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In today’s edition:

 🦅 Vultures and humans interlinked

🌳 A new cohort of biodiversity start-ups

💼 A whole new suite of NatureTech jobs

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🐘Long Read (1-Min Read)

How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths

What happened:  A new study has revealed an unexpected link between these scavenger birds and public health in India.

Ecological Importance: Vultures are nature's clean-up crew. These birds dispose of over 50 million animal carcasses every year in India. This is critical for preventing the spread of diseases.

The Crisis: 

• Diclofenac, a livestock painkiller, became widely available after patent expiration in 1994 in India. Vultures were poisoned by the drug. Populations declined by 95% in under a decade.

• The decline of vultures in India is the fastest ever recorded for a bird species and the largest since the passenger pigeon’s extinction in the US, according to researchers.

Ripple Effects: Absence of vultures created a cascade of problems. 

1) Wild dog populations surged, as they had access to more food. This increased rabies cases.

2) Water quality deteriorated due to unprocessed carcasses and the use of chemical disposal methods.

Human Cost: 

• Human Death rates increased by 4% in areas with historically large vulture populations, this equated to 500k deaths over 5 years.

• The economic impact was estimated at $69 billion per year due to premature deaths and increased healthcare costs.

For Nature: 

•  Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98%

• The study highlights the often-overlooked importance of biodiversity. It also emphasises the need for immediate conservation action and reevaluation of seemingly unimportant species.

• Vulture conservation is crucial worldwide. Four vulture species are now critically endangered in India. Similar declines could have devastating effects in other regions.

For NatureTech: This is unlikely to have any direct impact on NatureTech start-ups. However, studies like this help raise public awareness of the complexity of relationships between humans and Nature. It demonstrates our need for the start-ups helping to obtain  data on these relationships.

 (Full story here)

💬Snippets for your lift conversations

• Big business: Purina PetCare Europe has become the first consumer goods business to join a new collaboration aimed at restoring marine habitats at scale in the oceans around Norway.

• Big business: Measures such as ‘fish hotels’ and artificial reefs should be incorporated into the design of offshore wind farms to provide marine life with habitats for shelter, feeding and spawning. According to a new report released by the Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council

• Big business: Only 5% of large businesses globally assess and disclose how their operations impact nature and fewer than one in five provide any numerical evidence that they are reducing plastic waste according to the World Benchmarking Alliance

• Finance:  Brazilian startup to issue first biodiversity credits for endangered plants in 2025

• Finance: A Germany-based investment vehicle is piloting its biodiversity credit methodology for endangered species within a reserve in South Africa, in a bid to increase investors’ appetite towards habitat conservation in the area - CarbonPulse

• Finance: Acknowledging the vital role that banks can have in safeguarding and restoring nature and our environment, the global sustainability academy for bankers – has launched a new nature course, “Applying Nature-Responsible Banking “.

• Policy: The Sri Lankan government has launched a programme to conserve 30% of the country’s land and ocean by 2030 while aiming to attract $1.5 billion in green investments between 2025 and 2030.

• Policy: Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rose in July, breaking a 15-month streak of falling destruction under President Luiz Inacio da Silva, preliminary government data showed amid a strike by environmental workers.

• Big business: The Polish climate ministry and mining companies are working on a plan to build desalination installations to improve the quality of water in the Oder and avoid a repeat of a mass fish die-off in the river, deputy climate minister.

• Opinion: To cool the planet, regenerative agriculture 'has to come as standard’

• Policy: ‘Losing Noah’s Ark’: Brazil’s plan to turn the Pantanal into waterway threatens world’s biggest wetland.  Plans are under way for the Paraguay River, one of the Pantanal’s main arteries, to be turned into an industrial shipping route for crops such as soya beans and sugar.

🎣Deals

• Aprisium, A Singapore based startup, raised US$7 Million in Seed funding to Deliver Real-time Contaminant Detection with biodiversity co-benefits 

• Growlink, a Denver, CO-based controlled environment agriculture (CEA) provider of advanced IoT controllers, sensors, and cultivation software, raised $2M in Seed funding.

💭Little Bytes

📊Stat: More than 41,000 are threatened with extinction. Cycads – ancient seed-bearing plants that pre-date the dinosaurs – are the group most threatened, with more than 80% at risk of disappearing altogether. More than 40% of sharks and rays are at risk of extinction, while more than a fifth of birds could go.

📺️Watch: The biodiversity crisis in numbers - a visual guide

💬 Listen: The ‘ghost roads’ driving tropical deforestation

📆Events

• 26 August - 14th European Conference on Ecological Restoration - Estonia

• 1 September - The African Bioacoustics Conference - Cape Town

• 26 Sept - NetworkNature Annual Event 2024 | Busting myths - Virtual

• 30 September - Nature for Life Hub 2024 - Virtual

• 8 October - The Global Nature Positive Summit 2024 - Sydney

• Oct 24 - Bloom - Colombia

💼Jobs

Special thanks to Theresa Lieb for this awesome list…

🐝 Corporate 🐝

Lindt & Sprüngli, Head of Responsible Sourcing (Zurich, Switzerland) https://lnkd.in/eiSJdAkQ

DSM Firmenich, Global Sustainability Nature Trainee (Barcelona, Spain) https://lnkd.in/ea-sjK-e

Salesforce, Analyst, Water, Nature and GHG Accounting (London, UK) https://lnkd.in/efmu6NuV

Gap, Senior Manager, Global Water Stewardship (San Francisco, US) https://lnkd.in/eCwVECdF

Pernod Ricard, Nature Impact Manager (Paris, France) https://lnkd.in/eW85KHGk

🐝Finance🐝

Rabobank, Quantitative Analyst for Biodiversity (Utrecht, Netherlands) https://lnkd.in/eYMz-Ve8

IDB, Nature Financial Instruments Consultant (Washington DC, US) https://lnkd.in/eQjukR_X

🦊 Nature-based solution projects & nature tech startups 🦊

The Ocean Clean-Up, Senior Finance Business Partner (Rotterdam, Netherlands) https://lnkd.in/e7xGkqWu

Terraformation, Head of Commercial Finance (remote, US) https://lnkd.in/eUaCsVbj

Renature, Project Support Officer internship (Amsterdam, Netherlands) https://lnkd.in/evkbifUS