The surprising resilience of a smiling salamander and some old buried seeds
Captive-bred axolotls, the salamanders with a big smile, can survive in the wild
It’s an important discovery since axolotls are now found only in Lake Xochimilco, Mexico City.
Recognizable by their feathery external gills, between 50 and 1,000 of the critically endangered amphibians are left in the wild. But a study in Mexico City monitored 18 axolotls over 40 days and found that the species can survive in both human-made and restored wetlands.
Why We Wrote This
In our progress roundup, scientists found that some creatures are more adaptable than assumed. And even governments can adapt to the legal environment when other jurisdictions require it. In Indonesia, more efforts are being made to comply with EU laws to curb deforestation.
Luis Zambrano, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, hopes the study will raise awareness of axolotls as more than just pets. “We want to create this link between, this animal is highly popular, this animal is very interesting ... but the habitat is going down,” said Dr. Zambrano. “If we don’t do anything, then the habitat will be destroyed in the near future.”
Source: The Washington Post
Adoption of giant batteries for energy storage in the U.S. is surging
Typically, electricity must be used soon after it’s generated. But falling prices, better technology, and more favorable regulations are motivating grid operators to adopt storage systems and begin to see how they can increase resilience in the power grid.
Between 2021 and 2024, the U.S. increased its battery capacity fivefold, adding 12.3 gigawatts of storage last year. Rising demand for even small rechargeable devices has encouraged innovation, making lithium ion batteries cheaper and more effective. At least 11 states have procurement targets, requiring utilities to meet a certain level of storage capacity.
Storage allows more use of solar and wind energy, systems that produce power only during certain conditions. Last year, when a heat wave caused a surge in electricity demand in Texas, the state’s grid operator kept electricity flowing by drawing on batteries.
The largest power storage facility in the world opened last year in California. It can store nearly 3.3 gigawatt-hours – enough to power 110,000 homes for a day.
Source: Vox
New regulations aim to ban the sale in EU markets of products linked to forced labor
In 2022, the International Labour Organization estimated that some 17.3 million people worldwide are victims of forced labor in the private sector, an 8% increase since 2016.
The new regulations, which apply to all companies that conduct business in the EU, allow either national regulators or the European Commission to investigate companies whose supply chains are believed to use forced labor at any point in production. If an investigation finds that products are made with forced labor, the company is given time to address the problem before its products are banned from European markets.
A year ago, the EU passed a related regulation that requires large firms to more closely examine their supply chains to prevent human rights abuses, but it excluded 99% of EU-based companies, according to Human Rights Watch. The new law applies in full force to all companies that conduct business in the EU as of mid-December 2027.
Sources: Human Rights Watch, European Union
In South Africa, seeds buried for more than a century can help regenerate their unique ecosystem
In Cape Town’s Tokai Park, scientists were surprised that fynbos seeds, as old as 130 years, could germinate after an accidental fire at a pine plantation. Fynbos is a community of plants in a region of more than 6,000 species that are found nowhere else, the greatest concentration of nontropical higher plant species in the world.
The underground seed banks are natural storage areas where the seeds are dormant until triggered by fire. Urbanization and invasive trees, particularly pine, wattle, and eucalyptus, brought from Europe in the 1800s, have shrunk fynbos habitats.
Scientists say that if remaining pine plantations are cleared and prescribed burns are held, fynbos can be restored with little of the effort and cost associated with vegetation that does not make its own seed banks.
Source: The Conversation
Two new systems address deforestation in Indonesia from the ground up
Monitoring that relies on satellite images doesn’t always indicate whether tree loss is due to illegal activity. Instead, the platform Ground-truthed.id equips Indigenous people and local communities with a tool to anonymously report violations, supplemented by geolocation data. Kaoem Telapak, the nonprofit behind the initiative, verifies and publishes the reports, helping authorities to act quickly and prevent long-term environmental damage.
An online dashboard in development will verify where commodities come from before they’re exported.
At the end of this year, the European Union will require that imports of seven commodities and some derived products come from places that were not deforested or degraded. Indonesia is a major exporter of five of the commodities – palm oil, timber, coffee, cocoa, and rubber.
Indonesia shares with Papua New Guinea the largest rainforest in Asia and the third-largest in the world.
Source: Mongabay
