The Karnataka Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has busted a gang of wildlife poachers, including a software professional, authorities said on Tuesday.
The arrested were identified as Byatappa Gowda, a resident of Arehalli in Tumakuru district; Vaishak from Kadehalli; and Charan, the software professional, from Bengaluru.
According to the CID Forest Cell wing, the accused were involved in poaching rabbits and wild boars.
Recently, Byatappa and Vaishak had shot a leopard and attempted to sell the animal’s nails, skin and jaws through accused Charan.
Arrested
CID officers, posing as religious seers, first approached the accused techie, and nabbed him. The other managed to escape initially, but they were tracked and arrested later.
The accused were arrested in Sri Ranganatha hill in Tumakuru district, where they had laid a trap for rabbits and wild boars.
The rate that emerging wildlife diseases infect humans has steadily increased over the last three decades. Viruses, such as the global coronavirus pandemic and recent monkeypox outbreak, have heightened the urgent need for disease ecology tools to forecast when and where disease outbreaks are likely.
A University of South Florida assistant professor helped develop a methodology that will do just that – predict disease transmission from wildlife to humans, from one wildlife species to another and determine who is at risk of infection.
The methodology is a machine-learning approach that identifies the influence of variables, such as location and climate, on known pathogens. Using only small amounts of information, the system is able to identify community hot spots at risk of infection on both global and local scales.
coronavirus
“Our main goal is to develop this tool for preventive measures,” said co-principal investigator Diego Santiago-Alarcon, a USF assistant professor of integrative biology. “It’s difficult to have an all-purpose methodology that can be used to predict infections across all the diverse parasite systems, but with this research, we contribute to achieving that goal.”
With help from researchers at the Universiad Veracruzana and Instituto de Ecologia, located in Mexico, Santiago-Alarcon examined three host-pathogen systems – avian malaria, birds with West Nile virus and bats with coronavirus – to test the reliability and accuracy of the models generated by the methodology.
The team found that for the three systems, the species most frequently infected was not necessarily the most susceptible to the disease. To better pinpoint hosts with higher risk of infection, it was important to identify relevant factors, such as climate and evolutionary relationships.
By integrating geographic, environmental and evolutionary development variables, the researchers identified host species that have previously not been recorded as infected by the parasite under study, providing a way to identify susceptible species and eventually mitigate pathogen risk.
“We feel confident that the methodology is successful, and it can be applied widely to many host-pathogen systems,” Santiago-Alarcon said. “We now enter into a phase of improvement and refinement.”
The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, prove the methodology is able to provide reliable global predictions for the studied host–pathogen systems, even when using a small amount of information. This new approach will help direct infectious disease surveillance and field efforts, providing a cost-effective strategy to better determine where to invest limited disease resources.
Bats/wikipedia
Predicting what kind of pathogen will produce the next medical or veterinary infection is challenging, but necessary. As the rate of human impact on natural environments increases, opportunity for novel diseases will continue to rise.
“Humanity, and indeed biodiversity in general, are experiencing more and more infectious disease challenges as a result of our incursion and destruction of the natural order worldwide through things like deforestation, global trade and climate change,” said Andrés Lira-Noriega, research fellow at the Instituto de Ecologia. “This imposes the need of having tools like the one we are publishing to help us predict where new threats in terms of new pathogens and their reservoirs may occur or arise.”
The team plans to continue their research to further test the methodology on additional host-pathogen systems and extend the study of disease transmission to predict future outbreaks. The goal is to make the tool easily accessible through an app for the scientific community by the end of 2022.
One of the most serious threats to wildlife biodiversity, in addition to the climate crisis, is the illegal killing and trafficking of animals and plants. Despite many laws against the black-market wildlife trade, it is considered to be one of the most lucrative illicit industries in the world.
Animals, especially endangered and threatened species, are often exploited and sold for their pelts or used as medicine, aphrodisiacs, curios, food and spiritual artifacts.
In a new study published in Global Change Biology, Arizona State University researchers estimate that more than 1.1 million sea turtles have been illegally killed and, in some cases, trafficked between 1990 and 2020. Even with existing laws prohibiting their capture and use, as many as 44,000 sea turtles were exploited each year over the past decade in 65 countries or territories and in 44 of the world’s 58 major sea turtle populations.
Hawksbills turtle/Photo:en.wikipedia.org
Despite the seemingly large number of poached turtles, the study shows that the reported illegal exploitation of sea turtles declined by approximately 28% over the last decade —something that surprised the researchers. They initially expected to see an overall increase in reported poaching.
“The decline over the past decade could be due to increased protective legislation and enhanced conservation efforts, coupled with an increase in awareness of the problem or changing local norms and traditions,” says Kayla Burgher, co-first author of the study and a doctoral student in ASU’s environmental life sciences program in the School of Life Sciences.
In addition to the slight decline, the researchers found that most of the reported illegal exploitation over the past decade occurred in large, stable and genetically diverse sea turtle populations.
Jesse Senko, co-first author of the study and an assistant research professor with the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society says this discovery may be a silver lining to the high number of turtles illegally exploited. “What this means is that most of these sea turtles came from healthy, low-risk populations, which suggests that, with a few exceptions, current levels of illegal exploitation are likely not having a major detrimental impact on most major sea turtle populations throughout the world’s oceans.”
Sea turtle/Photo:en.wikipedia.org
Our assessment also did not include eggs or turtle products, such as bracelets or earrings made from sea turtle shells that could not be easily attributed to individual turtles,” says Senko.
The study revealed additional patterns and trends that may assist in determining conservation management priorities. For example, Vietnam was the most common country of origin for illegal sea turtle trafficking, while China and Japan served as destinations for nearly all trafficked sea turtle products. Similarly, Vietnam to China was the most common trade route across all three decades.
Across the 30-year study period, 95% of poached sea turtles came from two species — green and hawksbill turtles — both of which are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Also, Southeast Asia and Madagascar emerged as major hotspots for illegal sea turtle take and trade, particularly for critically endangered hawksbills, which are prized in the illicit wildlife trade for their beautiful shells.
“Our assessment is an important foundation for future research and outreach efforts regarding illegal sea turtle exploitation. We believe this study can help conservation practitioners and legislators prioritize conservation efforts and allocate their resources to best help protect sea turtle populations from harmful levels of exploitation worldwide,” says Burgher.
“Increased support for governments lacking the resources to protect sea turtles is needed, along with support for communities to sustain human well-being in the face of restrictions or bans on sea turtle exploitation. We must develop conservation strategies that benefit both people and turtles,” says Senko.
It may be surprising to learn that even giraffes, parrots, and oak trees are included in the list of threatened species, as well as cacti and seaweed.
Seaweed is one of the planet’s great survivors, and relatives of some modern-day seaweed can be traced back some 1.6 billion years. Seaweed plays a vital role in marine ecosystems, providing habitats and food for marine lifeforms, while large varieties – such as kelp – act as underwater nurseries for fish.
However, mechanical dredging, rising sea temperatures and the building of coastal infrastructure are contributing to the decline of the species.
The world’s trees are threatened by various sources, including logging, deforestation for industry and agriculture, firewood for heating and cooking, and climate-related threats such as wildfires.
Unsplash/Shane Stagner. Kelp, a type of seaweed, can be fed to animals and could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It has been estimated that 31 per cent of the world’s 430 types of oak are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species. And 41 per cent are of “conservation concern”, mainly due to deforestation for agriculture and fuel for cooking.
Giraffes are targeted for their meat, and suffer from the degradation of their habitat due to unsustainable wood harvesting, and increased demand for agricultural land; it’s estimated there are only around 600 West African giraffes left in the wild.
