Dear friends and co-fighters!

Welcome to the next issue of Positive News.

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Sviatoslav Zabelin, SEU coordinator

Digest of Socio-Ecological Union International for March 8, 2022. №45

Yellowstone turned 150 years old March, 1, 2022, which is an incredible milestone. When Yellowstone became a national park, it was the first of its kind in the world.

The Limits to Growth+50: Global equity for a healthy planet. At the time of publication, March 2, 1972, The Limits to Growth was the first study to explore the possible impacts of the growing ecological footprint of population growth, human activities and its physical impacts on our finite planet from a systems perspective. 

The authors warned that if growth trends in population, industrialisation, resource use and pollution continued unabated, we would reach, and then overshoot the carrying capacity of the Earth at some point in the next one hundred years. Over the past half century, the findings of The Limits to Growth have proven remarkably accurate. The world population and economy have continued to grow at roughly the same rate as in the decades before 1970, and as a result, humanity now finds itself facing an unprecedented planetary emergency. The publication has played a critical role in shaping the narrative of sustainable development, alerting the world to the dangers of unlimited growth, environmental pollution and unchecked resource consumption. Read more

Wildlife-rich Panama has become the latest country to enshrine the rights of nature into law. Legislation passed this week gives nature the “right to exist, persist and regenerate,” and the “right to be restored after being affected directly or indirectly by any human activity.”

Image: A pygmy sloth. Credit: Sergiodelgado

Passing the law is one thing, enforcing it is another. In Ecuador, which recognises the rights of nature, controversial extraction projects have continued in ecologically sensitive areas. However, as Positive News reported recently, the law has successfully halted some projects. Panama joins a growing list of countries that have introduced rights of nature laws. Bolivia, Mexico and New Zealand are among them.  Read more

At the end of last year, neat slices appeared on the trees in the Yagorlyk State Reserve, Moldova. According to senior researcher biologist Nikolai Romanovich, beavers leave such traces on trees. It turned out to be nonsense for Transnistria.

There were no beavers in our region in modern history. To confirm the fact that the beavers really left the cuts on the trees, the reserve staff installed photo traps with which the beavers were recorded in the photo. According to the scientist, this type of animal is completely out of character for the territory of the former Moldova: there is no sufficient food supply, there are no rivers free of people with the presence of plants that they feed on. Read more

A South African court has blocked the continuation of a seismic survey for oil and gas off the country’s west coast. The judge agreed with fishing communities and civil society organizations that Australian geoscience company Searcher’s consultation process excluded fishing communities.

Fishers at Velddrif, South Africa. Image by South Africa Tourism via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The ruling is the latest successful challenge to a prospecting permit on the basis that it denied local communities their right to participate in environmental decisions. Read more

A program to restore forest cover in a watershed area that serves São Paulo and other urban centers has restored 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) since 2016. The Conservador da Mantiqueira program includes 425 municipalities in the Mantiqueira Mountains in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.

Image of Helias Alves Cardoso in the Conservador das Águas greenhouse in Extrema, in Minas Gerais state, by Sibélia Zanon.

The program was inspired by the smaller Conservador das Águas project in the municipality of Extrema, Minas Gerais state, which has planted more than 2 million native trees since it started in 2005, and pioneered the use of payment for ecosystem services (PES) in Brazil. The Mantiqueira Mountains watershed, part of the Atlantic Forest, is the source of the largest rivers supplying water to southeastern Brazil’s major cities. Read more

A community in rural Mexico has for the past 15 years led the conservation of the forest on its communally managed land, or ejido, in a region wracked by illegal logging. The Nueva Vaquería forestry program near Pico de Orizaba National Park has seen the community reforest nearly 500 hectares (more than 1,200 acres), in stark contrast to the deforestation unfolding inside the park and neighboring communities.

Jorge Zavaleta walks along the trails near the youngest section of forest, which the community replanted. Image by Óscar Martínez.

The ejido members are doing this with barely any government support, and have called on the authorities to do more to help, including cracking down on illegal logging in the region.“We try not to demolish the forest,” says a community member, “but I feel that the government does not see this; it does not help us to further conserve the forest, to give an example to our people.” Read more

In the state of Jalisco, northwest Mexico, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán is attempting to use the forest sustainably to create development opportunities for inhabitants.The state government and the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) are supporting projects that encourage forest conservation while providing income generating opportunities for the Indigenous Wixárika and O’dam communities.

Community members in the Bajío de los Amoles sawmill yard. Image courtesy of the Jalisco State Government.

The area is home to Jalisco’s largest forest reserves with some 680,000 hectares (1,680,300 acres) of temperate, dense and arid forest in the state’s ten northernmost municipalities. Read more

Today, we are proud to tell you that the Network for Animals team is on the ground helping feed and rescue animal victims of the horrendous war in Ukraine!
Pet owners have had to flee their homes, leaving their beloved animals behind to fend for themselves. Forced onto streets that are often literally in flames, the animals are vulnerable, starving and terrified - and all too often, wounded. We have heard that the poor creatures are even being used as target practice by snipers!

We are providing literally TONS of food to animals in the war zones. We are finding ways to channel food to countless abandoned animals who face death by bomb blasts, airstrikes and enemy fire. Two days ago, we managed to get roughly 1.3 tons (1,300 kilograms) of food to hungry tummies, as well as provide medical supplies. Yesterday, we delivered another two tons (2,000 kilograms) of food, and today we hope to do even better. Read more

More than a twenty luxury resorts and mansions illegally built in national parks in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex have been demolished or ordered to be demolished since October 2020. Officials say prosecutions for encroachment rarely succeed, due to legal ambiguities. created by legislation that allows people to remain on land they owned prior the declaration as a national park.

A riverside resort in Sai Yok National Park. Image by Qsimple via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Under the law, residents allowed to remain on park land cannot transfer land outside of their families, but one park official estimates that close to 20% of this land has, in fact, been sold. The owners of the newly demolished buildings include retired military generals and prominent businesspeople. Read more

A few weeks ago, a valuable replenishment took place in the Novosibirsk Zoo! Three female manulas (Otocolobus manul) produced 16 cubs at once.

A wild cat that lives in Central and Central Asia, manul has hardly changed since ancient times. It remains the same as it was 12 million years ago. This wild cat is one of the most ancient progenitors of modern representatives of the feline family. Each kitten is an important contribution to the preservation of the species. The manul population is declining, and they are in a status close to an endangered species. Read more