I hope I'm not too late for the Rally of Chile in the 2023 WRC season, since I finally finished drawing the Seat Cordoba WRC rallying through the rally stage in the country.
I had to blame my school for wasting my time after finishing it.
El Rally del Guadiato vuelve con fuerza en su tercera edición!
Tras dos años consecutivos consagrándose como el mejor rally de Andalucía, este año llega con una novedad que lo hará aún más emocionante: puntuará para el Campeonato Madrileño de Rallys de Asfalto.
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Prepárate para dos días de pura adrenalina los próximos 1 y 2 de noviembre. Los mejores pilotos de Andalucía y Madrid se darán cita en este apasionante evento que recorrerá los…
— Recent giant anteater sightings in Rio Grande do Sul state indicate the species has returned to southern Brazil, where it had been considered extinct for more than a century.
— Experts concluded that the giant anteater ventured across the border from the Iberá Park in northeastern Argentina where a rewilding project has released around 110 individuals back into the habitat.
— The sightings emphasize the importance of rewilding projects, both to restore animal populations in specific regions and help ecosystems farther afield.
— Organizations across Brazil are working to protect and maintain current giant anteater populations, including rallying for safer highways to prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions that cause local extinctions.
Playing back hours of footage from a camera trap set in Espinilho State Park in the south of Brazil in August 2023, Fábio Mazim and his team banked on possible sightings of the maned wolf or the Pantanal deer and had their fingers crossed for a glimpse of a Pampas cat (Leopardus pajeros), one of the most threatened felines in the world.
What they didn’t expect to see was an animal long presumed extinct in the region. To their surprise, the unmistakable long snout and bushy tail of a giant anteater ambled into shot.
"We shouted and cried when we saw it,” the ecologist from the nonprofit Pró-Carnívoros Institute told Mongabay. “It took a few days to grasp the importance of this record. A sighting of a giant anteater was never, ever expected.”
Last seen alive in the southwest of the Rio Grande do Sul state in 1890, the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) has since been spotted 11 times since August 2023, although the scientists are unsure whether it’s the same one or different individuals. However, the sightings confirm one clear fact: The giant anteater is back.
It's a huge win for the environment. Giant anteaters play an important role in their ecosystems, helping to control insect numbers, create watering holes through digging and are prey for big cats such as jaguars and pumas.
The habitat of the giant anteater stretches from Central America toward the south cone of Latin America.
Its conservation status is “vulnerable,” although it is considered extinct in several countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala and Uruguay, as well as specific regions such as the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, Santa Catarina and (until now) Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the Cordoba and Entre Rios regions in Argentina.
In the last six months, the giant anteater was spotted on camera 11 times in the Espinilho State Park in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. It was the first time in 130 years that the species has been seen alive there.
Yet not only is it a triumph for conservationists to see these animals returning to Brazilian biomes, it’s also a surprising mark of success for a rewilding program about 150 kilometers (93 miles) away in neighboring Argentina.
Rewilding Argentina’s biomes
Iberá National Park in Corrientes province in northeastern Argentina is a 758,000-hectare (1.9 million-acre) expanse of protected land comprising a part of the Iberá wetlands with its swaths of grasslands, marshes, lagoons and forests. The region was once home to just a handful of giant anteaters after habitat loss, hunting and vehicle collisions decimated the population.
Since 2007, the NGO Rewilding Argentina, an offspring of the nonprofit Tompkins Conservation, has been reintroducing the species back to the area, most individuals being orphaned pups rescued from vehicle collisions or poaching.
So far, they have released 110 giant anteaters back into the wild. Nowadays, several generations inhabit the park, transforming it from “a place of massive defaunation to abundance,” Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation for Rewilding Argentina, was quoted as saying in an official statement.
The project has been so successful that the giant anteaters appear to be venturing farther afield and moving to new territories beyond national borders, such as Espinilho State Park in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul region...
Experts now hope that a giant anteater population can reestablish itself naturally in Espinilho State Park without the need for human intervention.
“The giant anteater returning to Rio Grande do Sul shows the success of the work done in Argentina and how it’s viable, possible and important to do rewilding and fauna reintroduction projects,” Mazim said. “It is also an indication that the management of conservation units and also the agricultural areas of the ecosystems are working,” he added. “Because if large mammals are coming from one region and settling in another, it is because there is a support capacity for them. It is an indication of the health of the environment.”
The next couple sessions brought some background events to centre stage.
Juhani Valkiapáá was an airborne jaeger, commander of his unit, and tasked with exterminating the biker cossacks conducting raids on either side of the Finland/Russian border. His unit was assigned to the Sortavala region, where Valkiapáá's grandparents used to own land. He made an alliance with the local Cossacks, forming a cordon around his family's land. If the Cossacks would kill every russian within the cordon and burn their property, he would allow them free passage. The bikers were never caught, but Valkiapáá and his unit were sentenced to life in 2004.
Valkiapáá was being released that week on good behaviour, and a rally was being held that Saturday in protest, before the music festival.
The Tuesday morning after we raided Helheim's apartment, Citrine heard on the news that a group of five bikers had entered the Zone. They claimed that they were there for the music festival, and seeking medical aid for a friend of theirs. They were middle-aged, Russian, and heavily chromed (though unarmed), so we considered it possible that they might be the bikers Valkiapáá allied with before his incarceration, and that they could fairly easily arm themselves once within the Zone.
Antti, the softboy from the Urban Jungle (who had previously mentioned to us that he volunteered at Amnesty International and Sortavala Memorial Foundation for War Crime Victim Support, and whose couch Citrine had been occupying) let slip that he had been contacted by a possible witness willing to testify that the bikers on the news, and the cossacks under Valkiapáá were one and the same, but we'd need to wait until later in the week to meet up.
Later that day, Cordoba and Loco were contacted by their respective syndicates for a job on Thursday night.
Cordoba was to provide late-night drone overwatch while some members of her syndicate delivered a crateful of weapons and ammo to the bikers. Aftwerwards, Loco was tasked with planting a note confirming the transaction under the rear bumper of a specific car. The car in question was notably fancy, and was on its way to the richer part of the city.
On Friday morning, the two relayed the events of the previous night. We were able to find the bikers' possible base of operations from where Cordoba provided security. A small two-story garage. When we drove by, we saw 5 bikes parked outside. Maxx contacted officer Peippo, explaining the situation (leaving out Cordoba's and Loco's names), hoping to leverage his personal distaste for Valkiapáá to get some help. No dice, the finnish police had been tasked with ensuring Valkiapáá's safety during the protest. He was interested in the possibility of a witness though, and asked us to keep him posted.
It was shortly after that Antti called to inform us that the witness was late to meet him, and was not answering her phone.
In a world facing multiple crises that are putting immense pressure on communities, achieving gender equality is more vital than ever. Ensuring women’s and girls’ rights across all aspects of life is the only way to secure prosperous and just economies, and a healthy planet for future generations.
One of the key challenges in achieving gender equality by 2030 is an alarming lack of financing with a staggering USD 360 billion annual deficit in spending on gender-equality measures. The time for change is now! 8th March 2024 International Women’s Day. We all need to rally behind the call for change and the need to Invest in women
Courtesy UN Women
Picture: Deyanira Cordoba, one of many coffee-growing women of Tablón de Gómez, in the Nariño region of Colombia. As part of a UN Women project, she has learned about her economic rights, bodily autonomy and more. Photographer: UN Women/Ryan Brown. #changeiscoming
El pasado 27 de septiembre se llevó a cabo el acto de presentación de la prueba cordobesa en la Casa de la Cultura de Peñarroya Pueblonuevo, donde se reunieron las autoridades pertinentes y algunas figuras del mundo del automovilismo. Rafael Madueño, presidente del Club Deportivo Villaviciosa Motorsport, ha destacado el privilegio que supone para la prueba el haber sido elegida como mejor rallye…