Thanks to Danny Hunter for pointing to two recent posts at CABI’s blog, one on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease to you and me), the other on bluetongue disease. BSE seems to be running its course and to be more or less under control, even though many mysteries still surround it. Bluetongue, however, is altogether more menacing, because it seems to have reached Britain at least partly as a result of climate change, which has allowed the midges that spread the virus to expand their range. This could be the start of something big. I don’t believe there is any resistance associated with different breeds of cattle, but I could be wrong.
Wild blueberries thrive in Canada
Climate change causes blueberry war.
Down on the levee
A riverine trifecta today, describing threats to the biodiversity — including agrobiodiversity — associated with major rivers around the world…
From Italy, news that students and teachers from the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo (founded in 2004 by Slow Food guru Carlo Petrini) — over 150 of them — Â will travel down the Po River watershed by bicycle and boat in September and October. They’ll be giving the river and its valley a source-to-delta checkup, they say, diagnosing their ills but also identifying their abiding strengths — ecological, cultural and, presumably, agricultural.
Further east, Hubert von Goisern, an Austrian musician, has done something similar — but in his own way — for the Danube. He’s spent the summer giving a series of concerts down the river for a WWF campaign to raise awareness of the damage that planned development projects will do to the habitat of the Danube sturgeon. Plans to straighten and deepen the course of the river to facilitate shipping are expected to affect a thousand-kilometer stretch, destroying a unique natural and cultural heritage.
And further east still, Nguyen Huu Chgiem, the son of a Mekong delta rice farmer, reflects on how climate change, deforestation and saltwater intrusion are affecting Vietnam’s “rice basket.” And what he can do about it now that he’s a professor of environment and natural resources management.
Disappearing languages, disappearing agrobiodiversity
There are about 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world. By 2100, there will half that, if we’re lucky. That’s according to Harrison and Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Oregon, who “traveled the world to interview the last speakers of critically endangered languages as part of the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project.” Here’s a telling quote from Harrison Anderson:
Most of what we know about species and ecosystems is not written down anywhere, it’s only in people’s heads.
Just compare the map of hotspots of language loss with those of centres of crop origin and diversity. When the last native speakers of those 3,500 doomed languages go in the next century or so, they’ll be taking with them irreplaceable knowledge of agricultural biodiversity. Knowledge which we’ll need to make the most of that agrobiodiversity, and indeed to conserve it in situ (should we wish to) ((Or, indeed, should we be able to, given what climate change is going to do. Anyway, thanks to Ola for pointing out the article.)).
Dragon’s blood set to dry up
Having been involved in the botanical exploration of the Indian Ocean island of Socotra back in the early 90s, and also — more recently — having done some ecological niche modeling, I was fascinated to see these interests coincide in a recent paper in Biological Conservation. Italian and Yemeni researchers ((The Italian and Yemeni governments, UNDP and IUCN (among others) are financing a Socotra Conservation and Development Programme. Nothing like that when I was there, of course.)) have modeled the distribution of the Socotran endemic Dracaena cinnabari, the Dragonblood Tree, to predict what might happen to it with climate change. It’s not good. This flagship species, whose resin has been the source of a dye and medicine since antiquity, is looking at a halving of its potential area of distribution, due to drier conditions, and only a couple of its current localities will fall within what will remain suitable. Fortunately, they are near a protected area, and the authors recommend that its boundaries be expanded to include them.