1 Biogenesis
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UN OW CONFORMISTA
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The separation myth
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despite the fact that Darwin and Wallace published their theory of evolution
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Nature conservation
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activity whereby humans do ‘good things’ for nature,
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scientists usually treat human impacts as external drivers
Note:ESTERNO
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‘humans are making nature less natural’ is equivalent to saying that ‘nature is making nature less natural’.
Note:PARADOSSO
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mass extinctions in the history of the Earth appear to have been caused by natural internal changes
Note:LA NATURA ESTINGUE
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Today, a rapid increase in the rate of extinction is again being driven by an unprecedented evolutionary event arising within the Earth system: the rise of an unusually brainy and linguistically capable primate.
Note:ESTINZIONI ATTUALI
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at what point in the unbroken sequence of generations should we decide that humans ceased to be part of nature,
Note:SOGLIA VAGA
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There is absolute scientific certainty that we evolved from apes
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we continue to conceptualize a separation between humanity and nature
Note:C È QUALCOSA DI STRANO
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there must be something quite fundamental driving the sense of ‘other’
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Every species is special to itself
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Our evolutionary predisposition towards ourselves and other people makes it far easier for us to develop philosophies in which humans are (somewhat) separate from nature
Note:TEORIA DELLA SEPARAZIONE
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Yes, we drove many of the largest land animals to extinction, but this is not new.
Note:INCIDIAMO ESTINGUENDO
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Humans have accelerated the rate at which the seeds of plants and animals are moved around the world
Note:ALTRO MODO DI INCIDERE SULLA NATURA
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Humans are simply acting as dispersal agents
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The consequence of humans changing the climate is that species are gradually shifting their geographic ranges towards the poles and to higher altitudes.
Note:ALTRO MODO D INCIDERE
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Lastly, we come to transforming the land.
Note:ALTRO MODO D INCIDERE
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The upshot of all these quantitative (but not qualitative) changes is a new natural world
Note:NUOVA NATURA
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from the dust mites that live in our beds to the microbes and pelagic invertebrates that attach themselves to fragments of plastic, which float across the world’s oceans.
Note:NUOVA FLORA...
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Why would we regard these new, human-altered ecosystems as any less natural
Note:NUOVO ECOSISTEMA
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The world is one in which the specific combination of species and genes in any one place is new but the fundamental biological processes that are in operation are the same as before.
Note:TESI
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I could describe any past period of environmental change with identical words.
Note:I CAMBIAMENTI PASSATI
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we must contemplate life as a never-ending sequence
Note:CAMBIAMENTO CONTINUO
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The human and non-human contributions to every ecosystem are already inseparable.
Note:INSCINDIBILITÀ
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Thirty years after the terrible nuclear disaster that befell Chernobyl on 26 April 1986, Pripyat is a ‘lost city’ in the making.
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COME FIORISCE LA NATURA A CHEENOBYL
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2,600 square kilometres on the Ukrainian side of the border, and a further 2,165 square kilometres in Belarus.
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90 per cent of the wildlife lives in places where radiation levels are tolerable
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falcons
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Enormous, slippery catfish
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Red-backed shrikes,
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grasshoppers, lizards and small rodents,
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Iridescent emperor butterflies
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wild boar, moose, deer, bear and wolves,
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European bison
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Nature is taking back the land,
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Thirty years after the event, the benefits of removing human activity from most parts of the landscape can be seen.
Note:BENEFICI
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The land is not reverting to a pre-human version of pristine.
Note:ANCORA TRASFORMAZ
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This is unnatural, some might say, yet all the species that are thriving in this landscape are perfectly natural species.
Note:STRANE SPECIE
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Waves of human invasion continued to exterminate large animals across Asia, and then in North and South America.
Note:LO STERMINATORE DELLE EPOCHE RIMPIANTW
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Virtually all ecosystems on the land surface have been fundamentally altered by humans for over ten thousand years.
Note:DA 10000 ANNI
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The ubiquity of human-influenced change15 for such a long period means that biological gains associated with our existence are as universal as losses.
Note:UN BILANCIO IN PAREGGIO
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We need to encourage, not resist, dynamism if we are concerned about enabling nature to accommodate to the human world.
Note:DINAMISMO
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Too often, we act as if nature is an old master, a great painting that must be kept just as it is.
Note:LA NATURA SOPRAVVIVE CAMBIANDO NN CONSERVANDO
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We can think of the Anthropocene epoch as a fresh start for life on Earth and not only as a passing of the old guard.
Note:ANTROPOCENE
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Let’s make the best choices that are possible, accepting that humans are part of the new natural world order.
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sparrows must have started to find it easier to find food by hanging around the villages that sprang up in the fertile valleys where agriculture first developed.
Note:PASSERI E UOMINI.... ASIA
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Its destiny sealed, the sparrow spread around the world from its origin in Asia, moving to wherever
Note:PASSERI OVUNQUE... UNA STORIA DI SUCCESSO
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Asia, entered our homes
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In some respects, they are unchanged. They continue to pursue insects for their young (often in our yards and fields) and seek out grass seeds (which we call cereal grains)
Note:IL LATO IMMUTATO
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integrated into the human world. They became part of human culture:
Note:DAI TEMPI DEGLI EGIZI
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sacred to Aphrodite,
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Sparrow hieroglyphs
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Roman assarion coin.
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the sparrow was then thwarted, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and by the Indian Ocean and the Sahara Desert to the south.
Note:CONFINI UN TEMPO INVALICABILI X LA SUA DIFFUSIONE
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In the nineteenth century, New Yorker Eugene Schieffelin embarked on releasing – in North America – every different kind of bird
Note:IL PASSERO S IMBARCA
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help control insect pests in the New World.
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to get rid of a ‘plague’ of caterpillars
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House sparrows originated in Asia and are now spread throughout the world, associated with humans.
Note:SINTESI DELLA STORIELLA DEL PASSERO
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Italian sparrows did not exist before humans developed agriculture and towns.
Note:E L ITALUA SPICCA... IBRIDO TRA L ASIATICO E LO SPAGNOLO
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My childhood education in coarse language was provided by my father’s guttural curses as he cleared sparrow nests that were blocking our house’s down-pipes;
Note:UNA CONVIVENZA DIFFICILE MA FRUTTUOSA
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the most widespread animals on our planet
Note:RECORD
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the ‘correct’ number of house sparrows is taken to be roughly how many there were in the 1970s. Picking any specific date is obviously completely arbitrary.
Note:ESEMPIO DI PROGRAMMA CONSERVAZIONISTA SUI PASSERI INGLESI... TORNARE AL PICCO
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‘correct’ number of house sparrows in Britain would be zero.
Note:ARBITRIO...IL PASSERO PROSPERA CON L AGRICOLTURA... NN ESISTEVA PRIMA E OGGI PENA
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decline likely stemmed from a reduction in the amount of dropped grain
Note:CAUSE DEL DECLINO
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Cleanliness leads to fewer sparrows.
Note:SPORCIZIA E PULIZIA
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The solution was obvious: feed the birds. The bird-feeder business is booming
Note:ALIMENTAZIONE ARTIFICIALE
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expensive mealworms
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human-made breeding cavities.
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While European researchers and conservationists try to increase the numbers of sparrows, their North American counterparts contemplate the reverse.
Note:IN AMERICA ODIATI SI CERCA DI ELIMINARLI...UN SECOLO FA
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evicting beautiful native bluebirds
Note:L ACCUSA DEGLI AMERICANI
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‘House Sparrows are an overly aggressive, alien species of bird that prefers similar habitats and nesting locations as bluebirds. The male sparrow is particularly nasty and will often kill not just the young bluebirds but even the adults and eggs too. House Sparrows MUST be controlled in the habitat your nest boxes are placed in to ensure the nesting success of bluebirds.’
Note:MALEDIZIONI CONTRO IL PASSERO
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numbers of bluebirds are not affected by the numbers of sparrows,
Note:TRA L ALTRO...
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Why do we not equally hate all the native North American animals – including tree swallows, flickers, hawks, chipmunks, squirrels and raccoons – that also evict or kill bluebirds?
Note:UN PERCHÈ MOLTO INTERESSANTE
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When it comes to conservation debates, it often seems as though we have set ourselves apart to act as referees and arbiters of how nature should be – yet our stance lacks consistency.
Note:CONSERVAZIONISTA: ARBITRO DEL BELLO E DEL BRUTTO
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Why not just be happy with the numbers we have?
Note:PERCHÈ NE VOGLUAMO TANTI? LA SPECIE CONTA PIÙ DEL NUMERO
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‘Male Italian Sparrow … has brighter coloration in breeding plumage, with rich chestnut crown, whiter cheeks and under-parts’.
Note:UN ALTRA STORIA DI SUCCESSO
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the sparrows themselves held the secret to their origins in their genes.
Note:L ORIGINE OCCULTA DEL PASSERI ITALIANO
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They discovered unique genetic sequences, some of which could only be found in Spanish sparrows and others only in the house sparrow – clearly these two were separate species.
Note:L INCROCIO ITALIANO
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hybrids.
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as the house sparrow followed the development of villages and agriculture and spread out of southern Asia some thousands of years ago, it met up with the Spanish sparrow.
Note:L IPOTESI SULLE ORIGINI DELL ITALIANO
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Biologists usually think of new species taking hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years to evolve. Yet the Italian sparrow must have come into existence within the last eight thousand, after agriculture first began to be practised in the Italian
Note:800 ANNI... CI VUOLE POCO A CREARE UNA NUOVA SPECIE
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extremely fast.
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virtually instantaneous biological genesis of a new species.
Note:NASCITA
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we have also altered the trajectory of evolution.
Note:L UOMO ALTERA L EVOLUZIONE
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The news is full of stories that we are causing the loss of species
Note:LA NOSTRA ATTITUDINE INDUCE CANTONATE
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‘We are basically annihilating the life on our planet.’
Note:EHRLICH
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The same trawl of current news revealed over a hundred reports highlighting the ‘negative impacts’ caused by mammal, insect, snail, mussel, worm and plant species that are today living in a continent,
Note:RIMPIANTO X I VECCHI E RIBREZZO X I NUOVI
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We have declared them to be in the ‘wrong’ place,
Note:NON SONO AL LORO POSTO
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European Commission, the UK government and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, among others, have been behind recent attempts to exterminate the ‘foreign’ American ruddy duck,
Note:LA MALEDETTA ANATRA AMERICANA
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Ruddy ducks can hybridize with the rarer ‘native’ Eurasian white-headed duck,
Note:EPPURE PORTA RICCHEZZA
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Pied stilts colonized New Zealand by flying across the Tasman Sea from Australia
Note:IL FENICOTTERO PEZZATO... UN INTRUSO DA CACCIARE
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hybridization could potentially be beneficial if it acts as a source of genes that enable the hybrids to evade their predators a little better,
Note:I VANTAGGI DELL IBRIDO
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We have to accept that a world without change is not an available option.
Note:LA CONSERVAZIONE NN È PRATICABILE
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We are confused because a particular animal or plant may not necessarily be where we expect,
Note:CONFUSI..... E FELICI
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a broader movement in which life on Earth has set off on a new course, coping with and adapting to the impacts of humanity?
Note:IL MOVIMENTO DELLA NATURA VARSO UN CONTINENTE UNCO
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Huge numbers of species are thriving in the human-altered world,
LA FAUNA DEL MONDO ARTIFICIALE
