A study from the University of California, Davis, examines this question by overlaying renewable energy siting maps with the ranges of two species in the southwestern United States: the iconic and climate-vulnerable Joshua tree and federally endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that Joshua trees are expected to lose 31% of their habitat while kit foxes lose 81% by 2070. That’s with climate change alone, under a moderate emissions scenario. When overlayed with existing and proposed renewable energy projects, an additional 1.7% of Joshua tree habitat and 3.9% of kit fox habitat could be lost.

“This study describes how we need to use more renewable energy to fight climate change, but it also warns us that as we expand renewable energy, we are going to overlap with biodiversity hotspots,” said first author Uzma Ashraf, a postdoctoral scholar with the UC Davis Wild Energy Center and the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. “We show how advanced computer modeling can be applied to improve our understanding of how to site renewable energy resources in ways that benefit biodiversity and their shifting ranges.”

Clean energy and biodiversity

Globally, 290 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity were developed in 2021. The world needs to ramp that up to 1,120 GW every year between now and 2030 to meet net zero emissions goals by 2050.

Meanwhile, animal populations have declined by two-thirds in the past 50 years, mostly due to habitat losses, which are exacerbated by climate change, the study notes.

Altering the landscape could damage places that would otherwise serve as climate refugia under future climate conditions.

San Joaquin kit foxes have been known to use solar facilities for habitat, which scientists attribute to the shade the facilities provide. The study said this suggests there may be ways to minimize impacts to the species through careful attention to its ecological needs.

Future-facing decisions

Corresponding author and Associate Professor Rebecca R. Hernandez directs the Wild Energy Center at UC Davis. She said her center is working to develop a framework to help clean energy developers make future-facing decisions on siting that consider expected range shifts of animals.

“There is a current moonshot for solar and wind energy development,” Hernandez said. “It is one where the footprint of the transition takes hold fast but in a manner that reinforces goals for biodiversity conservation and social justice. Species maps are now dynamic over time under climate change. Our team uses state-of-the-art computational tools to chart a safe passage for renewables.”

The study’s co-authors include Toni Lynn Morelli of the U.S. Geological Survey and Adam B. Smith of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development.

The study was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The researchers developed so-called threofuranosyl nucleic acid (TNA) with a new, additional base pair. These are the first steps on the way to fully artificial nucleic acids with enhanced chemical functionalities. The study ‘Expanding the Horizon of the Xeno Nucleic Acid Space: Threose Nucleic Acids with Increased Information Storage’ was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Artificial nucleic acids differ in structure from their originals. These changes affect their stability and function. “Our threofuranosyl nucleic acid is more stable than the naturally occurring nucleic acids DNA and RNA, which brings many advantages for future therapeutic use,” said Professor Dr Stephanie Kath-Schorr. For the study, the 5-carbon sugar deoxyribose, which forms the backbone in DNA, was replaced by a 4-carbon sugar. In addition, the number of nucleobases was increased from four to six. By exchanging the sugar, the TNA is not recognized by the cell’s own degradation enzymes. This has been a problem with nucleic acid-based therapeutics, as synthetically produced RNA that is introduced into a cell is rapidly degraded and loses its effect. The introduction of TNAs into cells that remain undetected could now maintain the effect for longer.

“In addition, the built-in unnatural base pair enables alternative binding options to target molecules in the cell,” added Hannah Depmeier, lead author of the study. Kath-Schorr is certain that such a function can be used in particular in the development of new aptamers, short DNA or RNA sequences, which can be used for the targeted control of cellular mechanisms. TNAs could also be used for the targeted transport of drugs to specific organs in the body (targeted drug delivery) as well as in diagnostics; they could also be useful for the recognition of viral proteins or biomarkers.

Past climate change (often caused by natural changes in greenhouse gases due to volcanic activity) has been responsible for countless species’ extinctions during the history of life on Earth. But, to date, it has not been clear what factors cause species to be more or less resilient to such change, and how the magnitude of climate change affects extinction risk.

Led by researchers at the University of Oxford, this new study sought to answer this question by analysing the fossil record for marine invertebrates (such as sea urchins, snails, and shellfish) over the past 485 million years. Marine invertebrates have a rich and well-studied fossil record, making it possible to identify when, and potentially why, species become extinct.

Using over 290,000 fossil records covering more than 9,200 genera, the researchers collated a dataset of key traits that may affect resilience to extinction, including traits not studied in depth previously, such as preferred temperature. This trait information was integrated with climate simulation data to develop a model to understand which factors were most important in determining the risk of extinction during climate change.

Key findings:

• The authors found that species exposed to greater climate change were more likely to become extinct. In particular, species that experienced temperature changes of 7°C or more across geological stages were significantly more vulnerable to extinction.
• The authors also found that species occupying climatic extremes (for instance in polar regions) were disproportionately vulnerable to extinction, and animals that could only live in a narrow range of temperatures (especially ranges less than 15°C) were significantly more likely to become extinct.
• However, geographic range size was the strongest predictor of extinction risk. Species with larger geographic ranges were significantly less likely to go extinct. Body size was also important, with smaller-bodied species more likely to become extinct.
• All of the traits studied had a cumulative impact on extinction risk. For instance, species with both small geographic ranges and narrow thermal ranges were even more susceptible to extinction than species that had only one of these traits.

Cooper Malanoski (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford), first author of the study, said: ‘Our study revealed that geographic range was the strongest predictor of extinction risk for marine invertebrates, but that the magnitude of climate change is also an important predictor of extinction, which has implications for biodiversity today in the face of climate change.’

With current human-driven climate change already pushing many species up to and beyond the brink of extinction, these results could help identify the animals that are most at risk, and inform strategies to protect them.

Lead author Professor Erin Saupe (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford) said: ‘The evidence from the geological past suggests that global biodiversity faces a harrowing future, given projected climate change estimates. In particular, our model suggests that species with restricted thermal ranges of less than 15°C, living in the poles or tropics, are likely to be at the greatest risk of extinction. However, if the localized climate change is large enough, it could lead to significant extinction globally, potentially pushing us closer to a sixth mass extinction.’

According to the research team, future work should explore how climate change interacts with other potential drivers of extinction, such as ocean acidification and anoxia (where seawater becomes depleted of oxygen).

The study also involved researchers from the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. Professor Dan Lunt, from the University of Bristol, said: ‘This study shows that over the course of Earth’s history, the extinction risk of marine life has been inextricably linked to climate change. This should act as a stark warning to humanity as we recklessly continue to cause climate change ourselves through burning fossil fuels.’

The method can be used by governments in cost-benefit analyses for public infrastructure projects, in which the loss of animal and plant species and ‘ecosystem services’ — such as filtering air or water, pollinating crops or the recreational value of a space — are converted into a current monetary value.

This process is designed to make biodiversity loss and the benefits of nature conservation more visible in political decision-making.

However, the international research team says current methods for calculating the values of ecosystem services “fall short” and have devised a new approach, which they believe could easily be deployed in Treasury analysis underpinning future Budget statements.

Their approach, published in the journal Science, takes into consideration the increase in monetary value of nature over time as human income increases, as well as the likely deterioration in biodiversity, making it more of a scarce resource.

This contrasts with current methods, which do not consider how the value of ecosystem services changes over time.

“Our study provides governments with a formula to estimate the future values of scarce ecosystem services that can be used in decision-making processes,” said Moritz Drupp, Professor of Sustainability Economics at the University of Hamburg and lead author on this study.

Two factors play a key role in this value adjustment: on the one hand, income will rise and with it the prosperity of the world’s population — by an estimated two percent per year after adjusting for inflation.

As incomes go up, people are willing to pay more to conserve nature.

“On the other hand, the services provided by ecosystems will become more valuable the scarcer they become,” said Professor Drupp. “The fact that scarce goods become more expensive is a fundamental principle in economics, and it also applies here. And in view of current developments, unfortunately, we must expect the loss of biodiversity to continue.”

According to the researchers, the present value of ecosystem services must therefore be set much higher in today’s cost-benefit analyses, to more than 130 percent if just including the rise of income.

If also taking into account the impact on Red List Index endangered species, the value adjustment would amount to more than 180 percent.

Accounting for these effects will increase the likelihood of projects that conserve ecosystem services passing a cost-benefit test.

The research team includes three UK-based authors: Professor Mark Freeman (University of York), Dr. Frank Venmans (LSE), and Professor Ben Groom (University of Exeter).

“The monetary values for the environment that are currently used by policy makers in the appraisal of public investments and regulatory change mean that nature becomes relatively less valuable over time compared to other goods and services,” said Professor Groom.

“Our work shows this is wrong. We propose an uplift in the values of ecosystems over time. This proposal could easily be deployed in the Treasury’s analysis that will underpin future Budget statements.”

Dr Venmans added: “Take coral reefs as a specific example. These are expected to decline in area and biodiversity as the climate changes, meaning that the remaining reefs will be much more valuable than today, and even more so as household incomes rise. This matters when we assess coral reef preservation with long-lasting effects.”

Professor Freeman said: “The government is under considerable pressure from many sides for additional public investment. Ensuring that the protection of ecosystems is appraised in a way that is consistent with other public projects, including HS2 and other infrastructure spending, is critical. This is what our work aims to achieve.”

The researchers say that as political decisions can alleviate the loss of biodiversity, it is important that governments are able to adequately assess the consequences of their decisions today and in the future.

Economist Professor Moritz Drupp has developed this research in collaboration with a team of international researchers from Germany, the UK, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United States.

The team advises, among others, HM Treasury, the US White House, and the German Federal Environment Agency.

The federal government removed nearly two dozen species from the endangered list last year – because they went extinct. Environmentalists often must fight just to get a species recognized as endangered. They say knowing is half the battle, but half isn’t enough to win. Being added to the list doesn’t always guarantee the research and action necessary to restore an endangered species to sustainable population levels.

In 2023, the 50^th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 21 species had been removed from the endangered species list. But it wasn’t happy news; those species were delisted because they had gone extinct. The list of extinct species includes one mammal – the Little Mariana fruit bat – two species of freshwater fish, 9 shellfish, and 10 species of birds that were mostly from Hawaii.

For a complete history of the Endangered Species Act, with extensive commentary about its efficacy and results, Earth911 recommends The Codex of the Endangered Species Act, Volume One (The First 50 Years) and Volume Two (The Next 50 Years).

Struck From The List

The 21 delisted species were:

Mammals

• Little Mariana fruit bat (Guam)

Birds

• Bachman’s warbler (Florida, South Carolina)
• Bridled white-eye (Florida)
• Kauai akialoa (Hawaii)
• Kauai nukupuu (Hawaii)
• Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Hawaii)
• Large Kauai thrush (Hawaii)
• Maui ākepa (Hawaii)
• Maui nukupuʻu (Hawaii)
• Molokai creeper (Hawaii)
• Po`ouli (Hawaii)

Fish

• San Marcos gambusia (Texas)
• Scioto madtom (Ohio)

Mussels

• Flat pigtoe (Alabama, Mississippi)
• Southern acornshell (3 states)
• Stirrupshell (Alabama, Mississippi)
• Upland combshell (3 states)
• Green-blossom pearly mussel (Tennessee, Virginia)
• Tubercled-blossom pearly mussel (8 states)
• Turgid-blossom pearly mussel (3 states)
• Yellow-blossom pearly mussel (Alabama, Tennessee)

The Fish and Wildlife Service said protection simply came too late for these species. Their numbers were already too low at the time of listing for recovery to be possible. The majority of them were listed as endangered in the first decade after the ESA was passed or even before ESA protections were established. The most recently listed extinct species were two types of mussels that were listed in 1993.

Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the national law which implements the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the U.S. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are the federal agencies responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act, which has undergone many changes over the decades. Although the ESA is imperfect, it is still the chief mechanism preventing species extinction in the United States. Despite the failures, more than 100 species of plants and animals have been delisted during the law’s 50-year history for the happier reason that populations rebounded. Fifty-four of those species have recovered to self-sustaining levels, while 56 of them remain threatened.

According to Fish and Wildlife, 99% of the more than 1300 species on the list still have a chance for survival. Defenders of Wildlife claim the number is 95%. Either way, the results of the ESA are impressive for any kind of government program.

The Trump administration made several rule changes that weakened protections under the Endangered Species Act. Federal agencies have slowly rescinded those rules, restoring strength to ESA protections. Many changes to the implementation of the ESA are made through executive order and agency rulemaking.

But Congress can be involved, too. In the 2023-24 session, Tom McClintock (R., Ca.) proposed the Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act requiring public disclosure of all data used prior to any ESA listing decision. It also requires that the “best available scientific and commercial data” include all data provided by affected states, tribes, and local governments, which could leave responsible agencies unable to disregard bad science.

Taking Action  

Citizens cannot rest assured that the Endangered Species Act will always protect endangered species. It is up to us to remain vigilant and stay informed about changes that the president and Congress make to the Act. We need to let our representatives in Congress know that we support a strong Endangered Species Act., to ensure that the U.S. continues to be a world leader in wildlife protection.

Another way individuals can be involved in species protection is through the pesticide registration process. When EPA registers pesticides, they are required to ensure that the use of the pesticide is not likely to jeopardize listed species or critical habitat. The registration process offers multiple opportunities for public input.

To be more directly involved in species protection, you can find out which species in your state are endangered and learn about official conservation plans and rulings from the Fish and Wildlife website. Once you know what local species are threatened or endangered, you can become involved in local conservation efforts to protect those species and restore their habitats. Even if volunteering isn’t an option for you, simple lifestyle changes like eliminating pesticides from your garden or improving your property’s stormwater flows can help local wildlife.

Published in Sustainable Earth Reviews, the study surveyed Australian university students belonging to Generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2010) and found climate change was their number one environmental concern.

More than 80 per cent reported being ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about climate change, with many revealing they felt anxious over the issue.

Climate anxiety sees concern about climate change manifest as disturbing thoughts, overwhelming distress about future climate disasters and the continuing fate of humanity and the world. It can also translate into feelings of fear, insecurity, anger, exhaustion, powerlessness and sadness.

Curtin Professor of Sustainability Dora Marinova said climate anxiety was a contributing factor to Gen Z’s overall sense of unease towards the future, which could have major future ramifications.

“These young people are very concerned and, in a way, intimidated by the lack of concrete action being taken to battle climate change,” Professor Marinova said.

“Gen Z has serious concerns which will not only impact their mental health — which will be something society and the public health system will have to deal with — but also the choices young people make: how they spend their money, whether they have families, their choice of career and more.”

The study also revealed despite their concerns, only 35 per cent of Gen Z regularly engaged in traditional climate activism such as fundraising, donating money to worthy causes, supporting political campaigns, or participating in events such as marches or protests.

Curtin Research Fellow Dr Diana Bogueva said the survey respondents instead regularly use social media to voice their concerns and find out information.

She said while their online activities were important, Gen Z may need to engage in other ways to both alleviate climate anxiety and drive change.

“Gen Z should consider participating in more traditional or mainstream areas of activism such as political campaigns to engage with policy makers and better connect with other generations to influence decision makers, to accelerate climate action, and help safeguard a liveable planet for all,” she said.

Dr Bogueva stressed it wasn’t solely Gen Z’s responsibility to solve climate change — a problem they didn’t create — but taking meaningful action can help alleviate an individual’s feelings of anxiety and powerlessness.

“This can include finding out how they can be part of the solution in their personal lives, whether it’s choosing a career which has an impact or adjusting the products or food they consume,” she said.

“While the challenges of climate change can be scary it is not too late for Gen Z to make a difference fighting for a sustainable future.”

The discovery by Washington State University researchers could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics for treating difficult infections. Reporting in the journal, Biofilm, the researchers used the messengers, which they named death extracellular vesicles (D-EVs), to reduce growth of the bacterial communities by up to 99.99% in laboratory experiments.

“Adding the death extracellular vesicles to the bacterial environment, we are kind of cheating the bacteria cells,” said Mawra Gamal Saad, first author on the paper and a graduate student in WSU’s Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. “The cells don’t know which type of EVs they are, but they take them up because they are used to taking them from their environment, and with that, the physiological signals inside the cells change from growth to death.”

Bacterial resistance is a growing problem around the world. In the U.S., at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths are attributable to antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. When doctors use antibiotics to treat a bacterial infection, some of the bacteria can hide within their tough-to-penetrate, slimy home called a biofilm. These subpopulations of resistor cells can survive treatment and are able to grow and multiply, resulting in chronic infections.

“They are resistant because they have a very advanced and well-organized adaptive system,” said Saad. “Once there is a change in the environment, they can adapt their intracellular pathways very quickly and change it to resist the antibiotics.”

In their new study, the researchers discovered that the extracellular vesicles are key to managing the growth of the protective biofilm. The vesicles, tiny bubbles from 30 to 50 nanometers or about 2,000 times smaller than a strand of hair, shuttle molecules from cells, entering and then re-programming neighboring cells and acting as a cell-to-cell communications system.

As part of this study, the researchers extracted the vesicles from one type of bacteria that causes pneumonia and other serious infections. They determined that the bacteria initially secrete vesicles, called growth EVs, with instructions to grow its biofilm, and then later, depending on available nutrients, oxygen availability and other factors, send EVs with new instructions to stop growing the biofilm.

The researchers were able to harness the vesicles with the instructions to stop growth and use them to fool the bacteria to kill off the biofilm at all stages of its growth. Even when the biofilms were healthy and rapidly growing, they followed the new instructions from the death EVs and died. The death EVs can easily penetrate the biofilm because they are natural products secreted by the bacteria, and they have the same cell wall structure, so the cells don’t recognize them as a foreign enemy.

“By cheating the bacteria with these death EVs, we can control their behavior without giving them the chance to develop resistance,” said Saad. “The behavior of the biofilm just changed from growth to death.”

WSU Professor and corresponding author Wen-Ji Dong, who has been studying the vesicles for several years initially thought that all of the bacterial-secreted vesicles would promote cell growth. The researchers were surprised when they found that older biofilms provided instructions on shutting themselves down.

“So now we’re paying attention to the extracellular vesicles secreted by older biofilms because they have therapeutic potential,” he said.

The researchers are applying for research funding from the National Institutes of Health to continue investigating exactly how the messengers work and how well the process works with other bacterial types or fungi. They are working with WSU’s Office of Commercialization and have applied for a provisional patent.

Researchers planted 10 species on a custom-built 1.4m green wall beside the A3 in Guildford.

Mamatha Tomson, postgraduate researcher at the University of Surrey, said:

“By planting vertically on a green wall, communities can clean up their air without taking up too much street space.

“Our study suggests that this process depends not only on the shape of its leaves but on the micromorphological properties of their surfaces. We think a good mixture of species will produce the most effective green walls — and look forward to carrying out further research to see if we’re right.”

Plants remove air pollution in two steps. First, they catch particles of pollution on their leaves. Then, the rain washes them safely to the ground.

Evergreen Candytuft and Ivy leaves were found to be especially good at trapping pollutant particles, large and small.

Meanwhile, rain was able to wash most of the pollution off the hairy leaves of Lavender. Candytuft and Marjoram also performed well in washing off smaller particles of pollution.

Professor Prashant Kumar, director of the University’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), said:

“We hope that town planners and infrastructure experts can use our findings to think more carefully about what they plant.

“Having a green wall is a great way of removing pollution — but what you plant on it can make a big difference to how successful it will be.”

The study is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

It helps promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 (good health and well-being), 13 (climate action) and 15 (life on land).