Updates: polution; hunting; animal slaughter; climate change

[Anthea]

15,000 ghost flights have left UK

Almost 15,000 “ghost flights” have departed from the UK, according to newly revealed official figures

The ghost flights, defined as those with no passengers or less than 10% of passenger capacity, operated from all 32 airports listed in the data. Heathrow was top, with 4,910 ghost flights between March 2020 and September 2021. Manchester and Gatwick were the next highest. There were an average of 760 ghost flights a month over the period, although the data covered only international departure and not domestic flights.

Flying is one of the most carbon-intensive activities people can undertake and ghost flights have angered those campaigning for action on the climate crisis. The German airline Lufthansa recently warned it would have to fly 18,000 “unnecessary” flights by March in order to keep its landing slots at airports. Under current rules, airlines lose their valuable slots if they are not sufficiently used.

However, during the pandemic-hit period covered by the new UK data, the rules that had required 80% of slots to be used were completely suspended. Airlines did not have to operate flights to retain the slots, but nonetheless flew 14,472 ghost flights.

“Flights may operate with a low number of passengers for a range of reasons,” said the aviation minister Robert Courts, who produced the data in response to a parliamentary question. “Since the onset of the pandemic, the government has provided alleviation from the normal slot regulations. This means that airlines have not been required to operate empty or almost empty flights solely to retain their historic slots rights.”

The Labour MP Alex Sobel, who asked the question and is chair of the net zero all-party parliamentary group, said: “To really tackle the climate emergency we need to ensure that our aviation sector is as efficient as it can be with its carbon output.”

Anna Hughes, at Flight Free UK and whose parliamentary petition on the issue now has 11,000 signatories, said: “At a time of climate emergency we need to be drastically reducing our use of fossil fuel, not burning it in empty planes.”

Slot rules were partially restored in October 2021, requiring 50% usage, and this will rise to 70% at the end of March. “If more than 14,000 empty flights took off from UK airports when there was no requirement to retain landing slots, how many more will have taken off since?” said Hughes. “Of course, all flights harm the climate, which is why we also campaign for a reduction in demand, a tax on aviation fuel and more affordable trains. But preventing planes from flying empty should be an easy win for policymakers and the climate.”

Tim Johnson at the Aviation Environment Federation said: “Information [on ghost flights] is hidden from public view, with airlines avoiding scrutiny by claiming the data is proprietary. No doubt airlines fear reputational damage, but the public and consumers should be informed. It shouldn’t take a parliamentary question to expose the scale of this wasteful practice.”

“The number of flights may be small in comparison to the overall total, but the effects on our climate add up when you consider the average short-haul flight emits between 13 and 20 tonnes of CO2,” he said.

The Guardian asked the Department for Transport for data on ghost flights in January, but was told the DfT did not hold this data. The Civil Aviation Authority, which provided the new data to the government, refused a freedom of information request from the Guardian, saying it did not have the consent of the airlines to release it. Slot rules are monitored and enforced by a company called Airport Coordination Limited, but it told the Guardian passenger numbers on flights could come only from the airlines themselves.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic told the Guardian they did not operate ghost flights to retain slots, but declined to provide data on the occupancy of their flights.

A spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic said: “Covid-19 had an unprecedented impact on customer demand, with wide-ranging global restrictions that limited international travel. For three months during 2020, Virgin Atlantic did not operate any passenger flights. Any lower-occupancy flights that operated outside of this window were not ‘ghost flights’ – they supported the global movement of people including returning foreign citizens and repatriated UK citizens.”

Both airlines said the increase in the required slot usage to 70%, the highest in the world, would lead to low-occupancy flights. Luis Gallego, the chief executive at IAG, BA’s parent company, said: “This decision would force airlines to operate flights with low load factors, which will generate unnecessary CO2 emissions. This is bad for the environment and detrimental to aviation’s efforts to tackle climate change.” Ryanair and easyJet did not respond to requests for comment.

Tim Johnson said the slot system was unsustainable and outdated and that reform was needed, adding “Slots at congested airports can exchange hands for millions of pounds each so there are very strong incentives for airlines to keep using them, even when passenger demand is very low. The government should rule out airport expansion and instead focus on slot reform and other efficiency improvements.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... emic-began

[Anthea]

Bojo scrapped ban fur and fois gras trade

A row has erupted in cabinet over plans to scrap a ban on the import and sale of fur and foie gras after No 10 was convinced to kill off policies that would outlaw the trade

Lord Goldsmith, the environment minister and the ban’s main proponent, spoke out after his colleagues, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, persuaded the prime minister to ditch the proposals.

In response to those in cabinet who do not agree with the ban, Goldsmith said: “The public are strongly in favour of measures to curb the fur trade and foie gras

“There are some who view the issue as a matter of personal choice, but no one would extend that principle to things like dog-fighting or bear-baiting, so it’s not clear why fur farming or force-feeding geese, which arguably are associated with far greater levels of cruelty, should be any different.”

There is hope among ministers who are in favour of the bill that it is not yet completely off the table, though sources say “that is the direction of travel”. The ban was supposed to be part of a raft of measures that would position post-Brexit Britain as a world leader on animal welfare.

Sources in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the ban had been removed from the animals abroad bill in an attempt to scrap the policy altogether. The production of fur and foie gras products are banned in the UK.

The Guardian understands that Rees-Mogg made the intervention as he does not believe banning things to be Conservative in nature.

This is a further sign of the struggle for Boris Johnson’s ear being played out by the more libertarian side of the Tory party and the more ecologically minded. Some on the rightof the party believe such bans are against free-trade principles, and that the purchase of such goods should be a matter of choice. Others believe the ban could win over swing voters and show the Conservative party is modern and caring.

However, there are even splits on the matter within the European Research Group, often thought of as the hub for the party’s libertarian right wing. A leading member said: “I have made no representations to Boris on this matter. I personally stopped eating foie gras when I learned how it was made.”

Yesterday, a number of Conservative MPs said they would demand an explanation from the prime minister, who has previously vowed to use Brexit as an opportunity to take a stand on animal welfare.

The ban was mentioned in the government’s action plan for animal welfare and aimed to bring swing voters on side. The 2019 manifesto, which referred to the action plan, also committed to not compromising on animal welfare standards in international trade.

A Defra spokesperson said the government was still “fully committed to animal welfare”.

The shock decision to remove the ban from the animals abroad bill is likely to upset the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, who has been vocally supportive of such measures.

She has previously: “Anyone who wants to buy fur really is sick. Fur belongs on animals only. Nuts to think some of Britain’s department stores still sell fur.”

The decision is thought to have been taken while Carrie Johnson was away at the weekend, as she was seen returning to No 10 with her children and some suitcases on Monday morning.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... pped-by-pm

[Anthea]

Climate Change Unbalancing Insect World

The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity

Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their defiance of previous mass extinction events, surely insects will do better than most in the teeth of the climate emergency?

Sadly not. At 3.2C of warming, which many scientists still fear the world will get close to by the end of this century (although a flurry of promises at Cop26 have brought the expected temperature increase down to 2.4C), half of all insect species will lose more than half of their current habitable range. This is about double the proportion of vertebrates and higher even than for plants, which lack wings or legs to quickly relocate themselves.

This huge contraction in livable space is being heaped on to the existing woes faced by insects from habitat loss and pesticide use. “The insects that are still hanging in there are going to get hit by climate change as well,” says Rachel Warren, a biologist at the University of East Anglia, who in 2018 published research into what combinations of temperature, rainfall and other climatic conditions each species can tolerate.

Some insects, such as dragonflies, are nimble enough to cope with the creeping change. Unfortunately, most are not. Butterflies and moths are also often quite mobile, but in different stages of their life cycle they rely on certain terrestrial conditions and particular plant foods, and so many are still vulnerable.

Pollinators such as bees and flies can generally move only short distances, exacerbating an emerging food security crisis where farmers will struggle to grow certain foods not just due to a lack of pollination but because, beyond an increase of 3C or so, vast swaths of land simply becomes unsuitable for many crops. The area available to grow abundant coffee and chocolate, for example, is expected to shrivel as tropical regions surge to temperatures unseen in human history.

The climate crisis interlocks with so many other maladies – poverty, racism, social unrest, inequality, the crushing of wildlife – that it can be easy to overlook how it has viciously ensnared insects. The problem also feels more intractable. “Climate change is tricky because it’s hard to combat,” says Matt Forister, a professor of biology at the University of Nevada. “Pesticides are relatively straightforward by comparison but climate change can alter the water table, affect the predators, affect the plants. It’s multifaceted.”

Insects are under fire from the poles to the tropics. The Arctic bumblebee, Bombus polaris, is found in the northern extremities of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. It is able to survive near-freezing temperatures due to dense hair that traps heat and its ability to use conical flowers, like the Arctic poppy, to magnify the sun’s rays to warm itself up.

Rocketing temperatures in the Arctic, however, mean the bee is likely to become extinct by 2050. Species of alpine butterflies, dependent on just one or two high-altitude plants, are also facing severe declines as their environment transforms around them.

Further south, in the UK, glowworm numbers have collapsed by three-quarters since 2001, research has found, with the climate crisis considered the primary culprit. The larvae of the insects feed on snails that thrive in damp conditions, but a string of hot and dry summers has left the glowworms critically short of prey.

These sort of losses in Europe have challenged previous assumptions that insects in temperate climates would be able to cope with a few degrees of extra heat, unlike the mass of species crowded at the world’s tropics that are already at the upper limits of their temperature tolerance. A team of researchers from Sweden and Spain have pointed out that the vast majority of insects in temperate zones are inactive during cold periods.

When just the warmer, active, months of insects’ lives were considered by the scientists, they found that species in temperate areas are also starting to bump into the ceiling of livable temperature. As Frank Johansson, an academic at Sweden’s Uppsala University, glumly puts it: “Insects in temperate zones might be as threatened by climate change as those in the tropics.”

Bumblebees, those large, furry insects permanently sewn into their winter coats, are at the pointy end of this rising heat. A study by the University of Ottawa in 2020 found that bumblebee populations in North America have nearly halved, with those across Europe declining by 17%

Some scientists have warned that the correlation shown in this research has yet to prove causation, but there is a broad acceptance that changes in temperature and rainfall could overwhelm insects already facing a barrage of threats.

In 2019, for example, scientists revealed the happy news that nine new bee species had been discovered in the south Pacific island of Fiji, only to then immediately note that many of them face climate-related extinction due to their warming mountaintop habitats.

“In the future, climate change is going to be the nail in the coffin for quite a lot of creatures which are already in much reduced numbers,” says Dave Goulson, a University of Sussex ecologist. “They’ll simply be unable to cope with a 2C rise in temperature and all the extreme weather events that are likely to go with that.”

Even the Amazon rainforest, that humming trove of insect life, is seeing complex relationships torn asunder. The increasing incidence of the El Niño phenomenon, coupled with human interventions such as deforestation, are spurring more intense drought and wildfires. Researchers were shocked to find this changing regime causing a population collapse among the humble dung beetles, which are key distributors of nutrients and seeds and important indicator species of the health of an ecosystem.

Counts of beetles before and after an El Niño event in 2016 found that insect numbers had been cut by more than half within the studied forests. The climate crisis is making the Amazon drier, more brittle and more prone to fires, while also stripping away the unheralded dung beetles that help regenerate burned forests.

“I thought the beetles would be more resilient to drought than they were,” says Filipe França, the Brazilian scientist who led the research. “If climate change continues we’ll not only see less biodiverse forests but also make them less able to recover after further disturbances.”

Insects are so interlaced with the environment that they acutely feel any jolt to the regular rhythms of life. Spring is being pushed earlier and earlier in the year, unsettling the established life cycle of insects. In the UK, moths and butterflies are emerging from their cocoons up to six days earlier a decade on average, while in parts of the US, springtime conditions that trigger insect activity occur as much as 20 days earlier than they did 70 years ago.

Most plant and animal species rely on the buildup of heat in spring to set in motion flowering, breeding and hatching of insect eggs. The reshuffling of the season’s start risks throwing delicately poised interactions off-kilter, such as birds setting off on migration early only to find a food source isn’t quite ready for them yet.

British scientists who looked at half a century of UK data found that aphids are now emerging a month earlier than they once did, due to rising temperatures, while birds are laying eggs a week earlier. The aphids aren’t necessarily growing in number, despite their elongated season, but their earlier appearances means they are targeting plants that are younger and more vulnerable.

“There’s good evidence here in the UK that under climate change things are warming up early, so we’ve got all these bees coming out early but not the flowers, because obviously the day length isn’t changing,” says Simon Potts, a bee expert at the University of Reading. “We’re getting this decoupling between pollinators and the plants and that’s starting to mess up all these very delicate, very sophisticated food webs.”

For some insects, a warmer Britain is a welcome development. In recent years, insects such as the violet carpenter bee and the camel cricket have crossed the Channel and established themselves, while some native butterflies, such as the marbled white, are hauling themselves out of population declines with a climate-assisted march northward to cooler climes. Flowers such as wild orchids are heading north, too.

These adaptive techniques will mean little when climate breakdown warps the properties of the plants themselves, diminishing them as a food source wherever insects can find them. Scientists have found that CO2 can reduce the nutritional value of plants, providing insects with a meal of empty calories lacking elements such as zinc and sodium.

A study site in the prairies of Kansas found that grasshopper numbers there are dropping by around 2% a year, and researchers felt confident enough to rule out pesticide use or habitat loss as the likely cause. Instead, they concluded that the grasshoppers were suffering starvation via the climate emergency.

Not only is climate breakdown potentially causing insects to be malnourished; it also appears to be altering the scent of plants. Pollinators searching for food will note the colour and number of flowers as well as the plant’s scent, with bees able to recall a fragrance and associate it with certain plants and their nectar content.

Scientists who measured the fragrance molecules emitted by rosemary in shrubland near Marseille, in France, discovered that a different scent was given off by plants that were stressed, which deterred domesticated bees. As the climate crisis stresses more plants by subjecting them to drought and soaring heat, insects may find them not only a bland meal but also unappealing to even approach.

This alteration in plants may be, for insects at least, the most far-reaching symptom of climate breakdown.

Not all insects are doomed in a warming world, however. As with all realignments, there are winners and losers, and our attention is more easily captured by thoughts of hordes of marauding insects unshackled by global heating than by a handful of scientists fretting about a declining desert moth.

In 2020, east Africa suffered its worst plague of locusts in decades. The previous year, the Horn of Africa had been pounded by rainfall, up to 400% above average levels, aiding the reproduction of locusts. Increased heat is also thought to boost locust numbers, with both factors heavily influenced by climate breakdown.

Farmers in Kenya watched on helplessly as the sky darkened with locusts that descended to decimate their corn and sorghum. Separate, massive swarms then broke out in western and central India, chewing up land at a rate not seen in a generation.

A hotter world is likely to bring an array of insect pests and pathogens to attack potatoes, soya beans, wheat, and other crops. A group of American researchers calculated that yields of the three most important grain crops – wheat, rice, and corn – lost to insects will increase by as much as 25% per degree Celsius of warming, with countries in temperate areas hit the hardest. Crop pests also tend to thrive in simplified environments that have been stripped of their predators – another legacy of monocultural farming practices.

In the American suburbs, we will see more emerald ash borers, the brilliantly green beetles native to Asia that were introduced to the US after a few of them clung to some wooden packaging that made its way to Detroit. The rapacious beetles have killed off hundreds of million of ash trees across North America and are now establishing themselves in eastern Europe. Milder winters mean the pests will be able to spread farther north, causing further devastation.

Even the domestic environment will see a new influx of unwanted insects, with populations of houseflies more than doubling by 2080, according to one estimate, due to changes in temperature, humidity and rainfall. But while houseflies can cause illness through the transfer of waste on to food, at least they aren’t major vectors of deadly conditions.

It is worrisome, therefore, that there’s an expansion under way of mosquitoes

Freezing temperatures tend to kill mosquito eggs. This means that a heated-up planet is allowing the insects to conquer new territories, helping trigger outbreaks of dengue in France and Croatia, chikungunya in Italy and malaria in Greece in the past decade. These incursions are likely to be vanguards; the Mediterranean region is already a partly tropical region, and as heat and moisture continue to build, the central swath of Europe and even the southern regions of the UK will be within striking range of a fearsome cadre of newcomers.

“If it gets warmer we could get West Nile. Malaria could come back, too,” says Simon Leather, a British entomologist. “We could see a real change in terms of human health problems.”

Mosquitoes are clearly, by the number of people killed, the most deadly animal on Earth to humans; but in our eagerness to vanquish them, we often deploy weapons with high levels of collateral damage. The chemical compound DDT was developed for widespread anti-mosquito use – before mosquitoes developed resistance and the chemical’s pernicious impact on other wildlife led to its ban.

A more recent replacement, an organophosphate called naled, is now sprayed on mosquito habitat despite evidence that it is toxic to bees, fish and other creatures. But if our fears of a seething invasion of heat-loving insects were to be embodied by one animal, it would probably be the Asian giant hornet.

You might have heard it referred to as a “murder” hornet. The bulky, thumb-sized hornet has the demeanour of a cartoonish supervillain, with its tiger-striped abdomen, large burnt orange-coloured face, teardrop eyes like a demonic Spider-Man and a pair of vicious mandibles.

Despite a flurry of public concern to the contrary, murder hornets do not murder people; they kill honeybees. The hornets loiter outside bee hives and gruesomely decapitate emerging worker bees, dismembering the unfortunate victims and feeding the body parts to their larvae.

This carnage can go on until a hive is completely annihilated, the crime scene marked by thousands of scattered corpses. In some places, bees do fight back. Bees in the hornets’ native range have evolved a defensive tactic whereby a mob of bees will hurl themselves at a hornet that enters the hive, covering the invader in a ball-like mass and then vibrating their flight muscles to generate so much heat, up to 47C, that the hornet is roasted alive. Honeybees in Europe and North America, however, are unused to the hornet and are essentially helpless in face of the slaughter.

As its name suggests, the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is native to the forests and mountain foothills of east and south-east Asia. It is commonly mixed up with its cousin, the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina), which has found its way to Europe and dismembered so many honeybees in the UK and France that bee-keepers have fretted over the viability of colonies already under stress from varroa mites and pesticides. Vespa mandarinia, meanwhile, has launched an assault on the western coast of North America, most likely hitching a ride over on cargo shipping.

Three confirmed specimens were discovered by surprised Canadian authorities on Vancouver Island in August 2019, then another hornet was found further south, close to the US border. By December, the species was spotted again, this time in the US, about 12 miles further south in the state of Washington.

One beekeeper, stung a few times by irate hornets, set the entire colony on fire to destroy it. Another fresh hornet queen, found 15 miles south-west of the next nearest find, suggested either a repeated influx from overseas or a vigorous dispersal by the hornets.

By May 2020, with the hornet appearing to have gained a decent foothold on the west coast, the situation had attracted the attention of the New York Times, which ran a story headlined “‘Murder Hornets’ in the US: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet.” Climate change could help turbocharge the pace of the hornet’s advance, similar to the astonishing travels of the Asian hornet in France, where it has moved at nearly 50 miles a year since arriving in the early 00s and is now found in the Alps.

It’s natural to get squeamish over the idea of a squadron of murderous hornets or the idea that those ever-durable cockroaches will march on despite the surging heat. The genuinely scary part of all this, though, is climate breakdown itself, an existential threat we have brought upon ourselves and all other living creatures that we still, despite decades of increasingly frantic warnings, move too sluggishly to avert.

But as we’ve reacted so grudgingly and ponderously to the menace of flooding, storms and droughts that can spark civil unrest and even wars, what hope is there that the plight of insects will spur us on? A more realistic goal is a concerted effort to restore complex, connected insect-friendly habitat and ensure that it remains largely toxin free, in the hope that this will at least parcel out a little time and space from the onslaught of the climate crisis.

Although climate breakdown can often feel like a drawn-out, almost imperceptible rearrangement that far-off generations will have to deal with, it is also punctuated with lacerating reminders that it’s already well under way.

This is an edited extract from The Insect Crisis: the fall of the tiny empires that run the world, published on 20 January by Atlantic.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how- ... obal-en-GB

[Anthea]

50% Of All Species Disappearing

The Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing, scientists say

Because of the current crisis, biologists at UC Santa Barbara are working day and night to determine which species must be saved. Their international study of grassland ecosystems, with flowering plants, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The current extinction event is due to human activity, paving the planet, creating pollution, many of the things that we are doing today," said co-author Bradley J. Cardinale, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology (EEMB) at UC Santa Barbara. "The Earth might well lose half of its species in our lifetime. We want to know which ones deserve the highest priority for conservation."

He explained that the last mass extinction near the current level was 65 million years ago, called the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction event, and was probably the result of a meteor hitting the Earth. It is best known for the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, but massive amounts of plant species became extinct at that time as well.

According to the current study, the most genetically unique species are the ones that have the greatest importance in an ecosystem. These are the ones that the scientists recommend be listed as top priority for conservation.

"Given that we are losing species from ecosystems around the world, we need to know which species matter the most –– and which we should pour our resources into protecting," said first author Marc W. Cadotte, postdoctoral fellow at UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).

Cadotte, Cardinale, and co-author Todd Oakley, an EEMB associate professor, put together a "meta-analysis" of approximately 40 important studies of grassland ecosystems around the world. They reconstructed the evolutionary history among 177 flowering plants used in these studies by comparing the genetic makeup of the plants.

The scientists found that some species are more critical than others in preserving the functions of ecosystems and that these species tend to be those that are genetically unique. Therefore, they are looking to evolutionary history for guidance in conservation efforts and in understanding the potential impacts of species loss.

Recent studies show that ecological systems with fewer species generally produce less biomass than those with more species. Less plant biomass means that less carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere and less oxygen is produced. So, as the biomass of plants plummets around the globe, the composition of gasses in the atmosphere that support life could be profoundly affected. Additionally, there are fewer plants for herbivorous animals to eat. Entire food chains can be disrupted, which can impact the production of crops and fisheries.

The loss of species that are not closely related to other species in the ecosystem reduces productivity more than the loss of species with close relatives. And the more genetically distinct a species is, the more impact it has on the amount of biomass in an ecosystem.

"Losing a very unique species may be worse than losing one with a close relative in the community," said Oakley. "The more evolutionary history that is represented in a plant community, the more productive it is."

Cadotte explained that the buttercup is a very unique species, evolutionarily. Losing the buttercup, where it occurs in grasslands, would have a much bigger impact on the system than losing a daisy or a sunflower, for example. The latter species are closely related. Each could therefore help fill the niche of the other, if one were to be lost. The daisy and sunflower also have a more similar genetic make-up.

"These 40 studies are showing the same thing for all plants around the world," said Cardinale. "It is not a willy-nilly conclusion. This study is very robust. It includes studies of plants that are found throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. We can have a high degree of confidence in the results. And the results show that genetic diversity predicts whether or not species matter."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 171454.htm

[Anthea]

Click to Enlarge Image:


US killed 200 animals per hour in 2021

A division of the US Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, killed more than 1.75 million animals across the nation in 2021

Conservationists are enraged at the murders, calling them cruel and unnecessary. The killings, according to Wildlife Services, are vital to safeguard agricultural productivity, vulnerable species, and human health.

The 2021 toll includes alligators, armadillos, doves, owls, otters, porcupines, snakes, and turtles. More than a million of the animals killed were European starlings. A lone moose was shot, as was a solitary antelope and, by chance, a bald eagle.

Click to Enlarge Image:


Wildlife Services targets invasive animals that it considers a threat to ecosystems, such as feral pigs and a type of gigantic swamp rat known as nutria, but it also kills a large number of America's native species, which is contentious.

Last year, the agency killed 404,538 native wildlife, including 324 gray wolves, 64,131 coyotes, 433 black bears, 200 mountain lions, 605 bobcats, 3,014 foxes, and 24,687 beavers

Many animals are killed inadvertently, with 2,746 species, including bears, foxes, and dogs, being destroyed by mistake last year. This is due, in part, to Wildlife Services' employment of leg hold traps, snares, and poisons to target animals. Other methods used by the agency include collecting up and gassing geese and killing coyotes from helicopters or airplanes.

Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity called the program "stomach-turning," adding that "Killing carnivores like wolves and coyotes to supposedly benefit the livestock industry just leads to more conflicts and more killing. This is a truly vicious cycle, and we’ll continue to demand change from Wildlife Services.”

Wildlife Services killed 5 million animals in both 2008 and 2010, and as recently as 2019, it killed roughly 1.3 million native species. Wildlife Services claims its mission is to " resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist and frequently operates at the request of ranchers, state agencies, and airports to exterminate species deemed harmful to the environment, economic activity, or public safety.

However, conservationists have long criticized this technique, claiming that the deaths are indiscriminate and harm America's ecology.

Targeting predators, such as coyotes and bears, can destabilize ecosystems and potentially contribute to the spread of exotic species. Various pieces of legislation have failed to limit Wildlife Services' activities, despite resistance in some states, such as California and Washington.

The most controversial of the methods is the use of M-44 cyanide "bombs" to extinguish some animals

The devices, touted as an "effective and environmentally sound wildlife damage management tool" by Wildlife Services, are simply canisters placed in landscapes that release a cloud of sodium cyanide when touched by animals. It frequently kills foxes, coyotes, and other targeted animals in five minutes or less.

However, the usage of M-44 canisters sometimes go wrong, such as when pet dogs mistakenly activate them. Canyon Mansfield, 14, was smeared in deadly powder in 2017 after coming into contact with one of the devices while walking his dog Kasey behind his home in Pacatello, Idaho. The event wounded Mansfield and killed his dog, causing environmentalists to demand for a ban on the use of M-44s, which the federal government has so far rejected.

Carson Barylak, campaigns manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) stated "M-44 cyanide ejectors jeopardize animals and people alike, and a nationwide ban is long overdue."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/env ... ur-in-2021

[Anthea]

Mexican Heatwave Temps Over 40°C

The heatwave will persist in most of Mexico. For this afternoon, maximum temperatures are forecast, above 40 degrees Celsius in 14 states

At the beginning of the boreal spring, 14 of the country's 32 states are suffering from a heat wave and drought: five in the north (Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas), another five entities in the south (Guerrero, Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Yucatán) and four in the center (Puebla, Morelos, Hidalgo, and San Luis Potosí).

Temperatures of 35 to 40 degrees Celsius are also expected in the center, southeast and the northern states of Sonora and Sinaloa (northwest).

Due to the high temperatures, authorities recommend the population take preventive measures, such as avoiding prolonged exposure to sunlight.

The indications include "adequate hydration, paying special attention to the chronically ill, children and the elderly," and following the indications of the Health and Civil Protection authorities.

The National Council for Fire Protection registers annually some 95,000 forest fires of different magnitude, but 90 percent are caused by human carelessness.

So far this year, some 30 such outbreaks have destroyed some 4,200 hectares of forest.

According to the National Coordination of Civil Protection, more than 1,500 combatants make up brigades against fire outbreaks.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Hal ... -0011.html

[Anthea]

Dust storm engulfs Erbil

A severe dust storm sweeping the Kurdistan Region on Thursday has forced Erbil’s airport to suspend its flights until further notice as it has significantly impaired visibility

All outbound and inbound flights are suspended until the storm is cleared and visibility is returned, CEO of Erbil International Airport Ahmed Hoshyar told Rudaw on Thursday.

A thick layer of dust blanketed Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, reducing visibility in the cities and making driving difficult.

Poor visibility conditions are a danger when aircrafts land and take off. The dust could also scour plane surfaces and damage engines.

The storm is expected to last for 48 hours, meaning until Saturday, according to the Region’s directorate of meteorology and seismology.

Over a thousand people were hospitalized due to breathing problems in Baghdad after a heavy dust storm hit the city last month.

Baghdad’s sky often turns orange and reddish-brown as sand from the surrounding desert blows into the capital. Experts believe the dust increases as a result of the worsening drought which reduces the flow of water in the Tigris and Euphrates, creating drier and dustier land more susceptible to sand storms.

Climate change is a major factor in increasing dust waves. According to statistics recorded by the General Meteorological Authority, Iraq's ministry of environment said on Tuesday, the number of dusty days increased from 243 to 272 days per year over the past two decades, and it is expected to reach 300 dusty days per year in 2050.

Iraq is among the most affected countries in the world by the effects of climate change. It has been named by the UN as the fifth-most vulnerable nation, with rising temperatures and water shortages.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/070420221

[Anthea]

Garmiyan administration declares year of drought

Garmiyan administration in Kurdistan declared a drought year for the second consecutive time, during a press conference on Wednesday. The administration’s supervisor stated that this year’s drought will have a more severe impact on the local agriculture sector than the previous one

Garmiyan used to be known for its rich water resources, but has only seen 125mm of rainfall this year, leading to its second consecutive drought year.

“After receiving all the data, and the likelihood of raining not being very promising, we declare a drought year in the Garmiyan administration… Garmiyan will suffer greatly in most aspects, as this year’s [drought] will have a greater negative impact than last year,” said Jalal Nouri, the administration’s supervisor, during a press conference on Wednesday.

Nouri stated that the drought will harm 135 thousand dunams of land, adding that the lack of clean water will lead to an increase in the risk of catching diseases and infections. He also added that they will present a detailed report to the government, requesting an emergency budget to handle the situation, while also urging international organizations to provide assistance.

“To battle the drought year, a major part of it is related to money, a budget, and the other part is related to planning,” said Nouri.

In March, the General Manager of Garmiyan Agriculture, Shadia Hussain, said that they prepared a report along with proposed solutions to end the drought issue in the area. “One of the fastest solutions is to provide seeds to the farmers,” she stated.

According to statistics from Garmiyan agriculture, 6,287 farmers planted wheat on dry soil, losing 3,200,000 billion Iraqi dinars in 2021.

Water scarcity is a severe issue in Iraq. The country is the fifth-most vulnerable nation to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the United Nations (UN), yet it is lagging behind its neighbors when it comes to a plan to protect its water resources.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/130420222

[Anthea]

Chile to ration water after 13 year drought

The rivers that bring water to Santiago are running short, causing rotating water cuts to different sections of the city

As Chile's grueling, record-breaking drought reaches its 13th year, the country's capital, Santiago, has proposed an extraordinary proposal to limit water.

During a press conference, Claudio Orrego, the governor of the Santiago metropolitan region stated that a city "Cannot live without water," adding that the situation in Santiago's 491-year history is "unprecedented."

Orrego warned that "We have to prepare for there not to be enough water for everyone who lives here."

The plan includes a four-tier alert system that goes from green to red and begins with public service announcements, progresses to water pressure restrictions, and concludes with rotating water cuts of up to 24 hours for around 1.7 million consumers.

The alarm system is based on the capacity of the Maipo and Mapocho rivers, which supply the majority of the capital's water and have suffered declining water levels as the drought continues.

According to the government, the country's water availability has decreased by 10% to 37% in the previous 30 years and might decrease by 50% in northern and central Chile by 2060.

The river water deficit, calculated in liters per second, will govern whether cutbacks will occur every four, six, or 12 days. Each day, a different location would experience water restrictions in each situation.

According to Orrego, “This is the first time in history that Santiago has a water rationing plan due to the severity of climate change," adding that citizens should understand that climate change is not only global but local.

The cutbacks will not apply to areas served by well water or other sources other than the two rivers.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/env ... ar-drought

[Anthea]

Gone are the toads

Climate change threatens 11,475 species worldwide

At one point in the elfin cloud forest of Costa Rica, golden toads would leap around in abundance, a representation of the forest's well-being and prosperity.

"The soils are very dark and so golden toads would stand out like animal figurines. It was quite a spectacle," said J Alan Pounds, an ecologist at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, Costa Rica.

In 1990, the golden frog, suddenly, was gone - because the toad could only be found in the Monteverde forest, its extinction was total. Upon its realization, causes were assessed to find out that climate change is the driver behind the extinction. Climate and the biodiversity crisis are interconnected.

The Intergovernmental Panel for the United Nations on Climate Change says that almost 1 in 10 of all species face an extinction threat.

Climate change, at the time when Pounds left to Costa Rica, was not a very popular concept - but, that did not chip away from any of its drastic effects on the environment.

The golden toad, the Monteverde harlequin frog, and more have suffered elimination.

Apparently, extinctions occur during unusually warm and dry weather periods; they were also linked to the chytridiomycosis infection. However, Pounds and his colleagues contended that while the disease can be attributed to the bullet, climate change was the trigger.

"We hypothesized that climate change and resultant extreme events were somehow loading the dice for these kinds of outbreaks," Pounds told AFP.

More animals suffer: the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent originating from Torres Strait island, was last seen in 2009. They are the only mammals endemic to the Great Barrier Reef (whose corals are bleached due to global warming as per recent reports), and their populations were downsized by sea-level rise and more.

Climate change threatens 11,475 species worldwide - and those are the numbers we know, provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Around 5,775 are at risk of extinction.

Top corporations fall short in fighting climate change

Some of the world's largest corporations are failing to live up to claims that they will achieve net-zero emissions targets, reducing carbon emissions by only 40% rather than the projected 100%, according to a new analysis.

Amazon, IKEA, Nestlé, and Unilever are among the firms cited as having little substance behind their assertions that they will dramatically reduce emissions.

The report's compiler, Thomas Day of NewClimate Institute, stated that the combined efforts of the 25 companies analyzed would have little influence. "It's unclear whether these cuts go beyond business as usual," he said. "We were both dissatisfied and surprised by the amount of opportunity for improvement [among the companies surveyed]. Companies must be far more open about their objectives."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/env ... -sixth-era

[Anthea]

KFC misleading’ on chicken farming

KFC has been accused of portraying poultry farming in a "misleading" manner after campaigners went back to a farm recently highlighted in a film by a YouTube celebrity

YouTuber Niko Omilana visited a farm managed by meat manufacturer Moy Park, one of Europe's top poultry suppliers, which sells chicken to KFC in the Behind the Bucket film, which was released last December.

The film has been seen over 1 million times on the Joe news and entertainment website's Twitter account.

Birds are shown in a shed in the clip, with fresh straw covering the floor and perches offered as enrichment.

Undercover investigators working for the vegan food brand VFC visited the farm in February and reported finding terrible overcrowding, little fresh straw, and ill, lame, and dead birds.

VFC footage from inside the farm, which has a capacity of 380,000 birds, appears to show a sodden floor with animal waste and little or no fresh straw. It also appears to depict dead birds on the ground as well as sick, damaged, or lame birds. Bins containing dead chicken corpses were also captured on film.

Footage exposes the truth

After examining VFC footage from the farm, Prof Andrew Knight of the University of Winchester's Centre for Animal Welfare noted that the birds appeared to be held at "very high stocking density, within a huge shed, with little to no environmental enrichment."

He added that the “severe crowding and barren environment meant these birds had very little room to move and to exercise highly motivated natural behaviors, such as foraging and exploring”.

The birds in the VFC clip demonstrated "behavioral indications of stress such as feather plucking and topical skin infection," according to Paul Roger, a veterinarian and founder member of the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics, and Law Veterinary Association.

Matthew Glover, VFC’s co-founder, said: “This is the most disingenuous marketing campaign we have seen for a long time. This portrayal of chicken farming is utterly misleading and seeks to reassure the public that all is well when nothing could be further from the truth.”

KFC responds

In response to the allegations, KFC said: “We take the welfare of the chickens in our supply chain extremely seriously. We will continue to work with Moy Park to ensure these standards are being met and we will continue to drive transparency, which is an important part of our welfare work – removing misconceptions and ensuring accountability across the industry.”

A spokesperson for Moy Park told the Guardian: “Claims such as these are treated incredibly seriously and we immediately reviewed the footage along with independent audits and veterinary reports.

“This farm is managed to a very high standard and our preliminary findings show that it is meeting those standards. The birds are displaying natural behaviors and the farm adheres to all stocking, enrichment, and welfare requirements.”

The company said that staff visit sheds a minimum of three times a day to assess the health and welfare of the birds. “A small number of birds may die between those checks and are identified and removed during the next inspection.”

People in a shed at an inconvenient moment, according to the spokeswoman, could potentially have an impact on the birds' movements.

Stuart Jones, director of Upload agency, which represents Niko Omilana, said: “Whilst we take these allegations very seriously and will speak with KFC about these claims, the filming that our client took part inaccurately reported the conditions he saw and experienced on the day.”

According to a Joe Media spokeswoman, the footage it captured on behalf of KFC described the conditions they saw and experienced on that day.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/hea ... icken-farm

[Anthea]

Biden resuming drilling leases

With tight energy markets and a planet warming up really fast, Biden's leasing policy feels the heat in the White House

Last Friday afternoon, the Department of Interior will go back to selling oil and gas leases on federal lands but also increase company fees depending on what they produce, according to the department.

The agency will be publishing notices this week for the first onshore lease sales since Biden took a decision to halt the program after assuming office. His administration offered 144,000 acres.

The department made a promise that the decision is "not business as usual," explaining that the acreage put down on the table is only one-fifth of the number of companies aimed to auction.

This "pragmatic approach focuses leasing on parcels near existing development and infrastructure," the Interior Department said, adding it will "help conserve the resilience of intact public lands and functioning ecosystems."

Royalties have risen from 12.5% to 18.75% to "ensure fair return for the American taxpayer."

Many environmental groups have criticized this decision, while some Democrat-aligned groups held their fire. The White House's climate advisor yesterday announced her plan to resign due to the "slow pace of climate progress."

"Candidate Biden promised to end new oil and gas leasing on public lands, but President Biden is prioritizing oil executive profits over future generations," said Nicole Ghio of Friends of the Earth.

Another group, Evergreen Action, contended that although the acreage reduction looks "encouraging", the leasing is contradictory to the US' climate goals.

Industry groups, in parallel, have both praised and criticized the decision.

For instance, the American Petroleum Institute expressed delight in seeing the government leasing again, but "we are concerned that this action adds new barriers to increasing energy production, including removing some of the most significant parcels."

"At a time of high energy costs, these changes to long-standing fair and reasonable lease terms may further discourage oil and natural gas investment on federal lands."

Last month, Biden announced that Washington would no longer import Russian oil and gas and billed the high gas prices as the Putin Price Hike. Eberhart, however, said the gas prices were soaring well before the war in Ukraine began in late February.
Read more: Biden gaslights causes behind soaring gas prices

"Everyone knows the price of gas was going up the [during] entire Biden administration, not just since Putin has started waging this war. And the policies have a chilling effect," he said.

The oil exec said that during the Trump administration, US domestic oil companies were producing up to 13 million barrels of oil per day.

"Now, with the better economy, with a higher oil price and more demand, we're producing 11.6 million barrels a day. The industry wants to produce more, [but] the policies have a chilling effect, and it’s showing," he stressed.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/env ... mate-goals

[Anthea]

Iraq green belt'neglected

KARBALA, Iraq - Envisioned as a lush fortress against worsening desertification and sand storms, the "green belt" of Iraq's Karbala stands as a wilted failure

Sixteen years after its inception, only a fraction of the 76-kilometre (47-mile) crescent-shaped strip of greenery has materialised, though the years proved a deep need for protection against mounting environmental challenges.

Eucalyptus, olive groves and date palms first took root in 2006 as part of a plan for tens of thousands of the trees to form a green protective shield around the city in central Iraq.

"We were very happy because the green belt would be an effective bulwark against dust," said Hatif Sabhan al-Khazali, a native of Karbala -- one of Iraq's Shiite holy cities that attracts millions of pilgrims every year.

Iraq's host of environmental problems, including drought and desertification, threaten access to water and livelihoods across the country.

But nowadays, the southern axis of Karbala's green belt is only about 26 kilometres long while the northern axis of the 100-metre (328 feet) wide strip is even shorter, at 22 kilometres.

Irrigation is sparse. No one pulls out the weeds anymore. Branches of the stunted olive trees sway between date palms -- symbolic of Iraq -- that struggle to grow.

"The construction was stopped," said Nasser al-Khazali, a former member of the Karbala provincial council.

He blamed "lack of interest from the central government and local authorities," saying: "The funding didn't follow."

According to him, only nine billion dinars ($6 million) was spent on the northern axis, out of the originally planned 16 billion dinars.

- It does little -

"Negligence" is how Hatif Sabhan al-Khazali explains the fate of the green belt project.

It's a frequent refrain -- along with "financial mismanagement" -- on the lips of many Iraqis and was a driving factor behind near-nationwide protests against graft, crumbling public services and unemployment that shook the country in 2019.

Iraq has consistently been a low scorer on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 157th out of 180 countries for perceived corruption levels in state institutions last year.

What was meant to be a buffer against frequent dust storms that envelop the country does little to lessen their impact.

Earlier in April, two such storms blanketed Iraq in less than one week, grounding flights and leaving dozens hospitalised due to respiratory problems.

According to the director of Iraq's meteorological office, Amer al-Jabri, sand and dust storms are expected to become even more frequent.

He attributed this increase to "drought, desertification and declining rainfall", as well as the absence of green spaces.

Iraq is particularly vulnerable to climate change, having already witnessed record low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years.

In November, the World Bank warned that Iraq could suffer a 20 percent drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change.

Water shortages have been exacerbated by the building of upstream dams in neighbouring Turkey and Iran.

- 'Criminal gangs' -

These water shortages and the attendant soil degradation have led to a drastic decline in arable land.

Iraq "loses around 100,000 dunams (about 250 square kilometres or 97 square miles) of agricultural land every year", said Nadhir al-Ansari, a specialist in water resources at Sweden's Lulea University of Technology.

"This land is then transformed into desert areas," he said, warning that Iraq should "expect more dust storms" -- which would have dire consequences on agriculture and public health.

Ansari blamed this on the Iraqi government and the "absence of water planning".

During the country's last dust storm, the agriculture ministry assured that it was working on "restoring vegetation cover" in Iraq.

Last year an official with the Ministry of Water Resources referred to "several initiatives" to plant green belts but he said that "unfortunately these belts were not maintained," the state INA news agency reported.

As an example the official cited Karbala, where Hatif Sabhan al-Khazali despairs at seeing the city's green belt left to "criminal gangs and stray dogs".

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/190420223

[Anthea]

Iraq's water reserves down 50%

A senior adviser at the Iraqi water resources ministry warned on Thursday that the country’s water reserves have decreased by half since last year, due to a combination of drought, lack of rainfall and declining river levels, as officials continue to caution a deeply concerning environmental and humanitarian situation in Iraq

"Water reserves are far lower than what we had last year, by about 50 percent because of poor rainfall and the quantities arriving from neighbouring countries," Ministry of Water Resources adviser Aoun Diab told AFP, attributing the concerning situation to "the successive years of drought: 2020, 2021 and 2022".

Water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers - shared by Iraq, Syria, and Turkey - have dropped considerably in recent years. In the latest stark warning of the threats a heating climate poses to the country, a report by Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources towards the end of last year predicted that unless urgent action is taken to combat declining water levels, Iraq’s two main rivers will be entirely dry by 2040.

"This serves as a warning on how we must use (water resources) in the summer and next winter,” Diab added. “We have to take these factors into account in our planning for the agriculture sector.”

Water pollution is also a high concern for officials. The spokesperson for the water ministry, Ali Radi, told state media on Thursday that, "Water poisoning or contamination is a very dangerous matter," and that “sources of water pollution from sewage stations, factories and laboratories to hospital waste… is a very dangerous issue."

According to Radi, "there is governmental, judicial and military coordination and support, as well as coordination with local governments and water departments in the governorates," including "dozens of lawsuits that have been raised against violators.” The official stressed "the need to rehabilitate, maintain and introduce modern technologies to treatment plants located in sewage plants or hospitals."

Last year, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Rashid al-Hamdani accused Iran of digging tunnels and trying to alter the natural water flows. His ministry in December announced the completion of procedures to file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice against Iran.

Salah al-Hajj, representative from the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told Rudaw earlier this month that Iraq’s wheat production is expected to significantly decrease during the 2022 harvest season, citing the lack of rain as the reason for the massive drop.

“If we consider Nineveh, there is a clear estimation that a main portion, a minimum of 70 or 80 percent of the crops dependent on rain, will not reach the harvest stage… There’s a shortage of wheat production for this season as a result of lack of rain,” Hajj said, adding that Iraq will need to resort to importing products to address the shortages.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has long warned that the water available in Iraq is set to decrease by around 20 percent by 2025, threatening the long-term stability of Iraq’s agriculture and industry. According to another concerning report by the United Nations, dams built in neighbouring Turkey and Iran have also dramatically reduced the combined volume of the Tigris and Euphrates by up to 60 percent.

Because of the water crisis, the agriculture ministry announced in October that the government had approved a plan to reduce the country’s winter crops in irrigated areas by 50 percent.

In November, the World Bank warned that Iraq is running out of water, with devastating consequences for the country’s employment and economy, stressing the failure to manage water resources as a key damaging factor. The World Bank’s April update cautioned that further intensified climate change effects and water shortages will decrease agricultural production.

Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. Low rainfall levels and high temperatures caused by climate change are depleting water supplies across the country. Much of Iraq’s agricultural lands depend on irrigation, but dams and reservoirs were at record-low levels this summer.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/210420223

[Anthea]

Drought takes toll on Basra farmers

BASRA, Iraq - The once-thriving Abu al-Khasib district, in southern Iraq, that used to house a myriad of palm trees and lush forests has now lost its charm after years of drought have forced farmers to give up their lands

A local farmer, Abbas Radi, feels heartbroken when he sees what the land that used to be the main source of livelihood for him and his family has turned into. As a result of water scarcity, he has lost many of his fruit trees.

“We are in the month of April, and there is still no fruit,” Radi told Rudaw’s Anmar Ghazi on Tuesday, adding that the salination level of the water increases this time of the year, “killing everything.”

With summer around the corner, Basra will once again endure the repercussions of water scarcity and high temperatures the season brings.

In addition to bad water management in Iraq, neighboring Iran is also to blame for the scarcity, as Tehran in recent years has reduced the amount of water flowing into the country.

Despite being home to the Tigris, Euphrates, and the Shatt al-Arab, as well as three ports, Basra technically has plenty of water access, but it still cannot provide clean water for drinking or for its agriculture.

Examinations of the water have shown that the province's resources are not suitable for drinking and locals have been advised not to use them.

In 2018, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized after ingesting the polluted water

A senior adviser at the Iraqi ministry of water resources warned last week that the country's water reserves have decreased by half since last year, due to a combination of drought, a lack of rainfall, and declining river levels.

"Water reserves are far lower than what we had last year, by about 50 percent because of poor rainfall and the quantities arriving from neighboring countries," Ministry of Water Resources adviser Aoun Diab told AFP, attributing the concerning situation to "the successive years of drought: 2020, 2021 and 2022".

Water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers - shared by Iraq, Syria, and Turkey - have dropped considerably in recent years. In the latest stark warning of the threats a heating climate poses to the country, a report by Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources towards the end of last year predicted that unless urgent action is taken to combat declining water levels, Iraq’s two main rivers will be entirely dry by 2040.

Water pollution is also a high concern for officials. The spokesperson for the water ministry, Ali Radi, told state media on Thursday that, "water poisoning or contamination is a very dangerous matter."

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has long warned that the water available in Iraq is set to decrease by around 20 percent by 2025, threatening the long-term stability of Iraq’s agriculture and industry. According to another concerning report by the United Nations, dams built in neighboring Turkey and Iran have also dramatically reduced the combined volume of the Tigris and Euphrates by up to 60 percent.

Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. Low rainfall levels and high temperatures caused by climate change are depleting water supplies across the country. Much of Iraq’s agricultural lands depend on irrigation, but dams and reservoirs were at record-low levels this summer.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/24042022