jurassic rise of squamates as supported by lepidosaur disparity and evolutionary rates

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2022

New research reveals how the black rat colonised Europe in the Roman and Medieval periods

New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe – revealing that the rodent colonised the continent on two occasions in the Roman and Medieval periods.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

 

IMAGE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL BLACK RAT MANDIBLE view more 

CREDIT: EWAN CHIPPING, UNIVERSITY OF YORK

New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe – revealing that the rodent colonised the continent on two occasions in the Roman and Medieval periods.

The study - led by the University of York along with the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute  -  is the first ancient genetic study of the species (Rattus rattus), often known as the ship rat.

By analysing DNA from ancient black rat remains found at archaeological sites spanning the 1st to the 17th centuries in Europe and North Africa,  the researchers have pieced together a new understanding of how rat populations dispersed following the ebbs and flows of human trade,urbanism, and empires.

The study shows that the black rat colonised Europe at least twice, once with the Roman expansion and then again in the Medieval period - matching up with archaeological evidence for a decline or even disappearance of rats after the fall of the Roman Empire. 

The authors of the study say this was likely related to the break-up of the Roman economic system, though climatic change and the 6th Century Justinianic Plague may have played a role too. When towns and long-range trade re-emerged in the Medieval period, so too did a new wave of black rats.

The black rat is one of three rodent species, along with the house mouse (Mus musculus) and brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), to have become globally distributed as a result of its ability to live around humans by taking advantage of food and transportation.

Black rats were widespread across Europe until at least the 18th century, before their population declined, most likely as a result of competition with the newly arrived brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), the now dominant rat species in temperate Europe.

Dr David Orton from the Department of Archaeology said: “We’ve long known that the spread of rats is linked to human events, and we suspected that Roman expansion brought them north into Europe.

“But one remarkable result of our study is quite how much of a single event this seems to have been: all of our Roman rat bones from England to Serbia form a single group in genetic terms.”

“When rats reappear in the Medieval period we see a completely different genetic signature – but again all of our samples from England to Hungary to Finland all group together. We couldn’t have hoped for clearer evidence of repeated colonisation of Europe.”

Alex Jamieson, co-author at the University of Oxford, said “The modern dominance of brown rats has obscured the fascinating history of black rats in Europe. Generating genetic signatures of these ancient black rats reveals how closely black rat and human population dynamics mirror each other.”  

He Yu, co-author from the Max Planck Institute, said “This study is a great showcase of how the genetic background of human commensal species, like the black rat, could reflect historical or economic events. And more attention should be paid to these often neglected small animals.”

Researchers said that the study could also be used to provide information about human movement across continents.

 “Our results show how human-commensal species like the black rat, animals which flourish around human settlements, can act as ideal proxies for human historical processes,” added Dr Orton.

The research was a collaboration between York and partners including Oxford, the Max Planck Institute, and researchers in over 20 countries. 

Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history is published in Nature Communications.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-30009-z 

ARTICLE TITLE

Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2022

AOC has a message for Americans who already paid off their student loans: 'We can support things we won't directly benefit from'

Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, May 2, 2022,

AOC said student-loan forgiveness is good, even for those who have already paid off their loans.

Biden is getting closer to acting on debt relief, saying a decision will be made in the coming weeks.

He told reporters he isn't considering $50,000 in forgiveness — an amount progressives have pushed for.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says student-loan forgiveness is good for everyone — even those who already paid off their debt.

"Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn't impact you," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram story, in response to a question on the benefits of debt cancellation for those who already paid off their loans. "That doesn't make it bad. I am sure there are certainly other things that student loan borrowers' taxes pay for. We can do good things and reject the scarcity mindset that says doing something good for someone else comes at the cost of something for ourselves."

AOC responds to a question on student-loan forgiveness on Instagram.Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"It all comes around," she added. "It's okay. We can support things we won't directly benefit from."

The student-loan forgiveness conversation is picking up steam after President Joe Biden told reporters last week a decision on relief will be made "in the next couple of weeks." While he said he is not considering canceling $50,000 in student debt for every federal borrower — an amount many progressives have been pushing for — a number of reports have suggested the president is considering at least $10,000 in relief that will likely be tied to income limits, and it will be implemented before the pause on payments expires after August 31.

I'm a 34-year-old who has never had a credit card — and it's the worst financial decision I've made in my life

He avoided credit cards to stay out of debt, but it still hurt his credit score.

While broad loan forgiveness is something many Democrats would like to see carried out, Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post she has concerns with subjecting the relief to income thresholds.

"I don't believe in a cutoff, especially for so many of the front-line workers who are drowning in debt and would likely be excluded from relief," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Canceling $50,000 in debt is where you really make a dent in inequality and the racial wealth gap. $10,000 isn't."

Republican lawmakers feel differently. Since the news came out that the president is considering canceling some amount of student debt this summer, many of them slammed the possibility of broad relief. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, for example, wrote about the cost to taxpayers forgiving debt would have on Twitter: "Why should those who didn't go to college or responsibly paid their loans be responsible for $13,000 in new debt?"

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said broad relief would be a "bribe" to voters — an attempt by Democrats to win the midterm elections. Maine Sen. Susan Collins previously told Insider student-loan forgiveness is "not fair" to those who have already repaid their debt and argued people with higher incomes shouldn't qualify for the broad relief Biden is considering.

But most Democrats want to see Biden enact broad student-loan relief for everyone, free of thresholds.

"Instead of continuously extending the pause under pressure," New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman recently tweeted, "he needs to cancel all student loan debt."

'A slap in the face': 

Some Americans are mad over 

potential student loan forgiveness

Aarthi Swaminathan

·Reporter

Tue, May 3, 2022, 

As the president weighs broad student loan forgiveness, some Americans expressing frustration over a policy they see as unfair.

"While some may view this debt forgiveness as a slap in the face to people who were responsible and paid off their student loans, this is a bigger slap in the face to those Americans who never went to college," Will Bach, a financial advisor based in Ohio, told Yahoo Finance.

Research has shown that a college degree generally boosts an individual's earnings over their lifetime. And given that any broad-based forgiveness would cost tens of billions of dollars, all taxpayers — not just by those who have a college degree — would be contributing to the cost of cancellation.

"How can we honestly ask people who did not go to college to subsidize the lives of those who did decide to go to college?" Bach added. "To my knowledge, everyone with student loans voluntarily took them. Every instance of a student loan was a voluntary choice that person made."

Some right-leaning academics, including Andrew Gillen of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, argue that there are a variety of problems with cancelling student loan debt. These include the overall cost and the fact that forgiveness does not directly address the core issue of rising college costs.

Cancelling $10,000 or $50,000 across the board is "really badly targeted," Gillen said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

"There there are people who are struggling to repay their debt, and we've got an existing set of solutions — and those solutions aren't working," he acknowledged, such as the massive failure of the income-driven repayment system. At the same time, he added, any broad-based forgiveness would be like saying that "a handful of people that are struggling here, [so] let's get rid of the debt for everybody."

An income cap on who qualified for any loan forgiveness would be a "no brainer," Gillen added, because it would help target the relief towards lower-income struggling debtors.

Biden is reportedly considering capping forgiveness to those who earned less than $125,000 or $150,000 as individual filers the previous year, The Washington Post reported recently. For couples filing jointly, the cap would be around $250,000 or $300,000.

President Joe Biden during a meeting with Agency Inspectors General in the State Dining Room of The White House on Friday April 29, 2022. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

"The other thing that would also be a no-brainer is having different criteria for graduate loans than you do for undergraduate loans," Gillen said, "because we really do restrict how much you can borrow at the undergraduate level ... whereas at graduate level, because those students can borrow virtually without limit."

The proposal "is nothing more than a welfare program for the upper class," Bach said. "The people who have responsibly saved and paid for college will not benefit from this at all."

Bach, who worked as a police officer for five years after college, added that he took on student loans to pay for his MBA in finance and paid it off within a few years of graduating. He currently is a certified financial planner and financial adviser.

Critics ignore the privilege that allowed them to be debt-free: academic

Advocates pushed back against critics of Biden's plans to cancel debt.

“I'm sorry we weren’t able to win cancel student debt sooner," Melissa Byrne, a political organizer and an activist pushing for student debt cancellation, told Yahoo Finance. "I'm sorry that political operatives in the '70s and the '80s caved to Ronald Reagan and let folks defund higher education. ... But I'm not sorry we’re about to hopefully get a win now."

Louise Seamster, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, told Yahoo Finance that the group pushing back against cancellation is not a large one and asked them to put themselves in student debtors' shoes.

"As a sociologist, my work involves teaching students to consider how their own experiences are shaped by larger forces," Seamster said in an email to Yahoo Finance. "As such, I would encourage people who have been lucky enough to pay down their debt to reflect on what factors allowed them to pay down their debt: maybe attending school when public education was actually affordable; the support of a partner or family; or graduating into a favorable economy."

She added that critics "might have made career choices that prioritized income, but I hope they think what our society would look like if everyone had made those same choices and who would be educating their children or providing them medical care."

Some studies have shown that women and people of color take on more debt to go to college compared to their white male peers. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) has repeatedly argued that student loan forgiveness is "a matter of racial and economic justice" given the disproportionate burden on borrowers of color.

"Canceling student debt is one of the most powerful ways to address racial and economic equity issues," a recent letter from prominent Democrats, including Pressley, asserted to the president. "The student loan system mirrors many of the inequalities that plague American society and widens the racial wealth gap. Black students in particular borrow more to attend college, borrow more often while they are in school, and have a harder time paying their debt off than their white peers."

U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 8, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Seamster added that if Americans still feel like cancellation of debt is unfair, "I invite them to join the movement for free college to make the same public higher education benefits available to all and make student debt itself unnecessary."

Bach said he doubted that forgiving debt would help the economy, and that it was an opportunity for Democrats to gain clout with voters.

"I don't think there is any evidence that this is going to help with the U.S. economy or student debt holders," he said. "This is simply a Hail Mary for President Biden who has just hit a 40% approval rating with the younger population."

The political benefit seems to be one thing both sides agree on: In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Pressley stated that "Democrats win when we deliver, and we have to deliver in ways that are impactful, tangible and transformative, like canceling student debt. This is good policy. And it is also good politics."

Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

Student debt can impair your

cardiovascular health into middle age

Individuals with student loan debt into early middle age have a higher risk of cardiovascular illness, plus undermining the usual health benefits of a post-secondary education, researchers report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELSEVIER

Ann Arbor, May 3, 2022 – Adults who failed to pay down student debt, or took on new educational debt, between young adulthood and early mid-life face an elevated risk of cardiovascular illness, researchers report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. Adults who repaid their student debt had better or equivalent health than individuals who never faced student debt, suggesting that relieving the burden of student debt could improve population health.

“As the cost of college has increased, students and their families have taken on more debt to get to and stay in college. Consequently, student debt is a massive financial burden to so many in the United States, and yet we know little about the potential long-term health consequences of this debt. Previous research showed that, in the short term, student debt burdens were associated with self-reported health and mental health, so we were interested in understanding whether student debt was associated with cardiovascular illness among adults in early mid-life,” explained lead investigator Adam M. Lippert, PhD, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA.

The study utilized data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a panel study of 20,745 adolescents in Grades 7 to 12 first interviewed during the 1994-1995 school year. Four subsequent waves of data were collected, including Wave 3, when the respondents were aged 18-26 and Wave 5, when respondents were aged 22-44. Wave 5 respondents were invited to in-home medical exams.

Researchers assessed biological measures of cardiovascular health of 4,193 qualifying respondents using the 30-year Framingham cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score, which considers sex, age, blood pressure, antihypertensive treatment, smoking status, diabetes diagnosis, and body mass index to measure the likelihood of a cardiovascular illness over the next 30 years of life. They also looked at levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker of chronic or systemic inflammation.

The investigators classified student debt according to the following categories: never had student debt; paid off debt between Waves 3 and 5; took on debt between waves; and consistently in debt. Models were adjusted for respondent household and family characteristics including education, income, and other demographics.

The researchers found that more than one third of respondents (37%) did not report student debt in either wave, while 12% had paid off their loans; 28% took on student debt; and 24% consistently had debt. Respondents who consistently had debt or took on debt had higher CVD risk scores than individuals who had never been in debt and those who paid off their debt. Interestingly, respondents who paid off debt had significantly lower CVD risk scores than those never in debt. They found clinically significant CRP value estimates for those who took on new debt or were consistently in debt between young adulthood and early mid-life, estimates that exceeded their counterparts who never had debt or paid it off. Race/ethnicity had no impact on the results.

Supplemental analyses suggested that, on balance, degree completion provides health benefits even to those with student debt, although these benefits were diminished relative to non-debtors. Dr. Lippert observed that these findings underscore the potential population health implications of transitioning to debt-financed education in the US. Though the empirical evidence is clear on the economic and health returns from a college degree, these advantages come at a cost for borrowers.

“Our study respondents came of age and went to college at a time when student debt was rapidly rising with an average debt of around $25,000 for four-year college graduates. It’s risen more since then, leaving young cohorts with more student debt than any before them,” Dr. Lippert said. “Unless something is done to reduce the costs of going to college and forgive outstanding debts, the health consequences of climbing student loan debt are likely to grow.”

---

JOURNAL

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.amepre.2022.02.002 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Student Debt and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Among U.S. Adults in Early Mid-Life

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2022

Amazon tribes turn the tables on intruders with social media
 

In this photo provided by Kwazady xipaya, president of the Indigenous Association Pyjahyry xipaya Aldeia tukamã, Indigenous leaders Kwazady Xipaia Mendes and Juma Xipaia participate in an online meeting with the Federal Prosecutors' Office, in the Karimaa village of Altamira, Para state, Brazil, March 15, 2022.

 A fast-expanding network of antennae is empowering Indigenous groups to use phones, video cameras and social media to galvanize the public and pressure authorities to respond swiftly to threats from gold miners, landgrabbers and loggers. 

(Warawara Xipaya dos Santos/Indigenous Association Pyjahyry xipaya Aldeia tukamã via AP)

Mon, May 2, 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — It was dusk on April 14 when Francisco Kuruaya heard a boat approaching along the river near his village in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. He assumed it was the regular delivery boat bringing gasoline for generators and outboard motors to remote settlements like his. Instead, what Kuruaya found was a barge dredging his people's pristine river in search of gold.

Kuruaya had never seen a dredge operating in this area of the Xipaia people's territory, let alone one this massive; it resembled a floating factory.

Kuruaya, 47, motored out to the barge, boarded it and confronted the gold miners. They responded in harsh voices and he retreated for fear they were armed. But so was he — with a phone — the first he'd ever had. Back in his village Karimaa, his son Thaylewa Xipaia forwarded the photos of the mining boat to the tribe's WhatsApp chat groups.

“Guys, this is urgent!" he said to fellow members of his tribe in an audio message The Associated Press has reviewed. “There's a barge here at Pigeons Island. It's huge and it's destroying the whole island. My dad just went there and they almost took his phone."

Several days' voyage away, in the nearest city of Altamira, Kuruaya's daugher Juma Xipaia received the frantic messages. She recorded her own video with choked voice and watery eyes, warning that armed conflict was imminent -- then uploaded it to social media.

In a matter of hours, word was out to the world.

The episode illustrates the advance of the internet into vast, remote rainforest areas that, until recently, had no means of quickly sharing visual evidence of environmental crime. A fast-expanding network of antennae is empowering Indigenous groups to use phones, video cameras and social media to galvanize the public and pressure authorities to respond swiftly to threats from gold miners, landgrabbers and loggers.

Until now Indigenous communities have relied on radio to transmit their distress calls. Environmental and Indigenous rights groups then relayed these to the media and the public. But the non-profits have been maligned by Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who advocates legalizing mining and land leasing in protected Indigenous territories. He has castigated the organizations as unreliable actors, out of touch with Indigenous people’s true desires and on the payroll of global environmental do-gooders.

Video and photos coming directly from Indigenous people are harder to dismiss and this is forcing authorities as well as the public to reckon with the reality on the ground.

“When used properly, technology helps a lot in real-time monitoring and denouncing,” said Nara Baré, head of the group Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, in a telephone interview. “The external pressure to make the federal government act in the Xipaia territory was very important. Technology has been the main tool for that.”

Connectivity is not only enabling whistle-blowing on social media. Brazil's Federal Prosecutor's Office has set up a website to register reported crimes and receive uploaded visual material. Previously people in remote communities have had to make the long and expensive trip to the nearest city that has a federal prosecutor's office.

Xipaia territory is part of a pristine rainforest area known as Terra do Meio (Middle Earth) that is dotted with dozens of Indigenous and traditional river communities. Internet connection there was rare until mid-2020, when a group of non-profits, including Health in Harmony and the Socio-Environmental Institute, financed installation of 17 antennae throughout the vast region.

Priority was given to communities with either health centers or market hubs for the production and sale of forest products, such as Brazil nuts. Signal can be painfully slow, especially on rainy days, yet it has connected people who were previously off the grid, and is enough for photos and videos to trickle out of the forest.

“The strategy was to improve communication and avoid unnecessary trips to the city,” said Marcelo Salazar, Health in Harmony's Brazil program coordinator. “The internet makes it easier for health, education, and forest economy issues." Fighting environmental crime was an added benefit, he added.

Four out of five Xipaia communities are now connected. Karimaa, the village where the barge was first spotted, has had internet since July 2020. Just three days after installation, when a teenager injured his head, a city doctor was able to assess his condition using photos sent over WhatsApp. That avoided a costly, complicated medevac during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the case of the mining dredge marked the first time the Xipaia used the internet to protect their territory. In addition to sounding the alarm, four villages used WhatsApp to quickly organize a party of warriors to confront the miners. Painted with urucum, a local fruit that produces a red ink, and armed with bows, arrows and hunting rifles, they crammed into a small boat, according to Juma Xipaia. By the time they reached the location where the barge had been, however, it was gone.

Some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) to the west, in the Amazonian state of Rondonia, internet access enabled the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people to take classes in photography and video online so they could chronicle deforestation by landgrabbers. The three-day training in 2020 was held via Zoom.

That effort produced the documentary “The Territory,” which won awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and others. Throughout its production, American director Alex Pritz relied on WhatsApp to communicate with his newly trained camera operators.

Tangaãi Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau is a teacher-turned-cameraman who traveled to the Danish festival and later spoke with the AP via WhatsApp from his remote village. He said the film is changing people's perception of Brazil's indigenous people. "In Copenhagen... I received many questions. They knew about Brazil’s natural wonders, but didn’t know about Indigenous peoples who fight for their territories.”

Elsewhere in the Amazon, the internet has yet to arrive. So when illegal gold miners killed two Yanomami tribe members in June 2020, news of the crime took two weeks to arrive due to the area's remoteness. To avoid a repeat of that, Yanomami organizations have been seeking better connectivity. After Palimiu village along the Uraricoera River suffered a series of attacks committed by miners in May 2021, the Yanomami managed to install an antenna there. Since then, the violence has eased.

Bolsonaro's repeated promises to legalize mining and other activities on Indigenous lands have fueled invasions of territories, which are often islands of forest amid sprawling ranches. Indigenous and environmental groups estimate there are some 20,000 illegal miners in Yanomami territory, which is roughly the size of Portugal. Bolsonaro’s government claims that there are 3,500.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon surged 76% in 2021 compared to 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office, according to official data from Brazil’s space agency, which uses satellites to monitor forest loss.

Most internet connections in the Amazon remain slow, even in mid-sized cities. That may soon change. Last November, Brazil's Communications Minister Fábio Faria held a meeting with billionaire Elon Musk to discuss a partnership to improve connectivity in rural areas of the world's largest tropical rainforest.

The communications ministry, however, says the talks have not evolved and no progress has been made. Musk's company SpaceX did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Some worry that Indigenous groups like the Xipaia won't be the only beneficiaries of greater internet penetration in the Amazon region. Illegal miners often co-opt local Indigenous leaders, communicating surreptitiously on messaging apps. The conversations, sometimes aided by clandestine networks, can enable miners to hide heavy machinery, or tip them off to impending raids by authorities, allowing them to flee.

In Roraima state, which is where most of the Yanomami territory lies, the AP contacted one internet provider that offers wifi to an illegal gold mine for $2,600, plus $690 per month. Clandestine small craft fly the equipment in for installation.

“It's a double-edged sword,” said Salazar, of Health in Harmony, speaking of increased connectivity.

But for Juma Xipaia, the new connection means added protection and visibility for her people. After she posted her tearful video, it racked up views and was picked up by local and international media. Within two days, an airborne operation involving the Federal Police, the national guard and environmental agencies swooped in. They located the dredge hidden behind vegetation on the banks of the Iriri River with seven miners aboard.

In a country where environmental crime in the Amazon usually goes unchecked, the speedy, successful response underscored the power of Indigenous networks.

“After making a lot of calls for help, I decided to do the video. Then it worked. The telephone didn’t stop ringing," Juma Xipaia said by phone. "It was very fast after the video.”

—-

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.