We would like to draw your attention to an A Rocha-hosted conversation by Dr Rodel Lasco, A Rocha International Trustee and Director of the Oscar M Lopez Center. Rodel is a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), an expert on biodiversity, and a pastor.

“Our planetary life support systems are starting to fray under the weight of human activities. Come and hear Rodel’s appraisal of the current state of biodiversity globally, how we can respond with hopeful action, and the exciting plans for A Rocha’s growing presence in South East Asia.”

Time: 13.00 – 14.00 UTC | Date: 11 November 2024

Tickets (free! with an optional donation to A Rocha) are available here.

In scouring the internet for news items, we stumbled across two indications of progress:

It appears that jaguars have been successfully reintroduced to Ibera Park, an Argentine wetland. 70 years after they went extinct in that area.

In a joint statement obtained by Zenger News on Thursday, Tompkins Conservation and Fundación Rewilding Argentina said: “Camera trap footage reveals the birth of the first jaguars (Panthera onca) in the wild for Rewilding Argentina in the 1.8-million-acre Ibera Park.

“Their parents were released last year: Jatobazinho, a rehabilitated wild jaguar from Brazil, and Arami, the first jaguar cub born in 2018 at the Jaguar Reintroduction Center in the wetlands.”

The full story from Newsweek, including video, is here.

Perhaps related, we also learned from Happy Eco News (isn’t that a great sounding website?) and Mongabay that bringing cheetahs back to southern Malawi has resulted in four species of endangered vultures returning as well:

Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the reintroduction of cheetahs, lions and the carcasses the cats left behind, conservationists say.

In 2017, seven cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) were reintroduced to Liwonde National Park under a project run by African Parks and the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), two conservation groups working in partnership with Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW).

Within days, and with the cheetahs still in their acclimatization pen or boma, the vultures showed up.

First, from EcoWatch:

A new survey of 3,331 scientists studying biodiversity across 187 countries has revealed that more species are threatened with extinction than previously thought. As many as 50% of species have been threatened with extinction or driven to extinction since 1500, according to survey results.

And along with that, this fascinating journal article from Conservation Letters, journal of the Society for Conservation Biology:

The current perception that climate change is the principal threat to biodiversity is at best premature. Although highly relevant, it detracts focus and effort from the primary threats: habitat destruction and overexploitation. We collated causes of vertebrate extinctions since 1900, threat information for amphibia, birds, and mammals from the IUCN Red List, and scrutinized others’ attempts to compare climate change with commensurate anthropogenic threats. In each analysis, none of the arguments founded on climate change’s wide-ranging effects are as urgent for biodiversity as those for habitat loss and overexploitation. Present conservation efforts must refocus on these issues. Conserving ecosystems by focusing on these major threats not only protects biodiversity but is the only available, economically viable, global strategy to reverse climate change.

Do we need to continue to fight climate change? Absolutely, including with our prayers. But let us not lose sight of the fact that there are threats that are greater, more urgent, and potentially more devastating than climate change alone. In light of this situation, we applaud our friends at A Rocha for consistently making the biodiversity crisis one of their top strategic concerns.

Doubtless you were as dismayed as we were to learn a few days ago that the beautiful, magnificent, harmless monarch butterfly has joined thousands of other insect species on the endangered species list:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The monarch butterfly fluttered a step closer to extinction Thursday, as scientists put the iconic orange-and-black insect on the endangered list because of its fast dwindling numbers.

“It’s just a devastating decline,” said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University who was not involved in the new listing. “This is one of the most recognizable butterflies in the world.”

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.

The group estimates that the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.

Source: AP

Whatever the reasons, and they are, admittedly, complex, all that we can think of is what God will say to us: “Did you have to destroy my butterflies, too?”

May God have mercy.

On the good news side of the ledger, global carbon emissions appear to have fallen by 7%, which is a record. Let us not, of course, lose sight of the fact that this reduction came at enormous cost, economic and social, due to the pandemic, which simply demonstrates what has long been known: the only thing costlier than confronting climate change will be the failure to do so.

Also good news, though hardly a surprise to Pollinator readers, scientists have “discovered” that greater biodiversity leads to greater happiness. Sample conclusion: “the individual enjoyment of life correlates with the number of surrounding bird species.” Of course! (Read the study here!)

And voters in the US are rejoicing that the incoming Biden administration is, for the first time in US history, making climate change a top policy priority.

Tell us about the good news in your country…

According to Bob,

This was part of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Religion and Conservation Working group. The paper is free to download and uses case studies to examine a tool for scientists to engage with faith communities. So not specific to Christians, but a few of the case studies are for Christian communities including mine which focuses on our microplastic work in France and Monaco

Find the paper here.

And here’s the abstract:

Recognizing the need to identify ways in which conservation researchers and practitioners can work constructively with faith leaders and communities to conserve biological diversity, the Religion and Conservation Biology Working Group of the Society for Conservation Biology formally launched the Best Practices Project in March 2016 for the purpose of collecting recommendations from SCB members throughout the world. A survey of members in 2016, a forum at the 2016 International Marine Conservation Congress in Newfoundland/Labrador, a symposium, workshop and poster session at the 2017 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Colombia, and an e-mail request to RCBWG members in October 2017 yielded many recommendations that constitute Guidelines for Interacting with Faith-based Leaders and Communities: A Proposal by and for Members of the Society for Conservation Biology published by the SCB in May 2018. Members have been reporting the efficacy of following these guidelines in their projects, and five who worked with different faiths presented their experiences in the field during a symposium at the 2019 ICCB in Malaysia. Abridged versions of their presentations are shared in this article with focus on guidelines that proved most helpful for facilitating conservation-faith collaboration to achieve project goals. Discussed subsequently are ways in which conservationists and faith communities benefited from their joint efforts, reasons why conservationists should consider engaging faith communities in their projects, and impediments to collaboration that must be overcome. The SCB guidelines are listed succinctly, and conservationists are urged to consider using them in their projects.