Biodiversity

Biodiversity – The Bavarian Herring – Bavaria

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The Mairenke, which is mostly 15 to 25 centimeters and in exceptional cases up to 35 centimeters long, only occurs in some Upper Bavarian lakes and their large inflows and outflows. Contrary to what its name suggests, Alburnus chalcoides is not a whitefish. It’s a carp fish. And it has one thing in common with the herring: it lives in large schools. This is one of the reasons why the Landesfischereiverband (LFV) has chosen the Mairenke as Bavarian Fish of the Year 2021. Because the herring is the German fish of the year 2021. Since herring in Bavaria only occurs on the plate or in the bread roll, Bavarian fishermen wanted their own fish of the year. “The Mairenke is, as it were, the Bavarian equivalent of the herring,” says LFV President Albert Göttle. In addition, the Mairenke occurs in Germany only in Bavaria. From Göttle’s point of view she is therefore “the perfect representative for the diverse underwater world of our homeland”.

Mairenken have a slim, elongated body. Her scaly dress is silver on the flanks and greenish above. This is why the Mairenke is also called a green compact. Other names are Seelaube or Schiedling. The distribution area of ​​the Mairenken ranges from the Alps to the Caspian Sea. In Bavaria there are Mairenken who can live up to ten years, especially in the Chiemsee, Simssee and Starnberger See lakes. Until the Second World War, they were also available in Schliersee, for example.

Mairenken prefer to stay in the pebbly shore regions of the lakes. When the water gets warmer there in summer, they withdraw to deeper zones. Spawning time is in May, from which the species takes its name. To spawn, the fish move to the very shallow bank areas of lakes or tributaries. A female lays between 15,000 and 30,000 eggs and sticks them to the gravel bottom of the water. The larvae hatch after two or three days. After just under two weeks, the young fish follow the adult animals into the deeper zones of the lakes or tributaries.

The Mairenke was once an appreciated food fish. But like all carp fish, it has many bones. That’s why it’s not so popular anymore. For perch, pike and other predatory fish, however, mayenkers, which feed on plankton and mosquito larvae, are an important prey. Cormorants, goosanders and other fish-eating birds also like to hunt them. For years, however, the stocks have been decreasing. The species was already classified as endangered in the Red List of 2003.

But the main reason is not their many enemies. But the innumerable human interventions in the waters. Weirs and bank structures – especially on the lakes – decimate the habitats of the Mairenken. In addition, they are troubled by the many inputs of nutrients and sediments into the lakes and rivers. This silts up their gravel soils, spawning grounds and habitats for the larvae are lost. The Mairenke is protected under European nature conservation law. “Bavaria has a special responsibility for the species,” says Fischer President Göttle.

To promote the Mairenke, Göttle and the fishermen are calling for the renaturation of lake shores. The most important thing is to restore spawning grounds with shallow water and gravel bottoms, they say. In addition, the traditional walking corridors between the deep zones of the lakes and their inflows and outflows would have to be made open again. The LFV cites the removal of weirs or the construction of hiking aids as examples. The entry of sediments and nutrients into the waters must also be reduced if the species is to have a chance. In order for them to have it, the fishermen tackle it themselves. In 2019, they started a resettlement attempt at Schliersee – with spawning Mairenken from Simssee.

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The One Planet Summit relaunches the Great Green Wall

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Nearly 12 billion euros should be mobilized over 5 years to finally materialize the pharaonic project of the Great Green Wall. Traditional donors and several private actors have pledged to invest to restore 100 million hectares from Senegal to Djibouti. A weapon to counter the disastrous advance of the desert and to create jobs. This time, can we believe it?

Guests :

– Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

– Abakar Mahamat Zougoulou, Scientific and Technical Director of the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall

– Remi Hemerick, Managing Director of SOS Sahel who manages the Great Green Wall Actors Platform

– Karim Ait Talb, Deputy CEO of the Advens-Geocoton Group, co-founder of I’A M Africa, a fund dedicated to financing agroecology in Africa.

– Report in Senegal on the “Tolou Keur” project to restore land in Senegal in the village of Belvédère 40 km from Dakar.

Zoom on : the verdict of the “Affaire du siècle”, the French state soon condemned for climate inaction? With Marie Toussaint, founder of the “Affaire du siècle” and MEP EELV.

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Protecting Biodiversity: An Alliance for Biodiversity

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Germany will join a new global nature conservation coalition at a video summit on Monday. Critics say that their goals are not enough.

Sandstorm in the Sahel zone in Mali: desertification endangers biological diversity Foto: imago stock&peoble

BERLIN taz | Conservationists hope that it will be the start of a good year for biodiversity: On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel will speak at the international “One Planet Summit” about the connection between the global pandemic risk and the loss of biodiversity.

She will probably also announce Germany’s accession to the so-called High Ambition Coalition (HAC) via video link. A spokesman for the Federal Environment Ministry announced that this had been prepared in advance at the request of the Federal Chancellor’s Office. “There is agreement in the ministerial group that Germany will join the coalition,” he said.

This newly created “Alliance of the Willing” is a group of around 40 countries that are campaigning for an ambitious agreement at the corona-related postponed summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Under the leadership of France and Costa Rica, the coalition wants to enforce the protection of 30 percent of the planet. The EU, which is also a member of the HAC group, is already promoting such a project as part of its biodiversity strategy.

Initially, “no direct additional financial commitments would be made,” declared the Ministry of the Environment. Joining the HAC alliance after Germany’s signing of the “Leader’s Pledge for Nature” at the end of September was, however, a logical step towards the protection of biological diversity, the climate and pandemic preparedness. Environmentalists and nature conservationists see it that way too. “It is a conference with a signal effect,” said Eberhard Brandes, Managing Director of WWF Germany. “An intact nature is the key to human health. It is very welcome that this knowledge has now also reached the highest political level. ”However, the commitments should also be reflected in more financial support for nature conservation and specific legislation.

First focus on biodiversity

The One Planet Summit, which served as the starting shot for the HAC Group, was initiated in 2017 – largely by French President Emmanuel Macron in connection with the then UN climate conference in Bonn. Now, again at the invitation of France, the summit is taking place for the first time with a focus on biodiversity. In addition to heads of state and government, leading representatives from international organizations such as the World Bank, the business sector and NGOs take part.

The One Planet Summit website says that the corona crisis has shown in a dramatic way how important nature is for daily life and business. The damage to ecosystems is unprecedented and will have increasingly severe effects. “Reversing this trend is a major challenge for the next decade: We have to rethink our entire relationship with nature.”

No goal achieved

In addition to the protection of terrestrial and – under the leadership of Great Britain – marine ecosystems, the promotion of agroecology, in particular the implementation of the so-called African Green Wall in the Sahel to protect against advancing desertification, is on the agenda. Added to this are the topics of pandemic prevention – possibly a boost for nature and species protection – and the tiresome problem of financing new projects through public and private investments.

The global biodiversity crisis is considered by experts to be just as threatening as the climate crisis – especially since both are mutually reinforcing. In 2019 the World Biodiversity Council (IPBES) published a high-profile report that warned, among other things, of the threat to a million species. In 2020 the United Nations reported in its “Global Biodiversity Outlook” that not a single one of the 20 goals of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity for the period from 2011 to 2020 had been met. The deliberations of the more than 190 member states for a follow-up agreement by 2030 are currently making slow progress. According to current plans, the decisive summit is to take place in the autumn in Kunming, southern China.

The goal of the UN, supported by the HAC group, of binding protection of 30 percent of the entire land and sea surface of the earth is welcomed by many experts and nature conservationists. So far it is around 15 percent of the land and 7 percent of the sea. However, there is also criticism: some consider the goal to be too ambitious. Others, on the other hand, reject it because they believe that it is primarily at the expense of the indigenous population in the Global South. Environmental and human rights organizations such as the NGO Survival International warned in an open letter in September 2020 that 300 million people could be expelled from their homes in the name of international nature conservation. In addition, it has not yet been defined what exactly should be considered a protected area.

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The One Planet Summit ends with promises and little progress for biodiversity

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End of the 4th edition of the One Planet Summit, this great annual summit meeting, launched in 2017 by President Macron and United Nations Secretary Antonio Guterres. This year, the theme was biodiversity, a step in the objective of the future biodiversity COP. Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, Prime Ministers, representatives of central banks and international institutions have apparently reached a consensus.

A conference full of promises and good intentions. So many announcements and an ambitious record that the President of the Republic has summarized in four points.

First, the protection of biodiversity: 50 states are committed to the coalition for the high ambition of nature, to protect 30% of ecosystems by 2030.

Then, the protection of the Mediterranean, which implies putting an end to overfishing, greening maritime transport, and developing protected areas.

Third, the promotion of agroecology, with 14 billion euros in international public and private funding for “ great green wall “, By 2025.

And finally, the protection of forests, notably with Prezode, an international cooperation program between researchers and health professionals to prevent future pandemics and zoonoses.

One thus spoke a lot about money, and besides, for the NGO Attac, one evoked especially the market value of nature, without questioning the economic causes of its degradation.

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Covid-19: an epidemic revealing an ecological and societal crisis

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Tribune. The year 2020 will have been marked by the first epidemic translation of the planetary ecological crisis. If we are not careful, other epidemics will follow because the same causes will produce the same effects. We know the impetus, namely the extremely rapid transmission of a coronavirus, a virus that has crossed the species barrier and whose emergence is linked, in particular, to human influence over natural spaces, to the loss of biodiversity and wildlife trade. The wildlife trade has increased fivefold over the past fifteen years, despite the warning from the 2002-2003 Sars epidemic in Asia.

Throughout the past twelve months, the Covid-19 has acted (and continues to act) like a huge black hole absorbing all the informational material to leave room in France only for the daily count of the number of deaths, places available in intensive care, hydroxychloroquine or vaccine. No more Hezbollah, conflicts in Yemen, Syria or Libya, refugee camps, migrants on their frail boats, global warming, Iranian nuclear power, pension reform, but a planetary reality engulfed in the gravitational field of the Covid-19. Until saturating our mental and spiritual universe. No more sport, no more culture, no more bistros, no more restaurants. Nothing else. That the confusion and the fear, the excitement and the shift in a terribly anxiety-provoking and indeterminate reality until the arrival of a vaccine.

No space for reflection and critical distance

As if the event we are experiencing had escaped our radar and our familiar reading grids, while bringing us closer to the planetary catastrophe so dear to “collapsologists”. Who could have imagined, at the start of 2020, the planetary runaway of which we were going to be the main dazed protagonists? Who could have guessed that entire territories would be confined, cities deserted, activities of all kinds interrupted, elections postponed, political and health officials, sick or confused, improvising, day after day, responses that are too often incoherent or inappropriate?

Read also “The coronavirus crisis is an ecological crisis”

Something seems to have gone wrong, there, suddenly, in this beautiful mechanism of globalized flows, free trade treaties and the international division of labor, mass tourism and travel. low cost. At the heart of an era already marked by so many localized upheavals, repeated crises, and other climatic, stock market, technological, media or political booms …

But with this first planetary ecological crisis, it is as if the runaway had shaken our little blue planet on a scale and with an intensity never seen before. From the runaway of continuous news channels to that of immune defenses (cytokine storm); from the proliferation of articles published in scientific journals around the Covid (up to 292 per day!) to the surge in public and private debt; the runaway political decision concerning the marketing of drugs (such as remdisivir, paid at a high price to the Gilead laboratory, and which will prove ineffective) or vaccines (such as Pfizer / BioNTech, first arrived on the market market) to the agitation of social networks around hydroxychloroquine or Raoult, everything seems to converge and accelerate to leave no space for reflection and critical distance.

Pauperization of our public health system

We have known since Paul Virilio or Hartmut Rosa (1) that our world is accelerating, from crisis to crisis, from rupture to rupture, from degradation to degradation. But with Covid-19, we have entered the era of global and planetary systemic phenomena, the immediacy and immediacy of real time, on a world scale, plunging us into a generalized state of emergency: emergency health, safety, economic, social and climatic. All it took was a virus for our planetary megamachine to jam, for growth to collapse, for stock market prices to panic, for poverty and precariousness to explode, for geopolitical balances to be profoundly altered and that we were discovering, what we didn’t want to know, the vulnerability of our world-system, and the fragility of our Western societies.

Read also Hartmut Rosa: “We are not living the utopia of deceleration”

What provisional lessons can we draw from this observation? First, there cannot be lasting solutions without calling into question the ideology of the “Zero stock and just-in-time”, of time management and piloting by the indicators which have largely fueled the life of our institutions (private or public) since the 1980s. With the health result, the impoverishment of our public health system, which has been defective in the face of the repeated attacks of the pandemic in its preventive and curative aspects.

«One Health»

However, in France, we continue to eliminate beds, while the health crisis has shown the importance of well-endowed staff and services! The second message is ecological and should make us reconsider our place among the living. Because we have to admit it, our system has never ceased to degrade living conditions on Earth, without regard for man as for animal, mineral or plant.

Care must become the object of a general policy and the principle of all future action. The approach «One Health», which considers human, animal and environmental health together is a step in the right direction. We cannot ignore our dependence on the Earth and the geophysical conditions of all existence. The lesson is valid for today and for tomorrow. If we were to forget it, once again, in too much of a hurry to close the Covid-19 parenthesis, then the pandemics of the future, associated with the loss of biodiversity and global warming, could be much more dramatic with an even greater impact. on our human societies.

(1) Speed ​​and Politics And of Paul Virilio Acceleration d’Hartmut Rosa.

Alain Coulombel is the author of Chronicle of a planetary runaway, to be published mid-January, at Libre & Solidaire. Eric Caumes is the author ofHealth emergency, Robert Laffont, 2020.

Alain Coulombel national spokesperson for EE-LV


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Eric Caumes professor of infectious and tropical diseases

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Botanists discover rare flowering plant in Hawaii

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More than 1400 plant species are known from the Hawaiian Islands, around 90 percent only grow there. Now the collection is one species richer, and it is also one of the rarest plants on earth: Just a single specimen of Cyanea heluensis discovered Hank Oppenheimer and Jennifer Higashino despite an intensive search in the gorges of Mauna Kahalawa on Maui. The first description of the plant appeared in »Phytokeys«, which was found in 2010, but has only now been scientifically recorded.

The two biologists had stimulated the plant to grow stronger with a special paste in order to then pull a new individual in the botanical garden via an offshoot. This failed, but they could also get a seed of Cyanea heluensis collect, from which another plant eventually grew. It belongs to the species-rich group of the lobelia family, which has produced around 80 different species on the Hawaiian Islands. They all go back to a common ancestor who arrived on the island chain eight to ten million years ago.

Cyanea heluensis clearly differs from its relatives by the shape of the leaves and their white flowers. Oppenheimer became aware of them when he searched the slopes of the study area with binoculars. The plant grows in a very shady place in a remote canyon of the volcano on Maui. The species is likely pollinated by birds, which eat its orange colored berries and thereby spread their seeds.

Many of the original bird species on the island chain, however, have been exterminated in the last few centuries or their populations have decreased extremely. It is therefore possible that the pollinator of the newly discovered plant is missing. In addition, introduced snails and rats eat fruit, seeds and leaves, which further threatens the species. There are also natural risks such as landslides in the steep terrain. Oppenheimer and Higashino therefore classify them directly as endangered species.

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Silence we play! “Alba”, “Carto”, “Super Meat Boy” and our expectations for 2021

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Silence we play! this is the weekly video game show from Release. With Erwan Cario and its chroniclers, Patrick Hellio, Corentin Benoit-Gonin and Marius Chapuis.

This week, we start by defending biodiversity in the new production by studio Ustwo, more aimed at children, Alba : a Wildlife Adventure. We continue with the clever and very elegant puzzle game Carto, where we have to arrange a map to progress in the adventure, before continuing with the return of Super Meat Boy in a two button format that is far from appealing to everyone. We end this first show of 2021 with a little review of what awaits us in terms of games during the year to come.

Jérémie Kletzkine, in his board games column, tells us about Guitar.

Silence we play! still has its own YouTube channel. To find all the shows, it’s here.

To subscribe:

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To comment on this program, give your opinion, your opinion, participate in the official forum of Silence we play!

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Plant diversity has declined significantly in the last 60 years (neue-deutschland.de)

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The biodiversity is threatened.

The biodiversity is threatened.

Photo: dpa / Paul Zinken

Lepy. Plant diversity in Germany has noticeably decreased over the past few decades. This is the result of a major study presented on Wednesday by the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and other research institutes and nature conservation authorities. The mean biodiversity per grid field has therefore decreased by an average of two percent per decade since the 1960s.

According to the experts involved, the project was the most comprehensive analysis of plant data in Germany to date. They divided the country into grid areas measuring around five by five kilometers and examined how plant diversity developed over the course of 60 years. Accordingly, declines were recorded in more than 70 percent of the 2000 species examined.

The extent of the decline in the affected species averaged 15 percent. The so-called archaeophytes were particularly affected. This is the technical term for plants that were brought into the country by humans before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America in 1492. This includes large parts of the typical »field accompanying flora« such as seed and usury flowers and real women mirror.

The authors of the study warned of negative effects of development on biodiversity and ecosystems. Such losses could have “very serious effects” due to the often complex relationships. You referred to insects, for example. “The results really surprised us in their clarity. They paint a very gloomy picture, ”explained lead author David Eichenberg from the Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research. AFP / nd

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Brazilian soy soon to be shunned by European buyers?

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In Europe, supermarkets and industry are stepping up initiatives to keep Brazilian soybeans from deforestation out of their supply. The latest: the ultimatum to the trading giants to stop selling them soybeans grown on cleared land in Cerrado, Brazil’s water tower.

Cerrado has become the new frontier for Brazilian soybeans since a moratorium temporarily halted deforestation in the Amazon. Savannah region where most of Brazil’s rivers originate, the Cerrado has seen half of its natural vegetation burned in ten years. Today it supplies 60% of Brazil’s soybeans, but land clearing continues. It is therefore the new field of mobilization of environmentalists and scientists.

From Cargill to Louis Dreyfus, the traders in the hot seat

In 2017, 60 companies decided to join their “manifesto for Cerrado”. Now there are 160. From McDonald’s to Unilever via Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Barry Callebaut or L’Oréal, but also Auchan, Carrefour, Lidl, Cooperl, Sodexo… These brands have been sent by mail to their suppliers, the ADM traders, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Cofco and Glencore-Viterra, so that they stop sourcing from next year soybeans grown on new land cleared of Cerrado. Otherwise they will stop their purchases.

Norwegian salmon farmer gives up Brazilian soybeans

Some European buyers have already taken the plunge: Nestlé has stopped sourcing Brazilian soy from Cargill, the Norwegian salmon giant Grieg Seafood, has excluded the American supplier from its new aquaculture investments financed by its green bonds. Finally, last week, Bremnes Seashore, another major Norwegian player in salmon farming, announced that it would no longer feed Brazilian soybeans to its fish, but rather European grains.

Massive exports to China

The pressure is increasing on intermediaries but for the moment this does not prevent Brazil from exporting record quantities of soybeans (more than 82 million tonnes in 2020), thanks to Chinese demand.

► Read also: Brazil wants to profit in the long term from the woes of American soybeans in China

Insatiable in recent months, it has emptied Brazilian stocks, to the point that Brazil, despite being the world’s largest producer with 127 million tonnes in 2020, had to import a million tonnes this year, a record, for its own consumption.

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The fabulous animals of Anne Sylvestre

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Tribute to the French singer, who died at the beginning of the week, through her Fabulettes which featured many animals. Feminist, Anne Sylvestre was also an environmentalist.

At the time, in those very Giscardian 1970s, you had to choose. As we were Rolling Stones or Beatles, we were Anne Sylvestre or Chantal Goya. The purists of French song, even aged 4, had chosen the author of Fabulettes, these children’s songs that their parents also listened to, with exceptional lyrics and musical arrangements.

Many of them feature animals, pretexts for word games. There is the hedgehog: ” Hedgehog, sound, sound / Hedgehog rings vespers / Hedgehog therefore / Hedgehog up and down“. Or the turtle: ” Turtle, why are you silent? / Turtle, you are stubborn ». « It’s awesome !, remembers Sylvain Richardot of the group Chanson plus bifluorée, author of the children’s album There are animals in my songs . Make the words and consonants of the names of animals sound, it appeals to children, the fact that we laugh with animals. »

A musical, lexical and ecological education

With the cuckoo clock, Anne Sylvestre goes even further: she calls it ” famous thug Because he “wallows” in the nests of others. And if she laughs at pigeons (” I don’t like big pigeons / Who poop on my head / I don’t like big pigeons / Their dirty legs, their round eyes “), It is because she” love the little sparrows / They are the pretty birds of the cities / I love the little Pierrots / Which have brown on the back »

Birds have a special place in the fabulettes not stupidby Anne Sylvestre. The birds «Migrants / Frequent travelers / They always know when it’s time / To go to find the heat / A compass in the heart ». The Fabulettesby Anne Sylvestre are a musical, lexical and ecological education. We play with words, we play with animals, and we learn from them and about them, as in Little bird fallen from the nest: « No one will touch you / Because if we did that / Your mother wouldn’t want you anymore / And you would be lost“. Lessons of nature and life, linked to a true conviction. “Anne was an environmental activist, recalls Sylvain Richardot.With this feeling of respect for nature, the seasons … »

“The dream share of animals”

But why do animals occupy such a place inFabulettes, as in many other children’s songs and nursery rhymes, books and films? They are for the little ones a first representation of the world, a world which keeps its share of dreams. “Animals are very close to children, Sylvain Richardot analysis.Animals do not speak, have instinct, like children. Animals represent that part of dreams and that part of instinct, that part of nature that children often lose when they grow older.On the other hand, they do not lose the memory ofFabulettes.

“Another French personality died this week, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Did he like nature, too? “

The election of VGE, in 1974, coincided with the first ecological candidacy for a presidential election in France, that of René Dumont. The time isflower power. And its seven-year term was marked by the creation of the Conservatoire du Littoral and the first major law on the protection of nature.

Yes, but there you go, VGE also loved hunting. Kill animals. In particular in the Central African Republic, the country of his friend Jean-Bedel Bokassa. Giscard had his habits, when he was still only Minister of Finance. Every year. All fees paid. With a reserved hunting ground of 2000 square kilometers. According to JBB, VGE and his retinue have killed 150 to 200 elephants. Until the fall of the emperor, driven out by Giscard himself.

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