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Survey reveals grim state of Uganda’s lions, leopards and hyenas
Lion numbers in Uganda are at a critical low while hyenas are faring well across four major protected areas in the country, according to survey findings co-led by Griffith University, Southern University of Science and Technology (China) and Northern Arizona University.
The study, “Insights into Large Carnivore Populations in Uganda: A Participatory Survey of Lions, Leopards, and Hyenas Using Spatial Capture- Recapture,” has been published in Global Ecology and Conservation.
Researchers unveiled the first comprehensive population estimate of Uganda’s lions, leopards, and spotted hyenas in nearly two decades.
Conducted across six major protected areas—including the 4,000 km2 Murchison Falls and the 2,400 km2 Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area—this innovative study was a collaborative feat involving more than 100 conservation stakeholders.
Using advanced spatial capture-recapture methods set a new standard for wildlife monitoring in Africa, the findings are already influencing conservation policy, and have served as the foundation for Uganda’s new Strategic Action Plan for Large Carnivore Conservation (2023–2033).
Lions are in decline across most protected areas, while hyenas show resilience
The study showed that populations of lions in the Queen Elizabeth and Kidepo Valley National Parks were critically low, with fewer than 40 and 20 individuals remaining respectively.
In contrast, spotted hyena populations appear to be faring well, with the Murchison Falls National Park population holding Africa’s largest density recorded to date at 45 individuals per 100 km2.
The radically different numbers of hyenas displaying resilience could be indicative of a trophic imbalance.
“We could be seeing a release in hyena numbers as populations of lions decline,” Dr. Braczkowski said.
“However, in places like Murchison Falls, we are seeing high densities of all three species; lions, hyenas, and leopards.”
Murchison Falls National Park is the last critical lion stronghold in Uganda
The study identified the Murchison Falls National Park (Uganda’s largest protected area) as a vital area for lion conservation.
The region supports high lion densities (seven lions per 100 km2) and an abundance of 240 individuals in a 3,233 km2 sampling area compared with Queen Elizabeth and Kidepo Valley, despite significant pressures from wire snare poaching and oil exploration, making it a critical priority conservation area in the country.
Leopards holding on across most of the country
While leopard densities varied, Murchison Falls recorded some of the highest in Africa at 14 individuals per 100km2, the highest recorded to date in Africa.
Similarly to the national parks’ lion populations, it is highly probable that the anti-poaching efforts by the government and several non-government organizations (including Uganda Conservation Foundation, Snares to Wares, and ICON) were preventing the low densities observed in other parts of the country.
Collaboration and training key to such a large effort
Griffith University lead researcher Dr. Alexander Braczkowski said one of the most striking results from the survey was that it brought together more than 100 participants from 20 different NGOs, lodges, and conservation groups, meaning people who may not have had an opportunity to be involved in science previously now have an opportunity to survey and engage in science on the animals they lived closest to.
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He added that this was critical for the long-lasting capacity needed to maintain a solid understanding of how these carnivore populations performed over time, especially against conservation action.
“This survey highlights both the challenges and successes of Uganda’s carnivore conservation,” Dr. Braczkowski said.
“The collaborative nature of this work—spanning governments, NGOs, and local communities—is a testament to what’s possible for wildlife conservation. More importantly, these are the kinds of training exercises that are most needed if we hope to build the science capacity in the places that need it most”
Dr. Braczkowski said the results sounded an alarm for Uganda’s iconic carnivores, whose survival was jeopardized by poaching, habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. His team also emphasized the critical role of community engagement in conservation success.
More information:
Alexander R. Braczkowski et al, Insights into Large Carnivore Populations in Uganda: A Participatory Survey of Lions, Leopards, and Hyenas Using Spatial Capture-Recapture, Global Ecology and Conservation (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2024.e03312
Provided by
Griffith University
Citation:
Survey reveals grim state of Uganda’s lions, leopards and hyenas (2024, December 3)
retrieved 4 December 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-12-survey-reveals-grim-state-uganda.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Telegram U-turns and joins global child safety scheme
After years of ignoring pleas to sign up to child protection schemes, the controversial messaging app Telegram has agreed to work with an internationally recognised body to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is used by major online services to help them detect and remove CSAM, and prevent its spread.
Telegram had repeatedly refused to engage with it or any similar scheme.
But, four months after its founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris for Telegram’s alleged failure to moderate extreme content, the platform has announced a U-turn.
The IWF has described Telegram’s decision as “transformational” but warned it was the first step in a “much longer journey” for the app.
“By joining the IWF, Telegram can begin deploying our world-leading tools to help make sure this material cannot be shared on the service,” said Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO at the IWF.
Telegram is used by around 950 million people worldwide and has previously positioned itself as an app focussed on its users’ privacy rather than the policy norms prioritised by other global social media companies.
But reporting from the BBC and other news organisations highlighted criminals using the app to advertise drugs as well as offer cybercrime and fraud services and, most recently, CSAM.
It led one expert to brand it “the dark web in your pocket.”
In August, its billionaire owner was detained at an airport north of Paris.
Mr Durov is accused of a failure to co-operate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud.
French judges have barred the 40-year-old from leaving France pending further investigations.
The company maintains that his arrest is unfair, and that he should not be held liable for what users do on the platform.
Nonetheless, Telegram has since announced a series of changes to the way it operates, including:
- Announcing IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate its rules will be handed over to police in response to valid legal requests
- Disabling features like “people nearby” which it admitted had issues with bots and scammers
- Publishing regular transparency reports about how much content is taken down – a standard industry practice it had previously refused to comply with
Mr Durov has also vowed to “turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise”.
The partnership with the IWF appears to be the latest step in that process.
The IWF is one of a few organisations in the world that is legally able to search for child sexual content to get it taken down.
Its ever-evolving list of known abuse content is used by websites to detect and block matches to stop it spreading.
Telegram says that before becoming a member of IWF it removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of abuse material each month using its own systems. The IWF membership will strengthen its mechanisms, the company said.
The app is marketed as a fully end-to-end encrypted messaging service – meaning only the sender and recipient of a message can read it – like WhatsApp and Signal.
But in fact the majority of communication is done with standard encryption, raising questions about how secure from hacking and interception it is.
Mr Durov, who was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, has citizenship in Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St Kitts and Nevis.
Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states as well as Iran.
Snowfall in the Alps is a third less than a hundred years ago, meteorologists find
From 23% less in the northern Alps to a decrease of almost 50% on the southwestern slopes: Between 1920 and 2020, snowfall across the entirety of the Alps has decreased on average by a significant 34%. The results come from a study coordinated by Eurac Research and were published in the International Journal of Climatology. The study also examines how much altitude and climatological parameters such as temperature and total precipitation impact on snowfall.
The data on seasonal snowfall and rainfall was collected from 46 sites throughout the Alps, the most recent of which was collected from modern weather stations, and the historical data was gathered from handwritten records in which specially appointed observers recorded how many inches of snow were deposited at a given location.
By collaborating with numerous meteorological offices, environmental agencies, volunteer associations, and the University of Trento, it was possible to combine all this information, which was then interpreted by the Eurac Research-led team, who created a comprehensive picture of snowfall in the Alps between 1920 and 2020.
“There is a markedly negative trend in terms of fresh snowfall in the Alps with an overall decrease of about 34%. In particular, a notable decrease was observed after 1980. This date also coincides with an equally sharp increase in temperatures,” explains Michele Bozzoli, environmental meteorologist at Eurac Research and first author of the study. “The most negative trends concern locations below an altitude of 2,000 meters and are in the southern regions such as Italy, Slovenia and part of the Austrian Alps.
In the Alpine areas to the north such as Switzerland and northern Tyrol, the research team observed the extent to which altitude also plays a central role. Although there has been an increase in precipitation during the winter seasons, at lower altitudes, snowfall has increasingly turned to rain as temperatures have risen. At higher elevations, however, thanks to sufficiently cold temperatures, snowfall is being maintained. In the southwestern and southeastern areas, temperatures have risen so much that even at higher elevations, rain is frequently taking over snowfall.
“Snow is crucial as a water reservoir. It feeds glaciers, mountain streams, and as it melts slowly in spring, replenishes water reserves gradually. The decrease in snow has an impact not only on winter sports, but also on all activities and processes that rely on water. This aspect can no longer be ignored in the policy planning of water management,” Bozzoli concludes.
More information:
Michele Bozzoli et al, Long‐term snowfall trends and variability in the Alps, International Journal of Climatology (2024). DOI: 10.1002/joc.8597
Provided by
Eurac Research
Citation:
Snowfall in the Alps is a third less than a hundred years ago, meteorologists find (2024, December 3)
retrieved 4 December 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-12-snowfall-alps-years-meteorologists.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Massive Elon Musk donation news to me, says Nigel Farage
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says talk of a $100m (£78m) donation to his party by US billionaire Elon Musk is “pure speculation”.
Farage told the BBC the idea was “complete news to me” and “I’ve heard nothing of the kind”.
The rumours were sparked by the Sunday Times, which reported Conservative Party officials were concerned about Reform using the money to wipe their party out at the next election.
Mr Musk’s father Errol in an interview with GB News, suggested his son, whose grandmother was British, could take UK citizenship to get round foreign donation rules.
Mr Musk is a prominent critic of Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and has backed Reform UK to form the next government in posts on his social media platform X.
As a US citizen Mr Musk cannot make personal political donations in the UK.
But a donation could be made through the British branch of X, the Sunday Times suggested.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Farage said “even a fraction of that money would make a massive difference to our operation as a party, [but] it’s purely theoretical”.
He added that although he does know Mr Musk and “politically he is a supporter of mine, there’s no secret to that, I’ve never solicited a donation from him and one has never been offered”.
He also raised doubts that a donation of that size would be possible if funnelled via the UK arm of Mr Musk’s X social media site, formerly known as Twitter.
“As far as the company is concerned the Electoral Commission would take a view that a donation that came from a company would have to be proportional to the size of the company in this country,” he said.
“The idea that X Corp could give $100m to any political party is for the birds.”
Pressed on whether he would accept a donation, Farage said “of course I would accept money” but pointed out that James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party spent £25m on the 1997 election and “got 3%” of the vote.
He added: “Money isn’t everything.”
Mr Musk, who was born in South Africa, donated $75m to US President-elect Donald Trump’s re-election bid, with $72m of that going to a political action committee he set up called America PAC.
Mr Musk’s father Errol suggested the SpaceX and Tesla mogul might even be prepared to become a UK citizen to make a $100m donation to Reform UK.
He told GB News: “I’m eligible for British citizenship, so is he, I suppose.”
He added: “If the thing that’s stopping Farage from moving ahead is money, then he should get money so that he can move ahead.”
Asked what his family had against Sir Keir, Errol Musk said: “What’s happened in England is just totally un-English.”
South Korea’s scandal-hit leader who declared martial law
Getty ImagesSouth Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s future is hanging in the balance after a chaotic night during which he dramatically declared martial law and then withdrew it just as suddenly, plunging the country into turmoil.
Yoon, who won the top job by a whisker in 2022, was already deeply unpopular and under growing pressure since losing parliamentary elections in April, regarded as a vote of confidence on his time in office.
He’s been plagued by personal problems too. Last month he apologised in a televised address to the nation for a string of controversies surrounding his wife that included allegedly accepting a luxury Dior handbag and stock manipulation.
Now he’s facing demands that he resign and lawmakers have said they will move to impeach him.
Tuesday night’s short-lived attempt to impose martial law took everyone by surprise.
It sent lawmakers scrambling to the National Assembly in Seoul to vote against the order. Outside, police had assembled as thousands of protesters gathered in fury.
The same crowd erupted in cheers when Yoon backtracked within hours and declared he would withdraw the martial law order.
That he would play such a high-stakes game, and then back off so easily, came as a surprise to South Koreans and the rest of the world.
Rise to power
Yoon was a relative newcomer to politics when he won the presidency. He had risen to national prominence for prosecuting the corruption case against disgraced former President Park Geun-hye in 2016.
In 2022, the political novice narrowly beat his liberal opponent Lee Jae-myung by less than 1% of the vote – the closest result the country has seen since direct elections started to be held in 1987.
At a time when South Korean society was grappling with widening divisions over gender issues, Yoon appealed to young male voters by running on an anti-feminism platform.
People had “high hopes” for Yoon when he was elected, said Don S Lee, associate professor of public administration at Sungkyunkwan University. “Those who voted for Yoon believed that a new government under Yoon will pursue such values as principle, transparency and efficiency.”
Yoon has also championed a hawkish stance on North Korea. The communist state was cited by Yoon on Tuesday night when he tried to impose martial law.
He said he needed to protect against North Korean forces and “eliminate anti-state elements”, even though it was apparent from the outset that his announcement was less about the threat from the North and more about his domestic woes.
Yoon is known for gaffes, which haven’t helped his ratings. During his 2022 campaign he had to walk back a comment that authoritarian president Chun Doo-hwan, who declared martial law and was responsible for massacring protestors in 1980, had been “good at politics”.
Later that year he was forced to deny insulting the US Congress in remarks made after meeting US President Joe Biden in New York.
He was caught on a hot mic and seen on camera seemingly calling US lawmakers a Korean word that can be translated as “idiots” or something much stronger. The footage quickly went viral in South Korea.
Yoon has had some success in foreign policy, notably improving ties in his country’s historically fraught relationship with Japan.
‘Political miscalculation’
Yoon’s presidency has been mired in scandal. Much of it centred around his wife Kim Keon Hee, who was accused of corruption and influence peddling – most notably allegedly accepting a Dior bag from a pastor.
In November, Yoon apologised on behalf of his wife while rejecting calls for an investigation into her activities.
But his presidential popularity remained wobbly. In early November, his approval ratings tumbled to 17%, a record low since he took office.
In April, the opposition Democratic Party won the parliamentary election by a landslide, dealing a crushing defeat for Yoon and his People Power Party.
Yoon was relegated to a lame duck president and reduced to vetoing bills passed by the opposition, a tactic that he used with “unprecedented frequency”, said Celeste Arrington, director of The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies.
This week, the opposition slashed the budget the government and ruling party had put forward – and the budget bill cannot be vetoed.
Around the same time, the opposition was moving to impeach cabinet members, mainly the head of the government audit agency, for failing to investigate the first lady.
With political challenges pushing his back against the wall, Yoon went for the nuclear option – a move that few, if any, could have predicted.
“Many observers worried in recent weeks about a political crisis because of the confrontation between the president and the opposition-controlled National Assembly,” said Dr Arrington, “though few predicted such an extreme move as declaring martial law.”
President Yoon’s declaration of martial law was a “legal overreach and a political miscalculation”, according to Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“With extremely low public support and without strong backing within his own party and administration, the president should have known how difficult it would be to implement his late-night decree,” Dr Easley told the BBC.
“He sounded like a politician under siege, making a desperate move against mounting scandals, institutional obstruction, and calls for impeachment, all of which are now likely to intensify.”
Getty ImagesWhat now?
Yoon has drawn ire from politicians on both sides, as hastily-gathered lawmakers – including some from Yoon’s party – voted to lift martial law on Tuesday night. The opposition Democratic Party is trying to impeach Yoon, and even Yoon’s own party leadership has demanded the president’s withdrawal from the party. Yoon’s senior aides offered to resign en masse on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reported.
Opposition leader Lee is projecting optimism, telling reporters that Yoon’s “illegal declaration of martial law” is a “decisive opportunity to break the vicious cycle and return to normal society”.
The repercussions of Tuesday night are set to ripple beyond South Korea’s borders. Yoon’s announcement has rattled South Korea’s allies. Officials in the US, a key ally, said they were caught off guard by Yoon’s announcement, and are urging South Korea to resolve the crisis “in accordance with the rule of law”. Japan says that it is monitoring the situation in South Korea with “exceptional and serious concerns”.
Meanwhile, North Korea, which has ratcheted up tensions with the South in recent months, may “attempt to exploit divisions in Seoul,” said Dr Easley.
Anger is still sweeping South Korea. On Wednesday protesters streamed onto the streets condemning Yoon. One of the country’s largest labour unions with over one million members is calling on workers to go on strike until he resigns.
It is unclear what Yoon plans to do. He has yet to make a public appearance since the fiasco.
“He was increasingly unpopular for the way he has dealt with the problems that have been raised with his own conduct and the conduct of the first lady,” former South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha told the BBC Newsday programme. “The ball is in the president’s court to find a way out of this corner that he has put himself in.”
But no matter how Yoon chooses to play it, his botched martial law declaration may already be shaping up to be the last straw that breaks his shaky presidency.