Larger, dynamic animal species like rhinoceroses and elephants get a lot of well-deserved attention. But they also get the lion’s share of global conservation funding, leaving threatened species that are not as well-known to fend for themselves.

A 25-year study led by researchers at University of Hong Kong (HKU) has found that, of the nearly $2 billion in funds allotted to projects globally, 82.9 percent was devoted to vertebrates.

Mammals and birds received 85 percent of the funding, while amphibians were assigned less than 2.8 percent.

Invertebrates and plants were each given 6.6 percent of the total resources, while algae and fungi only benefited from 0.2 percent.

“The extensive loss of biodiversity represents one of the major crises of our time, threatening not only entire ecosystems but also our current and future livelihoods. As scientists realise the magnitude and scale of ongoing extinctions, it is vital to ascertain the resources available for conservation and whether funds are being effectively distributed to protect species most in need,” a press release from HKU said.

Mammals like kangaroos, wallabies, rodents and bats were greatly underfunded.

“Conservation efforts are largely concentrated on a narrow subset of species, some nonthreatened, while most species in urgent need of protection are largely ignored,” the authors of the findings wrote. “Both governments and nongovernmental stakeholders urgently need new approaches to help tackle the biodiversity crisis, including realigning funding priorities to ensure representative funding across taxa toward vulnerable and currently neglected species.”

Lead author of the study Benoit Guénard, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at HKU, said that no financial support was given to almost 94 percent of the species that were identified as threatened.

“Protecting this neglected majority, which plays a myriad of roles in ecosystems and represents unique evolutionary strategies, is fundamental if our common goal is to preserve biodiversity,” Guénard said, as The Guardian reported.

The researchers analyzed nearly 15,000 conservation projects from 1992 to 2016. They looked at the allocation of funding based on specific groups of organisms or species based on an assessment of their conservation needs by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

“Based on previous literature-based studies, we expected biases towards vertebrates and, whilst this was true, we found the situation much worse than previously estimated. Even within vertebrates, many of the most threatened groups, like amphibians, were largely underfunded with declining funding trends over time,” Guénard explained in the press release.

Reptiles, especially snakes and lizards, were another example of funding bias. More than a thousand reptile species are identified as threatened, but 87 percent of reptile conservation funding was devoted to seven marine turtle species.

“This highlights an important mismatch between scientific assessment of conservation and allocation of funding by conservation stakeholders, which appears to rely on the ‘charisma’ of species. This leads to nearly a third of the funding directed to non-threatened species while almost 94% of threatened species have not received any support,” Guénard said.

The study, “Limited and biased global conservation funding means most threatened species remain unsupported,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our traditional view of what is threatened often does not align with species genuinely at threat, leaving many smaller, or ‘less charismatic’ species neglected. We urgently need to reframe this perspective and better allocate funding across taxa if we want any hope of redressing widespread population declines and the continued loss of biodiversity,” said the study’s co-author Alice Hughes, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at HKU, in the press release.

Based on the findings, the researchers said a new approach needs to be taken to funding conservation. Not only does species conservation need additional funding, a more careful approach must be taken in the selection of projects and species that are to receive the limited funds available.

“Conservation agencies and NGOs need to modify their philosophy towards conservation to protect all species, and not just a subset based on subjective criteria of charisma or beauty,” Guénard said.

The research team has hope that their database will be expanded to make funding allocation information more easily accessible and transparent. This would help with planning future conservation efforts worldwide, evaluating existing gaps and reducing funding redundancy for species that are already receiving most of the financial support.

The post Most Conservation Funding Goes to Large, ‘Charismatic’ Vertebrates Instead of Lesser-Known, Threatened Species: Study appeared first on EcoWatch.

Trees in central Los Angeles absorb much more carbon dioxide than scientists thought. This means they are able to offset a surprising amount of the city’s fossil fuel emissions when the weather is warm and trees are most active.

In a recent study, researchers used densely spaced air-quality sensors to find that vegetation in parts of central LA offset 60 percent of the city’s carbon emissions, especially during the growing season, a press release from University of Southern California (USC) said.

The discovery that urban greenery plays a more substantial role in offsetting LA’s carbon footprint could offer insights to help other cities combat climate change.

“Urban areas are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, necessitating effective monitoring systems to evaluate mitigation strategies,” the authors of the study wrote. “A dense sensor network, such as the Berkeley Environmental Air-quality & CO2 Observation Network (BEACO2N), offers a unique opportunity to monitor urban emissions at high spatial resolution.”

The first-of-its-kind study by Public Exchange and USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was able to provide more detail than had been previously available by tracking emissions absorption in real time.

The measurements are some of the most detailed on how air quality is impacted by urban trees. Vegetation in the area absorbed as much as 60 percent of daytime carbon dioxide from fossil fuels during the spring and summer months and roughly 30 percent annually. This ranks LA as a city with one of the highest documented uptake rates of carbon dioxide.

In order to track LA’s carbon in real time, the team launched the Carbon Census array, which involved deployment of a dozen high-resolution BEACO₂N sensors over a 15-by-six-mile area of Mid-City.

The sensors mapped changing carbon concentrations in the air as it moved across the urban landscape. This enabled the researchers to take wind direction and speed, as well as urban density, into account to determine the extent to which local vegetation was offsetting emissions.

“You can think of emissions like passengers on a train,” said lead researcher Will Berelson, a USC Dornsife professor of Earth sciences, environmental studies and spatial sciences, in the press release. “As the wind moves pollution through the city, some gets picked up and some gets dropped off. These sensors let us see that process in real time.”

The study, conducted from July of 2021 to December of the following year, measured carbon dioxide directly, unlike other models that estimate carbon levels based on traffic data, fuel sales and other models that depend on carbon landing on individual sensors.

“One of the study’s biggest surprises was that trees absorb the most CO₂ during summer, despite it being L.A.’s driest season. Satellite imagery shows L.A.’s urban greenery is remarkably verdant in summer, likely due to irrigation, groundwater access from leaky pipes and resilient tree species,” the press release said. “Still, trees can’t keep pace with emissions. As expected, CO₂ levels spiked during rush hour, reinforcing the fact that, while greenery helps, it can’t offset pollution from cars, buildings and industry on its own.”

The findings of the study help inform USC’s Urban Trees Initiative, which is a partnership between the City of Los Angeles, USC and community organizations with a focus on expanding urban greenery where it’s needed most. Identifying areas where trees are absorbing the most carbon could be helpful in guiding future planting efforts.

Building on the success of the study, the USC team added eight more sensors to its network outside the original study area.

“Our goal is to monitor more areas of L.A. to define baseline values of CO₂ emission and identify where vegetation is making the biggest impact and where more greenery is needed,” Berelson said.

The fact that urban vegetation only absorbs about one-third of the area’s fossil fuel emissions each year emphasizes the urgent need for improved public transportation, clean energy and broader emissions reductions.

LA has a target of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050. Berelson said that, while the city’s urban greenery gives it a natural boost, reducing the use of fossil fuels is still the most important step in combating climate change.

“Nature is helping us, but we can’t rely on it to do all the work,” Berelson said.

The findings, “Observing Anthropogenic and Biogenic CO2 Emissions in Los Angeles Using a Dense Sensor Network,” were published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The post Trees in Central Los Angeles Absorb More Carbon Than Previously Thought: Study appeared first on EcoWatch.

Increased pesticide use, habitat loss and climate change have been contributing to a decades-long decline in global honeybee numbers.

Now, a computer science team from University of California, Riverside (UCR), has come up with an innovative way to help. They developed a sensor-based technology with the potential to revolutionize commercial beekeeping, reduce colony losses and cut labor costs.

“Honeybees, as natural crop pollinators, play a significant role in biodiversity and food production for human civilization. Bees actively regulate hive temperature (homeostasis) to maintain a colony’s proper functionality. Deviations from usual thermoregulation behavior due to external stressors (e.g., extreme environmental temperature, parasites, pesticide exposure, etc.) indicate an impending colony collapse,” the authors of the paper wrote. “Anticipating such threats by forecasting hive temperature and finding changes in temperature patterns would allow beekeepers to take early preventive measures and avoid critical issues.”

The Electronic Bee-Veterinarian (EBV) uses forecasting models and inexpensive heat sensors to predict when temperatures in a hive could reach dangerous levels, a press release from UCR said.

The system gives beekeepers remote early warnings so that they can take preventive action before colonies collapse during extreme cold or hot weather, or when bees aren’t able to regulate the temperature of their hives due to pesticide exposure, food shortages, disease or other stressors.

“We convert the temperature to a factor that we are calling the health factor, which gives an estimate of how strong the bees are on a scale from zero to one,” said lead author of the paper Shamima Hossain, a computer science Ph.D. student at UCR, in the press release.

The technology uses a simple metric, with “one” indicating that the bees are at their strongest, allowing beekeepers to quickly assess hive health.

UCR entomology professor Boris Baer thinks EBV could revolutionize beekeeping — an essential practice to large sectors of agriculture throughout the world.

More than 80 crops are pollinated by honeybees, and the essential pollinators contribute approximately $29 billion each year to agriculture in the United States. But factors like pesticide exposure, parasites, habitat loss and climate change have contributed to the decline of bee populations.

“Over the last year, the U.S. lost over 55% of its honeybee colonies,” said Baer, citing data collected by Project Apis m., which monitors U.S. beehive losses. “We are experiencing a major collapse of bee populations, and that is extremely worrying because about one-third of what we eat depends on bees.”

Right now beekeepers use manual inspections and their own judgment to detect issues, which often leads to delayed interventions. Baer said EBV could predict conditions days ahead of time, providing them with real-time insights and significantly reducing labor costs.

“People have dreamed of these sensors for a very long time,” Baer emphasized. “What I like here is that this system is fully integrated into the hive setup that beekeepers already use.”

Baer explained that honeybees maintain an internal hive temperature of between 91.4 and 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit to assure colony survival and proper brood development. Among the first indicators of a threat to hive health are fluctuations in temperature.

The EBV model feeds temperature data collected from sensors inside the hive into an algorithm that can then predict hive conditions several days ahead of time.

EBV was used to analyze data from up to 25 hives at the UCR apiary. It proved its effectiveness by detecting conditions requiring beekeeper intervention.

“When I looked at the dashboard and saw the health factor dropped below an empirical threshold, I contacted our apiary manager,” Hossain said. “When we went to check the hive, we found that there was actually something wrong, and they were able to take action to manage the situation.”

UCR electrical and computer engineering associate professor Hyoseung Kim explained that keeping costs at less than $50 per hive was a big priority.

“There are commercial sensors available, but they are too expensive,” Kim explained. “We decided to create a very cheap device using off-the-shelf components so that beekeepers can afford it.”

The researchers have begun the next phase of developing automated climate controls that beekeepers can install in hives to respond to EBV’s predictions by automatically adjusting hive temperature.

“Right now, we can only issue warnings,” Hossain said. “But in the next phase, we are working on designing a system that can automatically heat or cool the hive when needed.”

The paper, “Principled Mining, Forecasting and Monitoring of Honeybee Time Series with EBV+,” was published in the journal ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data.

The post New Low-Cost Beehive Sensors Could Help Save Honeybee Colonies appeared first on EcoWatch.

The antioxidants that make fruits and vegetables so colorful have been found to potentially counteract some of the worst effects of microplastics on the reproductive system.

The powerful antioxidants could even be used to develop future treatments, according to new research.

“The accumulation of [microplastics/nanoplastics] contaminants across ecosystems raises significant concerns for human health due to their potential dispersion within the human body through respiratory, integumentary, and digestive systems,” the authors of the study wrote. “[T]here is evidence suggesting that they could disrupt the endocrine system, exert influence on fertility, and impair embryonic development.”

The researchers focused on the reproductive toxicity of microplastics and anthocyanins — plant compounds found in fruits, vegetables and nuts. They discovered that anthocyanins likely protect against a host of microplastics-induced reductions in estrogen and testosterone, decreased sperm counts and lower sperm quality, impacts on hormones, damage to ovaries and erectile dysfunction, reported The Guardian.

Antioxidants in fruits and flowers seem to counteract harmful effects of microplastics, study shows

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— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) February 24, 2025 at 11:08 AM

“The search for natural compounds to counteract these harmful effects is ongoing, with anthocyanins emerging as a promising candidate,” the authors wrote in the study. “These compounds may exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, mitigate oxidative damage, and improve the function of steroid receptors such as androgen and ERs, which are crucial in maintaining reproductive health. The modulation of these receptors by anthocyanins may help restore hormonal balance, reduce cellular stress, and protect reproductive organs from plastic-induced damage.”

Microplastics are tiny plastic pieces produced when larger plastics break down. The dangerous particles contain an array of chemicals, many of which — such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), phthalates, BPA and heavy metals — present serious health risks.

Microplastics have made their way into the human body through the food chain and have been found to have the ability to cross brain and placental barriers. They have also been associated with increased inflammation, risk of cancer and heart attack and can alter the essential gut microbiome.

The ubiquitous particles have been discovered in breast milk, ovarian tissue, testicles, semen, placentas and fetuses.

By safeguarding the blood-testis barrier and stopping microplastics from making their way into bodily tissues, some of the plant compounds have been demonstrated to improve sperm count and spermatogenesis, a crucial step in sperm development.

Impacts on women’s fertility could be helped by the seeming ability of anthocyanins to protect hormone receptors against plastic chemicals like phthalates, bisphenol and cadmium — chemicals that can cause hormonal responses or mimic hormones.

“Plants offer a wealth of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that can counteract these harmful effects. Among these, anthocyanins, natural colorants responsible for the vibrant hues of fruits and flowers, exhibit a wide range of biological activities, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-neoplastic properties. Moreover, anthocyanins can modulate sex hormone levels and alleviate reproductive toxicity,” the authors wrote.

The post Antioxidants in Fruits, Veggies and Nuts May Counteract Harmful Reproductive Impacts of Microplastics, Scientists Find appeared first on EcoWatch.

The French Parliament voted on Thursday for ambitious new legislation to limit the sale and production of some products that contain toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) “forever chemicals,” including cosmetics, most clothing and ski wax.

The bill seeks to prevent the import, sale and production of any product that has an alternative to PFAS, except certain industrial textiles that are deemed “essential,” beginning in January of 2026, reported AFP.

“In a relatively short space of time, two and a half years, thanks to the mobilization of members of parliament, NGOs, scientists and investigative journalists, a subject that was under the radar has made its way into the public debate, to the point where France now has one of the world’s most ambitious laws on PFAS,” said French environmentalist Nicolas Thierry, a Green Party MP and the bill’s rapporteur, as Le Monde reported.

France adopts 'one of the most ambitious' laws on PFAS

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— Le Monde in English (@lemonde-en.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 8:39 AM

Only last month, health and environmental organizations throughout Europe wrote a joint letter urging President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen to take action against PFAS.

The coalition called on von der Leyen to “end the worst pollution crisis in human history” with a ban on the hazardous substances. She had promised to do so under the European Green Deal’s 2022 “zero pollution” strategy.

PFAS are a group of thousands of human-made chemical compounds used to make products waterproof, nonstick and stain-resistant, but have been found to cause a wide range of health problems.

Referred to as “forever chemicals,” the dangerous substances have made their way into drinking water and the food chain through soil and groundwater, and have now been found almost everywhere on the planet, from the peak of Mount Everest to the human body.

Chronic PFAS exposure, even at low levels, has been associated with high cholesterol, reduced immune responses, liver damage and several types of cancer.

Non-stick saucepans were to be banned in the original draft of France’s new law, but intense lobbying by the owner of French manufacturer Tefal led to their removal, reported AFP.

The regulation will require French authorities to conduct regular testing of drinking water for PFAS.

A January 2025 study found that one type of PFAS associated with birth defects and health problems had been discovered in the drinking water of many towns and cities in France, including Paris.

Beginning next year, new European Union regulations will require member states to test their drinking water for 20 types of PFAS. The EU has been considering a potential ban on PFAS use in consumer products, but so far no regulation has been implemented.

“This ban on PFAS in products like clothing and cosmetics is great news for French citizens worried about their exposure to these harmful chemicals. The not so good news is that some key products like cookware were exempted. Now France needs to get firmly behind an EU wide restriction on PFAS ensuring more products are included and citizens of all member states are protected,” said Sandra Bell, policy and advocacy advisor at nonprofit CHEM Trust.

The post France’s Parliament Bans PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Key Products appeared first on EcoWatch.