AFP UK

A tiger's stripes are unique, like human fingerprints. An estimated 4,500 of the big cats remain in the wild across Asia

In a town in northeastern Scotland, Debbie Banks looks for clues to track down criminals as she clicks through a database of tiger skins.

There are thousands of photographs, including of rugs, carcasses and taxidermy specimens. 

Banks, the crime campaign leader for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based charity, tries to identify individual big cats from their stripes.

Once a tiger is identified, an investigator can pinpoint where it comes from. 

“A tiger’s stripes are as unique as human fingerprints,” Banks told AFP.

“We can use the images to cross-reference against images of captive tigers that might have been farmed.”

Currently this is slow painstaking work.

But a new artificial intelligence tool, being developed by The Alan Turing Institute, a centre in the UK for data science and artificial intelligence, should make life much easier for Banks and law enforcement officials. 

The project aims to develop and test AI technology that can analyse the tigers’ stripes in order to identify them.

“We have a database of images of tigers that have been offered for sale or have been seized,” Banks said.

“When our investigators get new images, we need to scan those against the database.

“At the moment we are doing that manually, looking at the individual stripe patterns of each new image that we get and cross-referencing it against the ones we have in our database.”

It is hoped that the new technology will help law enforcement agencies determine where tiger skins come from and allow them to investigate the transnational networks involved in trafficking tigers.

Once the officials know the origins of confiscated tiger skins and products, they will be able to tell whether the animal was farmed or poached from a protected area.

Poaching, fuelled by consumer demand, remains a major threat to the survival of the species, according to the EIA. 

Tiger skins and body parts are sought after, partly due to their use in traditional Chinese medicine.

An estimated 4,500 tigers remain in the wild across Asia. 

“Tigers faced a massive population decline in the last 120 years, so we want to do everything we can to help end the trade in their parts and products, including tiger skins,” Banks said.

Anyone with photographs of tigers is invited to submit them to the EIA to help bolster the AI database. 

“We are inviting individuals — whether they are photographers or researchers and academics — who may have images of tigers where their stripe patterns are clear,” Banks said.

“They could be live tigers, dead tigers or tiger parts.

“If they can share those with us, the data scientists can then develop, train and test the algorithm,” she said.

“We need thousands of images just to do that phase of the project.”

Fewer than 200 members remain of the Urue-eu-wau-wau tribe, traditionally hunter-gatherers who live in a protected area of Brazil's Amazon rainforest, surrounded and encroached upon by aggressive and illegal settlers, farmers and loggers

When Covid-19 reached Brazil’s Amazon, and an indigenous tribe sealed off its borders, director Alex Pritz found an innovative way to finish his documentary — he handed the cameras over to the Uru-eu-wau-wau themselves.

“The Territory,” to be released by National Geographic on Friday, follows the plight of some 200 hunter-gatherers who live in a protected area of rainforest, surrounded and encroached upon by aggressive and illegal settlers, farmers and loggers.

While shown in the movie dressed in traditional garb and honoring ancient customs, the Uru-eu-wau-wau and their young leader Bitate — the film’s main subject — were more than happy to use modern technology to fight back.

“When Covid happened, Bitate made the really bold decision to say ‘Okay, no more journalists coming into our territory, no more filmmakers, no more Alex, no more documentary crew, nobody,'” said Pritz.

“We had to have a conversation with him like, ‘Okay, are we done with the film? Do we have everything we need? Is there more? Should we start editing?’

“Bitate was really clear: ‘No, we’re not done. We still have a lot left to do. You guys weren’t done before, why should you be done now?

“‘Just send us better cameras, send us audio equipment, and we’ll shoot and produce the last part of the movie.'”

The result was a “co-production model” in which an Uru-eu-wau-wau filmmaker is credited as cinematographer, and the community more broadly acted as producers with a share of profits and a say in business decisions about the film’s distribution.

Besides enabling filming to continue into the pandemic, Pritz believes the decision to provide equipment and training directly to the Uru-eu-wau-wau benefited the film by adding a “firsthand perspective” on the group’s activities, which include patrolling the land to arrest interlopers.

“I shot a bunch of surveillance missions myself. None of them made the cut!” said Pritz.

“Not because we wanted to transfer the filmmaking… it was more raw, it was more urgent.”

– ‘Digital children’ –

Even before Pritz’s crew arrived, the Uru-eu-wau-wau had become adept at using the power of modern technology and media to champion their cause, positioning themselves on the global stage as guardians of a forest whose survival is bound up in issues of climate change and biodiversity.

“Bitate and this younger generation within the Uru-eu-wau-wau are digital children. He’s born in the late 90s. He’s on Instagram. And that’s part of how he engages with the world,” said Pritz.

When drones capturing stunning and harrowing footage of vast deforestation appear early in the documentary, many audiences assume they belong to the filmmakers, said Pritz. 

But in fact, the flying cameras were bought and are operated by the Uru-eu-wau-wau themselves.

“Whereas it would have taken four days to walk over a mountain range of thick, dense, old-growth rainforest… with the drone, you’re there in 30 minutes, you have images tagged with metadata,” said Pritz.

“People can’t argue with that.”

It is a stark contrast to the farmers and settlers, who are also central subjects of the film.

In astonishing footage, the documentary follows one group as they brazenly chainsaw and set ablaze protected forest, illegally clearing space for roads to territory they one day wish to settle and claim as their own.

Access was possible because many settlers see themselves as heroic pioneers, speaking in interviews to Pritz about opening up the rainforest for the good of their nation — a heady mix of “Wild West” cowboy culture borrowed from American movies, and nationalist propaganda stoked by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

“The settlers were these naive people who had no understanding of the historical context of their actions, the ecological consequences, what they were doing for the rest of the planet,” said Pritz.

For the settlers, many of whom lack education or any other economic opportunities, “it was just about ‘me and mine,’ ‘just this one little plot,’ ‘if only I can get this.'”

“Whereas Bitate has this expansive outlook. He’s thinking about climate change. He’s thinking about the planet. He’s politically savvy, media-oriented.”

The huge Lake Mead, which was formed by the damming of the Colorado River, is at historically low levels

Water supplies to some US states and Mexico will be cut to avoid “catastrophic collapse” of the Colorado River, Washington officials said Tuesday, as a historic drought bites.

More than two decades of well below average rainfall have left the river — the lifeblood of the western United States — at critical levels, as human-caused climate change worsens the natural drought cycle.

Despite years of warnings and a deadline imposed by Washington, states that depend on the river have not managed to agree on a plan to cut their usage, and on Tuesday, the federal government said it was stepping in.

“In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the Basin must be reduced,” said Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for water and science at the US Interior Department.

Arizona’s allocation from the river will fall by 21 percent in 2023, while Nevada will get eight percent less. Mexico’s allotment will drop by seven percent.

California, the biggest user of the river’s water and the most populous of the western states, will not be affected next year.

The Colorado River rises in the Rocky Mountains and snakes its way through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California and northern Mexico, where it empties into the Gulf of California.

It is fed chiefly by snowpack at high altitudes, which melts slowly throughout the warmer months.

But reduced precipitation and the higher temperatures caused by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels means less snow is falling, and what snow exists, is melting faster.

As a consequence, there is not as much water in the river that supplies tens of millions of people and countless acres of farmland.

The states that use the water have been locked in negotiations over how to slash usage, but missed a Monday deadline to cut a deal, so Washington stepped in.

Officials in upstream states hit out Tuesday at what they saw as an unfair settlement, with California exempted from any cuts.

“It is unacceptable for Arizona to continue to carry a disproportionate burden of reductions for the benefit of others who have not contributed,” said a statement by Tom Buschatzke, director of the state’s Department of Water Resources and Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project. 

– Climate change –

Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau said his department — which oversees US water supplies — was “using every resource available to conserve water and ensure that irrigators, Tribes and adjoining communities receive adequate assistance.”

“The worsening drought crisis impacting the Colorado River Basin is driven by the effects of climate change, including extreme heat and low precipitation,” he said.

“In turn, severe drought conditions exacerbate wildfire risk and ecosystems disruption, increasing the stress on communities and our landscapes.”

The western United States is suffering under a drought that is now in its 23rd year, the worst episode in more than 1,000 years.

That drought has left swathes of the country dry and vulnerable to hotter, faster and more destructive wildfires.

Communities served by the Colorado River, including Los Angeles, have been ordered to save water, with unpopular restrictions in place on outdoor watering.

Those restrictions are unevenly adhered to, with some lawns — especially in the plushest parts of Los Angeles and its surroundings — still remarkably green.

Bull sharks swim off the coast of Jupiter, Florida on February 12, 2022

A 10-year-old boy had part of his leg amputated after being bitten by a shark while snorkeling on vacation in the Florida Keys, his family has said.

Jameson Reeder Jr. was attacked on Saturday at Looe Key Reef, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a statement.

A Facebook post by his uncle Joshua Reeder said Jameson had gone on a boat trip with his parents and three other siblings and was snorkeling in a shallow reef when he “took a crushing blow below his knee,” by what they believed was an eight-foot-long bull shark.

Jameson was able to hold on to a noodle float and was rescued by his father, who applied a tourniquet to the leg and flagged down another, faster boat that raced the family ashore. 

The boy was then airlifted to the Miami Children’s Hospital where a medical team saved his life but was forced to amputate the leg below the knee.

“He is now out of surgery and resting,” wrote Joshua Reeder, crediting Jameson’s strong religious faith for helping him to survive the ordeal.

A GiveSendGo appeal by the family for financial assistance had surpassed its target of $50,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.

While a higher than normal number of shark encounters off the coast of New York this summer have attracted attention, the overall risk of being bitten by a shark remains low.

Global trends are now roughly stable after rising slightly over the past 30 years, partly due to increased recreational activity by humans, and recovery of vulnerable shark populations.  

Last year, there were 73 unprovoked attacks globally, according to the Florida Museum. Nearly every attack is a result of mistaken identity as sharks do not intentionally target humans.

Most attacks in the United States occur off the Atlantic coast of Florida, home to choppy waters and bait fish that several shark species feed on.

The huge Lake Mead, which was formed by the damming of the Colorado River, is at historically low levels

Some US states and Mexico must cut their water usage to avoid “catastrophic collapse” of the Colorado River, Washington officials said Tuesday, as a historic drought bites.

More than two decades of well below average rainfall have left the river — the lifeblood of the western United States — at critical levels, as human-caused climate change worsens the natural drought cycle.

Despite years of warnings, states that depend on the river have not managed to reduce their demands enough, and on Tuesday, the federal government said it was imposing cuts.

“In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the Basin must be reduced,” said Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the Interior Department.

Arizona’s allocation from the river will fall by 21 percent in 2023, while Nevada will get eight percent less. Mexico’s allotment will drop by seven percent.

California, the biggest user of the river’s water and the most populous of the western states, will not be affected next year.

The Colorado River rises in the Rocky Mountains and snakes its way through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California and northern Mexico, where it empties into the Gulf of California.

It is fed chiefly by snowpack at high altitudes, which melts slowly throughout the warmer months.

But reduced precipitation and the higher temperatures caused by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels means less snow is falling, and what snow exists, is melting faster.

As a consequence, there is not as much water in the river that supplies tens of millions of people and countless acres of farmland.

Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Tommy Beaudreau, said the department — the part of government with responsibility for water resources — was “using every resource available to conserve water and ensure that irrigators, Tribes and adjoining communities receive adequate assistance.”

“The worsening drought crisis impacting the Colorado River Basin is driven by the effects of climate change, including extreme heat and low precipitation,” he said.

“In turn, severe drought conditions exacerbate wildfire risk and ecosystems disruption, increasing the stress on communities and our landscapes.”

The western United States is suffering under a drought that is now in its 23rd year, the worst episode in more than 1,000 years.

That drought has left swathes of the country dry and vulnerable to hotter, faster and more destructive wildfires.

Communities served by the Colorado River, including Los Angeles, have been ordered to save water, with unpopular restrictions in place on outdoor watering.

The cause of death is uncertain, though officials believe the fish are likely to have been poisoned

Polish firefighters said Tuesday they had recovered 100 tonnes of dead fish from the Oder river running through Germany and Poland, deepening concerns of an environmental disaster.

“We’d never had an operation of this scope on a river before,” said Monika Nowakowska-Drynda from the national firefighter press office.

She confirmed that around 100 tonnes (220,500 pounds) of dead fish had been recovered since Friday. 

The cause of death is uncertain, though officials believe the fish are likely to have been poisoned. 

“Probably enormous quantities of chemical waste was dumped into the river in full knowledge of the risk and consequences,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last week.

But Climate and Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said on Tuesday that “none of the samples tested so far has shown the presence of toxic substances”.

She said the government was also looking into possible natural causes and in particular higher concentrations of pollutants and salinity as a result of lower water levels and high temperatures.

A third hypothesis being examined is that industrial waste water with a high chlorine content was poured into the river, she said.

Water samples have also been sent to laboratories in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Britain in the hopes of finding the cause.

The first reports of mass fish deaths were made by Polish locals and anglers as early as July 28.

German officials have accused Polish authorities of failing to inform them about the deaths, and were taken by surprise when the wave of lifeless fish came floating into view.

In Poland, the government has also come under heavy criticism for failing to take swift action.

The Oder has over the last years been known as a relatively clean river, and 40 domestic species of fish are found in the waterway.

But now, dead fish — some reaching up to 40 centimetres (16 inches) — can be seen across the river.

Nowakowska-Drynda said more than 500 firefighters have been recovering the dead fish in Poland with the help of dams, boats, quad bikes and even a drone. 

An aerial view shows how low the waters are off the peninsula of Sirmione on Lake Garda

The pedalos lie far from the water’s edge and the flat stone slabs around the Sirmione peninsula are exposed after drought reduced the level of Italy’s Lake Garda to a 15-year low.

Italy’s largest lake, a major tourist destination nestled among mountains in the north of the country, is suffering like many others from months without rain.

“We are currently at 30 centimetres (12 inches) above the (benchmark) hydrographic level,” compared to an average for this time of year of between 80 and 100, said Gianluca Ginepro, head of Garda Unico, which promotes the lake.

It is the lowest since 2007, when levels dropped to 9.9 cm, according to official data.

“It’s a situation to keep an eye on, even if from the point of view of using the lake — like wind surfing, sailing — there is no problem,” Ginepro told AFP.

Tourism was holding up well, he said, although operators of trips across the lake had switched from hydrofoils to catamarans.

He also said that “the possibility of providing water for agriculture has dropped”.

Farmers have also been hit by a lack of water in the River Po, which stretches across northern Italy and is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.

But the issue goes beyond Italy, with land across Europe parched by a lack of rainfall and sweltering temperatures, driven by climate change.

Several other European countries, as well as reporting record temperatures during recent heatwaves, have also reported low levels of water in rivers.

The research suggested plans by some energy majors to decarbonise are not compatible with the Paris Agreement temperature goals

Global decarbonisation scenarios envisioned by oil and gas majors are incompatible with the Paris climate deal temperature goals aimed at averting devastating heating, according to research published Tuesday.

The landmark 2015 accord saw nations commit to limit planetary heating to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels and to work towards a safer 1.5-C warming cap. 

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of experts analysed six emissions scenarios from three European energy giants — Equinor, BP and Shell — as well as those produced by the International Energy Agency.

They then compared the analysed pathways to scenarios outlined in a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on 1.5C of warming. 

The team used these to evaluate peak and end-of-century temperatures under each scenario, noting that average global temperatures may decline by 2100 in some scenarios after peaking.

They also assessed the underlying energy system changes that drive emissions and could lead to a given scenario meeting — or failing to meet — the Paris temperature goals.

“Most of the scenarios we evaluated would be classified as inconsistent with the Paris Agreement as they fail to limit warming to ‘well below 2C’, let alone 1.5C, and would exceed the 1.5C warming limit by a significant margin,” said Robert Brecha of the Climate Analytics think tank and co-lead author of the study. 

“Energy system transformation is critical to reaching the Paris Agreement warming limit, and decision makers need sound and transparent scientific assessments. This paper adds to that transparency.”

– ‘Catastrophic impacts’ –

The analysis found that Shell’s Sky scenario would lead to warming of 1.81C by 2069 — a far cry from 1.5C.

A Shell spokeswoman told AFP that the Sky pathway was just one of several envisaged by the company.

The team responsible for modelling scenarios “makes assessments based on plausible assumptions and quantifications, which are not intended to be predictions of likely future events or outcomes, let alone our energy transition plan”, she added.

Equinor’s Rebalance scenario would see warming peak at 1.73C above pre-industrial levels by 2060, according to the study.

BP’s Rapid scenario would see peak warming of 1.73C by 2058, while its Net Zero scenario would see median warming peak at 1.65C, the analysis found. 

Equinor declined to comment, while BP did not respond to a comment request.

Only the IEA’s Net Zero 2050 pathway is fully aligned with the Paris agreement’s 1.5C goal, the authors concluded. 

“Fossil fuel companies claim that we can continue to burn oil and gas while keeping to the 1.5C warming limit, and they cite their own scenarios as justification,” said Bill Hare, CEO and Senior Scientist at Climate Analytics. 

“But our research shows that their pathways would bust the Paris Agreement. Even temporarily exceeding the 1.5C warming would lead to catastrophic impacts and severely weaken our ability to adapt to climate change.”

This year's fires in Spain have already destroyed more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in 2021

Some 300 firefighters spent a difficult night battling a huge wildfire in southeastern Spain that has burnt through nearly 10,000 hectares in an area notoriously difficult to access, officials said Tuesday.

The fire began when lightning hit the Vall de Ebo area in the province of Alicante late Saturday and has since spread rapidly, fuelled by strong winds, forcing the evacuation of more than 1,000 people, Valencia’s regional government said.

“At the moment, we are talking about more than 9,500 hectares (235,000 acres) burnt with a perimeter of 65 kilometres (40 miles),” regional president Ximo Puig said late Monday, describing the blaze as “absolutely huge”.

“It’s a very complicated situation… The fire is creating enormous difficulties that are absolutely impossible to tackle with the speed we would like.”

Regional interior minister Gabriela Bravo told Antena 3 television some 300 firefighters were battling the flames, backed by 24 planes and helicopters.

Firefighters elsewhere in the region were also battling two other wildfires north of Valencia city, with hundreds of firefighters and at least 10 firefighting planes engaged in the operation, officials said.

Further north, firefighters in the Aragon region were battling another major blaze that broke out Saturday and has burnt more than 6,000 hectares of land, forcing at least 1,500 people from their homes.

– Worse than 2021 –

Meanwhile, a huge wildfire in central Portugal that raged for a week in a UNESCO-designated natural park and was finally brought under control on Friday night, flared up again Tuesday, the civil protection authority said. 

More than 1,200 firefighters had been drafted in to tackle the blaze, which has already consumed some 15,000 hectares and was “burning fiercely” with the flames whipped up by strong winds, the authority said.

So far this year, Spain has suffered 391 wildfires, fuelled by scorching temperatures and drought conditions, which have destroyed a total of 271,020 hectares of land, according to the latest figures from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

This year’s fires in Spain have been particularly devastating, destroying more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in the whole of 2021, which amounted to 84,827 hectares, the figures show.

Portugal has suffered 195 wildfires so far this year, which have ravaged 84,717 hectares of land, EFFIS figures show. 

Scientists say human-induced climate change is making extreme weather events, including heatwaves and droughts, more frequent and intense. They in turn increase the risk of fires, which emit climate-heating greenhouse gases.

Fires have blazed across Europe, particularly in France, Greece and Portugal, making 2022 a record year for wildfires on the continent.

The blaze in Portugal’s Serra da Estrela natural park started on August 6 outside the central town of Covilha and authorities have deployed 373 fire engines and 12 planes and helicopters to bolster firefighters’ attempts to tame it.

The blaze has so far left three people seriously hurt and 19 others less seriously while 45 people have been evacuated as a precaution since Monday as Portugal battles its worst forest fires since 2017 when some 100 lives were lost.  

Portugal’s civil protection agency head Andre Fernandes warned of the probability the fire would spread and said attempts to stabilise it were liable to be hampered by wind.

Hayabusa-2 returned to Earth's orbit two years ago to drop off a capsule containing the sample

Water may have been brought to Earth by asteroids from the outer edges of the solar system, scientists said after analysing rare samples collected on a six-year Japanese space mission.

In a quest to shed light on the origins of life and the formation of the universe, researchers are scrutinising material brought back to earth in 2020 from the asteroid Ryugu.

The 5.4 grams (0.2 ounces) of rocks and dust were gathered by a Japanese space probe, called Hayabusa-2, that landed on the celestial body and fired an “impactor” into its surface.

Studies on the material are beginning to be published, and in June, one group of researchers said they had found organic material which showed that some of the building blocks of life on Earth, amino acids, may have been formed in space.

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, scientists said the Ryugu samples could give clues to the mystery of how oceans appeared on Earth billions of years ago.

“Volatile and organic-rich C-type asteroids may have been one of the main sources of Earth’s water,” said the study by scientists from Japan and other countries, published Monday.

“The delivery of volatiles (that is, organics and water) to the Earth is still a subject of notable debate,” it said.

But the organic materials found “in Ryugu particles, identified in this study, probably represent one important source of volatiles”.

The scientists hypothesised that such material probably has an “outer Solar System origin”, but said it was “unlikely to be the only source of volatiles delivered to the early Earth”.

Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 on its mission to Ryugu, around 300 million kilometres away, and returned to Earth’s orbit two years ago to drop off a capsule containing the sample.

In the Nature Astronomy study, the researchers again hailed the findings made possible by the mission.

“Ryugu particles are undoubtedly among the most uncontaminated Solar System materials available for laboratory study and ongoing investigations of these precious samples will certainly expand our understanding of early Solar System processes,” the study said.