The end of war doesn’t necessarily bring peace to the environment. An increase in illegal logging could be one of the unexpected consequences of peace in Colombia.

In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the guerrilla group FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), ending the longest war in the Americas. During the 52-year-long conflict, as many as 220,000 people are reported to have died and millions were displaced.

But the armed group may unexpectedly have helped protect the regions it occupied from deforestation. As the group disbands, conservationists fear the lush forests it occupied will be left vulnerable to illegal logging.

“Now, that FARC is gone, there is nobody controlling the deforestation – because actually when they were here, they had some rules about it,” says at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who has been studying the relationship between armed conflicts and conservation in Colombia.

In areas under FARC control, the organisation often took on the role of a local government, .

Logging rise?

“Now there is no one to oversee the land,” says Negret Torres. “The government hasn’t come in yet, but everybody else has and they log.”

Negret Torres has looked at the number and distribution of armed conflicts across Colombia between 2000 and 2014, comparing the data with levels of deforestation in the country’s various regions. He found that wherever FARC guerrillas were present, deforestation activity was lower than in conflict-free areas. He presented his results at the in Cartagena, Colombia, last week.

Negret Torres hasn’t quantified the difference yet. In total, almost 3 million hectares of forest have been lost in Colombia from 2001 to 2015, according to

The impact of war on natural environments is unpredictable. The in the Democratic Republic of the Congo became a site of conflict in the 1990s and 2000s: the local environment suffered as fighters killed wildlife and felled trees, . But war in Sierra Leone during the 1990s had the opposite effect. There – as in Colombia – .

The Colombian government has plans to increase its control of the country’s forests. By 2018 it intends to protect more than – up from nearly at present.

Budgets cut

“We are working with former members of FARC to implement environmental policies, and training them to help conserve areas,” Luis Gilberto Murillo, the Colombian Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development told the conference. “This is also a way for FARC to reincorporate to the civil life.”

However, the Colombian government recently announced that the , leaving conservationists doubtful that there will be enough money to fund the promised expansion of the protected areas.

at Oregon State University, who also intended the conference, worries about the effect of deforestation in formerly untouched forests. “Even just initial logging on intact forests has a much worse impact [on biodiversity] than in areas already exposed to deforestation,” he says.

Such deforestation is made more likely by the fact that millions of people displaced by the conflict could return home, and may need to find a new source of income.�� “If you have poverty, people will turn to the forest,” says Betts. “And you could also have hunting for bush meat out of control.”

, and many still haven’t been fully explored because of the decades-long turmoil. “There are species and forests being preserved,” says Negret Torres. “But a peace where we are able to prioritise places important for conservation would be the best.”

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Salt-loving species

Artificial microhabitats

It was like identifying a criminal from a bit of DNA left at a crime scene. No murder mystery was solved, but researchers have found rare blind cave salamanders in five caves they were not previously thought to live in, thanks to the DNA the animals shed in water.

This extends the known range of the vulnerable salamanders and raises hopes for their long-term monitoring and conservation.

The olms (Proteus anguinus), or baby dragons as locals call them, spend their entire life in the underground waters of the Dinaric Alps running from Slovenia through Croatia and several other Balkan countries.

DNA from bits of skin that they have shed or their feces gets dissolved into their watery habitat and can be washed out of the cave. This is good news for biologists studying cave life, because most of the 7000 or so caves in Croatia are inaccessible to humans.

“Before you would only see these elusive animals if they were washed out of their home after heavy raining, or if you would actually go cave-diving,” says Judit Vörös of the Hungarian Natural History Museum who led the study. “But now we can tell just from some cave water if they are there or not.”

Olm my goodness!

Her team used a technique known as environmental DNA, or eDNA, to survey the salamanders. “This technique has been known for some time among conservation biologist, but until now it was never used for cave vertebrates,” says Vörös.

The team collected water samples from 15 caves across Croatia during the summer of 2014. They filtered 2 liters of water from each site through special paper, and then extracted the eDNA from the paper. They confirmed the presence of the salamander in 10 caves it was already known to inhabit, and detected the species for the first time in five others.

Croatian conservationists have now adopted this technique to map the olms’ habitat more precisely, and to learn more about their population genetics.

Although both caves and olms are protected in Croatia, Vörös hopes discoveries with eDNA will accelerate the protection of the ground above the caves, since olms are very sensitive to pollution and contaminants can seep into their habitat from above.

Salamander in your hands

“This is an excellent use of eDNA, but it’s just a complementary tool,” says Matthew A. Barnes of Texas Tech University. “It’s never going to replace the hard evidence of having a fish, or a blind salamander in your hands.”

In dark, cold caves, eDNA can stick around for a long time and could even get carried far from its source, leading researchers to make false assumptions about where the olms are, he says.

And little is known about the degradation rate of the olm eDNA, or eDNA in caves at all because that has never been studied in detail.

Vörös agrees the method is not perfect. She says it can detect the presence of the animals within a cave system, but not necessarily narrow it down to a particular cave.

But she says it is a good way to identify cave systems with the animals, so the team can then examine those areas in more depth with traditional methods – sending divers, for example.

Read more: Meet the weird amphibian that rules the underworld; DNA sequencing turns rivers into ecosystem surveillance systems

Money for love

Ants may be smarter than we give them credit for. Tool use is seen as something brainy primates and birds do, but even the humble ant can choose the right tool for the job.

at the University of Szeged in Hungary and his team offered two species of funnel ants liquids containing water and honey along with a range of tools that might help them carry this food to their nests.

The ants experimented with the tools and chose those that were easiest to handle and could soak up plenty of liquid, such as bits of sponge or paper, despite them not being found in the insects’ natural environment.

This suggests that ants can take into account the properties of both the tool and the liquid they are transporting. It also indicates they can learn to use new tools – even without big brains.

Some ant species are known to use tools, such as mud or sand grains, to collect and transport liquid to their nests. But this is the first time they are shown to select the most suitable ones, says team member Patrizia d’Ettorre from the University of Paris-North, France.

Tool up

To investigate this behaviour, the team offered Aphaenogaster subterranea and A. senilis ants various possible tools, both natural, such as twigs, pine needles and soil grains, and artificial.

The ants experimented with the tools and eventually showed preference for certain tools – even unfamiliar ones. The ants would drop the tool into the liquid, pick it up and then carry it to the workers back in the nest to drink from.

Subterranea workers preferred small soil grains to transfer diluted honey, and sponge for pure honey. Most of them even tore the sponge into smaller bits, presumably for better handling.

Senilis started off using all the tools equally, but then focused on pieces of paper and sponge, which could soak up most of the diluted honey they were offered. This indicates that they can learn as they go along.

Factors such as the weight of the tools could also have influenced the ants’ choice, but the researchers believe the tools’ absorbency and ease of handling mattered the most.

Stuck for space

Aphaenogaster ants possibly developed such tool use because, unlike many other ants, they can’t expand their stomach, says d’Ettorre. “They had to find a way to exploit the valuable resource of liquid food.”

This way, when ants come across a fallen fruit or a dead insect in the wild, their fluids can be transferred to the nest for the rest of the colony.

As ants live in a highly competitive environment, natural selection may favour using such tools to help feed the colony, says at Roanoke College, Virginia.

And these ants may have been happy to try novel materials because which particular tools are available in their natural habitat varies according to the season.

“Many other accomplishments of these small-brained creatures rival those of humans or even surpass them, such as farming fungi species or using ‘dead reckoning’, a sophisticated navigation to find their way back to the nest,” says Banschbach. “The size of brain needed for specific cognitive tasks is not clear.”

“Tool use in insects is largely genetically controlled and evolved from selection of advantageous genetic mutations,” says Gavin R. Hunt at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. This is unlike most tool use in birds or primates, which begins as novel behaviour and can sometimes be enhanced through genetic changes, he says.

Read more: Squirrel monkeys teach themselves to eat and drink from a cup

Disturbed leopards

Twin cubs

A city in Denmark is about to become the first in the world to provide most of its citizens with fresh water using only the energy created from household wastewater and sewage.

The Marselisborg Wastewater Treatment Plant in Aarhus has undergone improvements that mean it can now generate more than 150 per cent of the electricity needed to run the plant, which means the surplus can be used to pump drinking water around the city.

As well as regularly powering the entire water system of 200,000 people living in the inner city area, any excess electricity could be sold into the local grid.

“We are about to be the first energy neutral catchment area,” says Mads Warming of Danfoss Power Electronics, which provides the technology for Aarhus Water, the municipal water utility.

The plant generates energy from the biogas it creates out of household wastewater, including sewage. Carbon is extracted from the wastewater and pumped into digesters kept at 38°C filled with bacteria. These produce biogas – mostly methane – that is then burned to make heat and electricity.

“We don’t add any extra organic material like from restaurants or energy from wind turbines or solar panels,” says Lars Schøder, general manager of Aarhus Water.

The technology isn’t new. But its success in Aarhus is down to a combination of strict environmental regulations targeting water discharge and a mandate for reducing nitrate and phosphate pollution. Tailored infrastructure for using the recovered energy has helped, as has controlling the daily and seasonal pressure on the pipes, which greatly reduced money lost due to leaks and maintenance costs.

Upgrading the facilities in Marselisborg required an upfront investment of nearly €3 million, but Aarhus Water expect that to be recouped in just five years, from maintenance savings and the sale of excess energy into the grid and the district heating system.

Other cities in Denmark, including Copenhagen, have been trying to copy the example of Aarhus, with interest from as far away as Chicago and San Francisco.

Energy efficiency

“Replicating Denmark’s experience and performance will not be easy,” says Molly Walton, energy analyst at International Energy Agency.

The use of energy in the water sector is seldom simply quantified, Walton says. And energy efficiency is rarely in the picture, especially as it requires upfront investment that could considerably increase the price of the water.

Moreover, to work, the wastewater plant needs to be big enough to generate sufficient biogas, and even the wastewater has to be the right mix – if it’s diluted by storm or groundwater it will be more difficult to recover energy.

According to IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2016, the amount of energy used in the water sector will more than double over the next 25 years. As the global population grows, the water service will slowly expand requiring more energy to run, especially in developing countries.

With rising global temperatures, energy will be needed to provide fresh water from other sources such as desalinating seawater in more arid areas.

Kata Karáth’s trip to Aarhus has been paid for by Danfoss Power Electronics

Saving a species from extinction can be a back-breaking task.��Hungarian conservationists found this out last week when they started to dig out Vojvodina mole rats one by one��as part of an effort to relocate them to safety.

“This is a very rare species, only around 400 individuals left in the world,” says Sándor Ugró, director of the Kiskunsági National Park in Hungary. “They are actually much rarer than the well-known symbol of conservation the giant panda.”

“After the Iberian lynx or the Mediterranean monk seal, they are one of the rarest animals in Europe,” says Gábor Csorba, head of the Hungarian mole-rat protection committee, which advises the government.

The species (Nannospalax leucodon montanosyrmiensis) is only known to inhabit Hungary and the province of Vojvodina in northern Serbia.��But their populations are now under two-pronged threat (see video below).

One of the in Hungary lives in an area just outside the Kiskunsági National Park that could soon be the site of a new solar power plant.��The other lives in an area along the Hungarian-Serbian border, where last year the Hungarian government erected a fence to deter refugees from entering the country, inadvertently blocking movement of wildlife, too.

The fence could physically isolate the mole rat population living around the border, and “will speed up its extinction”, the Institute for Nature Conservation of Vojvodina Province.��The fence has effectively split their population in half, and the increased border control traffic may also be affecting the mole rats.

“It’s difficult to study these animals, we don’t know for sure how much the increased traffic from increased border control affects them – but we can’t afford to lose any,” says Ugró.

So conservationists at Kiskunsági decided to take some of the animals from the border area to establish a third Hungarian population in a safer location near the village of Öttömös.

“It is extremely hard to find a suitable habitat for these animals; this one took us a year to locate,” says Csorba. The species requires a very specific type of soil, climate and vegetation, which is often already under cultivation.

Mole rats are not easy to catch, either. Rangers open the entrance of fresh molehills with a spade and have to avoid accidently injuring the animal as they block their escape with the spade.��The rangers insert a piece of reed near the entrance, which shakes when the animal comes up to plug the entrance (mole rats don’t like draft), indicating when to dig.

“This is also a unique opportunity to study the formation of a new population from the very beginning,” says Attila Németh mole-rat expert at Kiskunsági. “Every animal got a microchip, a health check-up and we took DNA samples.”

To give them a good start, rangers have already built an artificial burrow half a meter below the surface for each of the seven individuals they have managed to relocate so far. Initially, rangers will regularly check on the animals until they are sure they are thriving in their new home.

Meanwhile,��conservationists are lobbying the government to restrict development of the solar plant on the site of the largest mole-rat population to just 5 hectares instead of the 130 hectares that had originally been proposed.��And they hope the site might be protected as part of the national park, but that probably won’t happen for another few months.

Read more: Naked mole rats reveal why they are immune to cancer

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Every scar tells a story. Whales migrating through tropical waters often carry crater-like wounds, and cookie-cutter sharks looked like the culprits. But we lacked data on how frequent such attacks by sharks on whales might be, and where and when they happen.

Nicknamed “demon whale biters”, these elusive sharks usually lurk in warmer waters between latitudes 40° north and 40° south – corresponding to the zone between the Bahamas and Madagascar.

They are thought to rise up from depths of 1000 to 4000 metres to prey on fresh meat, taking chunks out of live whales – quite an undertaking given they are only around half a metre long.

“That’s one of the ways they feed, taking non-fatal bites from much larger animals,” says of Florida International University in Miami.

Now, two South Africa-based researchers have analysed wound data from more than 1700 whale carcasses collected by one of them at Donkergat whaling station in South Africa over 8 months in 1963, when commercial whaling was still allowed.

The characteristics of wounds seen in sei, fin, Bryde’s and sperm whales confirms that cookie-cutters (Isistius species) are indeed to blame.

“The fact that the animals were dead allowed us to inspect the whole body of the whale, not just the sections that are visible when the animal surfaces to breathe,” says study co-author of the Centre for Statistics in Ecology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This meant they could look at where on a whale the bites occur, and the stage of would healing of the wound indicated when the attacks happened.

Dozens of wounds

The results show that the sharks inflicted many wounds from head to tail on whales passing through their habitat. One sei whale carried 138 unhealed bite marks.

Combining this with what we know about whale and shark distributions allowed the researchers to deduce how the frequency and timing of bites was related to whale migration.

“We found that whales are bitten regularly during the [southern hemisphere] autumn, winter and early spring,” says Photopoulou. This indicates that by mid-spring the whales had migrated away from the zone where the sharks live.

The results tally with what we know about sei and fin whale migrations, but also reveal something new about sperm whales. The lower number of fresh wounds on maturing sperm whales suggest that they spend less time at lower latitudes – where the sharks are – than mature whales.

Papastamatiou says the study convincingly fingers cookie-cutter sharks as having caused the whale wounds. Given that there are often no other ways to study elusive deep-water creatures such as these sharks, he says, studying bite marks could also help refine our knowledge of the sharks’ distribution.

Although the era of whaling in South Africa is long gone, “demon bitten” scars on living whales can offer new insights into the behaviour of lesser-known whale species, too, Photopoulou says.

Read more: The enigmatic whale we can hear – but have never seen; Sharks seen hunting and killing a whale for the first time