California condors could be again in trouble

California condors could find themselves once again in serious trouble just like this was the case in 1980s. In 1987 there were only 22 condors remaining in the wild, and they were captured and bred in San Diego Zoo Safari Park where conservationists managed to stop further decline in condor population. Today there are around 400 California condors in the wild.

The main factors that led to serious decline in California condor population were habitat loss, poaching and lead poisoning. Sadly, by the current looks of it lead poisoning could once again spell huge danger for condors in the wild.

In the latest study led by the environmental toxicologists at the University of California the scientists have expressed fear that California Condors could once again find themselves in trouble because of the lead poisoning from ammunition.

Condor’s main diet includes carcasses of large mammals such as deer. While feeding on these carcasses condors can ingest fragments of lead bullets leading to lead poisoning and eventual death.

Myra Finkelstein, a research toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz said that: „California condors are tagged and monitored, captured twice a year for blood tests, and when necessary treated for lead poisoning in veterinary hospitals, and they still die from lead poisoning on a regular basis“.

Not only have scientists found high lead isotope ratios in blood of free-flying condors, they have also discovered excessive lead levels in feathers, which led them to conclusion that birds are in fact chronically lead poisoned.

What this means is that without the continued releases of captive-reared birds and interventions to treat lead-poisoning, the condor population would again experience serious decline in population, and head to extinction.

The current measures of intensive management are helping condors to maintain their current numbers but nonetheless something has to be done to solve this worrying lead poisoning issue.

In 2008, California partially banned the use of lead ammunition in condor habitat. This ban has so far not fulfilled its purpose and has not been able to reduce the lead levels in blood of the condors. 

The interaction between people and nature needs to improve

Is there something positive that can be said about the interaction between the people and nature? Well, more and more people are willing to adopt practices that do not lead to the deterioration of our environment, and the environmental conscience is slowly growing across the globe. The bad thing is that there is still lot more people who consider our environment and nature in general, as something that only exists to serve their purposes and so they can treat our environment every way they want, without any care for our future generations.

The nature is there to serve our needs, that's true, but serving our needs does not have to be connected with huge levels of environmental destruction like this is very much the case today.

Our main problem is that we often like to think how we are beyond the nature, forgetting the very important fact that we are only part of this nature, of this planet, and that we cannot survive on our own.

We need plants, animals, water, clean air. Nature has created very complicated and yet so simple process where all living species on our planet depend on each other. This interconnection of life is truly a remarkable thing, a simple but highly effective process where every species, no matter how small or big is, play its unique and special role.

The man has sadly decided to go against the nature believing that his „superior“ mind is enough to disregard nature postulates that have been created for billions of years. Just because we have developed brain as compared to other species we think we know what's best. This brain of ours could soon become our curse unless we do something to change our current way of thinking and living.

We are not only destroying our environment in form of several major environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss, we are also hiding our humanity in search for material goods as we look to find happiness strictly in money.

Instead of being the guardians of our planet we are becoming barbarians ready to savagely destroy it, without thinking of what future may hold for humans if we continue this path of destruction. This selfish short-term thinking shows our greed and major cracks in the foundations on which our civilization and society was built.

Nature provides us with resources crucial for our survival which means that going against the nature means going against ourselves, against the logic and better judgment.

It's time to change the way we think and the way we act. Our nature needs the very best version of humans and not these greedy little creatures that we are today. Changing our approach towards the nature is the key to our future survival.

How to solve environmental problems?

Before solving certain problem you first need to acknowledge it and this is something that has been only partially done with environmental problems. Why? Because world leaders are reluctant to acknowledge the seriousness of global environmental condition as they are constantly postponing actions for „better future times“.

Climate change, huge biodiversity loss, the destruction of tropical rainforets, the depletion of natural resources and excessive levels of environmental pollution are all major problems and we sadly don't have the luxury to wait for better times as world leaders think we have.

Our current lifestyle will have to change if we want to stop further environmental destruction. We must find solutions that would enable maintenance of our current lifestyle without further destruction of our environment, and the key for this lies in sustainability.

Sustainability, however, requires completely different way of thinking and installment of new values into our society in order to encourage people to improve the environmental conditions in their communities.

People from different countries need to work together because many environmental problems have global character and can be solved only by an adequate international action (such as climate change).

We need to better utilize science and technology in order to make our industry greener. This means finding economically viable and efficient solutions to replace „dirty technologies“ that are being used in many industries (such as coal power plants).

Education is also one of the keys in solving environmental issues. Better education and improved literacy rates should be a main foundation to create the adequate level of environmental conscience in many countries of the developing world.

World also needs to find a way to alleviate poverty because poor people think only how to survive. To more than one billion hungry people in the world environmental issues mean very little and we must show more care for this people.

This world is still a rather selfish place where money and material goods rank well above humanity and social responsibility. As already said before this can only be achieved with the completely different way of thinking and adopting adequate sustainable behavior and policy.

It's time to get our act together and do something that will save our planet from global environmental disaster. Saving our environment from environmental issues means ensuring wellbeing for our future generations and giving them chance to enjoy in many beauties this planet has to offer instead of crying at the broking legacy that was left to them by their irresponsible and selfish ancestors.

The connection between biodiversity and melting of glaciers

Biodiversity loss is one of the biggest environmental issues of modern world, and the widespread effect of climate change is making things even worse. The latest study published in the Nature Climate Change magazine has studied the effect of retreating glaciers on biodiversity. The conclusion was that the continuous melting of glaciers has negative effect on biodiversity in affected areas.

The scientists have studied temperate, arctic and tropical regions (Alps, Alaska and the equatorial Andes) in order to find the correlation between the glacial coverage and biodiversity loss. They have discovered that in situations where „glacial coverage is reduced to the point where it only covers 30 to 50% of the drainage basin, several species begin to disappear.“

They have also calculated that the entire melting of the glaciers in these areas would result in huge loss of biodiversity, where between 11 and 38% of the animal and plant species could go extinct, including many of endemic species that can be found only in these areas.

We are not just talking here about the loss of biodiversity in these areas but also about the huge water shortage issue for many places across the globe. The worldwide melting of glaciers threatens to eliminate the water supply for numerous towns in valleys, and water could very soon become a very scarce resource for many regions of the world.

This is just one of many scientific warnings about the growing impact of climate change. World leaders still don't look particularly worried about it, and the climate change issue is still far from being the top issue on global political agenda. As always, finance and economies are far more important to world leaders than environmental issues.

Biodiversity loss will only grow as climate change impact becomes stronger, and if we fail to do something quick we will pass the point of no return where the world will be helpless to do something effective against climate change (the global temperature increase of two degrees Celsius).

The glacier melting is just one of many climate change faces, all of which can result in one scary future. This future could soon become our reality…