new of the moon to get close otherwise. it's not on like a tough interview with interviewing politicians oprah c.e.o.'s you have to wait for the right moment just to get around that your friends that make you know. you have to take risks to get results. are going to help those that i work with. this is day w news and these are our top stories germany's governing c.d.u. party has chosen amin lost it as its new party leader he beat conservative rival fleecy math and a runoff vote last night is now in a strong position to become the party's candidate and september's election he's currently the premier of north rhine-westphalia germany's most populous state.

in france a nationwide 6 pm curfew is taken effect to help stem the spread of the coronavirus the curfew runs until 6 am and will be in place for at least 2 weeks new daily infections have level 2 around 20000 in france but the number of people being admitted to hospital and requiring intensive care treatment is still rising. the electoral commission in uganda has announced the final result from thursday's election declaring incumbent president he'll worry most 70 the winner the 76 year old as one of the world's longest serving leaders his main challenger singer turner lawmaker bobby wine called the poll the most fraudulent in the history of uganda wine has pledged to release video evidence to back his claims of fraud this is g.w. news from berlin follow us on twitter and instagram d w news or visit our website w dot com.

nature has blessed us with an amazing array of flora and fauna. and researchers around the world are committed to protecting that biodiversity replenishing vital ecosystems and the species that inhabit them means we all have to do our pops. scavengers can play an important role. as can animal droppings small and large. what are scientists doing to counteract the dramatic loss and biodiversity that's our topic coming up. well come to you tomorrow today the science program on t.w. . this cells of every organism have a genetic origin which is passed on to the next generation in the case of identical

twins to 2 people. when individuals are produced with identical d.n.a. they are called clones 996 or the 1st successful attempt to create a genetically identical copy of a living animal dolly the sheep today researchers hope to use cloning technology to promote and preserve biodiversity. meat caught who's technically been dead for 22 years. you may have guessed it kurt is a clone and he's the 1st white horse ever successfully cloned which makes him quite a big deal. and he wasn't just an experiment scientists are now cloning endangered species to slow down the rate of biodiversity loss and even improve entire ecosystems. in the world. words just wow obviously we want to say.

but how exactly would that work and how realistic is it welcome to the very weird world of wild clones gene banks and ring species back from the afterlife. i am. cloning has been controversial around the world. with legitimate concerns about us playing god creating endless copies of species that wipe out biodiversity. but costs focus is the exact opposite to bring diversity back to this population of while she walski hasse's. so how does a clone which is an exact genetic or b. of another animal supposed to bring back biodiversity well bear with me.

on 2000 horses a life today have descended from only 12 wild ancestors to clone could researches use a unique gene that was frozen years ago that would have otherwise been lost from the pool and they use a domestic horse as a surrogate mother. is not the 1st endangered species to be cloned and that has even been a clone of an extinct species but with limited success the pairing in ibex was cloned 3 years after it went extinct using an old frozen skin sample researchers impregnated over $200.00 domestic goats only 7 mccain pregnant one made it to term but the baby died minutes off that was born. less than one percent of wild clones ever survive and the lack of research and access to wild animals makes the entire process especially difficult. with kut looking healthy scientists thought he would

be the 1st clone to directly increase the genetic diversity of a population in the wild. and this is really cool because it's this represents a paradigm shift in conservation where we're no longer reacting to crisis but we're getting out to being preventative. that's been know that one of the scientists who cloned could and has been pushing the idea of cloning for conservation. the idea behind it is that we can use cloning in multiple ways to help endangered species either by increasing the size of their populations or by using it strategically to maintain genetic diversity let's take a closer look at the increasing population numbers can help species recover but scientists only have a limited gene pool to choose from. but the method being use here is to add to the

strength of the genetic pool by bringing back genes that would have otherwise died out this good many populations more resistant to the effects of inbreeding and disease and even make them better at adapting to climate change. biodiversity loss is an existential threat we face but some basic resources from pollination water and food at severe risk and poor countries are likely to be the worst hit at 1st. species numbers are in such a freefall that since the 1970 s. species populations have declined by around 60 percent today we could be losing up to $150.00 species each day. geneticists around the world have taken notice i'm not collecting and preserving whatever genetic material they can in labs zoos and. gene banks.

i mean today it's too late for many species i'm sure so i mean storing the d.n.a. is like a last resort. for their guy so at least have the genetic. ed louis call founded a british gene bank run by public universities museums and zoos that consortium has collected over 48000 samples so far. while the main cloning experiments are taking place in the western world especially the u.s. government's iraq on the world have ramped up their d.n.a. collections to. from india to china and in the amazon where researchers like collecting samples of endangered species banking on the technology to catch up. at least having that information. saving any species.

worth. owning is only one part of assisted reproduction which also includes artificial insemination in vitro fertilization and more recently editing. over thousands lose and research institutions around the world are working on assisted reproduction of wild animals including for projects a devoted specifically to cloning for conservation. raised to conserve genetic diversity is on cloning may well save some species but would cause a long term effect still on conservationists say it is much more sensible to focus on protecting the biodiversity we still have how. could we ever leave this all that you're losing now. such questions need to drive the technology that is most likely here to stay.

rather than trying to save single species it's better to protect entire ecosystems knowing which plants animals and ecological communities need special protection requires regular monitoring until now such monitoring could only provide a momentary snapshot of conditions in a set place and time. but a new method might soon allow us to monitor and in time ecosystem in one fell swoop . this is the airport at the german aerospace center and over 5 and a half and near munich a dorney a 228 is ready for takeoff. it's carrying a hyperspectral camera. colleges hope to use the device to help identify the species of flora and fauna and their distribution in

a particular ecosystem from the air. after a 90 minute flight the darn yea has reached its goal. the varian forest national park in southern germany the ecologist get to work. the hyperspectral camera registers the visible light and other electromagnetic radiation reflected off the forest below something like a regular digital camera. but a normal digital camera has sensors that are only sensitive to visible light in 3 bands. red green and blue. the hyperspectral camera captures in much wider range dividing it into $250.00 spectral bands it collects lots of images of the same area every substance has its own

pattern its spectral signature. taken from a plane or satellite high 1st spectral images can already reveal how much chlorophyll or water there is in a forest canopy or whether pasts have infested the trees. but scientists want to do more international research project in the bavarian forest is taking the next step. as you just put it does this is we want to identify the range of species on the grounds and then investigate whether the reflection of sunlight on the ground could be used to identify the species that would lead to smoke biodiversity from space if you thought also. first the team of biologists from the netherlands france china and australia. well try to identify all the organisms living in the forest a gargantuan task they take samples of soil which is full of bacteria and other

micro-organisms and fungi. spiders and many other species of animal also leave their trace in the soil in the form of d.n.a. . all of these traces will be brought to the lab where they'll be subjected to genetic analysis. within just a few months the team hopes to compile an inventory of the entire ecosystem and especially its microorganisms. down the road degrading their leader leaves. there are. recycling. and. plans. grow so. prison are really important and we can predict and see

how. the scientists are also using laser scanners to study 60 distinct areas within the forest different conditions allow different species to thrive so the species will vary if there's a lot of dead what for example. if there's mainly connect or deciduous trees in. the biologists are also very interested in leeds. just fyi the forest canopy is also home to insects fungi and microorganisms. the mix of species living in the canopy can reveal a lot about the health of the forest and the leaves themselves are a kind of mirror of the health of the entire forest ecosystem. the chemistry of the leafs is a presentation of the condition of the tree and quality of the tree is representation

of the quality of the ecosystem because everything is related to each other and by understanding the relation to standing how to change 1st locations 1st for start 1st the forest and supporting the standing forces and how diverse a forest ecosystem is. hyperspectral imaging could help identify the chemical composition of leaves in a particular patch of forest. and be not so good at predicting individual species but that's not our goal we want to predict the range of species in a forest and if we could do that from space identify species by their spectral fingerprint then we could map biodiversity over lunch stretches of land and also observe changes in that biodiversity. the health of large scale ecosystems can then

be monitored from space in real time and this very in forest is an ideal testing ground although it will take another 3 years until all the data has been gathered and analyzed. greedy insatiable and cruel and many languages someone who behaves like a vulture is someone who is ruthless a true predator. that does a disservice to the scavengers which make a big contribution to healthy ecosystems. but in recent decades africa's population. has fallen by some 90 percent bringing them to the brink of extinction . a kenyan conservation group has launched an initiative to protect the best. over half of africa's 11 votes just species are teetering on the brink of extinction the environmental n.g.o.s kenya has been observing the development in

east africa. it's distressing because without these scavengers dead animals would rot wherever they dropped and that could upset entire ecosystems. which is a very much important in. cleaning the environment we call them the neutrons and atika the clean the environment all the dead carcasses and by doing these these top the spread of diseases diseases like. lizzie and all of that nature kenya introduced a vulture conservation program in the messiah mara nature reserve in 2014 it's a mr spread awareness of the crucial role vultures play. by this group of mice i work as nature can use vulture ambassadors they explain to villages that when a dead cow will go just poisoned with acar chemicals in order to kill predators that threaten their livestock all of the animals that feed on the carcass of

poisoned and that includes a lot of vultures. so as i'd like to volunteer i want to go. for example in my location. when there is. that issue before it's place and we actually sometimes take the carcasses of those. and we put them aside and you can. actually talk to the or know that i'm not always with. support from villages and their leaders is key to the ngos campaign. the assistant chief of wonder lynch tells us that battles between humans and animals are an ongoing issue in the area. there is a lot of conflict animals are being killed by a lie. but people are also getting killed by elephants and lions. presents a serious challenge for us about conflict incident. but

all too often the main victims of these conflicts are vultures and that's the environmentalists message. to put an end to their agonizing deaths nature kenya also cooperates with the ranges from the mara reserve. i think the biggest challenge is they sure of reporting. pisses off poisoning we normally don't get a lot of reports from the community because they know that it's a crime and so a lot of this case is go unreported. but reporting the cases would give the conservationists a chance to save the birds. that's why keeping communication channels open is important the effort is. basically talking now we discussed because we don't assume that they don't know they know something so what we do is to add to the dividing line and basically to create this. also supported by bird

life international the program is focused mainly on east africa because that's where vulture death rates are especially high the campaigns push to improve the exchange of information is now starting to yield results. we're getting reports on human live conflict and also responses to. and by these waters i've been saved because there is. a. response protocol that is being followed. close off in the. incident last year an international initiative was launched with the goal of reducing vulture mortality in africa by 50 percent within the next decade before it to work its final of the local communities are also on board.

biodiversity has been in dramatic decline in recent decades. the trend that is set to continue unless urgent action is taken. there are various steps we can take to stop that development or even reverse it by completely rethinking our consumer behavior as well as supporting ecosystems. functioning ecosystems can sometimes be found in the on likeliest of places. to the left. kilos in weight 30 centimeters across and 2 centimeters high that's about average for a cow pasture a single cow produces about 10 of these a day semenya is an excellent fertiliser the spots on the pasture that get plenty of cow patties are especially lush and green.

but cowpats are far more than just fertilizer on this meadow in a nature reserve in southwestern germany and some on a just 2 year who's that and biologist have at nickel are looking for fresh samples . here we've got a slightly older cowpat as you can see the surface is dried out and there's a pretty good crossed and you can see that the 1st larvae are already appearing like here this year. my larvae thrive in the dong and they're prey for other bugs and beetles. i mean. here is a clown beetle. is fairly small but they're also much larger species which are natural born predators cause they're got very big mouth parts which they use to chop up the larvae much like a butcher's knife and then eat them so this is a very complex food web that's. cowpats teeming with life the

dung provides thousands of small creatures with food and shelter. before it even hits the ground a cow path starts to attract young flies they deposit their eggs in the fresh down . and pretty soon the 1st dung beetles move in they dig tunnels for their own offspring which in turn everything by spiders and predatory beetles about 2 weeks later the worms arrive soon the cow pat has vanished but the entire area remains a hive of activity birds and other magic creatures such as lizards dine on the insects. beetles predatory beetles birds and then birds of prey for example occupying different positions in the food web so you get in the norm is functional complexity from one cowpat if it isn't clear if

the cow stays in the barn this doesn't exist. a single free ranging alchemy to use up to a time down. that yields 20 kilos of insects. which can sustain about 10 kilos with the birds about 3 stokes all search starlings for example. but that only happens when ecological farming methods he used as on this protected spot of land in the midst of a nature reserve. 40 cows live here on an area of 70 hectares of forest and says he had tens of posture the measure was allowed to run wild it's never moaned.

her hair. her hair but nicole wants to see what kinds of creatures living here she uses a modified leaf blower to suck up a sample and finds more than a 100 different species. in these openness we find a lot of cicadas and bugs but there are also beetles and spiders everything that you'll find tom perrotta and on the vegetation it's an amazing thing to see there's a diversity of species you'll no longer find on an ordinary meadow these and if they get. this is an ordinary pasture not far away. the meadow was moved recently. and the biologist takes another song paul. he finds less than a dozen creatures. far fewer species it's

a catastrophe for insects and birds there's hardly anything here is a park is there. and what about the cow past many farm animals are given substances to control internal parasites that affects biodiversity in the down the zenith and i think i don't see a single beetle or a tunnel made by one nothing at all. and here. back at the meadow in the nature is a habit nicole says the rich diversity of planted animal life would be easy to preserve. mandaean dodgeball said fox and if we had just 5 percent wildly that those are if sense of year round how should i say in germany insert life would benefit immensely on tiny plots of land like this one insect biodiversity can be doubled or even tripled in both absolute numbers and species

i've seen it here obviously because it is good prices. and all of this wouldn't be possible without cowhands. do you. if outlet is right why are they flat on the videotape. do you have a science questions you'd like us to answer. if we featured on the show you get a little surprise as a thank you. come on just. for most science stories check out our website w dot com slash science or look for us on twitter. and that's all for now thanks for joining us on tomorrow today we'll be back next week with more fascinating stories from the world of science and technology until

then but i. maybe i got a big returns. as long as their dream. still is with an ecological consonant with their start ups and business ideas they are setting the financial world on a sustainable course for. christian green investment change the world.

this man loves to eat his christmas tree. timbers our tourists use our knows whether it's needles mark or hood and. everything is at a ball. all right. back to the brand. 16. life on earth little coming to an end. a

gigantic coincidence. that the previous. the earth was just a messy chemistry lab i thought mission was. where the improbable but such was the creation of our solar system with our planet is a bit like the winning the lottery there is a good. one for earth. starts feb 11th on t w. climate change is transforming the earth at an ever increasing pace. a new movement wants to stem the tide. with money. invested in a sense investors determine what happens in the world of those. young influential millionaires want the world of business and finance to go green. if the

time's running out and we have to act. for a decade.