LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Warren hits Bloomberg for giving money to 'right-wing' Republicans

Elizabeth Warren revived her attacks on Michael Bloomberg in the Charleston debate, this time with an emphasis on the money he has given to "right-wing" Republican candidates.

The list includes South Carolina's own GOP senator Lindsey Graham, Warren said, as well as a Republican who opposed her in a Senate race.

"It didn't work," Warren said.

Warren said she doesn't care how much money Bloomberg has, but core Democrats cannot trust him because he has backed so many Republicans.

"He has not earned their trust," Warren said.

Bloomberg did not address his past GOP endorsements but instead cited his experience as New York mayor.

"I know what to do," Bloomberg said.

– David Jackson

Bloomberg starts to say he ‘bought’ Democrats while discussing his campaign contributions

After getting bashed by Elizabeth Warren for his giving to Republican candidates, Michael Bloomberg tried to make amends by pointing out that he gave around $100 million to Democratic congressional candidates in the 2018 cycle.

Bloomberg, a former Republican mayor of New York City, said his money helped elect 21 of the 40 House Democratic candidates and was ultimately responsible for flipping the House to Democratic control.

“All of the new Democrats (who) came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough—I got them (in),” he said, appearing to catch himself before he said the word “bought.”

- Ledyard King

Trump praises India’s religious freedom while Muslim-Hindu violence erupts

The violence that broke out Sunday and continued through Tuesday was one of the deadliest clashes the Indian capital has seen in decades.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES PHOTO ESSAY
Two very different scenes played out in New Delhi and across India this week.
By Sigal Samuel and Kainaz Amaria Feb 25, 2020 VOX

President Trump leaves a ‘Namaste Trump’ rally at a giant

cricket stadium on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, on

February 24, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

MODI AND TRUMP ARE ARYAN NATIONALISTS

President Donald Trump wrapped up his first official visit to India on Tuesday, after touring the Taj Mahal in Agra, addressing huge crowds of fans at a stadium in Ahmedabad, and meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss trade and politics in New Delhi.

At one point, Trump praised the Indian leader for “working very hard on religious freedom.”

But just 10 miles away, in the capital’s working-class neighborhood of Maujpur, tensions boiled over into violence. At least 13 people, including Muslims and Hindus, were killed. Dozens more were badly injured. Residents attacked each other with petrol bombs, clubs, and rocks. Muslim-owned shops and mosques were looted, burned down, and vandalized.

Police officers and paramilitary troops were called in, but some Muslims said the security forces didn’t intervene to stop the Hindu mobs. The violence, which broke out Sunday and continued through Tuesday, was the deadliest communal clash the Indian capital has seen in decades.

Yet Trump and Modi carried on with their scheduled lunch and meetings on Tuesday as if all was well. The American president refused to comment on the Hindu-Muslim violence or the controversial new citizenship law that triggered it, saying only, “I want to leave that to India. And hopefully they’re going to make the right decision for the people.”

Hundreds of thousands of Indians are in their third month of protests against a citizenship law that will fast-track citizenship for migrants from many religious minorities, but not for Muslims. Human rights advocates have been challenging it in the Supreme Court on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional.

India is home to 200 million Muslims, or 14 percent of the Hindu-majority country. Under Modi, they are facing mounting threats to their status and safety.

The new law is closely linked with the National Register of Citizens, part of the government’s effort to weed out people it claims are illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam. Residents there have a limited time to prove that they are legitimate citizens — or risk being rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately, deported.

Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has said it plans to extend the NRC process to the whole country. With so many people facing the threat of detention and deportation, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch are warning that this could soon turn into a humanitarian crisis of horrifying proportions.

All this has turned India into a tinderbox ready to ignite. The killing this week in New Delhi threatens to set off a larger conflagration in a country with a long history of Hindu-Muslim riots.

The contrast between events that happened in parallel — a buzzy sightseeing tour for powerful leaders and a clash that’s left more than a dozen people dead — is perhaps best conveyed by photographs. We’ve selected a few below.

President Trump, first lady Melania Trump and India’s Prime

Minister Narendra Modi attend the “Namaste Trump” rally

on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, on February 24, 2020.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

“We will always remember this remarkable hospitality,”

Trump said of the rally held in his honor at a gigantic

cricket stadium. “We will remember it forever.”

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Police detain an activist from the Center of Indian Trade

Unions during a protest against President Trump’s visit

to India in Hyderabad. Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images

“We think we’re at a point where our relationship is so special

with India, it has never been as good as it is now,” Trump

said at the rally in Ahmedabad, where he shook hands with

Modi. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

An activist from the Center of Indian Trade Unions is detained

during a protest in Hyderabad.

Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images

White House senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner

attend the “Namaste Trump” rally. Over 100,000 people

attended the rally. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Activists from All India Democratic Students Organization

protest against the arrival of President Trump in New Delhi.

Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Members of the US Secret Service and Indian Special

Protection Group (SPG) stand guard during the

“Namaste Trump” rally. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Activists protest in Guwahati, India, against President

Trump’s visit. Anuwar Ali Hazarika/Barcroft Media

via Getty Images

President Trump and Melania Trump visit the Taj Mahal

in Agra on February 24, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Indian police and paramilitary forces react to clashes between

groups over the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi,

on February 24, 2020 Yawar Nazir/ Getty Images

India’s President Ram Nath Kovind and his wife Savita Kovind

greet President Trump and Melania Trump as they arrive

at the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, on February 25, 2020.

Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images

Student activists protest against President Trump’s visit to

India, in Kolkata. Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP via Getty Images

An Indian police officer and a civilian were killed as clashes

between groups over the Citizenship Amendment Act,

a controversial law that will fast-track citizenship for

migrants from many religious minorities, but not for Muslims.

Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Demonstrations were held in Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim-majority

area in New Delhi, where hundreds of women have been

holding a sit-in protest over the past two months.

Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Indian police stand guard in front of damaged vehicles and

shops in New Delhi. Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

The violence that broke out Sunday and continued through

Tuesday was one of the deadliest clashes the Indian capital

has seen in decades. Yawar Nazir/Getty Image

President Trump and Melania Trump stand with India’s

President Ram Nath Kovind and his wife Savita Kovind

during a state banquet at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the

Presidential Palace in New Delhi on February 25, 2020.

Alex Brandon/AFP via Getty Images

While the Trumps had a sumptuous banquet at the Presidential

Palace in New Delhi, havoc overtook the streets outside.

Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Melania Trump visits a government school in New Delhi.

Sanchit Khanna/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Women flee from an area where violence erupted in Delhi.

Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Trump, flanked by the first lady and Indian Prime Minister

Narendra Modi, pose for reporters prior to a meeting at

Hyderabad House in New Delhi. Imtiyaz Khan/Anadolu

Agency via Getty Images

Protesters walk in traffic demonstrating against the arrival

of Trump in Kolkata, India. Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto

via Getty Images

Donald and Melania Trump wave as they board Air Force

One in Agra, India. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

At least 20 killed in violent clashes in India's capital

Three days of clashes in India's capital city of New Delhi between opponents and supporters of India's new citizenship law left at least 20 dead and more than 150 injured. The violence erupted during and after President Trump's first official visit to the subcontinent.

HINDU NATIONALISTS HINDUTVA ATTACK MUSLIM NEIGHBOURHOODS
The clashes involved Hindus and Muslims in Muslim-majority neighborhoods about 11 miles from where Mr. Trump stayed and conducted meetings.

Authorities have started releasing the details of those killed in the clashes, said New Delhi Television (NDTV), and four have been identified. Two men, an auto rickshaw driver and a handicrafts trader were Muslim, while two others, a marketing executive and a policeman, were Hindu.

The demonstrations against the law have led to other violent protests since it passed in December, but demonstrations had been mostly peaceful in New Delhi.

11 SLIDES
© Adnan Abidi/Reuters © Sajjad Hussain/AFP © Prakash Singh/AFP
© Danish Siddiqui/Reuters © Manish Rajput/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

A firefighter walks past damaged shops at a tyre market after they were set on fire by a mob in a riot affected area after clashes erupted between people demonstrating for and against a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, February 26, 2020.

2/11 SLIDES © Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
Local residents look at burnt-out vehicles following clashes in New Delhi, on Feb. 26.

3/11 SLIDES © Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
A Hindu religious flag is seen on a minaret of a burnt-out mosque following clashes between people supporting and opposing a contentious amendment to India's citizenship law, in New Delhi, on Feb. 26.

4/11 SLIDES © Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Firefighters douse the burning wreckage of a shop at a tyre market after it was set on fire by a mob during the riot, in New Delhi, on Feb. 26.

NDTV reported that three of its reporters and a cameraman had been attacked in the clashes, and were asked to "prove their religion." The network said more than 150 people, including a child, had been injured as armed mobs swept through sections of northeast Delhi with reports of stone throwing, arson, and vandalism.

There were also reports of tear gas being fired at protesters, and violent clashes between protesters and the outnumbered police.

The government issued orders late Monday evening in India banning large gatherings across the northeast area of the city.

Police were initially slow to respond to the demonstrations, according to NDTV.

After reports that police were stopping ambulances from going into the affected areas, the Delhi High Court ordered police to ensure the safe transport of injured people to hospitals.

The areas in northeast Delhi where the clashes happened looked like a war zone— roads were covered with bricks and stones and several shops and houses were gutted.

Indian security management held several meetings Wednesday morning. Despite assurances by police Tuesday that the "situation is in control," the clashes didn't stop and the death toll kept rising.

Slide 5 of 11: Men make their way around burnt-out vehicles following clashes between people supporting and opposing a contentious amendment to India's citizenship law, in New Delhi on February 26, 2020. - Four more people have died in some of the worst sectarian violence in decades in New Delhi, a hospital source told AFP, which takes the death toll from several days of rioting to 17.

Security personnel patrol on a street near burnt-out vehicles following clashes between people supporting and opposing a contentious amendment to India's citizenship law, in New Delhi on February 26, 2020. - Four more people have died in some of the worst sectarian violence in decades in New Delhi, a hospital source told AFP, which takes the death toll from several days of rioting to 17

A man speaks on his mobile phone as he walks past a

burnt-out mosque and shops, in New Delhi, on Feb. 26.

A man speaks on a mobile phone as he looks at a burnt-out gas station in New Delhi, on Feb. 26.

A woman speaks with a police officer during a sit-in protest in a riot affected area in New Delhi, on Feb. 25.

A police vehicle moves past burning debris that was set on fire by demonstrators in a riot affected area in New Delhi, on Feb. 25.

Paramilitary troopers patrol streets during the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) at Jaffrabad, in New Delhi, on Feb. 25.

Worst communal violence in Delhi in decades leaves 20 dead as Trump visits India

Joanna Slater, Niha Masih, Tania Dutta

NEW DELHI —Rioters roamed the streets with iron rods and wooden sticks, demanding to know whether people were Hindus or Muslims. Mosques were damaged and shops were set ablaze, sending smoke billowing high into the air. People with gunshot wounds and blunt trauma from hurled stones rushed into a nearby hospital.

Two days of communal violence in the northeastern part of Delhi have left at least 17 people dead and 150 injured in the worst such clashes in India’s capital in decades.

The violence happened to unfold as President Trump made his first official visit to India and conducted meetings Tuesday in the tony central area of the city home to central government buildings and embassies.

The riots represent a serious escalation of tensions after months of protests in response to a controversial citizenship law and growing frictions between supporters and opponents of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Since winning reelection last year in a landslide victory, Modi has moved swiftly to implement his party’s agenda of Hindu primacy in India, a multireligious democracy founded as a secular nation. The citizenship law, which provides a fast track to citizenship for migrants from six religions — excluding Islam — is the most contentious step yet. While India is a Hindu-majority nation, Muslims make up about 14 percent of its 1.3 billion people.

Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in peaceful protests against the law. Some protests have turned violent, and the government mounted a crackdown, storming university campuses and making widespread arrests. Nearly 20 people were killed in protests in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in December.

The capital of India, Delhi has faced the worst sectarian violence in decades after the clashes between people supporting and opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The death toll from several days of rioting has reached to 17.(Pictured) A firefighter walks past damaged shops at a tyre market after they were set on fire by a mob in a riot affected area after clashes erupted between people demonstrating for and against a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 26.Slideshow by photo services

On Tuesday night, police had barricaded the road to Maujpur, a poor and densely populated neighborhood of narrow lanes that reported some of the worst violence. Isolated gunshots punctuated the tense silence. All of the shops were shuttered.

This week’s violence in northeastern Delhi is the worst in the capital since at least 1992, when there were nationwide riots, and possibly since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.

The trigger for the clashes came when Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, on Sunday threatened to clear a sit-in mounted by protesters, nearly all Muslim women, against the citizenship law. He said he would take no action while Trump was visiting but that if police did not move the protesters soon, he would take matters into his own hands.

What happened next remains unclear and chaotic, but groups of Hindus and Muslims hurled stones at one another Monday.

Adil Khan, 29, lives in the neighborhood of Kardampuri and said Muslims gathered in the street to defend themselves after a message went out that a mob was massing to attack. By the next morning, the mob was closer.

Buildings burn in New Delhi amid worst clashes in India’s capital in decades

“From our house, we could see the mobs burning vehicles and shops,” he said. “The mob was very close. I was scared for my life.”

In a nearby area, groups of Hindu activists wielding sticks roamed the streets below Bilal Rabbani’s house, pounding on the hoods of passing cars and forcing them to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Victory to Lord Ram,” a favorite slogan of Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party. Rabbani said supporters of the citizenship law — who appeared to be outsiders, rather than people who lived in the neighborhood — also set fire to Muslim shops as police looked on.

“People used to say that things will change for Muslims if [Modi] wins and I never believed them,” said Rabbani, 25, who is training to be a librarian. “But I can see it now.”

Several journalists were attacked. Saurabh Shukla, a reporter with New Delhi Television, said he and a colleague were on an overpass filming damage to a mosque Tuesday when they were spotted by rioters. The rioters came and began punching and beating his colleague with sticks, damaging three of his teeth. He and his colleague were allowed to leave only after Shukla showed them a string of prayer beads to prove he was Hindu and deleted the footage from their phones, Shukla said

SLIDES © Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

Police struggled to contain the violence, and witnesses said some joined in at points. A Reuters correspondent said he saw policemen encouraging supporters of the law to throw stones at Muslim protesters. Mohammad Sajid, 40, who works at a shop, said police arrived in his Muslim-dominated neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon and fired tear gas. When angry residents began to throw stones, the police opened fire, he said, hitting his younger brother in his back.

He said he saw five others with gunshot wounds. “It’s a dark day,” said Sajid. The “police shouldn’t have fired.” A spokesman for the Delhi police did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment on the incident.

On Tuesday night, nearly a dozen injured people arrived on motorbikes, rickshaws and ambulances at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, several with gunshot injuries. Rajesh Kumar Singh, 36, came with a gunshot wound in his thigh. Singh’s brother Amit said he was shot by masked men near his home and blamed Muslims for the attack.

“Why are they attacking us? If they are against the [citizenship] law, they should tell the government,” said Singh.

Sajid, the shop worker, said the area was plunged into bloodshed when members of the ruling party decided to confront opponents of the law. For two months, the protest against the citizenship law in the area had unfolded “without any violence,” he said. “Things turned ugly when the [law’s] supporters came.”

joanna.slater@washpost.com

niha.masih@washpost.com

Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow contributed to this report.
Slideshow by photo services

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=HINDUISM IS FASCISM, CASTISM AND RACISM

Baboon ready for vasectomy escapes with 2 female pals

Storm Gifford

In movies, it’s usually the humans running from the primates.

© AP Photo/Halden Krog In this photo taken on Monday, Sept. 17, 2018, baboons forage near the Buitenverwachting Wine Farm in the historic wine growing area of Constantia, Cape Town. Groups of baboons regularly raid vineyards on the foothills of South Africa’s Table Mountain, dodging and weaving as farm workers with motorbikes and paintball guns try to chase them off the land. The workers even wear leopard print clothes and lion masks in an attempt to scare off the baboons on the mountainside overlooking Cape Town. The cat-and-mouse maneuvers are happening in the Constantia vineyards, home to farms that produce some of South Africa’s finest wines. (AP Photo/Halden Krog)

Three Australian baboons — including a male who was set to receive a vasectomy — made a break for it Tuesday by escaping from a truck at a Sydney research facility, confirmed police.

After shocked onlookers spotted the trio of simians in a parking lot, officials were able to capture them unharmed, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Brad Hazzard, the New South Wales Minister for Health and Medical Research, stated that the 15-year-old male was accompanied by two females baboons who were meant to keep him calm before his surgery.

“He cut loose before the big cut,” joked Hazzard.

The animals reportedly aren’t involved in research projects, and the minister claimed the vasectomy for the male would go on as planned.

“The reason they are doing (the operation) is to allow (the baboon) to continue to live his life in peace and harmony with his own family and they couldn’t have him continuing constantly to breed within the troupe because it presents all sorts of genetic problems.”

Some Aussies found humor in the not-so-great escape.

“And, I for one, welcome our new escaped baboon overlords,” joked Twitter user Justin Warren.

Another social media user also piled on.

“Can’t believe Melbournians think Sydney has no culture when stuff like this happens,” tweeted Joe Cordy.

But Animal Justice Party MP Emma Hurst was in no mood to chuckle, claiming the baboons were medical experimentation survivors.

“Several baboons have made an attempted flee to freedom in a desperate attempt to avoid further painful procedures forced upon their bodies against their will,” wrote Hurst on social media. “These are the hidden faces behind animal experimentation in this country.”

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/sydney-baboon-escape-police-confirm.html

A Forgotten Forest of Ancient Trees Was Devastated by Bushfires

Maddie Stone

Deep in the rain forest on the southern edge of Australia’s Nightcap Range, around 200 unassuming gray trees are among the last survivors of a fallen world. These are Eidothea hardeniana, trees that trace their roots to the bygone supercontinent of Gondwana, where long-necked sauropods grazed on towering conifers and flowers were an evolutionary novelty.

© Darcy Grant Bushfires burnt through groves in Australia's Nightcap range.

The Eidothea lineage has survived the fracturing of its continent and the cosmic catastrophe that ended the age of the dinosaurs. But it might not survive the disaster now facing it, living in a biosphere that’s been vandalized by humanity.

Tens of millions of years of tectonic transfiguration and the slow desiccation of Australia have steadily eroded Eidothea’s territory, constricting its two living species to patches of forest along the continent’s eastern coastline. One of those species, Eidothea hardeniana, or the Nightcap Oak, occupies just a few acres of land in a rain-forest preserve. The grove’s adult trees resprout over and over by cloning, and some of them are likely to be many thousands of years old.

This past bushfire season killed at least 10 percent of the population. It was the worst in living memory—a disaster brought on by a multiyear drought, months of extreme heat, and the warming, drying effects of humanity’s fossil carbon emissions—and up to 30 percent of Eidothea hardeniana’s grove was harmed by fire. For a species that numbers so few, Robert Kooyman, a botanist at Macquarie University, told me, “losing any individuals is a disaster.”

“Elements of what you lose … are irreplaceable,” he said. “If we’ve lost some of its genetic diversity, in evolutionary terms that’s lost forever.”

[Read: How long will Australia be livable?]

While the Nightcap grove is ancient, the scientific community was unaware of its existence until a few decades ago. In 1988, Kooyman was walking along a creek in a remote part of Nightcap National Park when he discovered a juvenile tree with elliptical, sawtooth-edged leaves he couldn’t identify. The tree seemed to have some affinity to Proteaceae, an early family of flowering plants with a lineage going back more than 120 million years. But its identity would remain a mystery until Kooyman returned to the same patch of forest 12 years later and came upon specimens of the same type of tree in different stages of growth: a seedling, a sapling, and an adult tree with fleshy golden fruits underneath it. When he returned a few months after that, he discovered its tubular, cream-colored flowers.

With the entire life cycle of the plant now evident, Kooyman and fellow botanist Peter Weston of the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney soon confirmed that the tree was, in fact, a member of Proteaceae. They set about formally describing the species, and in 2002, they gave it a name: Eidothea hardeniana.

Eidothea was a goddess from Homer’s The Odyssey, a daughter of Proteus, with extraordinary powers. Hardeniana, meanwhile, paid homage to Gwen Harden, a prolific botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden who was on the brink of retirement.

“We regarded Gwen as something of our goddess of the rain forest, but she’d never had a species named for her,” Kooyman said. “To support women in science and acknowledge her incredible contributions, we named our newly discovered goddess for Gwen.”

The mythological epithet is appropriate in more ways than one. Based on DNA evidence, researchers have estimated that the Eidothea genus evolved more than 70 million years ago, deep in the history of flowering plants. At that time, Antarctica, Australia, and South America’s Patagonia region were stitched together into an evolved form of Gondwana blanketed in temperate rain forest. Many of the plant lineages found growing in the Nightcap area today, including araucaria and eucalyptus trees and evergreen tree ferns, are present in Gondwanan fossil beds from Argentina to Antarctica, suggesting Eidothea is part of a primitive botanical community that spanned the supercontinent.

[Read: The bleak future of Australia wildlife]

“It represents an ancient lineage from an ancient family,” Peter Wilf, a paleobotanist at Penn State University who studies remnant Gondwanan forests, told me. “It also represents an ancient type of forest.” In fact, ecological surveys suggest that in addition to sheltering dozens of threatened endemic animals, the Nightcap area is more “Gondwanan,” floristically speaking, than any other place in Australia.

“It’s a true refugia,” Kooyman said—an area that serves as a sort of biotic bomb shelter where species can survive geologic upheaval.

Now, it’s a shelter in crisis. In early November, a lightning-sparked blaze flared up near Nightcap National Park’s border, and before long, the grove’s understory had started to burn. With firefighters’ resources stretched thin and the weather working against them, not every leafy resident could be saved.

When Kooyman traveled to the Nightcap area in late November to start assessing the damage, he found a grim sight. All of the ground-level shrubs and ferns had been burned away; piles of smoldering wood lay everywhere. Charred rain-forest trees were split and dying. Adding to the surreal quality of the scene, the forest canopy remained largely intact: an umbrella of green over a blackened forest floor.

“It was pretty distressing,” he said.

Working with members of the National Parks and Wildlife Service’s Saving our Species conservation program, Kooyman quickly set up a series of forest-monitoring plots, which have become the site of a morbid science experiment. As researchers assess the fire’s impacts on dozens of rain-forest species in the Nightcap area, they’re monitoring these plots over time to see how many trees succumb to the knock-on effects of fire damage. As Kooyman explained, if heat or fire penetrates the thin bark of rain-forest trees, they can develop fatal vascular embolisms or fungal infections long after the flames have passed.

[Read: Australia will lose to climate change]

Kooyman’s biggest concern is that the loss of even a few individuals could deal a crippling blow to Eidothea hardeniana’s gene pool. Early genetic work spearheaded by Maurizio Rossetto at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney revealed that the species is remarkably diverse given its small population size. If the recent mortalities included some of the most genetically distinct individuals, the species’s ability to adapt to long-term changes might be severely diminished.

“Losing 10 percent of stems doesn’t necessarily mean you’re losing 10 percent of evolutionary potential,” Rossetto told me. “It will depend on what has been lost and the distribution of individuals.” Once Kooyman’s ongoing surveys have painted a clearer picture of which trees have been killed by the fires, Rossetto and his team plan to revisit their genetic data to quantify the evolutionary impact.

Because the fires occurred before the fruiting season, new Eidothea hardeniana seedlings could take root this year. Even adult trees that were severely affected might yet be able to put out new suckers, or sprouts. But Eidothea hardeniana grows slowly, and in a fragmented habitat, where local fauna doesn’t seem to find its fruit particularly palatable, its ability to spread is limited. Humans could help by actively propagating the tree into other suitable habitat areas, Rossetto said; Kooyman, by contrast, emphasized the need to redouble conservation efforts within the Nightcap area by clearing out encroaching weedy vegetation and felled timber left behind after historical logging.

However, centuries could pass before any new seedlings reach reproductive maturity, Kooyman said. And with Australia’s fire season rapidly worsening, as humans pump heat-trapping carbon into the atmosphere at a rate not seen in the last 66 million years, the next pyrotechnic assault could arrive long before that.

The Gondwanan glory days are over, and in geologic terms, time capsules such as the Nightcap area were on their way out. But humanity has “really kicked things forward,” Wilf, the paleobotanist at Penn State, said, pushing species such as Eidothea hardeniana that much closer to extinction and threatening to sever our connection to an ancient world far sooner than nature intended.

“It is tragic to think about,” he added. “These are plants that have survived an enormous amount of global change—immense global cooling, continent splitting.” But with Eidothea hardeniana’s lone life raft now breaking apart in a geologic eyeblink, the survivors might not be able to chart an evolutionary escape route fast enough.