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Scientists Discover Unusual Ancient Fish 900 Miles North of Its Previous Known Range

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Tuesday, May 28, 2024

The Australian brook lamprey, a non-parasitic jawless fish, has been found in Queensland, extending its known range. Conservation efforts face challenges due to its mistaken identity with a more common species. Scientists stress the importance of protecting this Endangered species amidst threats like habitat changes and rising sea levels. Credit: David MoffattThe Australian brook lamprey (Mordacia praecox) belongs to a group of primitive jawless fish. It’s up to 15 cm long, with rows of sharp teeth. Growing up to 15 cm in length, it has rows of sharp teeth. Unlike most lamprey species, which use their teeth to suck blood, this species is non-parasitic.As larvae, the Australian brook lamprey lives buried in the bottom of streams for around three years, filter-feeding. Its adult phase is about one year long, in which it doesn’t feed at all. Prior to this study – funded in part by the Australian Government through the National Environmental Science Program’s (NESP) Resilient Landscapes Hub – the species was widely believed to only live in a few streams along a 170 km stretch of coastline near the NSW/Victoria border.A close-up of the head of an adult male Australian brook lamprey. Credit: David MoffattThe study began after another exciting discovery: Dr Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo from the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University found the species living in streams on K’gari (Fraser Island). To unravel the mystery of Queensland lampreys, Dr Carpenter-Bundhoo teamed up with David Moffatt from DESI, who had found isolated populations of lamprey in other Queensland streams. Together, they confirmed reports of Australian brook lamprey in Queensland, including as far north as Rockhampton! With this enormous extension of its geographic range, the Australian brook lamprey becomes the only lamprey species in the world to live in truly tropical waters.Conservation Concerns“It’s quite exciting to find an Endangered species so far out of its known range, yet so close to populated areas. We expect these animals naturally occur in Queensland, and have been here for an awfully long time, but have remained hidden due to their cryptic nature,” said Mr Moffatt.The Australian brook lamprey is thought to be extinct where it was first described, in southern NSW. Its existence is thought to be threatened by sedimentation, wildfires, and human development.Perhaps the biggest threat to their conservation is that they’re very difficult to identify – this species truly faces a case of mistaken identity. For most of their life, the non-parasitic Australian brook lamprey is indistinguishable from its more common blood-sucking southern relative, the short-headed lamprey (Mordacia mordax), which has a conservation status of ‘Least Concern’.David Moffatt and Dr Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo with a small tank of Australian brook lamprey. Credit: Troy HarrisAdd to this the fact that, globally, only a few people can tell them apart.In their new Endangered Species Research article, Dr Carpenter-Bundhoo and Mr Moffatt outline the difficulties of implementing a conservation strategy for this fish and propose some solutions.The species’ conservation is especially important, given that projected sea level rises mean that many of the lowland freshwater coastal streams where Australian brook lamprey live are likely to become saltwater.With these new findings, scientists will be better equipped to conserve this unusual and Endangered species.Reference: “Expanding the known range and practical conservation issues of the Endangered Australian brook lamprey Mordacia praecox” by Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo and David B. Moffatt, 25 April 2024, Endangered Species Research.DOI: 10.3354/esr01319The surveys were partially funded by an NESP project that aims to restore ecosystem health in the Moonaboola (Mary River) catchment area of south-east Queensland and protect threatened species like the Australian lungfish, the Mary River cod and the giant barred frog.

The Australian brook lamprey (Mordacia praecox) belongs to a group of primitive jawless fish. It’s up to 15 cm long, with rows of sharp teeth....

Mouth of a Juvenile Australian Brook Lamprey

The Australian brook lamprey, a non-parasitic jawless fish, has been found in Queensland, extending its known range. Conservation efforts face challenges due to its mistaken identity with a more common species. Scientists stress the importance of protecting this Endangered species amidst threats like habitat changes and rising sea levels. Credit: David Moffatt

The Australian brook lamprey (Mordacia praecox) belongs to a group of primitive jawless fish. It’s up to 15 cm long, with rows of sharp teeth. Growing up to 15 cm in length, it has rows of sharp teeth. Unlike most lamprey species, which use their teeth to suck blood, this species is non-parasitic.

As larvae, the Australian brook lamprey lives buried in the bottom of streams for around three years, filter-feeding. Its adult phase is about one year long, in which it doesn’t feed at all. Prior to this study – funded in part by the Australian Government through the National Environmental Science Program’s (NESP) Resilient Landscapes Hub – the species was widely believed to only live in a few streams along a 170 km stretch of coastline near the NSW/Victoria border.

Close Up of the Head of an Adult Male Australian Brook Lamprey

A close-up of the head of an adult male Australian brook lamprey. Credit: David Moffatt

The study began after another exciting discovery: Dr Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo from the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University found the species living in streams on K’gari (Fraser Island). To unravel the mystery of Queensland lampreys, Dr Carpenter-Bundhoo teamed up with David Moffatt from DESI, who had found isolated populations of lamprey in other Queensland streams.

Together, they confirmed reports of Australian brook lamprey in Queensland, including as far north as Rockhampton! With this enormous extension of its geographic range, the Australian brook lamprey becomes the only lamprey species in the world to live in truly tropical waters.

Conservation Concerns

“It’s quite exciting to find an Endangered species so far out of its known range, yet so close to populated areas. We expect these animals naturally occur in Queensland, and have been here for an awfully long time, but have remained hidden due to their cryptic nature,” said Mr Moffatt.

The Australian brook lamprey is thought to be extinct where it was first described, in southern NSW. Its existence is thought to be threatened by sedimentation, wildfires, and human development.

Perhaps the biggest threat to their conservation is that they’re very difficult to identify – this species truly faces a case of mistaken identity. For most of their life, the non-parasitic Australian brook lamprey is indistinguishable from its more common blood-sucking southern relative, the short-headed lamprey (Mordacia mordax), which has a conservation status of ‘Least Concern’.

David Moffatt and Luke Carpenter Bundhoo

David Moffatt and Dr Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo with a small tank of Australian brook lamprey. Credit: Troy Harris

Add to this the fact that, globally, only a few people can tell them apart.

In their new Endangered Species Research article, Dr Carpenter-Bundhoo and Mr Moffatt outline the difficulties of implementing a conservation strategy for this fish and propose some solutions.

The species’ conservation is especially important, given that projected sea level rises mean that many of the lowland freshwater coastal streams where Australian brook lamprey live are likely to become saltwater.

With these new findings, scientists will be better equipped to conserve this unusual and Endangered species.

Reference: “Expanding the known range and practical conservation issues of the Endangered Australian brook lamprey Mordacia praecox” by Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo and David B. Moffatt, 25 April 2024, Endangered Species Research.
DOI: 10.3354/esr01319

The surveys were partially funded by an NESP project that aims to restore ecosystem health in the Moonaboola (Mary River) catchment area of south-east Queensland and protect threatened species like the Australian lungfish, the Mary River cod and the giant barred frog.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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From the telegraph to AI, our communications systems have always had hidden environmental cost

The telegraph was hailed for its revolutionary ability to span distance. Now AI is being hailed as a great leap forward. But both came with environmental costs.

The first attempt to lay submarine telegraph cable between Britain and France. Universal History Archive/GettyWhen we post to a group chat or talk to an AI chatbot, we don’t think about how these technologies came to be. We take it for granted we can instantly communicate. We only notice the importance and reach of these systems when they’re not accessible. Companies describe these systems with metaphors such as the “cloud” or “artificial intelligence”, suggesting something intangible. But they are deeply material. The stories told about these systems centre on newness and progress. But these myths obscure the human and environmental cost of making them possible. AI and modern communication systems rely on huge data centres and submarine cables. These have large and growing environmental costs, from soaring energy use to powering data centres to water for cooling. There’s nothing new about this, as my research shows. The first world-spanning communication system was the telegraph, which made it possible to communicate between some continents in near-real time. But it came at substantial cost to the environment and humans. Submarine telegraph cables were wrapped in gutta-percha, the rubber-like latex extracted from tropical trees by colonial labourers. Forests were felled to grow plantations of these trees. Is it possible to design communications systems without such costs? Perhaps. But as the AI investment bubble shows, environmental and human costs are often ignored in the race for the next big thing. The telegraph had a sizeable environmental and social cost. Pictured: workers coiling the first transatlantic telegraph cable in the bilge tanks of the S.S. Great Eastern in 1865. Universal History Archives/Getty From the “Victorian internet” to AI Before the telegraph, long distance communication was painfully slow. Sending messages by ship could take months. In the 1850s, telegraph cables made it possible to rapidly communicate between countries and across oceans. By the late 1800s, the telegraph had become ubiquitous. Later dubbed the “Victorian internet”, the telegraph was the predecessor of today’s digital networks. Building telegraph networks was a huge undertaking. The first transatlantic cable was completed in 1858, spanning more than 4,000km between North America and Europe. The first transatlantic submarine cables made possible rapid communication between the United States and Europe. This 1857 map shows their paths. Korff Brothers, CC BY-NC-ND Australia followed closely behind. European colonists created the first telegraph lines in the 1850s between Melbourne and Williamstown. By 1872, the Overland Telegraph Line between Adelaide and Darwin had been completed. From Darwin, the message could reach the world. There are clear differences between the telegraph and today’s AI systems. But there are also clear parallels. In our time, fibre optic cables retrace many routes of the now obsolete submarine telegraph cables. Virtually all (99%) of the world’s internet traffic travels through deep sea cables. These cables carry everything from Google searches to ChatGPT interactions, transmitting data close to the speed of light from your device to faraway data centres and back. Historical accounts describe the telegraph variously as a divine gift, a human-made wonder, and a networked global intelligence, far from the material reality. These descriptions are not far off the way AI is talked about today. Grounded in extraction In the 19th century, the telegraph was commonly thought of as an emblem of progress and technological innovation. But these systems had other stories embedded, such as the logic of colonialism. One reason European powers set out to colonise the globe was to extract resources from colonies for their own use. The same extractive logic can be seen in the telegraph, a system whose self-evident technological progress won out over environmental and social costs. If you look closely at a slice of telegraph cable in a museum or at historic sites where submarine telegraph cables made landfall, you’ll see something interesting. The telegraph was a technological marvel – but it came at considerable cost. Pictured is an 1856 sample of the first submarine telegraph cable linking Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in Canada. Jemimah Widdicombe, CC BY-NC-ND Wrapped around the wires is a mixture of tarred yarn and gutta percha. Cable companies used this naturally occurring latex to insulate telegraph wires from the harsh conditions on the sea floor. To meet soaring demand, colonial powers such as Britain and the Netherlands accelerated harvesting in their colonies across Southeast Asia. Rainforests were felled for plantations and Indigenous peoples forced to harvest the latex. European colonial powers drove intensified production of gutta-percha despite the environmental and social cost. Pictured: Kayan people in Borneo harvesting the milky latex around 1910. Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-ND Australia’s telegraph came at real cost, as First Nations truth telling projects and interdisciplinary researchers have shown. The Overland Telegraph Line needed large amounts of water to power batteries and sustain human operators and their animals at repeater stations. The demand for water contributed to loss of life, forced dispossession and the pollution of waterways. The legacy of these effects are still experienced today. Echoes of this colonial logic can be seen in today’s AI systems. The focus today is on technological advancement, regardless of energy and environmental costs. Within five years, the International Energy Agency estimates the world’s data centres could require more electricity than all of Japan. AI is far more thirsty than the telegraph. Data centres produce a great deal of heat, and water has to be used to keep the servers cool. Researchers estimate that by 2027, AI usage will require between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic metres of water – about the same volume used by Denmark annually. With the rise of generative AI, both Microsoft and Google have significantly increased their water consumption. Manufacturing the specialised processors needed to train AI models has resulted in dirty mining, deforestation and toxic waste. As AI scholar Kate Crawford has argued, AI must be understood as a system that is: embodied and material, made from natural resources, fuel, human labour, infrastructures, logistics, histories and classifications. The same was true of the telegraph. Huge new data centres are being built to service the growth in AI and the wider internet. Pictured: a new Google data centre in the United Kingdom. Richard Newstead/Getty Planning for the future Telegraph companies and the imperial networks behind them accepted environmental extraction and social exploitation as the price of technological progress. Today’s tech giants are following a similar approach, racing to release ever more powerful models while obscuring the far reaching environmental consequences of their technologies. As governments work to improve regulation and accountability, they must go further to enforce ethical standards, mandate transparent disclosure of energy and environmental impacts and support low impact projects. Without decisive action, AI risks becoming another chapter in the long history of technologies trading human and environmental wellbeing for technological “progress”. The lesson from the telegraph is clear: we must refuse to accept exploitation as the cost of innovation. Jemimah Widdicombe works for the National Communication Museum (NCM) as Senior Curator.

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Appeal seeks to force factory farms to disclose hazardous air emissions

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A coalition of food, environmental and animal welfare groups is appealing a recent federal court decision that upheld a US Environmental Protection Agency rule exempting factory farms from publicly disclosing hazardous air emissions information.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fat Bear Week

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Warnings of imports of caged hen eggs as Ukraine and Poland become UK’s biggest suppliers

Shift raises food safety and welfare concerns as imports can bypass standards for domestic producersUkraine and Poland have overtaken other EU countries to become the UK’s biggest egg suppliers, sparking warnings that imports of eggs from caged hens are slipping “through the back door” despite welfare pledges.Freedom of information data from the Animal and Plant Health Agency shows that, while the Netherlands supplied a large proportion of UK eggs in 2022, its share has steadily fallen. By 2025, Ukraine and Poland together accounted for more than 15m kilograms, with Spain, Italy and other southern and eastern European countries also having increased their exports. Continue reading...

Ukraine and Poland have overtaken other EU countries to become the UK’s biggest egg suppliers, sparking warnings that imports of eggs from caged hens are slipping “through the back door” despite welfare pledges.Freedom of information data from the Animal and Plant Health Agency shows that, while the Netherlands supplied a large proportion of UK eggs in 2022, its share has steadily fallen. By 2025, Ukraine and Poland together accounted for more than 15m kilograms, with Spain, Italy and other southern and eastern European countries also having increased their exports.Ukraine has provided the most eggs so far this year by weight at 8m kilograms, followed by almost 7m kilograms from Poland and 5m from Spain, according to data provided up to July this year.Imports of eggs for consumption rose sharply from about 3,500 consignments in 2023 to more than 10,000 in 2024. Although overall tonnage declined, fewer big shipments have been replaced by many small ones from regions where caged-hen systems remain widespread.Mark Williams, the chair of the British Egg Industry Council, said UK farmers were being placed at an unfair disadvantage. “Our farmers are asked to invest in ever-higher standards of hen welfare while the government leaves the back door open to eggs produced in a system that is banned in the UK. This is morally wrong and unfair, and the government should not be doing this,” he said.Williams said battery cages outlawed in the UK since 2012 were still commonplace in Ukraine, and that eggs linked to food safety issues in mainland Europe continued to be traded.After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the country’s farms, factories and trade routes were badly hit. To help Ukraine’s economy survive, the UK and EU suspended tariffs on its goods, meaning products such as eggs could be exported without extra costs. Ministers argue this tariff suspension is a deliberate step to support Ukraine during wartime.Williams acknowledged the humanitarian case, but added: “Aid should not come at the expense of UK egg farmers – particularly when British retailers have already pledged to go cage-free by 2025. That promise is undermined if imports from countries with weaker welfare standards are allowed to fill the gap into the price-sensitive food service and processing sectors.”The UK currently produces about 88% of its own eggs, and imports the remaining 12%. Leading supermarkets only sell British Lion eggs in retail, following 2017 Food Standards Agency advice confirming they are safe to eat runny or raw. Imported eggs are more likely to be found in restaurants and food processing.“I am not worried about Ukrainian eggs entering retail,” Williams said. “But retail is only 65% of the market. The other two segments – food service (18%) and processing (17%) – are very price-competitive, which makes it attractive for Ukraine to sell eggs or egg products here.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionHe added that UK regulations on food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection accounted for about 14% of the cost of producing a dozen eggs. “Ukraine doesn’t face those costs, giving them a huge commercial advantage. That’s why it’s so attractive right now to send eggs and egg products to the UK.”Ukraine has asked Britain to keep tariff suspensions in place until 2029. While the UK has agreed to extend tariff-free trade on most goods to that date, eggs and poultry are classed as “sensitive products” and have only been granted a shorter, two-year extension.A government spokesperson said: “We are backing our farmers with the largest nature-friendly budget in history to get more British food on our plates and we will always protect our farmers in trade deals.“We are making the supply chain fairer and are engaging with the egg industry to draft new regulations to ensure a level playing field for producers.”

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Renowned Primatologist Jane Goodall Dead At 91

The Jane Goodall Institute said Goodall passed away "due to natural causes."

English primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall speaks in the panel "Earth's Wisdom Keepers" on the last day of the forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in 2024.AP Photo/Markus SchreiberJane Goodall, the world’s most famous primatologist, died Wednesday at the age of 91, the Jane Goodall Institute announced on social media.According to the Institute, Goodall passed away “due to natural causes” while in California as part of a speaking tour of the United States.“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” the Institute said in a statement.Goodall, the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees, communicates with chimpanzee Nana in June 2004 at the zoo of Magdeburg in eastern Germany. The British primatologist has died.JENS SCHLUETER/DDP/AFP via Getty ImagesIn the spring of 1957, Goodall, then a 22-year-old secretary with only a high school education, boarded a ship from her native England to Kenya. Her work at a local natural history museum soon took her to the rainforest reserve at Gombe National Park (in present-day Tanzania), home to one of the largest chimpanzee populations in Africa.She felt an immediate connection to the chimpanzees. Over the decades that followed, she spent almost all her time in the reserve ― conducting research that reshaped our understanding of chimpanzees and even what it means to be human. Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, to businessman Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall and novelist Margaret Myfanwe Joseph. She grew up in the middle-class resort town of Bournemouth, on the southern coast of England. In grade school, she started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels and Hugh Lofting’s “The Story of Doctor Dolittle” and became obsessed with the idea of traveling to Africa.Goodall’s parents couldn’t afford to send her to college, so after she graduated from high school, she worked as a secretary for two years to save money for the three-week passage to Africa. Two months after arriving, she met renowned paleontologist Louis Leakey, whose work had shown that hominids originated in Africa, rather than Asia. Leakey recognized Goodall’s intelligence and hired her at the natural history museum in Nairobi, where he worked, intending to send her to the rainforest to study chimpanzees. Goodall appears in Gombe National Park in the television special "Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees," originally broadcast on CBS in December 1965.CBS Photo Archive via Getty ImagesFor the first few months of her stay in Gombe, the chimpanzees were cautious, refusing to come within several hundred feet of the young woman. But Goodall persisted, using bananas as a lure for the chimpanzees, and they eventually became comfortable enough to allow her to observe them at close range. Goodall began giving them individual names — highly unorthodox in a field where the standard practice was to assign animals identifying numbers. And as she got closer to the chimpanzees, she discovered that they behaved in a manner that resembled the rich, complicated social structure of humans far more than anyone had suspected. She came to the belief that they could be caring and violent, resourceful and playful — much like human beings.Goodall feeds rescued chimpanzees on July 14, 2016, at the Sweetwaters sanctuary, Kenya's only great-ape sanctuary.TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty ImagesGoodall made what is still regarded as her most significant discovery about chimpanzee behavior in October 1960. Looking through her binoculars, she saw a male chimpanzee she’d named David Greybeard sticking a twig into a termite colony and using it to retrieve termites that he then ate. Before this moment, scientists had always believed that humans were the only creatures on earth capable of making and using tools.It hadn’t, in fact, been known that chimpanzees ate meat. Goodall later observed chimpanzees hunting and eating mammals, including other monkeys and even, on rare occasions, other chimpanzees.In 1962, Goodall enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Cambridge University, becoming one of just a handful of people ever to do so without an undergraduate degree. While there, she published her breakthrough finding on the tool-using chimpanzee in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.After getting her degree in 1965, Goodall returned to Gombe to continue her work with chimpanzees. She published her first book, “My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees,” in 1967. She has since published more than a dozen other books for adults and several for children. One of these books, 2013’s “Seeds of Hope,” was criticized for including passages lifted from several other sources without attribution, a misstep Goodall attributed to sloppy note-taking. She later published a revised edition.Goodall poses for a photo at Taronga Zoo on Oct. 11, 2008, in Sydney. Robert Gray via Getty ImagesIn 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute to promote conservation and development programs in Africa. It now has projects across the world, including youth-focused programs in nearly 100 countries. As Goodall’s fame grew, she became an outspoken advocate for animal rights and conservation. She has been involved in numerous organizations working on behalf of better treatment of animals.“You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings,” she told The Guardian in 2010. “You know it and I think every single one of those scientists knew it too, but because they couldn’t prove it, they wouldn’t talk about it.”In a 2021 interview with HuffPost, she reflected on humanity’s stewardship of the world and expressed hope we might lean more on our intellect to work toward the mutually beneficial goal of environmental preservation.That intellect is ultimately what distinguishes us from chimpanzees, she said, and allows us to collaboratively plan for the future:20 Years OfFreeJournalismYour SupportFuelsOur MissionYour SupportFuelsOur MissionFor two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching, and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 — we can't do this without you.We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.Chimpanzees have a very brutal, dark, war-like side. They also have a loving and altruistic side. Just like us. But the big difference is the explosive development of our intellect, which I personally think was at least partly triggered by the fact we developed this way of talking with words. So we can tell people about things that aren’t present. We can make plans for the distant future. We can bring people from different disciplines together to discuss a problem. That’s because of words. We now have developed a moral code with our words. And we know perfectly well what we should and shouldn’t do. But there is this kind of innate territorialism, which leads to nationalism. That’s in our genes. But we should be able to get out of it because of this intellect. We have the tools. We have the language. We have the scientific technology. We understand that if we make the right decisions every day and billions of us do it, we can move in the right direction. But will we do it in time? I don’t know.Goodall married Dutch nature photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick in 1964. The two had a son, Hugo, in 1967, and divorced in 1974. She married Derek Bryceson, head of Tanzania’s national parks, in 1975. He died of cancer in 1980. Sara Bondioli contributed reporting.

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