Tag: Biodiversity
“No Mow May” Won’t Fix Our Biodiversity Problems – Mother Jones
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This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In 2020, the Wisconsin city of Appleton brought No Mow May to the United States. Each spring, by temporarily forgoing mowing and letting residential lawns grow with flowers, residents could support bees and other insect pollinators, proponents claimed. Indeed, they even said the practice was backed by their own published scientific study.
But a little more than two years later, critics
A DNA leaf swab technique could revolutionize biodiversity monitoring
Just a few swabs from a handful of leaves can say a lot about what animals are roaming in the area.
Two dozen leaf swabs from plants in Uganda’s Kibale National Park revealed a stunningly accurate genetic picture of the park’s vertebrate diversity, researchers report in the Aug. 21 Current Biology. The swabs picked up environmental DNA, or eDNA, shed from 52 animals, 30 of which could be identified to the species level. The quick and easy technique is
Brazil’s Lula pushes end to deforestation, stumbles on fossil fuels – POLITICO
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Under pressure from the EU to rein in deforestation or face trade restrictions, Amazon countries must figure out how to bring prosperity to the region without destroying the forest. And that’s proving difficult.
At a two-day summit starting Tuesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is looking to corral countries to speed up efforts to stop deforestation and decide on a common strategy to save the rainforest.
But
The Potemkin lobby shaping the EU’s agricultural policy – POLITICO
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s biggest farming lobby claims to represent all the bloc’s agricultural workers, but Stela Zămoiu doesn’t believe it speaks for farmers like her.
Zămoiu, 61, remembers when the land around her was full of smallholders. Today, her three hectares in eastern Romania are surrounded by large, industrial farms. When she dies, she expects her property to be swallowed up by one of her neighbors.
“The village has grown old,” she says. “After the elders die, the
How to navigate Spain’s EU presidency policy agenda like a pro – POLITICO
Spare a thought for Spanish diplomats in Brussels. They’re going to be working flat-out until Christmas.
Sweden has spent the last six months trying to process a huge pile of legislative files, many of which were proposed late by a European Commission distracted by COVID-19 and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Despite commendable progress, many of these files still need a lot of work before being passed into law. Look at the files we’ve laid out below, then look back at
Air pollution monitoring may accidentally help scientists track biodiversity
The ability to track animals and plants is up in the air — literally — thanks to help from an unexpected source.
Around the globe, many air quality control stations filter air through small paper disks on a daily or weekly basis, allowing scientists to ensure concentrations of hazardous pollutants such as heavy metals are below certain levels. But the filters also pick up plant and animal DNA that has been scattered into the wind, researchers report June 5 in
Coral reefs host millions of bacteria, revealing Earth’s hidden biodiversity
Coral reefs are hot spots for more than fish.
Fish and corals in reefs across the Pacific Ocean may harbor nearly 3 million varieties of bacteria, researchers report June 1 in Nature Communications.
That means scientists are vastly underestimating Earth’s microbiome, microbiologist Pierre Galand of Sorbonne University in Paris said at a May 31 news conference. The new count of bacteria living in the Pacific Ocean’s coral reefs alone falls within current estimates for the total microbial diversity of
A wonk’s guide to the Swedish EU presidency policy agenda – POLITICO
Sweden’s policy smorgasbord is already groaning with some chewy (and even unpalatable) items — but the Commission keeps adding more to its plate.
By this point in a five-year EU election cycle, the vast majority of new policy proposals have already arrived from the EU executive branch, and are already on their legislative journey. But as Sweden takes over the rotating Council presidency with a year-and-a-half left until the next European election, that’s not the case.
With massive official bandwith
The Liz Truss Manifesto – POLITICO
LONDON — Liz Truss has not published her plan for government, but this is the closest thing to it.
Over nearly eight long weeks of hustings, interviews, articles and debates, the two contenders for the Tory leadership have made their respective cases for why they should succeed Boris Johnson as U.K. prime minister. Among all the campaign jibes and blue-on-blue attacks have been scores of pledges and promises for how to deal with the urgent problems facing the country.
The
How Romania flouts EU ban on bee-killing insecticides – POLITICO
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Nearly a decade after the European Union first restricted the use of seeds coated with bee-killing insecticides, Romania’s honeybees are still feeling the sting.
In one of the EU’s honey-production capitals, the government has been relying on the banned seeds to prop up its lucrative cash crop exports, something NGOs and beekeepers denounce as an egregious and routine violation of EU laws that is endangering one of the country’s most ancient trades and