Philippa Kaur

Domestic cats (Felis catus) are beloved companions for many people, but they are also invasive predators that have been linked to numerous birds, mammals and reptiles going extinct. Their eating habits are of interest to ecologists, to determine the risk these cats pose to endangered species. Writing in Nature Communications, Lepczyk et al. report a global assessment of the diet of free-ranging domestic cats — and find that they are not picky eaters (C. A. Lepczyk et al. Nature Commun. 14, 7809; 2023).
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests. More

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Imagine reconstructing Earth’s biodiversity using only emojis. Based on these digital pictograms, one would think that giant pandas, wolves, frogs and other vertebrates were the most common forms of life. Meanwhile, the true rulers of the planet by sheer numbers of individuals — unicellular life forms — are represented by just a single emoji.

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“Reducing the consumption of animal products in high-consuming countries would deliver the biggest results in the short term,” says food systems researcher Helen Harwatt.Credit: Vladimir Popovich/Alamy

Last week at the start of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, 134 countries signed a declaration pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from processes related to producing and consuming food.It’s the first time in nearly three decades of climate summits, which were established to set the world’s direction in tackling climate change, that the importance of food systems has been recognized in this way. Also, for the first time, on 10 December, COP28 will dedicate a day to discussing ways to reduce emissions from food and agriculture.Many have welcomed the moves. “It’s great to finally have food on the COP menu,” says Clement Metivier, a climate and biodiversity policy expert at the World Wildlife Fund for Nature in the UK, who is attending COP28. “There is really a growing momentum around food systems transformation to tackle both the biodiversity and climate crisis.” But equally, researchers say not enough is being done to reduce emissions in one of the world’s biggest, largely untackled sources – and that will involve some tough political decisions.Making food systems more sustainable is crucial to keeping alive the dream of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, agreed at COP21 in Paris in 2015. Getting food from farm to food-table accounts for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 study by Monica Crippa and Adrian Leap of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. The researchers estimated that in 2015, some 70% of these emissions came just from the practice of doing agriculture and land-use changes – such as cutting down trees to clear land for crops.There is also obvious scope to reduce some of these impacts, for example by limiting the use of fossil-fuel-hungry fertilizers, or by reducing food waste. Roughly half of food systems emissions come from food that is lost in the supply chain – before reaching the consumer – or wasted, according to a study published in March in Nature Food from Xunchang Fei based at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues. Halving food loss and waste could remove around one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions from the food system, the team has estimated.The declaration signed on 1 December means nations will need to include food and agriculture in their next round of emissions reduction plans – known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – that represent their commitment to helping meet the Paris goal. But its initial impact looks likely to be limited.The declaration is not legally binding. It also fails to mention the role of fossil fuels in food systems such as that used to transport food as well as in powering farm machinery and refrigeration. Food systems, moreover, are not mentioned in the draft text that all nations must agree when COP28 ends on 11 December. “It was a glaring omission,” says Metivier, who hopes that this will be rectified in the final version.“It’s at least a commitment at the highest level, but there’s still not much specificity in terms of what actually needs to be done,” says biodiversity and agriculture researcher Lim Li Ching at the Third World Network, a non-governmental organization based in Penang, Malaysia. “We need an inclusion of food systems and phasing out of fossil fuels to be built into the revision of national climate commitments,” she says.Cutting food carbon …Perhaps the most contentious aspect of reducing food-related emissions is connected with what we eat. Meat, dairy and other animal products generate more emissions than other food types such as fruit and vegetables. In China, for example, halving meat consumption could reduce global food system emissions by nearly one-quarter if the calories were replaced by other food types, according to the authors of the Nature Food study.“Reducing the consumption of animal products in high-consuming countries would deliver the biggest results in the short term and should be the priority,” says food systems researcher Helen Harwatt at Chatham House, an international-affairs think tank in London. Part of this transition should involve financially supporting countries that heavily rely on livestock for development, such as India and countries in Africa, she adds. Currently just 4% of global climate finance goes towards food systems, according to an analysis from the Climate Policy Initiative think tank…. is not straightforwardBut changing how people eat on a global scale is complex. It is firstly “political”, says Patty Fong, a programme director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a group of philanthropic foundations, who is also attending COP28: complex political decisions are required to achieve these goals.Often, governments argue that safe and nutritious food that also achieves economic growth means prioritizing industrial-scale food production. Such an approach, however, can give less emphasis to environmental impacts, says biodiversity and agriculture researcher Li Ching of the Third World Network.Li Ching also points out that large corporations – including fossil fuel companies — have good access to governments and can therefore press these arguments, compared with small-scale farmers or Indigenous people who are at the frontline of climate impacts, but have comparatively less influence on policymakers.There is also a nutritional dimension, says Saswati Bora, an executive with The Nature Conservancy, a conservation organization based in New York city, who is also attending COP28. While people in high income countries might be able to cut down on meat consumption, that is not so straightforward in low-and-middle-income nations where meat is a rare source of protein for many, but where consumption is increasing.Highlighting this hurdle, in a 2019 study, a group of 37 researchers from 16 countries— the EAT–Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health crafted a diet – consisting mainly of plant-based foods with a small amount of meat or fish. But other researchers questioned whether the diet would provide enough nutrition for people in low-income settings.Such questions of global equity are not the least reason why global recommendations on how to reduce food-related emissions have so far not been on the menu – and could be difficult for many to swallow. More

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Researchers have developed a way to forecast when whales and turtles are likely to get entangled in fishing gear — up to one year in advance. The technique, published in Nature Communications1 on 5 December, could protect animals and benefit fisheries.Researchers have previously developed ways to predict how heatwaves will affect the distribution of wild fish and the productivity of fish farms. But few forecasting tools have focused on protecting marine animals from hazardous human activities such as fishing.“There’s a lot of power in a forecast approach,” says marine ecologist Stephanie Brodie, at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Brisbane, Australia. The technique that Brodie and her colleagues developed can help both conservationists and those trying to make fisheries sustainable, she says. It is also more accessible to researchers than previous methods.Ecological forecasting models can predict where marine animals are likely to be on the basis of sea-surface temperatures. Previous tools often required researchers to infer sea temperatures of a specific region from lower-resolution global data, which is a complex process that requires powerful computers, says Brodie.Rope injuriesInstead, Brodie and her team have shown that they can use widely available, low-resolution, global forecasts of sea-surface temperature to accurately predict when whales are likely to swim near the shore off the coast of California, where a local fishery lays down crabbing pots on the seabed from around November to June. Ropes extending upwards from these pots pose a risk to the animals.“That rope gear is what whales can get entangled in,” says Brodie. This can cause rubbing injuries on their fins, mouth or tail, preventing them from diving or feeding. It can sometimes even kill them, she says.To avoid this, the local crab fishery uses the past month of sea-surface temperatures in the region to make decisions on whether crabbing can go ahead, on the basis of whether a current of cold, nutrient-rich water — which attracts whales — has been compressed towards the shore.This phenomenon is quantified using a metric called the Habitat Compression Index (HCI). When this value falls below a certain threshold, whales are likely to move inshore, and so fishers are recommended to suspend crabbing. But this leaves little time for the fishers to adapt to the economic impacts of fishing closures, says Brodie.The team found that using global temperature forecasts to calculate monthly HCI — over the course of a 33-month heatwave during 2014 to 2016 — allowed them to accurately forecast when the whale’s habitat was compressed towards the shore, up to 11.5 months in advance.Protecting turtlesThe researchers also studied another local fishery that deploys floating fishing nets. It uses the past six months of unusual sea-surface temperatures to decide whether loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) are at high risk of getting caught in nets. Turtles tend to track warmer waters, so if the waters where people fish are warmer, the fishery might have to close, says Brodie. “When turtles get caught in those nets it could strangle them, or stop them being able to move and feed,” says Brodie.The team found that they could use forecasts for global sea-surface temperatures to accurately predict when closures were necessary to protect turtles during the 2014–16 heatwave, also up to 11.5 months in advance.“These results raise optimism for reliable ecological forecasts in regions for which high-resolution local ocean models may not be available,” says Kathy Mills, a marine ecologist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. “As ocean resource users, managers and communities make decisions, they need relevant, timely and reliable information,” especially amid climate change and increasingly frequent marine heatwaves, she adds. More

I work with the Pessamit band of the Innu First Nation in Nitassinan, the traditional land of the Innu Indigenous people. This is a vast boreal forest region in Canada, covering some 130,000 square kilometres northeast of Quebec City. It’s a fairly open landscape dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana), with some balsam fir (Abies balsamea). It’s not uncommon to find forests that are 300 years old here.I study the southern portion of these forests, an area of roughly 30,000 square kilometres, to see how their structure and diversity change over time and respond to disturbance. I did this first as a graduate student, and then as a forest ecologist for the federal government. Now, I’m employed by the Pessamit community.Logging started here in the 1920s and shot up in the 1970s; now, about one million cubic metres of logs, such as those pictured here, are cut each year. Logging has completely changed the age structure of the forest. Large tracts of old growth have declined from about 40% of the landscape 30 years ago, to less than 20% today.Moose enter the logged areas, where they feed on new deciduous growth. Wolves follow the moose, travelling along logging roads, and prey on caribou.I’m not against logging, but I’m against the speed with which it’s done here. Loggers have been moving from south to north, and in five to ten years they’ll reach the commercial-logging boundary. Then they’ll go back south and start again. Sustainable forest management means maintaining the species that are associated with these forests. And that’s not what is happening.Many groups are pushing for an Indigenous-led conservation area. The Innu are also interested in the possibility of carbon credits. They want to find ways to manage the forest, while continuing their cultural practices. I’m keen to contribute to something that I believe in. I feel that the Innu and I share the same ecological values. More

RESEARCH BRIEFINGS
29 November 2023

Exposure to the complex mix of pesticides used in agriculture in Europe significantly reduces bumblebees’ health. This suggests that current risk-assessment processes, in which pesticides are assessed separately, are not fit for purpose. Continuous monitoring is needed to quantify the real-world effects of pesticides on pollinator health. More

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