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Demonstrators were forced to use exercise as a means of protest amid the COVID-19 pandemic on May 4, when New South Wales South Coast residents campaigned against the clearing of forest that had been spared from the catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfires.

Developer Ozy Homes planned to develop a 20-hectare area at Manyana after receiving approval for the project in 2008, according to reports.

However, locals were concerned that the development land had become a last refuge for local wildlife that had lost its habitat during the bushfires.

Social distancing regulations in place across New South Wales to stem the spread of coronavirus had effectively banned mass protests, forcing the demonstrators to use exercise such as yoga and walking as a reason to attend the site.

An estimated 312 homes were destroyed and 500,000 hectares were burnt in the surrounding area by the 74-day Currowan fire in late 2019 and early 2020. The blaze threatened homes and forced resident to evacuate to beaches in the area on New Years Eve.

Record bushfires gripped much of New South Wales in late 2019 and early 2020, with over 11,400 bush and grass fires burning 5.5 million hectares, the equivalent of 6.2 percent of the state of New South Wales. Fires burned across the state for 240 consecutive days between July 2019 and March 2020. Credit: Manyana Matters via Storyful

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Demonstrators Exercise in Protest Against Land Clearing on South Coast During COVID-19 Restrictions - Yahoo News UK

One of the most beneficial trees for wildlife is the oak tree. Oaks offer food, shelter, cover and nesting sites for a number of animals. The branches, nooks, crannies and hollow areas in oak trees afford protection from the elements, a place to rest, escape predators and nesting areas to raise the young.

Many animals feed on the small twigs, buds, shoots and leaves of oaks as well. Oak trees attract hundreds of insects and invertebrates that feed on their foliage. These insects attract insectivorous birds, reptiles, frogs and mammals, developing a very dynamic food web within the forest. Because oak trees attract such a wide variety of insects they are considered to be one of the most important trees for woodland inhabiting birds. Oak trees also produce acorns, which are a very important winter food for deer, fox, bear, squirrels, turkey, wood duck and many birds. Animal populations tend to increase or decrease based on yearly acorn production, a testament to the importance of oak trees. As oaks mature, they typically produce more acorns and develop a large hollow area, which further enhances their value for wildlife.

Oak trees tend to be longer lived, slower growing trees that develop best in full sunlight to moderate shade. Acorns may be able to germinate and develop a small tree in dense shade, but the oak tree will cease growing in shady conditions, waiting until it can exploit a gap in the canopy and continue its development. In this holding pattern, the small oak trees are vulnerable to deer browse or they may eventually succumb to lack of sunlight. Trees such as red maple, black gum, hickory, beech, sugar, maple, black birch and hemlock can develop much better in the shade, and they will overtake the young oaks underneath a dense canopy.

Many of the oak forests we now have are a result of former land clearing and logging practices that created conditions beneficial to oak germination and growth. In the past, large forest fires were also much more common throughout our region, giving rise to more oak regeneration. The thick bark oak tree is more resistant to forest fires and more likely to continue growing when the thinner barked maple, beech, birch or white pine tree may succumb following a forest fire. Oak and oak-pine forests are considered to be fire-dependent communities by ecologists.

Many of our present oak forests contain trees in their golden years, and the understory is full of shade-tolerant maple, birch, gum and beech trees. In ecological terms, an oak forest is considered to be intermediate, while a beech birch maple forest is considered to be a climax forest community. This means that in the absence of disturbances as the older oaks succumb to old age, the forest composition will change and the forest will contain more maple, birch, beech and gum, and less oaks. And, the prevailing trend seen throughout the east is that oak numbers are indeed declining. Along with changes brought about by forest succession, factors such as gypsy moth mortality, oak decline and other diseases, feeding activity of white tail deer, logging operations that remove oak and little else, forest fragmentation and invasive plants that overrun the forest thereby suppressing most native plants are all contributing to the decline of oak trees.

To understand how intricately nature interacts, it has been shown that a reduction in the amount of oak trees is impacting numerous forest interior bird species, including the wood thrush and wood pewee. Many of these species are displaying sustained population declines of 3 to 4 percent per year. Other factors contributing to this decline include loss of habitat from forest fragmentation, increased mortality, nest parasitism, overabundance of deer, cell towers, wind turbines and acid rain.

Recognizing that the gradual loss of oak canopy may impact future wildlife populations, plant diversity, and the forest products industry, many foresters, wildlife managers and forest ecologists, etc., are attempting to encourage the retention of oak forests or the establishment and development of oak tree regeneration where it is suitable.

In the fall of 2019, a prescribed burn was conducted at the Pine Swamp area on the Frederick City watershed. The purpose of this controlled burn was to encourage pitch pine, shortleaf pine and oak development by controlling the thin barked maple, beech and birch trees that had colonized the site while reducing fire danger by eliminating some of the downed fuels that were scattered around the site. The burn was deemed a success. Preliminary evidence suggests that numerous young pine and oak trees are developing in the area that was burned in 2017. Besides these silvicultural practices to encourage oak regeneration, landowners can plant oak seedlings and protect their oak trees from destructive insects like gypsy moth to help maintain this majestic tree on our landscape.

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Nature Notes: The importance of oak trees | Travel And Outdoors - Frederick News Post

Ever since COVID-19 lockdowns put a stop to tourism, wildlife has been thriving in the heart of the Maya Biosphere, Guatemala, a UNESCO recognised reserve.

The reserve covers a fifth of the country, with El Mirador National Park at its heart. With ancient Mayan cities, tropical forests and wildlife, this territory has been the centre of conservation efforts and initiatives to make sustainable tourism the countrys biggest source of income.

El Mirador has been under constant threat from land clearing projects for cattle ranches, as well as narcotrafficking and wildlife poaching. But major efforts have been made to protect the park through ecotourism, with job opportunities in hospitality for local residents who might otherwise have made a living through hunting or logging.

While the current travel restrictions mean a lack of tourism draws resources away from these projects, animals are being seen more frequently, including large mammals like cats, jaguars, and pumas.

"What the coronavirus leaves me with, is that we really do affect the animals. We do affect the forest," says Gabriel Urruela, photographer and park ranger at El Mirador National Park.

Original post:
Wildlife is roaming the Mayan forests | Living - Euronews

ATLANTA Georgias annual ban on outdoor burning began Friday in 47 counties. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division puts the restrictions in place during the summer months, when increases in ground level ozone may create health risks.

For seven counties that are normally included in the summer burn ban, restrictions will be activated on June 1, giving them extra time to clear vegetative debris from April storms. Those counties are Banks, Catoosa, Chattooga, Floyd, Gordon, Upson and Walker.

From May until Sept. 1, open burning of yard and land-clearing debris is prohibited in some counties where particulate matter pollutants and chemicals from smoke are more likely to combine with emissions from vehicles and industrial activities, Frank Sorrells, chief of protection for the Georgia Forestry Commission, said in a news release. Thats more likely to occur in cities, where theres more asphalt and concrete than open green space and trees to help cool and filter air. The risk of wildfire also may be high in summer, so our agencies are closely monitoring air quality and weather conditions for the safety of all Georgians.

The 47 counties affected by the ban beginning May 1 are Barrow, Bartow, Bibb, Butts, Carroll, Cherokee, Clarke, Clayton, Cobb, Columbia, Coweta, Crawford, Dawson, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, Haralson, Heard, Henry, Houston, Jackson, Jasper, Jones, Lamar, Lumpkin, Madison, Meriwether, Monroe, Morgan, Newton, Oconee, Paulding, Peach, Pickens, Pike, Polk, Putnam, Richmond, Rockdale, Spalding, Troup, Twiggs and Walton.

May through September is the time of year when people, particularly children, are more likely to be outdoors. Higher levels of ground-level ozone and particle pollution levels are known to contribute to lung problems and heart disease.

Residents in Georgia counties not included in the annual burn ban will continue to be required to secure a burn permit from the Georgia Forestry Commission before burning outdoors. Permits can be secured online at GaTrees.org, by calling 1-877-OK2-BURN or contacting their county GFC office.

During this time of increased focus on safety and respiratory issues in response to COVID-19, the GFC will be particularly mindful about the potential impact of smoke in every area of the state, Georgia Forestry Commission Director Chuck Williams said. The GFC and EPD carefully monitor air quality indices and will continue to do so wherever prescribed fire is permitted.

For more information about the EPD summer burn ban, go to epd.georgia.gov/ and click on Open Burning Rules for Georgia under Popular Topics, or call the EPD district office serving your area. To learn about services of the Georgia Forestry Commission, visit GaTrees.org.

Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free.Please support us by subscribing or making a contribution today.

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Georgia burn ban is in effect for 47 counties - The Albany Herald

We found the first fire without looking, crackling and roaring on farmland beside the busy Amazon highway, the flames consuming a road sign with its name BR-163 lying in the grass. Trucks thundered past, ferrying soya and corn from the agricultural heartlands of Brazils central-west to the ports of Santarm and Miritituba. Nobody was around.

Every year fires roar across the Amazon, and in just a few months they will be here again. But last August the number of blazes reached a nine-year high, and sparked an international crisis for Brazils far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Months later, their traces hung over the forests in the Amazon state of Par, leaving blackened logs and charred tree stumps where there was once rainforest.

But what happens to the land afterwards, especially in protected reserves? Is anyone punished for burning the forests? Are the forests allowed to grow back? Most of all, what can we expect from this years fire season? Late last year, reporters from the Guardian and investigative site Rporter Brasil spent a week at reserves along the BR-163 to find out.

We started in the hardscrabble settlers town of Novo Progresso in the state of Par, with its plethora of gold shops serving the largely-illegal wildcat mining trade. Police are still investigating Novo Progresso farmers for allegedly coordinating a fire day last August to show Bolsonaro their will to work fires soared by 300% around the town that day. The town sits beside the Jamanxim national forest, a protected reserve of more than 1.3 million hectares (3 million acres) that is one of the most devastated in Brazil. Where better to begin?

The first morning we steered the rented 4x4 along a dirt road out of Novo Progresso, bouncing over potholes as it snaked in and out of the Jamanxim forest. This forest is managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), a federal environment agency named after the rubber tapper, activist and environmentalist who won international acclaim before being murdered in 1988 by cattle ranchers.

Inside Jamanxims borders, as forest gave way to a sweep of cattle farms, we found more fire: a patch of forest still smouldering in places, trees swiped at waist height, and the felled, blackened trunk of a regal brazil nut tree in the scorched earth. An extensive search of government websites, publicly available information and internal ICMBio documents revealed that this very patch of forest has an emblematic history of environmental offences and fires.

This smouldering land fell inside the 889 hectares of land registered in 2015 by Jair Ferreira de Souza, a Novo Progresso resident, on Par state governments Rural Register (CAR), just inside the borders of the Jamanxim forest. In 2017 and 2018 Nasa satellites spotted fires on this land, and in 2015 and 2019 De Souza was fined more than 500,000 for destroying hundreds of acres within it by environment officials who photographed cattle branded with his initials: JF.

De Souza has appealed the fines, none of which have been paid. He told officials that he needed pasture and denied that one patch of destroyed forest was his. He claimed his family had owned land here for 30 years, arguing that he had cleared only a minimal area he needed to work, and requested one fine be annulled because he was unable to pay it.

Souza did not respond to messages sent to his phone.

But to understand how Jair Ferreira de Souza is able to claim ownership of land within a federally protected forest, we need to step back into the Amazons chaotic and rapacious history of colonisation.

The military dictatorship that ruled Brazil until 1985 often lauded by Bolsonaro - encouraged migration and built highways to force development into the Amazon region, but failed to impose a functioning property system. Instead, it sold off chunks of forest then largely government owned to private investors. It also handed out lots to migrants who had been encouraged to move there from the poorer north-east.

Much of this land was sold on later, often in deals involving unscrupulous notaries in a range of scams that continue until today, aided by the remoteness and lawlessness of the Amazon region. Adding to the disorder, under Brazilian law, improving land you are on can strengthen an eventual ownership claim. And Amazon farmers often argue that previous governments had encouraged them to move to the region, only to plonk a reserve on top of them years later even if they actually squatted the land afterwards.

As long as its confusing, as long its undetermined who owns what, the guys with the lawyers, the guys with the guns and the influence always win, said Jeremy Campbell, an associate professor of anthropology at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, who specialises in Amazon land conflicts.

Landgrabbers nicknamed grileiros, or crickets, after the tested ruse of leaving fake land titles in drawers full of the insects whose secretions turn them yellow and convincingly old-looking proliferate in the Amazon.

Having some sort of document is key to eventually legitimising stolen land. These days farmers register their own land online as was done for de Souza but often there is more than one claimant for the same area. In Par, there are around three times as many land titles as there is land, state prosecutor Jane Souza said in an interview. In December, Bolsonaro signed a measure allowing grileiros to claim up to 2,500 hectares (6,177 acres) of land squatted before 2018 under certain conditions, such as no environmental fines or embargoes. This needs to be approved by Congress.

The Jamanxim national forest reserve we were in was created in 2006 to slow rampant deforestation. Farms in the reserve were supposed to be repossessed by the government, but that never happened. Commercial agriculture is not permitted there but many local people have never accepted its reserve status.

Paulo Moreira, a federal prosecutor in Par, explained in an interview that protected areas like Jamanxim are attractive to speculators who buy illegally cleared land cheaply to sell on, or deforest it themselves, betting it will be regularised in the future and increase in value. Crime compensates and that makes it attractive, Moreira said.

We spoke to residents of Novo Progresso who clearly saw themselves as hard-working pioneers in a hostile wilderness. Wood, gold prospecting and now cattle made this town, Jadir Rosa told us. The 36-year-old mechanic had moved from Paran state in the south of Brazil and was lunching in the towns market. Rosa supported Bolsonaro and shared his governments scepticism over climate science. Global warming does not exist, he said.

Other residents similarly harboured little sympathy for environment officials. Laudi da Silva, a 72-year-old market stall holder and Bolsonaro supporter, complained that her brothers wildcat mining barge had been destroyed during an operation by environment officials. Theyre always burning things round here, she said. I dont like it.

Agamenon Menezes, the influential president of the towns rural producers union, has been interviewed by police in connection with the fire day investigation, and his computer seized, but he denied involvement during an interview at his unions headquarters. He argued that fire day had been invented by the media to attack Bolsonaro and that there were no more fires last August than in any other year. He denied man-made climate change existed because, he said, 35,000 serious Brazilian scientists had disproved it.

Menezes said Bolsonaro was popular in the region because he was against environmental officials and regulations preventing people working. They have to eat, they have to produce food. So they work illegally, he said. Nobody wants to be illegal as well. They want to work legally. Fires were lit to clear land for pasture that is then turned into agricultural land, he explained. You get an area of dense forest and deforest it, he said. You need to burn this wood.

Environmentalists describe a similar deforestation process. First, landgrabbers and loggers remove the most valuable trees, leaving some cover to make it harder for satellites to spot the damage. The remaining trees are then felled, left to dry and burned hence the fires. Later grass is sown, and cattle put on the deforested land to consolidate possession.

This is the classic cycle we have seen in recent years, said Greenpeace Brazils senior forest campaigner, Adriana Charoux. If the farmer feels confident enough about his ownership of the land, the next stage is soya, she added.

Soya production is growing in the Novo Progresso area, Menezes said, taking pride in the regions improving productivity.

It was striking to see how farming had eaten into the forest on both sides of the BR-163. Cows were everywhere. Wildlife survived as best it could. One morning a white monkey scuttled across a dirt road, followed by a gaggle of forest pigs. Black, blue and orange macaws squawked atop a charred tree trunk, their only perch in a field of cattle. An opportunistic anteater darted across the highway in a gap between the trucks.

All along the highway were signs of logging, including an enormous sawmill at Moraes Almeida and three clapped-out flatbed trucks parked up one morning without licence plates by a smaller sawmill at Vila Izol. Nearby were three swastikas daubed on a bar door. Logging was also evident in the Serra do Cachimbo Springs reserve a 342,000 hectare biological reserve created in 2005, which is also run by ICMBio.

Driving down a dirt road in the reserve one morning we passed a man standing next to a motorbike as a lookout while chainsaws howled in the trees. It was a tense moment: environment officials warned that running into loggers in reserves, who are often armed, can be risky.

When a convoy of government firefighters in 4x4s hurtled past, we followed them into a 6,000-hectare farm registered on the CAR system in 2016 to Andr Ferri. Cattle grazed on pasture littered with old charred logs outside an empty farmhouse, surrounded by a curtain of forest.

All of this was burned, and this is a sensitive area, said one of the firefighters, speaking anonymously because Bolsonaros government has banned environment agency employees from talking to the media.

A few miles from here, a thousand hectares of Ferris farm was embargoed by ICMBio officials in April 2015 after being destroyed illegally and he was fined 3m. Four months later officials revisited the area and found the area had been burned and the area of devastation increased by more than 400 hectares. A satellite image from 2005, when the reserve was created, found no deforestation in the embargoed areas. In 2017, Nasa satellites found fires around the same area. The farms limits have since been modified on the CAR system to exclude the embargoed area.

Ferri has accumulated millions of pounds in fines, some of which were handed out after he broke previous embargoes and none of which has been paid. The neighbouring farm is owned by a transport company run by his brother Edner in Paran state where Andr Ferri is also believed to live. Reached by phone on a Paran number, he refused to answer questions. Brazils justice system has been unable to locate him to formally notify him of any of his fines.

The firefighters headed deeper into the reserve to check an area that had been flagged for deforestation by satellites. Near a patch of houses there were freshly felled trees but no flames yet. They raced off again, passing a charred clump of felled forest, over a rocky ridge and through more cattle farms before parking near a clearing pockmarked with blackened logs and trunks.

Officials first came here last August following a deforestation alert and found a wooden house under construction, which they destroyed. Days later, the area was set on fire. The flames spread for miles and firefighters took days to bring the blaze under control. This is an enormous loss for the environment, one firefighter said. It will take hundreds of years to recover.

As the fires raged, a woman calling herself Nair Brizola drove up to Brazilian reporters and told them that ICMBio officials had started it. Her story was widely circulated by Bolsonaro supporters and the president ordered an investigation. In 2015, nearly 2,000 hectares of land including the scorched clearing where we stood was registered on the CAR system under the name Nair Rodrigues Petry. They are the same person. As Nair Brizola, Petry stood for the council of a town 150km away and had offered a similar plot of land for sale on Facebook for around 500,000.

Brizola/Petry has since been fined 221,000 for destroying 71 hectares of forest using fire. In a telephone interview on the same mobile phone number that appeared on the Facebook land sale advert, Petry said she had documents proving the land had been hers since 2001. When they came and created this reserve, we were already there, she said. Nobody is a crook. She repeated her accusation that ICMBio officials had started the fire, denied offering the land for sale and has not paid the fine.

Petry said she was only just beginning to mess with the land. In the future, the only thing we could do is pasture, she said, meaning more cattle. If I leave there, and leave it all abandoned, someone else will go in.

Brazilian meat companies have complex systems in place to prevent them buying from Amazon farmers facing fines and embargoes, like Andr Ferri. But farmers can avoid those checks by selling cattle to other farms for fattening, who then sell on to slaughterhouses a triangulation process some environmentalists have dubbed cattle laundering. Pressure is growing on meat companies that are largely unable to monitor all their indirect suppliers. In the case of one company, Marfrig, indirect suppliers provide more than half of its cattle supplied from the Amazon.

Research by Holly Gibbs, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who monitors Amazon cattle supply chains, has found that from 20172019 there were at least a hundred properties in the Jamanxim forest raising cattle 68 of them indirect suppliers. Gibbss team found another 27 properties in Serra do Cachimbo involved in cattle production from 20172019, including 25 that were indirect suppliers.

We had our answers: the farms we had managed to reach had illustrated the whole process. Fires three times more common in Amazon cattle farming areas are used to clear forest for pasture. Fragile law enforcement means fines are ignored. And when the loopholes that allow farmers to sell cattle raised on illegally burned or deforested land are taken into account, the future for Novo Progressos forests is not bright. Instead, it is black with smoke.

It was dark when the firefighters convoy left, bouncing back down dirt tracks. A huge fire lit up the night sky: Petrys neighbours burning more trees, the firefighters said. It was dark, and there was nothing they could do. We know why Amazon forests like this burn, but given Brazils current political situation, there are no solutions in view.

More here:
Forest fire season is coming. How can we stop the Amazon burning? - The Guardian

Residents of a tiny community on the New South Wales south coast gathered at dawn on Tuesday as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent a small pocket of bushland that escaped the summer bushfires being bulldozed for a 20-hectare housing development.

Between 70% and 80% of bushland in the Shoalhaven council area was affected during the January fires. Now the local community at Manyana wants the state government to intervene to at least postpone the destruction of one of the few unburnt areas, with the chainsaws expected to start as early as Thursday.

Some bring their yoga mats for the daily protests and, spaced out, greet the dawn. Others arrive on bikes rugged up for a socially distanced protest.

The developer agreed to put it on hold for social and environmental healing, yet just three months later, in the midst of the pandemic, people losing their jobs, out of the blue he said he was starting next week, said Jorj Lowrey, a spokesperson for Manyana Matters.

This is the last thing this community needs, its just too much to put on peoples shoulders. They need time to deal with their post-traumatic stress disorders, to find employment and to deal with their mental health, she said.

Lowrey said the area was home to more than 84 species of birds including the endangered powerful owl, glossy-black cockatoo, and migratory species such as rufous fantails and black-faced monarchs, as well as greater gliders.

These are now under habitat stress due to the huge tracts of bushland that were ravaged by the Currowan fire, which burned 499,600 hectares and razed more than 300 homes during December and January.

Nearby Conjola national park has remained closed which means there has not yet been a stocktake of the wildlife and species loss due to the fires. Plans to have the issue debated in NSW parliament have stalled due to coronavirus.

We called for a moratorium on all land-clearing in bushfire-affected areas, Lowrey said. We put together a petition and it was tabled in parliament, but now its in limbo due to Covid-19.

The developer Ozy Homes had planned to start bulldozing in January.

It now intends to begin clearing work on stage 1, for 30 housing lots, but has agreed to pause the other stages for now. Ozy Homes declined to comment.

The planning and public spaces minister, Rob Stokes, has said he cannot issue a stop-work order without legislative change. But the Greens MP David Shoebridge said Stokes could immediately declare a new State Environmental Planning Policy (Sepp) covering bushfire-affected areas, which would allow him to protect them from land clearing while bushland recovered.

The only reason this development is pressing ahead is because they are worried about policy change, Shoebridge said. I am certain the planning minister is under pressure to act and he could, by issuing a Sepp.

Lowrey said the land clearing was causing particular angst for people who fought the fires.

They stopped it burning across Cunjurong Point road. They put their lives on the line to protect the houses and this piece of bush, she said.

On New Years Eve, the Currowan fire ripped through Conjola, then crossed the lake and headed north up Bendalong Mountain, cutting off the villages of Manyana and Bendalong for days. More areas were burned on 3 January.

The history of development at Manyana has been fraught. Three new housing estates were approved more than a decade ago, despite local protests over loss of coastal environments including wetlands.

But because of sluggish market conditions, they became what are known as zombie developments. The sites changed hands and enough work was done to keep the development approvals alive, but development itself was paused.

Lowrey argues that over the past decade environmental standards for new housing estates in coastal areas have become more stringent and appreciation of the value of the remaining natural environment has increased. Some developers, she says, have chosen to develop larger lots and keep more vegetation, rather than opting for the standard suburban configuration.

Cruelly, the fires also burned part of the other planned development site, Inyadda Drive the part of the site that is to be kept as an environmental zone. It largely spared the area to be cleared.

If the one thing we make happen out of this is that the law changes. You shouldnt be able to sit on a development application, Lowrey said.

People get left with an out-of-date style project thats no longer viable, when something much better could be done: larger blocks with dedicated green space on each lot.

Read more from the original source:
Spared by the fires, NSW's south coast bushland now faces the bulldozers - The Guardian

Heavy rains and the melting of the snow have given new life to the reservoir. The Sea of Galilee supplies the inhabited centers and allows the irrigation of many crops. In the critical period it had dropped to 214 meters below sea level. The waters lap the Capernaum convent. The work of the friars committed to clearing the banks.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - The level of the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main source of fresh water, has been steadily rising for a few months, so much so that it has reached a height that has not been recorded for over 16 years. As the friars of the Custody confirm on terrasanta.net, this is information of primary importance for a water reserve of strategic importance, because it supplies the centers of the region and allows the irrigation of many crops.

Brother Luca Panza, Franciscan of the Custody of the Holy Land, guardian of the Capernaum convent, confirms "the abundant rains and the fact that the connecting dam has not been opened" with the Jordan River. He continues: "Days of heavy storms have damaged the banks, part of the work of this period is to bring new land and rebuild them. This year the level of the lake has increased by four meters, and we have to reckon with it. "

Located in Galilee, the basin is 160 km2 large and is a religious symbol for Christians and a place of pilgrimage for Jews. In recent years the waters had recorded a retreat, so much so that between 2017 and 2018 the "Sea of Galilee" touched the lowest point at minus 214 meters.

The agricultural production of bananas, which requires huge quantities of water, are among the causes of the decline. The crisis is compounded by the constant draining by Israeli authorities, which has touched 400 million cubic meters per year, and the low levels of precipitation over the past decade.

Population growth is also a factor, which has led to a decrease of one centimeter per day. The drop in water has alarmed environmentalists and experts, because it directly affects the natural environment and causes an increase in salinity, endangering flora and fauna.

Today the state of Israel has limited the drawdown to 40 million cubic meters per year. After all, water is a very precious asset and only a prudent management policy and a collaboration between entities and nations will be able to save the Middle East region, still at risk of crisis.

The last two rainy winters and the melting of the snow on the Golan peaks should contribute to raising the water levels even more which, for the first time since 1992, has exceeded less than 209 meters, with the water (in the photos) having reached the edges and banks.

The rising of the lake waters, however, puts at risk the sanctuaries of the Capernaum area, especially that of the primacy of Peter in Tabga (see photo), one of the most loved and visited places in the Holy Land seen in the past two years by an average of 5 thousand tourists a day, with peaks of 6500.

Today the place of worship is closed to visitors, in the context of the rules for the containment of the new coronavirus pandemic. Not having to deal with "the large numbers of pilgrims", underlines friar Luca, "our service is now to safeguard and protect the place". We are, however, continuing to work on improving the site. We will be ready - he concludes - for the arrival of new pilgrims, which we hope will happen soon ".

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HOLY LAND Levels of Sea of Galilee rise, a strategic water resource for the region - AsiaNews

Injured koalas and other native animals on the Gold Coast will receive enhanced care, thanks to new funding.

Nerang-based conservation group Watergum has received $13,000 from Landcare Australia's $300,000 Bushfire Recovery Grants program.

Fodder farms are plantations where displaced and injured wildlife can recover following medical treatment

Aim is to revegetate areas to provide links between pockets of koala habitats

Watergum calling on greater involvement in koala conservation efforts

Executive officer Rosalinde Brinkeman said the funding was "absolutely enormous" to their cause in helping native animals in the city.

"It's really important to be able to look after koalas and other native mammals," she said.

The money will be used to install a new fodder farm at Country Parkside Parklands, which will include planting 400 trees.

Watergum also works with other local councils and governments across Australia to spread awareness about the plight of injured and displaced animals.

"Our work involves a lot of community engagement through citizen science, revegetation and regeneration of natural areas ... so a whole lot of things," she said.

"This fodder farm will be perfect for our revegetation of areas."

"It is so important to provide leaf for overnight emergency care koalas and other native mammals as well as native mammals in care once they have been released from the wildlife hospitals," Ms Brinkeman said.

According to the group, more koalas and native animals are being displaced due to rapid development and deforestation.

"If you take out one big tree, it has multiple hollows in it which provides habitat for multiple animals at the same time," Ms Brinkeman said.

"You take out a lot of homes for a lot of animals and you can't just replace it (easily) by planting a new tree."

A tree may take up to 50 years or more to bring it to the same level and protection as the old tree it replaced.

However, Ms Brinkman said the topic of balancing rapid growth and conservation could be sensitive for some.

"We just need to make sure which areas need to be prioritized and which areas we need for our wildlife," she said.

"Most importantly, we need connectivity. We need reserves and parks to be connected to each other so animals can move around."

She urged all Gold Coast residents to do their part if they see an injured animal in their neighbourhood.

"Just look around you. If you walk around and see an injured animal, call the wildcare hotline so people can come and rescue those animals," she said.

The group also encourages people to enter submissions to new development projects if they're concerned about its environmental impact.

A spokesperson for the Gold Coast City Council said their Koala Conservation Plan recognised the importance of conserving the local population.

"We can help mitigate threats to koalas on the Gold Coast, monitor our local koala populations and engage with and empower our community to help protect koalas," she said.

Developers are required to meet conditions to manage land clearing and minimize impacts on the population.

"The city expects full compliance by developers in regards to those measures," she said.

Planting will begin once COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

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Gold Coast fodder farm to help sick and injured koalas and other native wildlife - ABC Local

TobagoNewsday3 Days AgoWalkers Reserve, a sand-quarry rehabilitation site in Barbados fully rehabilitated with the establishment of an array of fruit crop and plant life. -

Dr Anjani Ganase has referred to the green economy and the blue economy as appropriate for small islands. Here, she explains the concepts.

The green economy is an economy that is aligned with the health of the environment. It is based on the deep understanding that human beings are fundamentally reliant on the environment for lives and livelihoods. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, our healthcare, are dependent on our natural ecosystems. Unfortunately, at the moment we do not budget environmental degradation carbon emissions, land clearing, chemical discharge into human activities. To our detriment, we bear the brunt of the impact; annually over three million people worldwide die from air pollution (WHO); and we are using way too much resources without replenishment. To shift to a green economy, we need to first reduce excessive or inefficient consumption of natural resources by instilling more sustainable practices and infrastructure through a better understanding of our planets ecosystems. For many who live on islands and coasts, this concept extends to the blue economy, which is the sustainable use of oceans and marine resources.

A member of the rehabilitation crew on Walker's Reserve. -

The transition to green and blue may seem overwhelming because we believe it requires a complete 180 degree change in our jobs and lifestyles. This is not the case. Rather, it requires national and global support for implementing policies for best practices in curbing environmental and health impact in the sectors of food and agriculture, energy, manufacturing, technology and transport, all sectors which extract from the natural world. In 2012, the International Labour Organization (ILO) reviewed the opportunities presented by the green economy. Lets focus on agriculture and forestry as the largest employer globally, yet it draws the lowest revenue. Let us also consider that the practices of modern agriculture make it a major emitter of greenhouse gases; it is also now extremely vulnerable to climate changes and the pressure of increased production as the population continues to increase.

Green agriculture and agroforestry

To feed the worlds billions, we need to work smarter. The agricultural industry is not green. It needs considerable revamp of regulations and the implementation of supporting green infrastructure to allow the farmer to work lands that are naturally enriched and supplied by stable water sources. Going green in agriculture means a shift from large-scale monocultures that utilise unsustainable clearing practices, including slash and burn, and improper soil management with a high dependency on fertilisers and pesticides. How do we make the shift?

Workers at Walker's Reserve plant trees to rehabilitate it. -

The ILO has identified techniques for developing green agriculture. Firstly, techniques in soil fertility/ plant nutrient management refer to the use of organic compostable plant and animal waste fertilisation and crop diversification where crops that input nutrients into the soil are grown with other crops instead of synthetic fertilisers. Let us start with understanding the micro-ecology of soils and develop the scientists to provide knowledge of soil composition and ecology. We need to appreciate the microbes and organisms that maintain soil structure to improve productivity of certain plants. Building on soil, we turn to efficient and sustainable water management through irrigation technology, improving rainfall collection but also determining crop suitability during times of drought or flood conditions, either through selective breeding of plants or landscaping.

Other avenues of opportunity include crop and livestock diversification, biological plant and animal health management and appropriate mechanisation. There are methods of permaculture or regenerative agriculture where an array of crops that complement each others environments are used, similar to what is seen in nature. For example, the inclusion of banana plants and rubber trees on cocoa estates to enrich the soil and shade the cocoa trees. Livestock integration encourages the farming of crops and livestock in synchrony; examples of methods include silvo-pastoral systems where animal grazing is carried out among trees fruit, nuts, and timber crops. Significantly, green agriculture encourages more efficient farming on smaller scales that have lower impact.

Walkers Reserve in Barbados at the beginning of the rehabilitation process installing irrigation systems and plants. -

Let us also consider agro-forestry. While the primary goal of forestry is the protection and management of our natural stocks, forestry can go beyond traditional conservation tactics, and include active rehabilitation and reforestation of retired agricultural lands, quarries and mines. These programmes can be funded through taxes on resource extraction and enforced by environmental law. Agroforestry can then be developed on rehabilitated lands for timber or orchards. Government must ensure proper management and certification processes. Other offshoot opportunities of a well-functioning forestry division include eco-tourism. Creating a national park for low-impact tourism hiking and camping permits can also contribute to forest health maintenance.

Management of fisheries

An important sector of island ecosystems is fisheries. It is the resource that is most difficult to align with blue or green economic standards, considering that we have over-exploited most of our oceans for hundreds of years and we have limited control of fish stocks beyond our borders. Fisheries need to move beyond a purely extractive enterprise to stock management and farming. Fish stocks are primarily managed through the implementation of marine protected areas. If we implement similar harvest practices based on the knowledge of the life cycle of fish species, we can significantly improve the fishing industry. Fish farming in the simplest form, this means taking care of the nurseries for juvenile fish can subsidise the pressure on wild fish stocks.

Walkers Reserve, a sand-quarry rehabilitation site in Barbados before any rehabilitation was done. PHOTO COURTESY Rahaman-Noronha, Wa Samaki Ecosystems (walkersreserve.com)-

The development of green agriculture and blue fisheries is dependent on a supportive government policy framework to promote sustainable development and reduce ecologically harmful practices. The government will need to implement on land and sea, spatial planning and zonation, tax incentives, permitting and certifications, and recruit a skilled labour force. Skills range from research and development, ocean and environmental engineering, management and labour. The green and blue ventures are most suitable for our island ecosystem where there is limited space for agriculture that does not encroach on the many unique habitats we house.

Ready to change?

Apart from effects on our own health and well-being, the covid19 pandemic is signalling an end to business as we knew it. Shareholders in existing businesses should be anxious to formulate new strategic business plans for at least the next 18 months. How could existing investments buildings and people be speedily converted to catch the rising wave of new island economy. Yes, there will have to be renovations, conversions of existing buildings, retraining of loyal staff, recruitment of young enthusiasm. There will be expenditure and lower revenues for a while. There will be need for belt-tightening. But a vision for a future that is based on health and well-being for our island communities must be worth some effort.

References:

World Health Organization. (2016). Ambient air pollution: A global assessment of exposure and burden of disease.

International Labour Office. (2012). Working towards sustainable development: Opportunities for decent work and social inclusion in a green economy. International Labour Organization.

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The green and blue vision for Tobago - Trinidad News

With Russian flags now flying over abandoned U.S. military bases in Syria, and American soldiers still dying in combat with the Islamic State in Iraq, the terror groups strength may seem hard to gauge. Yet the Russian and American presidents have each suggested at different times that ISIS, as the group is also known, has been eliminated and that it was their respective militaries that had contributed the most to achieve that result. President Donald Trump, for example, effectively announced the groups defeat by U.S. troops on July 16, 2019: We did a great job with the [ISIS] caliphate. We have 100 percent of the caliphate and were rapidly pulling out of Syria, he said at a Cabinet meeting. President Vladimir Putin has made similar comments about the role of Russia and its soldiers. In early December 2017, a few days after the Defense Ministry officially told him that all ISIS gangs on Syrian territory have been destroyed and the territory itself has been liberated, Putin travelled to Syria and addressed Russian troops at the Hmeimim military base, saying that, in a little more than two years, Russias Armed Forces, together with Syrias army, routed the most battleworthy group of international terrorists [there was].

These claims of victory raise at least two important questions: First, to what extent has ISIS been defeated and, second, which country, the United States or Russia, deserves credit for contributing the most to this cause? The short answer would be this: The U.S.-led coalition did far more to clear ISIS out of Iraq and Syria than Russia and its allies; however, even though the terror group no longer controls significant territory in these countries, its fighters continue to carry out deadly attacks there, waging what the Institute for the Study of War recently called a capable insurgency with a global finance network, showing that any purported victory over ISISwhether claimed by Washington or Moscowis extremely fragile.1

While there is little doubt that ISIS had by the summer of 2019 lost control over most, if not all, of its territorial caliphate, it is also clear that the group has not been fully defeated, strategically or militarily. In the past two years we have seen ISIS once again become an insurgency group engaged in hit-and-run tactics and brutal terrorist attacks not only around the globe but also in areas supposedly liberated by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. Between the summer of 2018 and late March 2019, ISIS carried out at least 250 attacks in areas outside its control in Syria, according to a New York Times estimate. In Iraq, the numbers seem to be much higher: Research by the Combating Terrorism Center identified 1,271 attacks there by ISIS in the first months of 2018 alone, including a twin suicide bombing in Baghdad that left 38 dead and over 100 wounded. Other notable attacks in Iraq in the past two years have included a bombing at the funeral of anti-ISIS militiamen, which killed 16, a mortar attack on a soccer field near Kirkuk, which killed six, and a minibus bombing last September, which killed 12. This year ISIS fighters have continued the onslaught, killing three Iraqi soldiers with a roadside bomb in April and attacking two Iraqi security posts near the Syrian border in January. Inside Syria itself ISIS most prominent recent attacks include: a series of coordinated suicide bombings in the southwestern region of Suwayda in July 2018, which killed over 200 people; a January 2019 suicide attack at a restaurant frequented by U.S. military personnel in Manbij, which killed 19 people, including four Americans; and three near-simultaneous bombings in Hasakah province in July 2019. This February, according to one Syrian NGO cited by The Media Line news website, ISIS and other groups carried out 53 attacks in SDF territory in the countrys northeast, mostly targeted killings and home invasions in the regions of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.

In addition to staging attacks, the terror groups fighters and supporters are dispersed across both countries, reconstituting key capabilities since late 2018, according to ISW; a recent Pentagon report concurred, saying that ISISalso known as ISIL and IShas now solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and is also resurgent in Syria. ISIS fighters have taken refuge in Iraqs most forbidding terrain,2where government control is tenuous at best, including mountains and caves, remote desert, orchards, river groves and islands, as well as in destroyed and abandoned villages, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, or ICG.3(An attempt to clear ISIS militants out of one such area, a cave complex, in Iraq on March 8 led to this years first U.S. troop fatalities in the anti-ISIS battle.) Likewise, ISIS fighters are present in Syria: in the open expanses of its central Badiya desert, finding shelter in its rocky outcroppings and caves and launching regular attacks against exposed Syrian military positions, but also in Raqqa and Hasakah provinces, where ISIS is believed to have a sophisticated clandestine network and has conducted more complex and ambitious attacks.4According to the Institute for the Study of War,5as of 2019 ISIS had also established a rural network of support on the outskirts of Idlib province, now the last bastion of anti-regime forces in Syria, which Damascus has been trying to retake for months with Russian support. However, while many ISIS militants fled to the province after March 2019, the terror groups presence in Idlib has been low-key, in the words of one analyst, as Idlib is dominated by other jihadist groups, in particular an anti-ISIS coalition called Heiat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. Some of the rebel groups in Idlib have been supported by Turkey, whose intervention in northeastern Syria, coupled with the U.S.s partial withdrawal from the area, has only served to further strengthen ISIS capabilities in this Middle Eastern region, according to a recent Pentagon report.

The research laid out below leaves little doubt that the United States and its allies in the anti-ISIS coalitionkey among them Iraqi troops, Kurdish Peshmerga and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, as well as Syrian Arab fightersplayed a primary role in subduing ISIS, while Russia and its allies played an auxiliary role that contributed only marginally to the terrorist groups defeat. This follows from three factors: (1) that U.S.-led forces dislodged ISIS from more key strongholds and square miles of territory than did Russia; (2) that, despite a major Russian military deployment to Syria beginning in September 2015, Moscows campaigns against ISIS began in earnest only in 2017, when the group had already been severely weakened and was compelled to concentrate its forces on fighting the U.S.-backed SDF advance in eastern Syria; and (3) that, in the words of political analyst Vladimir Frolov, Moscows main goal had never been to fight ISIS but to suppress the armed opposition to [President] Bashar Assads regime, which by fall 2015 had lost control over 70 percent of the countrys territory and was on the verge of military defeat.6Frolovs assessment, likewise voiced by numerous U.S. experts, finds some reflection in the Russian Defense Ministrys own 2017 end-of-year statistics on its Syria campaign, which made no distinction between ISIS facilities/fighters and those of other terrorists and militants.

In terms of clearing territory, it is worth remembering that, at its height in late 2014, ISIS had succeeded in taking control of land in Syria and Iraq covering nearly 40,000 sq. miles with a population of 12 million, according to an estimate by the RAND Corporation. The U.S.-led coalition dislodged ISIS from all the areas the group controlled in Iraq, plus a vast triangle of land in eastern and northern Syriaincluding some of the biggest cities in ISIS grip, such as Mosul (where the groups then leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the creation of the caliphate in June 2014), Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit and Raqqa, which eventually became ISIS capital and main military headquarters. Russia, on the other hand, did not engage militarily against ISIS in Iraq nor did it make other significant contributions to the anti-ISIS effort there, as far as the research for this paper was able to ascertain.7In Syria, however, it is clear that Russia together with its allies on the groundthe pro-government Syrian forces, Iranian-backed militias and Lebanons Hezbollahwrested at least half a dozen areas from ISIS control in the west and center of the country, contributing, albeit marginally, to ISIS defeat.

Though Washington did have one costly CIA program supporting anti-Assad rebels in the civil war, by the fall of 2014 the Obama administration had publicly adopted an ISIL-first strategy, focusing Americas military might on fighting the terror group. Confronted with the threat posed by ISIS victories in Syria and Iraqboth to the stability of the Middle East and to the well-being of citizens regionally as well as globallythe United States built a broad coalition in 2014 to defeat the terrorist organization. Western partners included traditional allies like the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Canada and Australia, as well as many other, minor contributors. (Russia did not take part.) Led by the U.S., this coalition engaged primarily in direct airstrikes against ISIS military targets and strategic bases in Iraq and Syria. It also provided training, intelligence and military assistance to allied forces fighting ISIS on the ground. Several forcesfunded, trained and equipped by the United States and its alliesdid most of the fighting.8In Iraq, these included the countrys official counterterrorism service (also known as the Golden Division), regular armed forces and police, as well as Kurdish Peshmerga fighters of the Kurdistan regional government, or KRG, which operated primarily in northern Iraq. Several Shia militias supported by Iran also helped the Iraqi government fight ISIS on the ground, but they received neither training nor support from the U.S.-led coalition. In Syria, the U.S. and its allies relied on the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces and U.S.-trained Syrian Arab fighters belonging to the Free Syrian Army. The anti-ISIS coalition also involved other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, which primarily provided airpower support to help defeat ISIS but whose efforts were not determinant.

U.S.-led operations against ISIS began in the autumn of 2014 and achieved their first successes in 2015. In January of that year, U.S.-trained Iraqi forces restored control over the Diyala province in the countrys east, while in April the central Iraqi town of Tikrit was returned to government hands through the efforts of a 30,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government troops, Sunni tribal fighters and Shia militias closely advised by Iranian military commanders (including Qassem Soleimani, the powerful general assassinated by the U.S. in January). Again, the United States did not provide airpower to support these operations, as Washington refused to help the Iranian-backed militias fighting in Iraq.

Only in the autumn of 2015 did the U.S. begin significantly increasing the intensity and range of its airstrikes in Iraq, engaging in systematic attacks against ISIS facilities, command posts, leadership targets and income-generating installations, according to the Defense Departmentan escalation that significantly weakened ISIS and threatened its logistics, allowing major advances against ISIS on the ground. In mid-October 2015, Iraqi forces and Shia militias reportedly seized the Baiji refinery, Iraqs largest, from ISIS control in the countrys north. In November 2015, Iraqi Kurdish forces, backed by U.S. air strikes, took control of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, one of ISIS gateways to Syria where the terrorist organization had perpetrated a massacre against the predominantly Yazidi inhabitants in August 2014. A month later, in December 2015, the Iraqi counterterrorism service together with the Iraqi army made a major advance toward capturing the city of Ramadi, though fighting would last for another month until the city fell. This helped to break the back of ISIS resistance in Iraqs Anbar province, according to the U.S. military, and opened the way for the capture of Fallujah a few months later. At the same time, in northern Iraq, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters delivered several military blows to ISIS fighters, relieving the pressure around Erbil and along the disputed KRG border, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.9

The efforts in Syria also started showing signs of success in early 2015, when a coalition of U.S.-backed forcesincluding Syrian Kurdish fighters from the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Syrian Arab fighters of the Free Syrian Armybegan slowly moving south from the Turkish-Syrian border. Their first symbolic victory occurred in January of that year, when YPG forces and FSA fighters restored control over the border town of Kobani after a brutal four-month military campaign that relied on massive U.S. bombing. From Kobani, Syrian Kurdish fighters and their Syrian Arab allies pushed southward and eastward, slowly conquering territory from ISIS with the support of U.S. and coalition airstrikes. In April 2015, they managed to dislodge ISIS fighters from almost all the villages they had captured in the surrounding Kobani province. On June 16, 2015, they took full control of the strategic Syrian town of Tal Abyad, further extending Kurdish control over territory running along the Syrian-Turkish border. A few days later, on June 22, 2015, Kurdish-led forces, aided by U.S.-led airstrikes and smaller Syrian Arab rebel groups, captured a military base near the town of Ain-Issa, some 30 miles north of Raqqa, advancing deeper into ISIS territory.

After the victories of 2015, it took U.S. coalition forces about a year to score a major victory in Iraq. In late June 2016, after a five-week fight, the ISIS stronghold of Fallujah finally fell to Iraqi counterterrorism troops, local police forces and Shia militias supported by a massive campaign of U.S. and coalition airstrikes.10In August and September 2016, as Iraqi government forces advanced further north, ISIS lost control over what Iraqi officials called its last revenue-generating oil fields in the country, to the south of Mosul and in areas neighboring Kirkuk. In July 2017, after a nine-month fight, the large and symbolically important city of Mosul in northern Iraq was finally recaptured by Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, with the support of U.S./coalition airstrikes and U.S. special forces on the ground. The neighboring city of Tal Afar returned to Iraqi hands a month later. In October 2017, Iraqi forces captured the city of Hawija, ISIS last stronghold in northern Iraq, leaving ISIS fighters holed up in pockets of land by the Syrian border. Finally, in September-November 2017, Iraqi forces launched a successful offensive in Anbar province that allowed them to retake the last patch of Iraqi territory under ISIS control, in the border areas near Syria.11By the end of 2017, though ISIS fighters were hiding in some remote areas in Iraq, the group controlled no territory there.

The fighting in Syria also progressed in the U.S. coalitions favor in 2016-2017, with interventions not only by Russia but by Turkey as well. In May 2016, Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, now grouped under the umbrella of the SDF, launched a first offensive against Raqqa, intended primarily to test ISIS resistance capabilities. Thereafter, SDF forces tried to encircle Raqqa and cut off all lines of communication to the city. In June 2016, the Kurdish-led SDF also spearheaded a successful attack on the ISIS-occupied city of Manbij near the Turkish border, taking control of it in early August. Worried about Kurdish advances, Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield on Aug. 24, mostly to prevent Kurdish forces in Manbij from linking up with the Kurdish provinces they held in the northwestern tip of Syria, but also in response to a massive attack by ISIS in Turkey several days earlier.12Euphrates Shield proved quite successful: Within a few days, Turkish forces and U.S.-backed Syrian rebels dislodged ISIS from the border town of Jarablus and a stretch of land on the Syrian-Turkish border. In December 2016, Turkish troops would liberate the neighboring city of al-Bab from ISIS control, while in November Turkish-backed FSA rebels took control of Dabiq, a town with strong symbolic value for ISIS as the terror group claimed it would be the site of the final apocalyptic battle with Christian forces leading to the ultimate victory of the caliphate.

Also in November 2016, the SDF launched a major offensive to seize Raqqa, approaching it from various directions, with the U.S./coalition providing key air support, including a massive bombing campaign that would last for several months until the citys fall to Kurdish and Syrian forces in October 2017. In early March 2017, the SDF reached the Euphrates River in northern Deir ez-Zor Province, severing ISIS lines of communication between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. A few weeks later, the SDF seized the Tabqah airbase in western Raqqa province, cutting off ISIS lines of contact between Raqqa and Aleppo. In August, SDF forces linked their western and eastern axes of advance in southern Raqqa, and in early September the old city of Raqqa came under their control. Then the SDF units moved further south along the Euphrates and, in September, they consolidated control over most of Deir ez-Zor province, taking over the Conoco gas field, the town of Suwar and the big Jafrah oilfield. The Omar oilfield, the largest in Syria, was seized by the SDF from ISIS on Oct. 22, 2017, two days after the entire city of Raqqa fell to the SDF and U.S.-led coalition, symbolizing the defeat of ISIS self-proclaimed caliphate.

By the end of October 2017, therefore, with the support of the U.S. and its allies, ISIS had been cleared from most of the land that it had occupied in Syria to the east of the Euphrates. Only a small patch along Syrias southeastern border remained under ISIS control, and this area would be cleared by SDF-led forces in March 2019, after a one-and-a-half-month battle to take the village of Baghuz, marking the last nail in the caliphates coffin. In sum, ISIS was defeated in a vast triangle of land in eastern Syriafrom Kobani in the northwest, to Deir ez-Zor in the southeast, to the borders with Iraq in the east and Turkey in the north. During their entire land campaign, SDF units benefited from massive U.S./coalition airstrikes against ISIS command and control positions, its military infrastructure, its leadership and its energy resources, according to the U.S. military.This proved determinant to ensure the SDFs victory over ISIS; the U.S. and several of its allies also dispatched special-operation forces, which helped to recruit and train SDF fighters and in many instances also took part in military operations on the ground. As Frolov aptly summed it up: The main role in routing ISIS was played by the U.S.-led international coalition: First, it stopped the ISIS offensive in Iraq in summer 2014 and saved Syrian Kurds from complete annihilation, and thenwithout direct help from Russia (except aircraft supplies to the Iraqi Air Force)freed Iraq, including Mosul with its population of several million. In 2017, after thorough preparations, [the coalition] routed ISIS in its capital, Raqqa and cleared terrorists from the entire eastern bank of the Euphrates, as well as southwestern Syria. While the U.S. was fighting ISIS, Russia was left free to do away with Assads main enemies.13

Perhaps in a testament to the terror groups resilience, American anti-ISIS efforts have not ceased. As of late March, the U.S. had more than 5,000 troops in Iraq, most of them working to train and advise Iraqi security forces in the mission against the Islamic State, according to the New York Times. In Syria, meanwhile, despite Trumps December 2018 announcement that the U.S. would pull all of its troops out of the country, an American force of less than 1,000 is arrayed on small, exposed bases across the countrys oil-producing east, The Washington Post wrote on March 7, in part to keep revenue-generating oil wells out of ISIS hands. (A February news report had put the number of U.S. troops in Syria at 500.)

In contrast to U.S.-led anti-ISIS forces, Russia concentrated most of its military efforts on helping the Assad regime regain strength after suffering major losses in Syrias civil war, which broke out in 2011-2012. Between 2012 and the autumn of 2015, Russia provided military support in the form of equipment, training and advice to help Assadits longtime allyfight the insurgency together with Lebanese and Iranian militias. The opposition fighting against Assad consisted of an eclectic mix of groups, some of which were trained and equipped by the United States and its allies, while others included units directly affiliated with al Qaeda, such as Jabhat al Nusra.14Russias military assistance, however, did not prove sufficient to prevent the Assad regime from continuing to lose control over parts of Syrian territory to the Sunni rebels in 2013-2014. By the summer of 2015, the regime seemed on the verge of collapse. This negative predicament prompted Russia to become fully engaged militarily in the conflict. In September 2015, Russian deployed a significant military contingent to Syria, including 12 Su-24 attack aircraft, 12 Su-25 air support aircraft, several Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, as well as at least 12 Mi-24 helicopters, two naval frigates, one cruiser and one destroyer. Soon thereafter, the Russian aircraft began a massive campaign of airstrikes, targeted primarily against opposition fighters who challenged the Assad regime in western Syria. Although the Kremlin claimed that its forces were hitting ISIS targets, most of the Russian airstrikes in the autumn of 2015 were instead carried out against Western-backed rebel groups and jihadist fighters linked to al Qaeda in the provinces of Idlib and Hama. During that period and throughout 2016, Russia focused most of its military efforts on combating opposition fighters entrenched in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs and southern Damascusas these were the forces that posed the most direct threat to the Assad regime. This is clearly reflected in the pattern of Russias airstrikes, most of which were conducted in these areas rather than against ISIS positions in Syria.

Russian military forces only began fighting the Islamic State in earnest in 2017,15on the western banks of the Euphrates. The two significant exceptions were, first, the successful efforts carried out by pro-regime forces, with Russian support, to retake the ancient city of Palmyra from ISIS in March 2016 (the city, however, was again lost to ISIS in December 2016) and, second, Russias attempts to weaken ISIS positions in the strategic area of Deir ez-Zor where significant oil resources were located. At regular intervals in 2016, Russian aircraft bombed ISIS positionsand occasionally also SDF fightersin and around the city of Deir ez-Zor, in order to break the siege of the town. Yet it was only once that Assads government forces had gained sufficient strengthsucceeding in occupying eastern Aleppo in December 2016/January 2017that they began advancing, with Russian air support, further into Syrias eastern countryside in order to retake lands occupied by ISIS. By then, the extremist group had been severely weakened. It had been dislodged from most of the lands it had occupied in Iraq through the efforts of U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, Shia militias and Kurdish units, and was also losing ground in Syria. By March 2017, the U.S.-backed SDF had liberated most of northern and northwestern Syria and was starting its offensive against ISIS capital, Raqqa. In short, Assads advances were facilitated, to a great extent, by the partial withdrawal of ISIS forces from western Syria and their redeployment on the eastern bank of the Euphrates to counter a major U.S.-led SDF offensive. It is not possible, therefore, to argue that Russia played the primary role in defeating ISIS by comparison with the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.

Nevertheless, pro-regime forces, backed by Russian and Syrian air support, did help speed the defeat of ISIS in 2017 by dislodging it from western, southwestern and central Syria west of the Euphrates. On March 2, 2017, pro-regime forces supported by Russian air strikes, Iranian militias and Hezbollah fighters managed to recapture Palmyra from ISIS. A few days later, Assads forces and the Iranian and Lebanese militias supporting them seized the Jirah airbase and the Khafsa water treatment plant from ISIS, as well as dozens of towns in eastern Aleppo province, before pushing further eastward toward the banks of the Euphrates. On March 7, 2017, they took control over ISIS-occupied villages near the strategic border town of Manbij (itself liberated by the Kurdish-dominated SDF in August 2016), in order to stop a potential Turkish attack. Also in March 2017, Assads forces advanced southward, occupying ISIS-conquered villages and positions in the tri-border region of Daraa, Rif Dimashq and Suwayda provinces in southwestern Syria. All these advances were facilitated by air support from Russian and Syrian armed forces whose planes pounded rural and urban areas. (Russia likewise reportedly agreed to set up a training base for anti-ISIS Kurdish fighters near the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin, presumably to further help Assad counter Turkish incursions by strengthening the Kurdish forces there; however, Turkey would eventually push Kurdish troops out of the Afrin region in a special operation (dubbed Olive Branch) in January-March 2018, launched with what one analyst called Russias grudging acquiescence.)

Between the spring of 2017 and years end, pro-Assad forces with significant Russian support from the air managed a number of successes against ISIS: pushing its fighters out of Aleppo province; tightening the regimes hold on a large swath of territory under rebel control to the west of Raqqa, ISIS Syrian capital; breaking the terror groups three-year siege of Deir ez-Zor city; and taking control of the last remaining foothold of ISIS in Deir ez-Zor province. The rapid advances against ISIS in the last months of 2017 were facilitated by the terrorist groups decision to deliberately surrender almost all of its territory on the western banks of the EuphratesDeir ez-Zor, Mayadeen and Abu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi borderto pro-Assad forces in October 2017 as its fighters concentrated their defences against the U.S. and the SDF on the rivers eastern bank.16The milestones in this period, region by region, include the following:

Aleppo Province:

Raqqa Province:

Deir ez-Zor Region:

Hama and Homs Provinces:

Southwestern Syria:

The last of these offensives coincided with efforts by President Putin to find a negotiated political resolution of the conflictinvolving the Syrian government, the opposition, Iran and Turkeyand culminated in his Dec. 11, 2017, announcement of the end of Russias military operations and the start of the withdrawal of its forces from Syria. Yet ISIS had not been fully defeated then, as now, and therefore Russia not only continued to provide Assad with air power but decided to keep a force of some 5,000 servicemen deployed in Syria17to help the regime keep fighting what was left of ISIS, but, above all, to defeat the other rebel groups concentrated in Idlib and Aleppo, including those affiliated with al Qaeda. In 2018 Syrian government offensives, supported by Russia and Iran, continued targeting ISIS, as did the U.S.-backed coalition. In May, Assads forces launched a massive attack to kick ISIS out of the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern fringes of Damascus, and in July they routed ISIS in areas close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In July-August 2018, Syrian government forces, supported by an intensive Russian bombing campaign, finally took full control of the Yarmouk basin in southwestern Syria, clearing the region of ISIS. By mid-November 2018, the government had dislodged ISIS fighters from all the southwestern regions of Syria. By years end, therefore, the groups territorial control had been eliminated in most if not all of western and central Syria west of the Euphrates. And although Russia had withdrawn some of its aircraft and helicopters in the summer of 2018, including the new Mi-28 and K-52 attack helicopters, it had left a force of roughly 30 aircraft,18which continued to provide crucial support to pro-regime forces. Moreover, Russian special forces reportedly supported Assads efforts to dislodge jihadist and other rebel forces in several areas of northwestern Syria, including, possibly, in Idlib and Hama in the summer of 2019 (although Russian officials deny this).19In August 2018, Russias defense minister said more than 63,000 Russian servicemen had rotated through Syria in the previous three years; however, Russias troop presence there has been estimated at no more than 4,000-6,000 ground troops at any given time, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and recent estimates have placed the number at several thousand, including Russian military police with air support in eastern Syria.

Although Moscow and Washington have managed to keep their separate military campaigns in Syria deconflicted for the most part, U.S. officials told the New York Times in February that U.S. troops had been having increasingly frequent run-ins with Russian military personnel on highways in northeastern Syria and that Russian helicopters had been flying closer to American troops. One of the most dramatic collisions between Russian-backed forces and U.S. troops took place near Syrian oil fields in February 2018some months after both Russia and the U.S. had declared their respective victories against ISIS. In the confrontation, the U.S. military killed an estimated 200-300 pro-Assad fighters, including a significant number of Russian mercenaries, in a firefightthat the New York Times calledone of the single bloodiest battles the American military has faced in Syria since deploying to fight the Islamic Stateand certainly one that ratcheted up tensions between Moscow and Washington.

The worlds battle with ISIS may be far from over, but insofar as the terror group has been subdued, the United States and its allies, as noted above, played a bigger role than did Russia, and the numbers bear that out. According to the Pentagon, by late March 2019 the U.S.-led coalition had liberated about 42,000 square miles of territory and 7.7 million people from ISIS occupation. In October 2017, when the vast majority of land had been retaken from ISIS, the Pentagon claimed to have killed around 80,000 ISIS militants. Between August 2014 and October 2018, the U.S. and its allies conducted over 30,700 strikes as part of Operation Inherent Resolve and provided military assistance to allies on the ground. Russia, in turn, asserted in December 2017 that it had eliminated 60,318 militantsnot specifically identified as ISISas well as 8,000 units of military equipment, 718 weapons factories and workshops and about 400 oil production facilities belonging to rebel fighters. A top military commander publicly told Putin at the time that close to 26,000 square miles of territory [had been] liberated, including over 1,000 populated settlements, 78 oil and gas fields and two phosphate mines; he also said Russian forces had completed almost 7,000 military airplane raids and over 7,000 sorties by helicopters.

While it is difficult to determine the number of ISIS militants killed or captured by Russia, it is clear that together with its allies on the ground Moscow succeeded in returning to Syrian government hands most if not all of the areas in western and central Syria, to the west of the Euphrates River, that had fallen under ISIS control. These included the al-Hajar al-Aswad district south of Damascus, the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp, rural areas in the central territories of Homs and Hama provinces, as well as a series of villages to the east of Aleppo. Russian-backed coalition forces also twice freed the ancient city of Palmyra from ISIS (albeit, once more for show than substance), as well as Syrias southern districts in Daraa and Suwayda provinces. By early 2019, with Russian support, Assads forces had succeeded in recapturing a vast area of land running from Aleppo in the north, through Homs and Hama provinces in the center, to Damascus and Daraa province in the south, and from Palmyra in the center to Deir ez-Zor and Abu Kamal in the west. In October 2019, The Washington Post estimated that Assads regime controlled 57 percent of the country; more recent assessments, made since the U.S. partial pullout, in December and January, placed the Syrian governments control over territory at 70-73 percent, including major advances into former SDF-controlled areas.

The chief reason Russias contribution to the military rollback of ISIS was smaller than the United States, as described above, is that Moscows main goal was to support Assad against rebel groups directly challenging his hold of the country, and those included some groups backed by the U.S. Russia did not start fighting ISIS in earnest until 2017, when the group had already been severely weakened and was sending its remaining forces to the east of the country to face the U.S.-backed SDF advance. Once again Frolov summed it up well, after Russias triumphant so-called withdrawal from Syria in December 2017: Russia began to fight ISIS in earnest only at the final stage of the operation in eastern Syria, during the process of unblocking Deir ez-Zor and accessing the Euphrates. The retaking of Palmyra in 2016 was irrelevant from a military perspective. It is strange that Moscow is trying to challenge the U.S. and the coalitions role in routing ISIS. Its not that the U.S. is trying to capitalize on Russias victoryas claimed by the Russian Foreign Ministrys official spokespersonrather, Russia is trying to communize the U.S.-led coalitions victory.

As noted above, it is too early for anyone to claim victory over ISIS, as the terror group is rebuilding capacity and continuing to launch attacks. Moreover, in addition to ISIS, other jihadist groups continue to operate in the region, posing threats there and beyond. In northwestern Syria alone, these include: the powerful HTS coalition; the Turkish-backed National Liberation Front; the al-Qaeda-affiliated Hurras al-Din; and the Turkistan Islamic Party, or TIP, a jihadist group dominated by Chinese Uighurs.

RM special projects editor Natasha Yefimova-Trilling and RM student associate Daniel Shapiro contributed research for this article.

Photo by U.S.Sgt. Lisa Soy shared in the public domain as a U.S. government work.

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Who 'Defeated' ISIS? An Analysis of US and Russian Contributions - Russia Matters