CAPRA PYRENAICA PYRENAICA
The Pyrenean ibex was a subspecies of the Spanish ibex and it is now extinct.
Once, he was widespread in the French Pyrenees, in the Basque Country, in Navarra and in northern Catalonia.
In 1900 there were about 100 specimens left but already in 1910 there were only 40 left. The last specimen was found dead on January 6, 2006 with its neck broken because of the fall of a tree.
The scientists wanted to clone it but there wasn't male DNA, so they are now waiting for the technology to study a way to replace the X chromosome of the female cell with a Y chromosome of another subspecies.
CAPRA PYRENAICA LUSITANICA
The Portuguese ibex populated Portugal, Galicia, the Asturias and the Cantabrian Mountains.
In 1800 it was still quite numerous but it soon suffered a meltdown because the local populations enormously hunted it in each period of the year because of its meat, horns, skin (with which they made clothes) and bezoars (formations of foreign bodies in the stomach) used to defend against "any poison".
The last female specimen was sighted in 1892.
(Thanks to Lorenzo S. for helping me writing this post)
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Best wishes!
Chiara
Acid rain is one of the most dangerous and widespread forms of pollution.
This international problem was first noticed by England and Canada. Later also in the USA, in the Scandinavian countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden) and in other countries like Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Austria and Northern Italy.
This phenomenon has dramatically increased over the past few decades.
Many living and non-living systems has become harmed and damaged as a result of the acid rain. They are caused by the smoke and gases expelled by factories, airplanes and cars. When fossil fuels burn the sulphures are combined with oxygen and are transformed into sulphur dioxide and some of the nitrogen in the air becomes nitrogen oxide.
These pollutants bind to water and so chemicals fall back to the earth.
When trees get damaged by the acid rain their leaves and needles turn brown and fall off.
In the polluted lakes and rivers fish die and birds and mammals can be killed by eating them.
The only solution to this problem is to save energy and pollute less (or to use renewable energy). When less "dirty" energy is used, less coal is burnt and so there will be less acid rain.
(Thanks to Lorenzo S. for helping me writing this post)
In Japan the Bluefin tuna is particularly prized (a single large fish can fetch more than $ 100.000).
The large demand in this country led to aggressive fishing practices and the populations today are a tenth of what they were in the 1950s.
The decline is faster everyday because of open-ocean pens where wild juvenile tuna are put: these animals are removed from the wild before they have spawned and this is deleterious for the survival of the species.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/bluefin-tuna
As teachers have always told us since the very first years of school, water is essential for life. They taught us the water cycle, that it covers 71% of the earth's surface, that it makes up 65% of our bodies.
Now, water is becoming increasingly polluted and this is a threat to our health, to the fertility of the soil and to the survival of wildlife.
Water pollution is the result of human activities.
The water we daily use in our houses and industries is taken from lakes, rivers and from the underground and, after we have used it (and contaminated it) most of it returns to these locations.
If this waste water is not treated before it is discharged into waterways, then serious pollution will be the result.
To prevent water pollution we should remove the pollutants before the water gets back into the environment.
When the polluted water of the rivers arrive to the sea the nitrates and phosphates create beds of green algae and produce periodic catastrophic loss of marine life.
In the 60s the Thames was biologically "dead"...nowadays the quality of its water is better.
This situation is worse in the developing countries, where environmental policies are often almost non-existent and hazardous substances are used in the industrial processes and then poured out into lakes and rivers.
Lots of people in these countries die because of the contaminated water and many ecosystems have been or are being destroyed.
(Thanks to Lorenzo S. for helping me writing this post)
125.000 years ago in Europe there were lions and elephants; at that time the temperatures were 3 Celsius degrees higher than today and forests covered Greenland.
Soon, it may be 3 degrees hotter again but this time the change isn't happening naturally.
This all is happening because of pollution...and it is happening very quickly.
Pollution sends 4 main "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. They are:
- Carbon dioxide (CO2)
- CFC (chloro-fluoro-carbons)
- Methane
- Nitrous oxide
CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas and it causes half of this problem. Nearly 6 billion tonnes of it enter the atmosphere every year from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil). An extra 1,5 billion tonnes each year come from the burning of rainforest trees; normally, trees absorb CO2 but there are less day by day.
Methane and Nitrous oxide come from fertilizers, cow's stomachs and rubbish.
CFC are very dangerous, each one can trap 10.000 time more heat than an atom of CO2...and they don't just stay in the atmosphere, they destroy the ozone layer!
The greenhouse effect causes enormous damage to the earth and its inhabitants: the sun's rays reflected on earth can't easily get out of the atmosphere, causing a rise in the level of temperatures; this provokes the melting of the perennial ice, causing a rise in the sea levels and the desertification of lots of areas of the planet. The oceans' temperature increase causes always more frequent devastating atmospheric phenomena. The knock-on effects produced are dreadful.
So...HOW CAN WE STOP IT?
- Stop using fossil fuels
- Preserve rainforests beacuse the earth needs more trees, not fewer
- Use renewable energy, now at 20%. To slow down the greenhouse effect that number must rise to 50% in the next 15 years
- Totally ban CFCs in all the countries of the world
(Thanks to Lorenzo S. for helping me writing this post)
A growing movement emerged during the past two decades whose aim is to promote practices that contribute to solve many environmental and social concerns.
Sustainable agriculture consists in reducing (but not eliminating) the use of chemical products, developing integrated farming systems. This all received considerable attention from researchers, who see it as a compromise between conventional and organic farming.
Sustainable agriculture has within it three main goals:
- to improve agricultural production and systems;
- to fulfil farmers' needs and lifestyle choices;
- to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
"Sustainable rural development must become a key priority for the European Union. Public health must not be endangered. It is more important than commercial interests." (Franz Fischler, 1996)
(Thanks to Lorenzo S. for helping me writing this post)
