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Fredericton Botanic Gardens hosting invasive species tour
Fredericton Botanic Gardens hosting invasive species tour

CTV News

timean hour ago

  • General
  • CTV News

Fredericton Botanic Gardens hosting invasive species tour

The Fredericton Botanic Gardens is home to thousands of plant and animal species but not all of them are welcome. Mujin Lee is the head gardener at the botanic gardens. He's leading an invasive plants tour and workshop to raise awareness about the damage they cause at the gardens on Tuesday. He said invasive species spread aggressively in new environments and cause ecological damage by outcompeting local plants for resources. 'They do not form as much close relationships with our native organisms throughout their life cycle,' Lee said. 'Which means they provide less food and shelter to those native organisms.' Lee said this affects the entire ecosystem because invasive plants are very good at spreading. 'Some plants can actually deposit up to four years' worth of seeds in a single growing season and they can stay dormant in the soil for many years just waiting for the right environment to germinate.' Lee said the first step in stopping the advance of these species is making sure they don't go to seed by cutting them back after they flower before they form seed heads. For plants with extensive root systems, he said it's important to dig up and remove as much of the plant as possible. Two common invaders in the botanic gardens are Woodland Angelica and the multiflora rose, Lee said. He will be joined by the representatives from the invasive species council on the tour. They will demonstrate how to remove the rose. This the second in a series of guided invasive species tours at the Fredericton Botanic Gardens. The first was held on July 8. The workshop on July 22 begins at 6:30 p.m. For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.

Bedford council wins Bees' Needs award for wildlife corridors
Bedford council wins Bees' Needs award for wildlife corridors

BBC News

time12 hours ago

  • General
  • BBC News

Bedford council wins Bees' Needs award for wildlife corridors

A council that transformed intensively mown areas into thriving wildflower corridors to help insects and wildlife has won an award. Bedford Borough Council was honoured with the Bees' Needs Champion Award 2025 for its pollinator-friendly initiatives. It previously won in 2021. The authority said it had worked to provide food and shelter for animals, as well as "safeguard open spaces from vehicle incursions by planting wildflower-rich landscape features along park boundaries". Independent councillor Nicola Gribble said: "By creating these wildflower corridors, we are not only safeguarding biodiversity but also enriching the green spaces our community loves." Since 2023, corridors at Putnoe Park (also known as Bowhill), as well as open spaces at Newnham Avenue, Woodcote Open Space, and Chiltern Avenue, have created "vital nectar-rich habitats for bees, bugs, and other pollinators", the council said. "This work supports biodiversity, enhances visitor experience, and encourages the wider community to take action in support of pollinators," it added. Gribble said protecting pollinators was essential for a "healthy environment and a vibrant borough". She added: "This award recognises the hard work of our teams and the positive impact we can have when we prioritise nature in urban areas."The wildlife-friendly schemes were funded through Council Capital Funding. Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Oysters reintroduced into Humber as new technique trialled
Oysters reintroduced into Humber as new technique trialled

BBC News

time12 hours ago

  • Science
  • BBC News

Oysters reintroduced into Humber as new technique trialled

Oysters are to be released into the Humber Estuary in a technique described as a UK first. The method, known as remote setting, has involved growing the shellfish by placing oyster larvae in a tank filled with scallop will now be moved into the estuary and scientists will evaluate how it compares with the traditional method of directly placing individual juvenile and adult oysters on to the is part of a Wilder Humber project which aims to reintroduce 500,000 native European flat oysters to the estuary over five years. The estuary was once home to a thriving oyster reef that was so large it was listed as a hazard to shipping, Wilder Humber overfishing, disease and a reduction in water quality led to a van der Schatte Olivier, marine programme manager at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said the project would bring back a lost species and demonstrate how innovation, collaboration, and nature-based solutions could tackle biodiversity loss and climate change. During the first phase of the project, the larvae was attached to the shells and transferred to an oyster nursey at Spurn Point to to Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, 18% of the larvae survived compared with a 10% survival rate of oysters placed directly on the seabed. Laura Welton, native oyster restoration officer at the trust, said remote setting could transform how native oyster populations are restored, reducing transportation stress and increasing their chances of said: "Trialling this alongside the traditional method gives us vital insights into how to scale up restoration more efficiently and effectively. "This experiment is a key step toward restoring thriving oyster reefs in the Humber, across the UK, and beyond." Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices

Amazon remains in great peril and should top Cop30 agenda
Amazon remains in great peril and should top Cop30 agenda

Irish Times

time13 hours ago

  • Science
  • Irish Times

Amazon remains in great peril and should top Cop30 agenda

From the foothills of the Andes in Ecuador the largest tropical forest on earth stretches more than 3,500km – more than the distance from Galway to Moscow – before spilling into the Atlantic Ocean. It took Spaniard Franciso de Orellana more than eight months to descend the full length of the great river when his party became the first Europeans to do so in 1542. The accounts of Orellana's improbable adventure chronicled a jungle that was then inhabited by a large population, possibly as many as five million in total, according to modern scholars. These included advanced agricultural societies that had lived along the rivers of the Amazon basin for perhaps as long as 13,000 years. But the forest stretches deep into time as well as across space. Geological studies suggest it has existed for at least 25 million years, making human history of any kind in the region a very recent affair. In this time, a wondrous diversity of life has evolved so that despite covering only half a per cent of the earth's surface, it accounts for ten per cent of all named plants and vertebrate animals. A full accounting of its true biodiversity remains a work in progress. The Amazon has also been described as a 'critical component' of the Earth's climate system, 'strongly regulating global carbon and water cycles', a study published in the journal Science in 2023 concluded. READ MORE Orellana's tales of this vast jungle, hinting it contained troves of silver and gold equal to those his fellow conquistadors found in Mexico or Peru, fired a lust for conquest that brought misery and death to the indigenous peoples and a destructive force that, 500 years later, shows no signs of abating. Enslavement and disease wiped out whole populations; the rubber trade of the late 1800s immiserated those who remained. By the 1970s, the paranoid military dictatorship in Brazil encouraged a wave of settlers to colonise the jungle to bring 'people without land' to a 'land without people', as they saw it. Fires along the Trans-Amazonian Highway near the Aripuana National Forest, in the state of Amazonas. Photograph:The aforementioned Science paper concluded human impacts are outpacing natural processes and 'the Amazon is now perched to transition rapidly from a largely forested to a nonforested landscape, and the changes are happening much too rapidly for Amazonian species, peoples, and ecosystems to respond adaptively'. Even since this sentence was written, events have accelerated. During the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil from 2019 to 2023, tacit approval was given to land grabbers and ranchers to clear land, driving a spike in rates of deforestation. The leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula, as he is better known) succeeded him with a promise to reverse this trend. His efforts have met some success and data published in May showed deforestation rates across the country had dropped by one-third in 2024 compared to a year previously. Good news. However, this fall in land clearance is being swamped by losses of forest due to fires. The year 2024 was the hottest on record, while the drought that afflicted the Amazon basin was the worst in seven decades. According to new data from the World Resources Institute (WRI), 2024 marked a 'record-shattering' level of primary forest loss globally, with more than half of that in Brazil and its neighbour, Bolivia. During a webinar in May, Rod Taylor, global director of the Forests Programme at the WRI warned we are entering 'a new phase ... a climate/fire feedback loop' that is entirely down to deliberate land clearance for agriculture, since fires are not a natural phenomenon in the rainforest. In Bolivia, far from this being beyond the reach of authorities, it is the result of deliberate policies designed to increase agricultural exports from its Amazon region. The 3.1 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions released by the fires globally were greater than the entire emissions from India for one year. Marina Silva, Lula's respected environment minister, told Time magazine in May that 'even if we can nullify deforestation, with climate change, if we don't reduce carbon from fossil fuel emissions, the forest will be destroyed anyway'. Lula has staked his reputation as a climate leader by going out of his way to host the Cop30 climate summit, to be held in the Amazonian city of Belem this November. Fernanda Wenzel is an investigative journalist based in Brazil for Mongabay, a news outlet dedicated to nature conservation. She agrees that Lula's policies have resulted in 'some good news ... but there are contradictions as well'. She hails Marina Silva as 'very competent ... she knows what has to be done. We have environmental agents back on the ground and there have been several raids on indigenous lands to expel invaders – land grabbers, illegal loggers and miners – and we have an increase in remote monitoring using satellite imagery. We have clear signs that things have changed.' However, even with these successes, 'seven trees are knocked down every second ... deforestation is still advancing, we are far from zero deforestation', something that many tropical countries, including Brazil, have committed to achieving by 2030. Wenzel points to Lula's close relationships with big business, including the powerful livestock industry, mining and fossil fuel interests, including in the Amazon basin. She is sceptical that deforestation can be brought to a halt, partly because Lula is not in a politically strong position. 'We have a very conservative congress that has never been so strong and is backing agribusiness interests. They are making it difficult to demarcate new indigenous lands, and we know that those territories [are managed by] those who most protect the forest.' She also notes how the effects of climate change are being felt: 'I think it's going to be really hard to reach zero deforestation by 2030.' All of the commodities coming from the Amazon, particularly soy and beef, are not being produced to satisfy demand in Brazil. Rather, they are heading north, to countries like Ireland, and concerns have been raised that new trade deals, such as the one between the EU and the Mercosur regional trade block, will make matters worse. 'Everything that boosts Brazilian agribusiness production has an impact in the Amazon,' says Wenzel. Deforestation to provide for livestock. Photograph: Getty Images This point is echoed by Natalie Unterstell, president of the Talona Institute, a think tank dedicated to Brazilian climate policy. She says the 'EU-Mercosur deal could either support or undermine forest protection. Without strong safeguards and accountability, increased trade risks accelerating deforestation, as scientific research has repeatedly shown.' As part of the Green Deal, the EU agreed to a deforestation regulation that would ban products, such as beef and soy, from any land deforested from December 2020. However, this has met resistance from countries in the EU as well as Brazil itself, and its implementation has been delayed for one year. 'The real challenge is to align trade with both the EU and China, to zero-deforestation goals,' adds Unterstell. And what of Cop30 in Belem? According to Unterstell, Lula's 'climate leadership will only be confirmed if he sustains the Amazon turnaround [in deforestation] and commits to curb ongoing fossil fuel expansion across Brazil'. He plans to launch the Tropical Forests Forever Facility at the Belem gathering to finance forest preservation and restoration. Greenpeace has described the need for this initiative as 'urgent and clear'. Yet, the willingness to act with the ambition required has not been apparent. 'Right now, countries like the US and Brazil are still doubling down on investments in oil, coal, and gas as if time were on our side. It's not,' says Unterstell. In 1658, with the European invasion of the Amazon well under way, a Jesuit priest from Co Waterford, Richard Carew, witnessed the forced displacement of thousands of people, among them women, children and the sick, from the jungle to work the plantations around Belem, the city of Cop30. Two thousand people had just arrived in the city, many to face enslavement and hard labour, but the plantation owners wanted more. Carew wrote at the time: 'Even though the rivers of these lands are the biggest in the world, the greed of the colonists is greater than all the water.' There is scarcely any sign that it has yet to abate.

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