Construction has started in the UK on two of four new bison bridges that will enable the animals to cross through forested areas while allowing human visitors to observe the wildlife from the bridges above.

The project, totaling £1 million (about $1.33 million), includes four bridges that people can use to safely observe the UK’s first wild bison herd in thousands of years, according to Kent Wildlife Trust, which, alongside Wildwood Trust, has been a leader of the wild bison restoration project in the UK.

Kent Wildlife Trust reported that bison are labeled as dangerous under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976. This prevents bison from sharing the same spaces as humans. By installing pedestrian bridges, the bison can have a greater range, while the humans can watch and learn more about these creatures.

With the bridges, the bison will expand their roaming area from 50 hectares to around 200 hectares, as The Guardian reported. Currently, the bison are restricted to fenced regions because of the official dangerous wildlife designation.

While the bridges help expand the range for the bison, conservationists are hoping to push UK officials to update rewilding laws to allow for bison preservation and expansion projects that won’t require expensive steel fencing.

“We recognise that miles of fencing and bridges is a barrier to rewilding projects, but we must demonstrate what can be achieved so we can advocate for change. Bison are no more dangerous than domestic cattle and, in other parts of the world, they roam freely in public areas,” said Simon Bateman-Brown, head of land management at Kent Wildlife Trust, as reported by The Guardian. “Our long-term vision is to remove the steel fencing and have the herd contained via electric fencing, but until the government makes the law fit for rewilding, we will continue to make a case for projects like this, so they can be replicated.”

Two of the bridges are expected to be complete before the end of 2024. 

With the wild bison restoration and accompanying bridges to expand their range, the bison can help contribute to the local ecosystems and may even have beneficial climate impacts. According to a recent study by scientists at Yale School of the Environment, 170 bison in a rewilding project in Romania contributed significantly to carbon sequestration. As Kent Wildlife Trust reported, the findings of that study showed the rewilded bison helped store carbon emissions equivalent to removing around 84,000 gas-fueled cars from the roads.

“Whilst the monitoring system for our Blean Bison project is still in its infancy, we are already seeing the positive impact the herd in Kent is having on their environment — they’re opening up spaces in dense woodlands to make room for far more species and are helping to create micro habitats for other wildlife to thrive,” said Paul Whitfeld, director-general of Wildwood Trust. “We expect to see them improving soil and carbon sequestration too.”

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Amid a record-breaking drought, major river basins in the Amazon Rainforest are reaching their lowest levels ever recorded, with some even running dry.

According to data from the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB), the Madeira River reached 48 centimeters at Porto Velho on September 17. By comparison, the average water level of the river at this point has been 3.32 meters. As Mongabay reported, the Madeira River, which stretches 1,450 kilometers (900 miles), makes up about 15% of water in the Amazon Basin and is the largest tributary of the Amazon River.

The Solimões, another major tributary to the Amazon River, reached its lowest recorded level in Tabatinga, Brazil this week, and part of the Solimões River in Tefé had completely dried up by September 17, Reuters reported.

On Monday, the Purus River reached a water level more than 2 meters below its previous historic low recorded in 1983, Mongabay reported.

“We are going through a critical year,” Greenpeace spokesperson Romulo Batista told Reuters. 

“Last year was already the hottest year in the last 125,000 years. This year several months have broken last year’s records.”

The record-breaking water levels across the Amazon Basin comes as Brazil faces its worst drought in 70 years, since records began. As The Associated Press reported, 59% of the country is under stress from the drought.

“This is the first time that a drought has covered all the way from the North to the country’s Southeast,” Ana Paula Cunha, drought researcher at Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), said in a statement last week. “It is the most intense and widespread drought in history.”

But conditions could worsen still, as the dry season for the region usually lasts through November, BBC reported.

“More records will be broken,” Cunha told Mongabay. “The next round of rain is expected to be delayed, so you can expect more rain only in November, or even later.”

Several factors have played a role in the extensive drought, including climate change, the El Niño event that started in 2023 and decades of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

“We’ve seen floods not only in Brazil, but around the world, droughts and a lot of fires here in the Amazon, in the Serrado, in the Pantanal and around the world,” Batista said. “Climate change is no longer something to worry about in the future, ten or twenty years from now, it’s here and it’s here with much more force than we expected.”

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The government of Zimbabwe has ordered a cull of 200 elephants amid an ongoing drought and food shortages in the country. The order will be the first elephant cull since 1988.

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) has been tasked with the cull. Fulton Mangwanya, director general of ZimParks, said that the culling will be prioritized in areas where there have been human-elephant conflicts, as reported by IFL Science. 

According to the ZimParks website, Zimbabwe has the second largest population of elephants in the world. As IFL Science reported, the country is home to around 100,000 African elephants (of the genus Loxodonta).

Hwange, home to Hwange National Park, the largest nature reserve in Zimbabwe, is one of the target areas for culling, The Guardian reported. This area is home to around 65,000 of the country’s elephants.

“Zimbabwe has more elephants than our forests can accommodate,” Sithembiso Nyoni, the minister of environment for Zimbabwe, told Voice of America. “We are having a discussion with ZimParks and some communities to do like what Namibia has done, so that we can cull the elephants and mobilize the women to maybe dry the meat, package it, and ensure that it gets to some communities that need the protein.”

Namibia, which neighbors Zimbabwe, recently ordered a similar cull for over 700 animals, including 83 elephants, The Guardian reported. The cull was also a response to ongoing drought.

The decision has brought criticism from both conservationists and those concerned about the cull’s impact on tourism.

“Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to dealing with drought without affecting tourism,” said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance, as reported by The Guardian. “They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead. We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical.”

Those in support of elephant culling argue it will not only feed people and reduce pressure on resources but will also control the increasing elephant population and its impact on the environment. Chris Brown, CEO of Namibia’s Chamber of Environment, told The Guardian that the elephant population would damage local habitats.

“They really damage ecosystems and habitats, and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the Eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people,” Brown said. “Those species matter as much as elephants.”

Maguwu argued that although the culling decision is limited by protections such as Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), officials have long tried to change the rules for economic gain rather than to help communities amid crises, such as drought and food shortages.

“Zimbabwe has always been pushing for the right to kill elephants,” Maguwu told Voice of America. “We all know when you look at how our natural resources are being plundered right now, like minerals, the whole idea is to sell ivory. It’s not even about the communities there.”

Maguwu continued, “There is a lot that government can do to cushion the people from the impacts of drought rather than killing elephants. I think they should stop that move.”

As for alternatives to elephant culling, World Wildlife Fund has listed several options, including translocation, conflict mitigation efforts and breeding regulations and contraceptives. The organization also supports the development of overpopulation guidelines and procedures by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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A new map from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reveals the areas of the country that are at biggest risk from landslides.

“This new national landslide susceptibility map addresses an important but difficult question: which areas across the entire U.S. are prone to landslides?” Ben Mirus, USGS research geologist, said in a statement. “We are excited that it is now publicly available to help everyone be more prepared — to be a more hazard-ready nation.”

According to the U.S. Landslide Inventory and Susceptibility Map and an accompanying report, about 44% of the U.S. could be vulnerable to landslides, including catastrophic landslide events. 

The landslide inventory map, currently in beta, includes details on where landslides have already occurred, while the new susceptibility map can help in resiliency and land-use planning by showing areas that are more vulnerable to landslides. Previously, the landslide inventory was more disjointed, with different records and data being kept in various formats within varying agencies and departments. The inventory will be continuously updated, and the USGS is accepting additional landslide information to be sent to the email address gs-haz_landslides_inventory@usgs.gov.

As for susceptibility, historically, the focus remained on areas where risks were considered highest, USGS explained. Now, the map offers a more comprehensive look at risks across the U.S., including for Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.

In using the interactive susceptibility map, users will see increasing risk by color, with white showing little risk, yellow showing increased risk, and darker shades of red showing the highest risk. 

“The updated national landslide susceptibility map could potentially support state and federal agencies in their efforts to determine if landslides are a concern for areas of interest and whether site-specific analyses may be warranted,” USGS noted in its report. “This map may be of particular utility in areas without existing landslide data or only limited local capacity to do additional mapping.”

However, USGS warned that the maps are limited in that they do not provide details into the frequency or magnitude of landslides, which could increase in response to climate change. A 2023 study found that from 2031 to 2060 and 2066 to 2095, landslides caused by extreme precipitation could increase by 7% and 10%, respectively, when compared to landslide averages from 1971 to 2000.

“Although it does not account for frequency or magnitude of landsliding needed to quantify the probability of future landslide impacts, this uniform map provides useful information for stakeholders and partners to inform more detailed hazard or risk assessments. Comparing our map with existing landslide inventories shows areas where landslides were not expected, and thus where more detailed susceptibility assessments may be warranted,” USGS concluded.

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For a second consecutive year, sea ice around Antarctica is nearing a record low for the winter season. 

Scientists at the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP) announced that the Antarctic sea ice coverage has reached a new low point for winter, even surpassing the levels of 2023, which were the lowest since satellite records began.

“In 2023, the winter extreme was outside everybody’s expectations — not just due to its sheer magnitude, but because it’s the wrong time of year. In winter the ocean should be freezing,” scientist Will Hobbs explained in a statement. “While the summer sea ice of 2024 was largely within the ‘normal’ variability, this winter we’ve again seen chaotic fluctuations similar to last year, now producing the lowest winter extreme on record.”

The scientists determined that warming ocean temperatures are to blame, but they are still determining whether this level of warming in the short-term is “just a blip” or can be confirmed as a result of climate change, Hobbs said.

“We know that the past two years have been the warmest on record for the planet, with global temperatures more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial for extended periods,” Hobbs said. “This global warmth is now reflected in the oceans around the Antarctic, and is likely a major factor in continuing record low sea ice.”

As The Guardian reported, the ice coverage in the Southern Ocean reached 17 million square kilometers over the weekend. In 2023, the winter ice coverage reached 17.1 million square kilometers, compared to a long-term average of 18.4 million square kilometers for this time of year. 

However, the Antarctic winter season is not yet over, as it ranges from March to October, and scientists are concerned about whether the ice will increase before the end of the season.

“While it’s still too early to say whether winter sea ice has reached its maximum this year, it’s startling that the extent has dropped so low again — almost like the sea ice is being dissuaded from growing!” said Phil Reid, climate analyst at the Bureau of Meteorology, a partner of AAPP.

Earlier this year, NASA reported that Antarctic sea ice coverage was reaching record lows for the third year in a row, revealing longer term changes to the Southern Ocean. According to NASA, summer 2024 sea ice in the Antarctic dipped to a low of 1.99 million square kilometers on Feb. 20, 2024, about 30% lower than the average end-of-summer ice coverage from 1981 to 2010.

Now, scientists are working to deepen their understandings of how the decrease in sea ice and changes in ocean temperatures can also impact weather and climate.

“For example, recent studies suggest that reduced sea-ice extent may lead to an increase in occurrence and duration of summer-time wet extremes over Australia, and, conversely, longer periods of dry days during winter,” Reid explained.

“It is a gap in the knowledge of our sea-ice environment that we need to fill, because our polar environments are changing rapidly,” said Reid continued.

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