Eco Minute 13:30

BULLETIN 23 May 1:30 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Eco Minute:

# Prince William, in collaboration with United for Wildlife, has launched a new, groundbreaking documentary series titled Guardians. The six-part docuseries offers a rare insight into the dangerous work of wildlife rangers operating on the front lines of conservation worldwide. The series follows stories from rangers working in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the Central African Republic, the Indian Himalayas, Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, Sri Lanka, and the Caru indigenous land in Brazil. Around one-thousand-400 rangers have died in the past decade.

# Climate change is now the third-greatest threat to the planet’s wildlife, following overexploitation and habitat degradation. This is according to a new study, published in the journal BioScience, which analysed more than 70-thousand wild animal species. Nearly five-percent of the assessed species are threatened by climate change. The study found that marine invertebrates, such as molluscs, sea stars, corals and horseshoe crabs, are increasingly being impacted by climate change, partly because of global warming.

# And finally: The University of the Witwatersrand’s Climate Risk Modelling project has been awarded a grant by the Bezos Earth Fund’s AI Grand Challenge for Climate and Nature. The approximately 925-thousand-rand phase one grant is to help lead the ground-breaking project, aimed at transforming weather forecasting across Africa. The project was selected for its potential to address a major climate and development challenge in Africa, the lack of reliable weather data and forecasting infrastructure. This is particularly in rural and underserved areas dependent on rain-fed agriculture.

Stay tuned for more news………….