Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY
P. 28
A28
SCIENCEFriday 12 January 2018
African elephant, hippo, rhino populations shrink in wartime
By SETH BORENSTEIN In this 2014 photo provided by Joshua Daskin, a hippopotamus charges into the waters of Lake the entire continent over
AP Science Writer Urema, in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. 65 years. The researchers
WASHINGTON (AP) — War looked at 10 different fac-
is hell for wildlife, too. A Associated Press tors that could change
new study finds that war- population numbers, in-
time is the biggest threat to Although some animals to eat, Pringle said. Con- 1983 and 1995 during two cluding war, drought, ani-
Africa’s elephants, rhinos, are killed in the crossfire or servation programs don’t civil wars. mal size, protected areas
hippos and other large ani- by land mines, war primari- have much money, power Other studies have looked and human population
mals. ly changes social and eco- or even the ability to pro- at individual war zones and density.
The researchers analyzed nomic conditions in a way tect animals during war- found animal populations The number of wars had
how decades of conflict in that make it tough on ani- time, Pringle said. that shrink and others that the biggest effect on pop-
Africa have affected pop- mals, said study co-author Most of the time, some grow. For example, the de- ulation while the intensity
ulations of large animals. Rob Pringle, an ecologist animals do survive wars. militarized zone between of the wars — measured in
More than 70 percent of at Princeton University. Researchers found ani- North and South Korea is human deaths — had the
Africa’s protected wildlife People in and near war mal populations com- great for wildlife because it least.
areas fell inside a war zone zones are poorer and hun- pletely wiped out only in has “acted almost as a de By looking at the big pic-
at some point since 1946, grier. So they poach more six instances — including facto park for almost seven ture, the research supports
many of them repeatedly, often for valuable tusks or a large group of giraffes in decades,” Daskin said. what many experts figured,
they found. The more often hunt protected animals a Ugandan park between The new study covered that “war is a major driver
the war, the steeper the of wildlife population de-
drop in the mammal pop- clines across Africa,” said
ulation, said Yale Univer- Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecolo-
sity ecologist Josh Daskin, gy researcher on war and
lead author of a study in wildlife at the University of
Wednesday’s journal Na- California, Berkeley. She
ture . was not part of the study.
“It takes very little conflict, Greg Carr, an American
as much as one conflict in philanthropist and head
about 20 years, for the av- of a nonprofit group work-
erage wildlife population ing in and around Mozam-
to be declining,” Daskin bique’s Gorongosa Na-
said. tional Park , said the find-
The areas with the most fre- ings are not surprising. The
quent battles — not neces- park’s wildlife populations
sarily the bloodiest — lose plunged during the coun-
35 percent of their mam- try’s civil war, but Carr at-
mal populations each year tributes it more to poverty
there’s fighting, he said. than war..q
Study: Warming puts millions more at risk from river floods
By FRANK JORDANS people around the world, patterns by region and journal Science Advances. said.Researchers said even
Associated Press according to a study pub- found that flood defenses The number of people af- in developed countries
BERLIN (AP) — Global lished Thursday. will need to be improved fected by the worst 10 per- with good infrastructure
warming will increase the Using computer simula- particularly in the United cent of river flooding will the need for adaptation
risk of river flooding over tions, researchers in Ger- States, parts of India and double from 76 million to is big. They also warned
the coming decades, en- many examined the im- Africa, Indonesia and Cen- 156 million in Asia alone by that the risk of rivers flood-
dangering millions more pact of changing rainfall tral Europe.River floods are 2040, said the authors at ing will rise regardless of
already one of the most the Potsdam Institute for current efforts to curb cli-
widespread and damag- Climate Impact Research. mate change because of
ing forms of natural disas- In North America the num- greenhouse gases already
ters worldwide. Additional ber of people at risk could emitted in past decades.
protective measures in- increase tenfold, from Still, a failure to keep global
clude enhancing dykes, 100,000 to a million. warming below 2 degrees
better river management, “The real numbers might Celsius (3.7 Fahrenheit)
improving building stan- be even higher in the future may result in changes to
dards and even moving as population growth and river flooding patterns that
settlements, according to further urbanization is not populations can’t adapt
the study published in the taken into account,” they to, the authors said.q
