We need to talk about human beings. A recent study has revealed the disproportionate and devastating impact that humanity (just 0.01% of all living things) has had, in particular our destruction of a staggering 83% of all wild mammals.
So this week we bring you efforts to turn the tide, restoring animals who had disappeared and protecting those in danger of doing so.
The sand dunes of the Dutch coast might seem an unlikely home for a herd of wild European bison. But that’s where they’ve been successfully reintroduced, 80 years after being hunted to extinction in Europe. Daniel Boffey found out what the breakthrough means for the future of the largest land-living animal on that continent.
There are fewer than 30,000 rhinos left in the world, thanks to the apparently insatiable human desire for rhino horn. South Africa is home to many of the survivors, and wildlife vets there have taken drastic and controversial action to protect the species - with dramatic results, as Tony Carnie discovered.
In New Zealand, where millions of kiwi birds once flourished, only 68,000 remain. And the ancient flightless birds are declining at the rate of about 20 each week. Eleanor Ainge Roy visited the predator-free sanctuary of Kapiti Island and spoke with campaigners leading the charge to save a national icon.
What we liked:
This Apolitical piece on Copenhagen’s ingenious citywide heating system, which keeps CO2 emissions and costs low.
What we heard:
It is time to pull the rug out from under the feet of the international criminal gangs that run the horn trade and start to supply the market with legitimate horn.
Commenter ChrisGordon1 writing below the line about dehorning rhinos in South Africa.
Where was the upside?
In New York, where researchers may have unlocked the secret to our craving for sugar, and how to stop it.
