Talk about gratitude.
How far would you swim to reunite with the person who saved your life? For one penguin who found himself in a sticky situation (literally), the answer is approximately 5,000 miles.
Have you heard about the Magellanic Penguin and retired bricklayer in Brazil who have struck up a unique friendship?
Joao Pereira de Souza lives in a fishing village just outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2011 he found a tiny penguin lying on some rocks at his local beach. The creature was covered in oil and close to death.
Joao cleaned the penguin, nursed him back to health and named him Dindim. Joao tried releasing the penguin, presumably never to meet again, but Dindim wasn’t ready to leave just yet. Joao recalls, “He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared.”
But that was not the last time the two would meet. So the story goes, over the past five years, Dindim has spent many months of the year with Joao and some believe he spends the rest of the time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.
Joao told Globo TV, “I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me.” Apparently, no one else is permitted to touch Dindim, besides Joao, of course. Dindim lets Joao give him showers, feed and pick him up.
See for yourself:
That’s quite a heartwarming story, eh?
According to Penguin World, the Magellanic Penguin is the only migratory, offshore-foraging species in its genus. Some move as far north as Peru and Brazil in winter. So a penguin hanging out at a Brazilian fishing village is not necessarily as wild and crazy as it may sound.
I wonder though; is having a human "bff" in any way a detriment to this wild penguin’s welfare?
We know that there are health and emotional benefits of human-animal interactions. But we also know that wild animals belong in the wild and when humans try to change that, tragedy happens.
Still, a recent study found that ecotourism—which some claim can be dangerous to animal species in general—“might be less harmful to larger birds than previously thought because larger animals are more likely to be able to tolerate human disturbance.” A key finding from the study: “Larger birds are more tolerant of humans than smaller birds.”
Daniel Blumstein, the study’s senior author and a member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, explained, “This new finding flips previous recommendations about large-bodied species being more vulnerable to the presence of humans and shows that large-bodied species are more tolerant.” He added, “It is likely costly for animals to respond fearfully to people that are not harming them.”
Interesting indeed, but to get the full picture, you should read the complete study.
As for the heartwarming bond between Joao and Dindim, to further explore whether this relationship is in any way harmful to the penguin, I turned to International Bird Rescue, an organization that has pioneered oiled aquatic bird care.
There I connected with Barbara Callahan, International Bird Rescue’s Response Services Director, who had just left Brazil where she was working with their partner organization, Aiuká Consultoria em Soluções Ambientais. Callahan suggested I connect with the Projects Director of Aiuká, Valeria Ruoppolo, who has been following this case.
About the unusual human-penguin friendship, Ruoppolo told me, “There is no harm really, but that is excluding the fact that the animal is being fed while on shore and that is why it does not go away.”
Takes a bit of wind out of the friendship sail, but what do you expect? It’s hard for anyone to turn down free lunch.
In terms of where exactly the penguin goes when not with Joao, Ruoppolo believes the media thus far has gotten it wrong: “Once it decides to go, the animal clearly knows where it is going back to, but in my opinion it does not go back south to Argentina as I have seen all over the media.”
Her theory? “The penguin is generally away for four months and it probably feeds and swims around south and southeastern Brazil when it decides to go back to Mr. Joao.”
Well, you heard it here folks.
Here’s to friendship and mutual respect between humans and wildlife. To learn more about International Bird Rescue’s incredible work, click here.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.