<
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/22/1090905/man-made-snowdrifts-seal-pups-climate-change-habitats/>
"Just before 10 a.m., hydrobiologist Jari Ilmonen and his team of six step out
across a flat, half-mile-wide disk of snow and ice. For half the year this vast
clearing is open water, the tip of one arm of the labyrinthine Lake Saimaa,
Finland’s biggest lake, which reaches almost to Russia’s western border. As
each snow boot lands, there’s a burst of static, like the spine-tingling scrape
of a freezer drawer closing. “It’s a poor amount of snow,” complains Ilmonen,
who sees less than half the 20 centimeters (eight inches) he’d hope for in
mid-January.
To reach their destination, one of the roughly 14,000 islands that poke out
from the lake’s frozen surface, the team must walk for almost an hour in
temperatures of −17 °C (1.4 °F). Ilmonen pays close attention to the snow
underfoot because today it will be the material from which they construct
lifesaving shelters for the Saimaa ringed seal, one of the world’s most
endangered seals.
One key question brings volunteers out in these icy conditions: How will an
animal that’s born inside a grotto of snow survive on a warming planet? For
millennia, during Saimaa’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high
snowbanks along the lake’s shoreline, offering prime real estate from which
these seals carved cave-like dens to shelter from the elements and raise
newborns. But in recent decades, these snowdrifts have failed to form in
sufficient numbers, as climate change has brought warming temperatures and rain
in place of snow.
For the last 11 years, humans have stepped in to construct what nature can no
longer reliably provide. Human-made snowdrifts, built using handheld snowplows
to mimic the actions of strong winds, are the latest in a raft of measures that
have brought Saimaa’s seals back from the brink of extinction, following curbs
on hunting and industrial pollution, and seasonal bans on fishing with gill
nets. Now the seal population is rebounding, from lows of 100 or so in the
1980s to about 400 today. Some 320 pups—half of all Saimaa ringed seals born
since 2014—took their first breath inside these shelters."
Via
What Could Go Right? Exiting the Grexit Era:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/greece-economy-2024/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
