PG&E Power Lines Sparked Deadliest Wildfire in California History, Investigation Confirms
A house burns in Paradise, California during the Camp fire. Ray Chavez / Digital First Media / The Mercury News via Getty Images
Power lines owned by Pacific Gas and Electric were the immediate cause of the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California state history, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) investigation concluded Wednesday, The New York Times reported.
The Camp Fire, which burned 153,336 acres, destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, was also partly fueled by hot, dry conditions caused by climate change.
"After a very meticulous and thorough investigation, CAL FIRE has determined that the Camp Fire was caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E) located in the Pulga area," Cal Fire concluded.
The investigation uncovered two ignitions related to PG&E lines: the first near the community of Pulga in Butte county and the second at the intersection of Concow and Rim Roads. The latter was caused by an interaction between vegetation and electrical distribution lines. Cal Fire is passing the results of the investigation along to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey.
PG&E said it accepted the results of the investigation in a statement reported by CNBC. The company had already acknowledged in a February regulatory filing that its lines were the "probable" cause of the blaze. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in January after a number of lawsuits stemming from wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018. It could face criminal charges, including murder or involuntary manslaughter.
Our response to the Camp Fire Wildfire announcement. Read full response here: https://t.co/wxTnE3Ac20 https://t.co/UMmCtYsXB4— PG&E (@PG&E)1557967378.0
"Our hearts go out to those who have lost so much, and we remain focused on supporting them through the recovery and rebuilding process," the company said in a statement reported by The Washington Post. "We also want to thank the brave first responders who worked tirelessly to save lives, contain the Camp Fire and protect citizens and communities."
The company had previously said it would increase tree-trimming, maintenance and inspections in response to the heightened threat of wildfires. But survivors of the fire and their lawyers have criticized the company for filing for bankruptcy, according to The New York Times.
"If I caused the fire, I wouldn't be able to file bankruptcy and I wouldn't be able to make other people pay for it," Randi Hall, who lost her Paradise home to the Camp fire and now lives in a recreational vehicle, told The New York Times in an interview last week. "Why does a company that has so many millions of dollars in insurance get to do it?"
Ramsey's office said the forwarding of the most recent investigation was "strictly symbolic," according to a statement reported by CNBC.
"The fact the Camp Fire was started by a malfunction of equipment on a Pacific Gas & Electric Company transmission line has been known for months by investigators and had been, essentially, admitted by Pacific Gas & Electric in an early December 2018 report to the California Public Utility Commission," the statement said. "The investigation into how and why the PG&E transmission line equipment failed is ongoing in an effort to determine if PG&E or any of its personnel have any criminal liability."
In its report, Cal Fire also acknowledged the role of climate conditions in spreading the blaze.
"The tinder dry vegetation and Red Flag conditions consisting of strong winds, low humidity and warm temperatures promoted this fire and caused extreme rates of spread," the investigation said.
There were more than 7,571 wildfires in California in 2018 that burned more than 1.8 million acres.
Winds and #Wildfires in #California: 4 Factors to Watch That Increase Danger https://t.co/3ccEiHaghW @UCSUSA @greenpeaceusa @ClimateGroup
— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 25, 2018
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Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
The wildfires that roared through Eastern Washington in September had a devastating impact on an extremely endangered species of rabbit.
<p>The fast-moving Pearl Hill and Cold Springs fires scorched a habitat for Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits on Sept. 7, wiping out around half of the species' recovering population, <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/latest-endangered-pygmy-rabbit-population-halved-by-fast-moving-fire?fbclid=IwAR2pzH5M9FLQkGBEVPriSAyklH8Tej1B66EhCfPKYQbnAkSD9j3kEJT8chA" target="_blank">High Country News reported Monday</a>.</p><p>"The sun was blotted out, it was just red from the fire glare and the smoke and all you saw was rocks and sand and dust, there was just nothing," Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Biologist Jon Gallie told <a href="https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/paywalloff/fire-wipes-out-half-of-columbia-basin-pygmy-rabbit-population/article_8c20b63c-f475-11ea-b668-83235dc86d8a.html" target="_blank">The Wenatchee World</a> after the fire. "I have not seen a sagebrush fire that hot in my 13 years out here."</p>
<p>Gallie leads a recovery program for North America's smallest rabbits, which are about the size of a grapefruit, according to High Country News. Their population was devastated during the 20th century by development, agriculture and wildfires and, in 2001, the last 16 were gathered from the wild for a captive breeding program. Scientists bred the Washington rabbits with pygmy rabbits from the Great Basin of the intermountain West and began to reintroduce them to the wild in 2011, according to The Wenatchee World.</p><p>To defend against wildfires, the rabbits were released in three different locations: Jameson Lake, Beezley Hills and Sagebrush Flats. It was the Jameson Lake population that was lost to September's flames.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0Nzg4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjQ5MjQ3Mn0.D6_1M4ciX784XMASOHmBKtmQxkxB7aE4WDkiR6Z2MvI/img.jpg?width=980" id="edb37" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1d81accb8933f5bf30a885568b7bcc2c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A pygmy rabbit rescued from a breeding site in Beezley Hills, Washington, eats owl clover in its new enclosure. Kourtney Stonehouse, WDFW
<p>"We have pygmy rabbits well distributed on the landscape in two other areas, so not all is lost," Gallie told High Country News. "We will just have to chart a now more challenging path to recovery."</p><p>However, WDFW manager of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> diversity Hannah Anderson told <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/endangered-wildlife-habitat-burned-in-wildfires/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Seattle Times</a> that the department had been focusing on the Jameson Lake population and had expected it to increase.</p><p>"It's devastating," Anderson said. "A catastrophic loss and a significant loss in recovery."</p>
<p>The rabbits aren't the only endangered species that were harmed by the fires. The Pearl Fire may also have reduced the state's sage grouse population by 30 to 70 percent, according to The Seattle Times.</p><p>The fires also damaged the sagebrush ecosystem these and other species depend upon. This unique, biodiverse shrub-steppe environment once covered 10.4 million acres of Washington state, but has declined by 80 percent since the mid-19th century. The fires wiped out thousands more acres within days.</p><p>While sagebrush ecosystems are used to fires, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/invasive-species" target="_self">invasive species</a> of weeds have taken root that dry out early and encourage hotter, larger fires. It takes sagebrush steppe 10 to 20 years to recover from such blazes.</p><p>"Truly, now preserving what we have left is going to be the challenge," WDFW habitat program director Margen Carlson told The Seattle Times.</p>The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> is also <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/wildfires-climate-fires-2647729127.html" target="_self">fueling</a> larger, more extreme fires in Washington and around the world.
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A protestor in NYC holds up a sign that reads, "November Is Coming" on June 14, 2020 in reference to voting in the 2020 presidential election. Ira L. Black / Corbis / Getty Images
By Mark Hertsgaard
What follows are not candidate endorsements. Rather, this nonpartisan guide aims to inform voters' choices, help journalists decide what races to follow, and explore what the 2020 elections could portend for climate action in the United States in 2021 and beyond.
Will the White House Turn Green?
<p>Whether the White House changes hands is the most important climate question of the 2020 elections. President Donald Trump rejects climate science, is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, and has accelerated fossil fuel development. His climate policy seems to be, as he tweeted in January when rejecting a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal to protect New York City from storm surges, "Get your mops and buckets ready."</p><p>Joe Biden, who started the 2020 campaign with a climate position so weak that activists gave it an "F," called Trump a "climate arsonist" during California's recent wildfires. Biden backs a $2 trillion plan to create millions of jobs while slashing emissions—a Green New Deal in all but name. Equally striking, his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, has endorsed phasing out fossil fuel production—a politically explosive scientific imperative.</p><p>The race will be decided in a handful of battleground states, five of which already face grave climate dangers: Florida (hurricanes and sea-level rise), North Carolina (ditto), Texas (storms and drought), Michigan (floods), and Arizona (heat waves and drought). <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/" target="_blank">Public concern is rising</a> in these states, but will that concern translate into votes?</p>Will Democrats Flip the Senate, and by Enough to Pass a Green New Deal?
<p>With Democrats all but certain to maintain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate will determine whether a potential Biden administration can actually deliver climate progress. Democrats need to pick up three seats to flip the Senate if Biden wins, four if he doesn't. But since aggressive climate policy is shunned by some Democrats, notably Joe Manchin of coal-dependent West Virginia, Democrats probably need to gain five or six Senate seats to pass a Green New Deal.</p><p>Environmentalists, including the League of Conservation Voters, are targeting six Republicans who polls suggest are vulnerable.</p><ul><li>Steve Daines of Montana, who denies climate science</li><li>Martha McSally of Arizona</li><li>Thom Tillis of North Carolina</li><li>Susan Collins of Maine</li><li>Joni Ernst of Iowa (bankrolled by Charles Koch)</li><li>John James of Michigan (also a Koch beneficiary)</li></ul><p>Republican Senators are even at risk in conservative Kansas and Alaska. In both states, the Democratic candidates are physicians—not a bad credential amid a pandemic—who support climate action. In Kansas, Barbara Bollier faces an incumbent funded by Charles Koch. In Alaska, Al Gross urges a transition away from oil, though his openness to limited drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve dims his appeal to green groups. He faces incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, who receives an 8 percent lifetime voting record from the League of Conservation Voters.</p><p>In the House, environmentalists are working to elect these candidates, in one case over an establishment Democrat:</p><ul><li>Beth Doglio of Washington state</li><li>Georgette Gómez of California</li><li>Marie Newman of Illinois</li><li>Cameron Webb of Virginia</li><li>Mike Siegel and Wendy Davis of Texas</li></ul><p>We rightfully focus on federal climate policy, but climate action must also be made at the state and local level—and there are plenty of races and initiatives to pay attention to.</p>
Will Local and State Races Advance Climate Progress?
<h4>THE CLIMATE HAWKS</h4><p>Under Democratic and Republican leadership alike, Washington has long been a graveyard for strong climate action. But governors can boost or block renewable energy; the Vermont and New Hampshire races are worth watching. Attorneys general can sue fossil fuel companies for lying about climate change; climate hawks are running for the top law enforcement seats in Montana and North Carolina. State legislatures can accelerate or delay climate progress, as the new Democratic majorities in Virginia have shown. Here, races to watch include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Colorado.</p><h4>THE CLIMATE POLICY MAKERS</h4><p>Perhaps the most powerful, and most overlooked, climate policy makers are public utility commissions. They control whether pipelines and other energy infrastructure gets built; they regulate whether electric utilities expand solar and energy efficiency or stick with the carbon-heavy status quo. Regulatory capture and outright corruption are not uncommon.</p><p>A prime example is Arizona, where a former two-term commissioner known as the godfather of solar in the state is seeking a comeback. Bill Mundell argues that since Arizona law permits utilities to contribute to commissioners' electoral campaigns, the companies can buy their own regulators. Which may explain why super-sunny Arizona has so little installed solar capacity.</p><p>In South Dakota, Remi Bald Eagle, a Native American U.S. Army veteran, seeks a seat on the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, which rules on the Standing Rock oil pipeline. And in what <em>HuffPost</em> called "the most important environmental race in the country," Democrat Chrysta Castaneda, who favors phasing out oil production, is running for the Texas Railroad Commission, which despite its name decides what oil, gas, and electric companies in America's leading petro-state can build.</p>Will the Influencers Usher in a Green New Era?
<h4>THE UNCOUNTED</h4><p>The story that goes largely under-reported in every U.S. election is how few Americans vote. In 2016, some 90 million, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">roughly four out of every 10 eligible voters</a>, did not cast a ballot. Attorney Nathaniel Stinnett claims that 10 million of these nonvoters nevertheless identify as environmentalists: They support green policies, even donate to activist groups; they just don't vote. Stinnett's <a href="https://www.environmentalvoter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Environmental Voter Project</a> works to awaken this sleeping giant.</p><h4>THE SUNRISE MOVEMENT</h4><p>Meanwhile, the young climate activists of the <a href="http://www.sunrisemovement.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sunrise Movement</a> are already winning elections with an unabashedly Green New Deal message. More than any other group, Sunrise pushed the Green New Deal into the national political conversation, helping Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey draft the eponymous congressional resolution. In 2020, Sunrise has helped Green New Deal champions defeat centrists in Democratic primaries, with Markey dealing Representative Joe Kennedy Jr. the first defeat a Kennedy has ever suffered in a Massachusetts election. But can Sunrise also be successful against Republicans in the general elections this fall?</p><h4>THE STARPOWER</h4><p>And an intriguing wild card: celebrity firepower, grassroots activism, and big-bucks marketing have converged behind a campaign to get Latina mothers to vote climate in 2020. Latinos have long been the U.S. demographic most concerned about climate change. Now, <a href="https://votelikeamadre.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Vote Like A Madre</a> aims to get 5 million Latina mothers in Florida, Texas, and Arizona to the polls. Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayak, and Lin-Manuel Miranda are urging mothers to make a "pinky promise" to vote for their kids' climate future in November. Turning out even a quarter of those 5 million voters, though no easy task, could swing the results in three states Trump must win to remain president, which brings us back to the first category, "Will the White House Turn Green?"</p>From Your Site Articles
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Activists fight a peat fire in Siberia in September. ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The wildfires that ignited in the Arctic this year started earlier and emitted more carbon dioxide than ever before.
<p>Now, a group of researchers is warning that the nature of Arctic fires may be changing, and it's important to understand how in order to better predict the future of the global <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate</a>.</p><p>"It's not just the amount of burned area that is alarming," University of Colorado Boulder fire and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/permafrost" target="_self">permafrost</a> ecologist Dr. Merritt Turetsky said in a press release <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-09-arctic.html?fbclid=IwAR3y_vHkipR0x6-jCOdOYoVJYSHmqigeMnzhjBIQxV_-2GUnFbA4pfiMzzE" target="_blank">published by Phys.org</a>. "There are other trends we noticed in the satellite data that tell us how the Arctic fire regime is changing and what this spells for our climate future."</p><p>Turetsky co-wrote a commentary in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-00645-5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Nature Geoscience</em></a> Monday with two other fire experts. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scientists" target="_self">scientists</a> pinpointed two important ways that Arctic wildfires are changing.</p>
<h3>1. Zombie Fires</h3><p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/zombie-fires-arctic-2646140786.html" target="_self">Zombie fires</a>, also known as holdover fires, occur when fires from the previous season continue to burn beneath the ground during the winter. These blazes can then reemerge when the snow melts and the weather warms.</p><p>Satellite monitoring data from the <a href="https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-tracks-effects-arctic-circle-wildfires" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service</a> confirmed that zombie fires helped drive 2020's unprecedented wildfire season, which broke records both for the number of blazes and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, as <a href="https://www.livescience.com/zombie-wildfires-burn-arctic.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Live Science reported</a>. But the scientists writing in Nature Geoscience say they still need to learn more about these unusual fires and how they may contribute to climate feedback loops.</p><p>"We know little about the consequences of holdover fires in the Arctic," Turetsky said in the press release, "except that they represent momentum in the climate system and can mean that severe fires in one year set the stage for more burning the next summer."</p><p>Indeed, the 2020 wildfire season broke records that had been set just the year before, in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-wildfires--2639340124.html" target="_self">2019's also unprecedented season</a>.</p>
<h3>2. Fires Where Fire Shouldn't Be</h3><p>The other troubling feature of the 2019 and 2020 Arctic wildfire seasons is that their blazes ignited in areas typically resistant to burning, the scientists pointed out. This included tundra vegetation such as dwarf shrubs, sedges, grasses and mosses and previously burn-free environments like bogs, fens and marshes.</p><p>Significantly, more than 50 percent of the 2020 fires burning above 65° North occurred on ice-rich permafrost, which contains the most carbon of any Arctic soil.</p><p>"Nearly all of this year's fires inside the Arctic Circle have occurred on continuous permafrost, with over half of these burning on ancient carbon-rich peat soils," commentary coauthor and London School of Economics and Political Science fire scientist Dr. Thomas Smith said in the press release. "The record high temperatures and associated fires have the potential to turn this important carbon sink into a carbon source, driving further global heating."</p><p>The scientists called for more research into the dynamics of Arctic fires to better understand how they will contribute to the climate crisis. Part of this requires collaborating with local and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self">Indigenous</a> communities, who can provide on-the-ground observations to accompany satellite data.</p><p>"The burning Arctic is a global issue that requires a global solution," the scientists concluded. "While the expertise of the Indigenous communities of the North and Arctic nations will be central to any success, we cannot expect them to shoulder the responsibility alone."</p>
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A metapopulation project in South Africa has almost doubled the population of cheetahs in less than nine years. Ken Blum / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 3.0
By Tony Carnie
South Africa is home to around 1,300 of the world's roughly 7,100 remaining cheetahs. It's also the only country in the world with significant cheetah population growth, thanks largely to a nongovernmental conservation project that depends on careful and intensive human management of small, fenced-in cheetah populations. Because most of the reserves are privately funded and properly fenced, the animals benefit from higher levels of security than in the increasingly thinly funded state reserves.
<p>Initiated by the Endangered Wildlife Trust nearly a decade ago, the Cheetah Metapopulation Project recognizes that small cheetah populations may be physically secure in several small reserves, but the likelihood of inbreeding remains high if they are kept separated behind fences. By swapping animals between participating reserves, the trust helps private and state wildlife custodians manage overpopulation and underpopulation on their land and also identify new areas of suitable cheetah habitat. Most importantly, swapping animals reduces the risk of inbreeding among closely related animals.</p><p>Vincent van der Merwe, coordinator of the trust's metapopulation initiative, says that when the project began in 2011, there were 217 cheetahs scattered between 41 reserves. Now there are 419 spread across 60 reserves — more than a third of South Africa's total cheetah population.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0Njk3OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODQ5MTUxN30.-OSR8R8p9Ub3eyrwOEdltu7P4nnXAFwNlwekJVJz50I/img.jpg?width=980" id="4f7f7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="513e5803db97d5d6c8ea489d509274b3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Vincent van der Merwe at a cheetah translocation. Endangered Wildlife Trust
Under Pressure
<p>Cheetah populations elsewhere in Southern Africa have not prospered over the past 50 years. In Zimbabwe, cheetah numbers have crashed from 1,500 in 1975, to just 170 today. Botswana's cheetah population has held steady at around 1,500 over the same period, but illegal capture for captive breeding and conflicts with farmers and the growing human population are increasing. In Namibia, there were an estimated 3,000 cheetah in in 1975; roughly 1,400 remain today.</p><p>In contrast, South Africa's cheetah numbers have grown from about 500 in 1975 to nearly 1,300 today. Van der Merwe, who is also a Ph.D. student at the University of Cape Town's Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa (iCWild), says he's confident that South Africa will soon overtake Namibia and Botswana, largely because the majority of South African cheetahs are protected and managed behind fences, whereas most of the animals in the neighboring countries remain more vulnerable on mainly unfenced lands.</p><p>Wildlife researchers Florian Weise and colleagues have reported that private stock owners in Namibia still trap cheetahs mainly for translocation, but there are few public or private reserves large enough to contain them. Weise says that conservation efforts need to focus on improving tolerance toward cheetahs in commercial livestock and game farming areas to reduce indiscriminate trapping.</p><p>Van der Merwe says fences can be both a blessing and a curse. While these barriers prevent cheetahs and other wild animals from migrating naturally to breed and feed, they also protect cheetahs from the growing tide of threats from humanity and agriculture.</p><p>To simulate natural dispersion patterns that guard against inbreeding, the trust helps landowners swap their animals with other cheetah reserves elsewhere in the country. The South African metapopulation project has been so successful in boosting numbers that the trust is having to look beyond national boundaries to secure new translocation areas in Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.</p><p>Cheetah translocations have been going on in South Africa since the mid-1960s, when the first unsuccessful attempts were made to move scores of these animals from Namibia. These relocations were mostly unsuccessful.</p><p>"Most of those early attempts were a flop because the cheetahs were not kept in bomas before release and some of the reserves were also poorly fenced — so the cats shot out almost as soon as they were released," van der Merwe said.</p><p>Translocated cheetahs are now generally confined to capture bomas, small fenced enclosures, for four to six weeks to allow them to acclimate to their new home environment prior to being set free.</p><p>"We have found that four weeks is normally long enough to break the homing instinct and if you keep them in a boma for longer than that, they tend to lose fitness and condition," van der Merwe said.</p><p>The Phinda private game reserve in Zululand, one of several private game reserves that began re-introducing cheetahs in the early 1990s, recently swapped some of its animals with the nearby Manyoni private game reserve.</p><p>"We have found that when we capture and translocate cheetahs to other reserves, the Phinda cats do very well elsewhere because they grew up in a challenging environment," van der Merwe said. "Because they have to share space with lion, hyena and leopard they have learned to look after themselves — so they are pretty tough animals."</p>
<p>Charli de Vos, a wildlife monitor at Phinda, says when new cheetahs are released into the reserve in small units, at least one animal is fitted with a VHF tracking collar.</p><p>For the first few weeks, she says, the animals' movements are tracked on a daily basis to ensure that they are not showing "homing" tendencies and that they are also getting used to the presence of tourist and staff vehicles.</p><p>"This will apply until the animals have relaxed within their new environment. Once the animals have established a home range within the reserve (approximately three months after release), the VHF collar will be removed. Thereafter the research and monitoring team will try and get a visual of each individual cheetah at least once every second week," de Vos said.</p><p>The reserve also has an online database to record sightings of the animals, with tourist guides, researchers, land managers and land owners able to add sightings.</p><p>Despite a cub mortality rate of between 50% and 80% on some reserves, van der Merwe says there are now about 90 cheetahs in the Zululand area. He says cub mortality rates vary according to the number of larger predators such as lions and hyenas.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0Njk4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzQyMDg3M30.hoAtcVR-rSvXT2T_eraII5U6ClU5pT8RbrLljU3o704/img.jpg?width=980" id="8bc3a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7715fbde7a3198ea9f0b52e504c72761" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Charli de Vos uses a VHF antenna to locate cheetahs in Phinda Game Reserve. Tony Carnie for Mongabay
Swinging for the Fences
<p>But other wildlife conservation leaders have a different perspective on cheetah conservation strategy.</p><p>Gus Mills, a senior carnivore researcher retired in 2006 from SANParks, the agency that manages South Africa's national parks, after a career of more than 30 years in Kalahari and Kruger national parks. He says the focus should be on quality of living spaces rather than the quantity of cheetahs.</p><p>Mills, who was the founder of the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Carnivore Conservation Group in 1995, and who also spent six years after retirement studying cheetahs in the Kalahari, says it's more important to properly protect and, where possible, expand the size of existing protected areas.</p><p>He also advocates a triage approach to cheetah conservation, in which scarce funds and resources are focused on protecting cheetahs in formally protected areas, rather than diluting scarce resources in an attempt to try and save every single remaining cheetah population.</p><p>"People have an obsession with numbers. But I believe that it is more important to protect large landscape and habitats properly," Mills said.</p><p>He suggests that cheetahs enclosed within small reserves live in artificial conditions: "It's almost like glorified farming."</p><p>"In the long run we have to focus on consolidating formally protected areas," he added. "Africa's human population will double by 2050, so cheetah populations in unfenced areas will become unsustainable if they are eating people's livestock."</p><p>Mills, who was closely involved in a similar metapopulation project for wild dogs, said he tried to encourage landowners to pull down the boundary fences, to create larger areas of habitat.</p><p>"But there are many landowners who don't want to do that. They want their own areas and their own management programs. But my philosophy is: Take care of the ecosystem so that the animals can take care of themselves, so that nature can run its course," Mills said.</p><p>"Unfortunately, there are so few areas left where nature can have its say these days."</p><p>Van der Merwe says the financial costs of metapopulation management are unavoidable and justified, noting that private reserves bear the overwhelming bulk of the translocation and monitoring costs.</p><p>"This is 2020. State funding for conservation has collapsed in most parts of Africa and the days of setting aside any new large, wild open spaces are long gone," he said. "We should be celebrating the fact that many more private ecotourism reserves have been established on former cattle ranches in South Africa, outcompeting agriculture as a land use and creating new habitat for cheetah. The best we can do is to try and consolidate smaller private and community-owned reserves with larger national parks."</p><p>Sarah M. Durant of the Zoological Society of London and the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, says cheetahs remain susceptible to rapid decline and that, ultimately, conserving the remaining free-ranging populations in Botswana and Namibia will require "a paradigm shift in conservation toward a holistic approach that incentivizes protection and promotes sustainable human-wildlife coexistence across large multiple-use landscapes."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/spots-of-hope-some-good-news-for-south-africas-cheetahs/" target="_blank">Mongabay.</a></em></p>
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A new super enzyme feeds on the type of plastic that water and soda bottles are made of, polyethylene terephthalate (PET). zoff-photo / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Scientists are on the brink of scaling up an enzyme that devours plastic. In the latest breakthrough, the enzyme degraded plastic bottles six times faster than previous research achieved, as The Guardian reported.
<p>This new super-enzyme is able to break down plastic at room temperature, setting it apart from the enzyme that the French company Carbios discovered in April. As <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/mutant-enzyme-recycles-plastic-2645686207.html" target="_self">EcoWatch</a> reported at the time, the Carbios enzyme started to work when the plastic was heated to 65 to 72 degrees Celsius, or 149 to 161 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the range when plastic bottles start to soften and melt.</p><p>The researchers worked doggedly to reengineer the enzymes of an enzyme first discovered in Japan in 2016. The scientists published their results Monday in the <em><a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/23/2006753117" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a></em>. In the paper, they describe how the bacterium Idoenella sakaiensis produces two enzymes that thrive by consuming plastic bottles, according to <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/scientists-created-an-enzyme-cocktail-that-eats-plastic-1845206488" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gizmodo</a>.</p>
<p>The research holds tremendous promise for tackling the plastic waste crisis since the enzyme feeds on the type of plastic that water and soda bottles are made of, polyethylene terephthalate (PET). That type of plastic can take hundreds of years to degrade. The enzyme that the researchers enhanced can break the plastic down in just a few days, according to John McGeehan, the director of the Center for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, as <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/28/plastic-eating-super-enzyme-may-key-beating-pollution/" target="_blank">The Telegraph</a> reported.</p><p>"When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity," said McGeehan, as The Guardian reported. "This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it's also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab."</p>
<p>He was referring to the process that bacteria in nature use to devour polyesters, which occur in nature to protect plant leaves. "Bacteria have been evolving for millions of years to eat that," he said, as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43783631" target="_blank">BBC</a> reported in April.</p><p>McGeehan added that the enzyme could help accelerate a sustainable model since it enables the plastics to be "made and reused endlessly, reducing our reliance on fossil resources," as <a href="https://www.independent.ie/world-news/super-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-significant-leap-forward-in-pollution-crisis-39570785.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a> in Ireland reported.</p><p>McGeehan believes that cooperation between researchers and corporations could help scale up the enzyme in the near future.</p><p>"If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing this within the next year or two," he said, as The Guardian reported.</p>
<p>McGeehan and his team also believe their enhancements can be improved so the enzymes are able to consume plastic faster. By adjusting a bit of the residue on the enzyme's surface, it was able to work a bit faster, suggesting that further optimization is still down the road. A testing facility is under construction for McGeehan and his team in Portsmouth, while Carbios is building a plant in France to put the enzymes to use, according to The Guardian.</p><p>"The faster we can make the enzymes, the quicker we can break down the plastic, and the more commercially viable it will be," said McGeehan, as The Telegraph reported.</p>
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