YCLOAK

WEST END, N.C. — Jesse Wimberley burns the woods with neighbors.

Using new tools to revive an old communal tradition, they set fire to wiregrasses and forest debris with a drip torch, corralling embers with leaf blowers.

Wimberley, 65, gathers groups across eight North Carolina counties to starve future wildfires by lighting leaf litter ablaze. The burns clear space for longleaf pine, a tree species whose seeds won’t sprout on undergrowth blocking bare soil. Since 2016, the fourth-generation burner has fueled a burgeoning movement to formalize these volunteer ranks.

Prescribed burn associations are proving key to conservationists’ efforts to restore a longleaf pine range forming the backbone of forest ecology in the American Southeast. Volunteer teams, many working private land where participants reside or make a living, are filling service and knowledge gaps one blaze at a time.

Prescribed fire, the intentional burning replicating natural fires crucial for forest health, requires more hands than experts can supply. In North Carolina, the practice sometimes ends with a barbecue.

“Southerners like coming together and doing things and helping each other and having some food,” Wimberley said. “Fire is not something you do by yourself.”

More than 100 associations exist throughout 18 states, according to North Carolina State University researchers, and the Southeast is a hot spot for new ones. Wimberley’s Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association is considered the region’s first, and the group reports having helped up to 500 people clear land or learn how to do it themselves.

The proliferation follows federal officials’ push in the past century to suppress forest fires. The policy sought to protect the expanding footprint of private homes and interrupted fire cycles that accompanied longleaf evolution, which Indigenous people and early settlers simulated through targeted burns.

“Fire is medicine and it heals the land. It’s also medicine for our people,” said Courtney Steed, outreach coordinator for the Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association and a Lumbee Tribe member. “It’s putting us back in touch with our traditions.”

The longleaf pine ecosystem spans just 3% of the 360,000 square kilometers it encompassed before industrialization and urbanization. But some pockets remain, from Virginia to Texas to Florida. The system’s greenery still harbors the bobwhite quail and other declining species. The conifers are especially resistant to droughts, a hazard growing more common and more severe due to climate change.

A big tent of environmentalists, hunters, nonprofit groups and government agencies recently celebrated a 53% increase in the longleaf pine range since 2009, spanning an estimated 20,000 square kilometers. However, those strides fell short of their goal to hit 32,000 square kilometers.

Private landowners are central to the coalition’s latest restoration effort. They hold roughly 86% of forested land in the South, according to America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative.

The partnership needs thousands of new landowners to support longleaf management on their properties. The nascent burn associations are vital in their education, according to a 15-year plan released in November.

Federal agencies back the endeavor through activities such as invasive species removal and land management workshops. Nearly $50 million in federal grants are available for projects bolstering forest health, including prescribed fire.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a “Longleaf Pine Initiative” partnering with burn groups like Wimberley’s. Farm bill money supports planning and planting. Personnel can help install firebreaks.

But applicants are increasingly competing for limited funding that cannot cover all the needed maintenance burns, USDA spokesperson Matthew Vandersande said.

Landowners say liability-concerned states are reluctant to send their relatively few burners onto private property and private contractors cannot meet the demand.

“When it comes time to drop the match, you’re kind of on your own,” said Keith Tribble, 62, who owns a North Carolina tree farm.

While state forestry services provide classes, Tribble credits burn associations for the hands-on experience and crews needed to confidently manage the pines.

Humidity and wind speed are the biggest factors in a burn plan, according to Hitchcock Woods Superintendent Bennett Tucker, manager of a private forest in South Carolina. The pine’s oils allow it to almost always carry fire and he typically burns at a relative humidity between 25% and 50%.

“With a prescribed fire, we can control the where, the when, the how and all those factors by choosing the best conditions,” Tucker said.

Handheld weather meters ensure wind speed, temperature and humidity fall within limits under plans written beforehand. The prescriptions also can reduce potential liability in the event a fire escapes. Runaway fires are rare, according to studies of federal agencies and surveys of community burn groups. Wimberley’s teams haven’t had one yet, even with 40 burns per year.

Climate change is reducing the number of safe burn days. Rising temperatures cause lower relative humidity in the South and intensify periods when it’s too dry, said Jennifer Fawcett, a North Carolina State University wildland fire expert.

As the severity and frequency of storms, droughts and wildfires increase, longleaf pines could become even more important for ecological resilience in the South. Deep roots anchor them during strong winds and stretch far into the ground for water. Flames enhance soil nutrients.

Further, the surrounding ecosystems have few known rivals for biodiversity in the U.S. Light pours through open canopies onto the sparse floor, giving way to flora like an insect-eating plant that needs sun exposure and wet soil. Gopher tortoises feed on the native vegetation and dig up to 4.5-meter burrows sheltering other at-risk species.

“It’s more than just planting trees,” said Lisa Lord, The Longleaf Alliance conservation programs director. “We want to take the time to restore all of the values of the forest.”

A late 1920s education campaign known as the “Dixie Crusaders” harmed those interdependent relationships. Federal officials turned southerners against the practice and burning fell off. Flammable needles and wiregrasses piled up to dangerous tinder levels.

Wimberley’s family resisted, knowing their livelihoods depended on fire. His ancestors first applied it to “sweat” out the pine’s lucrative sap distilled into turpentine or exported as sealants. Later generations burned to shield crops.

Burning looks different from the times Wimberley’s mother dragged kindling known as “fat lighter” through the forest. But public understanding of its importance is returning and the ranks are growing.

“We’re all a bunch of pyromaniacs,” said Tribble, the tree farm owner.

Still, Tribble burns for a reason: he values connecting with people and the land.

Before his burns, brush cluttered the ground, choking waterflow to parts of the property that were “bone dry.” Now water runs from more marshy areas and the squeaky call of the rarely spotted red-cockaded woodpecker resounds from mature pines. Wild turkeys appear when smoke fills the sky.

Steed, the Lumbee outreach coordinator, is heartened by the rekindling of this proactive “fire culture” beyond the tribe that she says introduced it to the region.

She ran through her grandfather’s scorched woods as a child, but the expanse has gone about a decade without fire. Steed plans to lead her first burn next year in Wimberley’s woods and then manage a family property she recently inherited.

“It feels empowering,” Steed said of prescribed fire. “It feels like a very tangible way to connect to the past and also guide the future.”
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New oil and natural gas leasing will be prohibited on state land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park, an area sacred to Native Americans, for the next 20 years under an executive order by New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard.

Wednesday’s order extends a temporary moratorium that she put in place when she took office in 2019. It covers more than 293 square kilometers of state trust land in what is a sprawling checkerboard of private, state, federal and tribal holdings in northwestern New Mexico.

The U.S. government last year adopted its own 20-year moratorium on new oil, gas and mineral leasing around Chaco, following a push by pueblos and other Southwestern tribal nations that have cultural ties to the high desert region.

Garcia Richard said during a virtual meeting Thursday with Native American leaders and advocates that the goal is to stop the encroachment of development on Chaco and the tens of thousands of acres beyond the park’s boundaries that have yet to be surveyed.

“The greater Chaco landscape is one of the most special places in the world, and it would be foolish not to do everything in our power to protect it,” she said in a statement following the meeting.

Cordelia Hooee, the lieutenant governor of Zuni Pueblo, called it a historic day. She said tribal leaders throughout the region continue to pray for more permanent protections through congressional action.

“Chaco Canyon and the greater Chaco region play an important role in the history, religion and culture of the Zuni people and other pueblo people as well,” she said. “Our shared cultural landscapes must be protected into perpetuity, for our survival as Indigenous people is tied to them.”

The tribal significance of Chaco is evident in songs, prayers and oral histories, and pueblo leaders said some people still make pilgrimages to the area, which includes desert plains, rolling hills dotted with piñon and juniper and sandstone canyons carved by eons of wind and water erosion.

A World Heritage site, Chaco Culture National Historical Park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization. Within park boundaries are the towering remains of stone structures built centuries ago by the region’s first inhabitants, and ancient roads and related sites are scattered further out.

The executive order follows a tribal summit in Washington last week at which federal officials vowed to continue consultation efforts to ensure Native American leaders have more of a seat at the table when land management decisions affect culturally significant areas. New guidance for federal agencies also was recently published to help with the effort.

The New Mexico State Land Office is not required to have formal consultations with tribes, but agency officials said they have been working with tribal leaders over the last five years and hope to craft a formal policy that can be used by future administrations.

The pueblos recently completed an ethnographic study of the region for the U.S. Interior Department that they hope can be used for decision-making at the federal level.
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seattle — The U.S. government said Thursday it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted populations of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them.

President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sought that called the agreement a road map for dismantling them. Filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, it pauses long-running litigation over federal operation of the dams and represents the most significant step yet toward breaching them.

“Today’s historic agreement marks a new direction for the Pacific Northwest,” senior White House adviser John Podesta said in a written statement. “Today, the Biden-Harris administration and state and tribal governments are agreeing to work together to protect salmon and other native fish, honor our obligations to tribal nations, and recognize the important services the Columbia River system provides to the economy of the Pacific Northwest.”

The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with at least 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead.

Today, four are extinct and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depends on the salmon.

Dams blamed for decline

Dams are a main culprit behind the salmon’s decline, and federal fisheries scientists have concluded that breaching the dams in eastern Washington on the Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia, would be the best hope for recovering them, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho.

Conservation groups sued the federal government more than two decades ago in an effort to save the fish. They have argued that the continued operation of the dams violates the Endangered Species Act as well as treaties dating to the mid-19th century ensuring the tribes’ right to harvest fish.

Republicans in Congress who oppose the breaching of the dams released a leaked copy of the draft agreement late last month.

“I have serious concerns about what this agreement means for the future of our region,” Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, said in an emailed statement Thursday. “It jeopardizes the energy, irrigation and navigation benefits that support our entire way of life, and it makes commitments on behalf of Congress without engaging us.”

Details of agreement

Under the agreement, the U.S. government will build enough new clean energy projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by the dams — the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite.

The agreement includes a compromise regarding dam operations — providing for additional water to be spilled in the spring, fall and winter to help some salmon runs such as spring and summer Chinook, while reducing the spill required in late summer, when energy demand is high and production is especially profitable. That could harm fall Chinook, said the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which is representing environmental, fishing and renewable energy groups in the litigation.

The federal Bonneville Power Administration, which operates the dams, will spend $300 million over 10 years to restore native fish and their habitats throughout the Columbia River Basin, though it said the agreement would result in rate increases of only 0.7%. Two-thirds of that money will go toward hatchery improvements and operations, and the rest will go to what the agreement refers to as the “six sovereigns” — Oregon, Washington and the four tribes involved: the Yakama Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.

Combined with other fish-restoration funding, the federal government will be spending more than $1 billion over the next decade, the White House said.

The U.S. also will conduct or pay for studies of how the transportation, irrigation and recreation provided by the dams could be replaced. The dams made the town of Lewiston, Idaho, the most inland seaport on the West Coast, and many farmers in the region rely on barges to ship their crops, though rail is also available.

The agreement “lays out a pathway to breaching,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “When these things are replaced, and the Pacific Northwest is transforming into a stronger, more resilient, better place, then there’s a responsibility … to make the decisions that are necessary to make sure these treaty promises are kept.”

Utility and business groups Northwest RiverPartners, the Public Power Council and the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association have opposed the agreement.

“This settlement undermines the future of achieving clean energy goals and will raise the rates of electricity customers across the region while exacerbating the greatest threat to salmon that NOAA scientists have identified — the warming, acidifying ocean,” Northwest RiverPartners said in a news release Thursday.

There has been growing recognition that the harm some dams cause to fish outweighs their usefulness, but only a few lawmakers in the region have embraced the idea. Dams on the Elwha River in Washington state and the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border have been or are being removed.

In 2021, Republican Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed removing the earthen berms on either side of the four Lower Snake River dams to let the river flow freely, and to spend $33 billion to replace the benefits of the dams.

Last year, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Washington U.S. Senator Patty Murray, both Democrats, released a report saying carbon-free electricity produced by the dams must be replaced before they are breached. Inslee declined to endorse breaching the dams during a conference call with reporters on Thursday, but he said figuring out how to replace their benefits would enable Congress to make a better decision.

“I don’t think this agreement makes anything inevitable, but it does make it much more likely that we’ll have the information we need to make the decision,” he said.

In October, Biden directed federal agencies to use all available resources to restore abundant salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin, but that memo too stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams.

“The energy needs of the Pacific Northwest should not rest on the backs of salmon,” said Donella Miller, fisheries science manager with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “What’s good for the salmon is good for the environment, and what’s good for the environment is good for the people.”
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washington — The maiden liftoff of a new American rocket called Vulcan Centaur has been delayed from December 24 to January 8, the company that developed it said Thursday.

The postponement stems from last-minute technical snags, but United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said on X, formerly Twitter, that a recent dress rehearsal on the launch pad went well.

The rocket will carry a private lunar lander, developed by the startup Astrobotic, which could become the first such private craft to touch down on the moon and the first American robot to land on the surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

“This is sort of, in a way, the first giant step in the campaign for the U.S., and for all of our friends, to go back to the moon, eventually with people,” Bruno told AFP in an interview last week.

“It’s a pretty big deal to have a payload at all, let alone one that goes to the surface of the moon,” he added.

“We wanted to do something really important, and we have a lot of confidence, obviously, in the design of our rocket,” Bruno said.

Liftoff for this mission called Cert-1 will take place at the U.S. Space Force launch base at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In dress rehearsals in recent days, some “routine” issues emerged in the ground system so a Christmas Eve flight is now out, and the new window opens January 8, Bruno wrote on X.

Besides the lunar lander, this rocket will carry the cremated remains of several people associated with the original “Star Trek” series, including creator Gene Roddenberry and cast member Nichelle Nichols, who played the character Uhura. Roddenberry’s ashes have been launched into orbit previously.

A sample of Bruno’s own DNA will also be taken into space. “Who wouldn’t want to go to space with five ‘Star Trek’ people?” he mused in the interview with AFP.

Vulcan Centaur is meant to replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and is designed to carry a payload of up to 27.2 metric tons into low orbit, comparable to what the SpaceX Falcon 9 can do.
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London/Dubai — Nearly 200 countries signed a deal Wednesday at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels. Proponents say it heralds the end of the age of oil — but not all nations are satisfied with the text of the deal. 

The deal calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner … so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”  

 

It also calls for a tripling of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, speeding up efforts to reduce coal use, and accelerating technologies such as carbon capture and storage. 

Sultan al-Jaber, the COP28 president who also is head of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil firm, said the deal could prevent global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the target agreed to at the Paris climate summit in 2015. Scientists say that exceeding this level of warming will likely cause irreversible and increasingly catastrophic climate change. 

“It is a plan that is led by the science. It is a balanced plan that tackles emissions, bridges the gap on adaptation, reimagines global finance and delivers on loss and damage,” al-Jaber said of the COP28 agreement. 

He called the deal “historic” but added that its true success would be in its implementation. “We are what we do, not what we say. We must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions,” al-Jaber told delegates in Dubai. 

Many nations, including the United States and China – the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases – welcomed the agreement after two weeks of hard-fought negotiations. 

“Everybody here should be pleased that in a world of Ukraine and the Middle East war and all the other challenges of a planet that is foundering, this is a moment where multilateralism has actually come together and people have taken individual interests and attempted to define the common good,” John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, told delegates Wednesday. 

However, more than 100 countries, including many European states, had lobbied for stronger language to fully phase out fossil fuels.  

They faced strong opposition from oil-producing members of the OPEC cartel, led by representatives from Saudi Arabia, who argued the world can slash emissions without shunning specific fuels.

That prompted criticism from some delegates, including small island states, that are most vulnerable to rising sea levels in a warming world.

“We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual, when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” said Anne Rasmussen, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, whose members include 39 island nations.  

Many climate change campaigners said the text of the deal is too weak. “On the one hand, this is a good sign and signal that the world is finally dealing with fossil fuels after almost three decades of refusing to deal with it. But on the other hand, the new text includes cavernous loopholes that will allow for the oil and gas industry to continue,” said Jean Su of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. 

Those loopholes include the use of so-called carbon capture technology, which removes some carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of greenhouse gases.  

“That technology exists in some places, but it’s never been proven to work at the kind of scale that you would need if you were to continue burning fossil fuels,” said Ruth Townend, a research fellow with the Environment and Society Program at Chatham House, a research institution. 

Scientists say we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent in just six years, in order to meet the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  

“The energy transition to renewables is far more feasible than trying to capture carbon from the atmosphere. We know what we need to do. And governments now need to find ways that work for them economically and politically to commit to that and deliver it. And that needs to happen very fast,” Townend told VOA. 

Along with the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, the COP28 summit secured agreement on a loss and damage fund, with close to $800 million pledged during the conference. 

“The new fund helps the poorest countries of the world and the ones most vulnerable to climate change with money for the loss and damage that they are experiencing when they have a hurricane, flooding, fires or other damage to their economies,” said Professor Michael Jacobs, of the London-based ODI research group. 

“Some of the richer countries have put in money for this fund. They still need to make good on this money. It’s a pledge at this point but normally pledges are realized in time.  It’s something that the poorer countries have wanted for some time,” Jacobs told VOA.   

COP28 also saw the first ever ‘global stocktake’ – a new process whereby countries assess their progress toward achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, to be conducted every five years. The conclusion from COP28 is that the world remains well off target, said Teresa Anderson, who leads climate justice research at the global non-profit, ActionAid International. 

“The global stocktake report is quietly devastating in U.N. language. It says in no uncertain terms that we are not on track to save ourselves. The question is now, what do we do with that knowledge? Do we actually realize that we need to do something very different and very soon? Otherwise, we’ll be pushing the planet to the brink,” Anderson told VOA.

Dale Gavlak contributed to this report.
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DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Undeterred by wars at home, delegations from Ukraine and the Palestinian territories are active at COP28, determined to call attention not only to the environmental threats facing their homelands but also to emphasize their places in the global community.

Ukraine, attending its second COP international conference, is using its pavilion in Dubai to highlight the extensive environmental damage caused by Russia’s invasion and propose preventive measures against ecocide on a global scale.

Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine’s minister of environmental protection and natural resources, told VOA that the delegation aims not only to showcase the environmental and climate consequences of the war, but also to unite and engage the international community in achieving justice and peace.

Ukraine is committed to fighting climate change, Strilets said.

“Despite the war, Ukraine is finalizing the development of its climate architecture and consistently fulfilling its climate commitments. At COP28, we plan to gather even more partners around our country for a greener future for Ukraine and the entire world,” he said.

The Ukraine pavilion’s exposition is organized into three key blocks. One block recounts a catastrophic explosion at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam in June, which flooded dozens of towns and villages and killed more than 50 people.

A second block illustrates Ukrainians’ efforts to swiftly rebuild what the war has destroyed, and the third block details the impact the war is having on the environment.

During a visit this week to the Ukrainian Pavilion, Moldova Energy Minister Victor Parlicov expressed his country’s endorsement of the COP28 Environmental Declaration and reiterated that Russia should be held responsible for the environmental harm resulting from the war.

Other visitors to the pavilion have included Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova and Keit Kasemets, first deputy minister of climate for Estonia.

In the Palestinian pavilion, Ahmed Abuthaher, director general of the West Bank-based Environment Quality Authority, told VOA his delegation is in Dubai “to tell people to look at us as humanitarians, and this conference is for human beings.”

“For climate change, we need to have easy access to the financial resources. We have water shortage and in some areas we have desertification,” he said, expressing hope for help from a Loss and Damage Fund announced on the first day of the conference.

A June 2022 report prepared by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 78% of piped water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption.

According to the COP28 official webpage of their pavilion, the Palestinian leadership recognizes that collective efforts across sectors are crucial to the fulfillment of the conference’s climate commitments and ensuring a sustainable and resilient future.

Abuthaher emphasized the Palestinian commitment to participating in COP28 while calling for the global community to take meaningful action to address the issues faced by the Palestinian people.

The environmental damage inflicted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been documented in several studies, including an October 2022 report from the U.N. Environment Program finding that almost 1 million hectares (3,800 square miles) of land have experienced significant impact, with 812 specific sites facing threats.

VOA reported in January that the repercussions of the war extend as far as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists have cited its contribution to a scarcity of migratory birds.

COP28 delegate Ievgeniia Kopytsia, an associate of Oxford Net Zero at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said the war is also increasing carbon emissions that are widely blamed for rising temperatures worldwide.

“On top of the local pollution caused by the warfare,” she told VOA, a significant amount of greenhouse gas has been emitted into the atmosphere “caused by the consumption of fuel for military purposes, use of munitions, fires caused by shelling, bombing and mine-laying operations, and reconstruction of the civilian infrastructure.”

In July 2022, during a head-of-states conference in Lugano, Switzerland, the Ukrainian government unveiled the initial version of its 10-year national recovery plan, outlining proposed recovery pathways for major sectors at an estimated cost of $750 billion.

Kopytsia said participation in events such as COP28 can help turn that vision into a reality.

“Engaging with the global community in climate initiatives may foster diplomatic relations and provide opportunities for assistance in conflict resolution,” she said.

The impact of conflict on the environment must be addressed not only in Ukraine and Gaza but around the world, argued Simon Chambers, the director of ACT Alliance, a global alliance of more than 145 churches and other organizations from over 120 countries that provides humanitarian aid for poor and marginalized people.

“Climate justice is possible to be achieved, as is a just transition” to cleaner sources of energy, he said to VOA, but it will require all parts of society to come together — governments, nongovernmental organizations and businesses.

“We need to put the needs of the creation, of people and the planet ahead of profit and power,” he said. “If we all act in the face of the urgency of the climate emergency, it is possible to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and to do so in a way that is just.”
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Five countries in East and southern Africa are in the middle of outbreaks of the anthrax disease, with more than 1,100 suspected cases and 20 deaths this year, the World Health Organization said Monday. 

A total of 1,166 suspected cases had been reported in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Thirty-seven cases had been confirmed by laboratory tests, according to the WHO, which also said the five countries have seasonal outbreaks every year, but Zambia was experiencing its worst since 2011 and Malawi reported its first human case this year. Uganda had reported 13 deaths. 

Anthrax usually affects livestock like cattle, sheep and goats, as well as wild herbivores. Humans can be infected if they are exposed to the animals or contaminated animal products. Anthrax isn’t generally considered to be contagious between humans, although there have been rare cases of person-to-person transmission, WHO says. 

Anthrax is caused by spore-forming bacteria and is sometimes associated with the weaponized version used in the 2001 attacks in the United States, when five people died and 17 others fell sick after being exposed to anthrax spores in letters sent through the mail. 

Anthrax bacteria also occurs naturally in soil. 

In a separate assessment of the Zambia outbreak, which was the most concerning, WHO said that 684 suspected cases had been reported in the southern African nation as of November 20, with four deaths. Human cases of anthrax had been reported in nine out of Zambia’s 10 provinces. In one instance, 26 people were suspected of contracting the disease from eating contaminated hippopotamus meat. 

WHO said there was a high risk that the Zambian outbreak would spread to neighboring countries. 

The outbreaks in all five countries were “likely being driven by multiple factors, including climatic shocks, food insecurity, low-risk perception and exposure to the disease through handling the meat of infected animals,” the WHO said. 
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