environment

"In the 1920s about 60 percent of Haiti still had forest cover. In the 1980s it was estimated that between 1 and 4 percent of Haiti still had forest cover."

"Forests clean the air, filter water, control and support biodiversity (Acharya et al., 2019; Aznar-Sánchez et al., 2018). In addition, many forests are spiritual and cultural sites, enriching the lives of people in surrounding communities and offering opportunities for aesthetic enjoyment, relaxation and recreation (Brauman et al., 2020). Forests also play a significant role in influencing localised temperatures and rainfall (Leite-Filho et al., 2021; Schwaab et al., 2021). In 2020, total forest carbon stocks were estimated to be 662 million s, averaging 163 t per (, 2020). Between 1990 and 2020, global forest carbon stocks declined; however, forest carbon stocks per hectare increased owing to improved (FAO, 2020). Human activities, including deforestation and unsustainable practices, in particular, have greatly impacted forest ecosystems (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010). Between 1990 and 2020, 420 million hectares of forest were lost to other land uses. Despite a slowing deforestation rate, forests continued to decline at an annual rate of 0.25 % between 2015 and 2020 (FAO, 2020). Halting deforestation and forest degradation is crucial for addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, and threats to human health (Rametsteiner et al., 2022). Forests also play a crucial role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mitigating climate change, and enhancing human well-being and economic prosperity (Rametsteiner et al., 2022). Forest governance, therefore, includes the restoration of degraded forests, expanding forest cover, upgrading forest quality, increasing sustainable use and building green value chains to help meet future demands for materials and ecosystem services and to support greener, circular economies."

"The comprises the most biodiverse region in the world, but, despite being highly threatened by human-induced s, little is known about how those changes influence the remaining forest’s extent and configuration in Brazil’s arc of . We analysed the spatial and temporal dynamics and the configuration of forest cover in Brazil’s state of over 34 years. We calculated seven landscape metrics based on freely available satellite imagery to understand the habitat transformations. Overall, natural vegetation cover declined from 90.9% to 62.7% between 1986 and 2020, and fragmentation greatly increased, generating 78,000 forest fragments and 100,000 fragments of ‘natural vegetation’, which also includes forest."

"A leaflet drops through your letter box advising on ways to avoid contracting and spreading . Your bag is searched as you enter a country on the start of your holiday — and there's a fine of $200 for an undeclared apple. You drive across a disinfectant mat on a visit to a local farm. You call the council for advice on the spreading from your neighbour's garden. You switch to eating after reading about the role of industrial farming in the production of risk. You shudder as you remember the smell of . In many different ways you may have encountered events, practices, procedures, narratives and knowledges contained within the complex issue of ‘biosecurity’."

"In a strict sense, biosecurity involves issues dealing directly with s and s, such as prevention of emergence, loss, accidents, theft, or use, and remediation after pathogenic damage. It addresses procedures and practices to help ensure that s and relevant sensitive information remain secure and out of the hands of terrorists. But we have to be practical. We inevitably pay a price for security."

"When most physicians are asked about the realm of biosecurity, they often are able to discuss the subject in broad strokes that include concepts such as bioterrorism, , and s. However, the restriction of knowledge of biosecurity solely to these components does not make the concept adequately concrete; consequently, biosecurity remains a floating abstraction with no firm tie to reality, constraining the ability of physicians to fully converse with government policy makers and the public on this vital national security matter. Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law, by internationally renowned law professors and David Fidler, provides an opportunity to develop a robust understanding of biosecurity and its role in national and international policy."

"The secure and continuous production of and are key to U.S. national security. The introduction of foreign-origin or emerging animal, plant, and human diseases by intentional acts of , terrorism, , or criminal activity can lead to severe consequences for domestic and international s, the economic security of the agricultural community, and food security, and the credibility of responsible state and federal agencies. Early public, animal, plant health, law enforcement, and intelligence assessments and investigations of suspected or confirmed intentional threats are critical additions to existing interagency prevention, response, and management protocols. Forensic microbiology, a multidisciplinary science, is essential to the nation's readiness for responding to a potentially criminal, intentional, or otherwise nefarious incident in the agricultural sector (plant or animal), and of eventual supporting attribution and the prosecution of the perpetrators."

") air pollution has recently been recognized as a risk factor for . ... Fine particulate matter may affect cognitive function via as a result of systemic inflammation or following lung irritation. ... It has also been proposed that the smallest particles, often coated with neurotoxic chemicals, ... can enter the brain through the or cross the . ... Unlike many other common risk factors for dementia (eg, hypertension, stroke, and ), exposures to air pollution can be modified at the population level, making it a prime target for large-scale prevention efforts."

"and other activities were responsible for pushing populations of animals to extinction long before the , which began about ten thousand years ago. Today, however, our collective assault on animals, plants, and s has reached such a horrendous level that any alarm we might sound will be too faint to match the tragedy that is unfolding. ... In the past century or so, both the and of Homo sapiens have increased spectacularly, and this is this is the root cause of the rapid acceleration in human-caused species extinctions, precipitating what is now called the ."

"Outdoor is a major global public health issue (Cohen et al., 2017), leading to 4.14 million non-accidental premature deaths in both urban and rural areas worldwide in 2019 alone (Global Burden of Disease, 2019). In 2016, 54 % of the world's population lived in urban areas (United Nations, 2018), where ground-level (O3), particles with an aerodynamic diameter lower than 2.5 (), and (NO2) are the most harmful air pollutants for human health (Pascal et al., 2013; McDuffie et al., 2021; Anenberg et al., 2022). By 2050, 70 % of the world's population will reside urban areas (United Nations, 2018), and outdoor air pollution would lead to about 6.6 million premature deaths (Lelieveld et al., 2015). Air pollution also adversely affects biodiversity, ecosystems, and ecosystem services, such as (Agathokleous et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2022; Perring et al., 2022)."

"The global response to the has resulted in unprecedented reductions in . We find that, after accounting for meteorological variations, lockdown events have reduced the population-weighted concentration of and levels by about 60% and 31% in 34 countries, with mixed effects on . Reductions in transportation sector emissions are largely responsible for the NO2 anomalies."

"When we began and living more closely alongside them, we shared diseases with our new companions. And keeping animals with less than in the wild in crowded, stressful conditions also made them more susceptible to disease. Today, intensive has created highly pathogenic forms of that have infected herds of cattle and their farmers in the US. Then there’s . By and disturbing other habitats, we’ve caused animals stress and forced them to live more closely together. That may have contributed to the spread of from s to apes, monkeys and small forest antelopes known as s. contributes too, by forcing animals and plants to move to cooler regions, and mixing them up with other species. An encounter with a disease that your body hasn’t evolved immunity to is always dangerous."

"Considerable interest in , , and s arose amongst European colonialists who witnessed some of the consequences of Western-style economic development in tropical lands (Grove, 1997). However, the extent of human influence on the environment was not explored in detail and on the basis of sound data until George Perkins Marsh ... published ' (1864), in which he dealt with human influence on the woods, the waters, and the sands."

"There are numerous ways to approach air pollution. s may think of how contaminants in the air affect living things. Within biology, the subdisciplines vary in their interests. s are often interested in how exposure to air pollutants affect biodiversity and overall ecosystem health. s are concerned about the diseases associated with various air contaminants. ... s are interested in how the exposure and effects of air pollutants differ in time and space. They may observe a and associate this with a source of air pollution. Or, they may observe a change in disease occurrence over time that tracks with changes in the type and amount of pollution released in an area."

"Road-traffic noise significantly slows the development of crucial memory and attention skills in primary school children, research has found. The study of almost 2,700 children aged between seven and 10 in 38 schools in , Spain, is the first to assess the impact of traffic noise on child cognitive development over time and to determine the impact of peaks in noise. The children in the study are in a critical stage for the development of memory and attention skills, which are essential to learning. The research found that children exposed to about three times more traffic in the street than other pupils had memory development that was 23% slower and attention ability development 5% slower over a year."

"Noise pollution is expanding at an unprecedented rate and is increasingly associated with impaired reproduction and development across taxa. However, whether noise sound waves are intrinsically harmful for developing young—or merely disturb parents—and the fitness consequences of early exposure remain unknown. Here, by only manipulating the offspring, we show that sole exposure to noise in early life in es has fitness consequences and causes embryonic death during exposure. Exposure to pre- and postnatal traffic noise cumulatively impaired nestling growth and and aggravated shortening across life stages until adulthood. Consistent with a long-term somatic impact, early life noise exposure, especially prenatally, decreased individual offspring production throughout adulthood. Our findings suggest that the effects of noise pollution are more pervasive than previously realized."

"... Many bird species use acoustic communication to establish and maintain their territories and for intra-pair and adult–young communication. Noise pollution can impact negatively on breeding success and biorhythm if this communication is masked by noise and the individuals must adjust their singing activity. is a common bird species of agricultural landscapes whose population is declining due to agricultural intensification. It is found also in habitats near highways with forest steppe-like characteristics, where it is affected by the high levels of anthropogenic noise pollution. ... Our results showed that Yellowhammer’s singing activity changed in localities close to highways compared to agricultural landscape. With increasing long-term traffic intensity on highways, song duration of the Yellowhammer song was decreasing. The present traffic intensity led to later onset of dawn chorus and decreasing strophe length with increasing number of passing vehicles. Furthermore, in the agricultural landscape, Yellowhammer’s song duration increased with increasing distance from the nearest road."

"More than 45 million people live, work, or attend school within 300 feet of a major transportation facility in the United States alone ... These facilities include heavily traveled highways that can cause adverse noise effects. ... In addition to annoyance and speech interference, recent studies have reported on links between highway traffic noise and health effects. The (WHO) reported on environmental health effects, including heart disease, sleep disturbance, and cognitive impairment in children. WHO states, “... at least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western part of Europe” (WHO, 2011). These human health issues as well as the effects of highway traffic noise on wildlife are a growing concern. To help minimize the effects of highway traffic noise, researchers and practitioners must understand the noise sources, how the sound propagates to nearby communities, and how to reduce noise levels at the source, during propagation, or at the receiver. Further challenges lie in establishing and implementing highway traffic noise policies."

"Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature."

"... what you can be sure of is that many organisms have declined to the point where they can never do the services for us we want — even if the service is the pleasure of seeing a rare bird."

"Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems: they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. However, over the past 50 years, fast-growing demands for food, , water and other s have led to an unprecedented degradation of many ecosystem services so that their ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Therefore, reversing ecosystem degradation is one of the great challenges of sustainable development. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all actors in society, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the difficulties is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, it is still unclear what goods, services and activities are sustainable and how they could be identified."

"In the late 1960s, two chemists began to argue head to head in newspapers, journals, and courtrooms about a pressing question inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: ... namely, should the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) be banned in the U.S.? The protracted debate between Stony Brook University professor Charles Wurster and University of California at Berkeley professor initially concerned the pesticide's effects on nontarget wildlife, including robins, hawks, salmon, and crabs. As the debate gained momentum and visibility, however, it became clear that it concerned DDT's effects on another species as well: humans. Jukes argued that few technological breakthroughs had done as much as DDT to save human lives, by protecting millions from malaria, typhus, and starvation. Wurster, on the other hand, maintained that DDT threatened the lives of millions more by destroying the ecosystems on which humanity depended for its well-being. Wurster argued that DDT's effects on wildlife were a harbinger of what was to come for humankind. Significantly, he also denounced the chemical as a pervasive likely carcinogen."

"The robin was twitching, tremoring, convulsing uncontrollably, and peeping occasionally. The student handed the bird to me, and in a few minutes it was dead in my hands. It was April 23, 1963, and I was in my laboratory at in , when the student walked in with the bird. A week earlier the s of Hanover had been sprayed with the insecticide DDT to control the spread of by s."

"As an information specialist, Carson was in daily contact with wildlife biologists in those Fish and Wildlife divisions concerned with predator and pest control. They, along with the biologists at in nearby , were alarmed by some of the the early test results of the new synthetic pesticide dichlorodiphenyl-tricholorethane, known as DDT. Carson was particularly well informed on the progress of this research because her government mentor, friend, and former supervisor Elmer Higgins was collaborating with noted biological Clarence Cottam on a series of research reports on the impact of DDT on fish and other wildlife. These reports came to Carson's desk for editing, and their conclusions were the subject of debate and discussion around the office."

"A mosquito was heard to complain That a chemist had poisoned her brain The cause of her sorrow Was para-dichloro- Diphenyltrichloroethane."

"One of the most sinister features of DDT and related chemicals is the way they are passed on from one organism to another through all the links of the s. For example, fields of are dusted with DDT; meal is later prepared from the alfalfa and fed to hens, the hens lay eggs which contain DDT. Or the hay, containing residues of 7 to 8 parts per million, may be fed to cows. The DDT will turn up in the milk in the amount of about 3 parts per million, but in butter made from this milk the concentration may run to 65 parts per million. Through such a process of transfer, what started out as a very small amount of DDT may end as a heavy concentration."

"The dictionary defines wilderness as an impassable, undeveloped, unpopulated place. If we add unmanipulated, what we have is... nature!"

"The concept of rewilding was originally framed as a call for large, connected wilderness areas to support wide-ranging keystone species such as apex predators."

"Rewilding has also shown us that many of the areas that we consider pristine or well conserved (including many national parks) are actually deprived of many of their keystone species and therefore suffering varying levels of degradation."

"Originally defined as a conservation method based on 'cores, corridors and carnivores,' the term [of rewilding] is now broadly understood as the repair or refurbishment of an ecosystem's functionality through the (re)introduction of selected species."

"...when it comes to preserving ecosystems, large is better than small, connected is better than isolated, and whole is better than fragmented."

"The rewilding of natural ecosystems that fascinates me is not an attempt to restore them to any prior state, but to permit ecological processes to resume."

"Rewilding, to me, is about resisting the urge to control nature and [instead] allowing it to find its own way. It involves reintroducing absent plants and animals (and in a few cases culling exotic species which cannot be contained by native wildlife), pulling down the fences, blocking the drainage ditches, but otherwise stepping back. At sea, it means excluding commercial fishing and other forms of exploitation. The ecosystems that result are best described not as wilderness, but as self-willed: governed not by human management but by their own processes."

"The straight-tusked elephant, related to the species that still lives in Asia today, persisted in Europe until around 40,000 years ago....If the evidence is as compelling as it seems, it suggests that this species dominated the temperate regions of Europe. Our ecosystems appear to be elephant-adapted."

"… our use of fire is at the core [of our predicament] and is the real creator and destroyer."

"The human predicament was exceptional in that, empowered by a planetary larder of fossil fuels, they developed a global complex society, grew exuberantly at the expense of surrounding life, and collapsed a planetary life-support system. The consumer society selected for a phantom of happiness/purpose that the consumer bots were conditioned to pursue by working to make ‘money’ they use to consume products produced by an economic system NOT REMOTELY CLOSE TO SUSTAINABLE. Our collective unintended Calhoun rat-like experiment on ourselves is having what should be expected outcomes as our empire-building socio-economic pathology makes for a world of pathologies (or what was merely a world of wounds as Aldo Leopold noted) filled by human pathogens."

"Native birds and small mammals are already being negatively affected on multiple fronts by climate change, urban development, deforestation, toxic chemicals, invasive species, and the degradation of native grasslands. Domestic and feral cats are just one more factor making their survival increasingly tenuous. The effects on our environment from the loss of the multitude of small mammals and birds extend well beyond their direct killing by domestic cats. Birds are important for the pollination and seed dispersal of many plants. Small mammals are prey for bobcats, foxes, dingoes, weasels, caracals, ocelots, snakes, and birds of prey. Domestic cats have essentially replaced all those animals in urban and rural areas."

"We are already experiencing huge cost externalities from population hypergrowth and profligate fossil fuel use in the form of environmental devastation. Of the earth’s estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past fifty years. Each year, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct, an all-time high for the last 65 million years. Within one hundred years, between one-third and two-thirds of all birds, animals, plants, and other species will be lost. Nearly 25 percent of the 4,630 known mammal species are now threatened with extinction, along with 34 percent of fish, 25 percent of amphibians, 20 percent of reptiles, and 11 percent of birds. Even more, species are having population declines. Environmental scientists speak of an “omega point” at which the vast interconnected networks of Earth’s ecologies are so weakened that human existence is no longer possible."

"We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action. The participatory role of people in the well-being of the land has been lost, our reciprocal relations reduced to a Keep Out sign. [...] People do know the consequences of our collective damage, they do know the wages of an extractive economy, but they don’t stop. They get very sad, they get very quiet. So quiet that protection of the environment that enables them to eat and breathe and imagine a future for their children doesn’t even make it onto a list of their top ten concerns. The Haunted Hayride of dumps, the melting glaciers, the litany of doomsday projections—they move anyone who is still listening only to despair. Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth."

"The Industrial Revolution still cannot be considered an unqualified success, for all the comfort and convenience enjoyed by a minority of people in the world. Where we stand now is the brink of unprecedented damage to the ecology of the only habitable planet in the only universe we know of, and I refer not just to climate change—which may or may not be caused by human activity —but to all the other insults and injuries we’ve done to the biosphere. While industrialism led to the formation of a prosperous middle class, it also plunged millions of people into the grimmest kind of regimented quasislavery in conditions that were arguably no improvement over their grandparents’ lives as agricultural peasants (or their distant ancestors as hunter-gatherers)."

"Over timescales relevant to civilization (which began 10,000 years ago with agriculture and cities), plots of almost anything relating to human activity look like hockey sticks: population, agricultural output, industrial output, mined materials, deforestation, species extinctions, and so on. Many of these certainly correlate to population growth, but the per capita impacts also have shot up, compounding the human footprint to a frightening degree. At this point, humans and their livestock account for 96% of mammal mass on the planet, leaving a mere 4% for all wild animals (half of this from massive whales and other marine mammals). It’s not just a footprint any more: it’s a boot on the throat of the planet, leaving non-human life gasping and silently begging for even a little mercy."

"Using science, technology, and cheap energy, we expanded farmlands, chain-sawed forests, exploited fisheries, mined minerals, pumped oil, and flattened mountains for their buried coal. And we did these things in a way that was not remotely sustainable. By harvesting renewable resources faster than they could regrow, by using non-renewable resources that could not be recycled, and by choking environments with industrial wastes, we were borrowing from future generations and from other species."

"Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps."

"In the last few decades entire new categories of waste have come to plague and menace the American scene…. Pollution is growing at a rapid rate…. Pollution destroys beauty and menaces health. It cuts down on efficiency, reduces property values and raises taxes…. Almost all these wastes and pollutions are the result of activities carried on for the benefit of man. A prime national goal must be an environment that is pleasing to the senses and healthy to live in. Our Government is already doing much in this field. We have made significant progress. But more must be done."

"Our fossil fuel bonanza has left our ecosystem in a perilous state. We have destroyed vast forests and habitat, polluted water and soil, kicked off a rapid climate trend that natural systems may not adapt to quickly enough, and basically overrun the planet. […] 96% of mammal mass on the planet is now in the form of humans and our livestock, leaving a paltry 4% of wild mammals—land and sea. Roughly 70% of vertebrate numbers have vanished since 1970 (undoubtedly a higher fraction if the survey had started in 1700). Forests are also way down."

"The growth and progress upon which we looked back with such pride had committed mankind to living on a scale that exceeds the sustainable carrying capacity of this finite planet, and the leaders of nations continued to devote far more effort toward attempting to prolong overshoot than toward undoing it. Reluctance to face facts was driving us to make bad matters worse. The faster the present generation draws down the fossil energy legacy upon which persistently exuberant lifestyles now depend, the less opportunity posterity will have to live in anything like the same way or the same numbers. Yet most contemporary political proposals for solving problems of economic stagnation or inequity amount to plans for speeding up the rate of drawdown of non-renewable resources."

"All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated."

"Generations of Americans will pay the Republican campaign debt to the energy industry with global instability, depleted national coffers and increased vulnerability to price shocks in the oil market. They will also pay with reduced prosperity and quality of life at home. Pollution from power plants and traffic smog will continue to skyrocket. Carbon-dioxide emissions will aggravate global warming. Acid rain from Midwestern coal plants has already sterilized half the lakes in the Adirondacks and destroyed the forest cover in the high peaks of the Appalachian range up into Canada. The administration's attacks on science and the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and to our democracy."

"Environmental and are at root social crises. They are caused by profound problems in the social world, by elites, and the hierarchical control of decision-making and allocation of resources in profit-driven, expansionistic, ecocidal capitalist societies. As social problems, environmental crises require social solutions, namely radical political change seeking to create just, democratic, and sustainable societies. What we today call “natural disasters,” are at [the] root [of] social disasters that must be addressed if we are to solve the global . We must not only transform our and speciesist identities, our arrogant and vainglorious forms of human supremacism and pathological alienation, we must also transform our growth-oriented, profit-driven, meat-based, fossil fuel addicted societies. For millennia, the western world above all has lived by the philosophy of humans first, even humans only. It is now time for a new philosophy of earth first whereby humanity begins the arduous process of -- radically reducing their population numbers and consumption levels, rewilding natural environments and reserving vast habitats for wildlife alone, and shifting from a growth-oriented to a steady-state sustainable economy."

"We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment — or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc."