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Scoop
31 minutes ago
- Science
- Scoop
Earth's Seasonal Rhythms Are Changing, Putting Species And Ecosystems At Risk
Seasonality shapes much of life on Earth. Most species, including humans, have synchronised their own rhythms with those of Earth's seasons. Plant growth cycles, the migration of billions of animals, and even aspects of human culture – from harvest rituals to Japanese cherry blossom viewings – are dictated by these dominant rhythms. However, climate change and many other human impacts are altering Earth's cycles. While humans can adapt their behaviour by shifting the timing of crop harvests or Indigenous fire-burning practices, species are less able to adapt through evolution or range shifts. Our new research highlights how the impacts of shifting seasons can cascade through ecosystems, with widespread repercussions that may be greater than previously thought. This puts species and ecosystems at risk the world over. We are still far from having a full picture of what changes in seasonality mean for the future of biodiversity. Almost every ecosystem on Earth has seasons From tropical forests to polar ice caps and abyssal depths, the annual journey of Earth around the Sun brings distinct seasons to all corners of the planet. These seasonal rhythms shape ecosystems everywhere, whether through monsoonal rains in equatorial regions or the predictable melt of snowpack in mountain ranges. But the seasonality of these processes is changing rapidly due to local human impacts. This includes dams in many rivers, which completely and abruptly disrupt their natural flow, and deforestation, which changes the timing of the onset of the rain season. These local influences are compounded by climate change, which is systematically modifying seasonal patterns in snow cover, temperature and rainfall around the world. From the earlier seasonal melting of glaciers and the snowpack to the disruption of monsoonal rain cycles, the effects of these changes are being felt widely. Many important ecological processes we rely on could be affected. A mismatch between plankton blooms and the life cycles of fish could affect the health of fisheries. Tourism dependent on seasonal migrations of large mammals could suffer. Even the regulation of the climate system itself is tightly controlled by seasonal processes. Changing seasonality threatens to destabilise key ecological processes and human society. Evolutionary adaptations to seasonal fluctuations The seasonal rhythms of ecosystems are obvious to any observer. The natural timing of annual flowers and deciduous trees – tuned to match seasonal variations in rainfall, temperature and solar radiation – transforms the colours of whole landscapes throughout the year. The arrival and departure of migratory birds, the life cycle of insects and amphibians, and the mating rituals of large mammals can completely change the soundscapes with the seasons. These examples illustrate how seasonality acts as a strong evolutionary force that has shaped the life cycles and behaviour of most species. But, in the face of unprecedented changes to Earth's natural rhythms, these adaptations can lead to complex negative impacts. For instance, snowshoe hares change coat colour between winter and summer to blend in with their surroundings and hide from predators. They are struggling to adapt to shifts in the timing of the first snow and snowmelt. The impact of changing seasonality on hare populations is linked with changes in predation rates. But predators themselves may also be out of sync with the new onset of seasons. Our research highlights that these kinds of complex interactions can propagate impacts through ecosystems, linking individual species' seasonal adaptations to broader food web dynamics, or even ecosystem functions such as carbon sequestration. Although biologists have studied seasonal processes for centuries, we know surprisingly little about how they mediate any ecological impacts of altered seasonality. Our findings show we are likely underestimating these impacts. The distinct mechanisms involved deserve further attention. Until we account for these complex processes, we risk overlooking important ecological and human consequences. The more we understand, the better prepared we are Understanding the extent to which impacts of altered seasonality can interact and propagate from individuals to whole ecosystems is a big challenge. It will require different types of research, complex mathematical modelling and the design of new experiments. But it is not easy to manipulate the seasons in an experiment. Scientists have come up with inventive ways of experimentally testing the effects of altered seasonality. This includes manually removing snow early in spring, manipulating rainfall patterns through irrigation and moving plants and animals to places with different seasonality. Some researchers have even recovered seeds from centuries-old collections to sprout them and look at how recent changes in climate have affected plant populations. These efforts will be of great value for forecasting impacts and designing effective management strategies beneficial for ecosystems and humans alike. Such efforts help to anticipate future shocks and prioritise interventions. For instance, understanding the mechanisms that allow native and non-native species to anticipate seasonal changes has proven useful for ' tricking ' non-native plants into sprouting only in the wrong season. This gives an advantage to native plants. Similarly, studies on the molecular mechanisms involved in the response to seasonality can help us determine whether certain species are likely to adapt to further changes in seasonal patterns. This research can also point out genes that could be targeted for improving the resilience and productivity of crops. Not only are we likely underestimating the ecological risks of shifting seasons, we tend to forget how much our everyday lives depend on them. As Earth's rhythms change, the risks multiply. But so does our opportunity to better understand, anticipate and adapt to these changes. Disclosure statement Daniel Hernández Carrasco receives funding from a Doctoral Scholarship by the University of Canterbury. Jonathan Tonkin receives funding from a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship administered by the Royal Society Te Apārangi and the Centres of Research Excellence Bioprotection Aotearoa and Te Pūnaha Matatini.
Scoop
an hour ago
- Scoop
Councils Condemn Overnight Disruption And Thank Police For Strong Response
Horowhenua District Council and Palmerston North City Council are thanking Police and emergency services for their strong, coordinated response to unlawful gatherings in the region overnight, and are condemning the dangerous behaviour that put the safety of residents at risk. The gatherings involved a large convoy of vehicles and over 1,000 individuals. This follows similar illegal activity in Levin last year that saw State Highway 1 barricaded and weapons reportedly present. This year, Police acted early — deploying teams including Riot Police, Armed Offenders Squad and the Eagle helicopter, implementing a visible and proactive presence across the region. While their efforts successfully prevented major disruption in Levin, the group dispersed north along Tavistock Road and State Highway 57, State Highway 56 and Palmerston North before coming back to Levin. One bystander was taken to hospital with moderate injuries after an incident on SH57, with Police reporting further incidents with other bystanders and vehicles on SH56. No police are reported to be injured despite, having a vehicle deliberately rammed, Police car tyres slashed and fireworks being aimed at officers. 10 arrests have been made so far, with more to come as Police investigate footage from the evening. Mayor Bernie Wanden said the behaviour witnessed last night is disgraceful. 'This activity isn't just reckless — it's dangerous. People have been hurt. Most of the individuals involved are not from Horowhenua, yet it's our community that bears the burden. I commend Police and emergency services for their quick and decisive actions. Their efforts have helped to keep our residents safe and prevent further harm.' Mayor Grant Smith says street racing is completely unacceptable. 'It was great to see the significant police presence in Horowhenua and Palmerston North overnight to help demonstrate that street racing is not welcome in our city or our wider region. While those involved may think it's just a bit of fun, it is intimidating behaviour for communities. In past events, these incidents have also passed on large costs to ratepayers to repair damaged roads and clean up broken glass and car parts. We understand from the Police that a number of youths were involved in what occurred last night. We encourage parents to chat to their young people about the dangers of street racing and encourage them to ask questions when their teens are going out late at night about their plans. I want to thank the Police for their efforts last night and hope those involved get the message that street racing is simply not welcome in our region' Both Councils are continuing to liaise with Police to monitor the situation and support any required responses. Our thoughts are also with those injured last night, and their loved ones.
Scoop
an hour ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Council Commends Emergency Services Response To Overnight Illegal Gathering
Press Release – Horowhenua District Council We stand with our community in calling for respectful behaviour and will continue to work alongside Police to support efforts that deter and address this kind of activity, says Mayor Bernie Horowhenua District Council. An interim media statement from Mayor Bernie – Horowhenua District Council: 'We understand the concern and disruption that last night's unlawful gathering has caused for residents in our district. This behaviour has no place in our communities. I want to acknowledge the significant planning and swift response by Police and emergency services to keep our people and our roads safe. Their work helped prevent a repeat of last year's dangerous and unacceptable events. We stand with our community in calling for respectful behaviour and will continue to work alongside Police to support efforts that deter and address this kind of activity.'
Scoop
an hour ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Mister Netanyahu, Have You No Sense Of Decency?
Opinion – Jeremy Rose Well be waiting a long time for the wanted war criminal Netanyahu to show any decency, but could we be approaching a tipping point where the establishment finally calls off a witch hunt after realising no one is safe from false accusations? The word antisemitism has become so debased that depending on who is using it I might well take it as a sign that the accused is worth listening to. When the World Criminal Court issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu's arrest, he responded by saying the court was being antisemitic. One of the court's legal advisers was Theodor Meron a former Israeli ambassador and legal adviser who spent a chunk of his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp. Last week, Netanyahu declared the leaders of France, the UK and Canada of fuelling antisemitism. Their crime? Threatening 'concrete action' against Israel if it continues its 'egregious' blockade of aid entering Gaza. Egregious not genocidal. And the concrete action referred to wasn't sanctions or a full arms embargo but stalling free trade talks. The bitter irony is that with none of those countries having yet imposed a complete ban on arms exports to Israel; they are all in a sense fuelling a genocide. The Army-McCarthy hearings We're coming up to the 71st anniversary of the Army-McCarthy hearings where an army lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked senator Joseph McCarthy with the famous line: 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?' We'll be waiting a long time for the wanted war criminal Netanyahu to show any decency, but could we be approaching a tipping point where the establishment finally calls off a witch hunt after realising no one is safe from false accusations? The McCarthyite red scare, which began in the late 1940s, saw more than 2000 federal workers sacked, thousands of academics, teachers, and union members pressured or forced to resign due to anti-communist policies, and up to 500 Hollywood directors and actors blacklisted for being leftwing or refusing to name names. Welch's rebuke was triggered by none of that. It was McCarthy turning his metaphorical guns onto the military implying he would expose high ranking army personnel that saw the army lawyer return fire. The conflating of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been spectacularly successful in making any criticism of Israel a potentially career ending move. Three Ivy League presidents have been pushed out of their jobs for failing to crack down hard enough on students protesting the brutality of Israel's ongoing genocide. UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose popularity had seen the party become the biggest political movement in Europe, was toppled in 2016 after bogus accusations of antisemitism. In the purge of the Labour Party that followed Jews were five times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism than goys. It's the same story in Germany where Jews feature prominently among those cancelled for alleged antisemitism. Renowned professor of Jewish studies Peter Schäfe was forced to resign as the director of Berlin's Jewish Museum after he retweeted a post critical of Germany's anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions. Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis – not a Jew – has been banned from Germany or even appearing via Zoom for this response, on the 8th of October 2023, to being asked if he condemned Hamas: 'I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning, but inexorable, ethnic cleansing programme. As a European, it is important to refrain from condemning either the Israelis or the Palestinians when it is us, Europeans, who have caused this never-ending tragedy: after practising rabid anti-Semitism for centuries, leading up to the uniquely vile Holocaust, we have been complicit for decades with the slow genocide of Palestinians, as if two wrongs make one right.' That nuanced response, with its acknowledgement of the dreadful legacy of real antisemitism, has not only seen him banned from speaking – in person or virtually – but dropped by his German publisher. Antisemitism is often referred to as the oldest hatred – with good reason – but the word itself is relatively recent. A 'scientific' word for an old hatred 19th Century German journalist Wilhelm Marr popularised the term in a pamphlet the title of which translates as: The way to victory of Germanism over Judaism. What distinguished antisemitism from the commonly used Judenhass – or Jewish hate – was the idea that it was a Jew's race not their religion that was deserving of hate. Antisemitism was a prejudice proud to speak its name. It was respectable in a way that religious intolerance wasn't. Prominent professors and politicians happily declared themselves antisemites and adherents of 'scientific racism.' It was an old idea dressed up in new clothing. 15th Century Spain passed Limpieza de Sangre (cleanliness of blood) statutes to allow discrimination against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. The Judeo-Christian civilisational conflict with Islam, often referred to by right-wing supporters of Israel, is a relatively new construct. When the Jews were expelled from Spain the Ottomans sent ships to take them to new homes in Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Izmer. Times change and while it was once possible – even common – to be a respectable antisemite and scientific racist but frowned upon to discriminate based on religious belief, now the reverse is true. So-called new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins declare all religions bad but Islam worse. 'Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive sounding 'Allahu Akhbar.' Or is that just my cultural upbringing?' Dawkins once tweeted. The cultures of Europe have indeed cultivated racist ideas for centuries. And just as half a millennia ago conversion offered you no protection from the racism of the Spanish court, embracing Buddhism didn't protect Columbia university student Moshen Mahdawi from being snatched from a naturalisation interview by balaclava-clad ICE agents. His crime? Being Palestinian and telling his story. It's a topsy-turvy world where life-long anti-fascists like Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis are sanctioned on bogus claims of antisemitism while the likes of Elon Musk and Hungarian PM Victor Orban – both peddlers of old-style antisemitic conspiracies – are welcomed to Israel as friends and allies in a contrived battle of civilisations. One thing that differentiates antisemitism from the Judeophobia, which has been a European disease since the early days of Christianity, is that it places Jews among the victims of the continent's white supremacist legacy. It's perhaps no coincidence the Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas in the same year, 1492, that Spain expelled its Jews and Muslims. The settler colonisation of the Americas has been estimated by historian David Stannard to have resulted in the death of 100 million indigenous people – many from introduced diseases but tens of millions also died in genocides only recently making their way into history books. Last week when Netanyahu declared Israel's attacks on Gaza 'a war against human beasts' he was echoing the words of settler colonialists from Alaska to Aotearoa and the dehumanising language of the Nazis against the Jews. So, back to that question about whether we've reached a tipping point where unfair accusations of antisemitism will be seen in a similar light to McCarthy's red scare. With Netanyahu accusing the leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, an IDF reserve major general, of promoting a blood libel for speaking out against the starving of babies in Gaza, it's hard not to draw parallels with the Army-McCarthy hearings. It's worth quoting the words that saw Israel's PM accuse Golan of a blood libel – a reference to the lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children in the baking of matzos, and a trigger for centuries of pogroms. 'A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population.' The idea that an IDF general speaking out against the killing of babies is propagating racist hatred of Jews is surely a leap too far even for many fervent Zionists. Another sign that the tide might be turning is Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, saying the US administration's weaponisation of the IHRA definition is making academics and students (including Jews) less safe. The self-described Zionist said the definition was being distorted and used to silence anti-Israel critics. The IHRA working definition has been widely adopted internationally – including by institutions in New Zealand and Australia. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both criticised the definition claiming it has seen those documenting Israel's human rights abuses being falsely accused of antisemitism. It's a tragedy that weaponised accusations of antisemitism aimed at protecting Israel from criticism are obscuring a rise in Judeophobic conspiracy theories and attacks on Jewish community centres and synagogues around the world. And even more tragically that those accusations are blunting criticisms of Israel that could help bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end.
Scoop
an hour ago
- Business
- Scoop
New Zealand Is Not Yet Capturing Alternative Remittance In Anti-Money Laundering Laws
Press Release – Asia Pacific AML Though New Zealands AML/CFT regime captures conventional money or value transfers that occur through a Wire Transfer, it does not capture unconventional methods of trading. Alternative Remittance New Zealand has not yet aligned its AML/CFT Act to the International Standards set by FATF to regulate Alternative Remittance Services. Countries such as Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and the USA all provide regulations that explicitly capture Alternative Remittance. The legislative frameworks of those countries also provide separate reporting frameworks to capture both Conventional money or value transfer and Unconventional money or value transfer. Though New Zealand's AML/CFT regime captures conventional money or value transfers that occur through a Wire Transfer, it does not capture unconventional methods of trading. The problem with restricting money or value transfer services to Wire Transfers is that Alternative Remittance services do not need to rely on a Wire Transfer. Nor does a method of Alternative Remittance need to 'pass through' a financial institution or involve 'cross-border'. This is where the anomaly clearly lies in New Zealand's AML/CFT Act. It is only catering to conventional money or value transfer services and not unconventional. The NZ AML/CFT Act also limits its international money or value reporting framework to a 'Prescribed Transaction'. A Prescribed Transaction is defined as a 'Wire Transfer' (section 5 of the AML/CFT Act). It is clear New Zealand's AML/CFT Act is weakened in its ability to detect or prevent the use of Alternative Remittance services that assist in the facilitation of terrorism financing and evasion of sanctions. NZ AML/CFT Act Anamoly Already Known During the 2021 Statutory Review of the NZ AML/CFT Act, the Ministry of Justice released a document and acknowledged the definition of 'Wire Transfer' did not capture 'Hawala'. (Hawala is another terminology used for 'Alternative Remittance' or 'Traditional Remittance'.) The document states – 'However, under the current definitions of a wire transfer, this type of transaction is not explicitly captured as a wire transfer, and there are accordingly no specific CDD or PTR obligations for the transaction..' Despite this recognition, no changes have been recommended to address this anomaly. Use of the term 'Money Remittance' Though the DIA AML/CFT Supervisor is purporting the NZ AML/CFT Act regulates 'money remitters', the reality is the AML/CFT Act has not yet defined 'money remittance' and nor does it define 'alternative money remittance'. The use of the term 'money remittance' without the AML/CFT regime having a definition of money remittance, is only confusing the industry. Underground Banking One consequence of New Zealand failing to provide an AML/CFT regime that captures Alternative Remittance, is the increased use of underground banking channels. As underground banking channels are where transnational criminals operate – it is time for New Zealand to plug this gap. More on this topic will be reported.
