Mourning the 21 species declared extinct in 2023

The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a small black and yellow bird with glossy feathers and a haunting song, was the last surviving member of the Hawaiian honeyeaters. This year, it was officially declared extinct.

The ōʻō was one of 21 species that the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed from the endangered species list in 2023 because they had vanished from the wild. Gone is the little Mariana fruit bat – also known as the Guam flying fox – and the bridled white-eye, which was once one of the most common birds on that island. So too, are the Scioto madtom, a diminutive, whiskered catfish that lived in Ohio, and the Bachman’s warbler, which summered in the US south and wintered in Cuba. Eight freshwater mussels in the south-east are officially extinct, as are eight Hawaiian birds.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/us-animals-birds-extinct-this-year

Who does better at PAs — governments or communities? The answer depends, study says

What works better: protected areas managed by the state, or areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities? More than 50 different researchers came together to try to settle this debate. But their review of the scientific literature, published recently in Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, concluded with what some might find to be an unsatisfactory answer: what works is super local, and context dependent.

“In some ways, it’s a rather discouraging finding because if conservation effectiveness becomes so locally specific and so context dependent, it limits the purview of grand global statements,” says Dan Brockington, an anthropologist at the University of Sheffield, U.K., and a corresponding author of the study. “On the other hand, that’s an incredibly empowering finding for national, regional, and local conservation groups because it basically says, look, we do know what’s best about our context.”

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/who-protects-nature-better-the-state-or-communities-its-complicated/

2023 almost certainly hottest recorded year ever, and 2024 could top it

With climate change and an incipient El Niño driving up temperatures, 2024 is likely to eclipse 2023 as the hottest year ever, meteorologists project.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first 10 months of this year measured 1.40 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial baseline, a product of both human-caused warming and, to a lesser extent, the onset of El Niño, when warm waters pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The previous hottest year, in 2016, also coincided with an El Niño.

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2024-hottest-year