China Harvests First Crop of ‘Space Rice’ in Food Security Push

(Bloomberg) -- China harvested its first batch of “space rice” from seeds that returned from a lunar voyage last year, with scientists hoping it could help create new plant varieties and safeguard the country’s food security.

The crop was grown from the 40 grams of seeds that traveled with the Chang’e-5 lunar probe in November, state television reported. More tests and plantings are needed to determine the best varieties that could be promoted nationwide to help improve China’s grain harvest.

China’s ramped up its focus on food security and supply in the past year, boosting imports and urging greater self-sufficiency in staple crops to feed its population of 1.4 billion. The seed sector is a pillar of this push, with the government approving a plan on Friday to make seed sourcing a matter of strategic security and vowing support for research and agriculture projects.

The country has been taking seeds of rice and other crops to space since 1987. More than 200 space plant varieties including cotton and tomatoes have been approved for planting. In 2018, the total plantation area for space crops approved in China reached more than 2.4 million hectares, according to state media.

After being exposed to cosmic radiation and zero gravity, some seeds can mutate and produce higher yields when planted back on Earth. It may take three to four years before space rice enters the market, Global Times said, citing an official at the space breeding research center.


©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

CLIMATE CHANGE WARMING WATERS

Great White Sharks Have Returned to Cape Cod in Droves

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)


by Sarah Sax - Undark

July 12, 2021

On a windy morning in March, two older surfers at LeCount Hollow Beach, on Cape Cod, look out at the gray Atlantic. They are scanning the water closest to shore for seals, with whom they increasingly have to share the frigid water, which can dip as low as 37 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. The seals are a growing demographic. They have been rebounding since the 1970s, after almost being hunted to extinction. They are recolonizing what was once their native habitat, migrating seasonally up and down the coast. The surfers, too, have started to migrate, with many now surfing exclusively in the winter — not to avoid the crowds in this popular summer tourist destination, but to avoid another growing demographic: great white sharks.

One of the surfers, Charles Cole, who goes by Ch’arlie or Ch, has a long flowing beard bleached a light yellow from years of sea and sun. He has been surfing here off the coast of Massachusetts since the 1960s. “There used to be one or two sharks every summer,” he says. Now there are too many to even count. Cole has painted the bottom of his kneeboard with alternating stripes of white, black, and gray — a signal to let the sharks know he isn’t a seal. But just in case, his surf leash attached to the back of the board has a mechanical ratcheting buckle for tightening. “I bought one of these because it's a tourniquet,” says Cole. Devices like this are usually used to stop heavy bleeding after traumatic injuries from gunfire, road accidents — and shark bites.

Even with these precautionary measures in place, Cole says he won’t go out if the water appears too “sharky” — a sixth sense he has developed to tell him if sharks are present. And from about July to October, during peak shark season for what has now become one of the greatest concentrations of great white sharks in the world, the waters are very, very sharky.

For ecologists, the return of the sharks is hailed as a cascading conservation success story. Protection of Cape Cod’s unique seashore and the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act are credited with the return of the region’s gray seals — a preferred food source for great white sharks. The seals’ main stomping ground is the eastern shoreline of the Outer Cape, which extends like a forearm from the peninsula’s southern elbow to its northern fist. Here, 3,000 miles of open ocean, wind, and waves ram into the land, forming dramatic dunes that can reach 100 feet and attract millions of visitors every year. As the seal population has grown, so has the number of sharks and shark interactions, causing the Outer Cape’s four small towns and the National Park Service to grapple with competing demands of conservation and public safety.

Many societies have coexisted with large apex predators for centuries, but Western countries have tended to favor either eradication or separation. In Western Europe, for example, bears and gray wolves were largely exterminated by the late 19th century, and even though wolves have successfully returned, countries such as France, Norway, and Finland still routinely cull them. Separation looks a little different: In the United States, grizzly bears are largely tolerated within designated wildlife reserves and national parks, but if they go outside those boundaries, they risk being relocated or euthanized.



As one of the ocean’s top apex predators, great whites have been the target of intense management plans. Countries around the world have spent millions of dollars to install nets, barriers, and bait-lines to keep sharks away from humans, with mixed success. But now, increasingly sophisticated satellite and tracking technology might offer new, more detailed insight into how sharks behave. Among other things, researchers are creating a tool to predict the presence of sharks in the water. “Like a weather forecasting system just for sharks,” says Greg Skomal, a senior scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and a leading shark researcher.

That tool is what’s known as a heat map — a color-coded graphical representation of data. In this case, the goal is to map shark swimming behaviors and their relationship to environmental conditions, like water temperature, tides, and even lunar cycles. Researchers hope this heat map will give beachgoers and public safety officials the ability to predict the likelihood of a shark swimming near the shore. It’s not just a novel experiment for understanding shark behavior. Some researchers see it as emblematic of a growing shift in conservation science, as well as in Western societies, to finding more equitable ways of living with wild animals. In Cape Cod, being able to predict the presence of sharks in the water could allow beachgoers to coexist with the 2.5-ton animals whose ancestors have dominated the ocean for 450 million years.

Sharks were once abundant in the Northwest Atlantic. Almost 200 years ago, Henry David Thoreau took a series of trips from his home, about 20 miles west of Boston, to the windswept landscapes of Cape Cod. In his book about the region, he observed that no one swam on the eastern side “on account of the undertow and the rumor of sharks.” Thoreau recounts a local’s story of using oxen to drag a 14-foot “regular man-eating shark” he had killed out of the ocean. The author even spots a possible shark swimming not far from shore.

Published in 1865, the book, titled “Cape Cod,” gives a glimpse of the region before governments in New England wiped out the seal population by offering a bounty on seal noses, after inaccurately blaming them for declining fish stocks. As many as 135,000 seals were killed between 1888 to 1962, according to some estimates. By the time the Marine Mammal Protection Act was enacted in 1972, seals had been all but exterminated. Since then, though, the seals have returned in the tens of thousands to Cape Cod, a small slice of the roughly 450,000 gray seals that now live in the Northwest Atlantic.

Sharks, too, were nearly wiped out. The loss of their primary food source combined with a deadly mixture of trophy hunting, culling, and industrial fishing led to the near extirpation of coastal shark species. And as coastal development ramped up across the country and human-shark interactions increased, so did the perception that sharks were dangerous to humans. This spurred an increase in programs aimed at managing human-shark conflicts, often through lethal means. For example, the state government of Hawaii spent more than $300,000 on shark control programs between 1959 and 1976, killing almost 5,000 sharks in the process.

In the Northwest Atlantic, shark populations hit a dizzying low. By 2003, a few years after fishing for great whites was officially banned, their population had declined by as much as 75 percent in the previous 15 years. The species has since rebounded; Cape Cod has become the world's newest hotspot, with great white sharks steadily returning since at least 2009, when the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries began to consistently tag them. “A lot of people recognize it as a conservation success story,” says Megan Winton, a research scientist at the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, an organization dedicated to research, public safety, and conservation of great white sharks. “But now the community is really trying to figure out how to coexist, as people who like to use the water.”

Heather Doyle looks out at the ocean from the Newcomb Hollow Beach parking lot, which is covered in sand from a late winter storm. A few miles to the south, in 2017, her friend’s paddleboard was bitten by a shark just 90 feet from shore. “That was a big eye opener for everybody,” says Doyle. The following year, a few miles to the north of Newcomb Hollow Beach, a doctor was bit in the torso and leg. He survived; but then a month later, another shark fatally wounded college student Arthur Medici. Doyle points down the shore: a small, inconspicuous cross commemorating Medici teeters at the edge of a dune.

Medici’s death was the first shark fatality in Massachusetts since 1936. “We’re on a trajectory, right?” says Doyle. “It was three bites in 14 months.” After her friend’s paddleboard scare, Doyle co-founded Cape Cod Ocean Community, a community group that eventually became a nonprofit dedicated to increasing public safety. The group has helped connect pilots with lifeguards to alert them to possible sharks. It has raised funds for drones and giant car-sized balloons with high-definition cameras that could spot sharks, and it has advocated for devices such as the Clever Buoy, a marine monitoring and alert system that detects large marine life in the water.

But a six-month study commissioned by the Outer Cape towns and released in October 2019 looked at the efficacy of more than two dozen shark mitigation strategies, including the Clever Buoy, as well as nets, virtual barriers, electromagnet devices to deter sharks, and drones, among others. The report ultimately concluded that most either didn’t have enough evidence they actually worked, had limited efficacy, or wouldn’t work on Cape Cod’s shoreline — except one: modifying human behavior.


This has been the primary way that public safety officials have mitigated shark risk over the past eight to nine years, said Suzanne Grout Thomas, director of community services for Wellfleet, a fishing town about 15 miles from the tip of Cape Cod. Since Medici’s death, towns have stepped up their protocols, limiting how far out people can swim and closing beaches to swimming sometimes several times a day. Lifeguards and even some members of the public are trained in “stop the bleed” practices for bites, while signs warn about the presence of sharks. “Our biggest contribution to this is educating the general public as to how sharks can be anticipated to behave,” says Thomas. And she already sees signs it is working. People swim closer to shore, or don’t swim at all, and they react faster when the lifeguards blow their whistles to clear the water.

Last summer, Wellfleet had two buoys that sent a signal to lifeguards. If a tagged shark came within 200 yards, they could call swimmers out of the water. “There were hundreds and hundreds of sharks that pinged those buoys last summer,” says Thomas. Her goal is to have one at every beach.

But this approach, she acknowledges, has its limitations. Not every great white shark is tagged, and cellphone network service at the Outer Cape beaches is still spotty at best, meaning any live notification systems are difficult to share widely.


As researchers and residents consider the best mitigation strategies, one strategy — culling — has stayed off the table. That’s an approach some countries have tried. Western Australia, for example, implemented a regional policy in 2012 to track, catch, and destroy sharks that have posed an “imminent threat” to beachgoers. But according to the International Shark Attack File, a global database, shark attacks in Western Australia have been on a downward trend, but in the past couple years have spiked again. While estimating the effects is difficult, many experts still say culling projects don’t work.

Now, technological advances and a growing understanding of animal intelligence are giving researchers hope that another management option may be on the table, one that seeks to understand, rather than modify, shark behavior.

The ocean floor of the Cape is an immense patchwork of sandbars, shoals, and deep trenches. Sharks have learned how to navigate this underwater labyrinth. They now hunt in what some call “the trough,” a deep area of water that forms like the letter C between the outer sandbar and the beach. Because seals are often found in these shallow waters close to the shore, the sharks have learned how to attack laterally, rather than ambush from below. In fact, unlike in other areas of the world, sharks on Cape Cod spend around half of their time in water shallower than 15 feet, according to a recent study that analyzed data collected about eight great whites.

“It was really powerful for us to be able to come up with a number to tell people,” says Winton, the shark researcher who co-authored the study along with Skomal. “It really helps increase awareness of these animals and their presence.”

Winton and her colleagues hope to take this data point and layer it onto other data points about shark behavior and environmental conditions. The goal is to create a dynamic heat map akin to a weather forecast that can indicate the probability of a great white shark in the water, similar to maps used by commercial fishermen to indicate fish abundance. This, in turn, would help beach managers and would-be swimmers assess the risk of going in the water.

To estimate the great white shark population, Winton has already spent years following the sharks around Cape Cod in a boat, getting close enough to take videos of their unique scars and other identifiers with a GoPro stuck to the end of a painter’s pole. She and her research team have sifted through more than 3,000 videos and identified more than 400 individual sharks, often by their unique scars or fins, along with another possible 104 that require additional documentation to confirm.

She has also collaborated with colleagues and organizations that collect data from other kinds of devices: Acoustic telemetry, pop-up-satellite tags, smart position and temperature (SPOT) transmitting tags, and underwater drones. Each device gives scientists a unique data set. Acoustic tags, for example, emit a high frequency sound that is picked up by hundreds of receivers in Massachusetts coastal waters. Researchers can then use these to study where great white sharks spend their time, when they arrive, and when they leave. The researchers can track individuals in the water, as well as where the sharks travel from year to year. And as the scientists collect more data, they can figure out not only which sharks are doing what, but also whether their behavior is changing over time. The long-term goal is to use all these devices to produce heat maps on an automated daily basis for towns and public safety officials. A hotter color around a specific beach or area would signify a higher likelihood of running into a great white.

As far as Winton knows, she and her colleagues are the first to develop this type of map of sharks’ behavior, and she hopes it will be a useful tool for public safety. “This is a way to provide science-based information to people alerting them to when sharks are likely to be present,” she says.

Or as Cole might say, the map is just a scientific way to assess whether the ocean is “sharky” or not.

For now, residents and officials on Cape Cod interviewed for this article seem intent on figuring out ways to coexist with, rather than manage, the sharks — though not all of them used the term “coexistence.” That term has only recently gained prominence among Western academics and conservationists. At its core, coexistence describes a state in which humans and wildlife share the same landscape. And while that may sound Pollyanna-ish, scholars and policymakers don’t frame it as such. “Coexistence doesn't require you to love your neighbor, or your enemy, or that marauding beast,” says Simon Pooley, a researcher at the University of London. “It requires you to figure out a way of existing in the same space and getting what you need.”

Pooley and other researchers maintain that promoting coexistence will be important for sustaining wild animal populations into the future. “Many of the places where these dangerous animals persist — they persist because there is coexistence in those places,” he says. This is especially apparent in Indigenous-managed lands that contain about 80 percent of global biodiversity, including vital habitats for predators like jaguars, polar bears, and lions. He himself studies communities in Western India that coexist with wild crocodile populations. And in India's Sunderbans, a region of marshy land and mangrove forests populated by both humans and tigers, provides the largest remaining Bengal tiger habitat in the world.

Whether Cape Cod will become a model for coexistence is an open question. Currently there are no plans to put up barriers, or to bait and cull sharks, although a more heated debate has erupted around whether and how to deal with the tens of thousands of seals that have recolonized the Cape. Winton, who hopes to have beta versions of the predictive maps ready by the end of this year, is excited about the immense amount of data still out there that could be used to better understand sharks and their behavior.

“The more we learn about these animals, the more we just realize we've only started to scrape the surface understanding them,” she says. “I am just so excited for what the future holds — for not just shark science, for all of wildlife science.”

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described India's Sunderbans region as being "further south" of coastal communities in Western India where crocodile populations are common. The Sunderbans are roughly 1,000 miles east of this location, on the Bay of Bengal.

Sarah Sax is an environmental journalist based out of Brooklyn who writes about the intersection of people, nature, and society. You can find her on Twitter @sarahl_sax.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Sharks evolved over millions of years as an apex predator, yet are no match for humans

Megan Marples
CNNDigital
Published Sunday, July 11, 2021


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Sharks have called the Earth's oceans home for hundreds of millions of years and adapted to thrive in harsh environments.

While these top hunters of the deep blue have evolved to survive cold and dark climates, sharks are no match for the ultimate predator -- humans.

That's why Shark Week, running from July 11 through July 18, was launched 33 years ago by Discovery Channel to encourage shark conservation and educate the public on these underwater predators.

The world's shark and ray populations plummeted 70 per cent from 1970 to 2018, with overfishing as a primary cause, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Nature.

Of the 31 oceanic species of sharks and rays, 24, or over three-quarters, of the species are now threatened with extinction due to their steep drop in numbers, the study said.

With Hollywood blockbusters like "Jaws" and "The Meg" fanning the flames of fear and paranoia in humans, these underwater animals have suffered a serious image problem.

However, sharks play a crucial role in their environment and keep the animal kingdom in check.

Sharks balance the food chain

As sharks were killed off from overfishing in the Sea of Cortez, located between Baja California and the Mexican mainland, other creatures swooped in to take their place on the food chain.

Wahoo and hammerhead sharks, along with other fish species like marlin and swordfish, have seen a steep decline in population due to commercial and local fishing in the area.

Scientists believe the decline in sharks is one of the reasons the Humboldt squid now call the Baja home in greater numbers. The creature can grow up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) long and weigh over 100 pounds (45.4 kilograms).

The squid only live for a couple years, but they reproduce at a much faster rate than sharks.

Some sharks are partially warm-blooded

Despite having a reputation of being cold-blooded, some sharks -- like the great white and the salmon shark -- are able to internally regulate their temperature, according to a June study published by the British Ecological Society.

The study found endothermic fish, which are able to regulate their own body temperature, swam over one-and-a-half times faster than ectotherms, animals that rely on the outside temperature to regulate their body heat.

Researchers weren't able to make any conclusions on how the warm-bloodedness could be helpful to sharks, but they hypothesized that it could help them when searching for food or migrating.

Sharks can live for hundreds of years

Sharks tend to have one of the longest life spans of creatures in the animal kingdom.

Using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old Greenland sharks were for a 2016 study, researchers discovered the underwater creatures lived to be at least 272 years old, with the largest of the group clocking in at around 392 years old.

The animals don't reach maturity until the ripe age of 150 years old, and they are the longest-lived vertebrate known to humans.
Some can glow in the dark

A small number of sharks are bioluminescent and glow hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface, according to a February study published in Frontiers in Marine Science.

One of the sharks is the kitefin shark (Dalatias licha), which spans nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters). It's also the world's largest known bioluminescent shark.

Very little is known about sharks that glow because the sharks mostly roam in the deep sea, which begins over 656 feet (200 meters) below the ocean surface.


Researchers also discovered the southern lanternshark (Etmopterus granulosus) and blackbelly lanternshark (Etmopterus lucifer) have bioluminescent abilities.
They nearly went extinct millions of years ago

Despite having the reputation as an apex predator, sharks died off at alarming rates millions of years ago.

Over 90 per cent of open-ocean sharks disappeared from the planet around 19 million years ago, scientists said.

Researchers said they could not confirm what caused the near-mass extinction event, and it could have lasted from a single day to 100,000 years.

Based on current research, there was no climate or ecosystem crisis during this time, which leaves a gaping hole of knowledge for scientists to do more research on and unlock the mystery.




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Elisa Loncón: From poverty to PhD to writing Chile's constitution

By Eva Ontiveros
BBC World Service
Published1 day ago

Elisa Loncón is the first person to preside over Chile's newly created Constitutional Convention

In the 1970s, as Elisa Loncón was growing up, she had to travel 8km (five miles) to reach school. Her family, from Chile's Mapuche indigenous community, lived in poverty in a remote village in the southern Araucanía region. There was no-one to take her to classes, and very often, the only way to make the journey was on foot through dirt roads.

Her mother was a housemaid who loved poetry. Her father, a carpenter, had taught himself how to read at the age of 17. Life was difficult and, some days, her parents struggled to give Loncón and her six siblings food to eat. It was not easy at school either, because of the constant abuse she suffered over her indigenous roots.

But she did not give up.

"I come from a simple family. Like all Mapuche families we faced hardship," she said recently in an interview to Spanish newspaper El País. The Mapuche are Chile's largest indigenous ethnic group, with a common language, and a shared social, religious, and economic structure. But they have almost no guaranteed rights. "We stayed true to our values," she said, "inspired by collective norms, memory, history".

She eventually left the village called Lefweluan, where most of her relatives still live, and graduated as an English teacher. She went on to earn a PhD in humanities from the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, and another PhD in literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, before becoming a full-time professor at the University of Santiago.

Alongside her impressive academic work, Loncón embarked on a fight to defend the Mapuche. She became a well-known activist and, earlier this year, was elected for one of the 17 seats reserved for representatives of native peoples in the Constitutional Convention, the body that will write a new constitution for a deeply divided Chile.

"It's possible, brothers and sisters, to re-found this Chile," Dr Loncón said in her speech


It was a historic moment. Native communities have had little say in the running of the country to date, and Chile has never before defined itself as a multicultural nation. Indigenous people are not even mentioned in the current constitution, which dates back to the right-wing military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who ruled between 1973 and 1990.


And this month, in a decision charged with symbolism, she was elected to preside over the 155-member convention which, for the first time, proposes the recognition of the country's native peoples.


With her fist clenched above her head, Loncón, who is 58, accepted the position, amid noisy celebrations. "I salute the people of Chile from the north to Patagonia, from the sea to the mountains, to the islands, all those who are watching us today," she said, holding up a Mapuche flag.


"I'm grateful for the support of the different coalitions that placed their trust and their dreams in the hands of the Mapuche nation, who voted for a Mapuche person, a woman, to change the history of this country."



Who are the Mapuche?

Before the Spanish arrived in the16th Century, the Mapuche inhabited a vast swathe of land in southern Chile
Renowned for their ferocity, they successfully resisted conquest until the late 19th Century, when they were rounded up into small communities
Much of their land was sold off to farmers and forestry companies
About 12% of Chileans define themselves as indigenous, most of them as Mapuche




The convention, which has parity between male and female members, a first in the world, is made up by a majority of independent and left-leaning names. This has raised hopes for profound reforms, replacing a constitution blamed for social inequalities that sparked deadly protests in 2019.


Among the demands of the Mapuche and the other nine native Chilean peoples is the creation of a plurinational state, within which their autonomy and rights are accepted, as well as the recognition of their cultures and languages. Loncón herself wrote a series of books teaching the official Mapuche language, the mapudungun.



The communities also want guarantees in territorial terms. Indigenous groups have ancestral claims to their lands, which often enter into conflict with those of current landowners. Any dramatic changes are likely to raise questions over property rights, or about the more complicated issue of reparations.


"It's possible to dialogue with us, you do not need to fear us," Loncón told Chilean newspaper La Tercera, ahead of the vote for the commission. "There is a lot of prejudice [against the Mapuche]. So, this is also a call to free ourselves from our prejudices and relate to each other on equal terms."

There is often tension between Mapuche communities and the state

Loncón's election to preside over the body indicates the majority of the commission is keen on updating the country, but it is unlikely to be plain sailing. The opening session was delayed by almost an hour due to protests by a group of constituents, which followed clashes between police and demonstrators in the capital, Santiago .

The agreement among parties is that the presidency of the convention will rotate, although it has not yet been decided how long each term will last. The first draft of the new Chilean constitution is expected by 2022, and will be followed by another plebiscite, with mandatory voting.

"It's a dream of our ancestors and this dream has come true," Loncón said in her acceptance speech. "It's possible, brothers and sisters, to re-found this Chile, to establish a relationship between the Mapuche people... and all the nations that make up this country."

CONTEXT: We must be heard too, Chile indigenous say
VOICES: The pop sensation challenging repression
ON THE GROUND: The writing is on the wall

Bats showing signs of a comeback in Nova Scotia, decade after 90% were wiped out by disease

Researchers in Nova Scotia are baffled over the number of bats they’re seeing. A decade ago, a fungus wiped out 90 per cent of the province’s bats. The disease spread across North America, killing millions of these winged mammals. But as Ross Lord explains, the bats appear to be coming back.

Margaret E. Atwood @MargaretAtwood
We bats rejoice! Bat population in Nova Scotia showing signs of recovery | CBC News www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/bat-population-in-nova-scotia-showing-signs-of-recovery-1.6077404?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
Twitter2021-07-05 1:21 p.m.

Researchers believe Nova Scotia's bat population is recovering

It's been about 10 years since more than 90% of Nova Scotia's bat population died due to 'one of the worst wildlife diseases in modern history'

 By: Chris Stoodley

(stock photo)

Researchers believe that bats native to Nova Scotia are recovering after a fungus disease nearly killed off the entire population 10 years ago.

Prior to 2011, it was common for many people to step outdoors in Nova Scotia and encounter bats.

However, a fungus was introduced to North America causing bats across Canada and the United States to develop white-nose syndrome.

Lori Phinney, a wildlife biologist with Nova Scotia's Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, said the disease killed more than 90 per cent of the province's bat population between 2011 and 2013. Across North America, that disease has killed millions of bats.

"It was quick, it was fast and the bat population just plummeted," she told NEWS 95.7's The Rick Howe Show. "Now, we've been doing some monitoring to check how those bats are doing."

The Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute handles the province's bat conservation website, and Phinney said there have been very few reports of bat sightings over the past decade — but that's been changing.

"Recently, with some of the places we've monitored and from the public, we think this is a really good year for bats," she said. "We're actually seeing some of the colonies we monitor ... the numbers are a lot higher. So, we think that it's a good year for bats and that the public might be seeing them more often."

In 2018, Nova Scotia's largest known bat colony had a population of around 380. This year, that number grew to around 600.

Another site had 157 bats this year, up from 58 the previous year.

Phinney said the colonies are of female bats and their pups, and they usually live in bat boxes, sheds, attics and, sometimes, trees.

While this could be evidence of the bat population recovering, it's also possible that bats in Nova Scotia are just gathering at fewer sites.

Either way, Phinney said it'll likely be a long time for the population to make a full comeback.

"This is probably one of the worst wildlife diseases in modern history," she said.

White-nose syndrome causes the bats to wake up during hibernation. Since there are no bugs for them to eat during the winter, the bats usually die.

"With bats, what's going to happen with them is we're not going to see this rebound really quickly. Although it's been about 10 years — almost — since the population dropped off, they only have one pup per year."

Nova Scotia has three main species of bats that hibernate, and they're the main species the institute is monitoring: the little brown bat, the northern myotis and the tri-coloured bat.

Phinney said bats are important to the local ecosystem because they eat a large number of insects, and they act similarly to barn and tree swallows.

Since the province's bat population is so low, Phinney said every single bat a person sees is important to saving the population.

People who do see a bat are urged to report it on the institute's bat conservation website so it can track where people are seeing bats.

At the minimum, people should report the location and time of where they saw the bat. But including information on what the bat was doing, other comments and photos can also be helpful.

ECOCIDE
Florida breaks annual manatee death record in first 6 months

FILE - In this Friday, Feb. 5, 2021, file photo, manatees crowd together near the warm-water outflows from Florida Power & Light's plant in Riviera Beach, Fla. More manatees have died already in 2021 than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds. (Greg Lovett/The Palm Beach Post via AP, File)

STUART, Fla. (AP) — More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials said.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between Jan. 1 and July 2, breaking the previous record of 830 that died in 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.

The TCPalm website reports that more than half the deaths have died in the Indian River Lagoon and its surrounding areas in Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties. The overwhelming majority of deaths have been in Brevard, where 312 manatees have perished.

Some biologists believe water pollution is killing the seagrass beds in the area.

“Unprecedented manatee mortality due to starvation was documented on the Atlantic coast this past winter and spring,” Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute wrote as it announced the record Friday. “Most deaths occurred during the colder months when manatees migrated to and through the Indian River Lagoon, where the majority of seagrass has died off.”

Boat strikes are also a major cause of manatee deaths, killing at least 63 this year.

The manatee was once classified as endangered by the federal government, but it was reclassified as threatened in 2017. Environmentalists are asking that the animal again be considered endangered.

The federal government says approximately 6,300 manatees live in Florida waters, up from about 1,300 in the early 1990s.

The 11,000-Year-Old Site Where Neolithic Humans Got Absolutely Hammered


By Ross Pomeroy
June 29, 2021

Nestled near the top of a gentle sloping hill in the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey, surrounded by picturesque views of coarse, grassy savannah stretching into the distant horizon, rests the ruins of an ancient site dated to between 9,400 and 11,000 years ago. This is Göbekli Tepe. Though its dilapidated stones and worn-down pillars might hint at humble, solemn uses, archaeological examinations over the past decade have revealed a more convivial truth: Göbekli Tepe may have hosted some truly epic parties.

Southern Anatolia is at the northern end of the Fertile Crescent, a region in the Middle East invigorated by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where hunter-gatherers first settled down to farm. Göbekli Tepe was constructed sometime during this lifestyle transition, perhaps by different groups lured together through innate social desires. Exquisite carvings, decorated pillars, and animal-like figurines first suggested to researchers that this was a temple of some sort, intended for worship. Then, in 2012, archaeologists uncovered six large limestone troughs that could have each held up to 42 gallons of liquid. At the bottom of these structures were faint traces of oxalate, a compound which develops during the mashing and fermentation of cereals. To the researchers, this new evidence suggested that site's previously modest narrative needed a rewrite.

Limestone vessels likely used for brewing beer.
K. Schmidt, N. Becker, DAI

"At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops," they wrote.

Whatever "worship" was going on at Göbekli Tepe, it was lively, to say the least.

Subsequent finds have reinforced this tale. In 2019, archaeologists examined more than 7,000 artifacts from the site. They described grinding tools that would have been used to process grains, as well as pieces of decorated stone drinking vessels. Absent from the area were any sort of storage facilities, suggesting that people didn't live at Göbekli Tepe, they just ate, drank, and partied there.

"Our findings... suggest that such feasts were held strategically in seasons favorable to the natural availability of plant food and meat between midsummer and autumn," they wrote.


Even more intriguing, the researchers found several miniature stone masks, suggesting that attendees may have masqueraded.

"We assume that the stone masks are miniature representations of real organic masks actually worn."

The festivals may have occasionally involved more 'freaky' activities, if a 2017 study is any indication. Scientists with the German Archaeological Institute detailed three modified skulls found at Göbekli Tepe.

"These skulls... attest to the special postmortem treatment of certain individuals at Göbekli Tepe. Special status of the individuals could have been emphasized through the application of decorative elements to the crania, which were then displayed at designated points around the site. At present, it is unknown whether these treatments were performed in the frame of ritual activities in the monumental buildings or were brought to the ritual center from settlement sites," they said.

Between boozy beer, tasty food, ornamented skulls, sculpted figures, incredible views, and great company, Neolithic parties at Göbekli Tepe more than 10,000 years ago must've been exciting spectacles. It may have been events like this that helped convince wide-ranging hunter-gatherer groups to settle down into more permanent villages. That way, they could party every night!

UK Labour Party reinstates controversial member accused of Islamophobia

July 7, 2021 



Nasim Ahmed
Nasimbythedocks
July 7, 2021 

The British Labour Party has become embroiled in another major race row following its decision to readmit Trevor Phillips to the party just over a year after he was suspended for alleged Islamophobia. The 67-year-old writer and broadcaster is one of the most high-profile members of the party. As the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the head of its forerunner the Commission for Racial Equality he made a name for himself as an anti-racism campaigner. When he speaks about race, people tend to take him seriously.

According to the Guardian, Phillips was reinstated by the party "at least three weeks ago", without the matter going to a National Executive Committee disciplinary panel. "A Labour source said that the investigation into Phillips is ongoing and its procedures allow for this to happen even after a member's suspension has been lifted."

With Labour embroiled in an ongoing civil war over a number of issues, including its handling of alleged racism within the party, the decision to reinstate Phillips, who has a track record of making highly offensive comments considered by many to be Islamophobic, has fuelled anger and accusations of double standards. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn MP is still denied the party whip in parliament over comments he had made last year following the publication of a report by the EHRC on anti-Semitism within Labour.

READ: 'The concept of Islamophobia' is anti-Semitic claims pro-Israel commentator

The report was based on a 17-month long investigation which found no evidence of anti-Semitism attributable to the former leader, or any evidence of institutional racism within the Labour Party. It has been pointed out that there is a strong case to be made that the EHRC findings were further confirmation that Labour's anti-Semitism "crisis" was fuelled by a right-wing faction in order to undermine Corbyn. This was the conclusion of an internal 851 page report by the Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit.

As the party turned to the right under current leader Sir Keir Starmer, Corbyn's suspension triggered a civil war within Labour. Suspending Corbyn, Starmer claimed that his predecessor had "undermined" the EHRC report with his comments that the scale of anti-Semitism in the party had been "dramatically overstated". Starmer is on record saying that he "support[s] Zionism without qualification."

While Corbyn waits to have the whip restored, several Labour members are still serving suspensions for alleged anti-Semitism. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a senior member of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is one of those suspended under questionable circumstances. Wimborne-Idrissi is also vice-chair of her local party. She and the chair, Gary Lafley, were both suspended last December for asking questions about Corbyn's suspension.

"I feel bloody uncomfortable seeing damned good comrades and friends of mine being suspended from this party for doing nothing more than trying to discuss the questions which led to Jeremy Corbyn's unjust suspension," said Wimborne-Idrissi following Starmer's move against Corbyn. "We know it was unjust because he was readmitted, and then the question of the whip being taken from him which is almost certainly unconstitutional in the party."




Trevor Phillips, member of the Labour Party in London, UK on 26 October 2010 [Empfang/Flickr]

The obvious double standard has been pointed out by senior Labour MPs. "The continuing refusal to restore the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn becomes even more bewildering and unjustifiable in the light of this decision," tweeted former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP, following Phillips' reinstatement.

The divisions of the past five years have resurfaced with Labour MPs questionings their party's pledge to take Islamophobia seriously.

"Anything less than a full apology before readmittance makes a mockery of the idea that Labour takes Islamophobia seriously," said the Coventry South MP Zara Sultana. She cited comments made by Phillips about Muslims which many consider to be racist and Islamophobic and led to his suspension. Muslims, he claimed, "see the world differently from the rest of us"; they are a "nation within a nation".

South African author and former politician Andrew Feinstein tweeted that, "Trevor Phillips' reinstatement despite his Islamophobic comments shows again that the Labour party has a hierarchy of racism. Many anti-racist Jews remain suspended for supposed anti-Semitism while Islamophobe readmitted. U r either antiracist or u r part of the racism problem!"

READ: Starmer's refusal to challenge a far-right conspiracy theorist was shocking

The perception of double standards is fuelled in large part because many see Labour adopting a casual attitude towards explicit bigotry and hatred against Muslims. Meanwhile, it takes a harsh approach against alleged anti-Semitism even though the latter is often conflated with legitimate criticism of the policies and practices of the state of Israel.

Phillips' comments are cited as a clear example of how it is acceptable in 21st century Britain to talk about Muslims in ways that would be wholly unacceptable about any other minority. In an article in the Sun, for example, he said that placing a Christian girl into Muslim foster care was "akin to child abuse". He is accused of peddling unfounded claims about Muslims that not only align with those made by far-right Islamophobes, but are also used by anti-Muslim groups to justify their divisive targeting of Muslims.

His reinstatement by Labour while others who have been suspended are left out in the cold risks splitting the party even more.

"We are once again in a position where we must express the deep disappointment and frustration of Muslim members and supporters across the UK," said the Labour Muslim Network in an official statement. "Trevor Phillips' case is one of the most high-profile recent examples of Islamophobia within the Labour Party and quietly readmitting him behind closed doors, without apology or acknowledgement, will only cause further anxiety and hurt amongst Muslims."

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Marriage law vote proves that even 'left' Zionism is racism

July 10, 2021

Thousands of Israelis celebrate the country's new government, ending the 12-year reign of Premier Benjamin Netanyahu at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel on June 13, 2021 [Eyad Tawil‎ / Anadolu Agency]

AsaWinstanley
July 10, 2021 

This week, Israel's Parliament the Knesset failed to pass an extension to Israel's racist marriage law.

The law bars the spouses of Palestinian citizens of Israel from receiving citizenship.

This means that Palestinians from Haifa, Acre or Jaffa are effectively banned from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and Arabs from a series of other "enemy" states.

I say "effectively" since technically they could marry, but would then be forced to live apart since Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are banned from living inside "Israel proper" by a whole series of other racist laws.

The law does not apply to marriages of Jewish Israeli citizens to Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank. It is indisputably a racist law, discriminating against Arabs.

It was introduced as a supposed "emergency" law in 2003, but until now, it has been renewed annually without fail. However, what that does mean is that the Knesset must vote each year to ensure the law stays in full effect.

But what happened this week was not some sudden radical change of heart by Israeli lawmakers. It was rather a matter of opportunism by the new opposition, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, the last prime minister. The vote to extend the law failed by the narrowest possible margin, 59 to 59.

Read: Israel Knesset member calls for killing of people in mixed marriages

Netanyahu and his political allies in the opposition support the law in principle, and have voted to extend it many times in the past. They simply sought to embarrass the fragile new coalition government led by Naftali Bennett (another hard-right racist and a former Netanyahu coalition partner).

Only a tiny minority of six Knesset lawmakers voted against the law as a matter of principle. These were Palestinians from the Joint List group.

In a crude reminder of how all Zionism is racism – and not only the right-wing Zionism promoted by demagogues like Netanyahu and Bennett – even the supposedly "left-wing" Meretz party voted to extend the racist marriage law.

Meretz is part of the new coalition government led by hard-right racist Bennett, so there was an element of political opportunism to Meretz's vote in favour of the racist law. But mostly, it was ideological: Meretz is a Zionist party, so it voted for a Zionist law.

One of their lawmakers, Yair Golan, ranted against the opposition in the Knesset.

He accused Netanyahu and his ultra-right allies in the opposition (such as Kahanist party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir) of being in the "anti-Zionist, anti-nationalist camp" and of "betraying the Zionist vision."

A retired high-ranking military officer, Golan spoke in openly racist terms of the opposition supposedly wanting to "drown Israeli citizens in a sea of Palestinians." Some leftist. It was a phrase that could have just as easily come out of the mouths of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson.

And it wasn't only Meretz.

Arise Israel, an activist group that had been one of the leaders of the long-running anti-Netanyahu protests, also lashed out against the opposition in racist terms. This is the consequence of Zionism: the institutionalisation of racism across an entire society on every level.

Seeing a video of opposition politician Bezalel Smotrich, another Kahanist, declaring his refusal to vote with the government on the racist marriage law, the group responded on Twitter accusing him of: "Voting against the state of Israel and against the security of the state of Israel… shame on you."

When I broke the story of Assaf Kaplan, the Israeli spy hired by the Labour Party to help run its social media "listening" campaign, Zionists were hard put to come up with a defence. That didn't stop them trying though, with one weakly describing Kaplan as an "anti-Netanyahu protester".

Irrelevant. As their behaviour in Israel this week shows, the Zionist "left" is equally as racist as the Zionist right. Israel's new President Isaac Herzog is another example of that.

The failed Israeli Labor Party leader now holds the mainly ceremonial role. He's being praised as a sensible centrist in the West.

But this is the same guy who said that Jews marrying non-Jews is an "actual plague", was formerly a spy in Israel's violent cybercrime and blackmail operation Unit 8200, and who ran an openly racist election ad in which his comrades gushed that he "understands the Arab mentality" because he has seen "the Arabs" through "the sight of a rifle".

Progressive Israel!

Read: Another Palestinian couple has been separated due to Israeli restrictions

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Egyptians are quietly being executed

July 8, 2021

A group of people gather to stage a protest against executions in Egypt, in front of the New York Times Building, in New York, United States, on 02 March 2019 [Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency]


AdnanHmidan
July 8, 2021 a


News of the execution of 25-year-old engineering student Moataz Mostafa Hassan in Egypt has passed quietly. He was found guilty of questionable charges as have the 97 other citizens who have been executed in Egypt since the 2013 coup.

A few lonely voices denounced the crime on social media. While loud voices kept supporting and applauding the oppressor.

A report issued by an independent Egyptian human rights organisation has confirmed that 68 citizens are awaiting execution after 'exhausting all forms of litigation'.

Last month, Egypt's Court of Cassation upheld death sentences issued against 12 political detainees in the case known to the media as the Rabaa sit-in dispersal, including prominent leaders of the January revolution such as Mohamed Beltagy, preacher and political activist Safwat Hegazi, scholar Abdel Rahman Al-Barr, and former minister of youth Osama Yassin, along with others.



A senior political figure of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagy, is seen behind prison bars in Cairo, Egypt on 10 December 2016 [Moustafa Elshemy / Anadolu Agency]

These sentences can only be seen as retaliatory and unjust, especially in a country where sham trials are the norm, with judges receiving orders from the military over the phone. What is most painful in a world that claims to reject mass death sentences, even against murderers and rapists, is the voices that remain deadly silent when it comes to these detainees, in particular the Islamists.

The double standard with which the West treats our human rights issues and just demands is the main reason why many chose the path of extremism and adopt more fanatic views. It is responsible for tilting the balance.

READ: International call to stop political executions in Egypt

Even worse, the international community chose silence and betrayal, and only cared for Israel, allowing whoever befriends it to become the adored companion of the West and enjoy having their mistakes permanently overlooked by powerful states.

In April, Amnesty announced that there had been a 300 per cent rise in executions in Egypt and that Cairo had become the third most frequent executioner worldwide. But even this classification was not enough reason for US President Joe Biden to denounce the regime, despite his attack on his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi during his election campaign.

In this world full of injustice, the icon of the January revolution, Dr Mohamed Beltagy, the peaceful oppositionist of the coup, is tried over the blood that was spilled in Rabaa Square.

Beltagy receives a death sentence despite offering his daughter – Asmaa – as a martyr to this injustice, after an army sniper shot her in the head. Capital punishment has been issued against Beltagy, the victim, while the killer enjoys freedom and life, as the perpetrators of the mass killing in the Rabaa sit-in dispersal have not been formally interrogated to date.

No security or stability can be built on a sea of the blood of innocent citizens.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 7 July 2021

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.