AFP UK

Global warming is already affecting people’s health so much that emergency action on climate change cannot be put on hold while the world deals with the Covid-19 pandemic, medical journals across the globe warned on Monday.

“Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world,” read an editorial published in more than 220 leading journals ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in November.

Since the pre-industrial era, temperatures have risen around 1.1 degrees Celsius (34 degrees Fahrenheit).

The editorial, written by the editors-in-chief of over a dozen journals including the Lancet, the East African Medical Journal, Brazil’s Revista de Saude Publica and the International Nursing Review, said this had caused a plethora of health problems.

“In the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among people older than 65 years has increased by more than 50 percent,” it read.

“Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.”

It also pointed to the decline in agricultural production, “hampering efforts to reduce undernutrition.”

These effects, which hit those most vulnerable like minorities, children and poorer communities hardest, are just the beginning, it warned.

As things stand, global warming could reach +1.5C on pre-industrial levels around 2030, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And that, along with the continued loss of biodiversity, “risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse,” the editorial warned.

“Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions.”

In a statement ahead of the publication of the editorial, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “The risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any single disease.”

“The Covid-19 pandemic will end, but there is no vaccine for the climate crisis.

“Every action taken to limit emissions and warming brings us closer to a healthier and safer future.”

The editorial pointed out that many governments met the threat of Covid-19 with “unprecedented funding” and called for “a similar emergency response” to the environmental crisis, highlighting the benefits.

“Better air quality alone would realise health benefits that easily offset the global costs of emissions reductions,” it read.

The authors also said “governments must make fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organised and how we live.”

It was only supposed to fly five times. And yet NASA’s helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn’t ready to retire.

Given its stunning and unexpected success, the US space agency has extended Ingenuity’s mission indefinitely. 

The tiny helicopter has become the regular travel companion of the rover Perseverance, whose core mission is to seek signs of ancient life on Mars. 

“Everything is working so well,” said Josh Ravich, the head of Ingenuity’s mechanical engineering team. “We’re doing better on the surface than we had expected.” 

Hundreds of people contributed to the project, though only about a dozen currently retain day-to-day roles.

Ravich joined the team five years ago. 

“When I got the opportunity to come work on the helicopter project, I think I had the same reaction as anybody else: ‘Is that even possible?'”

His initial doubts were understandable: The air on Mars has a density equivalent to only one percent that of Earth’s atmosphere. By way of comparison, flying a helicopter on Mars would be like flying one in the thin air nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Earth.

Nor was it easy getting to Mars in the first place. Ingenuity had to withstand the initial shock of takeoff from Earth, and then of the February 18 landing on the red planet following a seven-month voyage through space, strapped to the rover’s belly. 

Once in its new surroundings, the tiny (four pound, or 1.8 kilogram) copter has had to survive the glacial cold of Martian nights, drawing warmth from the solar panels that charge its batteries during the day. And its flights are guided using an array of sensors, since the 15-minute lag in communications from Earth makes real-time guidance impossible. 

– Scouting duties –

On April 19, Ingenuity carried out its maiden flight, making history as the first motorized craft to fly on another planet.

Exceeding all expectations, it has gone on to fly 11 more times. 

“We’ve actually been able to handle winds greater than we had expected,” Ravich told AFP.

“I think by flight three we had actually accomplished all of our engineering goals … (and) got all the information we had hoped to get,” said Ravich, who works for NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which developed the helicopter.

Since then, Ingenuity has flown as high as 39 feet (12 meters), and its last flight lasted two minutes and 49 seconds. In all, it has covered a distance of 1.6 miles.

In May, Ingenuity flew its first one-way mission, landing outside the relatively flat “airfield” that had been carefully selected as its initial home.  

But not all has gone smoothly. Its sixth flight brought some excitement.

After being knocked dangerously off-balance by a malfunction affecting the photos taken in flight to help it stabilize, the tiny craft was able to recover. It landed, safe and sound, and the problem was resolved.

Ingenuity is now being sent out to scout the way for Perseverance, using its high-resolution color camera.

The purpose is twofold: to chart a path for the rover that is safe, but also which is of scientific interest, notably in geological terms. 

Ken Farley, who heads Perseverance’s science team, explained how photos taken by Ingenuity during its 12th flight showed that a region dubbed South Seitha was of less interest than scientists had hoped.  

As a result, the rover might not be sent there. 

– Favorable conditions –

After more than six months on the red planet, the little drone-like craft has gained a growing following on Earth, featured on coffee cups and T-shirts sold on the internet.

What explains its longevity?

“The environment has been very cooperative so far: the temperatures, the wind, the sun, the dust in the air… It’s still very cold, but it could have been a lot worse,” said Ravich.

In theory, the helicopter should be able to keep operating for some time. But the approaching Martian winter will be challenging.

NASA engineers, now armed with the data from Ingenuity’s flights, are already working on its next-generation successors. 

“Something in the 20 to 30 kilograms (range) maybe, able to carry science payloads,” said Ravich. 

Those future payloads might just include the rock samples collected by Perseverance. 

NASA is planning to retrieve those samples during a future mission — sometime in the 2030s. 

Should 80 percent of the Amazon be declared a protected area by 2025? 

The world’s top conservation body is on Sunday poised to decide whether its 1,400 members can vote on this controversial proposal, put forward by indigenous groups.

Submitted under an emergency provision to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the measure calls for a “global action plan” to halt rampant deforestation and the destructive extraction of precious minerals and oil.

Over the last two decades, the Amazon has lost roughly 10,000 square kilometres every year, according to assessments based on satellite data.

“That’s the emergency, not just for us but for humanity,” Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, a leader of the Curripaco people in Venezuela, told AFP at the Congress venue in Marseille.

For the first time in the IUCN’s 70-year history, indigenous groups are now voting members alongside government agencies and national or international NGOs. 

Diaz Mirabal submitted the Amazon proposal for the organisation COICA, which represents more than two million indigenous people in nine Amazon nations.

“We have been neglected, and now we have a voice and will exercise that voting right,” he said.

– ‘Territory of humanity’ –

Recent research has warned that massive destruction of tropical forests combined with climate change are pushing the Amazon towards a disastrous “tipping point” which would see tropical forests give way to savannah-like landscapes.

This would not only drastically change the region’s climate, but have an impact on global climate systems as well, scientists say.

Rates of tree loss drop sharply in the forests where native peoples live, especially if they hold some degree of title — legal or customary — over land, other research has shown. 

IUCN officials are reviewing the COICA measure, along with 20 others proposals submitted after the deadline last year, “to make sure they are both ‘new’ and ‘urgent’,” said Enrique Lahmann, a senior administrator. 

“Both criteria are required.” 

A decision will be announced late Sunday or Monday, his office said. 

While the vote, which would be held in the coming week, would not have legal weight, it demonstrates the strength of feeling among indigenous groups. 

In an emotional press conference, Diaz Mirabal — flanked by indigenous leaders from French Guiana and Ecuador — implored world leaders to take head of his message.

“We are asking governments to help us protect our territory, which is also the territory of humanity,” he said. “Because if the Amazon rainforest disappears, people will die everywhere, it’s that simple.”

“It is crucial to stop extracting the oil, the gold, the uranium,” he added. “This is wealth for Europe, the United States, Russia, and China, but is poverty for us.” 

Workers have deployed containment booms and skimmer devices as they attempt to contain a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico discovered after Hurricane Ida roared through the area, the US Coast Guard said Sunday. 

The spill is in waters off Port Fourchon, Louisiana — near where Ida made landfall — in a region that is a major hub of the US petrochemical industry. 

An oil slick now extends more than a dozen miles through the warm waters of the Gulf but has yet to reach shore, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The Coast Guard in Louisiana said it had been informed of a spill in that area and was responding, but provided few details.

Talos Energy, a Texas firm specializing in offshore oil and gas exploration, is sending a diving team to the area Sunday to seek the source of the leak, the Coast Guard said.

In a statement, Talos Energy said: “An ongoing investigation has not determined the cause of the release at this time; however, extensive field observations indicate that Talos assets are not the source.”

Talos said it is using booms and skimmers to recover the oil.

Packing winds of up to 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour, Ida roared through Louisiana last Sunday, causing catastrophic damage, according to local authorities. 

Downgraded later to tropical storm status, Ida nonetheless retained rare power as it rumbled through the US Northeast, leaving dozens dead.

It was in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico that, in 2010, an explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, touching off the worst oil spill in history. 

Just off the northern coast of Iceland, scientists are collecting data from whales’ breath to find out if they get stressed by whale-watching boats, an industry that has boomed in recent years.

Researchers from Whale Wise, a marine conservation charity, are studying the whales’ stress levels in their hormones.

From their small sailboat, a drone lifts off. After six hours of waiting, the scientists have finally spotted a humpback whale.

Attached to the flying device are two petri dishes — transparent cylindrical containers — that will collect water droplets from the whale’s spray.

The timeframe to collect the sample is short — the duration of a whale’s breath. 

This time, the drone flies over the whale carefully, crossing through the spray coming from the whale’s blowhole… and mission accomplished. It returns to the sailboat, delivering its precious cargo to the researchers.

Once wrapped in paraffin and frozen, the samples will be sent to a laboratory for analysis.

The researchers aim to collect samples before a whale watching boat arrives and then afterwards, then compare the two samples to determine the direct impact of that encounter on stress levels.

Tourists have been increasingly flocking to the waters of the North Atlantic off Iceland to admire the majestic creatures, though 2020 was a quiet year due to the pandemic.

More than 360,000 whale watchers were registered in 2019, three times the number a decade ago.

Almost a third of them began their whale watching tour in the Husavik harbour, heading for the chilly waters of Skjalfandi Bay.

– Feeding disruptions –

Previous studies on tourism’s impact on whales, which were based on behavioural observations, concluded that tourism caused only minor disruptions to the mammals.

The most recent study, from 2011, found that whale-watching excursions were disrupting minke whales in the Faxa Bay near Reykjavik, in the south of the country.

“We found that the minke whales were disturbed in their feeding, but it was only a short-term disturbance,” one of the authors of the study, Marianne Rasmussen, director of the University of Iceland Research Center in Husavik, told AFP.

“It didn’t affect their overall fitness.”

The method used by Whale Wise this summer has been used elsewhere by biologists but this was a first for researchers in Iceland.

“From the samples, you can look at hormones such as cortisol, which is a stress-related hormone, and then you can determine the physiological stress levels of these whales,” said Tom Grove, Whale Wise co-founder and a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. 

Since 2018, 59 samples have been collected. While a minimum of 50 are needed for a proper analysis, he hopes to collect around 100.

This summer, some of the samples were collected together with French environmental group Unu Mondo Expedition, which travelled to Iceland for a month-long expedition to study climate change issues.

“The whales are important to us, for our lives, because they are part of the ecosystem on our planet,” said Sophie Simonin, 29, the organisation’s co-founder.

“They also absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide,” she added.

According to a December 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund, a large whale captures an average of 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

While whales are a tourist attraction, they are also hunted in Iceland.

The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986, but Iceland, which opposed the moratorium, resumed its hunt in 2003.

Iceland only bans the hunt of blue whales.

But while the country has established an annual quota of 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales until 2023, no whales were hunted this year for the third straight year, as whalers say it is not financially viable.

Water tanks, fire trucks and helicopters: California’s Napa Valley winemakers are buying their own equipment to protect their property and their pricey vintages from wildfires.

A historic drought driven by man-made global warming has left large tracts of the western United States parched and highly vulnerable to fires.

That includes the world-renowned vineyards that dot central California, producing billions of dollars in wine every year.

And with fires spreading at an alarming rate — 2021 is shaping up to be the most destructive year on record — firefighting resources are stretched thin.

“I know that CalFire cannot be everywhere at the same time and that has shown constantly, not only here but in the rest of California,” said Randy Dunn, who founded his 200-acre (80-hectare) winery in 1979, referring to the state’s firefighters.

“So I feel strongly that, if you have some protection and you stay here, that you got a chance. If you leave, then I think your chance has really dwindled.”

Dunn already owned a vintage 1946 fire truck — old, but still functional — and has just bought a newer one.

The siren doesn’t work, but its hoses are fine, though so far they have not been battle tested — it’s more of something he has been using for fun with his grandchildren.

But he is confident he would be able to use it if a fire breaks out on his property.

Its purchase was prompted by a close call last year when the Glass Fire scorched more than 67,000 acres of Napa and Sonoma counties — prime wine-producing country.

“It was about a mile from here,” he told AFP pointing to the west, where dried-out pines cling to the dusty earth.

– Smoke-infused vintage – 

Wildfires are a part of the natural forest cycle, burning away old vegetation and spurring new growth in their wake.

But their reach, intensity and regularity is increasing across the region, as the planet warms and weather patterns change.

Each fire season brings new worries over how much will burn this year, and how far the wind will carry the embers.

Winemakers like Dunn know that they have to work hard to protect their land.

He has spent thousands of dollars to clear brush and forest around the property.

But the cost pales in comparison with the insurance premium, which has gone up more than five-fold this year to $550,000.

For Mike Dunn, Randy’s son, the land management is vital to the fight to protect the vineyards. 

The second fire truck adds peace of mind.

“If you have defensible space like we do, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have some sort of method to spray any possible (fire) startup. 

“If something came shooting over here, we can put it out.”

“We’ve done a lot of work maintaining the forest undergrowth, I think that’s really, really important, more so than owning fire trucks.”

The Dunn estate produces tens of thousands of bottles of wine each year, matured in casks from Burgundy, France in an on-site cellar.

Each one usually sells for between $85 and $140.

Last year’s smoke-infused vintage had to be turned into box wine, and fetched the equivalent of just $6 a bottle.

“The two evacuations last year and the proximity of the fire and the resulting ruined vintage… it’s just terrifying,” says Mike Dunn.

“It’s a way of life that’s being threatened.”

– Solutions –

With fires raging across California, the Dunns are not alone in fretting if the fire service will have the resources to protect them — even with the recent addition of a dedicated helicopter and high-tech fire-detection cameras.

Neighbor Michael Rogerson, a relative newcomer to the area and chief executive of an aircraft company, is offering another private-sector solution to worried vintners.

He has two retro-fitted ex-military helicopters that he wants to provide as dedicated fire-fighting machines.

“Right now, we’re finishing equipping the helicopters and we expect that they would be out in this region in about two weeks,” he said.

“We would hope to be able to demonstrate it and show it to CalFire and the US Forestry Service and also to the Napa community, that this is a great solution for them.”

With just a few weeks to go until the grape harvest, Randy Dunn is hoping that such solutions will not be needed, and that he won’t have to press his engines into action — at least not for fighting fires.

“We’ve used the old one for great squirt gun fights with the kids,” he says.

“They get their high powered squirt guns, I get my hose.”

It was only supposed to fly five times. And yet NASA’s helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn’t ready to retire.

Given its stunning and unexpected success, the US space agency has extended Ingenuity’s mission indefinitely. 

The tiny helicopter has become the regular travel companion of the rover Perseverance, whose core mission is to seek signs of ancient life on Mars. 

“Everything is working so well,” said Josh Ravich, the head of Ingenuity’s mechanical engineering team. “We’re doing better on the surface than we had expected.” 

Hundreds of people contributed to the project, though only about a dozen currently retain day-to-day roles.

Ravich joined the team five years ago. 

“When I got the opportunity to come work on the helicopter project, I think I had the same reaction as anybody else: ‘Is that even possible?'”

His initial doubts were understandable: The air on Mars has a density equivalent to only one percent that of Earth’s atmosphere. By way of comparison, flying a helicopter on Mars would be like flying one in the thin air nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Earth.

Nor was it easy getting to Mars in the first place. Ingenuity had to withstand the initial shock of takeoff from Earth, and then of the February 18 landing on the red planet following a seven-month voyage through space, strapped to the rover’s belly. 

Once in its new surroundings, the tiny (four pound, or 1.8 kilogram) copter has had to survive the glacial cold of Martian nights, drawing warmth from the solar panels that charge its batteries during the day. And its flights are guided using an array of sensors, since the 15-minute lag in communications from Earth makes real-time guidance impossible. 

– Scouting duties –

On April 19, Ingenuity carried out its maiden flight, making history as the first motorized craft to fly on another planet.

Exceeding all expectations, it has gone on to fly 11 more times. 

“We’ve actually been able to handle winds greater than we had expected,” Ravich told AFP.

“I think by flight three we had actually accomplished all of our engineering goals … (and) got all the information we had hoped to get,” said Ravich, who works for NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which developed the helicopter.

Since then, Ingenuity has flown as high as 39 feet (12 meters), and its last flight lasted two minutes and 49 seconds. In all, it has covered a distance of 1.6 miles.

In May, Ingenuity flew its first one-way mission, landing outside the relatively flat “airfield” that had been carefully selected as its initial home.  

But not all has gone smoothly. Its sixth flight brought some excitement.

After being knocked dangerously off-balance by a malfunction affecting the photos taken in flight to help it stabilize, the tiny craft was able to recover. It landed, safe and sound, and the problem was resolved.

Ingenuity is now being sent out to scout the way for Perseverance, using its high-resolution color camera.

The purpose is twofold: to chart a path for the rover that is safe, but also which is of scientific interest, notably in geological terms. 

Ken Farley, who heads Perseverance’s science team, explained how photos taken by Ingenuity during its 12th flight showed that a region dubbed South Seitha was of less interest than scientists had hoped.  

As a result, the rover might not be sent there. 

– Favorable conditions –

After more than six months on the red planet, the little drone-like craft has gained a growing following on Earth, featured on coffee cups and T-shirts sold on the internet.

What explains its longevity?

“The environment has been very cooperative so far: the temperatures, the wind, the sun, the dust in the air… It’s still very cold, but it could have been a lot worse,” said Ravich.

In theory, the helicopter should be able to keep operating for some time. But the approaching Martian winter will be challenging.

NASA engineers, now armed with the data from Ingenuity’s flights, are already working on its next-generation successors. 

“Something in the 20 to 30 kilograms (range) maybe, able to carry science payloads,” said Ravich. 

Those future payloads might just include the rock samples collected by Perseverance. 

NASA is planning to retrieve those samples during a future mission — sometime in the 2030s. 

Water tanks, fire trucks and helicopters: California’s Napa Valley winemakers are buying their own equipment to protect their property and their pricey vintages from wildfires.

A historic drought driven by man-made global warming has left large tracts of the western United States parched and highly vulnerable to fires.

That includes the world-renowned vineyards that dot central California, producing billions of dollars in wine every year.

And with fires spreading at an alarming rate — 2021 is shaping up to be the most destructive year on record — firefighting resources are stretched thin.

“I know that CalFire cannot be everywhere at the same time and that has shown constantly, not only here but in the rest of California,” said Randy Dunn, who founded his 200-acre (80-hectare) winery in 1979, referring to the state’s firefighters.

“So I feel strongly that, if you have some protection and you stay here, that you got a chance. If you leave, then I think your chance has really dwindled.”

Dunn already owned a vintage 1946 fire truck — old, but still functional — and has just bought a newer one.

The siren doesn’t work, but its hoses are fine, though so far they have not been battle tested — it’s more of something he has been using for fun with his grandchildren.

But he is confident he would be able to use it if a fire breaks out on his property.

Its purchase was prompted by a close call last year when the Glass Fire scorched more than 67,000 acres of Napa and Sonoma counties — prime wine-producing country.

“It was about a mile from here,” he told AFP pointing to the west, where dried-out pines cling to the dusty earth.

– Smoke-infused vintage – 

Wildfires are a part of the natural forest cycle, burning away old vegetation and spurring new growth in their wake.

But their reach, intensity and regularity is increasing across the region, as the planet warms and weather patterns change.

Each fire season brings new worries over how much will burn this year, and how far the wind will carry the embers.

Winemakers like Dunn know that they have to work hard to protect their land.

He has spent thousands of dollars to clear brush and forest around the property.

But the cost pales in comparison with the insurance premium, which has gone up more than five-fold this year to $550,000.

For Mike Dunn, Randy’s son, the land management is vital to the fight to protect the vineyards. 

The second fire truck adds peace of mind.

“If you have defensible space like we do, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have some sort of method to spray any possible (fire) startup. 

“If something came shooting over here, we can put it out.”

“We’ve done a lot of work maintaining the forest undergrowth, I think that’s really, really important, more so than owning fire trucks.”

The Dunn estate produces tens of thousands of bottles of wine each year, matured in casks from Burgundy, France in an on-site cellar.

Each one usually sells for between $85 and $140.

Last year’s smoke-infused vintage had to be turned into box wine, and fetched the equivalent of just $6 a bottle.

“The two evacuations last year and the proximity of the fire and the resulting ruined vintage… it’s just terrifying,” says Mike Dunn.

“It’s a way of life that’s being threatened.”

– Solutions –

With fires raging across California, the Dunns are not alone in fretting if the fire service will have the resources to protect them — even with the recent addition of a dedicated helicopter and high-tech fire-detection cameras.

Neighbor Michael Rogerson, a relative newcomer to the area and chief executive of an aircraft company, is offering another private-sector solution to worried vintners.

He has two retro-fitted ex-military helicopters that he wants to provide as dedicated fire-fighting machines.

“Right now, we’re finishing equipping the helicopters and we expect that they would be out in this region in about two weeks,” he said.

“We would hope to be able to demonstrate it and show it to CalFire and the US Forestry Service and also to the Napa community, that this is a great solution for them.”

With just a few weeks to go until the grape harvest, Randy Dunn is hoping that such solutions will not be needed, and that he won’t have to press his engines into action — at least not for fighting fires.

“We’ve used the old one for great squirt gun fights with the kids,” he says.

“They get their high powered squirt guns, I get my hose.”

After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new “Green Status” launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery. 

Since 1964, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed some 138,000 species for its Red List of Threatened Species, a powerful tool to highlight the plight of wildlife facing extinction. 

Some 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Its new Green Status will act as a companion to this survival watchlist, looking at the extent to which species are depleted or restored compared to their historical population levels. 

The initiative aims “to measure species recoveries in a standardised way, which has never been done before”, Green Status co-chair Molly Grace told a news conference Saturday during the IUCN congress in Marseille.

But it also looks to “incentivise conservation action”, with evaluations of how well past preservation efforts have worked, as well as projections for how effective future ones will be. 

It was born of a realisation that “preventing extinction alone is not enough”, said Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford.

Beyond the first step of stopping a species from disappearing entirely, “once it’s out of danger, what does recovery look like?”

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed to stop losses in the face of rampant habitat destruction, overexploitation and illegal wildlife trade.

In 2019 the UN’s biodiversity experts warned that a million species were nearing extinction.

– ‘Invisible’ work –

The Green status of over 180 species have been assessed so far, although the IUCN hopes to one day to match the tens of thousands on the Red List.  

They are classified on a sliding scale: from “fully recovered” through “slightly depleted”, “moderately depleted”, “largely depleted” and “critically depleted”. 

When all else has failed, the final listing is “extinct in the wild”.

While these categories mirror the Red List rankings, “they’re not simply a Red List in reverse”, said Grace. 

She gave the example of a pocket-sized Australian marsupial, the burrowing bettong, whose numbers have plummeted and which now exists in just five percent of its indigenous range.

Successful conservation efforts have seen populations stabilise, with a Red List rating improving from endangered to near threatened in recent decades. 

But Grace said the Green Status assessment underscores that the species is not out of the woods, with a listing of critically depleted that suggests: “We have a long way to go before we recover this species.”

The listing also incorporates an assessment of what would have happened if nothing had been done to save a given species.  

The California condor, for example, has been classified as critically endangered for three decades, despite major investment in its preservation.

“Some people might think: ‘We’ve been trying to conserve the condor for 30 years, its red list status has been critically endangered for all those 30 years, what is conservation actually doing for this species?'” said Grace. 

But she said her team’s evaluation of what would have happened without these protection efforts found that it would have gone extinct in the wild.   

“What this does is it makes the invisible work of conservation visible. And this is hopefully going to be really powerful in incentivising and justifying the amazing work that conservationists do,” said Grace. 

After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new “Green Status” launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery. 

Since 1964, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed some 138,000 species for its Red List of Threatened Species, a powerful tool to highlight the plight of wildlife facing extinction. 

Some 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Its new Green Status will act as a companion to this survival watchlist, looking at the extent to which species are depleted or restored compared to their historical population levels. 

The initiative aims “to measure species recoveries in a standardised way, which has never been done before”, Green Status co-chair Molly Grace told a news conference Saturday during the IUCN congress in Marseille.

But it also looks to “incentivise conservation action”, with evaluations of how well past preservation efforts have worked, as well as projections for how effective future ones will be. 

It was born of a realisation that “preventing extinction alone is not enough”, said Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford.

Beyond the first step of stopping a species from disappearing entirely, “once it’s out of danger, what does recovery look like?”

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed to stop losses in the face of rampant habitat destruction, overexploitation and illegal wildlife trade.

In 2019 the UN’s biodiversity experts warned that a million species were nearing extinction.

– ‘Invisible’ work –

The Green status of over 180 species have been assessed so far, although the IUCN hopes to one day to match the tens of thousands on the Red List.  

They are classified on a sliding scale: from “fully recovered” through “slightly depleted”, “moderately depleted”, “largely depleted” and “critically depleted”. 

When all else has failed, the final listing is “extinct in the wild”.

While these categories mirror the Red List rankings, “they’re not simply a Red List in reverse”, said Grace. 

She gave the example of a pocket-sized Australian marsupial, the burrowing bettong, whose numbers have plummeted and which now exists in just five percent of its indigenous range.

Successful conservation efforts have seen populations stabilise, with a Red List rating improving from endangered to near threatened in recent decades. 

But Grace said the Green Status assessment underscores that the species is not out of the woods, with a listing of critically depleted that suggests: “We have a long way to go before we recover this species.”

The listing also incorporates an assessment of what would have happened if nothing had been done to save a given species.  

The California condor, for example, has been classified as critically endangered for three decades, despite major investment in its preservation.

“Some people might think: ‘We’ve been trying to conserve the condor for 30 years, its red list status has been critically endangered for all those 30 years, what is conservation actually doing for this species?'” said Grace. 

But she said her team’s evaluation of what would have happened without these protection efforts found that it would have gone extinct in the wild.   

“What this does is it makes the invisible work of conservation visible. And this is hopefully going to be really powerful in incentivising and justifying the amazing work that conservationists do,” said Grace.