Many of the gravest threats to humanity are drawing closer, as carbon pollution heats the planet to ever more dangerous levels, scientists have warned.
Five important natural thresholds already risk being crossed, according to the Global Tipping Points report, and three more may be reached in the 2030s if the world heats 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/06/earth-on-verge-of-five-catastrophic-tipping-points-scientists-warn
When Fred Telekwa settled on his farm inside Nyakweri forest, in western Kenya, four years ago, his main worry was how to prevent elephants and buffaloes from destroying his crops. The nearby Maasai Mara game reserve housed a huge amount of roaming wildlife.
“Two or three elephants can clear an acre of cabbages in one night. I had no choice but to put up an electric fence to ward off the animals,” he says.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/05/once-thought-extinct-giant-ground-pangolins-helped-back-from-brink-kenya-aoe
At the foot of a towering fern, Pete Kirkman pushed his hand through a curtain of dead branches into a burrow. His fingers settled on a lump of feathers. Gently, he withdrew a fist-sized hatchling.
Baffled by the daylight, the chocolate-colored nocturnal bird shook its pencil-like beak from side to side. “You’re OK,” Mr. Kirkman, a conservationist, said soothingly, as he made the discovery last week. Then he heard a scratching from the burrow. He watched in delight as another hatchling charged out, searching for its sibling, and fell into his arms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/australia/kiwi-birds-wellington-new-zealand.html
