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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.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. Over the course of her trial, Pelicot — who insisted her full name be published and proceedings be made public — has been praised for her courage and become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world. The judge on Thursday was reading out verdicts for dozens of other men also accused of raping her.
Pelicot arrived Thursday at the court in Avignon, southeast France, where crowds had gathered outside holding signs saying: “Thank you for your courage.”
The trial began on Sept. 2, and almost every day, Pelicot came face to face with her former husband, Dominique, or one of the 49 other men charged with raping her. One other man faced a charge of aggravated sexual assault. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence, made by her ex-husband showing men sexually assaulting her while she appeared to be unconscious, be shown in open court.
The assaults took place between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was taken into custody. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on his computer drives, which helped lead them to other suspects. Some of the men testified they thought the unconscious woman was OK with it, or that her husband’s permission was enough.
“Gisèle Pelicot thinks that this shock wave is necessary, so that no one can say after this: ‘I didn’t know this was rape,'” her attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, told The Associated Press.
“It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them,” Pelicot said in court, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I’m expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
Controversial French laws
Pelicot’s case triggered protests across France, and there was hope among some demonstrators that the case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
France introduced a legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after a public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted on a lesser charge. Since then, sex with anyone under the age of 15 has been viewed as non-consensual, but French law does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
Under French law, rape is defined as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” without taking consent into account, according to the Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must, therefore, prove an intention to rape if they are to be successful in court, legal experts told Reuters.
Just 14% of rape accusations in France lead to formal investigations, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policies.
“Why don’t we manage to obtain convictions? The first reason is the law,” legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must comply with the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown attacker, use of violence, and the victim’s resistance. But it is only true for a minority of rapes.”
“I’m trying to understand”
Speaking in court during the trial, Pelicot, who is 72, talked about how she had thought she was in a loving marriage with her husband and would never have guessed that he was drugging her.
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court.
“We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice cream to my bed, where I was. My favorite flavor — raspberry — and I thought: ‘How lucky I am. He’s a love.'”
She said she didn’t have any sensation of being drugged.
“I never felt my heart flutter. I didn’t feel anything. I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pajamas on,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she would sometimes wake up “more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that.”
“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have got to this.”
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
