Utah state Rep. Casey Snider and state Sen. Scott Sandall sponsored a bill this legislative session with the innocuous-sounding title “Wildlife Related Amendments.”HB469is 20 pages long. Sneakily buried within it is a single line that turns the bill into a Trojan Horse.
Underthe provisions of this bill, a resident who is 12 years or older would be able to buy a license authorizing him or her, subject to rules and regulations established by the Wildlife Board, to “hunt or trap cougar during a period beginning on January 1 and ending on December 31″
It has been almost two decades in the making, but late on Saturday night in New York, after days of gruelling round-the-clock talks, UN member states finally agreed on a treaty to protect the high seas.
A full day after the deadline for talks had officially passed, the conference president, Rena Lee of Singapore, took to the floor of room 2 of the UN headquarters in New York and announced that the treaty had been agreed. At a later date, the delegates will meet for half a day to formally adopt the text. She made it clear the text would not be reopened.
“In Singapore, we like to go on learning journeys, and this has been the learning journey of a lifetime,” Lee said.
She thanked delegates for their dedication and commitment. “The success is also yours,” she told them.
She received cheers and a standing ovation from delegates in the room who had not left the conference hall for two days and worked through the night in order to get the deal done.
The Intergovernmental Conference on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction congratulating its President, Ambassador Rena Lee, on the successful conclusion of the BBNJ treaty. Photograph: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore
The historic treaty is crucial for enforcing the 30×30 pledge made by countries at the UN biodiversity conference in December, to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030. Without a treaty, this target would certainly fail, as until now no legal mechanism existed to set up MPAs on the high seas.
Covering almost two-thirds of the ocean that lies outside national boundaries, the treaty will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs) to protect against the loss of wildlife and share out the genetic resources of the high seas. It will establish a conference of the parties (Cop) that will meet periodically and enable member states to be held to account on issues such as governance and biodiversity.
Ambassador Rena Lee thanked delegates for their dedication and commitment. Photograph: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore
Ocean ecosystems produce half the oxygen we breathe, represent 95% of the planet’s biosphere and soak up carbon dioxide, as the world’s largest carbon sink. Yet until now, fragmented and loosely enforced rules governing the high seas have rendered this area more susceptible than coastal waters to exploitation.
Veronica Frank, political adviser for Greenpeace, said that while the organisation hadn’t seen the latest text, “We are really happy. The world is so divided and to see multilateralism supported is so important.
“What’s really important is now to use this tool to develop this 30×30 target into force really quickly.”
The Pew Charitable Trust welcomed the “landmark international agreement”.
Activists from Greenpeace display a banner before the United Nations headquarters during ongoing negotiations at the UN on a treaty to protect the high seas in New York Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
“High seas marine protected areas can play a critical role in the impacts of climate change,” said Liz Karan, director of Pew’s ocean governance project. “Governments and civil society must now ensure the agreement is adopted and rapidly enters into force and is effectively implemented to safeguard high seas biodiversity.”Skip Ad
The High Ambition Coalition – which includes the EU, US, UK and China – were key players in brokering the deal, building coalitions instead of sowing division and showing willingness to compromise in the final days of talks. The Global South led the way in ensuring the treaty could be put into practice in a fair and equitable way.
The European commissioner for the environment, ocean and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, described the agreement as a “historic moment for the ocean” and the culmination of more than a decade of work and international negotiations.
“With the agreement on the UN High Seas Treaty, we take a crucial step forward to preserve the marine life and biodiversity that are essential for us and the generations to come,” he said. “It is also a proof of strengthened multilateral cooperation with our partners and a major asset to implement our COP 15 goal for 30% ocean protection. I am very proud of our outcome.”https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2023/03/highseas-zip/giv-13425nxBX96ObO5us/
Michael Imran Kanu, the head of the African Group and ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the UN for legal affairs of Sierra Leone, said the treaty was “robust and ambitious”. Kanu, who expressed concerns during talks over the fair and equitable sharing of benefits, said: “We really achieved amazing results” on this issue. Monetary and non-monetary benefits would be shared and an initial upfront fund would be set up under the treaty. He welcomed the adoption of the “common heritage of humankind” as a key principle for the high seas, which was a red line for many developing states. “That was significant for us”, he said.
It is the third time in less than a year that member states have hunkered down in the UN’s headquarters in New York to thrash out a “final” deal. The negotiations, which ran over two weeks from 20 February were the fifth round of talks after earlier negotiations ended last August without agreement.
That an agreement was reached between 193 nations at all, was a huge achievement, but conservationists say it leaves significant scope for improvement. In particular, countries agreed that existing bodies already responsible for regulating activities such as fisheries, shipping and deep-sea mining could continue to do so without having to carry out environmental impact assessments laid out by the treaty.
One of the key stumbling blocks, which divided developing and developed nations, was how to fairly share marine genetic resources (MGR) and the eventual profits. MGR, which consist of the genetic material of deep-sea marine sponges, krill, corals, seaweeds and bacteria, are attracting increasing scientific and commercial attention due to their potential use in medicines and cosmetics.
Others sticking points included the procedure for creating marine protected areas and the model for environmental impact studies of planned activities on the high seas.
In a move seen as an attempt to build trust between rich and poor countries, the European Union pledged €40m ($42m) in New York to facilitate the ratification of the treaty and its early implementation.
Monica Medina, the US assistant secretary for oceans, international environment and scientific affairs, who attended the negotiations in New York, said: “We leave here with the ability to create protected areas in the high seas and achieve the ambitious goal of conserving 30% of the ocean by 2030. And the time to start is now.”
She said the US was pleased to agree on the major element of a high seas treaty that includes a strong, coordinated approach to establishing marine protected areas.
Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, said: “Following a two-week-long rollercoaster of a ride of negotiations and superhero efforts in the last 48 hours, governments reached agreement on key issues that will advance protection and better management of marine biodiversity in the high seas.”
“What happens on the high seas will no longer be ‘out of sight, out of mind,” said Jessica Battle of WWF in a statement after leading the group’s team at the negotiations. “We can now look at the cumulative impacts on our ocean in a way that reflects the interconnected blue economy and the ecosystems that support it.”
Residents in the mountains east of Los Angeles were growing increasingly desperate Saturday and begging for help as they remained trapped by record snowfall.
Up to 7 feet of snow dumped by thehistoric blizzardravaged swaths of California last weekend, but after a week, crews have been stymied in clearing mountain roads and rescue workers have faced obstacles in getting help to stranded residents.
“I feel like I’m never going to get out here,” resident Marcia Woloshun, who…
A group of friends play basketball amid a heat wave, after the national meteorological service confirmed that it recorded the hottest summer in its history, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 2, 2023. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian
BUENOS AIRES, March 3 (Reuters) – Argentina is being hit by a blistering late-summer heat wave, with many places setting record temperatures for March, while residents, tourists and crops swelter in the sun.
Some towns and cities have posted temperatures as high as 40 degrees Celsius (104°F), with Nueve de Julio and Ezeiza breaking records for the month. Buenos Aires itself hit 38 degrees Celsius, breaking a record previously set in 1952.
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“You can’t walk around, it’s too humid here. It’s tough,” said resident Gabriel Suarez.
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For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline.
The continent’s fringing waters witness a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February.
But across those four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week.
“By the end of January we could tell it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t even a…
The Permian-Triassic mass extinction, also known as the Great Dying, was the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. It occurred about 252 million years ago and wiped out about 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species.
The Latest Permian Mass Extinction (LPME) was the largest extinction event in Earth’s history to date, resulting in the loss of between 80-90% of life on the planet. Despite extensive research, the exact cause of the dramatic changes in climate during this time remains unknown.
A team of international scientists, including Tracy Frank, the Professor and Department Head of theUConn Department of Earth Sciences, and Professor Christopher Fielding, are collaborating to uncover the cause and events of the Latest Permian…
Scientists have carefully simulated conditions on Earth in the earliest part of its history, some 4.6 billion years ago, hoping to unlock a greater understanding of how amino acids brought the first ingredients for life into being.
Together, amino acids form proteins that play many vital roles in organisms. This new study was designed to help establish why a specific group of 20 ‘canonical’ amino acids is used again and again to build proteins when there are so many more of these amino acids to pick from.
It’s thought that these 20 amino acids are made up of 10 ‘early’ ones picked from the atmosphere and meteorite fragments of early Earth, and 10 ‘later’ ones added on top – but what the selection process for the latter 10 involved isn’t clear.
Canonical amino acids are thought to have been added in two groups. (Makarov et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2023)
“You see the same amino acids in every organism, from humans to bacteria to archaea, and that’s because all things on Earth are connected through this tree of life that has an origin, an organism that was the ancestor to all living things,” says chemist Stephen Fried, from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. “We’re describing the events that shaped why that ancestor got the amino acids that it did.”
Through a reconstruction of primordial protein synthesis, the researchers showed that ancient organic compounds would have favored the amino acids best at folding proteins, tailoring them for specific functions.
In other words, a process of evolution or natural selection was underway even at this stage: it wasn’t the amino acids that were most readily available that were picked, but the amino acids most suited to a particular job.
If other amino acids had been selected as part of the core group billions of years ago, the scientists determined that the very building blocks of life would not have been as efficient at doing that life-building.
“Protein folding was basically allowing us to do evolution before there was even life on our planet,” says Fried. “You could have evolution before you had biology, you could have natural selection for the chemicals that are useful for life even before there was DNA.”
The team behind the study suggests that the 10 ‘later’ amino acids, in particular, were selected for their protein-folding capabilities, enabling the replication of DNA and the production of proteins that sparked life into being.
This research can teach us more about the potential for microorganisms on other planets and our own: The same amino acids that came to Earth via meteorites can also be found in many other places in the Universe.
“The Universe seems to love amino acids,” says Fried. “Maybe if we found life on a different planet, it wouldn’t be that different.”
Top human rights organizations are calling on theUnited Nationsto intervene over the destruction of abortion rights in the US.
In alettershared in advance with the Guardian and sent on Thursday by nearly 200 organizations and experts, the authors detail how, since the overturning of the federal constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, some 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where abortion access is now either banned or inaccessible.
Among the signatories are the Global Justice Center, Pregnancy Justice, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They are joined by a broader coalition of groups and individual advocates for human rights and racial and economic justice.
Abortion restrictions, the signatories write, deny…
A hunter said he killed and skinned what he thought were two coyotes, but later discovered they were family pets.(File Image | Kaspars Grinvalds via Canva)
Published:Mar. 2, 2023 at 11:48 AM PST|Updated:Mar. 2, 2023 at 12:25 PM PST
DANBURY, Conn. (AP) – A hunter who told authorities he killed and skinned what he thought were two coyotes, but later discovered they were a Connecticut family’s pet German shepherds, has been criminally charged.
During a hearing in Danbury Superior Court on Wednesday that drew dozens of people including the dogs’ owners and animal rights advocates, Michael Konschak, 61, of Carmel, New York, said he was ashamed of what he did.
“Please know that it was never my intent that morning to harm the victims’ pets,” he said.
Police with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection arrested Konschak in February on charges…
(Kampee Patisena/Moment/Getty Images)
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Exposing the Big Game 