Feed aggregator

A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | One-hit blunder: America 250 musicians are dropping like flies…

Source

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Irrefutable proof of what Spanish researchers and wildlife experts had long suspected, and long feared, finally presented itself in the form of a grainy video that was shot on a minuscule island in the Balearics in April 2024.

Ribboning its way through the turquoise waters that separate the east coast of Ibiza from the islet of Santa Eulària 450 meters away, came a pale and solitary horseshoe whip snake in search of new territory and fresh sustenance.

The arrival of the snake on Santa Eulària, recorded by a local wildlife ranger, confirmed that the insatiable invader from the Spanish mainland—which has almost wiped out Ibiza’s endemic population of dazzlingly colored wall lizards—had opened up a new front.

“They control insect populations—including agricultural pests—so that all changes when they disappear.”

“There’d been increasing anecdotal evidence from fishermen and tourists who’d seen the snakes swimming, so we’d thought it was happening very often,” said Oriol Lapiedra, a biologist at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) in Catalonia. “But this was the first proper [evidence] we’d had of a snake swimming from Ibiza to the islet.”

The horseshoe whip snake, a nonvenomous reptile found across southern and eastern Spain, has become an existential threat to the lizards since it began appearing on the island two decades ago.

Its rapid colonization has been attributed to the fashion among wealthy property owners in Ibiza for importing ancient olive trees from mainland Spain to adorn the grounds of their homes. Unbeknown to them, however, the trees—replete with their nooks and hollows—have provided ideal travel berths for hibernating snakes and snake eggs.

Twenty years after it arrived, Hemorrhois hippocrepis is present across at least 90 percent of the island and has developed a taste for the unsuspecting lizards, whose familiar colors and outlines grace much of Ibiza’s tourist tat, from T-shirts and fridge magnets to towels and mugs.

These days, though, items of kitsch lizard merchandise may outnumber the real population. In October 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved the Ibiza wall lizard (Podarcis pityusensis) up its extinction red list from “near threatened” to “endangered.”

Treasured and beloved as the lizards are for their aesthetic appeal and tame natures, they are also a keystone species that plays a vital role in maintaining the region’s ecosystems.

“They control insect populations—including agricultural pests—so that all changes when they disappear,” said Lapiedra. “But they also pollinate flowers and disperse seeds.”

What is more, the lizards are something of an evolutionary wonder: Each of the dozens of islands and islets that make up the Pityusic Islands has a different population whose distinct colorations include green, blue, black, brown, gray, and orange.

No one knows how many invasive snakes there are in Ibiza. According to the Balearic regional government, which is working with CREAF and other groups to protect the lizards, more than 3,500 horseshoe whip snakes were captured on the island last year alone, and more than 16,000 have been culled since 2016. Even so, forecasts suggest they will be found across 100 percent of the island by the end of 2027.

“Each, or most, of the islets have these unique lineages that are being completely lost to science.”

On the mainland, the snakes tend to be skinny creatures that seldom exceed lengths of 1.8 meters. But they are thriving to such an extent on Ibiza that specimens have been found that are more than 2 meters long and weigh 2.5 times as much as their peninsular peers. As Lapiedra put it: “We’ve found animals that are as thick as my wrist.”

The biologist and his colleagues, whose research was published recently in the journal Ecology, believe increased competition for food among the snakes on Ibiza may have driven them toward the islets.

While the hope is that dwindling food sources may eventually bring down the number of snakes, the damage has already been done. Researchers observed 72 lizards on Santa Eulària in 2016 and just three in 2023. Today, the unique lizard populations of 10 islets—including Santa Eulària—have become extinct, taking with them thousands of years of unique evolution. Meanwhile, horseshoe whip snakes have been found on Ibiza’s neighboring island of Formentera.

In an effort to safeguard the species, a “Noah’s ark” captive breeding program involving lizards from eight populations was set up at Barcelona zoo last year and is doing well. But the small size of the islets, combined with the voracity of the snakes, leaves little room for optimism and still less for complacency.

Lapiedra likens the situation to that of the Pacific island of Guam, where the arrival of the brown tree snake on US military ships 80 years ago led to the extirpation of 10 of the 12 native forest bird species. “The only difference is that the snakes in Guam aren’t reported to swim,” he added. “So there are islands [around] Guam that still have the species that Guam used to have.”

And yet, as Lapiedra pointed out, all is not lost on Ibiza. In an ironic twist for a species that has been thrust into extinction’s fangs by the human compulsion to order and reorder the landscape, the safest lizard populations in Ibiza are now those in urban areas.

“The lizards are still present in the largest cities in Ibiza and the populations are fine,” he said. “Basically what’s happening is that in the urban areas, the snakes get run over and people there also kill them because they don’t like snakes. So for now, some of these urban areas have good lizard populations.”

But for Lapiedra, his colleagues and people across Ibiza, the rapid disappearance of the lizards is both an ecological and a cultural disaster.

“Each, or most, of the islets have these unique lineages that are being completely lost to science and to humanity right now,” he said. “So this is a tragedy—it’s like a fire in an old church.”

Oxford University students seeking work will be dismayed to learn that crooks have breached a second external platform provider for the university in as many months. The institution’s CareerConnect platform, provided by Group GTI, was the target of the intrusion, which exposed users’ full names and email addresses. Those who don’t use single sign-on (SSO) had their encrypted passwords leaked, too. CareerConnect forms part of Oxford University’s career services department, supporting students and alumni to find work opportunities. It is available to students, alumni, research staff, and recruiters. The same underlying technology powering the platform, which GTI markets as TargetConnect, is used by other universities in the UK and overseas, according to its website. OxfordUni said the May 28 attack was enabled by a “security vulnerability,” which has since been fixed. GTI has not publicly disclosed the security snafu itself, and did not respond to our requests for more information. The London-based tech company has not confirmed how many individuals were affected by the break-in, nor whether any data was stolen. It has also not explicitly stated which types of individuals were affected, although Oxford’s announcement listed “alumni, research staff, and employer users” as those who had their passwords forcibly reset following the attack. “There is no evidence that course information, uploaded files, appointment information, or financial information were involved in this incident,” the announcement went on to say. “GTI has stated this breach appeared to be focused on gathering credentials which may lead to phishing attempts.” The university did not list current students as among those affected, but told student newspaper Cherwell that names and email addresses might be compromised, and said the attack was entirely separate from the one which hit Instructure’s Canvas last month. Twice bitten Oxford University was just one of the circa 8,800 educational institutions affected by the mega breach at Canvas, a separate platform that’s also relied upon by schools, colleges, and universities. Seemingly timed by ShinyHunters to coincide with exam season, students across multiple countries were left without access to learning materials, tests, and grades at a pivotal time of the year. The scale of the attack was vast, affecting the usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information, and messages of up to 275 million students, teachers, and staff. The severity of the situation, coupled with the inopportune timing, led to Instructure “reaching an agreement” with ShinyHunters to prevent the criminal gang from leaking all the data online. In cyberese, this implies Instructure paid the criminals an extortion fee in exchange for their word that they would delete the stolen data. "We received digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs)," Instructure said, adding "We have been informed that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise." ®

Every week, a group of men in their late 60s meets at the Corner Cafe in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. One important reason for these meetups is to discuss what’s going on in their community. 

jQuery(document).ready(function(){prx("https:\/\/play.prx.org\/e?ge=prx_149_87c2c4d2-14d5-4ed4-afbc-c282b76a8d37&uf=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.revealradio.org%2Frevealpodcast", "prx-1", "embed")});Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Local news has virtually dried up in their rural county, as well as neighboring counties, and some residents say they’re being left in the dark and don’t feel equipped to make informed decisions.

“I’m not gonna vote if I can’t get the information,” says Penny Abernathy.

Like in much of the country, roughly two-thirds of North Carolina’s counties are considered news deserts. And the lack of local journalism isn’t just making it harder for people to stay informed; it’s exacerbating a crisis of trust in the news media. 

This week on Reveal, we partner with the podcast Scene on Radio and its hosts John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika to understand how American journalism got here and what can be done to repair the cracked foundation of the Fourth Estate.