Digest of Socio-Ecological Union International for January 12, 2025. №72

Dear friends and co-fighters!

Welcome to the next issue of Positive News.

Let you spread it among your friends and co-fighters in your countries and around the Earth.

We will be glad to receive and publish your positive news from the fields and offices.

Welcome to send us photos of your country's Nature Reserves.

Sviatoslav Zabelin, SEU coordinator

Digest of Socio-Ecological Union International for January 12, 2025. №72

Shaitan-Tau is a state nature reserve. It is located in the north of the Kuvandyksky district of the Orenburg region of Russia, on the territory of the ridge of the same name in the Southern Urals. The main purpose of the creation of the reserve is to preserve the oak forest steppe, the best preserved in the entire area of the Eastern European forest steppe from the Carpathian region to the Southern Urals. The flora of the Shaitan-Tau range is represented by two main floral complexes, forming a combination of Eastern European broad-leaved oak and linden forests and various variants of meadow grasslands and rocky steppes.

Baku Forest Declaration from Central Asia and Caucasus.  As the global community gathers for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29), we underscore the urgent need for effective climate action that prioritizes Indigenous peoples’ rights and forest protection. Despite the clear reliance on forests to mitigate climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has failed to halt deforestation or even adequately address it, treating forests merely as carbon sinks and carbon markets. Read more

The Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia has become the first tribal nation in the U.S. to adopt a tribal constitution that grants legal rights to a river, specifically protecting the Rappahannock River’s rights to exist, flourish, and maintain clean water. The constitutional provisions allow the tribe and individual tribal members to bring legal cases on behalf of the river itself, with a tribal court system planned for 2025 to enforce these rights.

Rappahannock Chief Anne Richardson speaks at Fones Cliffs by the Rappahannock River. Photo courtesy of USFWS, Public Domain.

This historic move comes from a tribe that has lived alongside and been sustained by the river for thousands of years, with Chief Anne Richardson describing the river as “the Mother of our Nation,” which has provided physical, cultural and spiritual nourishment to the tribe. The Rappahannock’s actions are part of a rights-of-nature movement that includes Ecuador’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights in 2008 and New Zealand’s granting of legal personhood to the Whanganui River in 2017. Read more

Norway has shelved plans to open a vast ocean area at the bottom of the Arctic for commercial-scale deep-sea mining. The decision, which was confirmed late Sunday, comes after the country's Socialist Left Party said it would not support the minority government's budget unless it dropped the first licensing round, initially scheduled for the first half of next year.

Environmental activists calling for an international moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said the move was a "postponement," while environmental campaigners hailed what they described as a "huge win". Read more

On Dec. 10, communities in Myanmar’s Kayin state launched the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park amid the country’s ongoing civil war. Some representatives call it a ‘peaceful resistance’ to the Myanmar state military. Inspired by the Salween Peace Park to its south, the new park is roughly the same size, spread across 318 villages, and includes 28 kaws (ancestral customary lands), four community forests, seven watersheds, six reserved forests and one wildlife sanctuary.

Many ethnic groups, including Karen subgroups, the Pa’O and Shan peoples, are involved in launching the park. Image courtesy of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park Committee.

The park’s charter is based on customary laws and includes guidelines to conserve the area like protected forests, rotational farming, and areas restricted for killing culturally important wildlife species. Communities, the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) and representatives from the Karen National Union (KNU) are working in coordination to govern and manage the park, including measures to strengthen peoples’ self-determination. Read more

The state of South Australia has banned fishing of several endangered or critically endangered sharks and rays in its waters. In a media release dated Dec. 11, the state government said the new rules prohibit both recreational and commercial fishing of critically endangered species such as the whitefin swellshark (Cephaloscyllium albipinnum), oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus), gray nurse shark (Carcharias taurus) and green sawfish (Pristis zijsron); as well as endangered ones like the greeneye spurdog (Squalus chloroculus), southern dogfish (Centrophorus uyato) and basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus). Additionally, fishing of all stingarees in the genus Urolophus and skates in the genera Dipturus and Dentiraja are banned.

Image of oceanic white tip shark with a rusty fish hook in its mouth, by Alexander Vasenin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Five of these species — the whitefin swellshark, greeneye spurdog, longnose skate (Dentiraja confusa), gray skate (Dipturus canutus) and coastal stingaree (Urolophus orarius) — are only found in Australian waters, according to the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) and Humane Society International (HSI) Australia. Read more

The Sombrero ground lizard is a critically endangered reptile, endemic to a tiny Caribbean island near Anguilla. In 2018, it was estimated that fewer than 100 individuals of the species were left in the wild – it was on the very brink of extinction. In 2018, following yet another severe hurricane, we feared it might be the end for the Sombrero ground lizard. Fewer than 100 were left and the island was in ruins.

The past three years have seen painstaking restoration activity, with hands-on efforts by both our international partners and local conservation heroes to remove the invasive pests and restore natural plant cover – not an easy feat on such a remote and rocky island like Sombrero. Read more

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected pleas from western states to remove the bears from the Endangered Species Act list, even though their numbers have risen since the mid-1970s.

A grizzly bear just outside Yellowstone National Park in Montana on Sept. 4, 2017. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will keep the grizzly bear as a threatened species through much of the western United States, teeing up a fight with the incoming Trump administration over the iconic animal’s status. Read more

With just two weeks remaining as president, Joe Biden invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling for the entire U.S. East Coast, West Coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico and sections of the North Bering Sea in Alaska. The move will ban fossil fuel extraction from nearly 2.5 million square kilometers (977,000 square miles) of federal water, an area larger than Texas and Alaska combined. The exempted regions are the most productive areas in the country for offshore oil and gas. The areas included in the ban are not central to U.S. oil production. There are currently no federal leases on the U.S. East Coast and there hasn’t been a federal sale off the California coast since 1984. Nonetheless, fossil fuel interests say the move could hamstring their ability to ensure a steady supply of domestic oil and gas. In a statement, American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said, “We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.” Read more

Criminal charges have been dropped against dozens of people who staged a protest against plastic pollution outside the headquarters of Unilever. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided not to proceed against 34 individuals days before their trial was due to start. Eight people had been facing charges of aggravated trespass and 26 protesters were charged with the new offence of “locking on”, which was introduced in the Public Order Act 2023. In a letter from the CPS, lawyers said charges were being dropped because there was “not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction”. The charges related to a protest outside Unilever’s headquarters in London last September when Greenpeace activists blockaded the entrances in protest over the company’s alleged failure to tackle plastic pollution. Read more

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