Assessment of anthropogenic-causing-agents act on waterbirds-diversity in the vicinity of Tarbela Dam, Indus River, Pakistan

Birds are among the best bio-indicators, which can guide us to recognize some of the main conservation concerns in ecosystems. Anthropogenic impacts such as deforestation, habitat degradation, modification of landscapes, and decreased quality of habitats are major threats to bird diversity. The present study was designed to detect anthropogenic causative agents that act on waterbird diversity in Tarbella Dam, Indus River, Pakistan. Waterbird censuses were carried out from March 2019 to February 2020 in multiple areas around the dam. A total of 2990 waterbirds representing 63 species were recorded. We detected the highest waterbird richness and diversity at Pehure whereas the highest density was recorded at Kabbal. Human activity impacts seemed to be the main factor determining the waterbird communities as waterbirds were negatively correlated with the greatest anthropogenic impacts. Waterbirds seem to respond rapidly to human disturbance.

Major threats and habitat use status of Demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo), in district Bannu, Pakistan

Cranes are the large and attractive Creatures of nature with long necks, legs, and life-span. Adults of both sexes are the same with similar color patterns. Demoiselle cranes spend most of their lifespan on dry grasses. They are also found around the stream, rivers, shallow lakes, natural wetlands, and depressions. To evaluate the current status of habitat use and major threats a study was conducted in tehsil Domel district Bannu. Line transect method and water quality tests (temperature, PH, contamination of E-coli bacteria) were used. To determine the major threats questionnaire method was used. The whole data was analyzed by using SPSS 21 version. Based on the distribution four study sites were selected and four water samples from each study site were taken. Most sites were moderate to highly degraded except Kashoo and kurram river mixing point which was low degraded with livestock grazing and human activities. Water quality tests showed PH ranges from 7-9, temperature 6.5-8.5, and contamination of E-coli in all samples. The social survey revealed that hunting, habitat degradation, and pollution as major threats. Effective long-term conservation and management in the study area are needed to focus on the protection of disturbance-free habitat.

Conservation-oriented restoration and its application to Central Asia

Continuing wide-scale habitat degradation and species extinctions indicate that existing plant conservation practices are inadequate and new approaches are needed. I briefly summarize the major principles of a previously proposed concept called conservation- oriented restoration and compare it with two other approaches to tackling ecosystems' degradation and biodiversity loss: traditional restoration and species-targeted conservation. I then present my perspective on how this concept can be applied in Central Asia as a possible solution to the regional biodiversity crisis.

Status, Distribution, and Threats of Striped Hyena (Hyaena hyaena Linnaeus, 1758) in Nepal: A Review

Striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is a member of the Hyaenidae family distributed globally from Africa to Central Tanzania, the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent including Nepal. Only a few documented studies have been carried out at a national as well as international level regarding their habit, habitat, threats, and conservation measures. Various open access works of literature including articles, reports, and books published from 1941 to 2021 were assessed through Google scholar and Research gate for this study. We searched, refined, and selected 42 pieces of literature for the study purpose. We found that striped hyenas were recorded from five national parks of lowland Terai regions and they were recorded in six districts lying outside the protected area in Central and Western Terai as well as the hilly region of Nepal. Habitat degradation, decreased prey population, retaliatory killing by poisoning, poaching and road kills are found to be the major threats to these endangered scavengers that require immediate conservation initiatives We believe that this manuscript can fulfill the knowledge gap on this species and suggests conservation initiatives, which could be a landmark for conducting further research and conservation of striped hyenas.

Life in This World and For the Life of the World: Natural Science and the Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (FLOW) is an admirable and important document, not least because it affirms natural scientific insights as valuable resources for Christian theology and social teaching. Given the current Ecumenical Patriarch's extensive engagement with environmental concerns, this affirmation is especially apposite. However, I do not believe FLOW fully recognizes the implications of such insights for its conception of God's creation or its social ethos. In particular, FLOW maintains that scarcity, competition, violence, and death are distortions of God's creation due to human sin and that human beings are commissioned and capacitated by God to strive to overcome them. By contrast, I contend that contemporary scientific understandings of planetary forces and ecological processes—and indeed Christian scripture—give Christians cause to consider scarcity, competition, violence, and death aspects of God's creation. I further claim that striving to overcome scarcity, competition, violence, and death would be environmentally disastrous and spiritually deleterious since it would domesticate the rapidly disappearing wilderness that biblical wisdom literature depicts as delighting and glorifying God. Happily, allowing natural scientific insights to inform Orthodox conceptions of God's creation in this way would render FLOW's injunction that human beings redress the environmental implications of their sin an imperative to reduce and remedy pollution and to minimize and restore anthropogenic habitat degradation and destruction, thereby fostering the ecological sustainability Orthodoxy champions and the respect for wilderness Christians have multiple reasons to commend. Although this abandons FLOW's aspiration that human beings wholly civilize God's creation, such respect for wilderness does not imply acquiescence to human deprivation and distress, for just as it is inappropriate to impose cultural values on all of nature, it is wrong to regard all natural dynamics culturally normative. Similarly, attributing scarcity, competition, violence, and death to God's creation rather than its sin need not undermine Christian hopes for freedom from these and all other maladies, for Christians await not only God's salvation from sin and its effects but God's new creation too. Thus, in addition to honing Orthodoxy's social ethos, heeding FLOW's embrace of natural scientific insights as constructive theological resources foregrounds a commonly neglected dimension of Christians' traditional depiction of the divine economy.

Vertebrate diversity at Margalla Hills National Park, Pakistan

The Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) in Islamabad, Pakistan, is an important site for the conservation of many plants and animals. The present study aimed to determine the status of fauna diversity and richness, and environmental threats to the animals. A field study was conducted and the point count method was used to determine vertebrate diversity. The survey showed that the MHNP is home to 117 species of birds, 27 reptiles (including species such as the saw–scaled viper, Russell’s viper and the Indian cobra) and 30 mammalian species, such as barking deer, wild boar, golden jackal, red fox, Asiatic leopards, monkeys, fruit bats, and pangolins. The results showed a maximum count of 9,076 birds of 117 species belonging to 48 families. According to the Islamabad wildlife management board, one of the unique species, the grey goral (Nemorhaedus goral), has become extinct at the MHNP as no single specimen has been recorded since 2018. It was also been observed, however, that the numbers of the endangered species of common leopard (Panthera pardus) and pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) have increased, possibly due to the wildlife management board’s strategy for conservation. Nevertheless, greater conservation and protection of wild fauna at the MHNP is still needed. During the visits, threats such as habitat degradation, climate change, and over hunting were recorded. Dataset published through GBIF (Doi: 10.15470/hf1s9i)

Factors Linking Declining Reef Health Ecosystem to Poverty in Lagonoy Gulf, Eastern Bicol, Philippines

This paper provided likely linkage between poverty and reef health status in Lagonoy Gulf. It showed that fishers are poor as reflected by their weekly income ranging from PhP 2,500.00 to <500.00 averaging PhP 1,214.00 which is way below the PhP 3,596 week-1 poverty threshold for Bicol Region. Population density in coastal municipalities is highest in Albay with 512 ind. km-2 and least in Catanduanes with 325 ind. km-2. Fishers are relatively ageing with mean age of 48 years and average fishing experience of 29 years. Majority only reached or finished primary level, and only 6% reached college. Five out of six do not own boat and gears, showing financial incapacity. Hook and lines were used by 66% of the fishers while, nets comprised 32%. Living coral cover declined from 1993 to 2018 by almost 25%. High dependence to coastal resources, high demand for seafood, destructive gears, lack of supplemental sources of income, low educational background, lack of skills, low income are identified contributory factors to habitat degradation. With the declining reef health and fish catch, fishers that are living below poverty threshold are more likely to become poorer because the reef’s capacity to provide goods and services is lost.

Quantifying functional consequences of habitat degradation on a Caribbean coral reef

Coral reefs are declining worldwide. The abundance of corals has decreased alongside a rise of filter feeders, turf, and algae in response to intensifying human pressures. This shift in prevalence of functional groups alters the biogeochemical processes in tropical water ecosystems, thereby influencing reef functioning. An urgent challenge is to understand the functional consequences of these shifts to develop suitable management strategies that aim at preserving the biological functions of reefs. Here, we quantify biogeochemical processes supporting key reef functions (i.e. net community calcification (NCC) and production (NCP) and nutrient recycling) in situ for five different benthic assemblages currently dominating shallow degraded Caribbean reef habitats. To this end, a transparent custom-made enclosure was placed over communities dominated by either one of five functional groups – coral, turf and macroalgae, bioeroding sponges, cyanobacterial mats, or sand – to determine chemical fluxes between these communities and the overlying water, during both day and night. To account for the simultaneous influence that distinct biogeochemical processes have on measured variables, the rates were then derived by solving a model consisting of differential equations describing the contribution of each process to the measured chemical fluxes. Inferred rates were low compared to those known for reef flats worldwide. Reduced accretion potential was recorded, with negative or very modest net community calcification rates for all communities. Net production during the day was also low, suggesting limited accumulation of biomass through photosynthesis and remineralisation of organic matter at night was relatively high in comparison, resulting in net heterotrophy over the survey period for most communities. Estimated recycling processes (i.e. nitrification and denitrification) were high but did not fully counterbalance nutrient release from aerobic mineralisation, rendering all substrates sources of nitrogen. Results suggest similar directions and magnitudes of key biogeochemical processes of distinct communities on this shallow Curaçaoan reef. We infer that the amount and type of organic matter released by abundant algal turfs and cyanobacterial mats on this reef likely enhances heterotroph activity and stimulates the proliferation of less diverse copiotrophic microbial populations, rendering the studied reef net heterotrophic and drawing the biogeochemical “behaviour” of distinct communities closer to each other.

Putting the “Beaver” Back in Beverley Brook: Rapid Shifts in Community Composition Following the Restoration of a Degraded Urban River

Widespread habitat degradation has caused dramatic declines in aquatic biodiversity. Reconfiguring channels and adding physical structures to rivers has become common practice in order to reinstate natural processes and restore biodiversity. However, the effectiveness of such measures is often questioned, especially in urban settings where overriding factors (e.g., water quality) might constrain biotic responses to increased habitat heterogeneity. We monitored invertebrate and fish communities before and up to five years after extensive restoration of Beverley Brook, a small, urban river flowing through a Royal Park in London, UK. Total invertebrate density was 5–148% higher with restoration across the monitoring period, and there was an increase in evenness but not invertebrate richness. Riverflies (Ephmemeroptera and Trichoptera) and crustaceans (Amphipoda, Asellidae) showed marked increases in density with restoration, suggesting improved flow, enhanced water quality, and greater quantity of basal resources. Fish biomass increased by 282% with restoration as did fish richness and the average body mass of three common fish species. Our results provide evidence for the effectiveness of common restoration methods in increasing standing stocks across trophic levels, from basal resources to apex predators. However, we primarily observed changes in the density of existing taxa rather than the development of novel assemblages, suggesting that large-scale factors, such as water quality and the lack of adequate source populations, might be important for understanding changes in biodiversity following river restoration.

Preference for Artificial Refugia over Natural Refugia in an Endangered Fish

The availability of appropriate refugia may ameliorate some impacts of habitat degradation and can aid in the conservation of target species. In addition to natural refugia, the provision of artificial refugia may be viable, particularly in degraded habitats. We examined the conservation potential of natural and artificial refugia for the endangered Eastern Cape redfin, Pseudobarbus afer. We show that deeper water is preferred so is likely to constitute a natural refuge. However, this preference is overridden by the provision of artificial refugia (a plastic pipe). We highlight that the most important habitat factor in the conservation of P. afer is availability of suitable natural refugia through avoidance of habitat destruction. However, when redfin habitat is already compromised, appropriate artificial refugia may supplement the protection provided by natural refugia and may provide benefits to the whole aquatic community.