Dr. Utku Perktaş is a professor in the Biology Department at Hacettepe University.
On World Biodiversity Day on May 22, I drew attention to nitrogen pollution in my article as a major threat to the environment. Coincidentally after this article, images of ‘sea snot’ in the Marmara Sea started to take place in Turkey’s environmental agenda. Experts warned in the news that this incident was a result of
It would be appropriate to start this article with a question: “How much does biodiversity contribute to the economy?” Ecologists and economists have sought answers to such questions for decades. Governments of the developing countries, in particular, put forward their answers from different perspectives. Are they successful? My answer is no; because it was environmental
Countries on fire: the outbreak continues Today, all countries in the world are struggling with deaths due to the Covid-19 outbreak. There are fires burning in many countries, but it’s due to the outbreak. The number of cases has reached almost 40 million. The number of deaths has already exceeded 1 million. North and South
With the increasing population, human beings started to make their presence felt significantly in the world since the 1950s. The population increased by about 5 billion in the last 50 years. This was an increase that the world had never experienced in its long history. One of the effects of the increasing population has been
Thanks to strong reactions from the press, social media, some official institutions, and conservationists, nature is back in the hands of its real owners. In Turkey’s eastern province of Tunceli, the hunting permission for mountain goats, which have folkloric and spiritual value for the locals, got canceled. This prevents the wrong rulings that cause hunting.
The first, unrivaled item on the global agenda during the past six months has been the coronavirus. It still has not lost this first place. There’s nobody left in the world who doesn’t know the meaning of the word pandemic. Before finding a treatment for the disease, we had to learn how to deal with the
Climate change due to global warming causes different effects in many areas of life. Climate change causes not only microbe-generated outbreaks that threaten human health. They also cause other negative processes that affect the fitness of species that are components of biodiversity. These observations do not need to be spread over many years anymore. Negative
We continue to stay at home and isolated during the corona days. We have very good opportunities at home to intertwine life with a little more science. When the restrictions are over, the opportunities that we can put in the first place of the isolation brought us. I think you started thinking about what could
Yes, April 22 is Earth Day! We are celebrating the day’s fiftieth anniversary! So how do we celebrate this important day? It seems that in the shadow of the COVID-19 outbreak, we are celebrating quietly, in our homes. We cannot even go out into nature together. But truth be told, we deserved this situation; we
