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Global biodiversity report shows “catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations
A shocking new report on global biodiversity is detailing what it calls “a catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations ahead of a major international conference on biodiversity.
On Monday, Oct. 21, the United Nations will convene a two-week conference in Cali, Colombia called COP16. On the agenda are climate change and the protection of life. But hanging over this meeting is a new report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). The 2024 Living Planet Report details “a catastrophic 73% decline in the average wildlife populations over just 50 years.”
The concern is centered at points around the world – from the grassy fields in the Serengeti to the urban jungles of the San Francisco Bay Area. Creatures big and small are under threat.
“That means in just my lifetime, 50 years, we’ve seen a decline of 73% in the average size of these wildlife populations,” noted Dr. Robin Freeman, global biodiversity expert with the Zoological Society of London.
Among the biggest threats are humans and a warming planet. Both are leading to an accelerating change that will make it impossible for species to successfully adapt.
“Species are very often exquisitely tuned to local environments that have taken thousands to millions of years through co-evolution to kind of establish and create the selection across their genome as to what features are going to survive,” noted Stanford biology professor Dr. Elizabeth Hadly. “When we are changing things so rapidly, we unravel those connections, extinction happens in a heartbeat.”
Humans are encroaching into the critical habitats of multiple species and putting many ecosystems at risk, thereby threatening the planet’s biodiversity. The impacts are affecting the elephants in tropical forests, the hawksbill sea turtles off the Great Barrier Reef, and even the migrating birds that pass through the Bay Area.
“Most of our native birds need a lot of biodiversity in the plants and the insects in order to survive,” explained Dr. Katie LaBarbera, senior biologist and science director for the Land Bird Program at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, who noted how around the world, some bird populations are in decline.
In addition to birds, some fish are in trouble. According to the WWF report, in California, the number of winter-run Chinook salmon dropped 88% since 1970. The Shasta Dam blocked off access to their historical spawning ground, while climate change threatens the Sacramento River – an important migration route.
Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and tribal members are working with Maori people of New Zealand and federal fish biologists to return Chinook salmon to the McCloud River and to find passage for them.
In the 19th century, millions of salmon eggs from the McCloud River were exported to 30 states and 14 different countries to create new salmon runs. New Zealand was the only location where the new run thrived, and in 2005, the Māori invited the Winnemem Wintu to bring wild salmon eggs back home to the McCloud.
“The water system here in California really are dependent on how we take care of the salmon,” said Sisk. “If the salmon survive, people will survive. If we want to drain the rivers and rename them as warm water rivers people will also suffer.”
These Bay Area experts say protecting the planet’s wildlife is an urgent wake-up call that no one should ignore.
“Biodiversity can never be recreated,” said Hadly. “It is what we rely on for our food, for our medicine, for our housing. It is so critically important for our humanity.”
“The bits of nature that we have around us are really precious and we’re not going to save them if we don’t first really appreciate them,” added LaBarbera.
“I wish that we could educate everyone about our salmon,” said Sisk. “They’re not just a food to eat. They dig down into the gravel and they let all the silt go out to the sea and they let that river breathe into the groundwater systems.”
The hope with this upcoming conference is that nations will agree to new standards on how to restore nature and halt the decline.
CBS News
Israel’s proxy war with Iran leaves young children in Gaza and Lebanon burned from head to toe
Beirut and Gaza — Displaced Palestinians in a tent camp outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza woke up in the early morning hours Tuesday to a blazing inferno after an Israeli airstrike. The flames spreading quickly from tent to tent. Civilians who’d sought shelter in the camp said there was only one fire extinguisher to try to quash the blaze.
Residents and rescue workers scrambled to rescue people from the flames, but they could not save Shaaban Al-Dalou, who was burned alive.
His father Ahmed Al-Dalou also suffered agonizing burns, but it’s guilt that was eating him alive when CBS News met him on Wednesday, several days after the strike.
Al-Dalou said that as flames tore through the camp, he found himself faced with an impossible choice.
“I woke up to go to the toilet and when I came back to bed, the sound of warplanes was loud,” he said.
He raced to find his family, but “I didn’t know who I should try to save.”
“I saw Shaaban sitting up and, although he was on fire, I thought he could get up and run, so I rushed to rescue my youngest children… I thought everyone was safe.”
CBS News
Al-Dalou managed to pull his younger son Abdul Rahman and his sister Rahaf to safety, but both Shaaban, who would have turned 20 on Wednesday, and his mother were killed in the fire.
“Today is Shaaban’s birthday,” the grieving father told CBS News. “He is celebrating his birthday with his mother in heaven.”
Al-Dalou’s other children were being treated for severe burns in a Gaza hospital ill equipped to handle the overwhelming casualty count.
Every day, more burn victims, young and old, come through the doors of hospitals across the Palestinian territory.
Layaan Hamadeen, 13, was among them. She was trying to get food for her family when she was severely injured in another recent Israeli strike. From her hospital bed, she told CBS News that she just wants to be a teenage girl again.
CBS News
“I want the war to end,” she said. “I want to wear beautiful clothes and have beautiful hair again… and I long for healthy food like apples and mangos.”
On Israel’s second front, in its war with Hamas’ allies Hezbollah in Lebanon, the death toll is also rising. Israeli jets continue to pound southern Lebanon and, despite the U.S. voicing concern over the bombing campaign in the capital city of Beirut, there was a fresh series of strikes around the capital Wednesday.
Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran, has vowed to strike deeper inside Israel after a year of rocket and drone attacks aimed at the country. Israel says Hezbollah has launched well over 10,000 weapons since Oct. 8, 2023. While most are intercepted, a drone did get past Israel’s air defenses about four days ago to hit a military base in the center of the country, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens of other people.
The Israeli military has vowed to keep striking Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, and it says it only targets the group’s weapons and fighters, but the Lebanese health ministry says the strikes have killed more than 2,300 people over the last month or so, wounded some 11,000 more, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
CBS News visited the only Lebanese hospital with a full burn unit this week, and found it had tripled its usual number of beds to cope with the number the casualties coming in.
Like many youngsters, 11-year-old Hamoodi seemed unable to tear his eyes away from his phone. It was helping take his mind off the burn wounds covering one side of his body.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
The phone is also his only connection to his mother, who was being treated in another hospital. They were both injured in an Israeli airstrike. As he sat there scrolling, Hamoodi still didn’t know that his father and brother were killed in the attack.
His aunt Jamal Ibrahim said he was asking for them, but she was worried the news could be too much for the boy to bear.
The war’s youngest victims are particularly difficult for Nurse Ali Humaida.
“It’s terrible to see children in pain,” he said, “especially when there isn’t much we can do.”
Already, tiny Yvana, just 21months old, has learned to dread the men and women in blue scrubs.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
She’s wrapped in bandages that cover severe burns, from head to toe. The slightest touch is excruciating, but the bandages must be changed regularly.
Her mother Fatima Zayoun told CBS News their house was hit by a rocket more than three weeks ago.
“I saw my daughter on fire,” she said.
The mother has been inconsolable since that day.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
“I don’t care about anything,” she said. “I just want her to get better.”
CBS News Marwan al-Ghoul contributed to this report.
CBS News
Charges dropped against Tyron McAlpin, deaf Black man with cerebral palsy whose Phoenix arrest video prompted outrage
The top prosecutor in Arizona’s Maricopa County announced Thursday that charges against Tyron McAlpin — a Black man who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, and who was seen on video being violently arrested — are being dropped.
The announcement comes after police body camera video of McAlpin’s arrest, which showed two Phoenix police officers repeatedly punching and tasing McAlpin, became public and sparked outcry.
“I have now completed my review and have made the decision to dismiss all remaining charges against Mr. McAlpin,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said Thursday.
McAlpin had been facing three felony charges for allegedly assaulting the two arresting officers and resisting arrest.
Phoenix police officers had been called because a White man was loitering at a convenience store on Aug. 19. That man claimed he had been assaulted and that his phone had been stolen, and he pointed to McAlpin as the culprit. McAlpin was not charged for the incident involving that man and his lawyer says he was wrongfully accused.
In the arrest video, officer Benjamin Harris was seen jumping out of his vehicle and punching McAlpin as officer Kyle Sue rushed over. McAlpin was punched at least 10 times and was also tased repeatedly. Sue can be heard on the video claiming McAlpin bit him and, in the police report from the incident, Harris claimed McAlpin swung at him.
“Tyron is just trying to avoid getting hurt by an aggressive, out-of-control police officer,” McAlpin’s attorney, Jesse Showalter, previously told CBS News. “He can’t hear any of the commands he’s being given and the assault never lets up and the officers never do anything to de-escalate the situation.”
The arrest video prompted strong reactions from the NAACP and ACLU, prompting Mitchell to announce she would “personally review the entire file, as well as the totality of the video.”
She also noted Thursday that she had “convened a large gathering of senior attorneys and members of the community to hear their opinions as they pertain to this case” earlier in the week.
The arrest of McAlpin came two months after a scathing report from the Department of Justice found Phoenix police have engaged in a pattern of discrimination and excessive force.
contributed to this report.
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Nearly all of MN is abnormally dry
Israel’s proxy war with Iran leaves young children in Gaza and Lebanon burned from head to toe
Charges dropped against Tyron McAlpin, deaf Black man with cerebral palsy whose Phoenix arrest video prompted outrage
Nearly all of MN is abnormally dry
Israel’s proxy war with Iran leaves young children in Gaza and Lebanon burned from head to toe