Seems like an obvious yes of course we should, but read on. The U.N. has taken steps to label humans a foundation species, even if they don’t say so specifically, through a resolution stating that “the right to a healthy environment is a human right.” As part of this resolution, the U.N. claims "this universal recognition will be a catalyst for more climate and environmental action; increase the priority for environmental protection, and will place human well-being and the enjoyment of human rights at the center of a healthy planet and prosperity for all.”
While I agree that a healthy environment should be a common good and not one reserved for special classes (for example, wealthy, white), there’s a huge assumption at play here. If humans could live up to the definition of beneficial foundation species, I’d put us at the center. Foundation species are defined as “a species that has a strong role in structuring a community. The activities of foundation species physically modify the environment and produce and maintain habitats that benefit other organisms using that benefit.”
To ensure what’s good for humanity is good for the planet and everyone else who lives here, we humans would need to revise dams and reservoirs to enhance wildlife benefits. We also must drastically revamp our entire agricultural, transportation, and industrial systems … well and everything else human. I think the U.N. resolution inverts what really works for the planet and, instead, should place environmental integrity at the center of a healthy planet for the prosperity of all who live on this planet, including humans.
I used a bold font to highlight specific points in this week’s science news that relate to the poll’s question: Do you agree with the phrasing of the U.N. resolution?
In the comments, please share other stories that interest you.
Most large U.S. wildfires occur in the West. But the smoke doesn’t stay there. It travels eastward, affecting communities hundreds to thousands of kilometers away from the fires. In fact, the majority of asthma-related deaths and emergency room visits attributed to fire smoke in the United States occur in eastern cities, according to a study in the September 2021 GeoHealth.
Over the last few decades, U.S. clean air regulations have cut down on particulate matter from industrial pollution, so the air has been getting cleaner, especially in the populous eastern cities. But the regulations don’t address particulate matter from wildfire smoke, which recent studies show is chemically different from industrial air pollution, potentially more hazardous to humans and increasing significantly.
In the United States, concentrations of six of the most common air pollutants have dropped by 78 percent since the Clean Air Act of 1970 … Western wildfires, which are growing more frequent, more severe and larger, are erasing some of the gains made in reducing industrial pollution, says Rebecca Buchholz, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. [...]
How far and where PM2.5 travels depends on weather patterns and how high wildfire smoke reaches — the stronger the fire, the longer it can last and the farther smoke can go, and thus the farther particulate matter can reach. Last year, far-away wildfires created unhealthy air quality conditions in locations from the Great Plains to New York City and Washington, D.C.
...for millennia, certain communities around the world have formed a different sort of bond—one where animals are more like business partners than pets. Dolphins herd fish for fishermen, for example, and some African tribes work with birds to find honey.
Collaborations like these are dying off, however, says Jessica van der Wal, a behavioral ecologist at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology who studies the honey hunters. In a paper published today in Conservation Letters, she and her colleagues provide a toolkit for documenting and preserving these partnerships. Science chatted with van der Wal about the complex relationships some humans form with wildlife—and what we can do to protect them. [...]
Q: Why did some of those practices go extinct?
A: The biggest factor that ended these relationships seems to be destructive interference from human outsiders. Some of these relationships disappeared in Australia, for example, because European settlers killed an Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin and two cooperating orcas. And in North America, the European settlers killed not only the wolves, but ungulates and Indigenous people in the Great Plains in the 19th century.
By striking a single sentence from the regulations, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries could once again protect a “critical habitat” even if it had become unsuitable because of development or other changes but could be restored.
The Trump administration narrowed the definition of “habitat,” limiting federal protection to only places that can sustain an endangered species, as opposed to a more broad, historic habitat where the animal could someday live or dwell.
But the Trump administration’s rule was at odds with the conservation purposes of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, wildlife officials say.
“For some species that are on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss or climate change, and there’s literally not a lot of habitat left, we need every tool in the toolbox to be able to protect the remaining habitats that could be suitable,” said Bridget Fahey, division chief for conservation and classification at the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In 2019 and 2020, devastating fires burned nearly 10 million hectares of southeastern Australia. The flames threatened hundreds of species with extinction, but the Kangaroo Island dunnart (Sminthopsis aitkeni) — which already numbered less than 500 before the fires — seemed to be one that defied expectations in the aftermath (SN: 3/9/21).
But now these rare creatures may be more at risk than ever, researchers say June 16 in Scientific Reports. The danger, as domestic as it sounds, is getting eaten by a cat.
More than three dozen fires started this way in the United States from 2014 to 2018, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of such blazes. “The ecological and economic losses are substantial,” says Antoni Margalida, a conservation biologist at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology …
Humans are responsible for the vast majority of wildfires in the United States. Lightning and even heat from the Sun can also spark blazes. But flaming birds have gotten less attention. [...]
Bird electrocutions are “an emerging problem” around the world, Margalida says. To minimize wildfire impacts, he says, electric utilities in regions characterized by wet winters and hot, dry summers should modify power infrastructure.
Electric utility companies can insulate wires and install spikes to discourage perching; they could also build structures that allow for safer perching on transformers, Barnes says.
Such engineering can be expensive, he admits. But, he says, “Compared to the potential financial costs of litigation, and loss of human life, loss of infrastructure, they are minor costs.”
In a study published in June in the journal Ecology, two researchers report that in Colombia, brown rats, the same ones that feast on garbage and steal slices of pizza in cities around the world, may be the primary pollinator in urban settings for the feijoa plant, which produces a fruit that is widely consumed in the country.
“I was very surprised because, in the beginning, I knew about the stories but never paid much attention,” said Carlos Matallana-Puerto, a plant biologist at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, whose remarks were translated by João Custódio Fernandes Cardoso, a co-author of the report. “Then when I started to study, I started to get excited because I started to realize that the thing makes sense.”
In Mr. Matallana-Puerto’s hometown Duitama, Colombia, residents — including his father and brother, and even the old lady living down the street — had long reported seeing typically nocturnal rats walking and perching in trees in broad daylight.
The next story should be entirely in bold.
ONE WAY TO fight climate change may be to … do more climate change. “Geoengineering” is a broad term encompassing distinct techniques for hacking the climate, split into two main groups: There’s carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which could mean sucking carbon out of the atmosphere with machines, or simply encouraging more vegetation to grow. And there’s solar radiation management (SRM), which might include brightening clouds or spraying aerosols in the atmosphere to bounce the sun’s energy back into space.
These two methods are sort of like different approaches to battling a seasonal flu.
Carbon removal is like taking an antiviral, which helps your immune system banish the virus from your body; deleting carbon from the atmosphere similarly targets the root cause of the climate change problem. On the other hand, solar radiation management is more like taking an aspirin to reduce the fever the flu is causing. It doesn’t obliterate the problem-causing agent, and only treats symptoms.
“Provocative” study argues barriers create dunes that can slow down floods and raise water levels.
Dams are often built to control floods, but on certain kinds of rivers they may make big deluges worse, a new study finds. The finding suggests river managers might need to rethink their flood control strategies on silty and sandy lowland rivers.
“It’s a counterintuitive finding,” says Gordon Grant, a hydrologist and geomorphologist with the U.S. Forest Service who was not involved with the work. “What this provocative paper is showing us is that we don’t fully understand” how dams influence flooding, he says.
...scientists who study human olfaction, or your sense of smell, wonder if the molecules wafting off our skin may be registering at some subconscious level in the noses and brains of people around us. Are they bearing messages that we use in decisions without realizing it? Might they even be shaping whom we do and don’t like to spend time around?
Indeed, in a small study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers investigating pairs of friends whose friendship “clicked” from the beginning found intriguing evidence that each person’s body odor was closer to their friend’s than expected by chance. And when the researchers got pairs of strangers to play a game together, their body odors predicted whether they felt they had a good connection.
In this book that follows on from 2018's I Contain Multitudes, Yong writes in a perfect balance of scientific rigor and personal awe as he invites readers to grasp something of how other animals experience the world … "They have agency," Yong writes. "They have an Umwelt."
Made famous by zoologist Jakob von Uexkull in 1909, the term Umwelt refers to the perceptual world experienced by each animal, a highly specific kind of "sensory bubble." When we walk our dog and she stops to smell every other bush or car tire, she's taking in through her acutely sensitive nose smells that we take in faintly or not at all. That's because humans and dogs have two different sensory bubbles, or Umwelten.
Yong explores the animals' Umwelten through chapters devoted, in addition to surface vibrations, to smells and tastes; light; color; pain; heat; contact and flow; sound; echoes; electric fields; and magnetic fields. The concluding two chapters then discuss how senses work together, and how a single species, ours, has disrupted animal senses through light and noise pollution. Gradually, the theme Yong establishes at the start gains shape and dimension as he writes that our own Umwelt feels natural, but it's only one way to sense the world:
"It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. As a result, we tend "to frame animals' lives in terms of our senses rather than theirs."