3 . The world’s first 3D-printed wood log hive (蜂箱) is a new project developed by the Lacrima Foundation in Edinburgh to reduce the troubling decline of honey bee populations around the world.

The Lacrima Foundation is a charity that is “committed to the conservation and protection of one of the Earth’s most important inhabitant.” The charity teamed up with beekeepers in Europe to work towards a rewilding approach that would offer bees a natural nest habitat and, in turn, create resilience (复原力) among bee communities.

Honey bees are one of the most important pollinators (授粉者), and although they may seem small and insignificant, they are vital for the production of our food — we couldn’t eat without them! However, in recent years, bee populations have been severely impacted by the growing climate emergency and our intensive agriculture practices, including the overuse of pesticides.

With help from local partners, the Foundation created 3D-printed wood log hives, which allow the bees to live in an undisturbed ecosystem where they can carry out their lives. They install these hives in high sections of tree trunks to model natural conditions for the big honey bee populations.

Vince Moucha, chairman of the Lacrima Foundation, said, “Even though there are other people and organisations working in the field of natural beekeeping, the impact, progress and scope of these projects is minimal and slow, due to limited access to resources and clear vision. I am driven by responsibility and decided to act on it due to the urgency and importance of this matter.”

The Foundation will continue to work with beekeepers in the UK, Europe, and the United States to help our bee populations survive and thrive for them and us! Check out the Lacrima Foundation, where you can see their mission and donate to the cause and even get a honey bee gift bracelet in return.

Years ago, the authors conducted human-wildlife conflict surveys in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s counties,     1     (locate) in the TAR’s remote Chang Tang region. These surveys showed     2     previously undocumented and growing problem of human-snow leopard conflict. Next, snow leopard telephone interviews were conducted with Tibet Forestry Bureau staff,     3     (result) in an additional new conflict and sighting location records. This new location information, together with records provided by other observers,     4     (collect) to make a snow leopard distribution (分布) map.

This effort greatly expanded knowledge of the snow leopard’s distribution in this region,     5     remains one of the least understood of the snow leopard’s key range areas. New knowledge on snow leopard in the Chang Tang will help identify human-snow leopard conflict hot spots and influence design of human-snow leopard conflict relief and conservation strategies for northwest Tibet. Nevertheless, much field work will also be required     6     (describe) snow leopard distribution in the Chang Tang.

Importantly, in the past few years, a number of major transportation infrastructure (基础设施) projects     7     (make) the Chang Tang more accessible. This has led to a     8     (great) increased number of tourists visiting western Tibet, Mt. Kailash and Lake Manasarovar     9     particular. All these developments have a large potential to cause disturbance to snow leopards and their prey species, including influencing their movements     10     destroying their habitat.

6 . Plastic is low-cost and long-lasting. It is not easily degraded(降解) because natural degradation processes can’t deal with its chemical components(成分). It takes in other ocean-present harmful substances. These chemical and dangerous components are gradually got into the atmosphere with additives such as color, which turns out to be really harmful when the plastic breaks down.

The design and development of new plastic products was sped up after World War II. Life without plastic seemed impossible in the modern age. But even though plastic was quite convenient, the dark side of it was seen as people began to enjoy the throw-away community. Many plastic products, such as plastic bags, have a lifetime of a few minutes to hours. However, they’ll stay in the environment for hundreds of years. We are destroying the very world that nurtured us.

Just 9% of plastic has been recycled and 12% burnt after production rose in the 1950s, which leave s about 79% of the 8.3 billion tons produced sitting in landfills(垃圾填埋场) or damaging our fields, oceans, and waterways. And each year the plastic ends up as contaminants. So to beat plastic pollution, we need to work together.

While plastic burning reduces the amount of waste dumped into oceans and lands, harmful gases are still produced, which also leads to greenhouse gases. However, if we make a firm decision and use modern waste management methods, we will be able to create a safe and healthy world. It is high time that we as responsible global citizens, took on the duty of protecting our environment and made great effort in saving our mother earth, instead of just leaving everything to our government. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s make a promise to successfully deal with plastic waste and protect our world from all possible risks.

7 . The amount of sea ice surrounding Antarctica has reached its lowest level since modern records began, for the second year in a row. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean’s surface around the planet’s polar regions. It forms at much lower sustained temperatures than freshwater ice does, at around-1.8 degrees Celsius. Sea ice builds up during the winter until it reaches its maximum extent, and then melts (融化) away in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum extent.

In Antarctica, where summer and winter are relative to the Northern Hemisphere, sea ice normally reaches its maximum extent in September when sea ice covers around 7 million square miles. At its minimum extent at the end of February, historically only around I million square miles remains. Last year the minimum sea ice extent was less than 772, 000 square miles, the lowest total since scientists began recording sea ice extent with satellites in 1979. On 21 February this year, that number had reduced to just 691, 000 square miles, which is roughly 40 per cent less than the average between 1981 and 2010.

The record-breaking minimum was expected after an extraordinarily hot January which was the seventh-warmest since records began 174 years ago. “By the end of January, we could tell it was only a matter of time until the record was broken,” said Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. Antarctica’s minimum sea ice extent will likely continue to decrease in the coming decades as global temperatures rise as a result of human-caused climate change and more multiyear ice, which acts as a seed for new ice growth, melts away.

Sea ice is crucial for polar predators(捕食性动物) such as penguins in Antarctica and polar bears in the Arctic, which use the ice as a platform for hunting. But the sea ice also helps stabilise ice on Antarctica. “Lower sea ice extent means that ocean waves will pound the coast of the giant ice sheet，further reducing ice shelves around Antarctic,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

9 . Naturalist Enzo Suma, who is now 40, lives in Puglia, a region in southern Italy whose long coastline faces the Adriatic Sea. Floating waste accumulates in this relatively enclosed part of the Mediterranean, unlike the open ocean, where the waste tends to be spread over a vast area. Feeling concerned about that, Suma makes it a habit to pick up the washed-up waste along the shore, especially after big winter storms.

One day, Suma was walking along the beach near his home when he discovered a bottle of Coke. Suma noticed on the bottle that the price, clearly printed on the bottom, was in lire, a currency (货币) that hadn’t been used in Italy since it was replaced by the euro in 2002. Could a plastic container have well survived in the Mediterranean, he wondered, for about two decades?

That led him to founding the Archeoplastica museum. It has a collection of about 500 unique pieces recovered from Italian shores and the Coke bottle is the first one of them. All collection demonstrates the unsettling life force of plastic waste in the environment. “Seeing that a product people may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago remains still unchanged, you’ll feel different. It’s a great shock,” Suma said to a reporter. So Suma often exhibits selected pieces from the Archeoplastica collection at local schools around his hometown of Ostuni.

“The playful side of the work allows you to arrive at the less beautiful side of things,” Suma acknowledged. “Plastic is a kind of useful substance. But it’s unthinkable that a water bottle, made from a material designed to last so long, can be used for just a few days—or even minutes—before becoming garbage. Clean the beaches. Clean the oceans. Recycle. But if we are still throwing out plastics, none of those are going to be long-term solutions.”

10 . This year, why not think of Earth Day as being like New Year’s Day?     1     Make a plan to do things differently and do something for our mother Earth. Keep on doing one of these for a year and see how it affects your health and the world.

Send your kids out to play. Sign up for the 1,000 hours challenge, where families accumulate (积累) 1,000 hours of outdoor play in a year.     2    Your children will be happier, healthier, and more connected to nature.

Learn how to cook five easy main dishes well. By promoting your kitchen skills and developing some of your own recipes, you won’t be so much interested in take outs and all the related packaging waste.    3    

    4     Download the Poshmark app onto your phone or visit the ThredUp website before ordering new clothing or shoes online. There are so many companies that there’s a good chance that you’ll find exactly what you need. Visit Facebook Marketplace, local exchanging sites, and more to find what you need in your daily life.

Walk or bike, don’t drive.    5     It will require making time adjustments, but if you view that time as an investment in mental and physical health, it’s not so hard to schedule. If you can sell a car, you might be able to justify purchasing an e-bike, which makes low-carbon travel even more accessible and fun.