It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Mexico president flags water-scarcity of northern state eyed for Tesla plant
Mon, February 20, 2023
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico's president said on Monday the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, considered the front-runner to land a major investment from Tesla Inc, struggles with a lack of water and touted the benefits of the poorer southern region where he has fought to boost development.
The comments come amid fears from some investors and analysts that Mexico's geographic advantages as a nearshoring destination for businesses looking to sell into the United States are somewhat dampened by the heavy-handed influence of the federal government.
The state of Nuevo Leon at the U.S. border had emerged as the top contender in Tesla's hunt for a site to open its first plant in Mexico, yet President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the electric car producer has not yet made a final decision and he would speak with company executives about the location.
"There are favorable conditions in Nuevo Leon. They have a skilled workforce, they have engineers, it's very close to the border," he told a news conference. "But the lack of water?"
Lopez Obrador said he would emphasize to Tesla the need for careful planning around water, electricity and other services, noting certain northern zones ban water extraction while the southeast holds 70% of Mexico's water.
"There's water, there's gas, there's electricity ... that's part of what we want to make known," said the president, who is slated to speak directly with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
Lopez Obrador has made it a priority to draw investment to southern Mexico, which has lacked the level of industrialization that has flourished along Mexico's northern border.
His administration scored a victory last year when brewery Constellation Brands opted to build in the southeastern state of Veracruz, after a partly-built project in the arid northern city of Mexicali was scrapped following Lopez Obrador's concerns over water scarcity.
Following Lopez Obrador's remarks on Monday, Nuevo Leon Economy Minister Ivan Rivas said water access had not been an issue for companies or held back investment, according to Mexican outlet Milenio.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes, Kylie Madry and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Marguerita Choy and Chris Reese)
IT'S NAVY SONAR TO BLAME As dead whales continue to wash ashore on Delmarva, elsewhere, questions are also mounting Kristian Jaime, Salisbury Daily Times Mon, February 20, 2023 This article was updated at 4:13 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16 to include the latest incidents along the East Coast.
The most recent incidents include a right whale — one of only an estimated 340 North Atlantic right whales remaining in the world — was found dead in Virginia Beach on Sunday. The 43-foot-long, 20-year-old whale suffered multiple vertebral fractures and separations from a likely ship strike that would have resulted in death shortly after the injury.
The second whale, a humpback found in Manasquan, New Jersey on Monday, was a 35-foot female in an advanced state of decomposition. Although no outward evidence of a vessel strike was seen, an exam showed internal injuries. NOAA stated a tissue analysis should determine whether the vessel strike occurred before or after death.
Incidents included an adolescent humpback whale on the Eastern Shore of Virginia on Friday afternoon, Feb. 10, that washed ashore at the mouth of Plantation Creek near Bay Creek. According to reporting by USA Today, at least 14 whales have washed ashore along the East Coast since Dec. 1, 2022, and some have blamed the whale deaths on seismic testing being done to construct offshore wind turbines. Yet longtime whale advocacy groups don't agree.
Both whales, a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and a humpback, were already beginning to decompose, but preliminary results show internal injuries consistent with the blunt force trauma of a vessel strike, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.
A dead humpback whale was also found floating in the waters off Virginia Beach, near Lynnhaven Beach, on Tuesday, Feb. 7. The Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Team, as in all similar instances, coordinated with the Virginia Beach Police Marine Patrol to track down the whale’s specific location.
A full necropsy is conducted in all cases of dead whales found along the Delmarva Peninsula.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains there are no documented cases of whale deaths linked to offshore wind projects and no evidence of whales being injured due to the seafloor probing developers have been doing to identify cable corridors or other wind energy activity.
Maryland also had a recent carcass of a 33.8-foot humpback whale wash ashore at Assateague Island National Seashore.
"We are in the middle of an unusual ongoing (whale) mortality event since 2016 that is specific to the humpback whales. While elevated, we have also had an elevated mortality rate for humpback whales to date. We've also seen similar cases for the North Atlantic right whales also," said Sarah Wilkin, coordinator of NOAA's Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, Fisheries Office of Protected Resources in a news conference earlier this month.
Whale deaths a political football?
Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for NOAA's Permits and Conservation Division, Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, quickly stifled speculation that preliminary offshore wind seafloor scanning and development is to blame for the spike of recent whale deaths along the East Coast.
Yet that has not stopped longtime detractors of offshore wind from crying foul and demanding a federal moratorium on such development.
A Jan. 30 letter signed by 12 New Jersey mayors and Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, called for such a moratium, a move also backed by Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md-1st.
"Following the death of yet another whale, this time on Assateague Island, I am calling for an immediate moratorium on windmill construction and related underwater geotechnical testing until it is definitively proven that this construction and testing are not the cause of the repeated whale deaths," Harris said. "NOAA has offered zero evidence that this construction, including geotechnical testing, is not the cause of death.
"I am also calling for a full and transparent release of necropsy results, including the necropsy results of the whale ear structures which should be removed for examination to determine whether sonar actively contributed to the cause of death," Harris said in a January statement.
Yet activists looking to bolster the case of offshore wind development claim opponents are using the whale death events to sway the conversation back to fossil fuels.
WashingtonEdit · Naval Submarine Base Bangor · Naval Station Bremerton · Naval Hospital Bremerton · Naval Undersea Warfare Center Keyport.
US protesters turn ire on wind farms to explain whale deaths – but where’s the evidence?
Gloria Oladipo Mon, February 20, 2023 Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Thousands gathered at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant beach on Sunday with a united mission: to pause offshore wind projects in response to recent whale deaths along the New York-New Jersey coast.
The gathering unfolded even as officials dispute the notion that the projects may be to blame for the dead whales, a controversy that – like many – is breaking along political party lines.
Holding signs reading “Save the Whales” and “Whale Lives Matter” on Sunday, World Whale Day, a coalition of ocean conservationist groups and homegrown activists argued that local wind turbine survey projects were harming marine wildlife.
“You are the ocean’s voice,” said organizer Cindy Zipf, encouraging protesters to get in touch with their local officials.
Since 2023, at least 10 whales have washed ashore on the New York and New Jersey coastlines.
Last Monday, a ninth humpback whale was found dead in Manasquan, New Jersey.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) fisheries division, which investigates such whale deaths, has called them “unusual mortality events”.
As organizers at Sunday’s protest argued for a moratorium on wind turbines in the area, others say there is no evidence to support claims that wind turbines are the cause of the whale deaths.
Many raising alarms on recent whale deaths have pointed to noise created by offshore wind survey work as confusing the whale’s navigation system.
But scientists argue that current evidence does not support such a claim.
“It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar said to USA Today.
And even though the agency considers the whale deaths unusual, a statement from Noaa fisheries officials added: “[T]here is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could … cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys.”
Noaa fisheries research on the 183 total whale deaths found that 40% of them resulted from human interaction, either from ship strikes or netting entanglement.
Many attendees of Sunday’s rally are locals to the New Jersey coast and say they came out to express their concern.
“I’ve gotten lots of information from different sources, and you can’t argue with the fact that 10 whales have washed up,” said Kim Wetzel, 57, an Ocean City resident.
Wetzel works in a primary school and became involved through whale advocacy work in Ocean City.
“Even though we don’t have the facts yet, the facts will come – but we’re seeing the evidence with our own eyes,” Wetzel said.
“Also, what’s real is common sense,” Michelle Gehring, a stay-at-home mom, also from Ocean City, added.
Gehring said that outside whales, residents of Ocean City were complaining that offshore wind projects were causing their houses to shake.
Both felt that more time and research was needed to understand how offshore wind projects affect the environment.
Others came to the protest via friends and local Facebook groups.
“I’m trying to educate myself,” said Casey Small, a teacher who lives in Cape May, almost two hours away from Sunday’s rally.
Small said many participants did not seem to have evidence on the survey’s exact impact.
“What I’m finding is a lot of people don’t really know what’s going on,” Small said. “We don’t really have a lot of information on it. I think it’s important to have concrete evidence. I’m learning that it’s really hard to find.”
Trisha Devoe, a whale-watching naturalist, organized Sunday’s rally and became involved after learning about recent humpback whale deaths.
“You have to stop and say, ‘Is it contributing to these deaths’?” said Devoe, who wants more studies on the whale deaths.
Zipf, who has organized for decades with her group Clean Ocean Action, said organizers originally supported a pilot project for wind turbines. But they have grown concerned as larger projects develop without a complete understanding of the turbines’ ecological impact.
“[People] are outraged because they feel like they weren’t told that this has been happening,” Zipf said.
“All of a sudden, their ocean is being turned into a giant power plant.”
Politicians also participated in Sunday’s event. The New Jersey congressman Chris Smith, a Republican who represents Point Pleasant, echoed calls for a moratorium on wind turbine projects.
Smith, who said he supports clean energy where viable, has introduced a bill for the federal General Accountability Office to determine how well the environmental impact statements on wind development projects were done.
“It hasn’t been looked at strongly for those who are about the benefits financially,” Smith said. “That brings a healthy skepticism to people like myself who think, ‘I don’t get anything out of this. I just want a clean ocean’.”
Discussions around whale deaths have become increasingly partisan.
Arguments that windfarms are harming whales is a talking point that has been parroted by conservative politicians and figures, including far-right Georgia congresswoman Majorie Tayor Greene and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
But many at Sunday’s rally said the issue, for them, wasn’t political.
“It’s very frustrating that this has become a partisan issue because the ocean has always been and always be non partisan,” Zipf said. “We all depend on a clean and healthy ocean.”
CANADIAN, EH
‘Incredibly intelligent, highly elusive’: US faces new threat from Canadian ‘super pig’ 'EVIL COMES FROM THE NORTH ' - TWIN PEAKS Adam Gabbatt Mon, February 20, 2023 Photograph: David Carson/AP
For decades, wild pigs have been antagonizing flora and fauna in the US: gobbling up crops, spreading disease and even killing deer and elk.
Now, as fears over the potential of the pig impact in the US grow, North America is also facing a new swine-related threat, as a Canadian “super pig”, a giant, “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” beast capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, is poised to infiltrate the north of the country.
The emergence of the so-called super pig, a result of cross-breeding domestic pigs with wild boars, only adds to the problems the US faces from the swine invasion.
Pigs are not native to the US, but have wrought havoc in recent decades: the government estimates the country’s approximately 6 million wild, or feral, pigs cause $1.5bn of damage each year.
In parts of the country, the pigs’ prevalence has sparked a whole hog hunting industry, where people pay thousands of dollars to mow down boar and sow with machine guns. But overall, the impact of the pigs, first introduced to the US in the 16th century, has very much been a negative, as the undiscerning swine has chomped its way across the country.
“We see direct competition for our native species for food,” said Michael Marlow, assistant program manager for the Department of Agriculture’s national feral swine damage management program.
“However, pigs are also accomplished predators. They’ll opportunistically come upon a hidden animal, and the males have long tusks, so they’re very capable of running and grabbing one with their mouth.
“They’ll kill young fawns, they’re known to be nest predators, so they impact turkeys and potentially quail.”
The wild pigs are also responsible for a laundry list of environmental damages, ranging from eating innocent farmers’ crops to destroying trees and polluting water. They also pose “a human health and safety risk”, Marlow said.
A pig is a “mixing vessel”, capable of carrying viruses, such as flu, which are transmittable to humans. National Geographic reported that pigs have the potential to “create a novel influenza virus”, which could spread to humankind.
The first record of pigs in the continental US was in 1539, when the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto landed in Florida with an entourage which included 13 swine.
During the four-year expedition, which saw De Soto order the slaughter of thousands of Native Americans, declare himself “an immortal ‘Son of the Sun’”, and then die of a fever, the number of pigs grew to about 700, spread across what is now the south-eastern US.
But it is only relatively recently that the pigs have become a problem.
“They lived a benign existence up until, you know, probably three or four decades ago, where we started seeing these rapid excursions in areas we hadn’t seen before,” Marlow said.
“Primarily that was the cause of intentional releases of swine by people who wanted to develop hunting populations. They were drugged and moved around, not always legally, and dropped in areas to allow the populations to develop. And so that’s where we saw this rapid increase.”
The number of pigs in the US has since grown to more than 6 million, in some 34 states. The pigs weigh between 75 and 250lbs on average, but can weigh in twice as large as that, according to the USDA. At 3ft tall and 5ft long, they are a considerable foe.
Marlow said his team had managed to eradicate pigs in seven states over the past decade, but with little realistic hope of getting rid of the swine completely, there are also fears over the potential impact of pig-borne disease, particularly African swine fever.
The disease is always fatal to pigs, and in China, which is home to more than 400 million pigs – half of the world’s pig population – African swine fever wiped out more than 30% of the pig population in 2018 and 2019. African swine fever has presented in Europe, too, but Marlow said it has not yet been detected in the Americas.
That’s something that Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian wild pig research project, hopes to maintain.
In Canada, like in the US, wild pigs are a relatively recent problem. Up until 2002 there were barely any wild pigs in the country, but Brook said the population has exploded in the past eight years. The animals are now spread across 1m sq km of Canada, predominantly in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
“Wild pigs are easily the worst invasive large mammal on the planet,” said Ryan Brook.
“They’re incredibly intelligent. They’re highly elusive, and also when there’s any pressure on them, especially if people start hunting them, they become almost completely nocturnal, and they become very elusive – hiding in heavy forest cover, and they disappear into wetlands and they can be very hard to locate.”
Brook and others are particularly troubled by the emergence of a “super pig”, created by farmers cross-breeding wild boar and domestic pigs in the 1980s. The result was a larger swine, which produced more meat, and was easier for people to shoot in Canadian hunting reserves.
These pigs escaped captivity and swiftly spread across Canada, with the super pig proving to be an incredibly proficient breeder, Brook said, while its giant size – one pig has been clocked at more than 300kg (661lbs) – makes it able to survive the frigid western Canada winters, where the wind chill can be -50C.
“All the experts said at that time: ‘Well, no worries. If a wild pig or a wild boar ever escaped from a farm, there’s no way it would survive a western Canadian winter. It would just freeze to death.’
“Well, it turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold.”
The pigs survive extreme weather by tunneling up to 2 meters under snow, Brook said, creating a snow cave.
“They’ll use their razor-sharp tusks to cut down cattails [a native plant], and line the bottom of the cave with cattails as a nice warm insulating layer.
“And in fact, they’re so warm inside that one of the ways we use to find these pigs is to fly first thing in the morning when it’s really cold, colder than -30, and you will actually see steam just pouring out the top of the snow.”
Given the damage the pigs have wrought, a range of attempts have been made to get rid of them. Scientists and researchers in the US and Canada have had some success with catching whole sounders of pigs in big traps, while in the US attempts have been made – sometimes unsuccessfully – at poisoning wild pigs.
One method that has worked in the US, Brook said, is the use of a “Judas pig”. A lone pig is captured and fitted with a GPS collar, then released into the wild, where hopefully it will join a group of unsuspecting swine.
“The idea is that you go and find that collared animal, remove any pigs that are with it, and in ideal world then let it go again and it will just continue to find more and more pigs,” Brook said.
Brook said a variety of methods are required to tackle the pig problem. But the efforts are more about managing the damage caused by these non-native mammals, rather than getting rid of the pigs completely. In Canada, that chance has gone.
“Probably as late as maybe 2010 to 2012, there was probably a reasonable chance of finding and removing them. But now, they’re so widespread, and so abundant, that certainly as late as 2018 or 19 I stopped saying that eradication was possible. They’re just so established,” Brook said.
“They’ve definitely moved in, and they’re here to stay.”
Gautam Adani: Will tycoon’s wealth woes hit India’s green energy dreams?
Soutik Biswas - India correspondent Tue, February 21, 2023 The Adani Group plans to spend $70bn in green energy and become a global renewable player by 2030
Two years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ambitious plans to make India a green energy colossus.
He pledged cutting emissions to net zero or becoming carbon neutral, meaning not adding to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by 2070. (Although its demand for power and emissions are lower than Western countries', India is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses.) Mr Modi also promised for India to get half of its energy from renewable resources by 2030, and by the same year to slash projected carbon emissions by a billion tonnes.
One businessman who's key to Mr Modi's green energy plans is Gautam Adani, one of Asia's richest men who runs a sprawling port-to-energy conglomerate with seven publicly traded companies, including a renewable energy firm called Adani Green Energy. Mr Adani plans to spend $70bn (£58bn) in green energy and become a global renewable player by 2030. This money is expected to be spent on hybrid renewable power generation, making batteries and solar panels and using wind energy and green hydrogen.
But Mr Adani's recent troubles have raised concerns about whether this means a setback for India's soaring energy ambitions. The listed companies in his group have seen some $120bn wiped off their market value after the US-based investment firm Hindenburg Research published a report accusing it of decades of "brazen" stock manipulation and accounting fraud. The group has dismissed the allegations as malicious and untrue, calling them an "attack on India". The Adani Group has denied allegations of financial fraud
In the first sign of investors getting skittish, TotalEnergies, a French oil and gas group, put on pause a planned $4bn investment in a green hydrogen project with the Adani Group until there was more "clarity" on the situation. (Total has already invested more than $3bn in energy projects with the group). To calm investors, the group has said that its companies faced no "material refinancing risk or near-term liquidity issues". A spokesperson of the Adani Group told the BBC: "We do not anticipate change in energy transition plans of [the] Adani portfolio".
Experts believe it is too early to determine the impact of recent developments on India's climate plans. "The Adani group is a big player in the green energy space. Some of the fresh investments may be delayed. If they are not able to raise more financing, it will have some impact on green energy investments that it had originally planned," says Vibhuti Garg of the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. "But the momentum in renewable energy will continue."
In the coming decades, India's energy transition will be the biggest in the world. With 1.4 billion people, the country still needs to hook up large swathes of population and the last holdouts with power. India adds a city the size of London to its urban population every year. Industrial activity is increasing. There are more extreme weather events like heatwaves. A push towards electrical vehicles will further exacerbate demand for power.
Not surprisingly, the electricity regulator reckons that demand is expected to double in the next five years. India is the world's second-largest producer and consumer of coal. Three-quarters of the electricity produced uses coal and India is still building thermal plants. Yet the plan is that most of the additional capacity will come from renewable sources. And to reach net zero emissions by 2070, India needs $160bn every year between now and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That's three times today's level of investment. Three-quarters of the electricity produced in India uses coal
Apart from the Adani Group, the other big player in green energy are the Ambanis. Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Group, India's biggest firm, plans to spend $80bn on renewable power projects in the western state of Gujarat. Energy giant Tata Group is also revving up its clean energy play. Yet experts say India's insatiable energy demand requires many more players.
"If we need to meet so much of energy demand, we need many more private players, a few big and many small," says Ashwini K Swain of Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank. He believes the the numbers of domestic green energy players has to grow. "We cannot work with half a dozen players and a couple of players who are disproportionately big," he says.
That's why the Adani Group's troubles could actually be an opportunity for other renewable energy players, says Tim Buckley of Australia-based Climate Energy Finance. He says he sees "huge potential capacity for other national players to "step up, leveraging their domestic skills and capacity, combined with expanding global capital access and interest in investing in Indian renewables and grid infrastructure".
India's total generation capacity of clean and dirty energy is 400 GW - and it plans add 500 GW in clean energy alone by 2030. It is an audacious ambition. A transition of this scale in a country which has depended on coal and oil so far to meet its energy demands is not going to be easy.
Mr Swain believes India should stop expanding coal capacity, and instead move to meeting some of its new demand from cleaner sources. For example, a fifth of India's electricity demand comes from irrigating its vast farms; powering the farms during daytime with solar energy could make everybody happy. "India's progress on renewable energy has been remarkable. There may be some delays and slowdowns, but those should not hamper the renewable energy growth," says Ms Garg.
One killed, a dozen injured after blast at Ohio factory scatters molten debris, starts fire Explosion rocks Ohio metals plant, media reports
Mon, February 20, 2023 By Daniel Trotta
(Reuters) -An explosion tore through an Ohio metals plant on Monday, scattering molten metal and debris that rained down on neighboring buildings, killing one person and injuring at least a dozen others, officials, witnesses and a media report said.
The blast sent smoke billowing into the sky that could be seen for miles around the damaged factory about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Cleveland.
The explosion of unknown origin at the I. Schumann & Co. metals plant in Bedford drew fire departments from throughout northeast Ohio.
Oakwood Fire Department Captain Brian DiRocco addressed the media on scene earlier on Monday, saying 13 people were taken to hospital, many of them with burn wounds, and one more was being treated on site.
At least one was in critical condition, and one was pulled from the debris, DiRocco had said. All of those injured were on site, the falling debris having spared those at neighboring businesses.
A spokeswoman for Cuyahoga County confirmed later that a 46-year-old man had died, according to the New York Times.
Both the company and the county officials did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
"The people were mostly walking wounded," DiRocco said. "I'm sure there's a lot of people that work here that were in shock."
DiRocco said he had inspected the site before and found it a safe place "except for the fact that it's a foundry. You are dealing with molten metal, so there's always an inherent danger."
The cause was unknown, and damage to the plant was "significant," the company said.
"We will work alongside investigators in their search for answers as part of our commitment to Northeast Ohio, where we have been operating for more than 100 years," I. Schumann and Co., which produces copper, brass and bronze alloys, said in a statement.
Matthew Wiggins, owner of the neighboring business Rose Colored Gaming, told WOIO he heard a large explosion and that "within a second or two, it sounded like large amounts of debris were hitting the roof."
"Things were falling off the walls, falling off shelves. We went out front and there was like smoldering rocks and molten metal in the yard. Tons and tons of smoke. Fire billowing out of the building across the street," Wiggins said.
Another witness, Joe Sarconi, said a brick wall enclosing the property was obliterated.
"A beam flew across the street. That other beam flew across the street and blew out our window," Sarconi said. "Exciting, but horrible." The explosion was about 70 miles (112 km) northwest of East Palestine, Ohio, where earlier this month a train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed, causing a fire that sent a cloud of smoke over the town and forced thousands of people to evacuate. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif.; Additional reporting by Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler, Chris Reese and Lincoln Feast)
Biden: Japanese American internment camps ‘one of the most shameful periods in American history’
Stephen Neukam Sun, February 19, 2023
President Biden on Sunday called the use of internment camps for Japanese Americans in the U.S. during World War II “one of the most shameful periods in American history.”
“When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, eighty-one years ago today, it ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history,” Biden said in a statement marking the anniversary of Roosevelt’s executive order.
“The incarceration of Japanese Americans reminds us what happens when racism, fear and xenophobia go unchecked,” Biden added. “As we battle for the soul of our nation, we continue to combat the corrosive effects of hate on our democracy and the intergenerational trauma resulting from it.”
Around 120,000 Japanese Americans were held in internment camps during World War II, with Biden saying on Sunday that they “tore families apart.”
“The wrongful internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent tore families apart,” Biden said. “Men, women and children were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs, their communities, their businesses and their way of life. They were sent to inhumane concentration camps simply because of their heritage.”
In early 2022, Biden signed a bill that designated a former internment camp site in Colorado as a national historic site. The site, where more than 10,000 people were detained, now includes a cemetery, a monument and reconstructed structures from its time as an internment camp.
Groups fighting ‘invasive’ wind farm project near Idaho WW2 incarceration camp site
Shaun Goodwin Mon, February 20, 2023 About 80 years ago, on a 33,000-acre plot of land about 60 miles northeast of Twin Falls, over 13,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated in a camp over a four-year span because of their ancestry. Those inside the camp were subject to cramped living conditions and often spent their winters struggling to walk through knee-high mud and below-freezing conditions.
But how did they end up there?
At the height of World War II, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast of the United States following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans living in “military zones” on the West Coast were deemed a threat to national security and incarcerated in camps throughout the country.
The Minidoka Relocation Center was Idaho’s sole camp. Following the camp’s closing in 1945, much of the land that once belonged to Minidoka — farmed and cultivated by those incarcerated — was auctioned off to local farmers.
The historic footprint of the site is now under threat from a new wind farm project funded by a New York private equity company. The potentially 400-turbine wind farm, called the Lava Ridge Wind Project, would be built directly north of the Minidoka National Historic Site on historic Minidoka land, casting an imposing view over the site.
The Lava Ridge Wind Project is being headed by Magic Valley Energy, a subsidiary of investment firm LS Power. Magic Valley Energy has proposed to develop the wind farm on a nearly 200,000-acre area, potentially as close as 2 miles north of Minidoka. The wind farm would power approximately 350,000 houses in Idaho, according to Luke Papez, senior director of project development for Magic Valley Energy.
About 340 of the turbines, which stand approximately 740 feet tall — for comparison the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall — would be visible from the visitor center at Minidoka.
Papez told the Idaho Statesman that the company selected the land north of Minidoka for the project because the region is “already crisscrossed and fragmented by several high voltage transmission lines and has a long history of wildfires.”
Magic Valley Energy looked at other locations for the project, Papez said, such as the China Mountain area southwest of Twin Falls and the Cassia Division, also called the South Hills, south of Twin Falls. But concerns about sage grouse and other environmental concerns pushed the company away from those locations and toward Lava Ridge.
The project would occupy about 75,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. BLM filed a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Jan. 20, outlining several alternatives for the project. Some of those alternatives are more imposing than others. BLM is taking public comment on the project until March 23.
“Some of the alternatives have wind towers on the historical footprint (of Minidoka), which is not actually on the (National) Park Service part of the site that exists now,” Janet Keegan, Friends of Minidoka board member, told the Statesman in an interview at the Minidoka National Historic Site in early February.
Friends of Minidoka supports the preservation of the camp for educational purposes. The group works with the National Park Service, which has administered the site since 2001.
“The historic footprint was many thousands of acres,” Keegan continued. “That would be in their original plan of development.”
Today, the Minidoka National Historic Site sits at the center of what was once the Japanese American incarceration camp. The National Park Service took ownership of the land after the camp was named a national monument in 2001. The site includes a visitor center and a few structures from its time as a camp, including a guard tower and housing barracks, spread over a 1,000-acre patch of land.
Two of the original structures at Minidoka National Historic Site have been preserved. A food hall on the left and a barracks were part of a larger camp where 13,000 people of Japanese descent were placed during World War II.
The Lava Ridge Wind Project would also impose upon the land of local farmers and ranchers. Driving along Hunt Road, the long and barren stretch that takes you from Idaho 25 to the historical site, handmade signs are nailed into wooden posts with messages to “Stop Lava Ridge.”
Multiple alternative plans outlined in the DEIS acknowledge the wind farm’s impact on Minidoka, Wilson Butte Cave and wildlife. BLM outlined two alternatives that it thinks would be most effective: Alternative C, which would reduce the farm to 146,389 acres and 378 turbines, and Alternative E, which would reduce it to 122,444 acres and 269 turbines.
Papez said that Magic Valley Energy is comfortable pursuing Alternative C, saying that he thinks it provides a “great compromise.”
“That alternative would incorporate, I believe, it’s up to approximately a five-mile setback from the Minidoka National Historic Site,” Papez said. “And that is really quite a reduction in the visual change to that location.”
Visual simulations created for Alternative C show that the nearest wind turbines would be 5.5 miles from Minidoka but still visible in the distance from the Minidoka visitor center.
“It’s still invasive,” Keegan said. “It’s not like they’d move it clear out of the viewshed.”
A visual simulation showing what the nearest turbine siting corridor would look like from the Minidoka National Historic Site visitors center under Alternative C.
The project’s impact on Minidoka
While there are concerns about the Lava Ridge wind farm creating an imposing view over the site, those included in pushing back against the project are also worried about the historical damage it could inflict.
Robyn Achilles, executive director of Friends of Minidoka, said she was frustrated at how Minidoka was described in the Environmental Impact Statement, a federal document outlining how a project will affect the surrounding environment. Terms like “recreational” and “tourist spot” were used, lumping in Minidoka with other nearby landmarks such as Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve.
“It’s also a sacred place for survivors and descendants to come,” Achilles said in an interview with the Statesman. “So it’s not just an educational space; it really is more of a reflective, sacred healing location for us. So it’s not like a regular park. It’s a site of conscience.”
Large swaths of empty land surround the visitor center. A short walk from the center takes you past a long-abandoned sports field to the left and an abandoned root cellar to the right. At the bottom of the path stands the last standing barracks — locked from the outside and derelict within. Standing silent, all that you can hear is the passing wind.
“It will forever change the immersive and educational experience at Minidoka National Historic Site,” said Robyn Achilles, executive director of Friends of Minidoka. She refers to a commercial energy plan to construct a wind farm on BLM land near the site in Jerome.
Friends of Minidoka’s primary purpose is to act as a supporter and vehicle for education regarding Japanese American incarceration. The group played a part in helping to open the new visitor center in 2020 and has helped protect and restore historic buildings on the site, such as the guard tower and a barrack.
But it’s getting more difficult to fulfill that mission, Keegan said, because of the fight against Lava Ridge. In 2021, Friends of Minidoka spent $18,000 — about 5% of its total income — on resources to push back against the Lava Ridge Wind Project, according to the organization’s financial report.
But it’s not just educational and financial impacts that Friends of Minidoka is concerned about. It’s the larger historical impact, too.
Karen Hirai Olen knows that more than most people. Her parents and grandparents were forcefully removed from their homes and incarcerated because of Executive Order 9066, and Hirai Olen was born in the camp in the summer of 1943. She remained there until her father earned a job as a farmhand about 18 months later, Hirai Olen told the Statesman.
“Minidoka had about 13,000 people pass through it, 70% of whom were American citizens,” Hirai Olen said. “I think it’s something that all communities need to consider. Because the evacuation basically denied that they had any value. And I think that the Lava Ridge Project denigrates our whole history.
“I think it’s important for … my generation to make sure the value of Minidoka is perpetuated. Because otherwise, my parents and grandparents’ struggles are being defined as worthless.”
“I think the Lava Ridge project denegrates our whole history here,” said Karen Hirai Olen, who was born to Japanese American parents at Minidoka. “I think it’s important for sanseis, my generation, to make sure the value of Minidoka is perpetuated.” Lava Ridge is a proposed wind farm that would place as many as 400, 740-foot tall wind turbines in the skyline nearby Minidoka National Historical Site in Jerome, where about 13,000 Japanese Americans were relocated during World War II.
Papez said that Magic Valley Energy is listening to the concerns surrounding the wind farm construction and wants to work with organizations like Friends of Minidoka to come to a solution.
“They have a very important site that is worthy of protection. We’re hoping we can work with them with this project to help tell their story even better,” Papez said. “This is just the draft EIS that shows, ‘here’s what the issues are, how they could be avoided, minimized, or mitigated.’ And it’s at this point where they start to weigh all those items and get further feedback. So there are ways to avoid impact to that historic boundary.”
It’s not just Hirai Olen who understands the pain of what life was like living in incarceration camps. Achilles and Keegan also had family incarcerated at camps — Minidoka was one of 10 camps in the United States.
Whenever Keegan drives down Hunt Road, she said, she can’t help but think how difficult it would have been for her ancestors to live in such a harsh environment. According to Leonard Arrington’s book “History of Idaho,” the flimsy barracks were made from tar paper, and mud around the camp would get so thick in the winter that children and small adults would often sink up to their knees.
Achilles says she thinks about the pain it caused many families, including her own.
“I feel like if they go ahead and push forward with this project, it has similar, in my mind, lines as when they forced removal of the Japanese American community,” Keegan said. “It’s not the appropriate place for a project like this.” How to get involved
Time is running out for those who want to provide feedback to the BLM on the project near Minidoka. The bureau has tentatively scheduled the final EIS to publish in the late summer and a Record of Decision on whether the project will go ahead in the fall.
Assuming there are no delays, Keegan fears that Magic Valley Energy could begin planning the wind farm by the end of 2023. Papez told the Statesman that if BLM issues its Record of Decision in favor of Magic Valley Energy, construction would likely begin in 2024.
Keegan urges people to read the EIS thoroughly and to submit comments on why the Lava Ridge Wind Project would affect Minidoka and the surrounding area. She also said people can write to their local BLM office or representative, as well as to their legislators and county commissioners.
The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be built on land in Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties.
“Obviously, Friends of Minidoka supports renewable energy,” Achilles said. “And we know we’re in a climate crisis, but we really need to be thoughtful about the full impacts and consequences of these projects on our environment.”
MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN In Mississippi's Capital, Old Racial Divides Take New Forms
Michael Wines
The New York Times Mon, February 20, 2023 Empty streets in the area near the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Feb. 11, 2023.
(Emily Kask/The New York Times)
JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s struggling capital has been a favored target of Republican leaders since the GOP took total control of the state a decade ago. But perhaps none of the slings and arrows flung at Jackson has provoked as much outrage as the one the state House of Representatives loosed earlier this month.
Legislators approved a bill that would establish a separate court system for roughly one-fifth of Jackson, run by state-appointed judges and served by the state-run police force that currently patrols the area around Mississippi government buildings. For the neighborhoods it would cover, the entire apparatus would effectively supplant the existing Hinds County Circuit Court, whose four judges are elected, and the city-run Jackson Police Department.
The proposal might be less provocative if not for the inescapable context: More than 8 in 10 of Jackson’s 150,000 residents, as well as most of its elected leaders, judges and police officers, are African Americans. The proposed court system and the police force would be controlled almost exclusively by white officials in the state government.
Atop that, the new courts and police patrols would serve neighborhoods that contain the bulk of Jackson’s white population. The city’s Black neighborhoods would largely be skirted.
For many prominent Jacksonians, this evoked earlier eras in Mississippi’s complicated racial history. The city’s Black Democratic mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, minced no words after the House vote.
“Some of the other legislators, I was surprised that they came half-dressed, because they forgot to wear their hoods,” he said.
That stung the bill’s chief sponsor, state Rep. John Thomas “Trey” Lamar, a 43-year-old Republican from Mississippi’s rural northwest. Lamar said his bill was a sincere effort to solve two of the city’s most pressing problems: soaring crime and a huge backlog in the courts.
“There’s absolutely nothing about House Bill 1020 — when I say nothing, I mean absolutely zero — that is racially motivated,” he said in an interview.
The debate may seem familiar. The uproar in Jackson retraces old fault lines in American society: race, police violence, fear of crime, partisan rancor between rural Republicans in state legislatures and Democratic leaders of beleaguered, largely Black cities.
But in Mississippi, that template overlays the nation’s poorest state and the one with the greatest percentage of Black citizens. The issue is compounded by a bitter racial history in which old wounds resurface in new forms, never to completely heal.
And in Jackson, a decade of Republican control of the Statehouse has brought a nasty partisan edge to long-standing racial disconnects with the state’s largest city.
The state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, has sometimes accused Lumumba of mismanaging the city, focusing on the state’s need to help when the long-neglected local water system collapsed in 2021. On a visit last year to Hattiesburg, Reeves called it “a great day to not be in Jackson” because, he suggested, he did not have to direct the city’s emergency response and public works efforts.
This year, Lamar’s legislation is but one of several GOP-backed bills that would, among other things, assert control over the water system and reallocate Jackson’s use of sales tax collections.
The racial subtext is difficult to ignore: All 112 Republican state senators and representatives are white. All but four of the 58 Democratic legislators are Black.
State Sen. John Horhn, a Black lawmaker who represents the Jackson area, called it “the most toxic atmosphere between the city and the Legislature that I’ve seen in my 31 years” in office.
Lumumba, who, at 34, is the youngest leader in the city’s history, likened the takeover bills to colonization.
“It’s their fundamental belief that the people of Jackson don’t deserve to run the city,” he said in an interview.
Mississippi is not the first state in which majority-Black cities have found themselves at odds with Republican state leaders. Under Gov. Rick Snyder, the Michigan state government took over management of Flint and Detroit, both majority-Black cities, during fiscal crises in 2011 and 2013. An emergency manager appointed by the governor made the cost-cutting decision in 2014 to draw Flint’s public water supply from a nearby river, which led the next year to lead contamination of the drinking water supply for 100,000 people.
For all the acrimony in Jackson, concern about the city’s decline crosses political and racial lines. “This is not a situation where there’s unanimous support for the mayor and Jackson police in the Black community and harsh criticism in the white community,” said Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law professor who opposes the legislation. “It’s not that simple.”
Jackson is a city with Southern bones — graceful churches, monumental civic buildings, a stunning antebellum mansion that houses the governor. But it is in sharp decline, its population and tax base sapped by white flight — and later, flight by Black middle-class families — to the city’s northern suburbs and outlying counties.
A parade of mayors have wrestled unsuccessfully with declining schools and infrastructure, like streets and the water system, and with policing. Crime increased sharply with the onset of the COVID pandemic, and the city recorded one of the nation’s highest murder rates in 2021. The police department is roughly 100 officers short of full strength, according to the Jackson City Council.
Hundreds of cases are backed up in the courts, leaving people accused of crimes awaiting trial for months and even years in conditions that can charitably be called substandard.
Six years ago, leaders on both sides launched a modest effort to ease the city government’s burden. The state created a Capitol City Improvement District that included downtown and state government buildings, and agreed to take over maintaining streets and other public assets within the district. To keep order, a small force of capitol security officers patrolled the district in hatchbacks topped with flashing orange lights.
That, it turned out, was only the beginning.
As crime rose, Reeves expanded the district’s borders and hired new officers in 2021. Last year, the Legislature voted — with Democratic support that included some Black lawmakers — to dramatically beef up the policing effort. A force projected to reach 150 officers began patrolling last spring in new black-and-white SUVs that seemed to command almost every street corner.
Crime in the capitol improvement district ebbed. Those who lived inside its boundaries took notice — but in different ways.
The dense knot of white government workers who live near the state offices within the district have applauded the new patrols. Many Black residents saw something different and complained that officers were both disrespectful and too aggressive toward them.
On July 9, Capitol Police officers shot and wounded a suspect. Officers wounded another suspect July 25, another Aug. 14 and a fourth Sept. 12.
Then, on the evening of Sept. 25, officers fatally shot Jaylen Lewis, a 25-year-old Black man, as he sat in a car with his girlfriend. Officials said the shooting occurred as the officers were attempting to make a traffic stop.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry into the fatal shooting. Nearly five months later, the investigation remains open, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety said Friday.
Brooke Floyd, an official at a local nonprofit that advocates for Jackson’s Black residents, said she was troubled not just by the new police force’s tactics, but by the fact that both the Capitol Police and the new court system — unlike local judges and police officers — do not answer to Jackson taxpayers.
“It’s concerning on a lot of levels, because it seems there’s no oversight and no accountability,” she said. “We don’t have a video. We don’t have access to reports. They’re not releasing anything.”
The state public safety commissioner, Sean Tindell, called Lewis’ death tragic, and the state-appointed police chief, Bo Luckey, said he had ordered a change in policing tactics. But in December, another shooting left another suspect wounded.
Against that backdrop, Lamar’s bill to expand the Capitol Police force’s jurisdiction into mostly white residential areas, and then layer a new court system atop it, landed like a bombshell.
Both Black and white critics have accused GOP lawmakers of effectively creating a separate court and policing system for a white population that already enjoys the city’s lowest crime rates. “It feels like the kind of reactionary, prejudiced, provincial, anti-democratic reaction that takes Mississippi back 60 years,” said Johnson, the University of Mississippi law professor.
Lamar and other supporters of the measure point out that the population of the enlarged district would be 55% African American. But Jackson’s white community is so small that including most of it in the new district would still leave as many as 7 or 8 out of 10 Black residents outside its boundaries.
On Feb. 7, the House voted 76-38, largely along racial and party lines, to send the bill to the Senate. Whatever happens next, the hourslong, sometimes anguished debate in the House left the divide between the two sides unmistakably clear.
During that debate, Lamar bristled at the implication that as a rural lawmaker, his solution to Jackson’s problems was driven by racial bias. “I like to come to Jackson because it’s the capital city, and so do my constituents back home,” he said. “White, Black, yellow, brown, it doesn’t matter.
“You’re talking to a guy who has been carjacked in Jackson,” he added. “All I’m interested in is helping make the capital city of Mississippi safer.”
Rep. Christopher Bell, a Black lawmaker from Jackson, asked why nobody had consulted legislators from Jackson and Hinds County about the bill before it was introduced. “There are several people who reside in Hinds County who I have spoken with,” Lamar responded.
“Do any of them look like me?” Bell asked.
Lamar paused, then replied, “All God’s children are unique.”
Alligator captured in New York park, possibly 'cold shocked'
AFP February 20, 2023 A four-foot-long alligator, shown in a photo provided by NYC Parks, is tended to by park officials and local rangers in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, hundreds of miles (km) north of its native habitat
A four-foot-long alligator, shown in a photo provided by NYC Parks, is tended to by park officials and local rangers in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, hundreds of miles (km) north of its native habitat
New York (AFP) - A "very lethargic" alligator was captured in a New York park, city officials said Monday, likely released by its owner far away from the species' warmer habitat in the southeast United States.
The reptile was spotted Sunday morning in Prospect Park, a favorite place for Brooklyn residents to picnic and stroll with their pets, especially when winter temperatures are in the 50s Fahrenheit (10-15 Celsius) like over the holiday weekend.
Rangers captured the four-foot-long (1.2 meters) alligator, which was "found very lethargic and possibly cold shocked," New York City Parks said in a statement.
It added that such urban public spaces "are not suitable homes for animals not indigenous to those parks" and that their release, while illegal, could also "lead to the elimination of native species and unhealthy water quality."
The alligator was later transported to the Bronx Zoo for rehabilitation, the statement said, adding that "thankfully no one was harmed."
The last publicized discovery of an alligator in New York was in June 2001 when authorities, the press and curious residents spent five days following the pursuit and capture of a stray caiman in Central Park.
New York's Urban Park rangers respond to about 500 animal health reports a year.
Alligator found in lake in New York City park
EMILY SHAPIRO and WILL MCDUFFIE Mon, February 20, 2023 at 8:28 AM MST·1 min read
A 4-foot-long alligator has been recovered from a lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, according to city officials.
Park maintenance staff noticed the gator Sunday morning, and when removed, the animal was "very lethargic and possibly cold shocked since it is native to warm, tropical climates," the parks department said.
No one was hurt by the animal, New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation said in a statement.
The gator has been taken to the Bronx Zoo.
PHOTO: A four-foot-long alligator has been recovered from a lake in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York. (Courtesy of NYC Parks)
It's not clear how or when it ended up in the lake.
The parks department warned, "In addition to the potential danger to park goers this could have caused, releasing non-indigenous animals or unwanted pets can lead to the elimination of native species and unhealthy water quality."
Australian humpback whales are singing less and fighting more. Should we be worried?
The Conversation February 17, 2023 Humpback whale (Shutterstock)
As eastern Australian humpback whale populations have recovered over the years, males have adapted their mating strategy in a highly strategic way, new research finds.
I analysed 123 days’ worth of data on Australian humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae), collected from 1997 to 2015, and found male humpbacks sang less and fought more as the whale population ballooned.
We think this shift in behaviour is a result of not wanting to attract other males to a potential mate, as we explain in research published today in Communications Biology. Rapid growth, rapid adaptation
Humpbacks have recovered magnificently since 1965, when the species became globally protected.
One population off Australia’s east coast grew from less than 500 in the 1960s and is estimated to contain at least 30,000 today. This population has provided experts a rich dataset. The males in particular are great subjects thanks to their striking song broadcasts.
Whale Song from 2003. Rebecca Dunlop, Author provided 6.69 MB (download)
Carrying on work started by University of Queensland Professor Michael Noad in the ’90s, we set out to investigate exactly how the eastern humpbacks have adapted to the growth numbers.
Luckily for us these whales migrate close to the coastline, so we were able to establish a land-based observation station at Peregian Beach, a small coastal town on the Sunshine Coast.
Volunteers onshore helped us track individual whales as they moved down the coast, while an acoustic array moored offshore recorded the whales’ song and tracked singing whales. This method (which Professor Noad first established) allowed us to pinpoint the exact location of a particular whale in real time.
A trend emerged when our data were coupled with those collected by Professor Noad’s team. As the eastern humpback population grew, males weren’t singing as much as they used to. Instead they were increasingly opting to quietly find a female to mate with, or fighting off other male competition.
Specifically, the proportion of singing males decreased from two in ten in 2003–2004, to only one in ten by 2014–2015. Data from 2003–2004 also show males were less likely to sing when they had a higher proportion of males in their social circle.
And it seems the change in tactics led to a change in results. In 1997 singing males were almost twice as likely as their counterparts to be seen joining with a female and escorting her, likely to attempt to mate. But by 2014-2015, non-singing males were almost five times more likely to be seen joining a group with a female.
That said, we can’t say for sure when joining a group actually results in mating with the female and fathering a calf. That’s another piece of this puzzle: how many of the males that join groups (singing or otherwise) actually end up mating and then fathering a calf?
Megaptera novaeangliae is one of three subspecies of the humpback whale.
Cetacean Ecology Group/University of Queensland., Author provided
What’s driving males to fight?
A species will carry out a behaviour for as long as the benefits outweigh the costs. If something changes, and the costs start to outweigh the benefits, they will stop. It’s a basic principle, but it goes a long way towards explaining our findings.
In the early years of data collection, when there were fewer whales around, a male could sing and broadcast himself to nearby females quite comfortably – not having to worry about hordes of other males wanting his neck.
Now, with a more than burgeoning population, the same tactic attracts the risk of being interrupted by other males. As a male humpback, you’re better off spending the breeding season quietly seeking a female to mate with and not attracting the attention of other males.
Or, if you fancy yourself a big, tough guy, you might take the chance to fight other males to become the “primary escort” of a group. And this relates to one of our working theories about why singing among the eastern humpbacks has diminished through time, and fighting has increased.
Until it was banned, whaling was likely targeting larger mature adults. This could have left an immature population, full of young whales less equipped to fight. Coupled with a sudden decrease in competition overall, this may help explain why whales in the early years preferred singing as a mating tactic.
By the same token, once these same males started to mature and grow large in later years, they may have tended more towards fighting off competition.
We have observed some of these bigger and more assertive whales, the “primary escorts”, on the breeding grounds. They move from group to group, displacing other males – always maintaining their alpha status.
Are whales losing their song?
Despite what our research has observed, we don’t think whales are at risk of losing their song. The eastern humpback whales have simply changed their behaviour to improve their chances of mating. As researchers working out in the field, we still hear whales singing, so we’re not worried.
But we do have questions moving forward.
For one thing, we don’t know how the population dynamics in the eastern humpback may have changed in the past seven years. The dataset used in our study ended in 2015 (and the population has since grown). It would be interesting to know if the trend we observed from 1997 to 2015 is ongoing or has stabilized.
We also want to better understand the factors that drive a male whale’s choice to sing. Is it age, or size, a combination of both, or something else?
Until then, we can safely conclude one thing: whales are incredibly socially complex creatures – and our findings indicate they can adapt remarkably to the social pressures around them.
By the same logic, however, any species under threat that can’t adapt to changing population dynamics stands to lose out. Humpbacks have managed to bounce back, but what about the other precious animals in the world?
Adult humpback whales can grow up to 17 meters in length. Cetacean Ecology Group/University of Queensland., Author provided
