Rare wild cattle herded in Cambodia by helicopter
Banteng are a type of wild cattle native to Southeast Asia and listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species.
Their natural habitat is forests and grasslands, but only a few thousand remain in the wild and they are mostly threatened by hunting, logging and industry.
Cambodia has lost around 33 percent of its tree cover since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch, as the government allows firms to clear vast tracts of land -- including in protected zones.
Conservation groups Rising Phoenix and Siem Pang said that 16 banteng found in the wild were herded over three days last week through a "mass-capture funnel trap" onto a truck before being relocated to a wildlife sanctuary.
For the first time, a helicopter was used to guide them through the funnel.
The operation took place in Siem Pang in northeastern Cambodia.
The conservation groups said that the method "opens the way for further such operations to relocate Banteng trapped in isolated forest patches elsewhere in the country".
They added that the banteng will be monitored and protected at the Siem Pang Wildlife Sanctuary.
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Washington Post
21 hours ago
- Washington Post
What if we need spiritual revival, not technology, to address climate change
When I lived in Cambodia, I meditated at a pagoda every week. Sitting on a pillow, the numbness creeping up my legs, I tried to master control of my mind. I never succeeded. But I did discover a dawning awareness of it. Even when not sitting cross-legged in Phnom Penh, that has served me well. At times, I can deeply observe moments or myself, catching what I would have otherwise missed. In journalism, where observing is the job, it has helped me follow the questions wherever they lead, trusting the answer is not what I already (think I) know. For American scholar and activist Joanna Macy, who died at age 96 this month, early encounters with Buddhism changed not only the course of her career, but popular understanding of how we might solve the most urgent environmental issues of our time. Today, her ideas are everywhere: in the language of protesters, in discussions at scientific conferences, even at the Vatican, where Pope Francis wrote his unprecedented 2015 encyclical on the environment, 'Laudato si.' Macy applied Buddhist teachings to help people understand that they were not free-floating individuals, but integral to a much larger whole composed of every living being across time, a network as real as our veins and arteries. She encouraged people to acknowledge their feelings about the destruction of the natural world and turn their anxiety and despair into positive action. 'The key is in not being afraid for the world's suffering,' she told an interviewer. 'Then nothing can stop you.' It was a philosophy she came to call the 'Work That Reconnects,' a practice, and an organization, that thousands around the world have turned to when overwhelmed by seemingly insurmountable problems. Macy's blueprint for climate action holds that we will not be able to solve the climate issue, and its intertwined problems, with technology and policy alone. We need spiritual renewal. It's notable that a dean of the modern environmental movement has come to an identical conclusion. Gus Speth, the co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, as well as the former dean of Yale's School of the Environment (where I studied), once considered biodiversity loss, ecosystems collapse and climate change to be the century's top environmental problems. 'I thought with 30 years of good science, we could address those problems,' Speth recently wrote by email. 'But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy … and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we lawyers and scientists don't know how do that.' Macy's own transformation began in the Himalayan foothills of northwest India. Growing up, she had spent idyllic summers on her grandfather's Western New York farm, an escape from what she remembers as the 'hideously confining' concrete canyons of New York City. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1950, she briefly worked for the CIA in postwar Germany, before moving to India, where she helped resettle Tibetan Buddhist refugees. Her encounters with monks fleeing Chinese persecution, and the Buddhist religion, changed her life forever. Returning to school in the mid-1970s, she earned a PhD in religious studies at 49. Her thesis, said Sean Kelly, a philosophy professor who taught with Macy at the California Institute of Integral Studies, was the first research explicitly connecting Buddhist teachings with Western systems theory. 'She looked at the Earth as a massive system of which we are a part,' Kelly said. 'The Earth is living through us and other species.' Human identity, she argued, can't be separated from the natural world — with profound moral and practical implications for how we live. During the Cold War, as nuclear weapons and waste spread around the world, Macy founded the Nuclear Guardianship project. Beyond opposing nuclear proliferation, she advocated for treating radioactive waste as a moral and cultural commitment that spanned generations. Rather than bury waste in underground tombs, she argued that societies should keep the waste in retrievable, visible storage, so future generations could monitor and maintain the safety of 'humanity's most enduring artifact' — expected to remain lethal for more than 10,000 years. As environmental crises mounted, she saw despair and fear rising in those around her. Rather than escaping into what she called a false and premature peace of mind, she accepted the reality of suffering, even embracing it, as the only way to reclaim the freedom to act. 'That became, actually, perhaps the most pivotal point in … the landscape of my life: That dance with despair,' she said on the public radio show 'On Being' in 2021. 'To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear, and that if we can be fearless, to be with our pain. … It only doesn't change if we refuse to look at it.' Her argument was simple: Pain reveals what we love. The problem, she said, was when people imprisoned themselves in numbness or distraction to avoid the pain. 'Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response,' she wrote in her book 'World as Lover, World as Self.' Her genius, said Monica Mueller, an environmental studies and philosophy professor at Naropa University, was translating this idea into a practice that anyone could pick up in one of her books or 'Work That Reconnects' workshops around the world. People, especially activists, found in her teaching an antidote to burnout and apathy in the face of brutal odds. 'I've seen that time and time again,' Mueller said. 'People come in [to these workshops], literally wailing publicly, and then have something move through them and suddenly they feel they can go on.' As Macy grew older, she appeared to grow more pessimistic about our prospects of avoiding the worst of climate change and the collapse of industrial society — what she called the 'Great Unraveling.' That only redoubled her commitment to love the world and, if some of it was doomed, to give thanks for its beauty at every funeral. Despite this drumbeat of destruction, and her own pain, she could see the first green shoots of a more life-sustaining society taking hold, what she referred to as the 'Great Turning.' But hope didn't fit into her lexicon. The word doesn't exist in Buddhism's teaching, Macy taught, because it implies wishful thinking about the future, divorcing us from the present moment when we possess the power to act. Real hope, she countered, was a simple practice reliant on courage and imagination, not optimism. When people asked if she thought this would be enough, she told them they were asking the wrong question. 'When you're worrying about whether you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares?' she said. 'The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here, and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Ashland SWCD and Farm Bureau to honor conservation leaders Aug. 18
The Ashland Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) and the Ashland County Farm Bureau are teaming for their annual meeting on Aug. 18 at Ashland University's Myers Convocation Center in Ashland. Attendees may to vote in the SWCD supervisor election, provide feedback on local Farm Bureau policy initiatives and recognize conservation and agricultural leaders in the county, according to an announcement. The Ashland SWCD will honor Rooks Brothers Farms as their Cooperator of the Year. 'When we select a cooperator of the year, we look for someone enthusiastic about conservation and making a difference in the long-term sustainability of their farm,' Jane Houin, Ashland SWCD director, said in the announcement. 'The Rooks family are long-term advocates for conservation-focused agriculture, from being long-term participants in our Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District cover crop program to being one of the first farms to jump on board the new H2Ohio expansion into Ashland County.' Houin said Bob Rooks went to extraordinary measures to ensure the family farm could take advantage of voluntary conservation opportunities, including completing enrollment from a hospital bed. More awards to be presented John Jolliff will be recognized as the district's 2025 Horizon Award winner. The award honors a long-time pioneer and advocate for conservation in Ashland County. 'For decades, woodland owners in Ashland and surrounding counties have been able to rely on the expertise, advice, and input of Ohio Department of Natural Resources Service Forester John Jolliff,' Houin said. 'John has shared his knowledge, wisdom and experience with landowners to help make a difference in the health and long-term sustainability of local woodlands, and the fact that he is an Ashland County resident just makes that even sweeter.' Tim and Paula Lavey will be honored as the district's 2025 Volunteers of the Year. 'One of the first programs our board planned in 2021 as they looked to reinvest and revitalize the Hazel Willis woods was a certified volunteer naturalist program, and the Laveys were participants in that first class,' Houin said. 'Since that time, they have been tireless volunteers for our district, from serving as speakers at Conservation Chats to helping to lead invasive plant removal projects at the Hazel Willis woods. Our district just could not find two better advocates for the voluntary conservation our district is built upon.' Voting for SWCD supervisor now underway Meeting attendees can vote in the annual Ashland SWCD supervisor election. All landowners and residents 18 years and older within Ashland County are eligible to vote in the election, which determines the board of supervisors to set the direction and priorities for Ashland SWCD. Voting will take place through Aug. 22 at the Ashland SWCD office at 100 Cottage St., in addition to at the annual meeting on Aug. 18. Voting is also available through absentee ballot. Supervisors are elected to a three-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2026. Candidates on this year's ballot are Valerie Hall, Kent McGovern and Justin Ringler. For more information on how to vote in the election, contact the Ashland SWCD office at 419-281-7645. Registration for the meeting is $5 per person and includes dinner. Registrations must be received by Aug. 10 by calling the Ashland SWCD office at 419-281-7645. This story was created by Jane Imbody, jimbody@ with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Ashland SWCD and Farm Bureau annual meeting set for Aug. 18 Solve the daily Crossword


New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Confiscated Corals Get a New Life at the Aquarium
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll find out what happened to an unusual shipment that was seized after it arrived at Kennedy International Airport. Aaron Brett was busy with a renovation project in his apartment when his cellphone rang. The way he remembers the call, his boss began by saying 'something along the lines of, 'Sorry that I'm calling on your day off.'' Then his boss said that a shipment was coming in — a big shipment, 11 boxes that had been confiscated after they were unloaded at Kennedy International Airport. Brett said he was on his way. To Brett and his colleagues at the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium, the boxes were significant, though they contained nothing as tantalizing as the cash and jewelry from the 1978 Lufthansa heist at J.F.K. that was retold in the movie 'Goodfellas.' These boxes held corals, sea creatures that were being imported, probably to be sold in pet shops. Camilla Piechocki, an aquarist who works with Brett, said some looked like small, colorful baseballs. 'Red, pink, green and orange,' she said. Others were mere fragments no more than two inches long. Brett is the coral expert at the aquarium, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had turned to for help after the corals were confiscated. The agency wanted the aquarium to take in the corals, some 200 specimens that Brett said had apparently been shipped from Indonesia. The aquarium said they had been seized because they were in violation of a multilateral treaty that protects at-risk species and also of the federal Endangered Species Act. A spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service said by email that the import company that had arranged the shipment abandoned the corals after they were seized. By the time they got to the aquarium, the corals had already spent nearly a week in less-than-ideal conditions. Each of the corals in each box was in a plastic bag filled with water that by then was less than clean. The aquarium says that corals — which, as reef-building invertebrates, are animals, not plants — are important because they account for about 25 percent of marine life. They also account for an increasing share of illegal animal seizures. Traffickers in places like Australia, Fiji and Indonesia pry them from reefs with hammers and chisels. Two years ago, Moody's Analytics put the cost of wildlife trafficking at $7 billion to $23 billion. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have said that the United States is the primary market for corals, and the agency ran a multiyear undercover operation in California to crack down on what it called 'the prolific smuggling of hard corals from Southeast Asia.' But corals can also be farmed and transplanted onto struggling reefs. Brett said the corals that the aquarium received appeared to have come from a mariculture nursery. When they arrived, Brett and his colleagues went to work fast, but not too fast. They removed the corals from their transport bags and began what are known as reconditioning protocols, gently acclimating them to clean water and light. It turned out that about 30 of the 200 corals had died in transit. For now, the rest are being housed behind the scenes at the aquarium, where they are faring well. 'A lot of them are starting to grow,' Brett said proudly. Weather Today will be bright and sunny with temperatures nearing 97. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low around 80. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Aug. 3 (Tisha B'Av). The latest New York news Etan Patz's case transformed parenting: The notion that children should be left unsupervised has changed since the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979. Parents have grown more aware, anxious and fearful of their children's safety. 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Castillo, the twins' mother, was charged with murder and manslaughter, bringing officers one step closer to resolving the nearly five-year-old case. Possible voter fraud in Republican primary: The New York City Board of Elections is investigating potential ballot stuffing and votes being cast by dead people in a City Council race in southern Brooklyn. Two absentee ballots were cast by dead people and one by a man who said he had not voted. The board tossed 22 fraudulent ballots. U.S. opens an antitrust investigation into NewYork-Presbyterian Did the NewYork-Presbyterian health system persuade insurance companies to agree to conditions that insulated the storied institution from competition, which would mean it could charge more for everyday procedures? That question is at the center of a civil antitrust investigation that could jolt some of the city's largest hospitals and the health insurance companies that negotiate with them. NewYork-Presbyterian includes the Columbia University Medical Center and the Weill Cornell Medical Center, hospitals that are affiliated with the medical schools of Columbia and Cornell. My colleague Joseph Goldstein writes that one result of the investigation could be more competition among hospital systems in the city. That, in turn, might mean lower prices for delivering a baby or replacing a knee. Colonoscopies and other common medical procedures might also cost less. The Justice Department has issued a subpoena that was reviewed by The New York Times. The subpoena did not come out of the blue. It went to the health fund of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, a large labor union that has long maintained that NewYork-Presbyterian charged too much. Last year Local 32BJ sent a 28-page memo to the Justice Department, requesting an investigation after claiming that NewYork-Presbyterian had repeatedly attempted to block the union's efforts to steer members to lower-cost hospitals. The memo said this had stifled competition and contributed to high hospital costs across the city. The memo said that a hip replacement at NewYork-Presbyterian cost the union's health fund $83,000 on average, while the procedure cost about $58,000 elsewhere. Colonoscopies at NewYork-Presbyterian, for instance, typically cost the union health fund $8,991, versus $3,638 at other New York hospitals, according to the memo. The investigation could reveal the complex and secret negotiations that occur as employers and unions secure health coverage for their workers. Martin Gaynor, a former Justice Department antitrust official and an emeritus economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said that he suspected that leading hospital systems frequently put anticompetitive restrictions in their contracts with insurers. Those arrangements generally remained secret. 'We don't know how common or pervasive these restrictions are,' Gaynor said, 'because they are private contracts.' A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation. A spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, Angela Karafazli, did not respond to questions about the investigation and would not comment on NewYork-Presbyterian's contracts with insurance companies. METROPOLITAN diary Lemon ice royalty Dear Diary: After spending the afternoon at the Queens Museum, I was in the mood for an Italian ice. My companion suggested we walk to the Lemon Ice King of Corona. After we got our ices, we asked a stranger to take a picture of us. 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You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.