NEWS

US Program Helps Blow Whistle on Wildlife Crimes

Rampant poaching across Africa has pushed species of elephants, rhinos and other treasured wildlife to the edge of extinction. However, there is a mostly untapped resource that can help crack down on these crimes: the Wildlife Whistleblower Program.

The program, an initiative of the National Whistleblower Center in Washington, allows witnesses to report wildlife crimes online, anonymously if they so choose. Reportable crimes include illegal poaching and trafficking, destruction of rainforests, and the improper netting of dolphins.

The international program provides confidentiality and monetary rewards to those who report such crimes if a case is successfully prosecuted.

The Washington-based Whistleblower Center describes itself as a legal advocacy organization that protects “the right of individuals to report wrongdoing without fear of retaliation.”

Chief operating officer Ashley Binetti says the wildlife program was created after the executive director realized U.S. wildlife laws that include rewards have not been fully implemented.

She thinks that will change as people with knowledge of such crimes realize that their identities will be kept confidential.

“[It’s] now a two-fold endeavor,” she said. “One aspect is educating potential whistleblowers about this opportunity and the other side is creating a safe online reporting platform whereby individuals with information can come forward with that, report it, and then be connected to attorneys who will help them transmit that information to appropriate law enforcement.”

“It’s not like you’re reporting to a tip line where you don’t know that your information is going to remain confidential,” Binetti said.

She says another element of the anti-poaching project is the potential for monetary rewards.

“Whistleblower rewards have been incredibly successful and there is all the reason to believe that that model can be replicated in terms of energizing wildlife whistleblowers and reversing the extinction crisis,” she said.     

Link to US

Binetti says anyone with knowledge of a wildlife crime can contact the center and be eligible for an award, with one caveat.

“The crime can occur anywhere, but it does have to have a tie to the U.S. But under these laws, that can be quite broad,” she explained. “For example, with the Lacey and Endangered Species acts, if a [wildlife product] is destined for the United States or is leaving the U.S. or a U.S. person is involved, there is potential liability there.”.

Another law that can be applied to wildlife crime is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which criminalizes bribery that would allow illicit goods onto ships and planes.

“So whereas you have the wildlife crime laws that haven’t been fully implemented in terms of the whistleblowing provisions, you have the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that is a really great route to start, [though] we haven’t seen it used in this context as best that it can be,” Binetti said.

To report a wildlife crime, witnesses should visit the National Whistleblower Center website at: wildlifewhistleblower.org\submit-a-report. 
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India Launches South Asia ‘Diplomacy’ Satellite for Communication Services

India launched a “South Asia” satellite on Friday to provide communication services to neighboring countries in a new initiative hailed by leaders of seven South Asian countries as a boost to regional cooperation.

The “space diplomacy” by India, which has an advanced space program, aims at building stronger ties in the region where China has been gaining influence. But underlining the tensions between the two most populous countries in the region, India’s arch-rival, Pakistan has opted out of the project.

Soon after the launch of the $70-million satellite, which is funded by New Delhi, the leaders of the seven countries participating in the project — India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives, addressed a video conference that was nationally televised.

Calling it the “first of its kind” project, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the satellite would help meet the aspirations of economic progress of one-and-a-half-billion people in the region.

“It shows that our collective choices for our citizens will bring us together for cooperation, not conflict, development, not destruction, and prosperity, not poverty, he said.”

Pointing out that South Asia was the world’s least economically integrated region, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said “South Asia has taken a giant step today toward regional cooperation.”

The leader of the landlocked country, which does not have road access to India, said if cooperation through land is not possible, it is certainly possible through the sky. “We are confident we will integrate,” he said.

Weighing 2,230 kilograms and containing 12 communication transponders, the satellite was put in orbit by a rocket in Sriharikota in eastern Andhra Pradesh state. It will help provide services such as telecommunications, telemedicine, disaster management and weather forecasting.

In a region prone to natural disasters like cyclones, floods and earthquakes, the satellite’s greatest benefit is expected to be in the area of disaster management.

The biggest beneficiaries will be the two smallest countries — Bhutan and Maldives.

Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay noted that his tiny Himalayan country, which measures the happiness quotient of its citizens as an indicator of progress, had neither the technical know-how nor the resources to launch their own satellite. He said the satellite will “advance the well being and happiness of our people” as it helps boost an array of services.

Pointing out that India wants to use its space program to further its regional goals, Sukh Deo Muni, a South Asia expert at New Delhi’s Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses said “India wants to take the lead in integrating the region, and probably join hands on the developmental issues, cooperating with each other.”

After taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Modi launched what he called a “neighborhood first” approach, partly to counter China, which has expanded its influence in South Asia and pumped in billions of dollars to build infrastructure projects in countries like Sri Lanka.

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan at the Observer Research Foundation Others said that for the first time, Modi is giving a strategic dimension to the country’s space program.

“India is possibly beginning to appreciate the importance of space launches as part of foreign policy tool and diplomatic engagement, something that China has been doing for a long time,” he said.

Foreign policy experts say Pakistan’s decision to opt out of the project is not surprising given the deep political hostilities and suspicions between the two countries.
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Scientists Track Beetles in Effort to Stop a Plant Plague

Rob Dunn is trying to prevent squash heart attacks.

Carried by the spotted cucumber beetle, a bacterial disease is giving squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons the botanical equivalent of clogged arteries. Wilting leaves are the first sign as the bacteria multiply in the plant’s circulatory system. The disease can nearly wipe out a farmer’s field.

“It’s a bad way to die,” Dunn said. “All your veins have been filled up with some bacteria.”

Dunn, an ecologist at North Carolina State University, said the way we farm today makes it easy for this and other plant plagues to spread.

Modern farms raise just a few crops over wide areas. While they feed more people more affordably than ever, there are risks in this way of feeding the world.

For a hungry pathogen, a giant monoculture is “the holy land, right? It’s unbelievable. You can eat from one end to the other,” Dunn said.

‘A story we repeat again and again’

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s is the worst-case scenario. About a million people died when a fungus wiped out the one crop on which most of the population subsisted.

That kind of catastrophe is rare. But Dunn says devastating disease outbreaks are an inevitable byproduct of modern agriculture.

“This is a story we repeat again and again,” he said.

Dunn tells several of those stories in his new book, Never Out of Season.

One example: Henry Ford’s rubber plantations. The auto pioneer planted millions of rubber trees on land carved out of the Brazilian Amazon in the 1930s. But pests and disease ravaged them again and again. Ford gave up in 1945. Fordlandia, as the first plantation was known, is now an abandoned ruin.

Then there’s the fungus that nearly wiped out cocoa production in Brazil, a suspected bioterrorist attack that wrecked the economy and transformed the ecosystem; and the cassava mealybug that threatened Africa in the 1980s.

Prepare now

Still, Dunn says he doesn’t expect agriculture to change anytime soon.

“People like cheap food,” he said. “We feed more people than we ever have.”

But, he added, we should be doing much more to prepare for the next inevitable plague.

That means collecting and preserving as many crop varieties as possible, plus their wild relatives. In addition, we need to know much more about the complex microbial ecosystem living in, on and around our crops.

“If there’s a fungus on which the roots of squash depend, we don’t know it. If there’s a fungus that grows inside the squash plant that helps it defend itself, we don’t know it. If there’s a parasite that attacks the beetle that carries the bacteria, probably nobody’s studying it,” Dunn said. “And that’s true for most of our crops.”

The Great Pumpkin Project

Dunn is working to fill in some of those gaps.

And he wants the public to help.

Scientists don’t know how far squash heart attack disease has spread, and they don’t know where the beetles that carry the disease are from year to year. So, scientists want anyone growing squash — or pumpkins, melons, cucumbers or any of the other members of the family — to watch out for them.

The Great Pumpkin Project at the citizen-science site iNaturalist.org is looking for pictures of attacking insects and sick plants.

Dunn hopes to collect millions of images from around the world, which would help scientists get a better sense of “which of these beetles is living in which places and eating what.”

And, hopefully, stay one step ahead of the next plant plague.
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UN Climate Chief: Cities Best Armed to Fight Climate Change

Cities are places where action on climate change can have most impact because they are engines for innovation and also highly vulnerable to a warming planet, the head of the U.N. climate program said on Thursday.

More than 140 countries have ratified the Paris agreement on climate change and they are looking for leadership from cities to help them implement commitments their national governments made, Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said.

“As each country looks to meet their emissions reduction, energy efficiency or renewable energy goals, they will look to cities as places where transformational change can make the most difference,” Espinosa told a conference on urban resilience in Bonn.

She said cities have a big responsibility in tackling climate change not only because they are large contributors to environmentally harmful greenhouse gas emissions but they also have potential to deliver prosperity and economic opportunity.

“Climate action in cities is the key that unlocks a low emissions and resilient future,” she said.

Climate change risks will become even more pressing as around two-thirds of people are predicted to live in cities by 2050, with developing countries in particular poised to see their urban populations soar.

“Cities should welcome a transformation to sustainable development because cities are uniquely vulnerable,” said Espinosa.

Local action and educating citizens about climate change will be key drivers in reaching the goal agreed under the Paris deal — in effect since last year — to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, she said.

“It is on the ground in the real world where everything comes together,” Espinosa said.

She cited data that shows more than two thirds of the world’s largest cities are in coastal regions, making their citizens vulnerable to sea level rises, flooding and other extreme weather.

“The risk to cities from climate impacts carries great social and economic cost, and of course, the loss of human lives,” said Espinosa.

“The ability of communities to meet their most basic needs — food, water, energy, sanitation — is threatened by climate change.”

These risks will not only affect cities in the developing world, she stressed, citing the impact of Hurricane Sandy in New York and the fact that flooding in Europe has more than doubled in the past 35 years.

 
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Shhh. Hear Rustle of Grass? Not So Much Now in US Parks

The call of the wild is getting harder to hear.

Peaceful, natural sounds — bird songs, rushing rivers and rustling grass — are sometimes being drowned out by noise from people in many of America’s protected parks and wilderness areas, a new study finds.

Scientists measured sound levels at 492 places — from city parks to remote federal wilderness. They calculated that in nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48’s parks, the noise can at times be twice the natural background level because of airplanes, cars, logging, mining and oil and gas drilling.

That increase can harm wildlife, making it harder for them to find food or mates, and make it harder for people to hear those natural sounds, the researchers said. Colorado State University biologist George Wittemyer said people hear only half the sounds that they would in natural silence.

“They’re being drowned out,” said Wittemyer, a co-author of the research.

In about 1 in five public lands, there’s a tenfold increase in noise pollution, according to the study in Thursday’s journal Science .

“It’s something that’s sort of happening slowly,” Wittemyer said.

Sounds are crucial

Except for city parks, though, the researchers are not talking about sound levels that people would consider unusually loud. Even the tenfold increases they write about are often the equivalent of changing from the quiet of a rural area to a still pretty silent library.

But that difference masks a lot of sounds that are crucial, especially to birds seeking mates and animals trying to hunt or avoid being hunted, Wittemyer said. And it does make a difference for peace of mind for people, he said.

“Being able to hear the birds, the waterfalls, the animals running through the grasslands … the wind going through the grass,” Wittemyer said. “Those are really valuable and important sounds for humans to hear and help in their rejuvenation and their self-reflection.”

No escaping the noise

For study lead author Rachel Buxton, a Colorado State conservation biology researcher, it can be personal. She points to a Thanksgiving weekend hike last year with her husband in the La Garita Wilderness in southern Colorado.

“We went to escape the crowds. We went to be totally isolated and have a real wilderness experience,” Buxton recalled. “As we’re hiking, aircraft goes overhead. You’re walking along and you can hear the jet coming for ages.”

The research team, which includes a special unit of the National Park Service, not only measured sounds across the U.S., but they also used elaborate computer programs and artificial learning systems to determine what sounds were natural and which were made by people.

‘Study makes perfect sense’

“The study makes perfect sense to me,” George Mason University biology professor David Luther, who wasn’t part of the research. He said in an email that he’s noticed more noise at many sites throughout the U.S.

“Olympic National Park is currently suffering high amounts of noise pollution from military flight trainings low over the park and visitors have been complaining loudly about the diminished wilderness experience,” he wrote.

But there are still some places where you can get away from it all, Buxton said, highlighting Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.
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Scientists Propose More Precise Way to Measure Greenhouse Gas Effects

Researchers from Harvard University, Princeton University and the Environmental Defense Fund proposed a new, more precise way to measure the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth’s climate in an article published on Thursday in the academic journal Science.

The proposal would create a two-digit measurement system the scientists likened to blood pressure readings in medicine, which show the pressure on blood vessels both during heartbeats and in between them. It would help scientists and policymakers account for the fact that some greenhouse gases last longer than others in the atmosphere.

“Different gases have widely different lifetimes in the atmosphere after emission and affect the climate in different ways over widely different time scales,” said co-author Michael Oppenheimer, a geosciences professor at Princeton.

The system would show the effects of greenhouse emissions on a 20-year scale and a 100-year scale. Having a measurement that shows both numbers, the scientists argued, would let governments and other institutions trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming decide which policies would be best in the short term and which should be adopted over the long term.

Opposing groups’ methods

It would also help in disputes between opposing advocacy groups. For example, according to the researchers, advocates for using natural gas as an energy source base their arguments on a 100-year timescale. But their opponents, activists lobbying against natural gas, use a 20-year time scale to show the effects of burning natural gas on the climate.

An overwhelming majority of scientists believe emissions of gas like carbon dioxide, which is produced from burning fossil fuels, are contributing to global climate change, triggering sea level increases, droughts and more frequent violent storms.

For the two-value proposal to be successful, the scientists argued, it would have to be widely adopted, not only by individual government agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but also by international bodies like the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.

Science is a weekly, peer-reviewed journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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‘Exercise Without Workout’ Pill Being Tested

Many people who are disabled or have a condition that limits their ability to exercise might someday benefit from an exercise pill.  A compound is being studied that gives people the benefits of exercise without having to work out.  

The compound called GW1516, or simply GW, has been around for the past 20 years, according to scientists, who say it has been used illegally by some athletes to improve their performance.

Researchers at Salk Institute in La Jolla, California have a different goal in mind, helping people with conditions like heart disease, diabetes and muscular dystrophy that are physically unable to exercise.  

The compound has the potential to give them the healthful benefits of exercise without actually having to do it.  

Michael Downes is a senior author of a paper published in Cell Metabolism that described how GW benefited mice in the lab.

“And what we’ve shown is that you don’t have to train to benefit from this drug because it engineers the body so that you are making maximum use of your muscles that you have,” said Downes, “and you are maxing out as far as you can with your muscles the endurance that you can do.”

To confirm and better understand the physical endurance pathway, researchers genetically engineered mice to have permanently activated PPAR delta, a gene that switches on the pathway.  

Instead of burning glucose for energy, which is normal for couch potatoes, the mice burned fat to fuel their muscles similar to what’s seen in marathon runners.

Then researchers gave normal mice the compound GW, activating the same endurance pathway.

Downes said those mice were able to run 70 percent further on a treadmill than untreated mice before becoming exhausted or what athletes call “hitting the wall.”

Weiwei Fan, the study’s lead author, said GW improves and repairs the structure of weak muscles.

Fan said researchers believe it could do the same thing in people who are sedentary without working out.

“The reason our lab is interested in this field, exercised-induced benefits, is we want to give the something to people who are not able to exercise,” said Fan.

Researchers say drug companies have expressed an interest in the compound, which could be turned into a pill that could improve fat burning and muscle strength in obese individuals and those suffering from conditions like type 2 diabetes and muscular dystrophy.  
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Trump Chooses Expert on Addiction to Lead Mental Health Agency

President Donald Trump’s pick to marshal the government’s response to the opioid epidemic and assist people with mental illness doesn’t quite fit the mold of some of his other nominees.

Psychiatrist Elinore McCance-Katz isn’t an outsider bent on disrupting the system. 

Instead, she’s an academic expert on addiction with extensive state government and federal experience, and a reputation for relying on science. She spent time at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the agency she has been nominated to lead.

The strongest opposition to her nomination isn’t coming from Democrats and advocacy groups, but from a Republican who says she’s been part of the problem.

Helped draft action plan 

McCance-Katz, 60, now serves as chief medical officer for the Rhode Island agency responsible for substance abuse and mental health services. She was on a task force that produced a nationally recognized opioid action plan for the state.

After a stint at SAMHSA during the Obama administration, McCance-Katz penned an article last year strongly critical of the federal agency, alleging “hostility toward psychiatric medicine” and failure to address the treatment needs of mentally ill people.

That may have caught the eye of the White House, along with a post-election piece that cast Trump’s victory as positive change for people with mental illness. Now the president wants to send McCance-Katz back to SAMHSA.

Coordinating 112 programs

Congress recently elevated the job of agency director to a new position with the higher rank of assistant health secretary, requiring Senate confirmation. Lawmakers want an executive to instill coherence and coordination among 112 federal programs for people with serious mental illness. Up to now, the main purpose of the roughly $4-billion agency has been to distribute grants.

Advocates for people dealing with mental illness and substance abuse see an opening. They were heartened that the White House invited advocacy groups to meet as officials were sifting candidates for SAMHSA.

“The early signs that we are seeing are that the importance of mental health is recognized,” said Ron Honberg, a senior policy adviser with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which is supporting McCance-Katz. “The administration has come out very strongly on the opioid issue.” The budget deal increased federal spending.

On Capitol Hill 

In the Senate, the nomination of McCance-Katz goes to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a committee member active on mental health issues, called her a “qualified and experienced leader who will make mental health reform a reality.”

But in the House, Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., says he was “stunned.” The congressman earlier had led an investigation of SAMHSA that revealed poor coordination of mental health programs and gaps in the oversight of grants. Although McCance-Katz criticized the agency after she left, Murphy says she failed to say anything while she was there, serving as chief medical officer.

Advocates say the problems Murphy highlighted have been addressed, and McCance-Katz would find the agency in better shape than she left it.

Within the mental health community, there’s a longstanding tension between those who favor medical treatment for problems like addiction, and those who favor “peer support.” The latter involves approaches similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, while the treatment usually involves medication. McCance-Katz is seen as firmly in the treatment camp.

The Rhode Island plan McCance-Katz helped develop starts with steps to curtail prescriptions of highly addictive drugs, promotes the antidote naloxone as the standard of care for overdose rescue, provides medication-based treatment for criminal justice inmates, and expands peer support services.
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