«… três espécies agrícolas mantiveram uma tendência negativa em 2018 (picanço-real, abelharuco e milheirinha) enquanto outras cinco viram as suas tendências tornarem-se negativas (e.g., pintassilgo, pardal-comum, andorinha-das-chaminés, verdilhão e cartaxo).
Muitas espécies do meio agrícola têm sofrido declínios populacionais significativos noutros países europeus, sobretudo relacionados com a intensificação das práticas agrícolas. (…)
A perda e degradação de habitat, nomeadamente a transformação do mosaico agrícola tradicional em monoculturas de grande dimensão, assim como o uso de fitofármacos em grande escala poderão ser explicações para o declínio continuado de algumas espécies insectívoras e o declínio recente de outras espécies agrícolas consideradas bastante comuns, e é um alerta para eventuais mudanças que estejam a ocorrer no meio agrícola com impacto para a biodiversidade.»
–O estado das aves em Portugal (2019), Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves (SPEA).
«Na Europa, as aves associadas aos meios agrícolas mostram um declínio de 57% desde 1980.»
– Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme.
«The use of animals as investigative models increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, often in highly-invasive research and still predating most forms of anesthesia or analgesia. (…) urrently, the most accurate evidence-based estimates of global laboratory animal use describe the year 2005. Approximately 126.9 million non-human vertebrates were used worldwide in that year (Knight, 2008a; Taylor et al., 2008). Driven by increased development and use of genetically-modified animals (Ormandy, Schuppli and Weary, 2009), and by large-scale chemical-testing programs (Knight, 2011), laboratory animal use has steadily increased in most developed countries, ever since. The single largest category of research conducted today is fundamental biological research, much of which has no obvious application.» – Source
«The unreliability of animal experimentation across a wide range of areas undermines scientific arguments in favor of the practice. (…) The resulting evidence suggests that the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits (…). Annually, more than 115 million animals are used worldwide in experimentation or to supply the biomedical industry.1 (…) Although it is widely accepted that medicine should be evidence based, animal experimentation as a means of informing human health has generally not been held, in practice, to this standard. This fact makes it surprising that animal experimentation is typically viewed as the default and gold standard of preclinical testing and is generally supported without critical examination of its validity. (…) In 2004, the FDA estimated that 92 percent of drugs that pass preclinical tests, including “pivotal” animal tests, fail to proceed to the market.38 More recent analysis suggests that, despite efforts to improve the predictability of animal testing, the failure rate has actually increased and is now closer to 96 percent.39 The main causes of failure are lack of effectiveness and safety problems that were not predicted by animal tests.40 (…) If experimentation using chimpanzees and other NHPs, our closest genetic cousins, are unreliable, how can we expect research using other animals to be reliable? The bottom line is that animal experiments, no matter the species used or the type of disease research undertaken, are highly unreliable—and they have too little predictive value to justify the resultant risks of harms for humans» – Source
Constança Carvalho: «Animal models have been widely used in most fields of biomedical research, including psychiatric and psychological research on mental disorders. Mental disorders are particularly challenging to model, as they are complex, of multifactorial origin and have human specific symptoms, impossible to model in animals. For many years the benefits of animal models for this sort of research were assumed without empirical evidence, but recently they have been questioned by evidence-based research. In this talk I will present data that demonstrates the poor contribution of animal models to mental disorder research field.»
«Wouldn’t we achieve greater results if we sought ways of cultivation that favor the development of plants, rather than creating genotypes that support the bad conditions we impose them?»
«Sou cientista [genético], mas tenho orgulho é de ser agricultor».
«Nós somos parte de um sistema inteligente, e não “os” inteligentes».
«Água também se planta».
«Repensar contra o fogo não é matar árvores, mas sim plantar e proteger. Não se poda em Maio, mas sim quando vem água que gera fungo e que come as bactérias e poda-se novamente antes da última chuva».
«Para combater os incêndios não se arrancam eucaliptos, mas sim planta-se ao lado semente de árvores, e promove-se o controlo de natalidade. Os eucaliptos são muito generosos porque permitem geração de muitas plantas. E depois não nos podemos esquecer que é preciso aproveitar a matéria orgânica de poda».
«Eucaliptos dando comida e não secando o solo».
– Ernst Götsch, fazenda Olhos D´Água (500 hectares), Piraí do Norte, Bahia.
… and, no, climate change is not the main reason why Venice is sinking… but rather man-made land subsidence (too many rat holes) – not only here, of course, bridges and islands are falling down everywhere – and marine traffic (which, by way, also leads whales to suicide). So, it is Industrial Revolution who is pulling Venice (which is only a case among several cases) under water.
F L U T U A N T E . "Float, crash... Be fluid" 