The human-made bridge helped Hainan gibbons traverse their fragmented habitat—but it's only a short-term solution, conservationists warn.
The world’s most critically endangered primate, the Hainan gibbon, is barely surviving. Only 30 remain on the planet, all restricted to a single patch of forest on China’s Hainan Island.
Because the species is so precarious, each gibbon’s survival is vital, says Bosco Pui Lok Chan, who manages the Hainan Gibbon Conservation Project, run by the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, in Hong Kong.
At home in the canopy, these acrobats use their long arms to swing from tree to tree, enabling them to easily gather forest fruits. They’re fearful of moving on the ground, which is why decades of forest fragmentation from logging and agricultural activities has isolated groups from one another, causing them to slowly die out. (Read more about threats to Hainan gibbons.)
New York is trying something novel for an American city in the pandemic: allowing reopenings in some areas while shutting down businesses and schools that are just blocks away.
At the Rego Center, a small mall in Queens, handwritten signs that were common during the early days of the pandemic have once again started to pop up: “We’re closed! Estamos cerrados!”
But a short walk away, at the Queens Center, shoppers carrying heavy bags busily maneuvered through the four-story mall. Diners ate at a first-floor Shake Shack.
The only difference was that the two malls were on opposite sides of a line on a map, hastily drawn last week by the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, that separated areas of Brooklyn and Queens where coronavirus cases have been dangerously spiking — red zones, he called them — from neighboring areas that had lesser risk.
Over the span of a few days, New York City has undergone a striking reversal of fortune. On the first day of October, restaurants had just reopened for indoor dining, subway ridership hit its highest level since the pandemic began and Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed the start of in-person public school, the only big-city mayor to even attempt such a feat.
This week, the Mouse House laid out a reorganization plan that puts a bigger focus on streaming. Don’t look for other studios to make similar moves.
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When you’re the highest-grossing studio in Hollywood, it’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t always want to do the thing that you’re immensely good at: making movies and showing them in theaters. And yet, it’s 2020 and nothing is predictable, and as such, this week Disney announced plans to—for lack of a better way to put it—pivot to streaming, a move that could shift the entire landscape for movie and TV distribution.
Or maybe not. You see, under Disney’s new plan, the company says it is looking to streamline its direct-to-consumer business by enlisting a new division, the Media and Entertainment Distribution group, to decide how the content made by its studios—Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, etc.—goes out into the world. Some of those studio offerings will still go to theaters, of course, but CEO Bob Chapek told CNBC this week, “We are tilting the scale pretty dramatically [toward streaming].” It’s a bold move, and one that shows just how big an impact outfits like Netflix have made on Hollywood. But it's not a move that every other studio is likely to mimic, nor should they. Why? They’re not Disney.