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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts by Sharon Guynup.
  • Microplastics are Sickening and Killing Wildlife, Disrupting Earth Systems

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 26, 2024  //  By Sharon Guynup

    This article, by Sharon Guynup, originally appeared on Mongabay.

    Bottlenose dolphins leapt and torpedoed through the shallow turquoise waters off Florida’s Sarasota Bay. Then, a research team moved in, quickly corralling the small pod in a large net.

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  • The New Arctic: Amid Record Heat, Ecosystems Morph and Wildlife Struggle

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    Guest Contributor  //  March 1, 2024  //  By Sharon Guynup

    This article, by Sharon Guynup, originally appeared on Mongabay.

    Walruses have traversed the Arctic for millennia, gregarious pinnipeds that rest en masse on drifting pack ice, diving to feed on crabs, clams and other seafloor delicacies. Icy platforms also serve as safe birthing and nursery grounds. But as the far north rapidly warms and sea ice disappears, some herds now huddle on overcrowded shorelines, with deadly consequences for young calves: Because more disturbances occur on shore than at sea, calves are regularly trampled during panicked stampedes by the 1-ton-plus adults.

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  • PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Harming Wildlife the World Over: Study

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    Guest Contributor  //  October 9, 2023  //  By Sharon Guynup
    Hooded,Seal,On,Sea,Ice,And,Dramatic,Landscape,Of,Davy

    This article, by Sharon Guynup, originally appeared on Mongabay.

    In Hawaii and elsewhere in the North Pacific, few hatchlings are emerging from the nests of endangered hawksbill and green sea turtles. In Wisconsin, some tree swallows have failed to produce offspring. In California, infectious diseases are now more common in southern sea otters. In Michigan, bluegills are swimming slower. In the Arctic, some hooded seals and their pups have thyroid problems. And in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, American alligators have been found with lesions and unhealed, infected wounds.

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  • Can the Growing Trans-Pacific Wildlife Trade Be Stopped?

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    Guest Contributor  //  March 3, 2023  //  By Sharon Guynup

    MM8421 - Iquitos Peru  Markets and Police - Jaguar skins, teeth and claws for sale. Wildlife Authority with seized skins Man with skin he bought showing off for his neighbors Bora People in Amazon with skin

    Today’s celebration of World Wildlife Day is a perfect time to focus greater attention on the rapidly growing Latin America-to-Asia wildlife trade. It now has reached crisis proportions, with both illegal and legal shipments rising in tandem with China’s economic investment in the region.

    Experts link this mushrooming trans-Pacific animal trade to large-scale development projects by Chinese companies. Over the past 15 years, two state-owned Chinese banks have loaned more than $140 billion for infrastructure, road, railway and mining projects in Latin America.

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  • Sharon Guynup, Mongabay

    Preventing the Next Pandemic is Vastly Cheaper Than Reacting to It: Study

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    Covid-19  //  Guest Contributor  //  February 11, 2022  //  By Sharon Guynup
    Rio,De,Janeiro,(brazil),april,06,2020:,Funeral,Of,Victim,Of,The,Covid-19,,New

    This article, by Sharon Guynup, originally appeared on Mongabay.

    As the novel COVID-19 coronavirus swept the planet in early 2020, researchers scrambled to find effective treatments and vaccines. Within a year, there was a clarion call from heads of state, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies to create an international “pandemic preparedness and response” treaty. WHO noted that COVID-19 offered “a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe” from zoonotic disease outbreaks.

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  • To Help Save the Planet, Stop Environmental Crime

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    Guest Contributor  //  Uncharted Territory  //  January 6, 2020  //  By Sharon Guynup

    ZakoumaAP_180517_014764-e1578317177856Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have so vastly altered Earth’s systems that we’re now in the midst of what many are calling the Anthropocene Epoch. Human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment, inflicting changes that may persist for millennia.

    We are razing the planet’s last intact wild lands, degrading, deforesting, carving up, and destroying huge swathes of habitat. We’re overfishing and poisoning our rivers and oceans. We continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising CO2 levels and hastening climatic changes that are already affecting all life on Earth.

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  • Pangolins on the Brink as Africa-China Trafficking Persists Unabated

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    China Environment Forum  //  May 24, 2018  //  By Sharon Guynup
    Pangolin

    While the pangolin’s thick overlapping scales protect it from predators such as lions, this animal is an easy mark for illegal wildlife traffickers. Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation, Zimbabwe.

    This article by Sharon Guynup originally appeared on Mongabay.

    Acting on a tip, Nigerian customs operatives raided an apartment in the southwest city of Ikeja in February. Inside, they found some 4,400 pounds of pangolin scales, and 218 ivory tusks—and arrested a Chinese suspect, Ko Sin Ying, who lived there.

    A few months earlier, at the other end of a well-worn trade route, Chinese customs officials made the largest-ever seizure of pangolin scales in the port of Shenzhen. They discovered an “empty” shipping container that had come in from Africa—stuffed with 13 tons of scales. They were packaged in bags that camouflaged their true contents beneath a veneer of charcoal. That haul had killed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 animals, each about as big as a medium-sized dog.

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  • “Journalists Need to Do More to Cover Wildlife and Environmental Crime”

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    Guest Contributor  //  December 14, 2017  //  By Sharon Guynup

    Sharon Guynup, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a National Geographic Explorer, offers her perspective on the role journalists can play in uncovering and combating illegal wildlife trafficking. This piece originally appeared on the Revelator.

    For the past few years, much of my work as a journalist has focused on wildlife and environmental crime. I’ve covered poaching busts and seizures of everything from pangolin scales and big-cat skins to rhino horn, live turtles and songbirds. I’ve reported on the Asian, African and South American markets that sell animals live, dead and in parts, and about the consumers that drive this black-market trade. I’ve written about China, the largest consumer, where many endangered species products are luxury items bought by the wealthiest and most influential as a way to flaunt power and gain prestige. I’ve also explored the trade here in the United States — the world’s second largest consumer. I covered the ubiquitous bird trade in Latin America, where ownership of pet parrots and other birds is so rampant that few realize these animals are endangered, or that it’s against the law to buy or keep them.

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