Humans need homes as safe havens to protect themselves from bad weather and threats from other animals and creatures. Birds also need habitats for survival.

Yet, climate change has posed a great threat to their habitats. To solve such habitat problems, China has recently recognized 1,140 sites as important breeding, wintering grounds, and migratory stops, with most of them located in wetlands. Wetlands include coastal areas with a water depth of no more than 6 meters at low tide, but exclude rice-grown fields and expanses of water used for aquaculture (水产业) and artificial breeding. Referred to as the “kidneys of the Earth” and as “species gene pools”, wetlands conserve clean water, maintain biodiversity, help contain floods and prevent droughts, reported China Daily.

To protect China’s wetlands, a law was introduced in 2022 to restrict construction at important national wetlands and ban harmful activities including land reclamation (土地开垦), overgrazing (过度放牧) , overharvesting and the discharging of wastewater. Since these measures have gone into effect, more birds have been spotted wintering in the nation’s wetlands. In February, the forestry bureau in Hunan province reported 72 species of water birds that spent this past winter at Dongting Lake, a region that stretches across several cities. Mallards and Eurasian cranes are among the birds which stay at the lake. Black-faced spoonbills (黑面琵鹭 ) , a rare and endangered species, were also spotted at Dongting after an absence of five years. The number of spoonbills has increased from 300 in the 1980s to more than 5,000 presently, according to the National Forestry and Grassland.

One thing you do not expect an oil minister to do is to block the development of his own country’s oil fields. But that is exactly what Alberto Acosta did when he was appointed Ecuador’s Oil Minister.

For a relatively poor country whose main income is from oil exports, this idea seemed like madness. Ecuador is not rich by economic (经济) standards, but in terms of the diversity of plant and animal life, it is one of the richest places on Earth. For this, scientists studied trees in the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador’s undamaged rain forest, and they found over 650 different species (物种) of tree in just one acre — more than the total number in all of the US and Canada combined. Mr. Acosta said he would rather the oil companies did not destroy these natural riches. His idea is to leave the oil reserves beneath Yasuni Park untouched, in return for compensation of half their value, which will be done by the international society. The oil is worth more than $7 billion.

Ecuador is not the only country trying to get richer nations to pay for not exploiting (开发) their forests. Both Nigeria and Guatemala are hoping they will be able to make similar deals. A spokesperson for local environmental groups explained, “This is fantastic though the plan has met with problems, both from within Ecuador and from outside. If only people in developed countries appreciated that these forests absorb a lot of the CO₂ that their industries produce. I just wish they would take a longer-term view of this problem. Protecting biodiversity and preventing climate change means temporary loss, otherwise, we will all be losers — with consequences I’d rather not even think about.”

A little more than a year ago, Karen Jenner was at a nearby beach on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia when she started picking up escape hatches from lobster traps.

“It started as a fun thing, collecting one item,” Jenner tells. “In only a few beach visits, I had collected over 500 of the hatches, and they were becoming harder to find. So I started collecting a few other things and gradually got to where I am now, collecting almost anything that I can remove from the beach.”

In just over a year, Jenner has pulled home more than 2.4 tons of mostly plastic trash (垃圾). Jenner posts photos of everything she collects on her Nova Scotia Beach Garbage Awareness Facebook page to draw attention to the trash problem. “I think the most important part of what I do is taking photos and posting them to my Facebook page,” she says. “The visual (视觉的) statements that the photos give cannot be challenged, nor can the numbers. It is real data.”

Jenner typically goes on her trips alone. “I have a son with special needs and this is ‘own’ time for me, a time to relax and just enjoy the quiet of being on the beach,” she says. “Many people have asked to tag along but I do not host beach cleanups. Many people have commented that they have been noticing trash on the beach and have started picking it up. How cool that is!”

“It is often very discouraging because no matter how much you clean up, there will always be more to do. I joke that it is a fool’s job!” she says. “I have often thought that, that’s it, I am finished and that it is nothing more than a waste of my time. Yet a few days later, I am off again! I keep doing it because whatever I remove from the shoreline will not ever be a danger again for marine life (海洋生物). As far as making a difference to the problem of plastic in the ocean, it is not even a drop in the bucket.”