Equilibrium/Sustainability — Arizonans flee 100-foot ‘wall of fire’

Thousands of people in Flagstaff, Ariz., were forced to flee their homes on Tuesday night as a wildfire with flames up to 100 feet encroached on their neighborhoods.

The Tunnel Fire, which began on Sunday, doubled in size overnight amid heavy winds and was still raging on Wednesday, despite slightly more favorable weather conditions, according to The Associated Press.

The towering flames ripped through some two dozen structures, sending the residents of about 766 homes — as well as 1,000 animals — scrambling to escape what one person described as “a wall of fire,” the AP reported. 

“To see flames several yards away from your property line and to hear the propane tanks bursting in the background, it was very surreal,” another resident, Ali Taranto, told the outlet. 

“Ash falling down. It was crazy,” she added. 

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. Subscribe here.

Severe hunger conditions are threatening the Horn of Africa, which is facing ongoing drought, the U.N. food agency warns. Plus, we’ll look at new evidence that occasional predation from wolves helps keep moose populations healthy. Let’s jump in.

Time running out in Horn of Africa: UN food agency

With major precipitation failing to materialize nearly a month into the Horn of Africa’s rainy season, the number of people suffering from drought-induced hunger could surge from an estimated 14 million to 20 million by the end of the year, the United Nations’ food agency warned. 

The World Food Programme (WFP) said that continuing drought conditions, exacerbated by stagnant and decreasing humanitarian aid, are straining communities in the Horn of Africa — a large peninsular region in East Africa that generally includes Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti as well as parts of Kenya. 

‘Time is fast running out’: This critical situation has been exacerbated by knock-on effects of the war in Ukraine, as food and fuel prices have soared, the WFP noted, adding “time is fast running out for families who are struggling to survive.”

Limited aid, funds: “We know from past experience that acting early to avert a humanitarian catastrophe is vital, yet our ability to launch the response has been limited due to a lack of funding to date,” Michael Dunford, WFP’s regional director for Eastern Africa, said in a Tuesday statement. 

The WFP said that it had last appealed for funding in February, but that less than 4 percent of the total money needed has been raised.  

Somalia is facing a particularly severe risk of famine, while half a million Kenyans are what the WFP described as “one step away from catastrophic levels of hunger.” Meanwhile, malnutrition rates in Ethiopia have surged well above emergency thresholds, according to the WFP. 

Impacts of war in Ukraine: The cost of a food basket has risen by 66 percent and 36 percent in Ethiopia and Somalia, respectively, the agency found.

Both nations rely on wheat from Black Sea basin countries, the WFP noted, adding that some transit routes have seen a surge in shipping costs since the beginning of the year. 

A PUSH FOR MORE RESOURCES

In Ethiopia, the WFP described a situation of widespread crop failure, with over a million livestock deaths and an estimated 7.2 million people waking up hungry every day in the southern and southeastern portions of the country. 

While WFP representatives are on the ground, the program said it requires $239 million over the next six months to respond to the drought in this area. 

Acute food insecurity in Kenya: In Ethiopia’s southern neighbor, Kenya, the number of people in need of assistance had increased fourfold in less than two years, according to the WFP. 
 
Escalating drought conditions have left 3.1 million people acutely food insecure, including half a million individuals who are confronting emergency levels of hunger. 

The WFP said that it requires $42 million over the next six months to nourish the most critically impacted areas in the country’s northern and eastern regions. 

Somalia faces ‘very real risk of famine’: The WFP found that some 6 million Somalis — 40 percent of the country’s population — are facing acute food insecurity, and that the country faces “a very real risk of famine in the coming months if the rains don’t arrive and humanitarian assistance isn’t received.” 

To help bridge these gaps, the WFP said it has been scaling up emergency food and nutrition assistance that will support 3 million people by the middle of this year. However, the organization stressed that it still requires $192 in relief funding over the next six months. 

A different situation from droughts past: While the Horn of Africa also experienced a severe drought in 2016-2017, the WFP explained that catastrophe was avoided during that period through early action. 

This year, however, a critical lack of resources has led to a different situation entirely, the program warned. 

Need for immediate action: “WFP and other humanitarian agencies have been warning the international community since last year that this drought could be disastrous if we didn’t act immediately,” Dunford, the regional director said. 

“But funding has failed to materialize at the scale required,” he added. 

To read the full story, please click here.

Wolves’ success means healthier moose, study finds

Wolves may be more effective than humans at culling moose in a way that improves the overall health of populations — an argument that could bolster calls to maintain their protected status, a new study suggests. 
 
Effective, natural and ethical: Unlike human hunters, the social canines seem to selectively target those suffering from genetic diseases like osteoarthritis, helping to reduce the prevalence of those diseases in the population.  

“Wolves might be an effective, natural and more ethical way of regulating the health of deer and moose populations — as opposed to using culls or recreational hunting to reduce the incidence of diseases or parasites of concern,” Sarah Hoy, one of the lead Michigan Tech researchers involved in the study, said in a statement. 

Selective, practical killing: Hoy’s team found that wolves tended to disproportionately kill older moose as well as younger ones suffering from osteoarthritis, a genetically-linked bone disease marked by reduced joint cartilage.

That behavior makes sense, Hoy said, because “adult moose weigh between 800 and 900 pounds, which is between eight and 10 times as heavy as a wolf.” 

Healthy gene pools: What was more surprising was the possible impact on the moose gene pool. The more of the large herbivores killed by wolves in a given year, the lower the rate of osteoarthritis in the surviving population, the scientists found. 

A positive cascade: The study builds on other evidence about the role of wolves on keeping landscapes in equilibrium. 

In Yellowstone National Park, for example — where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 after their eradication in 1926 — the presence of wolves led to a ripple-effect “across the entire structure of the food web that defines biodiversity in the Northern Rockies ecosystem,” according to a 2014 study in PLOS One. 

HOW CARNIVORE KILLS STACK UP

Wednesday’s study comes out against a backdrop of controversy, with recent state and federal numbers showing wolf killings up in Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico and the Yellowstone Valley. 

Two dozen Yellowstone wolves killed: A record number of Yellowstone wolves — 25, or about 20 percent of the national park’s population — were shot by hunters this winter, according to the Associated Press. 

While wolves can’t be hunted in the park, neighboring Montana, Idaho and Wyoming — states with strong constituencies of ranchers —  have amended state laws to allow hunts of wolves who strayed from the park, the AP reported.  

Poaching in Oregon: Twenty-one wolves were killed by humans in Oregon in 2021 — among them eight killed illegally by poison, according to a report by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Department. 

Among the Oregon wolves killed were all five members of the Catherine Pack, according to the Salem Statesman Journal. 

Deaths spur new protections: Between 1998 and 2020, 119 Mexican gray wolves were illegally killed by humans, according to a federal Fish and Wildlife conservation plan released this month. 

In February, a federal judge restored the protections that President Trump had stripped from gray wolves in 2020. That relaxation of the law had allowed a 2021 Wisconsin trophy hunt that killed 200 of the animals. 

Some want the protections removed again: Livestock groups like the National Cattleman’s Beef Association have opposed the restoration of protection to wolves, according to a February statement.  

‘Too important to gun down’: Environmental groups have touted the latest research to emphasize the importance of maintaining wolf populations. 

“This study highlights the ecological importance of wolves, which improve the health of moose by targeting the old and diseased,” Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Equilibrium. 

“Because wolves are so valuable to the health of our wild places, it is tremendously wasteful to allow them to be gunned down by trophy hunters,” Adkins said. 

To read the full story, please click here. 

Wistful Wednesday

New frontiers: Lunar data centers, green hydrogen and cut-price geothermal energy. 

‘Data center in a box’ — on the moon 

• Cloud computing startup Lonestar has joined forces with lunar lander developer Intuitive Machines to launch a proof-of-concept “data center in a box” on the moon next year, Space News reported. Such a center could offer a more secure and eco-friendly alternative to energy-intensive servers on Earth, Lonestar told Space News. 

Repurposing old oil wells for geothermal power 

• A new Department of Energy proposal seeks to cut drilling costs on geothermal energy — which uses the Earth’s heat to boil water to generate electricity — with an $8.4 million program to repurpose old oil and gas wells, Vox’s Recode reported. Such a program would aim to create sources of indefinite renewable energy, according to Vox. 

A key deal for green hydrogen 

• Startup Plug Power just signed a deal to supply Walmart with 20 tons per day of “green hydrogen” — a zero-carbon fuel synthesized from water using solar energy — to power 25,000 forklifts in what could be a pivotal deal for the frontier fuel, Forbes reported.
  
  

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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