Over the past week, news has been overwhelming about #Australian Wildfires, and bad news has been pouring in
The fire, which started in September 2019, is still burning for four months today. The bad effects caused by the fire made Bajie feel uneasy when she saw it. According to the latest statistics, the area of wildfires in Australia exceeds 52,500 square kilometers, which is larger than the land area of Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and other small countries
In the satellite cloud image of Australia, the whole country is like a piece of charcoal that has been burned red
Nearly a third of the entire Australian continent is shrouded in smoke.
The fire has been monitored to have emitted about 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere, exceeding the combined annual emissions of the 116 lowest-emitting countries. Melbourne, once with clear air, now has an air pollution index of 706 in some areas, ranking second from the bottom in the world
(The air pollution index is classified as 0-50, 51-100, 101-150, 151-200, 201-250, 251-300 and greater than 300. If the air pollution index is higher than 300, the health of all people will be severely affected)
Even more frightening, nasa says the smog from Australian wildfires will spread around the earth at least once.
The once pure South Pacific region has recently been detected with ultra-high concentrations of carbon monoxide, which originated from the fires in Australia. In addition, countries such as New Zealand are also being affected by the smoke of fires.
And in this mountain fire that shocked the world, the most innocent are the animals that lost their lives in this disaster
According to a report released by the University of Sydney, 1 billion animals across Australia have been affected by fires, and at least 500 million animals have been killed in fires.
The carcasses of various animals, like coke, are scattered throughout the forest after the fire has swept through. The charred body is unbearable to look at
Australia's national treasure, the koala, died more than 20,000 in the fire, so much so that it was declared functionally extinct. (Listed as an endangered animal in some areas)
We all know that koalas are slow-moving animals, and it is precisely because of their gentle and cute personalities that they are so loved by humans. When in danger, they climb into the canopy, curl up into a ball to protect themselves, and wait for the danger to pass. But in such a forest fire, they who do not know how to escape can only wait helplessly for death.
The smoke from the fire made the koala almost lose his vision, completely disoriented, and finally burned alive...
Not only the precious koala, but also the endangered cockatoo, may also have gone extinct in this fire. Wildfires produced large amounts of ash and sediment, which flowed into the Mackyrie River in New South Wales with heavy rains, causing thousands of fish to die...
These deaths could have been avoided.
Why didn't it take four months to extinguish the wildfire and let it get worse? Why wait until hundreds of millions of animals have already lost their lives before you think of rescuing them?
When the mountain fire first occurred, the Australian prime minister was still on a leisurely vacation in Hawaii; the Australian government spent 31 million yuan to hold a New Year's Eve fireworks display, and the fire was ignored... After the investigation, what is even more chilling is that the fire is not all natural disasters, but also man-made disasters
"180 people are suspected of arson, 24 are suspected of deliberate arson, 53 are suspected of failing to comply with the fire ban, and 47 are suspected of discarding lit cigarettes or matches on the ground". In the final analysis, it is the contempt and selfish desires of human beings that ignited this "fire of the century"
And how innocent are the animals buried in them?
Humans have always been accustomed to plundering, but rarely giving. We use and dominate the vast majority of natural resources, greedy and unrestrained; we destroy the habitats on which animals depend for our rapid economic development; we poach and kill for our own selfish desires, unbridled poaching, and even lead to the extinction of many species...
African elephants are poached
Some of us also use "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" as a pretext to excuse our cruelty and greed.
In 2019, Netflix partnered with the BBC to produce a nature documentary about Earth's animals, Our Planet.
In eight episodes, from the vast ice sheet to the depths of the ocean, from the distant forest to the Gobi Desert, the documentary shows the animals that strive for survival in the magnificent mysterious and dangerous natural world.
In Indonesia, the swampy forests of northern Sumatra are inhabited by one of our closest ancestors, the orangutans.
Orangutans have even learned how to make tools out of sticks, and they are the only animals in the world to be found to have mastered this skill.
However, this great and miraculous species, due to the destruction of its habitat, is shrinking at a rate of 100 per week. The generation seen in the documentary may be the last wild orangutan on earth. Over the past 40 years, the pristine lowland jungles on which orangutans depend have been surprisingly reduced by 75 percent due to the effects of human activities.
Globally, we are losing tropical forests at a rate of about 15 million hectares per year. Remember the #Amazon Rainforest Fire that happened not so long ago?
In August 2019, a fire filled the former "lungs of the earth" with smoke, and the "green heart" was branded with a huge black mark.
The same untimely fire fighting and the contemptuous attitude made the fire last for a month, and the Amazon rainforest was severely damaged. Since 2019, the number of fires in the Amazon rainforest has exceeded 72,000, an increase of 83% compared to 2018. As the rainforest disappears, it is the treasure trove of diversity of the planet, and humanity is not only losing the animals that once lived in it, but also changing the global climate.
The northeast coast of Russia is home to the largest colony of walruses on Earth. 100,000 walruses are densely packed all over the coast, narrow, cramped, crowded, but there is no other way.
Their natural home, sea ice, has retreated to the north due to warming. This coast became the closest place to their predation zone. (Human incineration of chemicals such as fossil fuels and petroleum is the main cause of climate warming.)
Every inch of space is packed, and to move forward you have to climb through the compact piles of its kind. Stampedes can occur suddenly, and if you are not careful, you will be trampled to death by your companions.
Walruses that fail to take a place on the coast have to find another habitat. They even go against their habits, dragging a ton of body and climbing an 80-meter-high cliff just to find a place to rest.
When hungry, they return to the sea. However, the walrus's eyesight is extremely poor after it comes out of the water, so the most cruel scene in the documentary appears...
Hundreds of walruses, falling from the heights they shouldn't have climbed, one after another, rolled into the pile of corpses of the same kind
The survival of walruses is being changed by the impact of human activities. They are the first victims of climate change and are bearing the consequences.
Unbridled poaching by humans is another major reason for the sharp decline in animal populations. Congolese gorillas have cut their population in half over the past 20 years to meet human demand for wild bush meat, and now his population is on the brink of extinction.
Blue whales, once found in more than 300,000 people in the world, were hunted mercilessly by humans in the last century, and today only a few thousand survive worldwide.
Although the Global Convention against Whaling entered into force in 1986, Japan continues to hunt whales in large numbers to this day. Siberian tigers, poached to make the number of surviving less than 600 ...
Over the past 50 years, global wildlife populations have declined by an average of 60% due to the greenhouse effect caused by human activities, global warming, and poaching.
For the first time in human history, the stability of nature is no longer taken for granted. Fortunately, as long as there is a chance, our planet's forests and oceans still have incredible resilience.
For example, the island of Raja Ampat in Southeast Asia, which was once occupied by shark hunting groups for a long time, conducted unregulated fishing here, so that sharks and other large fish species no longer exist here.
But today, the lagoon is listed as a marine protected area by humans and is back a sanctuary for baby sharks
The careful care of human beings has made the creatures of this sea more diverse again
Understanding how nature works, and how humans can help it, has never been more important.
One might think that all of this is too far away from us, after all, our daily lives are still running in an orderly manner.
But don't forget that having higher intelligence, such as human beings, is always a link in the biological chain. The butterfly effect is a hurricane that we will one day have to face.
As the line from The Wandering Earth goes, "Initially, no one cared about this catastrophe, it was just a wildfire, a drought, the extinction of a species, the disappearance of a city, until the catastrophe was relevant to everyone." ”