Current climate policy to ‘leave two billion exposed to dangerous heat by 2100’


Rebecca Speare-Cole, PA sustainability reporter
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, unprecedented new research suggests.

The paper, published on Monday and co-authored by academics from around the world, examines the “human climate niche” – the temperature range in which humans have lived and flourished throughout history – and how warming could see billions of people falling outside of it.

The researchers from University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, alongside the Earth Commission and Nanjing University, argue that current legally binding climate policies are estimated to produce an average temperature rise of 2.7C by 2100.

They said this could leave two billion people – 22% of the projected end-of-century population – exposed to dangerous heat, defined as an average annual temperature of 29°C or higher.

Forecasts show areas of the world where humans could be exposed to dangerous heat by 2100.

At these high temperatures, water resources could become strained, mortality could increase, economic productivity could decrease, animals and crops could no longer flourish, and large numbers of people may migrate.

However, the forecasts also show that limiting warming to 1.5C in line with the Paris Climate Agreement would leave just 5% outside the niche by 2100, highlighting “the importance of decisive action” to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.

Professor Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute, said that many areas of the world will “go up to unprecedented temperatures that nobody experienced in the historical climate” when warming hits 2.7C.

More than 600 million people in India and 300 million people in Nigeria could be exposed to dangerous temperatures by 2100, as well as areas of Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Australia, and almost 100% of Burkina Faso and Mali.

The research found that under the worst-case scenarios of 3.6C or even 4.4C global warming, half of the world’s population could be left outside the climate niche, posing an “existential risk”.

Prof Lenton said limiting warming to 1.5C makes a “profound difference” to forecasts, with those exposed to dangerous heat decreasing from more than two billion people to a little over 400 million people.

“The costs of global warming are often expressed in financial terms, but our study highlights the phenomenal human cost of failing to tackle the climate emergency,” he said.

“For every 0.1C of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.

“This reveals both the scale of the problem and the importance of decisive action to reduce carbon emissions.

“Limiting global warming to 1.5C rather than 2.7C would mean five times fewer people in 2100 being exposed to dangerous heat.”

The researchers said their paper highlights the inequity of climate crisis as the people least responsible for greenhouse emissions could face the most the exposure to dangerous heat.

They also found that the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average global citizens today – or just 1.2 US citizens – expose one future person to dangerous heat.

“We were triggered by the fact that the economic costs of carbon emissions hardly reflect the impact on human wellbeing,” said Professor Marten Scheffer, of Wageningen University, who co-authored the report.

“Our calculations now help bridging this gap and should stimulate asking new, unorthodox questions about justice.”

Prof Scheffer said that migration would be a “very natural adaptation” to the changing world.

He said: “It’s not like the earth is becoming unliveable, it’s just the best place on earth for humans is changing and that is a thing that happens to other species and a normal response to that is to move to the better places.”

But he added that migration will be part of the “human cost” of climate change. “No one wants to move away from the place they are born and it will be a cost for everyone in the world because it has to be accommodated in some way,” he said.

“It opens up a whole discussion about what is the best way for humanity to go ahead.

“One is to put the breaks on global warming but as you can see from the results, it is likely we will have to reaccommodate people on the globe.”

Catch-22: Canada's attempts to phase out fossil fuel might result in it paying the polluters

Kyla Tienhaara, Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment, Queen's University, Ontario
Mon, May 22, 2023 

US$20 billion: That’s how much American investors think Canadian taxpayers should fork over to compensate them for their failed bid to develop a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Québec.

That’s almost a fifth of the province’s total budget for this year.

Ruby River Capital LLC, the U.S.-based owner of GNL Québec Inc., filed a claim against Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after its Énergie Saguenay project failed to pass a federal environmental impact assessment.

The proposed LNG terminal had already been rejected by the Québec government over concerns that it would increase greenhouse gas emissions and negatively impact First Nations and marine mammals.

Canada faces a no-win situation — a catch-22. If the government does not rapidly phase out fossil fuels, it will fail to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement to address the climate crisis. But when it takes steps to do so, foreign investors invoke international trade and investment agreements like NAFTA and threaten to drain public coffers.

Paying the polluters

Unlike environmental treaties, trade and investment agreements have teeth. They are enforceable through a system known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that allows foreign investors to bypass local courts and bring claims for monetary compensation to a panel of three arbitrators. More than 1,200 ISDS cases have been launched against governments around the world in the last 25 years.

Read more: World Bank ruling against Pakistan shows global economic governance is broken

Between 1996 and 2018, Canada was sued more than 40 times by American investors through the investment chapter in NAFTA. To date, Canada has lost or settled (with compensation) 10 claims. Canadian governments have paid out more than $263 million in damages and settlements.

When NAFTA was replaced in 2018 with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it did not include an ISDS mechanism between Canada and the U.S. Chrystia Freeland, the then-deputy prime minister of Canada, noted at the time that the removal of ISDS “strengthened our government’s right to regulate in the public interest, to protect public health and the environment.”

Ruby River was only able to launch its case because USMCA allowed firms that had made investments before NAFTA’s termination — on July 1, 2020, — to continue to bring ISDS claims for three years — until June 30, 2023.

Importantly, Ruby River spent only about CDN$165 million on the Énergie Saguenay project proposal. However, the firm is permitted within the ISDS system to seek “lost future profits” based on speculation about the performance of notoriously volatile oil and gas markets.

Risks to climate policy

Québec is a member of the global Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and is the first jurisdiction in the world to ban all oil and gas production. The province is being sued over this ban by several fossil fuel firms — seeking more compensation than was offered — in Québec’s Superior Court.

Had these companies been foreign, and thereby qualified for the protection of an investment treaty, they likely would have chosen ISDS instead. This is because ISDS generally provides broader scope for claims — and larger awards — than domestic courts.




Other jurisdictions need to follow Québec’s lead. The global carbon budget has no room for new coal, oil or gas developments. Construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure also needs to be limited, as it would lock in continued extraction long into the future.

Despite clear messages to this effect from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, investors continue to propose new fossil fuel projects. They do so in full knowledge that governments need to act to curb emissions in line with their international commitments and that future climate policies may negatively impact their investments.

Allowing these companies to demand billions in compensation creates moral hazard and could dampen necessary policy action.

Read more: A secretive legal system lets fossil fuel investors sue countries over policies to keep oil and gas in the ground – podcast

Governments are increasingly aware of this risk and many are taking action. The European Union is seeking to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, the largest investment treaty in the world, because it “is not aligned with the Paris Agreement, the EU Climate Law or the objectives of the European Green Deal.”

The Biden administration is committed to not signing up to new agreements with ISDS and a number of Democrats are calling for the removal of the mechanism from existing deals. Other countries such as Australia and New Zealand have worked to exclude ISDS from some of their trade agreements.

Future threats

Canada will soon escape from the legacy of NAFTA. However, the government remains exposed to the threat of ISDS through other trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), as well as dozens of bilateral investment treaties.

When the U.K. officially joins the CPTPP, the risk of ISDS claims from fossil fuel firms will increase dramatically.

The idea that public finance, desperately needed for the energy transition and climate adaptation, will be redirected to compensate fossil fuel firms currently making record profits is offensive.

In light of the increasing body of evidence that documents how the industry has actively obstructed climate action and helped to spread disinformation about climate science, it is communities impacted by climate change that should be compensated by fossil fuel firms, not the other way around.

The Canadian government should adopt a consistent approach to ISDS. The exclusion of ISDS from USMCA should be emulated in any future agreements, and Canada should work with treaty partners to remove access to the system in all current ones.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

It was written by: Kyla Tienhaara, Queen's University, Ontario.

Read more:


Coastal GasLink and Canada’s pension fund colonialism


A bridge to nowhere: Natural gas will not lead Canada to a sustainable energy future

Kyla Tienhaara receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program and SSHRC (Government of Canada). She collaborates with and provides pro bono advice for a number of non-profit organizations working on climate and investment issues.

House Republicans are planning to vote on a bill this week to deprive over '40 million hard-working' student-loan borrowers of debt cancellation, the White House says — and if passed, Biden will veto it


Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, May 22, 2023 

President Biden.Jacquelyn Martin, Pool

Republicans are planning to bring a bill overturning student-debt relief to the House floor for a vote this week.


The White House said in a Monday statement that Biden will veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.


While the bill could pass the GOP-controlled House, it faces a tricky path ahead in the Senate.

House Republicans are teeing up a vote this week to overturn President Joe Biden's student-loan forgiveness, and as expected, the White House is ready to reject that legislation.

Earlier this month, the House education committee voted to approve a resolution that would block Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers, along with immediately ending the ongoing student-loan payment pause.

First introduced in March by GOP Rep. Bob Good, the resolution used the Congressional Review Act, which is an oversight tool lawmakers can use to overturn final rules put in place by government agencies. A group of Republican senators also introduced a companion version of the bill, and the House is expected to vote on the legislation on Wednesday.

Even before Biden announced his broad student-loan forgiveness plan, many Republican lawmakers launched a series of attacks on the relief, calling it costly and unfair to those who have already paid off their debt. But many Democrats and the Biden administration have maintained confidence in the legality of the relief and said it is necessary to help millions of borrowers financially recover from the pandemic — and the White House is emphasizing its stance in a Monday statement from the Office of Management and Budget.

"This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief," the OMB said.

"Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic," the OMB added. "The Department of Education's action is based on decades-old authority granted by Congress. That authority has been used by multiple administrations over the last two decades following the same procedures to protect borrowers from the effects of national emergencies and has never been subject to the Congressional Review Act. The Department's action here should be treated no differently."

The statement concluded: "If Congress were to pass H.J. Res. 45, the President would veto it."

Biden's broad debt relief plan has been blocked since November due to two conservative-backed lawsuits that paused the implementation of the plan. Currently, millions of borrowers are awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the legality of the relief — expected by the end of June — but GOP lawmakers apparently don't want to wait for that decision, as evidenced by the resolution.

During an education committee hearing last week, top Republican Virginia Foxx said that "the culture of this country has shifted from one in which individuals are responsible for paying for themselves to one in which the government plays nanny to each individual need."

While the resolution could pass the House given the Republican majority, if faces a much trickier path in the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. And 261 advocacy groups also recently called on congressional leaders to reject the Republican attempts to block student-debt relief, writing in a letter that "these CRA efforts would immediately force tens of millions of borrowers into abrupt and unplanned repayment with devastating effects, including adding thousands of dollars of payments and interest onto their loan balances."

CANADA

Deportation order over bogus college admission letter could set precedent: lawyers

The Canadian Press
Sat, May 20, 2023 



TORONTO — An Edmonton woman is facing deportation from Canada this month after a college admission letter that secured her entry into the country five years ago turned out to be fake.

Even though Karamjeet Kaur, 25, proved not to know the letter was fraudulent, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has ruled that she be deported by May 29.

That decision will likely have implications for possibly hundreds of other international students in Canada who reportedly received similar fake admission letters from the same education agent in India -- a situation that shows lack of accountability by border and immigration authorities, according to lawyers and activists who spoke with The Canadian Press.

Kaur, whose poor, rural Indian family spent their life savings so she could be the first among them to study and work abroad, now works as a supervisor for a company in Edmonton.She's married to a Canadian citizen, frequently volunteers, has a work permit valid until November and was on the path to becoming a permanent resident.

Avnish Nanda of Nanda & Company law firm, which has taken on Kaur’s case, said she's the type of person Canada wants. “She’s contributed so much, and she has the kind of character commitment to this country that we want in young immigrants.”

It wasn’t until 2021, during the last stage of Kaur's application for permanent residency, that the Canada Border Services Agency informed her the admission letter from Toronto's Seneca College, which secured her student visa, was fake.

Kaur said that upon her arrival to Canada, the agent in India only told her that her spot at Seneca was no longer available. Kaur eventually went to NorQuest College in Edmonton, where she graduated from a business and administration management program in 2020.

“We thought that the immigration process is very strict, and that they verify everything when they are giving the visa,” Kaur said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “I was really shocked. I’ve already been here five years. Canada is my country now.”

Nanda said immigration officials in both India and Canada believed that Kaur’s college admission letter was legitimate.

The same education agent gave as many as 700 students fraudulent admission letters to Canadian post-secondary schools, according to those trying to help the students who now face removal from Canada. The education agent is now reportedly facing charges in India.

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed in an email to The Canadian Press that "there are a number of active Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) investigations into cases of misrepresentation, including those related to study permits."

The CBSA did not provide further details, citing ongoing investigations, and said it does not comment on specific cases.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said it's required to hold an admissibility hearing in cases where the CBSA alleges that someone is inadmissible to enter or remain in Canada.

In January 2023, a Federal Court judge dismissed Kaur's request for a judicial review of the Immigration Board's deportation order. The judge found Kaur "genuinely believed" she had been accepted to Seneca College, but noted that she never took any action to verify her acceptance and never contacted the university to query why her purported acceptance had been withdrawn.

Kaur's deportation orderestablished an implied legal precedent for other students awaiting their hearing results, said Nanda. She's has since applied for permanent residency in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and through sponsorship.

Kaur and more than a dozen others protested outside Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s constituency office in Toronto on May 3 to demand culpability for their fake letters’ initial acceptance by Canadian immigration officials. An online petition against the deportations of affected students, launched by Migrant Workers Alliance the next day, has since received more than 940 signatures.

“We’re international students. We’re contributing millions of dollars in Canada’s economy… we stepped up (as essential workers) in COVID. We’re the victims of fraud. (Canada) has to do a proper investigation,” Lovepreet Singh, a victim of the same admission letter fraud, said at the protest. “If we have to go back, it would be an outrageous injustice for us.”

Jaswant Mangat is representing about 40 students in various stages of their admissibility hearingsbefore the immigration boardand said that his clients’ visa processing was done too hastily, often within a week. "There was no oversight or verification system,” he said.

"If agents know that (Canada’s immigration) system is unable to detect fraud, they’ll continue to commit it," said Mangat.

In response to claims that incoming students' permits and visa documents weren't adequately reviewed, the CBSA said that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is responsible for receiving and reviewing study permit applications. They did not confirm or deny the number of possibly fraudulent acceptance letters flagged in 2018. IRCC did not respond to questions about those claims by publication time.

Nanda said that Mendicino and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser should use the powers of their offices to mandate a process to determine whether all implicated students were unaware of the letter fraud, as Kaur proved in her judicial hearing.

"The government can today address this issue in a way that is compassionate and recognizes our domestic migration targets but also the daily lives of these folks who sacrificed everything to come to this country," said Nanda.

The Immigration and Refugee Board said it decides each case "on its merits, based on the law and the evidence and arguments presented by the parties."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 20, 2023

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Kiernan Green, The Canadian Press

Belgian unions demonstrate in Brussels to demand better worker protection

Mon, May 22, 2023 



BRUSSELS (AP) — Almost 20,000 Belgian trade union members mounted a demonstration on Monday to protest what they see as increasingly bad working conditions and the erosion of their right to strike. Action by transport workers paralyzed subway and other traffic in Brussels for most of the day.

The trade unions are irked by companies that seek to impose new contracts on workers that impact their social rights, affect their working conditions and cut their pay. They are specifically protesting the decision by the Delhaize supermarket chain to change the store management setup, directly cutting into the income and rights of staff.

Police authorities estimated the crowds walking through the capital at 18,000.

“We don't want second-class employees. We want respect and equal rights for all,” the socialist ABVV union said in a statement.

The unions are also protesting management measures to stifle strike action through court injunctions against the blocking of company premises, among other issues.

“The defense of our social and trade union rights is being made impossible,” the ABVV statement said.

Apart from public transportation, the day of protest could affect anything from day care centers to garbage collection.

The Associated Press

Meteorites found in Canada cannot be removed from the country without permit

The Canadian Press
Sun, May 21, 2023 


Catch a falling star if you can, and by all means put it in your pocket, but don't try to cross international borders with it lest you run afoul of a little-known Canadian law.

An American museum will have to navigate that law's intricacies should it try to buy portions of a meteorite believed to have landed in New Brunswick last month.

A fireball ripped through the Earth's atmosphere on April 8 and landed somewhere in the province, prompting the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum to offer a US$25,000 reward for the first one kilogram meteorite recovered.

But Chris Herd, a professor at the University of Alberta and curator of its meteorite collection, said obtaining the asteroid fragments won't be as simple as making an offer.

"In Canada, all meteorites are considered Canadian cultural property automatically through the Cultural Property Export and Import Act," he said in an interview. "... "If it's public property, say an American comes in and finds (the meteorite,) they have to apply to export it from Canada. They may not actually take it out of Canada unless they have an approved export permit."

The museum in Bethel, Maine, has openly expressed interest in obtaining some of the space debris if and when it's found.

Darryl Pitt, head of the museum's meteorite division, said doppler radar readings suggest the meteorite — which most likely originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — was likely scattered over the part of New Brunswick straddling Maine.

The museum's interest also extends beyond just the first 1-kg meteorite; a news release said it will buy any additional specimens found.

"Depending on the type of meteorite this is, specimens could easily be worth their weight in gold," Pitt said.

Herd said meteorites can be identified by a dark brown or black outer glassy crust that resembles an eggshell, he said.

"That's a telltale sign that it's come through the Earth's atmosphere from space," he said, noting they're usually dense and surprisingly heavy.

The person who finds a whole or partial meteorite on public property must complete an export application that's reviewed by an expert examiner, said Herd, who is one of several in Canada.

"The expert examiner then might say, 'well, this is of potential outstanding significance and national importance,'" he said.

"If the expert examiner says, 'Oh, I think this is significant, and important,' then (the Canadian Border Services) will recommend refusal of the export permit."

The file then goes to a cultural property export review board, which can disagree with the expert examiner and let the meteorite be exported. Alternatively, it can impose a six-month embargo period during which Canadian institutions can offer to buy the meteorite for a fair market price, he said.

Anyone taking a meteorite out of Canada without the requisite permit can face fines of up to $25,000, as much as five years in prison or both.

Despite its open interest in purchasing the meteorite, Pitt said the Mineral and Gem Museum is well aware of the regulations it must follow to obtain any fragments that surface.

"The museum should always do due diligence ... as to whether the meteorite was obtained legally before they actually acquire it," Herd said.

"If it comes from outside of the U.S., as would be the case in this scenario, then they would need to do their due diligence and make sure that the person exported it legally from Canada."

Pitt said the responsibility of obtaining an export permit lies with whoever finds a meteor. For its part, he said the museum would "immediately get in touch" with Herd to help broker a deal.

"If Canada wants it, it's Canadian," he said. "I hope that we could arrive at an agreement with our Canadian friends so that a sample of it could come to the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum."

Herd said he made a deal with an American dealer for a piece of the Grimsby meteorite that fell in southern Ontario's Niagara region in 2009.

"They realized they weren't going to be able to get it exported because it was a unique fall," he said.

Since Canada is a vast country, Herd said thousands of meteorites may have fallen in remote places.

"I don't think we would actually know how many of them are anywhere in Canada. But they are part of Canada's natural history. The law is there for a reason."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 21, 2023.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press

500-year-old shipwrecks teeming with porcelain and wood discovered in South China Sea

Moira Ritter
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Hundreds of years ago, the Ming dynasty relied on maritime trade to import key goods from foreign countries.

Now, the discovery of two Ming-era shipwrecks in the South China Sea is giving experts a better idea at what that trade looked like.

The shipwrecks were discovered about 1 mile below sea level on the northwest slope of the South China Sea, according to a May 22 news release from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage via the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Here’s what archaeologists have found in the shipwrecks so far.

A trove of porcelain

Experts determined that the first shipwreck dates to the Zhengde period of the Ming dynasty — which lasted from 1506 until 1521.

The wreck was overflowing with porcelain goods, including bowls, cups, plates and jars in various glaze colors, officials said.

Experts said they discovered more than 100,000 porcelain pieces.

More than 100,000 relics, mostly made of porcelain, have been uncovered so far, and experts said they are spread across hundreds of thousands of square feet.

Photos from the discovery show stacks of porcelain pottery. Although most of the pieces are covered with sand and dirt, ornate, colorful patterns are still visible beneath the grime.

Further explorations of the shipwrecks and artifacts will give experts more insight into ancient trade routes, officials said.
Stacks of logs and pottery

The second, older shipwreck dated to the Hongzhi period of the Ming dynasty — which lasted from 1488 until 1505.

Experts said they found the logs in neat stacks.

At this site, experts found stacks of logs and some pottery, according to officials. The persimmon logs were all a similar size and were neatly stacked.

The logs could have been intended for shipbuilding, according to officials.

Further research revealed that the logs could have been intended for shipbuilding, experts said. Chinese literature indicates that most products used to build ships were imported from foreign countries, according to the release.

A unique discovery

Archaeologists said their discovery marks the first time ancient ships sailing and returning have been found in the same area, indicating that they were likely on an important trade route.

Experts will continue researching and monitoring the wrecks, and they hope to learn more about ancient maritime trade routes and cultural exchanges, they said.

Google Translate and Baidu Translate were used to translate the news release from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage via the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Melting glaciers in the Alps will eradicate some invertebrates that are crucial for alpine ecosystems – new research

Jonathan L. Carrivick, Senior Lecturer in Geomorphology, University of Leeds, 

Martin Wilkes, Senior Lecturer of Life Sciences, University of Essex, 

Lee Brown, Professor of Aquatic Science, University of Leeds
Wed, May 17, 2023

The Conversation

A glacier-fed river from the Odenwinkelkees glacier, Austria. Jonathan Carrivick, CC BY-NC-ND

Glaciers across the European Alps are melting at an alarming rate. Between 2000 and 2014, glaciers in the region thinned by up to 0.9 metres on average each year. Over the entire mountain range, this rate of melting produces around 1.3 gigatonnes of lost ice mass annually.

The rapid decline of these glaciers poses a significant threat to the many animal species that live in or around the glacial meltwater rivers of the Alps. Invertebrates that are specially adapted to living in these rivers, for example, will face widespread habitat loss in the future should these rivers decline.

A multi-panel image of the invertebrate species included in the study.

And invertebrates are crucial for wider alpine ecosystems. They perform vital roles in nutrient cycling and, as prey for fish, amphibians, birds and mammals, they transfer organic matter from lower to higher levels of the food chain.

In our new study, we projected glacial losses between 2020 and 2100 to assess what impact the changing input of meltwater into alpine rivers would have on the distribution of 15 species of invertebrate, such as stoneflies, non-biting midges, flatworms and mayflies.

We found that some species will lose most of their habitat and disappear from the Alps entirely. Several other species will have to move to cold water habitats at higher elevations where glaciers still persist to survive.
Future melting

To generate our projections, we used glacier, landscape and biodiversity mapping data collected across 34,000 sq km of the Alps. We modelled glacier evolution based on the greenhouse gas emissions scenario that is currently targeted by governments and international treaties (limiting global warming to 2℃).

We then developed 3D landscape models for each decade, and mapped how changes to glaciers will affect river flow conditions as the input of glacial melt decreases. Water temperature increases as glacier melt inputs to rivers fall and river banks become less prone to erosion. Both of these are important factors in determining aquatic species abundance and diversity in glacier-fed rivers.

Using our models, we simulated key invertebrate populations for each decade between now and 2100. We then predicted the future distribution of these species across the Alps by using data from previous invertebrate monitoring studies, as well as key environmental characteristics of the glacier-fed rivers.
Consequences for invertebrates

Our results, recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, show that rivers across the Alps will experience major change by the end of the century. Until 2040, some will carry more water and new tributary rivers will form. But after that, most glacial rivers will become drier, warmer, flow slower and less prone to erosion. Some streams could even endure periods in a year where there is no water flow at all.

Meltwater flow from a glacier in the Sulzbach valley, Austria. 

Lee Brown, CC BY-NC-ND

These changes will all have severe consequences for aquatic invertebrates.

Our models suggest that the hardest-hit species will be some non-biting midges, stoneflies and mayflies. The habitat conditions in which some of these species thrive will become very rare and small in extent. To avoid extinction, it is likely that cold water specialists such as the non-biting midge species Diamesa steinboecki will have to migrate to higher parts of the Alps where glaciers persist.

Some of these species may be lost from the rivers entirely. Invertebrates that live on the rivers that flow into the Danube river basin are particularly vulnerable. Our projections suggest the glaciers that feed these rivers will be lost completely in the future.

But it’s far from a simple picture. Several species, including the flatworm Crenobia alpina, could benefit from the habitat changes because they thrive in warmer and more stable river flows.

Some mayflies, such as Rhithrogena loyolaea, are less at risk of habitat loss because they can tolerate mixtures of glacial- and groundwater-fed river conditions. However, a closely related mayfly species, Rhithrogena nivata, appears to be at higher risk if glaciers are lost completely.
Competing interests

Higher and colder parts of the Alps will provide refuge for some invertebrate species in the future. However, it is these areas that are also likely to see increasing pressure from skiing and other winter activities, as finding cold and snow becomes harder. As glacial rivers decline, higher parts of the mountain range could also become hotspots for hydropower.

Pockets of ice in the high Alps will be subject to intense competition. sirtravelalot/Shutterstock

Some of the invertebrate species that will seek refuge in these areas may have pharmaceutical or commercial applications that are at present unknown. Invertebrate species that specialise in cold water habitats, for example, have evolutionary adaptations (such as antifreeze proteins) that enable them to survive low temperatures.

Conservation strategies are thus needed to protect this threatened alpine biodiversity from human interference in the future. At present, these important high alpine areas are often not included within national park boundaries.

Predicting how invertebrate populations respond to climate change is key to understanding how biodiversity in high mountain areas will be affected. We focused on just a handful of species and entirely on the European Alps. But the techniques we used could be applied to other mountain environments, while advances in environmental DNA sample collection and analysis offer the promise of understanding how glacier loss will affect thousands of other species – from bacteria and fungi to invertebrates, fish and birds.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council contributed to the funding of this study.

Lee Brown receives funding from NERC, Royal Geographical Society, EU

Martin Wilkes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

How Tribal Hunters Became The Scapegoat For Yellowstone's Bison 'Slaughter'


Roque Planas
Sun, May 21, 2023

Every winter for the last decade, Andrew Wildbill has driven 12 hours from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation to lead a bison hunting party on the northern border of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a hit-or-miss hunt, dictated by the weather. Last year, it didn’t snow enough to push the animals north in search of forage, to where they could be legally hunted.

“We didn’t come home with anything,” said Wildbill, who serves as the reservation’s wildlife program manager. “But it’s always great just to return to where your ancestors went on an annual basis.”

This year was different. After back-to-back mild winters, the park’s bison population had ballooned to 6,000. When snow hit early, then kept piling up into the spring, bison streamed toward the park’s northern border. The result was the most successful hunt in more than a century, with tribal hunters taking home nearly 1,200 bison.

“Being able to provide bison back into our communities is great,” Wildbill said. “These foods are vital to our ceremonies.... These foods are celebrated. This hunt gives us that opportunity as Indian people to continue that relationship that was absent for over a century.”

Bison roam in Yellowstone National Park in February 2022. Yellowstone is developing a new bison population management plan that could cut the number slaughtered each year and transfer more to Native American tribes. The plan would aim to maintain a population range similar to the last 20 years at 3,500 to 5,000.

Bison roam in Yellowstone National Park in February 2022. Yellowstone is developing a new bison population management plan that could cut the number slaughtered each year and transfer more to Native American tribes. The plan would aim to maintain a population range similar to the last 20 years at 3,500 to 5,000.

Success has come at a steep cost. After taking federal culling and Montana state hunters into account, this year’s bison kill tops 1,600 ― among the highest since the federal government started rebuilding the park’s herd in the late 19th century from two dozen stragglers that had escaped the species’ near-extermination. Critics have raised a furor over both the death toll and the fact that most of it takes place in a narrow corridor, describing it as a “bloodbath” that threatens the future of wild bison. Billboards posted across Montana by a pair of environmental groups read: “There is no hunt. It’s slaughter!”

Mass bison killings are politically explosive events that occur outside Yellowstone during harsh winters. They routinely happen to avoid conflict with Montana’s powerful livestock industry, which fears the bison will spread disease to cattle.

But in the past, federal authorities have culled most of them. The biggest difference this year was that tribal hunters killed far more bison than slaughterhouses did. The change has left tribal hunters in the uncomfortable position of becoming the public face of a herd-thinning strategy they have long opposed.

“It was sight unseen. The same exact thing was going on, except now the tribes are exercising their treaty rights,” said Jeremy Red Star Wolf, the former wildlife chair for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla. “Does that mean this is what we want forever? No. We would like to have animals out on the landscape.”
A Recurring Controversy

Bison once roamed across most of North America, with numbers as high as 60 million at the time Europeans first arrived. Today, America’s wild bison number around 20,000 ― less than a tenth of a percent of their former size. Yellowstone National Park holds the greatest concentration. (“Bison” and the informal term “buffalo” refer to the same species named Bison bison.)

Unlike virtually all other wildlife, Yellowstone’s bison cannot venture far beyond the park’s boundaries. The policy of caging them in the park is driven by fears that they’ll get close enough to cattle to spread brucellosis, a bacterial disease that causes weight loss and spontaneous abortion.

That dynamic causes major conflicts in years with heavy snow, which pushes the bison to amble off toward lower ground with easier-to-access food. To keep the bison and cattle apart, officials have for decades relied on the unpopular policy of culling.

The harsh winter of 1996-97 marked a major turning point. Like this year, bison steadily migrated out of the park. Officials killed enough of them to reduce the herd by more than two-thirds, tofewer than 1,100 by winter’s end.

The public outcry over the killings, along with a major court settlement with the state of Montana, led to sweeping changes.

Tribal governments began playing a greater role in managing the herd. Tribes historically connected to Yellowstone with treaties guaranteeing the right to hunt unoccupied lands worked with the state of Montana to reestablish bison hunts. And in recent years Yellowstone has increasingly trapped migrating bison, then live-shipped them to reservations, allowing tribes to build new conservation herds.

With Yellowstone’s bison confined to the park, federal and Montana authorities have historically culled with a heavy hand, removing about a quarter of the bison population during harsh winters at least three other times since 2008. They planned to do it again this year, according to Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly, with the goal of returning the park to around 4,500 bison after calves are born in the spring.

That’s pretty much what happened. By the time it became clear in March that the unusually efficient tribal hunt might push the total kill over the planned limit of 1,500, Yellowstone staff corralled bison within the park’s boundaries, at one point holding back about 1,000 animals.

With winter over and most hunting seasons wrapped up, the final count overshot the mark by about 100 animals ― a figure that includes federal culling and about 75 bison killed by hunters holding tags issued by Montana.

“I get it that people don’t like how many bison have been taken out of the population in a single year,” Sholly said. “But keep in mind, had we hit our targets in the last two years, there would have been somewhere around 1,800 bison taken out of the population.”

“I think tribal hunting opportunities and state hunting opportunities are a good way to manage the population,” Sholly added.

Though planned, the number of dead bison ran far too high for many critics.

Jason Baldes, representative of the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Buffalo Program, worried that the scale of the killing could endanger a critical bison transfer program.

Adopted in 2019, the program has moved hundreds of Yellowstone bison ― prized for their nearly cattle-free genetics ― to tribal reservations across the country to start new herds. Before they can go, park authorities trap and isolate them to ensure they are free of brucellosis. About 60% of them test positive and are killed.

“It’s good that the tribes are taking animals and exercising their treaty rights, because a majority of those animals are going to die and are not going to end up in tribal communities,” Baldes said. “But we want to ensure that we can get that 40% out of the population alive.”

If we continue down this path, the bison's going to go extinct.Dallas Gudgel, board member of the Buffalo Field Campaign

The Buffalo Field Campaign, a conservation group, views this year’s bison kill as an existential threat. A lawsuit from the group forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year to consider whether Yellowstone’s bison merit federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. One key element is whether the park’s two distinct herds have the genetic diversity to sustain themselves over the long term.

“If we continue down this path, the bison’s going to go extinct,” said Dallas Gudgell, a board member of the Buffalo Field Campaign.

The group’s executive director, Mike Mease, called the tribal hunts a “logistical nightmare.”

“The amount of buffalo getting killed in one square mile is insane,” he said.

Still, he didn’t see hunters or treaty obligations as the problem.

“The bottom line is that this is all at the behest of the state of Montana and its zero tolerance policy for bison,” Mease said. “If you want to point the finger, the state of Montana and its Department of Livestock are 100% the cause of this calamity.”
‘Fighting For Grazing Land’

The cattle industry and the state of Montana are the two major voices saying that Yellowstone isn’t doing nearly enough to squelch the country’s largest remaining wild bison herd. In a letter from February 2022, Mike Honeycutt, the executive officer of the state’s Department of Livestock, urged the park’s authorities to “commit every effort” to cleave the Yellowstone buffalo population in half.

The same month, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) insisted that Yellowstone’s bison population should never have passed 3,000, calling attempts to let the population grow beyond that “absurd.” He threatened to sue the National Park Service to make it happen, according to an NPS briefing statement recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Montana officials’ hostility toward the official national mammal stemmed mostly from brucellosis concerns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has the authority to summarilyexterminate infected cattle herds, and an outbreak would threaten the state’s access to export markets for beef.

They want somebody else to raise these bison in order to fulfill their fantasy. If you love the bison, go buy some land and raise some bison.Gilles Stockton, Montana Cattlemen's Association

Because most of the national forest land along the northern migration route is too high or too wooded to produce much feed for bison through the winter, free-wandering bison would gravitate toward the private land and ranches along Paradise Valley, said Gilles Stockton, eastern director for the Montana Cattlemen’s Association.

“What’s all this nostalgia about bison?” Stockton said. “I find the advocates for that to be incredibly selfish. They want somebody else to raise these bison in order to fulfill their fantasy. If you love the bison, go buy some land and raise some bison.”

Skeptics, including many tribal leaders, often point out that no such restrictions exist on the free movement of elk, despite the fact that they also carry the disease and have spread it to cattle in the area at least 17 times over the last two decades.

“It’s the same argument that has been told since settlement began,” Wolf said. “They’re fighting for grazing land. That’s all it is.”

Returning Home

At least 27 federally recognized tribes once lived in, traveled through or hunted the area currently known as Yellowstone National Park. Eight of them ― the Blackfeet, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, Shoshone-Bannock, Northern Arapaho, Crow, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Nez Perce, and Confederated Tribes of the Yakama Nation ― have reached agreements with the state of Montana allowing them to hunt bison there.

Tribal hunters prize the meat, both for its cultural significance and as an especially nutritious food in communities that often struggle withdiet-linked disorders such as Type 2 diabetes.

“I’ve been to so many doors and left so much meat to different people,” Wolf said. “The smiles on the faces, the full bellies ― these are the things you cherish.”

Members of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe from Fort Hall, Idaho, prepare to harvest bison that have just crossed the border of Yellowstone National Park into the Custer-Gallatin National Forest in Montana's Gardiner Basin.

Members of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe from Fort Hall, Idaho, prepare to harvest bison that have just crossed the border of Yellowstone National Park into the Custer-Gallatin National Forest in Montana's Gardiner Basin.

Tribes that depended on bison also traditionally used the hide, bones, tail and other parts of the animal in religious ceremonies and artwork.

And traveling to the Yellowstone area for the hunt reestablishes a broken cultural link that many described as “returning home.”

“We as Nez Perce have traveled to places that contributed to our way of life,” said Erik Holt, the tribe’s fish and wildlife chairman. “To always have that connection to that place ― it’s deeply important to me.”

But the growing size of the hunt has also brought problems.

Most huntable bison funnel toward a small choke point on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest called Beattie Gulch, leading both tribal and state hunters to stack up there. The confined space and predictable bison migration in snowy years clashes with many observers’ idea of a fair chase hunt. Putting that many rifle hunters in one spot also presents safety concerns.

And this year added another glaring problem: bad optics.

Tragedy nearly struck when a bullet fragment hit a member of the Nez Perce tribe in the abdomen. The scale of the hunt left trails of blood, organs, spines and ribcages strewn across Beattie Gulch ― a spectacle described and photographed in amajor piece for The New York Times, casting national attention on the hunt.

“This year was the worst of the worst,” said Bonnie Lynn, who lives next to Beattie Gulch and has emerged as the hunt’s most prominent critic, waging a years-long legal battle to halt it and force the National Park Service to evaluate the environmental impact of such concentrated bison killing.

“I’m not against their treaty rights and I’m not against them being able to have spiritual hunts,” said Lynn, a hunter. “They deserve better than this.”

Most agree the hunting grounds are far too small for so many kills.

“What Montana has set up for political reasons is this firing range,” Gudgell said. “It’s intentionally made to have the tribes look like the bad guy. If there were tribal co-management of the bison, there would be fair chase.”

One way to relieve crowding might be to allow tribes to hunt within the park, some said. The plain language of the tribal treaties used to gain access to national forest land ― all of which precede the Lacey Act, which banned hunting in Yellowstone in 1894 ― appear to allow it.

“I do believe we have a right to hunt in Yellowstone ― a right to hunt and gather and conduct ceremonies,” Wildbill said. “At some point, that needs to be addressed at the federal level. Tribes should be co-managers of the entire national park.”

“The treaties that tribes signed didn’t give us anything that we didn’t already have as aboriginal people,” Wildbill added. “We had title to the land, we had our access, we had our sustenance, our culturally appropriate medicines and foods. The treaties gave rights to non-Indians to settle among us.”

Superintendent Sholly said that he did not know how to interpret treaty rights but that the tribes themselves would have to start the process.

“In four and a half years, I’ve never received a request formally from any tribal leader to exercise hunting rights inside Yellowstone,” Sholly said. “When those requests come in, there’s a lot to look at there.... We’ll cross that bridge when we get to that point.”
Room To Roam

The irony of all this is that tribal hunters and the conservationists decrying this year’s bison kill want the same thing: more buffalo, with more freedom to roam.

Federal and state authorities have worked with environmental groups to retire grazing permits and expand “tolerance zones” in recent years, giving the bison more access to winter range.

The state of Montana isn’t likely to support more of it. Gianforte’s letter to park officials from last year made it clear that “any assumption of continued tolerance zone expansion presumes too much.”

For many, corralling a migratory species so intertwined with Indigenous history in an area too small to hold it provides an unsubtle reminder of the same history that wrenched the tribes from their land and consigned the survivors to reservations.

“It all goes back to white supremacy and settler colonialism, and the idea to remove buffalo and remove Native peoples to make room,” said Cristina Mormorunni, director of the nonprofit groupIndigenous-Led. “Everything we’re dealing with today is the legacy of that. The tribes need to be put into a leadership, guardian position.”

In the “vast settlement era” of today, as Wolf puts it, the bison has been left with a tiny fraction of its habitat. But if it were up to tribal hunters to decide, bison would wander a lot more freely ― like elk, deer or pronghorn.

“When they tried to wipe out the buffalo, that was our food source and our life source ― our way of life,” said Holt, the Nez Perce fish and wildlife chair. “We want to see 5 million buffalo back on the landscape, not 5,000.”

America's birds are under siege. These are among the most at risk for extinction.

Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY
Sun, May 21, 2023 

If you enjoy watching cardinals or bluebirds at a feeder or seeing a great blue heron at the water's edge, it may not be immediately apparent but the nation's birds are under siege.

"Birds are declining," said Ken Rosenberg, a conservation biologist with Road to Recovery, an organization that focuses on recovery of the nation's most rapidly declining birds. "It's death by a million cuts."

They’re imperiled by habitat loss, disease and other threats. Several incidents this spring illustrate a few of the hazards.

In northern Arizona, at least 13 endangered California condors died after being infected by avian flu, and federal officials just approved an emergency vaccine.

In Florida in April, state wildlife officials charged two men with shooting and killing colorful, migratory cedar waxwings, including a blueberry farmer trying to keep them off his bushes.

Also in Florida, a man was charged with driving a golf cart into a flock of American black skimmers on the beach, killing five birds.

California condors are among the nation's most imperiled birds, but recovery actions have built their numbers back to more than 500 birds.

Scientists estimate more than 3 billion birds have been lost in the U.S. since 1970 and dozens of species are considered endangered, threatened or at risk. While extensive conservation efforts helped recover the condors, bald eagles and others, dangers remain for many species and climate change poses additional threats to habitats and food resources.

Here's what we know about bird species of greatest concern in the continental U.S.
Which bird species are most at risk?

It's hard to quantify which birds are most threatened, said Rodney Siegel, executive director of The Institute for Bird Populations. Is it a measure of population, habitat loss, rate of decline or something else?

A Florida scrub jay sits atop an oak at Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, Florida. The birds, endemic to Florida, are among the nation's most imperiled birds.

Below is a list of the birds found only in the U.S. that have the lowest populations, based on two sets of estimates kept by Partners in Flight, a network of 150 organizations in the Western Hemisphere, and a list of most imperiled birds from the American Bird Conservancy.

California condor: Largest and rarest, with an estimated 561 in 2022, including 347 birds in the wild, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


Whooping crane: From fewer than two dozen whooping cranes in the 1940s, conservation measures have helped build the population to just under 1,000 cranes.


Island scrub-jay: Found only on Santa Cruz Island off California, these birds have the smallest range. Once numbering more than 12,000, its population is an estimated 2,300 but recovering.


Florida scrub-jay: It has vanished from 10 Florida counties and its habitat is fragmented. Available population estimates vary widely from 7,500 to 11,000. It thrives in the Ocala National Forest where conservation efforts have protected large areas of its habitat.


Gunnison sage-grouse: This bird disappeared from roughly 90% of its range and is found in only 14 counties in Colorado and Utah. An estimated 4,800 remain, according to Partners in Flight data.


Kirtland’s warbler: On the endangered species list for 47 years before being delisted in 2019, it's "a success story," said Nicole Michel, quantitative science director for National Audubon Society. "But we still need to keep working to protect them." Estimated at 4,800, the nation's rarest songbird is found almost exclusively in stands of young Jack pine in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario.


Cassia crossbill: These relatives of the red crossbill were named a separate species in 2017. Fewer than 5,800 remain, found only in Idaho's South Hills and Albion mountains, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.


Piping plover: With an estimated population of 8,400, its greatest threat is human activity, Michel said. People walking or playing on the beach where the birds nest on bare sand, or letting dogs run loose, can harm the birds and scare them off their nests.

A Florida scrub jay feeds a chick in the nest at Lyonia Preserve in Deltona, Florida. The jay, found only in Florida, is considered one of the most imperiled birds in the U.S.

Which other species are at a tipping point?

An estimated 104 species are at greatest threat, according to Road to Recovery, an independently funded organization to collaborate and focus on recovery of the most rapidly declining birds.

Rosenberg was lead author on the study that identified the loss of at least 3 billion birds, and Road to Recovery grew out of that effort. The group created three "alert" lists – red, orange and yellow – to target the cause of decline and develop recovery strategies.
Why are birds declining?

While general threats ‒ such as habitat loss, invasive species and human activities ‒ are broadly understood, many birds continue to decline without scientists being able to identify a specific cause despite decades of research and conservation, according to Road to Recovery.

"A lot of things point to agricultural practices, and the intensifying of agriculture," Rosenberg said.

Many fragments of native prairie and native grasslands important to birds have been cleared, he said. "Not too long ago, there were hedgerows and fallow fields, just sort of enough to sustain birds around the edges. Now it's just all gone."

A juvenile whooping crane takes flight on the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Homosassa, Florida on March 4, 2010. Adult whooping cranes are nearly 5 feet tall.

Birds with very restricted ranges, such as the Kirtland's warbler, are inherently at risk, Siegel said. “Natural disasters and disease outbreaks could take out that population much more easily than a species that is more widely distributed."

Without more successful efforts to identify why birds die and address those losses, scientists said many birds are on a trajectory that could lead to extinction..
Birds now considered extinct

At least seven birds once found in the U.S. are believed to be extinct. The status of an eighth, the ivory-billed woodpecker, is debated. They are:

Bachman’s warbler


Dusky seaside sparrow


Passenger pigeon


Carolina parakeet


Eskimo curlew


Great auk


Labrador duck
Search for the ivory-billed woodpecker

The status of the ivory-billed woodpecker – once referred to as the "Lord God bird" for its impressive stature and appearance – remains controversial. While federal officials proposed it be listed as extinct, a group of believers insist the bird is still present deep in Southern swamps.

A study released May 18 presented evidence that researchers said indicates the birds remain in unnamed Louisiana swamps, but The Associated Press reported some experts refuted the new evidence.

Latest news: Videos show purported ivory-billed woodpeckers as US moves toward extinction decision
How is climate change affecting birds?

Nearly three-fourths of the nation's birds are vulnerable to losing large parts of their range as the climate changes and sea levels rise, on top of the other threats they face, Michel said.

"It's a force magnifier," she said.
Why birds matter

"It's not just about the birds," Rosenberg said. It's a broader message. "If we're seeing the common birds around us declining, it's telling us that the health of our environment is also."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US endangered birds include whooping crane, condor, scrub-jays: List