​The example of Ireland, a country that has almost completely lost its forests ● We don’t even realize how little wildlife is left ● A year or two, that’s how many brain years after a sleepless night

Example of Ireland, a country that has almost completely lost its forests

Although Ireland is associated with the color green and is considered by many to be a country with a strong environmental policy, it is the exact opposite. It can even be considered as an example when it comes to the destruction of forests.

One or two millennia ago, Ireland was 80% forested. Only the coastal areas were not covered by forests. And those forests teemed with wild life. The situation changed dramatically in 1169, with the beginning of the English occupation. Ireland then became, among other things, the main source of cheap timber.

With the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, an order was issued to eradicate Irish forests. Reason? The destruction of rebel shelters there and the urgent need for forest for the English fleet. As a result, in less than four decades, Ireland’s forest cover has shrunk to just 12%.

By 1711, when large-scale agricultural programs were launched, deforestation had reached such a level that it was said “there is not enough wood for toothpicks in all Ireland”. A few decades later, the last wolves disappeared. As for bears, they have been exterminated for centuries.

In 1914, only 1% of Ireland’s surface was still covered by forests. The situation became critical at the end of the 20th century, when the Irish people began to feel the consequences of the lack of forests. Aridity, reduced rainfall, increased soil acidity and consequent deterioration of soil quality, lack of natural nutrients, erosion, disappearance of wildlife, deterioration of air quality, pollution, failure to reduce carbon emissions, increased cost of imported wood, all these have come together.

Currently, only 2% of Ireland’s surface is still covered with native trees. Another 9% was restored with Alaska spruce, a fast-growing but lower-quality non-native species. The problem is that the soil has changed so much chemically that it is very difficult to bring native forests back to life. After 800 years, the Irish realized that the knife had reached their bones, and climate change would hit them harder, faster than others.

The government’s reforestation plans call for more than 440 million trees to be planted over the next 20 years because, yes, forests had a purpose. Whether they want to succeed remains to be seen.

We don’t even realize how little wildlife is left

We are used to thinking that this planet still has oceans, jungles, steppes and forests full of wildlife, biodiversity, and no matter what humans do, nature will find a way to regenerate. This is not the case, as the first-ever study of the biomass value of wild mammals has shown.

A study conducted by researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and published in the journal PNAS paints a bleak picture of the aforementioned biomass. What’s more, it’s a picture of a world that’s about to enter the history books, replaced by a world dominated by domesticated animals.

According to Israeli experts, the entire mass of wild terrestrial mammals is about 20 million tons. Aquatic mammals have twice as much, somewhere around 40 tons. At the same time, the biomass of domestic mammals is about 630 million tons. Practically, the latter is 30 times, respectively, 15 times higher than the wild one.

For another comparison, the weight of all wild land mammals on the planet is less than 10% of the weight of a human, which is approximately 390 million tons. In other words, it’s a world that seems to be disappearing.

In principle, something more could be done. That’s what all the experts say, every time. Only conservation measures should be urgent. Otherwise, we will see only in a few years whether there is anything left to save.

A year or two, that’s how much the brain ages after a sleepless night

We all know what a sleepless night means and how difficult it is to recover from as we age. However, it seems that the effects of sleep deprivation are much stronger on our brains than we might imagine. This is stated by a mixed team of neuroscientists from Germany, Denmark and Switzerland in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers analyzed 134 volunteers, people who were divided into four groups, each of which had to sleep eight hours, five hours, three hours and no sleep, respectively. Before starting the test, each participant received one night of a full eight-hour sleep schedule to provide a baseline to correlate brain changes before and after sleep deprivation.

Each individual volunteer was subsequently monitored using magnetic resonance imaging. The obtained data were analyzed using a computer program called brainageR, which can show the age of a person according to the morphology of the brain.

It turned out that people who were completely deprived of sleep had brains one, even two years older. And it does not mean that they were wiser. On the contrary, there was a decrease in gray matter, fluid circulation and other signs of premature aging.

The good thing about all this is that, as experts have observed, the brain returns to normal after a night’s sleep. The downside is that no one can say what the long-term effects are, since the study was only conducted for five days and on perfectly healthy subjects. They (experts) say that only after they also study people who suffer from chronic insomnia, they will be able to have a clear answer about the effect of lack of sleep on the brain.

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