A Day in the Clouds

The air is thin and we have to rest several times on the short hike from camp. To our left, snow-covered mountains disappear into clouds that seem almost close enough to touch. On the plain in front of us, we can just make out a herd of graceful animals.【小题1】

Tibetan antelopes live on the plains of Tibet Xinjiang and Qinghai. Watching them move slowly across the green gross, I'm struck by their beauty.【小题2】 They are being hunted, illegally, for their valuable fur.

My guide is Zhaxi, a villager from Changtang. He works at the Changtang National Nature Reserve.【小题3】 To Zhaxi, the land is sacred and protecting the wildlife is a way of life. “We’re not trying to save the animals,” he says. “Actually, we’re trying to save ourselves.”

The 1980s and 1990s were bad times for the Tibetan antelope.【小题4】 Hunters were shooting antelopes to make profits. Their habitats were becoming smaller as new roads and railways were built.

In order to save this species from extinction, the Chinese government placed it under national protection. Zhaxi and other volunteers watched over the antelopes day and night to keep them safe from attacks. Bridges and gates were added to let the antelopes move easily and keep them safe from cars and trains.

【小题5】The antelope population has recovered and in June 20l5, and the Tibetan antelope was removed from the endangered species list. The government however, does not intend to stop the protection programmes, since the threats to the Tibetan antelope have not yet disappeared.

In the evening, I drink a cup of tea and watch the stars. I think about the antelopes and what Zhaxi told me. Much is being done to protect wildlife, but if we really want to save the planet we must change our way of life. Only when we learn to exist in harmony with nature can we stop being a threat to wildlife and to our planet.

Yellow fever began to spread in Brazil in 2016. More than 2,000 people got sick, and 750 died. The disease is also severely threatening the golden lion tamarin, a little monkey, living in the rainforest of southeastern Brazil. The disease killed about one-third of its population, which was small even before the outbreak. So, scientists created a vaccine to protect the monkeys.

The vaccination campaign began last year. But vaccinating animals to protect their species from extinction is a new idea, which represents a change in thinking among supporters of wildlife conservation and has raised questions about how far humans should go to save wild animas. Historically, conservationists have believed that humans should not interfere directly with wildlife. A traditional saying in the world of conservation work is “Leave it as is.”

However, Tony Goldberg, a scientist and animal doctor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes in vaccinating wild animals when possible. “There are people who say we shouldn’t touch nature and that we shouldn’t alter anything. But really, there are no unspoiled natural habitats left.” he said. “People are realizing they have to do something.” he added. “This epidemic moved very quickly from north to south, across the country-no wildlife does that. It’s people. They cross vast distances in buses, trains, planes. They bring the disease with them. We realized that in five years, we could lose the entire population if we did nothing.”

The vaccine led to antibodies in the tested monkeys and caused no harm, the scientists found. So far, about 300 have been vaccinated and are reported to be doing well. Tests show that more than 90 percent of the monkeys have immunity or resistance to the virus since vaccination.

The outbreak of yellow fever is no longer a big problem for the monkeys, and their population is starting to come back. But even with the success of the vaccine program, scientists are still not sure about creating vaccines for other animals. Jacob Negrey, a biologist who studies monkeys, wondered about unpredictable effects of such wildlife treatment. He explained that you might create a treatment that helps one kind of animal but hurts another.

Whether you call them feral pigs, boar, swine, hogs, or even razorbacks, wild pigs are one of the most damaging invasive species on Earth, and they’re infamous for damaging agriculture and native wildlife.

A big reason they’re so harmful is that they uproot soil at vast scales, like tractors ploughing a field. Our new research, published recently, is the first to calculate the global extent of this and its effects on carbon emissions.

Our findings were horrible. We discovered the total area of soil uprooted by wild pigs is likely the same area as Switzerland. This releases 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year the same as one million cars. The majority of these emissions occur in Oceania. A huge portion of Earth’s carbon is stored in soil, so releasing even a small part of this into the atmosphere can have a huge impact on climate change.

It’s estimated that wild pigs destroy more than US$74 million worth of crops and grass each year in Australia, and more than US $270 million in just 12 states in the USA. Wild pigs have also been found to directly threaten 672 vertebrates (脊椎动物) and plant species across 54 different countries. This includes Australian ground frogs, tree frogs and multiple orchid species which are imperiled, as pigs destroy their habitats and hunt them for food.

Their geographic range is expected to expand in the coming decades, suggesting their threats to food security and biodiversity will likely worsen. But here, let’s focus on their contribution to global emissions.

One such study was conducted for three years in hardwood forests of Switzerland. The researchers found wild pigs caused soil carbon emissions to increase by around 23% per year. Similarly, a study in the Jigong Mountains National Nature Reserve in China found soil emissions increased by more than 70% per year in places disturbed by wild pigs.