Habitat

• In light of this fact, the leading Italian wine group chose to focus on packaging and its diverse environmental, technological, and social implications at Habitat, the annual sustainability conference held in Milan on September 28.
• During the event, ARGEA presented both the outcomes of its efforts in this area as well as the ambitious projects in progress.
• At the forefront is "L'Albero della Vite" ("The tree of Vine"), a collaborative project with Gentlebrand and Verallia.
• This initiative introduces a lighter glass bottle for premium sparkling wines, which weighs 100 grams less than the industry average.

• In August 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an advisory about an 11-state outbreak of salmonella bacteria linked to pet turtles.
• Global trade in turtles is big business, and the U.S. is a leading source, destination and transit country.
• I also use the global wildlife trade to teach important ecological concepts and research skills.
• Here’s what we know about trade in turtles and how it threatens their survival.

Life in the slow lane

• Most turtles reach reproductive maturity late in life and have relatively few eggs, not all of which produce successful offspring.
• To put this in context, compare a common female snapping turtle from the northern U.S. with a female white-tailed deer.
• It can take a female turtle her entire life to generate one or two offspring that in turn reach adulthood and replace her in the population.
• Terrapins reside in brackish water zones, where rivers flow into oceans and bays, and feed heavily on snails.

In global demand

• Today, people use turtles as pets; sources of food, jewelry and other curios; and in traditional medicines and religious and cultural practices.
• Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 127 million turtles were exported just from the U.S. between 2002 and 2012.
• There’s no good way to quantify how many native turtles are harvested from the wild.
• Historic demand for sea turtles, diamondback terrapins and snapping turtles as food led to such crashes in populations that management agencies had to regulate their harvesting.
• To curb pressure on wild populations, state agencies are prohibiting or limiting personal collection and possession of native turtles.

Black market turtles

• For example, in 2019 a Pennsylvania man was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $250,000 for trafficking thousands of protected diamondback terrapins.
• Rare species such as wood turtles and Blanding’s turtles, as well as uniquely patterned individual turtles, command top value on the black market.
• Between 1998 and 2021, U.S. enforcement agencies intercepted at least 24,000 protected freshwater turtles and tortoises from 34 native species that were being illegally traded across the U.S.

How to help

To curtail the illegal turtle trade, regulators are working to strengthen regulations and increase enforcement. Private citizens can also help reduce the demand and protect wild turtles. Here are some simple steps:

• MasterBrand, Inc. (NYSE: MBC, the “Company,” or “MasterBrand”), the largest residential cabinet manufacturer in North America, today announced it will be participating in Habitat for Humanity’s 2023 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project and will serve as the project’s exclusive cabinet provider.
• That is why our associates participate in Habitat for Humanity events from coast to coast—and some have done so for more than two decades.
• We are extremely excited to be participating in the 2023 Carter Work Project and supporting Habitat in a more focused way,” said Dave Banyard, MasterBrand President and Chief Executive Officer.
• The Carter Work Project is a marquee event for Habitat for Humanity, a global nonprofit housing organization, and MasterBrand’s partnership will directly support Charlotte families in a meaningful way.

• The remarkably detailed Dabous giraffe rock art petroglyphs are among many ancient petroglyphs featuring giraffes across Africa – a testament to early humans’ fascination with these unique creatures.
• To understand how giraffes are faring across Africa, conservation ecologists like me are studying how they interact with their habitats across vast geographic scales.

Many habitats and challenges

• By our best estimates, there are roughly 117,000 giraffes remaining in the wild, living in 21 African countries.
• For example, in the relatively arid Sahel region of Niger, they live among communal farmers entirely outside of formally protected areas.
• There is no one-size-fits-all approach for protecting giraffe habitats and promoting coexistence with people.

Tracking wide-ranging animals

• Each tracking operation contributes to local studies by telling us something interesting about giraffe behavior.
• To look at these patterns at a larger scale in our recent study, we analyzed GPS tracking data from 148 giraffes, representing all four species from across 10 countries.
• We used environmental data from satellite imagery, linking the giraffes’ locations to the exact conditions that the animals were moving through.
• They traveled faster and covered larger areas when they were moving between resource-rich zones and more heavily developed areas.

Giraffe movements inform conservation

• Conservation strategies will need to account for giraffes’ changing movements as the animals respond to these shifts.
• Conservation groups and governments are increasingly using conservation translocations – capturing wild giraffes and moving them to new habitats – as a tool to reestablish populations in areas where giraffes had previously become extinct.