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  1. University of Manitoba researchers have published a paper that challenges the way we think about airspace. By equipping some migratory birds with a GPS backpack, the biologists provided new and crucial data to a burgeoning idea that argues airspace is a habitat and we need to conserve it, an idea that is gaining support in municipal governments across Canada, including most recently in Winnipeg.

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  2. There are more and more threatened species by the impact of human activity and about a million of them are estimated to be endangered if the rate of biological extinction does not stop. Over the last fifty years, the global rate of extinction of the species and ecological destruction has been of 60% worldwide, according to the 2019 report by the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

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  3. In the race to avoid runaway climate change, two renewable energy technologies are being pushed as the solution to powering human societies: wind and solar. But for many years, wind turbines have been on a collision course with wildlife conservation. Birds and other flying animals risk death by impact with the rotor blades of turbines, raising questions about the feasibility of wind as a cornerstone of a global clean energy policy. Now, a pair of animal tracking studies from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of East Anglia, UK, has provided detailed GPS data on flight behavior of birds that are susceptible to collision with energy infrastructure. The first, a large-scale study of 1,454 birds from 27 species, has identified hotspots in Europe where birds are particularly at risk from wind turbines and power lines. The second zoomed in on how birds behave when flying near turbines, revealing that individuals will actively avoid turbines if they are within one kilometer. By tracking the movement of birds with high precision GPS devices, both studies provide the detailed biological data needed to expand renewable energy infrastructure with minimal impacts to wildlife.

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  4. Non-biting midges are the tiny flies that swarm together as thick masses around lakes and streams, annoying passers-by in warm weather. But early in a midge's life, it lives in the water. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have observed that non-biting midge larvae accumulate contemporary pesticides from polluted water and retain the substances into adulthood. As a result, animals that eat the adult flies could consume small amounts of pesticides daily.

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