AFP UK

Few species evoke the spirit of the American wild as much as wolves

Scientists often study the grim impacts of losing wildlife to hunting, habitat destruction and climate change. But what happens when endangered animals are brought back from the brink?

Research has shown restoring so-called “keystone” species — those with an outsized impact on their environment — is vital for the health of ecosystems, and can come with unexpected benefits for humans.

Here are some notable examples from North America. 

– Wolves –

Few species evoke the American wild as much as wolves. 

Though revered by Indigenous communities, European colonists who arrived in the 1600s embarked on widespread extermination campaigns through hunting and trapping.

By the mid-20th century, fewer than a thousand gray wolves were left in the contiguous United States, down from at least a quarter million before colonization.

Extinction was averted in the 1970s when lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act, helping revive the apex predator in parts of its former range.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the government took wolves from Canada and reintroduced them to Yellowstone National Park.

This generated a wealth of data that scientists are still working to understand.

The new arrivals kept elk numbers down, preventing them from over-browsing vegetation that provides material for birds to build nests and beavers to build dams — a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade.

The recovered vegetation helped stop soil erosion into rivers, changing their course by reducing meandering.

While building their dams, the beavers also create deep ponds that juvenile fish and frogs need to survive.

When they embark on hunts, wolves focus on weak and diseased prey, ensuring survival of the fittest.

A recent paper even found that wolves brought back in the midwestern state of Wisconsin kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions with cars.

Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity compared ecosystems to tapestries, “and when we take out some of the threads, we weaken that tapestry,” she told AFP.

It’s thought there are now more than 6,000 gray wolves in the contiguous United States. The main threat is legalized hunting in some states.

– Buffalo –

The story of the American buffalo — also known as bison — is inextricably linked to the dark history of the early United States.

From an estimated 30 million, their number plummeted to just hundreds by the late 19th century as the US government sought to wipe out plains tribe Indians whose way of life depended on the animal.

“It was an intentional genocide to remove the buffalo, to the remove the Indians and force them onto reservations,” Cody Considine of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told AFP.

Buffalo, he explained, are an integral part of TNC’s efforts to re-establish prairies in the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois.

The buffalo, who were introduced there in 2014 and now number around a hundred, favor eating grass over flowering plants and legumes, which in turn allows a variety of birds, insects and amphibians to flourish.

“Some of these species without that grazing simply just disappear off the landscape due to the high competition of the grasses,” added Considine.

As they forage, bisons’ hooves kick up and aerate the soil, further aiding in plant growth as well as seed dispersion. 

TNC currently manages some 6,500 buffalo, and is creating a pilot program with tribal partners that involves transferring excess animals to Indigenous communities, as part of broader efforts to revive America’s national mammal. 

Some 20,000 buffalo are now thought to roam in “conservation herds,” though none are truly free roaming, added Considine.

– Sea otters –

As the dominant predator of marine nearshore environments, sea otters play a hugely important role in their ecosystem.

Historically they spanned from Baja California up the West Coast up to Alaska, Russia and northern Japan, but hunting for fur in the 1700s and 1800s decimated their numbers, which were once up to 300,000. 

They were thought for a while to have been completely exterminated off California, but a small surviving population of around 50 helped them partially recover to some 3,000 today.

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told AFP that research during the 1970s in the Aleutian Islands showed the otters maintained the balance of kelp forest by keeping a check on the sea urchins that graze on them.

In the last decade, more complex interactions have come to light. These include the downstream benefits of otters for eelgrass habitats in California estuaries. 

Here, the sea otters controlled the population of crabs, which meant there were more sea slugs who were able to graze algae, keeping the eelgrass healthy.

Eelgrass is considered a “nursery of the sea” for juvenile fish, and it also reduces erosion, which can factor in coastal floods.

“Kelp and eelgrass are often considered good ways to sequester carbon which can help mitigate the ongoing impacts of climate change,” stressed Fujii, a prime example of how destruction of nature can worsen planetary warming.

Scientists warn that we need to drastically — and urgently — rethink our relationship with the natural world

Delegates from nearly 200 countries meet in Montreal next week to hammer out a new global biodiversity deal to protect ecosystems and species from further human destruction.

The meeting follows crucial climate change talks in Egypt in November, where leaders failed to forge any breakthroughs on scaling down fossil fuels and slashing planet-warming emissions.

Observers are hoping the COP15 biodiversity talks in Montreal will deliver a landmark deal to protect nature and reverse the damage humans have done to forests, wetlands, waterways and the millions of species that live in them.

Around 50 percent of the global economy is dependent on nature, but scientists warn that humanity needs to drastically — and urgently — rethink its relationship with the natural world as fears of a sixth era of mass extinction grow. 

“Our planet is in crisis,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), at a briefing ahead of the talks, adding that a global agreement on biodiversity was “crucial to ensure that the future of humankind on planet Earth is sustained”. 

So far, humanity has proven woeful at this, with one million species at risk of extinction. 

The so-called post-2020 biodiversity framework, delayed by two years because of the pandemic, will map out an official plan for nature until mid-century for most countries, with the exception of the United States, which has not signed up. 

It will include key targets to be met by 2030. 

But it comes after countries failed to meet a single one of the targets set for the previous decade. 

With new rules affecting key economic sectors — including agriculture, forestry and fishing — and covering everything from intellectual property to pollution and pesticides, delegates are grappling with an array of sticking points.   

So far, only two out of the 22 targets in the new deal have been agreed upon.

“We have to admit that success is not guaranteed,” an EU source close to the talks said. “We have a very difficult situation ahead of us.”

– Finance fight – 

While China currently chairs COP15, it is not hosting this year’s meeting because of the ongoing pandemic. 

Instead, it will be held from December 7 to 19 in Montreal, home of the CBD, which oversees the negotiations. 

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the only world leader attending. Chinese President Xi Jinping has not said he will join, and neither side has invited other leaders to come, with time quickly running out. 

Observers fear the leaders’ absence sucks the momentum out of the negotiations and could scupper an ambitious final deal. 

Divisions have already emerged on the key issue of financing, with wealthy countries under pressure to funnel more money to developing nations for conservation.

A group of developing nations, including Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia, this year called for rich countries to provide at least $100 billion annually –- rising to $700 billion a year by 2030 — for biodiversity.

But many Western nations are reluctant to create a distinct fund for nature.

Currently, most biodiversity funds for the developing world come from existing funding mechanisms, which often also include climate finance. 

On Thursday, the UN Environment Programme said investments for nature-based solutions must increase to $384 billion per year by 2025, more than double the current figure of $154 billion per year.

Another fight is brewing over the issue of “biopiracy”, with many mainly African countries accusing wealthy nations of pillaging the natural world for ingredients and formulas used in cosmetics and medicines, without sharing the benefits with the communities from which they came. 

– Indigenous rights – 

One cornerstone target that has received broad support is the 30 by 30 target — a pledge to protect 30 percent of land and seas by 2030. Only 17 percent of land and about seven percent of oceans were protected in 2020.

So far, more than 100 countries formally support the goal, according to the EU-backed High Ambition Coalition which tracks the target.

The new goal will rely heavily on the involvement of indigenous peoples, who steward land that is home to around 80 percent of Earth’s remaining biodiversity, according to a landmark UN report on climate change impacts this year.

“It’s not going to work if indigenous peoples are not fully included,” Jennifer Tauli Corpuz of the non-profit Nia Tero told AFP. 

“We completely lose the integrity of the document”, added Corpuz, who is part of the indigenous caucus to the talks. 

Other items in the framework: elimination or redirection of hundreds of millions of dollars in harmful government subsidies; promoting sustainable farming and fishing, reducing pesticides; tackling invasive species and reforestation.

But implementation is perhaps the most crucial agenda item to ensure the pledges made are actually carried out by governments.  

“We need goals and targets that are measurable and they need to be related to clear indicators,” the EU source said, calling for “robust monitoring, planning, reporting and review”. 

Kitzbuehel is making as much artificial snow as possible before its energy bills leap

One of Austria’s top ski resorts is making as much artificial snow as possible to lay a thick base on the slopes before its energy bills leap.

Like other spots across the Alps, world-famous Kitzbuehel is being hit by inflation-driven cost hikes, but also warmer winters that are ever less snowy.

“We expect that our power costs will at least double this season,” said Anton Bodner, head of the resort’s Bergbahn Kitzbuehel company, noting several lower price energy contracts run out by year’s end.

“We are talking about millions of euros,” he added, while looking over one of the few slopes already open.

The soaring energy bills for Austria’s famed ski resorts have translated into pricier tickets, but also shorter hours and reduced service.

“We have no choice but to pass higher power prices on to our customers,” Bodner told AFP, adding that they had kept increases below inflation, which stood at 11 percent by October.

Ski resorts like Kitzbuehel will try to save money by trimming opening times, ramping up snowmaking when temperatures are colder and reducing lift capacity to save energy.

Kitzbuehel plans to run its lifts about two hours less per day, opening slightly later and closing earlier. 

– Less schnitzel –

But at the end of the day, it’s skiers who wind up feeling the pinch and fewer are expected to turn up. 

A recently conducted survey was pointing towards significantly fewer holidaymakers this winter season in Austria due to high inflation compared to 2019, said Oliver Fritz, senior economist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO). 

“Even if a (winter) vacation is planned, potential guests want to spend less,” Fritz said.

Cutting expenses like eating out, shortening holidays or turning to cheaper accommodation or resorts are some of the ways people are dialling back.

“At the restaurant we will only have schnitzel once a week and not twice” like we used to, skiier Klaus Bernert told AFP in Kitzbuehel, which is known for its alpine skiing downhill race.

“Everything has become about 20, 30 percent more expensive. Another 20, 30 percent, and we can no longer afford skiing. Then we would unfortunately have to give up our hobby,” the 58-year-old added.

Equipment and season passes for him and another family member “already ate up two to three monthly salaries”, he said.

Sabine Huber, a local from a nearby valley, said she expected more and more people to continue to switch to ski touring, a sport where enthusiasts climb the slopes on skis, rendering lift tickets unnecessary.

“I’m lucky that I’m a ski tourer and can practise my sport relatively cheaply. Of course, I know many who are already considering whether or not to buy a ski pass because of high prices,” she said.

– Melting profits –

Austria’s famous ski resorts are part of its winter tourism industry, which pulled in about 3.9 percent of the country’s national GDP in 2019, before the pandemic slashed profits.     

Ski resorts are trying to stay optimistic, but it remains to be seen how Alpine tourist destinations across Europe will fare as warming temperatures and inflation threaten their very existence.

“Since 1961, the average annual snow cover duration over the entire area of Austria has decreased by 40 days,” said Marc Olefs, head of climate research at Austria’s national meteorological and geophysical service ZAMG.  

Without measures to cut greenhouse gas-related warming, the duration of natural snow cover at altitudes ranging from 1,500 to 2,500 metres could “decrease by a further 25 percent by 2100”, Olefs noted.

And without snowy winters and sub-zero temperatures, both natural and artificial snow will soon be a thing of the past. 

“Ski resorts can no longer be operated economically without artificial snow, because the tourism industry simply needs predictability and reliability. With artificial snow, we can guarantee that skiing is possible from the beginning of December until April,” said Kitzbuehel’s Bodner.

Austria’s economy would also suffer considerable damage.

Around 16 of 30 billion euros that the tourism industry generated per year before the pandemic were from the winter season, said Fritz, the economist.

“If Alpine winter tourism is severely affected by climate change, ten billion euros can certainly be regarded as endangered,” he said.

Vanuatu's climate change minister Ralph Regenvanu said dealing with the impact of global warming was a major challenge for the Pacific nation

Vanuatu is drawing up plans to relocate “dozens” of villages within the next two years, as they come under threat from rising seas, the Pacific nation’s climate chief told AFP Thursday.

Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu said dealing with the impact of global warming was a major challenge facing Vanuatu’s 300,000 inhabitants who live on a chain of islands strung out between Australia and Fiji.

Regenvanu said the response would inevitably involve relocating long-established communities from coastal areas, where climate change is pushing sea levels higher and fuelling more extreme storms.

He said Vanuatu’s government has identified “dozens” of villages in “at-risk areas” to be relocated “within the next 24 months” while other settlements have also been earmarked to move in the longer term.

“Climate displacement of populations is the main feature of our future. We have to be ready for it and plan for it now,” said Regenvanu, who took over his ministerial portfolio after a snap election in October.

“It’s going to be a huge challenge and a huge tragedy for many people who would have to leave their ancestral land to move to other places, but that’s the reality.”

Low-lying Pacific island nations, like Vanuatu, are already experiencing the impact of climate change.

Half of Vanuatu’s population was affected when Cyclone Pam battered the capital Port Vila in 2015, killing a dozen people, destroying crops and leaving thousands homeless.

Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters like earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.

Other Pacific nations are also looking to move under-threat communities, including Fiji where dozens of villages have been earmarked for relocation owing to the impacts of the climate crisis. 

Scientists predict sea levels in the Pacific will rise between 25–58 centimetres (9-22 inches) by the middle of the century.

That is a devastating prospect for Vanuatu, where around 60 percent of the population live within a kilometre of the coast.

– ‘All sorts of threats’ –

Regenvanu wants coastal defences strengthened.

“Our greatest challenge right now on Vanuatu is basically keeping our populations safe,” he said.

“We’re finding more and more that our people are subject to all sorts of threats from volcanoes, flooding, cyclones and so on.

“So we have to engage now in moving populations and building resilient infrastructure so that our people are safer in the coming years.”

Vanuatu already has experience of moving its people.

In 2005, it was one of the first Pacific nations to move an entire community on the northern island of Tegua from a flood-prone coastal area to higher ground.

And in 2017, all 11,000 people living on Ambae, an island in the country’s north, were ferried by a rag-tag armada of boats to other isles after the Manaro Voui volcano erupted, raining down rock and ash on villagers.

In May, Vanuatu’s parliament declared a climate change emergency and its government is seeking to speed up global action by leading efforts to take the matter to the Hague-based International Court of Justice.

Regenvanu attended the UN’s COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last month, where a landmark deal was struck to help vulnerable countries cope with climate change by providing a “loss and damage” fund.

The nations attending COP27 repeated a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels, but Regenvanu said the pledges did not go far enough.

“Basically, there’s not enough commitment to reducing emissions,” he said.

“And so we’re going to see temperatures increase beyond 1.5 degrees which we know will be disastrous for the Pacific — we have to focus on adaptation and particularly loss and damage.”

With its sleek design, the Tesla electric semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production has been delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation

After years of delays, US automaker Tesla is expected on Thursday to deliver its first battery-powered semi truck, with which it hopes to get a jump start on the nascent electric heavy duty vehicle market by offering longer ranges without recharging.

The Elon Musk-led company is scheduled to hand over the keys to its first electric truck — dubbed “Semi” — at its Nevada manufacturing plant to multinational food company PepsiCo.

With its sleek design, the Tesla electric semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production has been delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation.

Other manufacturers have meanwhile entered the market, from traditional truck makers such as Daimler, Volvo and China’s BYD, to startups like US company Nikola.

The competition has also begun to roll out their deliveries, and have many orders of their own waiting to fill.

However, the truck that “the market has been waiting for… is the one from Tesla,” says Dave Mullaney, a transportation specialist with sustainability think tank RMI.

Legacy manufacturers have primarily converted their diesel-designed trucks to electric.

“The Tesla, on the other hand, was designed to be electric from the very first design,” says Mullaney, who also underlined the company’s 15 years of experience in electric vehicles.

If the Tesla vehicle lives up to expectations, “it’s going to be a huge difference,” Mullaney says.

In a tweet on Saturday, Musk said that one Semi had driven 500 miles (800 kilometers) with a total weight of 81,000 pounds (nearly 37 tons).

The electric vehicles currently on offer only have a range of 250 to 300 miles.

– Physical limitations? –

To carry heavy loads over such long distances, the battery “needs to be very large — that makes it very heavy, takes up a lot of space and is very costly,” says Mike Roeth, director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE).

“The industry has kind of been wondering whether you can physically package that much battery” and keep the truck’s weight low enough to be able to do the job, Roeth adds.

With the ability to travel up to 500 miles without recharging, long-distance trips in electric trucks would be much more feasible, allowing drivers to return to warehouses in the same day.

Even longer trips could be taken over several days if drivers can find charging stations at truck rest stops.

The use of electric light duty vehicles for short-haul deliveries has been steadily growing for some time, but new regulations are pushing manufacturers and transporters to speed up the transition and build out long-haul capabilities.

The most populous US state, California, has passed a law phasing out combustion engine trucks, which has since been followed by other states.

The European Union is also expected to debate new standards in the coming months.

Companies are also facing pressure to have more environmentally conscious reputations.

They “want to be on the right side of history,” says Marie Cheron of the Europe-based association Transport & Environment.

Those who do not commit to a decarbonization strategy, some of whom say they are waiting for technologies to improve, “are falling behind,” she says.

Another motivation to transition, Roeth says, is that drivers who have been able to test them, “love the electric trucks a lot.”

“They’re very quiet, they don’t have the smells of the exhaust, and they are comfortable to drive.”

– Cost considerations –

For the adoption of electric trucks to accelerate, their range must truly live up to promises and batteries ideally would shrink, several analysts told AFP.

The charging infrastructure must also be built out.

That means adding more charging stations, but also building an electric distribution system strong enough to allow, for example, ten trucks to plug in at the same time in one parking lot.

The biggest factor will certainly be price.

An electric truck costs about 70 percent more to buy than a diesel truck at the moment, but in terms of energy and maintenance, it’s cheaper, Mullaney says.

“Battery electric vehicles will be competitive with diesel… it’s only a matter of time,” a spokeswoman for the American manufacturer Navistar, a subsidiary of Traton, told AFP.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says that Tesla must now “prove they can produce at scale, they need to execute.”

In late October, Musk said that Tesla is aiming to build 50,000 Semis by 2024.

In 2018, when production of Tesla’s Model 3 sedan struggled to ramp up, Musk showed that he was capable of getting his teams to speed up.

Ives says Musk’s attention is unfortunately focused on his newest acquisition, Twitter.

“The circus show there takes away a monumental moment in Tesla history,” he adds.

Few species evoke the spirit of the American wild as much as wolves

Scientists often study the grim impacts of losing wildlife to hunting, habitat destruction and climate change. But what happens when endangered animals are brought back from the brink?

Research has shown restoring so-called “keystone” species — those with an outsized impact on their environment — is vital for the health of ecosystems, and can come with unexpected benefits for humans.

Here are some notable examples from North America. 

– Wolves –

Few species evoke the American wild as much as wolves. 

Though revered by Indigenous communities, European colonists who arrived in the 1600s embarked on widespread extermination campaigns through hunting and trapping.

By the mid-20th century, fewer than a thousand gray wolves were left in the contiguous United States, down from at least a quarter million before colonization.

Extinction was averted in the 1970s when lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act, helping revive the apex predator in parts of its former range.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the government took wolves from Canada and reintroduced them to Yellowstone National Park.

This generated a wealth of data that scientists are still working to understand.

The new arrivals kept elk numbers down, preventing them from over-browsing vegetation that provides material for birds to build nests and beavers to build dams — a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade.

The recovered vegetation helped stop soil erosion into rivers, changing their course by reducing meandering.

While building their dams, the beavers also create deep ponds that juvenile fish and frogs need to survive.

When they embark on hunts, wolves focus on weak and diseased prey, ensuring survival of the fittest.

A recent paper even found that wolves brought back in the midwestern state of Wisconsin kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions with cars.

Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity compared ecosystems to tapestries, “and when we take out some of the threads, we weaken that tapestry,” she told AFP.

It’s thought there are now more than 6,000 gray wolves in the contiguous United States. The main threat is legalized hunting in some states.

– Buffalo –

The story of the American buffalo — also known as bison — is inextricably linked to the dark history of the early United States.

From an estimated 30 million, their number plummeted to just hundreds by the late 19th century as the US government sought to wipe out plains tribe Indians whose way of life depended on the animal.

“It was an intentional genocide to remove the buffalo, to the remove the Indians and force them onto reservations,” Cody Considine of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told AFP.

Buffalo, he explained, are an integral part of TNC’s efforts to re-establish prairies in the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois.

The buffalo, who were introduced there in 2014 and now number around a hundred, favor eating grass over flowering plants and legumes, which in turn allows a variety of birds, insects and amphibians to flourish.

“Some of these species without that grazing simply just disappear off the landscape due to the high competition of the grasses,” added Considine.

As they forage, bisons’ hooves kick up and aerate the soil, further aiding in plant growth as well as seed dispersion. 

TNC currently manages some 6,500 buffalo, and is creating a pilot program with tribal partners that involves transferring excess animals to Indigenous communities, as part of broader efforts to revive America’s national mammal. 

Some 20,000 buffalo are now thought to roam in “conservation herds,” though none are truly free roaming, added Considine.

– Sea otters –

As the dominant predator of marine nearshore environments, sea otters play a hugely important role in their ecosystem.

Historically they spanned from Baja California up the West Coast up to Alaska, Russia and northern Japan, but hunting for fur in the 1700s and 1800s decimated their numbers, which were once up to 300,000. 

They were thought for a while to have been completely exterminated off California, but a small surviving population of around 50 helped them partially recover to some 3,000 today.

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told AFP that research during the 1970s in the Aleutian Islands showed the otters maintained the balance of kelp forest by keeping a check on the sea urchins that graze on them.

In the last decade, more complex interactions have come to light. These include the downstream benefits of otters for eelgrass habitats in California estuaries. 

Here, the sea otters controlled the population of crabs, which meant there were more sea slugs who were able to graze algae, keeping the eelgrass healthy.

Eelgrass is considered a “nursery of the sea” for juvenile fish, and it also reduces erosion, which can factor in coastal floods.

“Kelp and eelgrass are often considered good ways to sequester carbon which can help mitigate the ongoing impacts of climate change,” stressed Fujii, a prime example of how destruction of nature can worsen planetary warming.

The Silala water system is the subject of a dispute between Bolivia and Chile at the International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice will give its judgement on Thursday on a climate change-fuelled row between Chile and Bolivia over the use of a crucial cross-border river.

Chile took its South American neighbour to the UN’s top court in 2016, asking the ICJ to declare the Silala an “international water course” and give it equal rights to the river.

It is the latest in a series of water-sharing disputes between parched Chile and landlocked Bolivia, which have been rowing over access to the Pacific Ocean for nearly 150 years.

The Silala rises in Bolivia’s high-altitude wetlands and crosses the border with Chile, flowing for around eight kilometres (five miles).

Bolivia however says the waters flow artificially into Chile due to a system of canals built to collect water from springs, and has demanded its neighbour pay compensation.

Judges at the Hague-based ICJ, which was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states, will hand down their judgment at 3 pm (1400 GMT).

The court in 2018 sank Bolivia’s bid to gain access to the Pacific, which it lost to Chile in the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific.

Former Bolivian president Evo Morales had previously sought to use the river dispute as a bargaining chip in its fight for a route to the ocean.

At the time, Morales threatened to reduce the flow of the Silala into Chile’s parched Atacama Desert and impose fees for its use.

– Troubled waters –

There have long been troubled waters between the two neighbours.

Chile and Bolivia have had no diplomatic relations since 1978 when Bolivia’s last attempt to negotiate a passage to the Pacific broke down in acrimony.

During the last hearings on the Silala case in April, Chile’s representative Ximena Fuentes said La Paz’s demand for Santiago to pay for the use of the River Silala was “absurd”.

Faced with the consequences of global climate change and freshwater becoming scarcer, “countries are called upon to cooperate in the efficient management of shared water resources,” Fuentes added.

Bolivia hit back, saying Santiago’s case was “hypothetical” and that it had “never” done anything to block the Silala’s flow on Chilean territory.

Once handed down, ICJ judgements are binding and cannot be appealed, although the court has no real means of enforcement.

Water is a major issue on a continent where climate change is having increasingly serious effects.

Chile is currently in a 13-year “Mega Drought” that is the longest in at least 1,000 years and threatens the country’s freshwater resources.

In Bolivia, the Pantanal — the world’s largest wetlands which also span Brazil and Paraguay — is experiencing its worst drought in 47 years.

Few species evoke the spirit of the American wild as much as wolves

Scientists often study the grim impacts of losing wildlife to hunting, habitat destruction and climate change. But what happens when endangered animals are brought back from the brink?

Research has shown restoring so-called “keystone” species — those with an outsized impact on their environment — is vital for the health of ecosystems, and can come with unexpected benefits for humans.

Here are some notable examples from North America. 

– Wolves –

Few species evoke the American wild as much as wolves. 

Though revered by Indigenous communities, European colonists who arrived in the 1600s embarked on widespread extermination campaigns through hunting and trapping.

By the mid-20th century, fewer than a thousand gray wolves were left in the continental United States, down from at least a quarter million before colonization.

Extinction was averted in the 1970s when lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act, helping revive the apex predator in parts of its former range.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the government took wolves from Canada and reintroduced them to Yellowstone National Park.

This generated a wealth of data that scientists are still working to understand.

The new arrivals kept elk numbers down, preventing them from over-browsing vegetation that provides material for birds to build nests and beavers to build dams — a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade.

The recovered vegetation helped stop soil erosion into rivers, changing their course by reducing meandering.

While building their dams, the beavers also create deep ponds that juvenile fish and frogs need to survive.

When they embark on hunts, wolves focus on weak and diseased prey, ensuring survival of the fittest.

A recent paper even found that wolves brought back in the midwestern state of Wisconsin kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions with cars.

Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity compared ecosystems to tapestries, “and when we take out some of the threads, we weaken that tapestry,” she told AFP.

It’s thought there are now more than 6,000 gray wolves in the US. The main threat is legalized hunting in some states.

– Buffalo –

The story of the American buffalo — also known as bison — is inextricably linked to the dark history of the early United States.

From an estimated 30 million, their number plummeted to just hundreds by the late 19th century as the US government sought to wipe out plains tribe Indians whose way of life depended on the animal.

“It was an intentional genocide to remove the buffalo, to the remove the Indians and force them onto reservations,” Cody Considine of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told AFP.

Buffalo, he explained, are an integral part of TNC’s efforts to re-establish prairies in the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois.

The buffalo, who were introduced there in 2014 and now number around a hundred, favor eating grass over flowering plants and legumes, which in turn allows a variety of birds, insects and amphibians to flourish.

“Some of these species without that grazing simply just disappear off the landscape due to the high competition of the grasses,” added Considine.

As they forage, bisons’ hooves kick up and aerate the soil, further aiding in plant growth as well as seed dispersion. 

TNC currently manages some 6,500 buffalo, and is creating a pilot program with tribal partners that involves transferring excess animals to Indigenous communities, as part of broader efforts to revive America’s national mammal. 

Some 20,000 buffalo are now thought to roam in “conservation herds,” though none are truly free roaming, added Considine.

– Sea otters –

As the dominant predator of marine nearshore environments, sea otters play a hugely important role in their ecosystem.

Historically they spanned from Baja California up the West Coast up to Alaska, Russia and northern Japan, but hunting in the 1700s and 1800s decimated their numbers, which were once up to 300,000. 

They were thought for a while to have been completely exterminated off California, but a small surviving population of around 50 helped them partially recover to some 3,000 today.

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told AFP that research during the 1970s in the Aleutian Islands showed the otters maintained the balance of kelp forest by keeping a check on the sea urchins that graze on them.

In the last decade, more complex interactions have come to light. These include the downstream benefits of otters for eelgrass habitats in California estuaries. 

Here, the sea otters controlled the population of crabs, which meant there were more sea slugs who were able to graze algae, keeping the eelgrass healthy.

Eelgrass is considered a “nursery of the sea” for juvenile fish, and it also reduces erosion, which can factor in coastal floods.

“Kelp and eelgrass are often considered good ways to sequester carbon which can help mitigate the ongoing impacts of climate change,” stressed Fujii, a prime example of how destruction of nature can worsen planetary warming.

It's not often that fishermen and conservationists see eye to eye

A local fishing ban off the southern French coast has won praise from environmentalists and fishermen alike, a rare example of biodiversity protection dovetailing with business interests.

Almost two decades after the ban, Cap Roux, a coastal tip of the Esterel mountain range near the resort of Saint-Raphael on the Mediterranean coast, is a biodiversity haven. 

It stands in stark contrast to many other places on the Cote d’Azur where unbridled construction, overfishing and heavy shipping traffic have spoiled the once-pristine natural environment.

More than 80 species of marine life thrive off Cap Roux, attracted by meadows of seagrass and so-called “living rock” beneath the waves, a fusion of coral and algae.

Fishing here has been forbidden since 2004, a ban covering 450 hectares (1,112 acres).

Surprisingly to some, local fishermen called for the restriction, saying fish needed a safe place to breed and grow to renew stocks.

“Fishermen were worried about their future, and said ‘let’s find a space for a nursery that will replenish the surrounding waters,'” said Christian Decugis, Saint-Raphael’s first fishing mediator.

– ‘More fish, bigger fish’ –

The fish sanctuary lies in the heart of an EU-protected reserve, chosen because it is a relatively unspoilt natural spot, far from the coast’s commercial ports.

“There would have been no point creating a reserve in an area that’s already been messed up,” said Decugis.

The ban has resulted in “many more fish and bigger fish, and an abundance of species”, he said, an observation backed by scientific studies and experiments.

Evidence shows the haven status has helped protect populations of grouper and corb, with scorpion fish and sea bream doing particularly well.

A 2017 study by APAM, an association promoting sustainable fishing, said that income for fishermen was “significantly higher” near the sanctuary than in zones farther away.

Beyond financial benefits, the new system also improves the reputation of the fishing community, which is often accused of having little concern for the consequences of relentlessly exploiting the sea’s resources.

“The image of a profession that is getting a handle on things and that thinks about tomorrow is very motivating for the fishermen,” Decugis said.

– ‘Open treasure chest’ –

Not everyone is so protective of the restricted zone, with poachers tempted to plunder its healthy and plentiful fish supplies.

“It’s like an open treasure chest”, Decugis said.

Julia Toscano, co-manager of the reserve, regularly goes out on a boat between May and September to check the no-fishing zone.

She calls police if she notices anything suspicious. Soon, she hopes there will be cameras to make the job easier.

Many violations are carried out by tourists who go fishing unaware of the rules, but Toscano said this is “still poaching”.

Regular campaigns inform visitors of the regulations and explain why the rich fishing grounds are off-limits.

But it’s a growing challenge: the number of tourists has shot up over the last three years.

Many come on big pleasure boats, typically over 24 metres (79 feet) long.

The abundance of fish and colourful reefs also attract divers, who generate 500,000 euros ($516,000) in income each year for local diving clubs, according to Fabien Rozec, who runs the region’s marine life watchdog.

EU funds have allowed the clubs to get hold of eco-friendly buoys, so they no longer have to lower anchors on the fragile seabed.

Even pleasure boats have grown more cautious over the years, Rozec said, anchoring on patches of sand rather than underwater flora.