Tag: Ecosystems

Appreciating bees and their cognitive abilities

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Close-up Photo of Bee in Flower by Alexas Fotos: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-bee-in-flower-2198671/
Close-up photo of a bee in a flower by Alexas Fotos.

Bees are remarkable creatures that support our ecosystems. They need protection and preservation.

Cognitive ability refers to the mental processes and skills involved in acquiring, processing, storing, and applying information. The American Psychological Association defines cognitive ability as, “the skills involved in performing the tasks associated with perception, learning, memory, understanding, awareness, reasoning, judgment, intuition, and language.”

Bees, particularly honeybees (Apis mellifera), exhibit remarkable cognitive abilities. They possess intricate navigational skills, communication systems, and memory capacity. In The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee, author Karl von Frisch delves into the complex behaviors and sensory perceptions of honeybees. Von Frisch’s research and observations shed light on the cognitive prowess of bees, including their ability to communicate through intricate dances and navigate complex landscapes using visual cues.

Bees also demonstrate impressive learning and memory capabilities. They can associate visual, olfactory, and tactile cues with rewards or punishments. Studies, such as the research conducted by Randolf Menzel and Martin Giurfa reveal that bees can learn to recognize and remember specific colors, shapes, patterns, depth, and motion contrast, among others. They exhibit a capacity for associative learning, enabling them to solve complex tasks and adapt their behavior based on past experiences. Bees also possess a centralized nervous system and a complex array of sensory receptors, suggesting a capacity for processing and integrating sensory information.

In addition, bees have shown a remarkable ability to solve problems in laboratory settings. Research by Lars Chittka demonstrates how bees can learn to use tools, such as small sticks, to access out-of-reach rewards. This behavior suggests a level of cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills beyond simple instinctual responses.

While it is challenging to measure subjective experiences in non-human animals, studies indicate that bees exhibit physiological and behavioral responses consistent with experiencing pain or distress. Research by Melissa Bateson and colleagues found that honeybees show a pessimistic bias in their decision-making after experiencing a negative event, suggesting that they could be regarded as exhibiting emotions. Sentience refers to the capacity of an organism to have subjective experiences, sensations, or conscious awareness of its own existence and in relation to the external world. It is often associated with the ability to feel pleasure or pain and have a sense of self-awareness. Since honeybees have been suggested to exhibit emotional states, this also implies that honeybees are sentient beings.

The potential sentience of bees alongside their cognitive abilities highlights the importance of preserving bee populations and their habitats for the well-being of these remarkable creatures and the ecosystems they support.

A new deal for nature?

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Lake Forest. Image by Alain Audet from Pixabay
Lake Forest. Image by Alain Audet from Pixabay

Feeling out the new framework for biodiversity protection with the Kunming-Montreal pact

By Robert Nasi, Forests News

Well, they got there. After years-long delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a relocation from Kunming, China to Montreal, Canada, and following weeks of late-night negotiations peppered with walkouts and protests, a ‘new deal’ for biodiversity has been struck: on 19 December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted as the outcome of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD).

The failure of the framework’s predecessor – none of the biodiversity targets set at Aichi in 2010 were reached by the 2020 deadline – added to the fraught tenure of the negotiations. The new framework isn’t perfect, as I’ll explain, but there are some important elements that, if implemented effectively and equitably, can make genuine impact.

Perhaps most notable is the target of protecting 30 percent of Earth’s land and sea by 2030. The global nature of the target means that the focus will be on the most biodiverse countries protecting key areas such as the tropical forests of the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Indonesia – all areas where the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) has a strong presence and strong partnerships.

Given it took the global community almost six decades to protect 17% of the planet, this is a lofty goal that will require coordinated – and careful – action. Much protected area creation in the past has been propelled by colonialist ‘fortress conservation’ approaches that fail to take the rights, territories, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities into account. Such restrictive approaches have had dire consequences for people and nature, with both biodiversity and livelihoods crumbling as a result.

As such, the strong language on these issues in the new framework – which reaffirms the protection of Indigenous rights and territories throughout its 23 targets and four goals, and purports to ensure their voice in decision-making – is to be commended, though as always it will be crucial to pay careful attention to how and if this plays out on the ground. As much of CIFOR-ICRAF’s work highlights, it’s critically important to recognize human agency in the shaping of sustainable landscapes. As a global community, we need to become more skillful at differentiating between human activity that has been harmful and natural resource use that has been, is, or can be sustainable.

On that note, the agreement to develop a multilateral benefit-sharing and funding mechanism, to help put sovereignty over digital genetic code in the hands of those in whose land and sea-scapes it resides (rather than those of biopirates and corporations) is also significant. It was heartening, too, to see a new standalone target on gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment, and the inclusion of the term ‘gender-responsive’ in place of the weaker ‘gender-sensitive’. Also welcome is the (long overdue) target of reducing harmful subsidies for fisheries, agriculture and fossil fuels by at least USD 500 billion annually by 2030: right now, at least USD 1.8 trillion of such subsidies are financing the destruction of biodiversity each year.

Among these victories, it was disappointing to see the watering-down of language promoting and centering agroecology in the framework’s sustainable agriculture target. The final text reads, “The application of biodiversity-friendly practices, such as sustainable intensification, agroecological and other innovative approaches”; sustainable intensification, however, causes significant biodiversity loss and has been shown not to stop agricultural expansion. Another concern is that over-emphasis on protected areas through the 30×30 target could take away from necessary attention on developing biodiverse, inclusive, and resilient food systems – a subject on which CIFOR-ICRAF has a combined 70 years of international experience. Agroforestry and trees on farms, for instance, can play a significant role in restoring and enhancing ecosystems while producing critical food and nutrition.

Discussions on who will foot the bill for biodiversity conservation were also fraught, and wealthier countries’ reluctance to front up prompted the walk-out of delegates from over 70 countries in the Global South at one stage. In the end, the financial target of USD 200 billion a year for conservation initiatives – a sum determined to be critical for the framework’s success – was reached, through some developing countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Brazil and Malaysia expressed disappointment that richer ones did not offer up a larger amount, and that a new fund for biodiversity was not established.

So, now that we have an agreed path towards halting the loss of species and protecting the world’s remaining biodiversity, what lies ahead? By addressing the current polycrisis  – biodiversity loss, climate crisis, growing inequalities, broken food systems, unsustainable supply chains – simultaneously through transdisciplinary science, CIFOR-ICRAF is delivering holistic solutions at scale in priority areas with the greatest potential for positive impact: sustainably managing multiple-use landscapes, promoting conservation in productive landscapes through agroecological approaches, and preserving local and global livelihoods. We will continue working to reverse negative environmental trends by generating evidence of the enormous value of trees – in forests, on farms, and across landscapes.

Robert Nasi is the Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Researchers warn Great Salt Lake’s retreat threatens crucial ecosystem, public health

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Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, USA by Urvish Prajapati on Unsplash
Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah by Urvish Prajapati on Unsplash

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” said one ecologist.

By Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Scientists are warning Utah officials that the Great Salt Lake is shrinking far faster than experts previously believed, and calling for a major reduction in water consumption across the American West in order to prevent the lake from disappearing in the next five years.

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) led more than 30 scientists from 11 universities and advocacy groups in a report released this week showing that the lake is currently at 37% of its former volume, with its rapid retreat driven by the historic drought that’s continuing across the West.

Amid the climate crisis-fueled megadrought, the continued normal consumption of water in Utah and its neighboring states has led the Great Salt Lake to lose 40 billion gallons of water per year since 2020, reducing its surface level to 10 feet below what is considered the minimum safe level.

“Goodbye, Great Salt Lake,” tweeted the Environmental Defense Fund on Friday.

Scientists previously have warned that increased average temperatures in Utah—where it is now about 4°F warmer than it was in the early 1900s—are to blame for a 9% reduction in the amount of water flowing into the lake from streams.

The authors of the BYU study are calling on Utah officials to authorize water releases from the state’s reservoirs and cut water consumption by at least a third and as much as half to allow 2.5 million acre feet of water to reach the lake and prevent the collapse of its ecosystem as well as human exposure to dangerous sediments.

“This is a crisis,” BYU ecologist Ben Abbott, a lead author of the report, told The Washington Post. “The ecosystem is on life support, [and] we need to have this emergency intervention to make sure it doesn’t disappear.”

The shrinking of the Great Salt Lake has already begun creating a new ecosystem that is toxic for the shrimp and flies that make it their habitat, due to the lack of freshwater flowing in. That has endangered millions of birds that stop at the lake as they migrate each year.

The loss of the lake may also already be exposing about 2.5 million people to sediments containing mercury, arsenic, and other toxins.

“Nanoparticles of dust have potential to cause just as much harm if they come from dry lake bed as from a tailpipe or a smokestack,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told the Post. Last month, Moench’s group applauded as Republican Gov. Spencer Cox’s administration, under pressure from residents, walked back its position supporting a plan to allow a magnesium company to pump water from the Great Salt Lake.

Abbott called the rapid shrinking of the lake “honestly jaw-dropping.”

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” Abbott told CNN. “The lake is mostly lakebed right now.”