Decline of Vulture Population in India and Africa

What is the mystery behind so many vultures dying off in India and Africa? Not many people are aware of this fact but vultures, particularly in India, are now driven to the brink of extinction. This has happened very fast; in a matter of just a couple of decades. Another fact that people are not cognizant of is that the loss of vultures and cockroaches actually threatens the well-being of the human population. For cultural and religious reasons, most people in India avoid eating beef. Cows are considered sacred and hence not slaughtered so easily in abattoirs. Cows are actually revered; they are mostly employed in pulling carts and ploughs, giving milk and producing dung that is used for fuel and fertilisers. Slaughtering cattle is considered taboo in India but it is fast changing in the past few decades. Aged cattle are usually allowed to die their natural deaths and their carcasses are generally left in open fields or taken to dump locations for vultures and several other scavengers to feed on them and consume them. Everyone knows that India’s population has soared to the skies during the last century; its herds of goats, cows, water buffaloes and other livestock have also gone up. The number of vultures also went up by the nineteen eighties and was close to forty million. Airports started complaining the vultures were creating a nuisance to the flights taking off, quoting that almost thirty per cent of planes that were hit by birds; which were all vultures. The civil aviation departments even thought of hiring people to shoot down vultures hovering around the aerodromes. So, how did the number of vultures decline? Some of the theories include death on account of electrocution on power lines, being hunted and dying from radiation generated from the mobile towers emitting 3G-5G waves. Some vultures have died for feeding on lead bullets within the flesh of the carrion. The habitats of vultures have also been shrinking for these past couple of decades. The major factor that filters out is the advent of cell phone towers. There has been concern about the reduction of forests where the vultures bred and made their nests. Today, forget about the forty million figure; not only the vultures, even the black crows and sparrows have disappeared and you can find them once in a blue moon. As per research done, there has been a rapid decline in the population of vultures in India between 1986 and 1999. It has been noted that the white-backed vulture has suffered mostly with adult mortality along with breeding failure. The source of the research report is the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Another variety that has declined sharply is the long-billed vulture. This rapid decline is somewhat of a mystery as there has been no scarcity of food in parks; abandoned cows have continued to wander the grounds and died. Healthy cows have also sometimes died after getting stuck in the marshes, providing access to food for vultures. It was observed that against the scenario prior to 1985, now out of hundred carcasses, only eight had vultures on them. Theoretically, disease or poisoning could be the culprit but evidence is lacking. Vultures produce highly corrosive stomach acids, allowing them to happily consume highly toxic bacteria such as anthrax. It has been seen that they seemed fine after eating the carcasses of cows that had been poisoned with a rodenticide. There are reports of vultures dying in South Africa after eating strychnine-laced cow or sheep carcasses. Such incidents are few and far between and cannot be the cause of population crash in vultures. Environmental pesticides could conceivably be killing birds or disrupting reproduction but tissue samples from dead vultures did not show significant pesticide loads. A team of investigators assembled by the Peregrine Fund, a nonprofit conservation organisation, arrived across the border in Pakistan in 2000 A.D. to investigate the deaths of vultures. What they would discover, after years of frustrating research, is that the very reverence for cows that had allowed vultures to flourish in India had subsequently led to their near-extinction across the region. A weird confluence of cultural practices, technological advancement and unique avian vulnerability caused a crisis that ranks among the worst human-caused wildlife die-offs in history. While the vulture deaths were inexplicable at first, they bring to mind past bird population declines whose causes were at least well understood. The dodo had succumbed to habitat destruction and predators introduced to its native island of Mauritius in the seventeenth century and its story later sustained a new understanding that animals actually could go extinct in clear defiance of God’s natural order. More recently, the passenger pigeon of North America numbered in the billions until humans wiped it out through massive hunting and deforestation. The species’ numbers faded gradually at first and then more rapidly until the last one perished in a zoo in 1914 A.D. In most cases, unintentional poisoning has played an important role in reducing the population of these birds. The condors consumed lead bullets in dead carcasses and this has shortened their livelihood by several years. It has been known in Africa that farmers have set out poisoned carcasses to kill leopards, lions and hyenas that hunted their cattle. In the same way, vultures have also fed on the tainted meat and died in great numbers. Even in Israel, the Druze and Bedouin farmers have also poisoned jackals, wolves and wild boars with destructive results. This has been confirmed by an avian ecologist with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Vultures actually aggregate in large numbers as they like to forage together and they nest in colonies. Hence, when there is a poisoning incidence, it usually takes out several hundreds of birds. Humans have not realised that such incidents will drive their numbers close to extinction. Conservationists who are working to protect vultures have to contend with not only a variety of environmental threats but also with public indifference laced with hostility and fear. Hostility has been a result of watching them circle above a wanderer in dry lands who is parched with thirst as he or she struggles. The vultures tend to settle near him or her as he or she weakens. On the first sign of collapse, the vultures will tend to converge on that person and attack by means of pecking at the flesh and even the eyes. These birds are symbolic of gluttony and take delight in consuming weak cattle and humans. Hostility has also arisen from the fact that vultures, with their featherless and bare heads, tend to look gross and ugly. Charles Darwin wrote once after seeing a turkey buzzard in 1835 in Chile that `it is a disgusting bird with its bald and scarlet head bent to wallow in putridity.’ It is known to man that vultures are specialists in finding dead bodies and carcasses that could be decomposed remains of even a few days. They emerge away from the carcasses with their beaks and mouths smeared with bacteria and blood. They have been found to defecate on to their legs. When they are threatened, turkey vultures take out stinky and acidic vomit to drive way other predators. Charles Darwin wrote about vultures, “When the condors are wheeling in a flock round and round any spot, their flight is beautiful; it is truly wonderful and beautiful to see these birds, hour after hour, without any apparent exertion, wheeling and gliding over mountain and river.” Vultures are on a constant search for carrion, swiftly stripping it bare before the decaying flesh can become a breeding ground for disease. For centuries, a Zoroastrian community in India called the Parsis, as well as Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet, disposed of their dead through `sky burials’, setting them out in high places where vultures and other birds quickly turned the bodies into bare skeletons. The health impact of the vulture decline, including treatment costs, loss of life and lost income, has been estimated at $34 billion just for the period from 1993 to 2006, which does not include spending for carcass management and disposal, loss of tourism dollars and environmental impact. Findings to determine cause of decline in population of vultures Most investigators had thought the reason could perhaps be an infectious disease, but it soon became clear to the research team that vultures were dying in clusters; this suggested exposure to a lethal toxin. In one of the first birds they examined, the internal organs were covered with a chalky paste - indicating visceral gout, a result of kidney failure. People and animals develop gout when they don’t properly metabolise purines, which are nitrogen-containing compounds that are commonly found in meat products. The body turns purines into uric acid, which birds normally excrete in their white poop, which is also the avian kind of urine. The researchers soon found many more dead vultures with gout and tested them for a long list of toxins, including heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium and commonly used insecticides. They looked for unusual bacteria and viruses, conducting DNA tests. Yet after two years of intense and expensive study, they identified nothing that could be causing such deaths, except for a common culprit. The Culprit – Painkillers - An innovation that turned fatal Diclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) which is used vastly to treat inflammation and pain, especially from rheumatoid and other kinds of arthritis. The investigators found Diclofenac in the dead vultures with kidney failure they had tested. This pain killer was present in the buffalo meat the birds had fed on before they died. To make sure of what they were arriving at, they injected diclofenac into few buffaloes and fed the meat to four captive birds, three of whom died of visceral gout within three days. The mystery was finally solved. The drug had been introduced in 1973 by Ciba-Geigy, a Swiss company that later became part of Novartis. There is an irony to the role of diclofenac in the vulture catastrophe; it had been specifically created to provide a less toxic alternative to aspirin and synthetic NSAIDs available at that time. In 1964, Alfred Sallmann and other chemists at Ciba-Geigy began studying existing NSAIDs, measuring their acidity, chemical structure and ability to dissolve in fat; all qualities that prove how well a substance is absorbed, binds with body receptors and is excreted. Scientists who studied Diclofenac’s safety and its effectiveness were aware that NSAIDs affect purine metabolism and they knew that interfering with those biological pathways could cause overproduction of uric acid and result in dangerous gout. However, in laboratory tests, Diclofenac or Voltaren, as Ciba-Geigy tagged the drug, seemed to have little effect on the enzymes involved in purine metabolism. For decades, Diclofenac was used mainly for arthritis in humans, but around 1994 in India and 1998 in Pakistan, veterinarians began using it to treat sick domestic water buffalo and cattle, usually by injection. It was cheap and effective; its patent had expired and it was manufactured by more than fifty companies in India. Diclofenac allowed rural families to treat their domestic animals’ pains so that they could continue working. People were happy with the results they were seeing. In Hindu culture, cow is treated as a mother, for it gives milk. Cows are of great value and they also plow the fields and provide milk. In case of cows, when they are given Diclofenac, the drug tends to break down fast and it becomes undetectable in the body after several days. It was an unfortunate reaction that the vultures developed severe gout as they became sensitive to Diclofenac as blood flow in their kidneys got reduced. Their organs malfunctioned and they could not get the uric acid removed from the blood, leading to gout and death. The vultures, being scavengers, fly high and spot carcasses of cows and buffaloes over large distances and dozens of them may descend on a body and strip it clean in very less time. They would also die within days as a result of infected cows. Deaths in vulture colonies are outpacing births. Mostly, vultures do not breed until they are five or six years old and the females will lay an egg a year and that also may or may not hatch. Mathematical models suggest that even one contaminated carcass can bring down the vulture population by about ten percent in a year. What action could be taken? Governments of India and Nepal convened a summit concerned by the rapidly declining vulture population. The summit was organised by the Peregrine Fund and various other groups to discuss damage control and recovery strategies. The government agencies were directed to stop veterinary Diclofenac in India, Nepal and Pakistan. Researchers suggested a safe alternative in Meloxicam after testing on vultures. Armed with the evidence that diclofenac had ravaged South Asian vulture populations, the Peregrine Fund and other groups convened summits in Nepal and India to prepare recovery plans. Conservation organisations educated government agencies, leading to bans on manufacturing of veterinary diclofenac in India, Nepal, and Pakistan in 2006. To encourage vets not to simply turn to other potentially dangerous NSAIDs, such as flunixin or ibuprofen, researchers identified a safe alternative, meloxicam, which they successfully tested in vultures. At first, the number of birds continued to fall every year. India did not ban actual sales of veterinary Diclofenac until 2008 and even allowed human Diclofenac products, which could be easily diverted for use in livestock. Large vials of Diclofenac remained available in pharmacies for several more years. While vets did begin to prescribe Meloxicam, its higher cost and lesser effectiveness slowed adoption. Other veterinary NSAIDs that kill vultures, such as ketoprofen, remain available in most of South Asia to this day. Finally, around 2011, the population of white-backed vultures stabilised, according to a study by Vibhu Prakash, the biologist who first documented the birds’ decline in Keoladeo Park, two decades earlier. Of the nine species of vultures that live in or visit India during migration, four are classified as critically endangered across their ranges: the white-backed, the Indian or long-billed, the red-headed and the slender-billed vultures. In the early 1990s, at least forty million vultures and possibly more lived in India; by 2015, the combined number of Indian, white-backed and slender-billed species has plummeted to somewhere about nineteen thousand in the country. To boost the chances of survival of these vultures, a captive breeding program was established and India now has five centres like these, holding more than six-hundred birds. The process is expensive, labor intensive and painfully slow. Success is not guaranteed as the vultures could still go extinct although breeding programs in California and Europe have been able to preserve threatened populations. A centre in Nepal released eight captive-bred vultures in September 2018 and it was the first such effort in South Asia. The Indian centres released their first captive-bred birds later. Diclofenac bans are now strictly enforced around the breeding centres and in safe zones that have been established in several locations across the region. In Nepal, six `Jatayu’ restaurants offer Diclofenac-free meals for the vultures. These programs buy old cattle or receive donated animals, allow them to die naturally, skin them for the leather and leave the carcasses out for vultures to safely consume. While it is difficult to ensure the meat is completely free of toxins, similar centres operate in India, Pakistan and Cambodia. The Long Battle Ahead India is not the only country where conservationists are labouring to protect minuscule bird populations. Israel, which about a hundred years ago had several thousand vultures, now has about one hundred and eighty resident Eurasian griffons along with hundred Egyptian vultures that migrate there in the summer, according to Hatzofe, the avian ecologist who oversees the country’s vulture protection programs. Israel’s wildlife agency now breeds vultures and releases them. It imports birds that are rehabilitated from places like Spain, tracks their whereabouts with GPS, stocks about thirty feeding sites with drug-free carcasses and protects individual nests that have eggs, subsequently chicks. Over and above these efforts, the agency also works to prevent aircraft collisions, researches emerging threats and supports public-education programs, as per Hatzofe. Staff members use helicopters to locate dead cows and have four trucks that clear almost three hundred tons of dead animals every year that include camels, sheep and cattle. This helps stem the overabundance of jackals, foxes, feral dogs and wild boars that feed on them. The government collects the carcasses and works with Druze and Bedouin shepherds to discourage them from involving poisons to protect their herds. Every bunch of unintentional vulture poisonings is a serious blow in a country that has so few of these birds; without the process of captive breeding and release, Israel’s vulture population would certainly decline further, Hatzofe said. Adaptation is the key here. With such a brittle population and varied collection of threats, there is no guarantee that numbers will increase steadily. Traditionally, they have fluctuated radically. Israel had at least a thousand pairs of Eurasian griffons in the early part of the twentieth century, which declined to just about eighty pairs in the early 1980s, as a result of food shortage, poisoning, electrocution on power lines, nest disturbances and poaching, as per the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. By the 1990s, with the help of conservation programs, the population has recovered to one hundred and fifty breeding pairs. Mathematical modeling has suggested that as few as one in every seven hundred and sixty, contaminated carcasses could drive down the vulture population by thirty per cent every year. Things are up and down in India The news from the Indian pharmaceutical scene is that companies are manufacturing diclofenac on a large scale for human use in vials and they are so large that part of it is being conserved still to treat livestock. This has been reported by Toby Galligan, a conservation scientist from Royal Society for Protection of Birds. Many veterinarians and livestock owners persist on choosing diclofenac over the other drug, meloxicam, which is not so dangerous for vultures. The suggestion given by Galligan is sensible when he instructs that diclofenac be allowed to be sold for use for human use but with limit to vials that are not bigger than four milliliters, making it harder to use in veterinary settings. This suggestion needs to be put into immediate practice if the vulture population is expected to survive in India. Pessimists do not give much hope as they feel that the vultures would disappear within a generation from India. As per an ornithologist, Prakash Javadekar, the vulture population in India has declined in a matter of three decades from 40,000,000 to just over 19,000. The breakup of this figure as per the Union Environment Minister is as follows – there are six thousand white-backed vultures left, twelve thousand long-billed vultures and one thousand slender-billed vultures left. The efforts of the vulture breeding centres that have been established for their conservation in various states have been in vain, mostly. The respective government heads of these states have released money in excess of 125 million Rupees towards vulture conservation. Vulture Population Prospects in Africa Prospects for vultures are also calamitous in Africa. A 2015 survey of ninety-five vulture populations in twenty-two African countries found that eighty-nine per cent of the population had suffered major decline or disappeared entirely over the last few decades. Sixty-one percent of recorded deaths were due to poisoning, twenty-nine to capture for trade in traditional medicine, nine to electrocution or collision with electrical infrastructure and one per cent to killing for food. Many countries are short of vigorous programs to fight these problems, some of which are degenerating. Trade in vulture parts appears to be rising and an American aid program is bringing electrical lines to more of sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa, the main reasons for the decline in population has been attributed to poisoning of vultures, urbanization, a rise in demand for vultures in witchcraft apart from electrocution by power lines and getting crushed by wind turbines. Vultures such as Ruppell’s Griffon are being threatened everyday by poaching, urban development and poisoning. At the current rate of decline, vultures are collapsing towards total extinction in Africa. There are eight vulture species in Africa and they have declined in number by about sixty-two per cent during the last three decades. This has been announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Assistant Director of African Programs for the Peregrine Fund, an Idaho-based no-profit organisation that is dedicated to saving birds of prey, mentioned that vultures have to be treated as one of the most important scavengers in nature. He was disturbed when he proclaimed that such natural recyclers that breed slowly and who require many years to mature are at the point of extinction in the next five decades. When a large predator in Africa such as a lion kills livestock, the respective farmer will often coat the carcass with poison to take revenge on that predator. This is a practice which is illegal but it is rarely prosecuted. Instead of the predator, it is the vultures that usually get to the corpse before anyone else and eventually to the poison. Pesticides are abused and poorly regulated in Africa. They are sometimes sold as `lion killers’ in many African countries. Many farmers use these pesticides, intentionally. This is the principal reason as per David Allan, curator of birds at the Durban Natural Science Museum in South Africa why vultures have mainly disappeared from the commercial farming regions in the African continent where pesticides are routinely used. Rapid urbanisation is also affecting the population of vultures in Africa as they are being displaced from their habitat. A sharp increase in wind farming across this continent has become a cause for concern as the vultures are often colliding with these turbines. The poachers are another danger as they are busy selling body parts of vultures to people dabbling in witchcraft. These idiots feel that through the vulture’s eyes, they are able to see into the future. In Africa, keeping a check on the vulture population is not an easy task as it may be in India perhaps because in the former, different countries are involved with various cultures. The vultures are facing different threats. Take, for example, the vulture population in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, Africa. The vultures there get much less attention than the apex predators and the wild game. Also, they are all threatened by the poison which is set out for them as a result of their attacks on livestock. However, there are several organisations connected with wild game reserve monitoring that train game scouts to respond to reports of carcasses which are poisoned before too many vultures feed on them and die. When a poisoning does get reported, the trained conservationists who are mostly Masai themselves approach the aggrieved farmer and listen to their complaints. Then, they discuss options. A particular group called the `Big Life Foundation’ keeps a fund to compensate such farmers. Complete cessation of poisoning is not possible but it can be checked and reduced so that the vulture population can grow gradually. It is going to take time as well as effort and it is not so easy. The slow but sure signs of the population growth in vultures in India show that societies could change if they wanted to and in ways that will allow these birds a possibility of a brighter future. A recent study done on vultures and cattle carcasses since 2010 has shown that the treatment with diclofenac has dropped by forty-nine per cent and researchers have extrapolated this information to conclude that there has been a corresponding decline on vulture deaths based on their feeding behaviour and that number is by almost sixty-five per cent. It is not something to dance about but it is certainly a step in the correct direction. The Race to save African Vultures A dozen species of African vultures are in the category of population freefall, meaning they are hunted for cultural uses or felled by poisons meant for lions. Conservationists and local people are moving quickly to stop the damage. While they may not have the same intrinsic majesty of say a pride of lions or a racing cheetah, a kettle of vultures feeding at a carcass on the African savanna is every bit as symbolic of that continent as the graceful, credible gait of a giraffe. What’s more, vultures play a significantly important ecological role and hence, the reason for grave alarm among conservationists about the growing decline of Africa’s once-flourishing vulture populations. Already, the vultures are the most threatened group of raptors in the world, which is why, in some respects, the related crisis in Africa feels like the repeat of a nightmare that played out in South Asia in the 1990s. There, vulture populations, especially in India, Pakistan, and Nepal rapidly disintegrated after farmers began treating their livestock with a cheap non-ste¬roidal anti-inflammatory pain reliever (NSAID) called diclofenac, which eases aches and increases milk yields. It has also, however, astonishingly toxic to many vultures that feed on the carcasses of livestock treated with it. By 2007, vulture populations in India had dropped by as much as 99.9%, and by only slightly less apocalyptic rates else¬where in the region. Frantic, last-ditch efforts like cap¬tive-breeding programs and campaigns to stop the veterinary use of NSAIDs have stabilised the vulture population in Asia today, at least somewhat. A similar collapse is playing out across Africa with different driving forces that make the situation challenging and perhaps more hopeful for those trying to stave off another vulture disaster. Seventy Per Cent of African Vulture Species are endangered Seven of Africa’s ten vulture species are now listed as endangered or critically endangered, with some populations falling by as much as 97% in the last few years. The steepest declines have occurred in West and East Africa and have even hit protected areas such as parks, with White-headed and Egyptian Vultures and Rüppell’s and Cape Griffon populations dropping the fastest. The list of threats to vultures in Africa is long and complex: NSAID poi¬soning, habitat loss, electrocution and collision with a rap¬idly growing power grid infrastructure, ingestion of lead ammunition from feeding on animals killed by hunters and human disturbance at breeding col¬onies, including egg-collecting and rec¬reational rock-climbing. Food scarcity is also a problem for vultures, especially in West Africa, where large-mammal populations have fallen 60% since 1970. Vultures are frequently the unintended victims of livestock growers who illegally use pesticide-laced car¬casses to kill off predators that threaten their herds, such as lions, jackals, and hyenas. Poisoning accounts for more than 60% of the vulture deaths in Africa, every year. “A lot of the things that affect vultures are not aimed at vultures,” said Darcy Ogada, Assistant Director of Africa Pro¬grams for the Peregrine Fund and lead author of a 2016 paper in the Journal Conservation Letters that pushed Africa’s vulture problem into the global limelight. Ogada says that the biggest threats to African vultures come when poisons are aimed directly at them. In particular, a growing trade in vulture body parts for traditional belief-based use (mostly as good-luck charms) uses poisons like carbamate pesticides as the preferred method of killing. “In southern Africa and parts of West Africa, people believe the use of vulture parts provides you with a degree of clairvoyance,” explains André Botha, the Vultures for Africa Program Man¬ager at the Endangered Wildlife Trust. The myth that vultures use clairvoyance to find faraway carcasses has led to the belief that consuming vulture parts can con¬vey extra sensory perception to humans. “People tend to use it for betting and gambling, but we also know examples where people used it to predict the outcome of exams,” he says. Although there is a modest food market for smoked vulture meat, most buyers simply want to possess part of a vulture, especially the head, believing it will improve success in business, raise the intelligence quotient of children, cure a variety of illnesses and generally bring good luck and ward off evil. The decline of White-backed Vultures from Nigeria has been blamed on belief-based trade in that country. The most shocking examples of poisoning for trade, though, have occurred in Guinea-Bissau, where more than 2,000 Hooded Vultures, a species already listed as critically endangered, have been killed since 2019. Hundreds of poisoned vultures have been found at a single site, many without their heads. Given that this small West African country holds about 43,000 Hooded Vultures, more than a fifth of the world’s population, the losses have seriously worried conser¬vationists, who see trade connections to larger and more populous countries like Nigeria as driving the demand. Botha notes that the use of vulture parts as charms has a long history, with hunters using traditional means to kill vultures. “But now, using modern pesticides, single incidents can kill hundreds and, as in the case of Guinea-Bissau, even thousands of birds,” he says. While belief uses are strongest in West Africa, the practice has a sizable foothold in southern Africa, Botha says. Experts see a disturbing rise in East Africa as well. “The sort of good vulture pop¬ulations remaining in West Africa probably won’t stay that way for very long,” Ogada warns, with the economic turmoil and job losses of the COVID-19 pandemic adding fresh incentives for people to monetise vulture populations. Ogada says that African vultures are being targeted in a type of sentinel poisoning, a common practice in which elephant or rhino poachers dose a carcass with toxins to preemptively kill off vultures so there are no gathering flocks of birds circling above an illegal kill. The increase in elephant poaching in the early 2000s drew international attention but no one notices that ele¬phant poachers also killed enormous numbers of vultures. Most notable among several incidents is that as many as five hundred vultures died at a single poisoned carcass at a national park in Namibia. More than one hundred and fifty vultures were killed at a dosed elephant body at Kruger National Park in South Africa. In most cases, swift decomposition meant that conservationists were unable to conclude exactly which species of vultures were involved. Sentinel poisoning is an issue that is much beyond the control of vulture conservationists as Per Mr. Ogada of the Peregrine Fund. Whereas sentinel poisoning accounted for about a third of the vultures killed in Africa each year in the early 2010s, Ogada says sentinel poisoning has decreased significantly in some countries, thanks to international pressure and stronger enforcement on elephant poaching. A Reason for Hope For all the bad news, conservationists have taken heart from the fact that the decline in African vultures has been slower than the extraordinarily rapid collapse that occurred in Asia, which has given them time to rally around and respond. They recognise the task of saving the great scavengers of their continent will not be that easy. Some Africans view vultures with superstitious fear and very few understand their ecological importance; which is why, vulture specialists are fighting back with their education and training. Through the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s poisoning intervention pro¬gram that was started by Botha, his colleagues along with him have trained more than two thousand conservation rangers, law enforcement officers and veterinarians in southern Africa to detect and prevent wildlife poisoning events. Botha has worked with Ogada to begin similar training in Kenya, where the Peregrine Fund has started collaborating with a non-profit group called `Lion Landscapes’ to offer a two-part education program for communities. Participants spend one day learning about the dangers of poisons and the importance of vultures; on the second day, they learn about how to build better livestock corrals, known as `bomas’, out of chain-link fences and sturdy gates. Better bomas leads to lesser instances of wandering livestock being lost to predators. This will motivate lesser incentive for communi¬ties to poison lions, hyenas and vultures that feed on poisoned bait or poisoned predators. Since 2019, this collaboration has facilitated the building of three hundred such corrals. There have been other important signs of progress. In 2020, a multi-species action plan was drafted under the sponsorship of the United Nations’ Convention on Migratory Species, covering all sixteen species of African and Eurasian vultures. It was endorsed by one hundred and twenty-eight 128 countries in the world from Europe, Asia and Africa. Botha was serving as the coordinator for that plan. It sets targets for reducing and eliminating several kinds of poisoning, focusing on protected areas and buffers. The plan also focused on international efforts to eliminate the veterinary use of NSAIDs and called for the identification of areas where electrical infrastructure, including proposed wind farms, posed the highest risk to vultures. This Convention on Migratory Species and Wild Animals came to an agreement for testing of all NSAIDs for vulture toxicity, the withdrawal from veterinary use of NSAIDs that are toxic and vulture-safety testing for new drugs. Another approach that has shown promise is the creation of Vulture Safe Zones, or VSZs. This is a technique that was pioneered in Asia in which a buffer was created around a vulture population strong¬hold. Within VSZs, use of diclofenac was aggressively fought against and drug-free carcasses were provided at vulture- feeding stations. Botha felt that many African vulture species are actively mobile over large areas every day. With more than fifty countries on the African conti¬nent, a single vulture may cross three or four international boundaries on a single daily foraging flight. For that reason, African conserva¬tionists are turning to the creation of multinational VSZs, overlapping the borders of Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana. In this area, the largest breeding colony of Cape Griffons could be found. Sometimes, you will find about one thousand four hundred birds nesting in a single colony in some of these zones. There are also considerable populations of vultures that are tree-nesting. About three hundred pairs of whte-backed vultures nest in the riparian vegetation along the Limpopo River that forms the border between three countries. The safe zones encompass close to twelve thousand square miles area. About eighty per cent of that is private land and that includes many private game reserves. Conservationists are working with private landowners within these Vulture Safe Zones and they include companies like DeBeers Diamond Company. National, local and provincial governments are working together to boost the existing legal protection for these vultures. Energy companies are also making sure that they reduce the risks of electrocution and power-line collisions. Some conservationists are also looking to explore anti-poisoning interventions and use of supplementary feeding stations to offer vultures with a food supply that is safe. They are likely to be successful to serve as models for trans-national zones alike in most parts of the African Continent like the Masai Mara in Kenya where the vultures follow the migrating game herds across the boundaries. The scale of the challenge is huge. There is a lot more of work that needs to be done but the way the things are being done looks promising. Summary Vultures are nature's most successful scavengers and they provide a vast collection of ecological and cultural services. Vultures are the only known coercive birds that have uniquely adapted to a scavenging lifestyle. Vultures' unique adaptations include soaring flight, keen eyesight and extremely low pH levels in their stomachs. Presently, about seven vulture species worldwide are threatened with extinction and the most rapid declines have occurred in the vulture-rich regions of Asia and Africa. The reasons for the decline in their population are varied, but poisoning or human persecution, or both, feature in the list of nearly every declining species. Deliberate poisoning of carnivores is likely the most widespread cause of vulture poisoning. In Asia, Gyps vultures have declined by more than almost ninety-five per cent due to poisoning by the diclofenac, which was banned for veterinary use by regional governments in 2006. It is still used for humans as a painkiller. Human persecution of vultures has occurred for centuries and shooting and deliberate poisoning are the most widely practiced activities. Ecological effects of vulture decline include changes in community composition of scavengers at carcasses and an increased potential for disease transmission between mammalian scavengers at carcasses. There have been cultural and economic costs of vulture decline also, particularly in Asia. As a result of disastrous vulture decline in Asia, regional governments, the international scientific and donor communities and the media have given the crisis considerable attention. Even though the Asian vulture crisis focused also on the plight of vultures worldwide, the situation for African vultures has received relatively little attention, especially given the similar levels of population decline. While the Asian crisis has been largely linked to poisoning by diclofenac, vulture population declines in Africa have numerous causes, which have made protecting existing populations more difficult. In Africa, there has been little government support to conserve vultures in spite of increasing evidence of major threats. In other regions with successful vulture protection programs, a common result is a large investment of financial resources and highly skilled personnel as well as political agenda and community support. Citations 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22175274/ 2. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-race-to-save-african-vultures/# 3. https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/poison-pill-the-mysterious-die-off-of-indias-vultures/ 4. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150731-vultures-africa-birds-animals-science 5. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/indian-vultures-are-dying-for-some-good-news/ 6. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/sharp-decline-in-vulture-population-from-40-million-to-19000-prakash-javadekar/article61590972.ece/amp/ ***********

Life in the Animal Kingdom

Scientists have been studying, probing and contemplating but they have not been able to prove that there is human and animal kingdom life elsewhere in the Solar System except on Planet Earth. When meteorites have fallen on Earth, we have learnt that they contain fossilised kinds of organisms. Few astronomers have been able to detect chemicals in the outer space that could be described as amino acids or the building blocks of ice. Let us learn a bit about animal life. The smallest forms of animal life could be found in the one-celled protozoans. They are very small for the naked eye and have to be probed through the microscopes. When you look at them, you will find they reveal themselves as miracles of symmetry and design. That is the glory of God, the Creator! The cell is really one of the truest wonders of nature. Each cell has a wall around it and a nucleus as the control centre. This nucleus will hold the chemical code that determines the forms of the cells and the physical features of a particular animal. All animals apart from the protozoans will have many millions of these cells. Mammals Among animals, we will come across mammals with mammary glands whose hallmark is hair, warm blood and glands that produce milk. The largest mammals are the great whales. The blue whale is the biggest animal in the kingdom. The whales are found in the sea where they breathe air when they come up. Mostly, they swim and live like fish. Animals of this size find it easy to survive under water as that is the only medium that can support their heavy weight. Each animal has developed physical features that help it to find food and defend itself. The elephant has been given four legs like pillars to support its vast and huge body and it has a trunk with strongest muscles as an extension of its nose to serve diverse functions which are similar to how humans use their hands. With such an adaptable organ, an elephant can squirt water over its body to keep itself cool or even pick up things from the ground to eat, like grass. The giraffe, being very tall, can feed on the leaves of a tree with its long neck that allows it to browse and feed without much effort among the tree branches. The mole that burrows in the ground, looking for worms to eat has been given paws that function as spades. Another great example of a termite hunter is the aardvark. Vertebrates, Amphibians and Reptiles There is greater diversity, outside of the mammals. Vertebrates such as birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles are suited to life in a special kind of environment. When we explore the invertebrates, those animals who do not have backbones offer us a remarkable diversity. The insects are the most found among invertebrates and for that matter; among all animals. They have the largest number of the different types of species. If we start counting, the number is more than a million that have also been classified. There is possibility that more are yet to be discovered. They occupy almost every kind of land and freshwater habitats. They can live high up in the mountains and could be found deep in the caves; in the tropics and even in frozen lands of the Antarctica. Many species even migrate like the birds and they can travel hundreds of miles. Some of the frailest creatures like the butterflies are frequent migrants, specially the monarch butterflies of North America and the painted ladies of Europe and Africa who are capable of travelling huge distances. The ability among some animals to find their way is a wonder of nature which has not been fully understood by man, yet. Recent research has shown us that the homing pigeons have tissues in their heads that contain traces of highly magnetic mineral called magnetite that acts as a built-in compass and allows them to respond to the magnetism available on Earth. This substance is also found in bees who also display great navigational skills. Some birds have been found to navigate by the stars or the direction of the Sun with the help of a kind of a built-in clock. Some birds and animals use landmarks. For example, a pigeon can easily identify its home loft. As an exercise, eighteen albatrosses making Midway Island their home were taken in an aeroplane to dispersed places in a range of three thousand miles away but they all managed to find their way back to Midway island within a reasonable time. Such experiments give us evidence that animals have highly developed senses, which are found lacking in Man, without the aid of a compass oor GPS tools. The sense of smell is an important means of communication to wild animals. Insects give off few chemical substances such as pheromones and they serve as identification signals to others of the same kind of species. These pheromones also come in handy when they mate and during their courtship. The hint of a right scent will attract a male insect to a female one over considerable distances. Another interesting animal is a horsefly. Its eye consists of several separate lens units that are called ommatidia. The lens receive light from a very small field of view. The sight is a result of a build up of a series of dots that form an image like a mosaic, in a similar way to a photograph in a newspaper which is made up of a number of dots of ink or like an image on a colour television screen that is made up of a series of dots of light. Horseflies have iridescent eyes that glow with shades of green and tinged with dark brown or purple. Another good example is the Monarch Butterfly which is native to North America and it is one of the most remarkable travellers in nature. These butterflies are seen all over Canada and the United States of America during summer and they breed as far north as the shores of Hudson Bay. In the autumn season, they migrate southwards in large swarms and their migration ends when they reach the Gulf of Mexico. During winter, they hang from trees and do not fly. They are in a semi-torpid state. As son as the spring arrives, they wake up and fly back northwards. It has been observed that they are capable of flying over two thousand five hundred miles in their round trip.

Benjamin Franklin – A Legendary American Inventor

Less than a couple of centuries after the initial English settlers set foot on the North American continent, the United States gave the world a Renaissance man – Benjamin Franklin. He was a man of modest beginnings who left his impact in science, politics, diplomacy, philosophy and innovation. He was versatile and it is a tribute to his character and his natural intelligence, besides being a testament to his curious and innovative nature. He did not study in an exalted educational institute and there was no big store of wealth to fund his inventions. He was a member of the middle class and pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He had a wife and an illegitimate son. He became a writer, a pragmatist and a philanthropist. Early Days after Birth in Boston, Massachusetts Franklin once wrote, “We are all born ignorant but we have to work hard to remain stupid.” Benjamin Franklin was born on 6th January 1706. He was one among twelve children born to Josiah Franklin. Josiah earned his living by making wax candles and soap. He had two wives and seventeen children, in all. Money became taught to educate all his children. Bejamin had to drop off from the eighth grade in South Grammar School in Boston as his father could not afford the cost of his education. When he was fifteen, he had to resort to working and not to studying. He had to work at the dock and as a cutler. With minimal schooling, Benjamin still had a lively intellect. He used to read Daniel Defoe as a child. Though his family was a church-going one, Benjamin had no interest in the church or its ministry and when he grew up; he had no vocation for it, despite his father’s insistence. However, traits of Puritanism filtered through in his lifestyle and in his writing, later. He believed in an honest and diligent living. He lived a simple and frugal life with main purpose in life being to serve and obey God. His brother, James, started a newspaper that was printed under the nomenclature of `The New England Courant’. Benjamin assisted him in this enterprise and also wrote some articles, one of which was about how people got sicker after taking inoculation for small pox. When he was seventeen, in 1723, Benjamin ran away and started to seek work in Philadelphia. He found the city bustling with life and he would settle down here for quite some time. Life in Philadelphia and then in London When he arrived in Philadelphia, he did not have much money left to spend. He decided to save up for food, stayed in a boarding house and wrote his famous maxim, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Philadelphia was then the largest city in the colonies. It offered more opportunity to him than Boston. Benjamin Franklin was able to find work as an apprentice printer. He was noticed by William Keith who was Governor of Pennsylvania who set him up in his own business and sent him to London to purchase rinting equipment for the business. Franklin proceeded to London and though it was not planned; he ended up staying there for a couple of years. He worked with a printer there by the name of Samuel Palmer. While in London, Franklin picked up the art of business etiquette and diplomacy. He printed one of his earliest pamphlets in London titled `A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain’. He forgot about William Keith and his business and arrived back in Philadelphia in 1726. Benjamin started considering himself as a Britisher in Philadelphia. He got into an affair with a woman named Deborah and had a child with her outside of marriage. Franklin came to be known in the city as a master printer and he built his career in his adoptive city. Deborah also proved to be a good business partner. Franklin was in-charge of the print shop while Deborah looked after the books and stationery, along with a general store that they also ran. Benjamin started his `Pennsylvania Gazette’ in 1730. In 1733, he started `Poor Richard’s Almanack’. It was a successful move. He wrote it under the alias of Richard Saunders. It was presented as the work of a man who needed money on account of a nagging wife. The almanac included recipes, weather reports and homilies that were speeches or sermons for moral or spiritual guidance. The Pennsylvania Gazette became the newspaper that was most widely read in all the thirteen colonies of the state. Benjamin Franklin started organising a Junto which was kind of a weekly meeting of artisans and tradesmen who were dedicated towards improving their standard of life. Franklin fashioned these meetings on the model of the coffee houses of London. His friends were also voracious readers who benfited from the writings of others. As time passed by, Franklin printed `Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania’ in 1749. In 1751, he was made the President of the Academy and Charity School of Philadelphia. In 1752, he promoted a textbook called `Elementa Philosophica’ by Samuel Johnson. It promoted a new educational curriculum In 1755, the College of Philadelphia opened. It has to be noted that about one-third of the men who had a big role to play in the creation of the Declaration of Independence were students of this College. Today, it stands as University of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin’s enthusiasm for improvement of life came from the values that he learnt from his Puritan parents. He believed in profitable living. He was the son of a poor candle maker but by mid life; he became quite wealthy that led him to retire from the life of a printmaker and pursue other business interests. His studies and his discoveries in later life built such a reputation that he started to be a respected name in the Courts of Europe. The Inventor “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this, we should do freely and generously.” – Benjamin Franklin. He was innovative by nature and has been given credit for many inventions of his. The principles of an air-conditioner and the concept of daylight savings time are credited to him. He has also invented the musical instrument, glass harmonica. It was an assortment of glass bowls of different sizes that were arranged on a rotating shaft. The shaft was spun with foot pedals. This invention became popular in USA and Europe.. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven wrote compositions for the glass harmonica. It is surprising that not many composers wrote for this instrument and its popularity has waned down the ages. Franklin also invented a special kind of stove that offered more efficiency and safety in those homes that lacked central heating. Most fireplaces were quite inefficient in colonial homes as the heat they produced through burning wood escaped upwards with the chimney. The stove designed by Franklin enclosed the fire within a box of cast iron and it could be kept in the centre of the room for heating purposes. Heat was radiated from all four sides of that box and adjustments could be made to the flow of air and the rate at which the wood would burn could also be controlled. The enclosure of the flames reduced the risk of stray sparks igniting a fire within the house. Franklin was also interested in the study of electricity while doing work in his print shop. He made a public proposal to fly a kite (Leonardo da Vinci was one of the earliest inventors of flying kites) in a storm to prove that lightning was electricity in its most intense form. He took care not to get struck by the lightning and conducted his experiment in 1752. In that process, he also invented the lightning rod which would protect buildings from getting struck by lightning based on a theory that if a metal rod were attached to the top of a building and wired with a cable to the ground, the rod would attract the lightning from storm clouds and avoiding damage. He conducted these experiments in his own home and found that his theories were correct. Lightning rods were then installed in a big way in the Academy of Philadelphia and the State House. The news spread to Europe and French cathedrals showed lot of interest in this device. Benjamin Franklin received accolades as the world became exposed to his achievements. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756 and he was one of the earliest and few Americans to be recognized in this way. He introduced these words to the English dictionary – battery, charge, positive and negative elements. He never bothered to apply for patents for most of his inventions. It sourced to his principle that inventors should be happy to benefit society with their creations and such inventions should be shared freely with others. Colonial Politics Benjamin Franklin always thought that being rebellious against tyrants is being obedient to God. As he grew up in life, Franklin showed much interest in every facet of life, ranging from science to education and from public service to politics. In the field of politics, he had acute insights and also had problem solving skills. His interest in politics provided him a base for a complicated and revolutionary turn in his career. In 1748, he was made a Councilman for the Philadelphia Government. The next year, he was made a Justice of the Peace. Two years later, he was elected to serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He began to defend the rights of the elected representatives as a leader in the Quaker Political Party which maintained the power of the Penn family. This Party were firmly on the side of the British and Britain had control of the land that was east of the Mississippi River. Such loyalty made him flourish as he was soon made the Deputy Post Master General of British North America. While at that post, he made sure that he improved the postal system. He noticed that during his days, the mail service was unstable. Coastal routes were the most reliable means of mail delivery because the roads that were connecting to the colonies were not in good condition. It was taking as long as a fortnight for a letter sent from New York City to Philadelphia. The postmen who were handed over these letters would take breaks at inns, taverns and coffee houses. He made a tour of all the colonial post offices. He then authorised the placement of milestones along the main roads after he surveyed the routes. He established direct routes between the colonies so that the mail would reach more efficiently. He started the weekly mail wagon that had to travel both during the day and night to improve the speed of mail delivery, particularly between New York City and Philadelphia. He organised postal rates based on weight and distance and standardised it throughout the thirteen colonies. He created a mail system with roads that ran from Maine to Florida. He served in this position till 1774. He then started to realise that there were flaws in the social and governmental structure run by the British. Corruption was spreading within political circles. Franklin the American When Benjamin Franklin started disagreeing with the British way of governance and administration, he was looked upon as a troublemaker. Franklin started realising that the colonists and the British could not exist peacefully for long. In the minds, the battle of independence had already begun. There was some bloodshed, too, at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts State. When Franklin was elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Second Continental Congress, he automatically became part of the Committee of Five who was assigned to write the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. Franklin was suffering with a case of gout during that period. The bulk of the writing responsibility fell on the shoulders of Thomas Jefferson. There was a risk that should the British stand firm, all members of this Committee were to be hanged and executed. Things worked out differently as on 4th July of 1776, USA got its independence and Franklin was among the heroes of that struggle. Later, in December of that year, Franklin was sent to France to serve as a Commissioner for the United States. He travelled with his grandson, William Temple Franklin. The French had heard about Franklin’s scientific experiments and they also welcomed his wit. Many French elite started befriending him. Franklin slowly started becoming the voice of the conscience of the New World. He said, “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation (meaning slow elimination), if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” The country’s Declaration of Independence affirmed the equality of all races and cultures. The irony of this declaration was both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were themselves owner of slaves for over four decades. Franklin even became critical when some slaves ran off to join the British Army during the colonial period. The dichotomy ws that Franklin never attempted to recapture them. In those times, the loss of a slave meant almost a loss of property. He owned seven slaves, among them a husband and wife, who worked well but he decided to sell them because he did not like Negro servants. As time went on, his views on slavery evolved. He was very keen on Pennsylvania passing laws to oppose slavery. King George III refused to pass such laws and his attempt to bring an end to slavery, failed. In partnership with Father Benjamin Rush, Franklin founded the First Abolition Society in Pennsylvania. He achieved success eventually in 1787 when he was made the President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This was the last major issue he took part in as his health started deteriorating with gout and kidney problems. He died on 17th April 1790. His funeral was attended by over twenty thousand mourners in Philadelphia. He had written an epitaph for himself wich read, “Here lies the bosy of B. Franklin – Printer like the cover of an old book; its contents torn out and script of its lettering and gilding, food for worms. His works shall not be wholly lost for it will as per his belief appear once more in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended by the Author.” During his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin write, “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live; the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men.” Before he died, Franklin was elected as the Sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. It was a post similar to that of a Governor. It was in that capacity that he played host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which was held in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin was the only Founding Father to sign all four major documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Treat of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with the French and the United States Constitution. Franklin proposed daily prayers in Philadelphia in the Executive Council. He reminded the dekegates that when he conflict with Britain started, the leaders of the nation prayed for divine protection on a daily basis. He asked, “Have we now forgotten that Powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? If a sparrow can’t fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?” This idea was not welcome and his motion was opposed. It goes to show the Great Nation under God was already turning away from Divine help. Benjamin Franklin believed passionately in morality and virtue and felt that is was merely by conducting our lives according to principles of goodness that a man could prosper. He explained, “I never doubted in the existence of the Deity; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing of good to man; that our souls are immortal and that all crimes would be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or in the Hereafter.” He believed in ethics and not in man-made dogmas and doctrines. It was with this philosophy that he vehemently supported religious tolerance. Puritan values formed his growing ideals, early in life and he remained a powerful advocate for work, education, temperance , frugality, charity and concern for the community. From his young days, he forged his own destiny when he left Boston for Philadelphia and created a profitable career for himself as a printer and civic leader. He was probably the first American citizen who was comfortable in other environments of different countries, leaving an impact with his American identity, particularly in Europe. He always hoped that ultimately; goodness shall triumph so that all men and women who were created equal could live together in harmony and freedom. *******

The impact of Expanding Projects of Liquefied Natural Gas

Big companies dealing with natural gas do not mention to the lay people around the world that natural gas is in a way poison to them and to the air and climate around them. Liquefied Natural Gas is, in reality, fracked gas. Fracking is hydraulic fracturing. It is a technique to recover gas and oil from shale rock. It involves drilling into the earth’s core and injecting a high pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand at the layers of a rock to have the gas, that is within, to be released. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock. It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer to release the gas inside. This fracked gas is cooled at approximately (-) 160°C and condensed into a liquid in coastal or offshore terminals. This liquefied natural gas is then shipped, converted back to gas and burnt all over Planet Earth. Big banks and their corporate heads, along with their fossil fuel clients love to present LNG as a kind of `bridge fuel’. They fail to mention that the main component that is being dealt with is methane. This is eighty times more dangerous to the climate than carbon. LNG has become the fastest growing fossil fuel sector now. It is expanding fast with many new projects and all this is happening at a time when scientists are telling us that we cannot afford new fossil fuel expansion projects. To give a clear idea, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are the leading five LNG banks, right in the midst of USA. They are not going to advocate the non-expansion of LNG projects. Let us understand that new and fracked gas terminals are going to cost anywhere from ten to twenty billion dollars and they will take anywhere from three to four years. All it says is that we are going to be locked into many more decades of dependence on LNG and fossil fuels. International Energy Agency is warning that there is no room for new natural gas fields to achieve Net Zero emissions. This does not seem possible with LNG liquefaction facilities that are under construction or at the planning stage. There is news that new LNG export terminals are being made ready for the Gulf Coast and the communities there are being overburdened with destructive climate impact and toxic pollution. This article is meant to convince people that LNG is going to be a major contributor to the emergency status of our climate on Earth. If the banks defunded this climate chaos, it would be an advisable move for energy transition. All fossil fuel expansion projects need to have their funding cut off. There is complacency around such a warning but people have not realised that certain disasters in the recent past are a direct result of big banks funding the fossil fuel bigwigs. The heat wave that affected California last summer around Fall is one example and thousands that got killed with millions displaced due to extreme flooding in Pakistan is another example. No one talks about the fires that are ravaging in the Amazon jungles in South America.

The Wonders of the Atmosphere of Earth

The Earth's atmosphere is a marvel of natural phenomena, providing the conditions necessary for life as we know it. It protects us from harmful radiation, regulates temperature, and provides the air we breathe. Key wonders include the protective ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, and the movement of air masses creating weather patterns. Protection from Harmful Radiation The ozone layer in the stratosphere absorbs most of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, preventing it from reaching the Earth's surface and causing damage to living organisms. Without this protective layer, life as we know it would be impossible, as ultraviolet radiation can cause sunburn, skin cancer and other health problems. Temperature Regulation The atmosphere traps some of the sun's heat, creating a greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth warm enough to support life. This is important because without the atmosphere; the Earth's average temperature would be far below freezing. The atmosphere also acts as a blanket, moderating temperature fluctuations between day and night. Weather Phenomena The atmosphere is constantly in motion, driven by temperature differences and pressure variations, leading to the formation of clouds, rain, wind and other weather patterns. Jet streams and powerful winds high in the atmosphere can influence weather systems around the globe. The formation of hurricanes and other powerful storms is also a result of atmospheric dynamics. Atmospheric Refraction The way light bends as it passes through the atmosphere creates stunning visual effects like sunsets and sunrises. Atmospheric refraction also causes the sun to appear above the horizon even when it is actually slightly below it. The Northern and Southern Lights (Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis) are caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. Atmospheric pressure keeps liquid water on the surface of the Earth and allows life to exist. The atmosphere also protects us from meteoroids, which burn up as they enter the atmosphere, preventing them from reaching the surface as large impacts. The atmosphere is as much a part of our planet as its crust with the molten rock within. Atmosphere is one of the most extraordinary features of Planet Earth but unfortunately; the least considered among the features. The layer of gases from the atmosphere extends about five hundred kilometres or three hundred miles into space. There are two principal gases that make up about ninety-nine per cent of the air around the Earth – Nitrogen accounts for about 78% and Oxygen makes up about 21%. The remaining one per cent is Argon, along with bits of carbon dioxide, neon, helium, krypton, xenon, hydrogen, methane and nitrous oxide. There are four layers as per scientists. The lowest part is the troposphere. It holds most of the dust and moisture, up to ten miles upwards. The temperature drops steadily the higher we go. The next layer is the stratosphere that extends to further twenty miles. Th third layer is the mesosphere which extends to about further twenty miles into space. The last layer is the thermosphere that extends into space and has no limit. The lower part of the thermosphere is called the ionosphere and this region is full of electrically charged air particles that are known as ions. These particles receive their charge as a result of radiation from the sun’s ultra violet rays and they reflect amplitude modulation radio waves down to Earth. They are also used for long distance radio transmissions in long, medium and short wave bands. Frequency Modulation (FM) waves pass through this ionosphere and travel out into space. The feature that most of us miss out on of the atmosphere is that it forms a shield that protects the Earth against effects of mass of energy from the Sun in the form of cosmic rays and large particles of metallic and stony matter that are known as meteors. A Comet is a celestial body that moves around the sun and when it passes close to the surface of the Earth, it emits a spectacular display such as fireworks. One of the most famous examples is that of Halley’s Comet. Moisture and dust in the air give off many phenomena in the earth’s atmosphere. The blue colour of the sky is caused by the light from the Sun which is scattered by the atoms in the air. The variations in the colour of the sky are mostly due to dust and pollution. After the fierce Krakatoa Volcano’s explosion in 1883, all places on Earth were witness to a series of spellbinding red sunsets for almost a year until the dust of the lava ash finally settled. The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) are also caused by sub-atomic particles from the Sun that collides with atmospheric particles, causing them to change their electrical charge and reflect lights like a fluorescent lamp. Different colours can be seen, depending n the charged atoms in the atmosphere. Mirages are also caused by the juxtaposition of layers of air of different temperatures. These layers are of different density and they cause the waves of light to bend at the junction between the layers. When the light from the sky is reflected on the ground, people think that it could be a body of water. Speaking of effects in the atmosphere, the Cirrocumulus clouds seems like piles of curled up white cotton wool in the skies. It is a rae cloud formation that usually takes place at around thirty-five thousand feet high above the surface of the Earth. These clouds are made up of ice crystals and often produce snow but if there are no lower clouds to reinforce them, the snow may evaporate before it reaches the ground. Tornadoes are produced by wind currents that may rotate at speeds up to three hundred miles an hour. The whirling columns of cloud or funnels strike downward towards the ground, raising clouds of dust as they strike the earth, causing considerable damage. At sea, the same factors cause water spouts.

Seas and Lakes

More than three quarters of the surface of the Earth is covered by water in the form of oceans, seas and lakes. The volume of water from these bodies is drawn up into the clouds by the effect of the heat received from the sun and it descends as rain, keeping life in existence, today. Several parts of the ocean floors are more than ten miles, stretching below the surface and some abysses are even deeper than that. There are many wonders in the oceans that are even found close the land shores and they include deep harbours, coral reefs, sandbars and gravel banks which are built by the action of the ocean waves and the ebb and flow of the tides which is caused by the pull of the Moon. Most of the islands that are found in the middle of the oceans emerge from the sea floor directly. The coral reefs are made up of small coral animals that are also known as polyps or planktons and they are related to sea anemones and jellyfish. They occur in seas that have temperatures exceeding eighteen degrees Celsius or sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. These corals exist in colonies and they build external skeletons from calcium that is extracted from the seawater. These combined skeletons build huge deposits that turn into atolls and reefs. The Power of Seas and Lakes The seas and lakes have the power to change the face of Planet Earth. It has to be noted that the waves crash on to already heavily eroded rocky shores. Atolls also begin as fringing reefs around volcanic islands. They emanate from the rims of craters. On account of the subsidence, the centres of islands are left submerged to form lagoons and the reefs form atolls. The longer reefs appear off continental coasts. A fine example is the Great Barrier Reef, off the North-Eastern coast of Australia. Many people imagine lakes to be limited in size and area. There are some lakes in this world that look as big as the oceans, themselves. Take Lake Superior or the Caspian Sea for example. Caspian Sea is the largest in the world and it covers an area of one hundred and forty-four thousand square miles. It is located in a great depression, east of the Caucasus Mountains and it lies about ninety feet below the sea level. In contrast, the Aral Sea is located about two hundred and twenty miles to its east and lies about one hundred and sixty-five feet above the sea level. The Great Salt Lake in Utah in the United States of America is the saltiest in the world. Lake Eyre, the largest lake in Australia is often wholly dry and is covered with a thick crust of salt, covering its bed. It gets filled only in times of heavy rainfall. Lake Baikal in Southern Siberia is the deepest lake in the world. It fills a deep rift valley with its bed being close to five thousand feet below the sea level at the lowest point. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world. It forms one of the five great lakes in North America. The Tarn House in Cumbria to the north of England is a fine example of a mountain lake, occupying a hollow that was created by snow and ice. Lake Titicaca in Bolivia is the highest situated lake in the world. Its surface is at around twelve thousand feet above the sea level.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline – Is it worth the big risk?!

So far, eighteen insurers have already dropped Trans Mountain because of the detrimental impact on local communities and drinking water issues but Liberty Mutual has remained silent. This project is in direct violation of human rights, as it does not have consent from indigenous communities. It has to be noted that if that isn’t bad enough, Liberty is also known for dropping coverage for people in areas most affected by climate disasters. Liberty Mutual maybe sensitive to any threats that spoil their `wholesome’ and `community-driven’ brand reputation. Whatever, The Trans Mountain pipeline is not worth the risk involving the health and safety of frontline communities and the threat to local wildlife. Trans Mountain poses massive threats to surrounding wildlife. From Anna’s hummingbirds to Orcas in the northern Pacific, this pipeline risks animals all along its route through Western Canada. Entire ecosystems are at risk and that is a big threat to local communities too. It looks like Liberty Mutual will decide the fate of the Trans Mountain Pipeline — and the fate of so many lives — when they decide whether or not to renew its insurance certificate The Trans Mountain pipeline, at some point, will break and leak, causing toxic tar sands oil to pollute drinking water and wild salmon habitats. Communities have called for a stop to the pipeline in order to protect the salmon — a food source and a large part of local economies; but their demands have been ignored. Ecosystems are connected. It’s not just a risk to a few animals in the short- term. Projects such as these cover hundreds of miles, carrying thousands of tons of tar sands oil. It harms everything along their path - people, animals, water and air. Despite the risks to protected animals, drinking water, frontline communities and our shared climate — construction has continued as the project continues to be insured. Tar sands oil releases three times more pollution than conventional oil and the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will triple the pipeline’s oil capacity — making it one of the most carbon intensive projects in the world. That’s why it’s so critical to consider about this expansion, NOW! The science is telling us that we cannot afford any new fossil fuel expansion. Trans Mountain Pipeline is literally a life-threatening expansion project. Will the government heads think about our environment and stop their greedy planning?!