DW Documentary (March 25, 2023) – Pangolins, native to Asia and Africa, are threatened with extinction. Their meat is considered a delicacy in Africa and their scales are sold as a health remedy in Asia. The protected animals are poached and smuggled on a large scale.
Pangolins are the most smuggled animals in the world – and demand is growing. Asian pangolins recently made headlines when they were suspected of being carriers of the COVID-19 coronavirus. On the banks of the Congo River, the pangolin sells for just a few euros.
But in cities like Kinshasa, its meat sells for a hundred times that price and – although illegal – is eaten in the best restaurants. Even more profitable is the sale of pangolin scales, which are highly prized in Asia for their supposed medicinal properties. The native Asian pangolins are already nearly extinct.
The film shows how just a handful of these animals can be rescued during police raids, then reintroduced into the wild by dedicated conservationists. From hunters in the bush of the Democratic Republic of Congo to bushmeat markets to the backrooms of Vietnam, reporters follow pangolin smugglers as they ply their trade.
00:16 Why more people than ever are short-sighted – The trend is worst in children and young adults, and half the world’s population could be short sighted by 2050.
01:37 Six species saved from extinction – Recent ecosystem restorations have rescued some species from the brink of extinction.
03:30 You could soon 3D-print furniture at home – Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a new wood-based ink that can be used for making 3d printed furniture
04:48 How Dark Data Affects Your Carbon Footprint -Companies generate 3.5 trillion gigabytes of dark data every day. But what is dark data?
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In Zimbabwe, the mighty rhino is making a comeback. In southern Africa, the animal was poached to near extinction in recent decades. We visit a wildlife sanctuary, with an elite anti-poaching team, to see how the animal is being bought back from the brink.
It’s one of the most successful rhino conservation projects in Africa. In south-eastern Zimbabwe, a private wildlife sanctuary is working hard to bring endangered rhinos back from the brink. In decades past, the mighty Black Rhino was poached to near extinction in southern Africa. Its horn, almost worth its weight in gold, makes it a target for organised poaching gangs.
In 1998, the privately-funded Malilangwe Trust had a population of 28 white and 28 black rhinos, imported from South Africa. Today its rhino population numbers in the hundreds. Reporter Michael Davie, an Australian born in Zimbabwe, returns home to witness this extraordinary wildlife success story. He spends time with the sanctuary’s highly trained anti-poaching team, the Malilangwe Scouts, the tip of the spear against the ever present poaching threat.
“Individually you can’t win against poaching and we need every one of us to fight against poachers,” says Patrick, a Sergeant in the Scouts. “You have to be a team, a strong one.” Davie captures all the incredible action of the hectic “rhino ops” where specialists dart the animals from helicopters then move in on 4WDs as they dash across the park. Led by ecologist Sarah Clegg, the rhino ops team collect vital data on the herd.
“They’ve got this reputation of being bad-tempered and dangerous and they are, but I think it’s mostly that they’re just such emotional creatures,” says Sarah, who’s studied the animal for more than two decades. “They’re just insecure, you know? And so they need more love.” Malilangwe increased its rhino population to such an extent that last year, it relocated some of its Black Rhino herd to nearby Gonarezhou National Park — a former killing ground for rhinos.
“It’s what we all aim for in our careers as conservationists,” says Sarah. “It’s a wild park, so being able to put the rhino back into that park is like waking it up again.” This visually stunning story has a powerful message of hope. “Everyone needs to know the rhino is special,” says Patrick.
The ibex is the king of the Alps, famed for its curved horns and extreme climbing skills. But for centuries, these mountain goats were hunted by humans – to the very brink of extinction. A royal hunting reserve in Italy saved the Alpine ibex, but is climate change now threatening them all over again? We tell the story of their remarkable comeback and ask what the future might hold.
The Alpine ibex, also known as the steinbock, bouquetin, or simply ibex, is a species of wild goat that lives in the mountains of the European Alps. It is a sexually dimorphic species: males are larger and carry longer, curved horns than females. Its coat colour is typically brownish grey.
We leave you this Sunday among trumpeter swans braving winter’s chill near Cayuga, New York. Videographer: Carl Mrozek.
The trumpeter swan (Cygnus buccinator) is a species of swan found in North America. The heaviest living bird native to North America, it is also the largest extant species of waterfowl, with a wingspan of 185 to 250 cm (6 ft 2 in to 8 ft 2 in). It is the American counterpart and a close relative of the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) of Eurasia, and even has been considered the same species by some authorities. By 1933, fewer than 70 wild trumpeters were known to exist, and extinction seemed imminent, until aerial surveys discovered a Pacific population of several thousand trumpeters around Alaska’s Copper River. Careful reintroductions by wildlife agencies and the Trumpeter Swan Society gradually restored the North American wild population to over 46,000 birds by 2010.
A wildlife photographer travels to India intent on documenting the rarest stork on earth but soon discovers a conservation hero and her inspiring efforts to rally a community to save it.
The Greater Adjutant is a large scavenging stork that was once widely distributed across India and Southeast Asia but is now confined to a last stronghold in Assam, India, with small populations persisting in Cambodia’s northern plains region. The species is classified as Endangered by the IUCN with a rapidly declining population of around 1,200 individuals. The key threats to the species are direct human persecution, particularly at nesting colonies, habitat destruction, including felling of nest-trees, and drainage, conversion, pollution and degradation of wetlands. Historically, adjutants bred during the dry season, taking advantage of abundant prey steadily trapped by receding water levels, and scavenging the remains of now extirpated megafauna. Today, the last adjutants survive alongside humans, congregating at garbage dumps and nesting colonially in rural villages. The majority world’s remain population lives around the city of Guwahati and relies on a single garbage dump for food and nearby villages for nesting. As the adjutant’s nesting colonies occur outside of state protected areas in Assam, community conservation initiatives are the only hope for saving the bird from extinction. Through the efforts of a remarkable conservation leader, Dr. Purnima Devi Barman, and the movement she has inspired, the birds are now protected, celebrated, and increasing their numbers locally. Despite this success and the momentum to conserve the species, the Greater Adjutant’s existence remains precarious.
On this week’s show: How cloning can introduce diversity into an endangered species, and ramping up the pressure on iron to see how it might behave in the cores of rocky exoplanets.
Also this week, Rick Kraus, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks about how his group used a powerful laser to compress iron to pressures similar to those found in the cores of some rocky exoplanets. If these super-Earths’ cores are like our Earth’s, they may have a protective magnetosphere that increases their chances of hosting life.
Concerned by a recent drop in population numbers of the threatened golden lion tamarin, conservationists in Rio de Janeiro state have built a bridge across a busy highway to help the monkeys circulate over a wider forested area.
The golden lion tamarin, also known as the golden marmoset, is a small New World monkey of the family Callitrichidae. Native to the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil, the golden lion tamarin is an endangered species.
Nearly 30 percent of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its survival watchlist are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.
Boomers Daily 