EXTINCTION NEWS
. . A finding of chaos theory is that the more complex a system is, the more stable it is.
EXTINCTION NEWS '06
starting Jan 1, 06
See extinction news back to '04.
Also see exotic species over-population.
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Dec 31, 06: A species of eagle that disappeared from Ireland more than 100 years ago could soon be soaring over the country once again if a five-year wildlife project is successful.
Dec 28, 06: After winning more protection for polar bears, a conservation group is pressuring the U.S. government to keep the North Pacific right whale from going extinct. The whales are the most endangered whale in the world.
Dec 21, 06: Rockhopper penguins, a type featured in the movie "Happy Feet", have suffered a mysterious 30% decline in numbers over five years in their South Atlantic stronghold, conservationists said.
. . The number of pairs of the small yellow-crested penguins in Britain's Falkland Islands fell to 210,418 pairs in 2005-06 from 298,496 in 2000, perhaps because of climate change, a survey by Falklands Conservation said. Figures from 1932 suggested that there were 1.5 million pairs at the time, giving an 85% fall in the species' main habitat, it said.
Dec 17, 06: Conservationsts plan to release 200 orangutans into a protected forest on the island of Borneo after years of preparing them for a return to life in the wild. About 62,000 orangutans are estimated to live in Indonesia, 7,500 of them in Sumatra. Originally: 300,000.
. . The orangutans, a species only found on Indonesia's Sumatra island and Borneo, have on average already spent about 3.5 years at the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center, where they have been gradually accustomed to life in nature.
. . However, Smits warned that the plan might have to be postponed as there were indications that a super El Nino weather phenomenon was forming and likely to reach Indonesia next year... referring to the years when forest fires wreaked havoc on the island, causing intense damage and sending choking haze to blanket the sky in the region for months.
. . At least 1,000 orang-utans have been killed in fierce forest fires in Indonesia, hastening the species' headlong rush to extinction within the next decade. The fires, the worst in a decade and which reached their peak last month, sent a thick pall of smoke across the region, closing airports and forcing drivers to use headlights at noon. Conservationists believe that many were deliberately lit to make room for plantations to grow palm oil - much of it, ironically, to meet the world's growing demand for environmentally friendly fuel.
. . Their greatest victim is the orangutan --Asia's only great ape-- which is so endangered that many experts believe that it will become extinct in the wild over the next 10 years. Some 50,000 of them, at most, still survive, and about 5,000 are thought to perish every year as the rainforests on which they depend are felled.
. . In the past 20 years, 80% of their habitat has been destroyed --and only about 2% of what remains is legally protected in reserves.
. . The International Fund for Animal Welfare predicts that they will be extinct within 10 years. Other estimates vary either side of that figure. WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) puts it at 20 years, Friends of the Earth at 12, and the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation at just four.
. . The apes --whose name means "man of the forest"-- are one of our closest relatives, sharing about 97 per cent of our DNA.
. . Mothers keep their babies with them for up to six years, and have a single baby every eight years or so. This leisurely rate of reproduction --the slowest of all the great apes-- makes the species particularly vulnerable.
. . The pet trade: the number of the apes per square kilometer in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, is now greater than in their natural rainforest homes. For every one that is sold as a pet, five or six are thought to die. And they are also killed for meat.
Dec 21, 06: A western lowland gorilla has given birth at a zoo in southwest England after being given a fertility drug that is normally used on humans, zoo officials said. The newborn, which has not been named, has started suckling and is doing well, the zoo's senior primate expert Mel Gage said. Its sex has yet to be determined. It's the second baby for the 30-year-old mother, Salome, who first gave birth almost 20 years ago.
Dec 21, 06: When it comes to protecting Australia's Great Barrier Reef, it is hard to beat the batfish. A study by researchers at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies found that the rare pancake-like white fish with brown stripes was the only one of 27 species that successfully removed the forest of algae that can otherwise overwhelm and kill off the reef.
. . The study not only raised the profile of the largely overlooked batfish but also showed the importance of protecting key algae-eating fish on reefs across the Pacific that are subject to overfishing, researchers said.
. . "What was really interesting for us is that there was a huge difference between the species that prevent the outbreak of algae and those that were able to remove the algae", he said.
. . By fencing off sections of the Great Barrier Reef over three years, researchers were able to simulate the growth of towering, weed-like algae on an otherwise healthy reef. Then, they introduced scores of different fish species and filmed the results. What they found was that some fish, such as the parrotfish and surgeonfish, were able to control growth of some algae but only the batfish could remove the most problematic algae blooms -which can overrun and kill a reef.
Dec 19, 06: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew its proposal to list as threatened a wildflower that grows only in areas of Utah and Colorado where oil shale and tar sand exploration are being done. [surprise...]
Dec 20, 06: A conservation group, alarmed at a decrease in the number of sea otters in southwest Alaska, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday to try to compel the government to designate critical habitat to help the endangered species recover.
. . The lawsuit, filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, argues that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service missed an Aug. 9 deadline for the designation under the Endangered Species Act. If granted, the designation means that federal agencies must ensure activities in certain areas do not harm the species.
. . The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally is required to designate critical habitat when a species is listed as endangered or within a year if it can't be done immediately. The sea otter was put on the list in August 2005.
. . The 1,000-mile long Aleutian Island chain once had an estimated 75,000 sea otters slightly more than the current statewide total. Now, there are about 8,700 sea otters in the Aleutians and numbers for the southwestern region, which includes the Aleutians, have dropped by more than half, said Burn. The are an estimated 73,000 sea otters in the entire state now.
. . The reason behind the sea otter population's collapse is not known, although some attribute it to increased predation by killer whales and climate change that may be reducing available prey.
. . Miyoko Sakashita, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said opening up areas in the Bering Sea and Bristol Bay to oil exploration, as has been proposed, could further devastate the sea otter population.
Dec 20, 06: Wildlife experts in the Seychelles have launched a last ditch attempt to save a rare tropical bird facing possible extinction in the Indian Ocean archipelago, conservationists said.
. . There are only about 200 Paradise Flycatchers left --all of them confined to La Digue, the third largest of the Seychelles' 115 palm-fringed islands. Experts say that makes them especially vulnerable to disease or a natural disaster. Islanders are being urged to fell fewer trees and use fewer of the insecticides that threaten the habitat and food of the bird --called Zwazi Linet, "the bespectacled one", in the local Creole language.
. . Residents of sleepy La Digue --which boasts only six cars and attracts many tourists with its laidback lifestyle-- had resisted attempts to breed the bird on other islands. They wanted to keep it exclusive to La Digue, he said, where its name adorns guesthouses, boats and cafes.
Dec 18, 06: Milwaukee County Zoo workers are trying to help scientists slow the spread of a fungus that has killed millions of frogs and expunged species. Chytrid has moved rapidly through the frog population in the Caribbean and Central America, killing nearly every croaker who contracts it. Scientists have been unable to stop the spread of disease even as amphibians' deaths tip ecosystems out of balance.
. . At the Milwaukee County Zoo, three workers are collecting, disinfecting and housing a few frogs who have survived. They hope that the frogs will someday be able to repopulate decimated areas. [ They mean "devastation", because mere decimation is hardly noticable.]
. . Meanwhile, scientists are racing to answer basic questions about the fungus, including where it came from and how it spreads. Scientists suspect the fungus came from Africa, in part because they have a preserved South African clawed toad killed by it in 1938. That's the earliest evidence.
. . The disease has eliminated 120 frog species so far. It suffocates frogs by thickening their skin so that oxygen can't flow in and CO2 can't escape. "When we find frogs who are about to die, they are standing on the very tips of their toes, straining to expose as much skin as possible" to breathe, Berg said.
. . Berg and two other workers at the Milwaukee zoo have focused on saving the Grenada frog. They've collected eight, and a female in their care laid eggs this year. They didn't hatch, but it was still a milestone the first time a Grenada frog produced eggs in captivity.
Dec 18, 06: Hundreds of thousands of native Australian animals such as koalas and kangaroos have been killed in bushfires that have burned across southeast Australia in the past two weeks, wildlife officials said. The bushfires, which are still burning in three eastern states, have been so big and intense that wildlife officials fear some species may become extinct as the fires destroy large swathes of animal habitats. "The fires are so devastating and moving so quickly that animals just don't have a chance to get out of the way."
. . Koalas and possums, which instinctively climb to the treetops for safety, would have had no chance of escaping the blazes, and kangaroos and bush birds would have been unable to outrun the fast-burning fires.
The oil in eucalyptus trees explodes into flames.
. . Australia faces extreme fire danger this summer due to a drought. Bushfires are a regular feature of the summer. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall.
Dec 14, 06: At the center of Mexico's flag stands an eagle on a prickly pear cactus known here as the nopal, a plant found almost all over the country. But fears are growing that the nation's eagle could soon lose its perch.
. . A moth larva capable of eating its way through huge swaths of cacti from the nopal family at an extraordinary rate has reached Mexican territory --an island less than 10km from the mainland in the south. The so-called cactus moth is also closing in from the north through the US, as well as hovering to the east in much of the Caribbean.
Dec 14, 06: A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared after ending a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat. The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.
. . For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and pollution in the Yangtze waters of eastern China. The damage to the baiji's habitat is also affecting the Yangtze finless porpoise, whose numbers have fallen to below 400.
Dec 8, 06: Researchers in Vietnam announced they have caught one of the world's most endangered turtles in the wild, a development which could bolster efforts to protect the species from hunters and collectors.
Dec 3, 06: President Bush is deciding whether to lift a ban on oil and gas drilling in federal waters off Alaska's Bristol Bay, home to endangered whales and sea lions and the world's largest sockeye salmon run.
Dec 3, 06: Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the government to increase security in the country's biggest rhino reserve after local media reported that at least 10 of the animals have been killed since July.
Dec 1, 06: Scientists who spent nearly a month in a fruitless search for a Chinese river dolphin that is more endangered than the Giant Panda say there may be no more than 50 left alive, the Xinhua news agency said.
Dec 1, 06: Even in anything-edible-goes-in-the-pot China, the Huifu Fine-food Restaurant is drawing attention with special menu offerings that include alligator kebabs and soup -complete with the endangered species' head and tail.
Dec 1, 06: Advocates for the California condor sued state wildlife regulators for allowing lead hunting ammunition despite concerns that the rare birds can die after eating carcasses contaminated with the pellets.
Dec 1, 06: Advocates for the California condor sued state wildlife regulators for allowing lead hunting ammunition despite concerns that the rare birds can die after eating carcasses contaminated with the pellets.
Nov 30, 06: Scientists have found a new type of piranha and a ray among 13 new species of freshwater fish in an area of Venezuela where pollution from gold mines is emerging as a threat, a conservationist said.
Nov 30, 06: The Lake sturgeon risks extinction, Canada researchers say. A fish whose ancestors date back 400 million years could be just 150 years from extinction, a group of Canadian researchers said this week.
Nov 27, 06: Tuna quotas are cut as stocks decline. Cuts are agreed in Atlantic and Mediterranean tuna catches, but conservation groups say they are weak.
Nov 27, 06: First introduced 17 years ago, to the Lower Mountain Fork River in southeastern Oklahoma, the resident trout owe their existence here to an unlikely source: the local dam. "There was a natural free-flowing warm water stream here that had populations of native sport fish such as smallmouth bass."
. . Deeper water is colder water and the intake to the hydropower turbines is located down in the cooler layer. "When the water suddenly got colder, it displaced the natural warm-water fish that were there."
Nov 27, 06: Rising temperatures could force the birth of more female crocodiles and fewer males, an expert said. The scenario could cause some croc populations to disappear. Crocodile gender is determined by temperature during incubation. Nest temps of 32-33 Celsius result in males. Anything warmer or cooler produces females. Temperatures typically vary from the top of a nest to the bottom, producing both genders.
Nov 26, 06: Chopping up the dense forests of the Amazon lets hot winds blow in and around ancient trees, killing them off hundreds of years early, researchers reported.
. . Many species of trees, and other plants and animals that depend on them, are disappearing more quickly than most experts anticipated. "Rain forest trees can live for centuries, even millennia, so none of us expected things to change too fast", Laurance said. "But in just two decades --a wink of time for a thousand year-old tree-- the ecosystem has been seriously degraded", he said.
. . Laurance and his team said fragmenting the forest creates more edges, exposing trees that would normally have been protected by other trees. "The rain forests of central Amazonia contain some of the most biologically diverse tree communities ever encountered, averaging 250 species that attain a diameter of at least 10 cm (4 inches) per 1 hectare", they wrote in their report. "These communities are also being cleared and fragmented at alarming rates as a result of large-scale cattle ranching, slash-and-burn farming, rapid soya expansion, industrial logging, and wildfires", they wrote.
. . They found that nearly a fifth of some of the most common tree genera --the larger groups comprised of several related species-- declined in abundance over the 22 years. Only one-tenth of the genera became more abundant. "When you fragment a forest, the winners are common pioneer and generalist species that like forest disturbance", said Laurance. "The losers are rare, slow-growing tree species that provide fruit, nectar, and homes for a diversity of rain forest animals."
Nov 24, 06: A fence along India's disputed border with Pakistan designed to keep out militants is curbing the movement of wild bears and leopards which are now wandering into villages and killing people, officials say.
. . The animals were until recently able to roam through forests in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. But they are unable to penetrate a heavily defended barrier built by India from 2003 to stem guerrilla activity linked to a separatist revolt.
. . Patrols in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park have cut poaching and increased the population of black rhinoceros, elephants and buffalo. The 14,763 Sq Km Serengeti National Park is famous for its 1.5 million-plus annual animal migration to and from Maasai Mara in Kenya.
. . Ray Hilborn, an aquatic and fishery sciences professor, and his six co-authors show that elephant, buffalo and rhinoceros herds declined in the park after 1977, when most of Tanzania's economy was closed to the world and spending on anti-poaching patrols was slashed.
. . In the late 1980s, the situation improved and more money was allocated to protecting wildlife, leading to larger elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo herds. "The animals are 'telling' us poaching is down now that there are 10 to 20 patrols a day compared to the mid-1980s when there might be 60 or fewer patrols a year."
Nov 24, 06: One of the first whooping crane chicks hatched in the wild in more than a century is making more history as it migrates south with its parents from a Wisconsin refuge.
Nov 24, 06: A baby chimpanzee found alone, helpless, in the forest. An African rock python caged and taunted by villagers until it cracks its skull on the metal bars. A rare shoebill crane, a tall, gray-feathered beauty, discovered in the trunk of a smuggler's car.
. . Dozens of animals like these are being rescued, nursed back to health and given a home at the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, a kind of halfway house for animals in trouble wildlife under pressure on a continent where human encroachment and poachers' greed are pushing many species toward oblivion.
Nov 23, 06: United Nations negotiators failed to agree today on a measure banning a fishing practice known as high-seas bottom trawling that environmentalists say chews up the ocean floor and depletes fish stocks. This was in the face of strong opposition from a handful of fishing nations led by Iceland, conservation groups said.
. . The resolution is due to be taken up by the 192-nation General Assembly on December 7, minus strong language regulating bottom trawling. But routine approval is expected as the membership of the assembly's legal committee, where the negotiations took place, is identical to the full assembly's. General Assembly resolutions, while not legally binding, carry great weight with governments as they reflect the will of the international community.
. . "The international community should be outraged that Iceland could almost single-handedly sink deep-sea protection and the food security of future generations", said Karen Sack of Greenpeace International.
. . A bottom trawl is a cone-shaped net that is towed by one or two boats across the sea floor, as much as 1,400 meters below the surface, its pointed end retaining all the fish that are scooped up. It can cause damage to extremely slow growing ecosystems, particularly coral reefs, and also depletes other marine life that is captured by the nets.
Nov 23, 06: Rare Abyssinian lion cubs are being poisoned at a zoo in Ethiopia and sold to taxidermists because there isn't enough money to care for the animals, the facility's administrator said.
Nov 23, 06: The Brookfield Zoo announced this week the birth of a baby okapi an endangered African animal that looks as if it were put together by committee. With a dark brown body and striped upper hind legs, the 1-month-old female looks a bit like a zebra, but claims closer ties to a giraffe. She could grow to 225 kgs and 1.5 meters tall.
. . First discovered by Westerners in the animals' native Congo in the early 1900s, the secretive okapi, known to live only in a forest in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, still hold many mysteries for researchers.
In Japanese villages each year, local fishermen hunt for large numbers of dolphins by herding them into shallow coves and then, scientists say, attacking them with knives and even eviscerating them alive.
. . Now, a broad-based coalition including marine scientists and aquarium workers is demanding that the Japanese end these government-sanctioned dolphin drives, which opponents criticize as an inhumane annual practice that targets an intelligent and self-aware species. The coalition is trying to collect one million signatures for a petition it plans to present to the Japanese government.
. . The practice survives in just a few outposts in Japan, primarily in the coastal villages of Taiji, in western Japan, and Futo, 62 miles southwest of Tokyo. It runs through the fall into the spring. Boyle said that while the Japanese contend dolphins compete with fishermen for fish, there is no scientific support for that claim.
Nov 23, 06: Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.
. . These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly. At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble.
. . "We are finally seeing species going extinct", said U of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening."
. . Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it's already happening; she figured it would be another decade away. Parmesan said she worries most about the cold-adapted species, such as emperor penguins that have dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula, or polar bears, which are dropping in numbers and weight in the Arctic.
. . The cold-dependent species on mountaintops have nowhere to go, which is why two-thirds of a certain grouping of frog species have already gone extinct, Parmesan said.
Nov 19, 06: A report warns that nearly a third of the world's seafood species have collapsed -meaning their catch has declined by 90% or more- and all populations of fished species could collapse by 2048 if current fishing and pollution trends continue.
. . "We've mismanaged the oceans from abundance into scarcity", said Karen Garrison, an ocean expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We can't protect our oceans without setting aside safe havens where fish can grow big and the whole food web can thrive."
Nov 18, 06: Flying over California's rugged Central Coast, Mike Sutton pointed to kelp forests and rocky reefs just below the water's surface that will soon be off-limits to fishing under one of the nation's most ambitious plans to protect marine life. "We're trying to make sure our oceans are protected as our land", said Sutton, a marine expert at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
. . Despite intense opposition from many fishermen, California wildlife regulators are creating the nation's most extensive network of "marine protected areas" -stretches of ocean where fishing will be banned or severely restricted.
. . The first chain of refuges, covering some 200 square miles and stretching from Santa Barbara to Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, is due to take effect early next year. The state plans similar protected zones along the more intensely fished coasts of northern and southern California. Conservationists say such networks are a new approach to saving the oceans from overfishing. They believe California's plan could serve as a model for other states and countries.
Nov 16, 06: Herds of wildebeest thundering across the Serengeti and swallows flying south for the winter could all become a thing of the past if global warming is not stopped, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said.
. . UNEP chief Achim Steiner said the threat to animals which roam the planet to breed or find food in favorable climes should prod delegates to extend the Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012. "Humanity has opened a Pandora's box on climate change."
. . The U.N. convention on migratory species Web site said a wide variety of animals including gorillas, whales, leopards, turtles and even bats are vulnerable to global warming. "That is why there is so much pressure on negotiators here to send a signal that we are making progress."
. . A major tourism draw in conference host Kenya is the annual migration of herds of zebras and wildebeest, chased by lions. Steiner said these could be at risk in a world where weather is changing and natural resources are shrinking. "Migratory species may very well be affected by the simple fact of water availability. Big migratory animals like whales follow their prey. Sometimes they don't know they can find prey somewhere else, but there are smarter or faster animals that identify that their prey has moved and they follow it."
Nov 15, 06: Far fewer polar bears cubs are surviving off Alaska's northern coast, a federal government report has concluded. The study of polar bears in the south Beaufort Sea, which spans the northern coasts of Alaska and western Canada, also found that adult males weigh less and have smaller skulls than those captured and measured two decades ago.
. . The study does not directly blame the changes on a decline in sea ice. However, fewer cubs and smaller males are consistent with other observations that suggest changes in sea ice may be adversely affecting polar bears, the study said.
. . The study warns that the decline in cub survival and the smaller adult males are the same conditions that preceded a decline in the polar bears of western Hudson Bay, Canada, where the population dropped 22% in 17 years.
. . The listing petition claims that polar bears are threatened because of drastic declines in ocean ice due to global warming. A decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on listing America's polar bears as threatened is due next month.
. . Polar bears depend entirely on sea ice for survival, according to the USGS report. Warming has caused major changes and scientists foresee more melting. For polar bears measured during autumn months, the number of surviving cubs born that spring declined from a mean of .61 cubs per female to a mean of .25 cubs per female. "This decline can only be explained by lower survival of cubs after den emergence", the report said.
Nov 15, 06: Deep-sea trawling is destroying underwater mountains teeming with marine life and causing irreparable damage to ecosystems, scientists warned. Trawlers' nets, made of chains, shatter coral and churn up clouds of sediment that smother sea life. Most of the underwater volcanic mountains, or seamounts, which contain deep-sea corals and are home to thousands of marine species, are in unregulated areas.
. . Over-exploitation of traditional fish such as cod and hake has prompted fleets to trawl the high seas for deep-dwelling species such as orange roughy, alfonsino and roundnose grenadier, but they are harming biodiversity in vulnerable regions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The precise number of large seamounts worldwide is unknown. It is estimated to be around 100,000 but Rogers said scientific information exists on only about 40. Just over half of the oceans' underwater mountain and coral ecosystems are located beyond national boundaries, leaving them unregulated and vulnerable.
. . The report will be presented at the UN, which is debating a plan to ban deep sea bottom-trawling in unregulated areas. It reveals new findings about the underwater mountains, some of which rise 1,000 meters from the sea floor, and the creatures that thrive on them.
. . Spain, which has the largest fleet, had about 40% of the bottom trawl catch in 2001, followed by Russia with 14%, Portugal, Estonia and Norway with 7% each.
Nov 11, 06: Leaked documents suggest the UK government may perform a U-turn on its promise to safeguard marine species in a network of protected reserves.
. . So-called "no-take zones", where fishing is banned, are considered vital for allowing fish stocks to recover from over-exploitation. But a "no-take" element will be absent from plans being drawn up by the UK government, the documents suggest. Reserves will be designed to protect only certain species or habitats.
Nov 11, 06: Indonesia's orangutan population, under threat from smog-producing forest fires this year, could be in graver danger in 2007, when dry El Nino conditions are expected to intensify in the region, an ecologist said.
Nov 11, 06: A Thai zoo, which has hosted a couple of pandas for four years, will play "porn" videos for the male next month to encourage them to breed in captivity, the project manager said. "They don't know how to mate so we need to show the male how, through videos."
. . Chuang, the six-year-old male, would be shown the videos on a large screen when he might be feeling amorous.
Nov 11, 06: Manatees have generally been considered incapable of doing anything more complicated than chewing sea grass.
. . But Hugh, a manatee in a tank at a Florida marine laboratory, doesn't seem like a dimwit. When a buzzer sounds, the speed bump-shaped mammal slowly flips his 1,300 pounds and aims a whiskered snout toward one of eight loudspeakers lowered into the water. Nosing the correct speaker earns him treats. At least 75 manatees have been killed this year in collisions with watercraft.
. . They faced no threats to their survival before the advent of boat propellers. "They're not under any selection pressure to evolve the rapid-type behavior we've associated with hawks, a predator, or antelopes, a prey.
. . The buzzer experiments are hearing tests in which the tones gradually grow shorter and softer. The researchers want to know: At what distance could Hugh hear a boat's propeller churning in the water? Could Hugh determine where the sound is coming from?
. . Scientists have long assumed brains with many folds -such as those belonging to dolphins and humans- are a sign of intelligence. But Reep argues the cause behind those brain folds is unknown, and smooth-brained manatees don't seem to be missing anything important. "The brain looks just as complex internally as any other mammalian brain." In manatee brains, the regions that process sight are quite small compared to auditory and tactile regions.
Nov 8, 06: Declining fish stocks mean that in some parts of the world, fishermen are increasingly turning their attention to sharks, where a lack of regulation further threatens many species' survival, an environmentalist said.
. . Many sharks are caught just for their fins, which are hacked off by fishermen who then dump the dying sharks into the sea. Sharks are caught not only for their fins --a popular dish at Chinese banquets-- but increasingly for their meat, said Sarah Fowler, co-chair of the World Conservation Union's shark specialist group.
. . Over-fishing threatens 20% of the world's 547 shark and ray species with extinction. Only a few countries manage their shark populations, such as Australia and the United States, and regulation in the European Union is patchy or non-existent.
. . The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization estimates 100 million sharks are caught each year, though experts say the real figure could be twice that, leading to a dramatic drop in the populations of some species.
. . Agreements to manage shark catches to within sustainable levels --and many species reproduce slowly-- are not being implemented fast enough, she said, adding shark stocks and perhaps entire species could be wiped out if fisheries management and biodiversity conservation tools were not used.
. . Researchers said last week the world's fish and seafood populations would collapse by 2048 if current trends in habitat destruction and overfishing continued.
Nov 5, 06: Prince Charles has said he believes the world has a duty to save the endangered albatross from extinction.
. . The heir to the British throne said the demise of the iconic sea-bird would be "such an appalling commentary on the way we treat the world". Campaigners say about 100,000 birds drown each year after becoming caught on longline fishing hooks. The vessels use lines up to 120 km long, each with thousands of baited hooks, to catch species such as tuna and swordfish.
. . "There are 21 species of albatross in the world, and 19 of those are classified as being under threat of extinction", Ben Sullivan, of BirdLife International. Because albatrosses were only active during daylight, conservationists said that night-time fishing cut the number of fatalities considerably. But there were also measures that could be used during daylight hours, Mr Sullivan suggested. "Adding weights to the lines means that the lines sink more quickly, so the quicker they sink, the faster they are out of reach of albatross and other sea-birds".
Nov 7, 06: Cambodia has set aside a large area of land to save from extinction fewer than 100 Bengal Floricans, believed to be the world's largest remaining group of the grassland bird, a provincial governor said.
Nov 6, 06: Indian scientists working in a tropical forest in the country's remote northeast have found a rare medicinal plant last seen 115 years ago, a scientific journal reported. The herbaceous plant was once regarded as having medicinal properties by the region's ethnic tribes, and reportedly was used to treat stomach aches and dehydration. It's juices were also reportedly used to ward off leeches.
Nov 6, 06: About 1,000 orangutans are estimated to have died in Indonesia during the dry season this year in which raging forest fires have produced thick smoke across huge areas of Southeast Asia, a conservationist said.
. . Around 43 have been taken for medical treatment. Most were beaten by humans after fleeing from the burning jungle to nearby plantations in recent weeks, but several are being treated for respiratory problems and burns.
. . Farmers and plantation companies set hundreds of land-clearing fires on Borneo and Sumatra each year, sending thick smoke into surrounding areas and neighboring Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. It has caused billions of dollars in business losses and in some cases health problems.
. . "Pristine jungle areas are being burnt", said Jennifer Miller, a relief worker with IFAW, which is helping Indonesia's Borneo Orangutan Survival group to recover and treat wounded orangutans.
. . The Indonesian government has been criticized for failing to act against those responsible for the fires. Jakarta, which has been pressured by its Southeast Asian neighbors to sign a regional anti-haze treaty, says it is doing all it can.
. . Indonesia has the highest number of threatened species of mammals in the world, around 146, according to the World Conservation Union. Fewer that 60,000 orangutans remain in the wild in Indonesia -nearly 90% of their habitat has been destroyed by illegal logging, poaching and cut-and-burn farming practices. If the rate of deforestation continues, orangutans will disappear from the wild in around a decade, experts say.
Nov 6, 06: Economic development and the race for mineral riches is putting Peru's bears in danger of extinction.
Nov 4, 06: Efforts are needed to save the Balkan lynx, the largest of Europe's wild cats, from extinction, experts say.
Nov 3, 06: The United States and two dozen other countries are protesting Iceland's resumption of whaling, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
Nov 3, 06: Conservation officials in Nepal have vowed to step up anti-poaching measures after a spate of killings this week of an endangered rhinoceros species. Poachers had killed four single-horned Asiatic rhinos in and around Chitwan National Park. Many more have been killed this year. The horn of the animal is sought after for its alleged aphrodisiac qualities. Chitwan now has fewer than 400 rhinos, besides other endangered wildlife species like the Royal Bengal tiger.
Nov 3, 06: Scientists believe prairie chicken numbers have declined 80% nationally since 1963, the result of habitat loss and fragmentation, population isolation, drought and changes in land usage. The bird has been a candidate for the endangered list since 1998.
. . Conserving the prairie chicken's habitat includes saving water sources, like playa lakes, and nurturing grasslands for other species like the Pronghorn "antelope" and birds who depend on it.
Nov 2, 06: There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. The international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.
. . But a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks. "The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the last one", said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie U in Canada.
. . This is a vast piece of research, incorporating scientists from many institutions in Europe and the Americas, and drawing on four distinctly different kinds of data.
. . Catch records from the open sea give a picture of declining fish stocks. In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield. Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are not bringing the world's fleets bigger returns --in fact, the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003.
. . Experiments performed in small, relatively contained ecosystems show that reductions in diversity tend to bring reductions in the size and robustness of local fish stocks. This implies that loss of biodiversity is driving the declines in fish stocks seen in the large-scale studies.
. . The final part of the jigsaw is data from areas where fishing has been banned or heavily restricted. These show that protection brings back biodiversity within the zone, and restores populations of fish just outside. "The image I use to explain why biodiversity is so important is that marine life is a bit like a house of cards", said Dr Worm. "All parts of it are integral to the structure; if you remove parts, particularly at the bottom, it's detrimental to everything on top and threatens the whole structure. And we're learning that in the oceans, species are very strongly linked to each other --probably more so than on land."
Nov 1, 06: Diplomats from 25 nations including Britain have delivered a letter of protest to Iceland's government over its resumption of commercial whaling.
. . British ambassador to Reykjavik, Alp Mehmet, was joined by counterparts from European and American countries. The demarche follows other diplomatic moves, including the summoning of Iceland's ambassador to London by the UK's marine affairs minister, Ben Bradshaw, and a protest by the US ambassador to Reykjavik. Last year, anti-whaling nations sent letters of protest to Norway and Japan, the countries which catch the largest numbers of whales.
. . "This united action shows the depth of feeling and concern not only in Britain but all over the world about this cruel and abhorrent activity", said Mr Bradshaw.
Nov 1, 06: Relaxing controls on dingo numbers in some parts of Australia could help arrest the decline of native marsupial mammals, a study says. In the last 150 years, marsupial populations have collapsed and many species have disappeared. Most of this has been blamed on the introduction from Europe of foxes and cats, which prey on native animals.
. . The dingo --a wild dog-- keeps fox and feral cat numbers in check, say researchers. They are considered to be Australia's last "top predator", taking up a place in the food web that was once filled by the extinct thylacine and marsupial lion.
Oct 31, 06: Researchers on a three-week mission to remote French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands discovered 100 species never seen in the area before, including many that may be entirely new to science. Researchers returned from the voyage with at least 1,000 species of invertebrates, including worms, crabs and sea stars. About 160 unique species of limu were also found.
. . Among the discoveries are: multicolored worms, a bright purple, foot-long sea star and a hermit crab that dons a sea anemone and sports shiny golden claws.
Oct 30, 06: Scientists estimate over 27% of the world's coral has been permanently lost and at current rates of destruction, another 30% will disappear over the next three decades. Reefs across the Caribbean have been hit particularly hard, making them vulnerable to deadly diseases.
. . Greenhouse gas emissions raise the sea surface temperature and increase the acidity of the ocean, hurting the reef, said Melanie McField from the World Wildlife Fund in Belize City, and the damage is almost impossible to control. "Other effects of development like pollution and over-fishing are caused by locals and can be mitigated. But with bleaching, nothing is off limits."
. . Belize lost nearly half of its reef, a World Heritage Site, in 1998 when global warming and the "El Nino" weather phenomenon combined to cause the highest sea temperatures ever recorded. Experts say 16% of the world's coral was wiped out that year and the damage was made even worse off this Central American nation by Hurricane Mitch, which ravaged the reef with huge waves and covered it with silt and sand.
Oct 30, 06: Australian scientists unveiled three test-tube koala joeys as part of an artificial insemination program to preserve the vulnerable mammal. The scientists said the program would lead to the creation of the world's first koala sperm bank, which will enable researchers to screen out koala diseases.
. . Scientists from the University of Queensland said a total of 12 koala joeys were produced using test-tube insemination. Johnston said the koala sperm bank would enable a genetic background check of each koala, screening for koala diseases such as chlamydia, a parasitic bacteria, and management of the genetic diversity of koala populations.
Oct 27, 06: Conservationists are celebrating success in a captive-breeding program that aims to save the world's rarest lizard from extinction. Three eggs laid by a Grand Cayman blue iguana that had been released into a nature reserve on the Caribbean island have successfully hatched. Since 2004, 219 captive-bred iguanas have been released in an attempt to save the critically endangered species. The wild population of blue iguanas is expected to be extinct within 10 years.
Oct 26, 06: Rabbits on a remote Australian island are destroying the nesting sites of threatened seabird species, WWF says.
Oct 25, 06: Now all they need is the rabbits. On a sprawling central Washington wheat farm, state and federal officials signed a landmark agreement Tuesday to create a "safe harbor" for reintroduction of the tiny Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit, which was listed as an endangered species in 2001 and whose impending return has raised concerns among area farmers that the bunnies could bust their business.
. . Pygmy rabbits are the smallest rabbits in North America, weighing about 1 pound, and one of only two rabbit species that dig burrows in deep soil. They are found in shrub-steppe habitat with plenty of sagebrush.
. . The Columbia Basin rabbit, however, has been an isolated population for thousands of years and differs genetically from other pygmy rabbits. None are believed to exist in the wild, and only three purebred rabbits remain in captivity one male and two females who haven't always been in the mood to mate.
. . Their fate has rested in a captive breeding program begun in 2001 with the related Idaho pygmy rabbit. There are now 115 interbred rabbits, and wildlife biologists plan to introduce between 20-40 rabbits with genetic markers that are no less than 75 percent Columbia Basin rabbit to a nearby wildlife area.
Oct 25, 06: Up to four times more sharks than previously thought are being slaughtered to fill the increasing demand for shark fin soup, scientists said. They estimate that each year between 26 million and 73 million sharks, weighing up to 2.29 million tons, are killed for their fins which are used in the delicacy that costs $100 a bowl in Chinese restaurants.
. . Figures reported to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization put the number at 0.4 to 0.6 million tons a year. Species most at risk are the blue shark, hammerheads and silky sharks. They said official estimates of the number of sharks killed each year may not reflect the true figure because many fish are caught by unregulated fisheries which do not report the catch.
. . Several countries have banned the slaughter of sharks for their fins following public outcries. Sharks are among the ocean's most threatened animals mainly because of overfishing. They grow slowly, mature late and produce few young which makes them particularly vulnerable.
Oct 25, 06: Researchers fear more than half the world's coral reefs could die in less than 25 years and say global warming may at least partly to blame.
Oct 25, 06: A deadly fungal disease linked to climate change is wiping out huge numbers of amphibians in Spain and could push some species to the brink of extinction, researchers said. The infectious illness that has already killed entire populations of frogs in Central and South America has now been spotted in Europe.
. . "We have found an association between increasing temperatures and amphibian disease in a mountain region in Spain", said Dr Matthew Fisher of Imperial College in London. "This is a global emerging amphibian pathogen which is one of the worst vertebrate infectious diseases found so far. It is causing a huge amount of extinction and disease within amphibian populations."
. . More than 100 species of amphibians are known to be affected by the disease known as BD. Some are very susceptible and die quickly while others which are more resistant are carriers of the pathogen. BD, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, infects the skin of amphibians such as frogs, toads, salamanders and newts and interferes with their ability to absorb water.
. . Fisher, who reported the findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said climate change could be worsening the impact of the disease in one of two ways. Global warming, which is blamed on burning fossil fuels, could be decreasing the amphibians' ability to mount a successful immune response to the fungus. Amphibians are cold-blooded so their ability to respond to a pathogen could change along with the external temperature. "Or, on the other hand, global warming could be increasing the fungus' ability to grow faster on the amphibian and cause more disease."
. . The Global Amphibian Assessment survey published earlier this year warned that a third of the world's amphibian species are in danger of extinction, many because of BD.
Oct 25, 06: Some monarchs travel up to 3,000 miles in a journey which is unique in the butterfly world. Each tag --which is pressed onto the insect's wing-- has a unique identification number and a toll-free telephone number and e-mail address to contact if a person happens to catch the butterfly or finds one dead.
. . The info is helping scientists to gather a database on the monarchs, which face a range of threats. In good years they tag somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 monarchs.
. . The populations varied widely from year to year, mostly it seemed from weather-related factors. The populations which winter at several sites west of Mexico City are the benchmark for monarch numbers and they are counted by the hectares they cover. Each hectare (2.47 acres) is estimated to hold between 25 to 75 million monarchs. The biggest recorded wintering population in the past 14 years was in 1996-1997, when 21 hectares were cloaked in a blaze of orange and black.
. . The autumn migration is the highlight of the cycle. The spring and summer migrations span generations [~5] in a gradual recolonization of the northern territory before the last batch makes the long trek back to Mexico.
Oct 25, 06: Years of overfishing have left so few red snapper that almost none reach full maturity, scientists say. To avoid eliminating the highly sought-after species, federal regulators said they plan to cut the numbers of red snapper that may be caught by almost 30% next year.
. . Red Snapper are highly popular in the seafood industry for their delicate flavor and among anglers for their aggressive behavior.
. . Environmental and conservation groups have been pushing to curtail snapper fishing for more than a decade. But those who catch and make money off the fish have been reluctant to accept any new restrictions. They say regulators ignore the role of shrimpers, whose trawl nets accidentally kill millions of snapper a year.
. . "We could have foreseen this 10 years ago and started into a more conservative management approach that would have made the cuts we're having now less draconian," said James Cowan, a coastal fisheries expert from Louisiana State University who served 13 years on a federal scientific advisory panel for red snapper. "I'm sensitive to the fact that it's going to affect people's livelihoods, but the decision was made 10 or 15 years ago to take the risky approach and ... hope for the best, but we didn't get the best."
Oct 24, 06: Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned. The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded "at a rate unprecedented in human history".
Oct 23, 06: Finding one 30-ton grey whale in the vast North Pacific might be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but finding 17,000 shouldn't be. But that's the situation researchers faced while searching for the creatures in their traditional summer feeding grounds last season -and the whales' absence has them concerned.
. . "We've just come off a second summer in Canada in which we've had next to no whales show up", said William Megill of Bath University in the UK. "Not only in our little area, but apparently throughout the traditional feeding areas from Washington on up north. We have no idea where the whales all went this year."
. . Grey whales usually spend their summers feeding in the waters of the North Pacific, from northern California to the Bering and Chuckchi Seas, because these areas are rich in plankton. But lately these regions haven't seemed to provide enough food for the whales.
Oct 23, 06: Among the rarest mammals in Southeast Asia, the kouprey's discovery almost 70 years ago in the jungles of Cambodia stunned the scientific community and led to a decades-long campaign to save it from extinction. But what if this elusive forest ox wasn't a natural species after all?
. . They concluded that the kouprey, which may well be extinct, most likely originated as a hybrid bred from domestic banteng and zebu cattle in Cambodia a century ago and only later became wild, rather than arising in the wild as a natural species.
. . The paper stirred up wild cattle specialists who have spent decades trying to save the kouprey. They say the conclusion was hasty and based on insufficient data. The World Conservation Union still designates the kouprey as critically endangered and estimates there are less than 200 left in remote parts of Indochina.
Oct 19, 06: Poaching has brought the hippopotamus population in Democratic Republic of Congo to within a few months of extinction, wildlife experts say. Researchers from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) say the population has halved in the last two weeks. Its scientists warn the entire population may disappear before the end of the year without urgent action.
. . They say the Mai Mai militia has set up camp in Virunga National Park and catches the animals for meat and ivory. ZSL says the militia killed hundreds of hippos in a two week period, and numbers now are below 400.
. . Twenty years ago, there were about 22,000 hippos in Virunga Park, but the country's civil war brought numbers crashing down. The hippo entered the Red List of Threatened Species this year, and is declining in many parts of Africa.
Oct 19, 06: Iceland's ambassador to Britain is summoned to explain his country's return to commercial whaling. The leading advisory body on north Atlantic fisheries says cod stocks are still too low to allow any fishing.
Oct 18, 06: Environmentalists have welcomed a rare admission from Japan that its fishing vessels have exceeded quotas. The country has also agreed to halve its annual catch of the popular southern blue-fin tuna. It has agreed to cut its quota by 50% for the next five years. But the environmental group WWF fears that will still not be enough to give the southern blue-fin tuna a chance to recover.
. . Japan imports about 10,000 tons of the fish, which is popular for use in sushi or sashimi dishes.
. . Despite welcoming the news from Tokyo, scientists say stocks of the fish are shrinking rapidly, and more still needs to be done.
Oct 17, 06: Iceland has announced it is to resume commercial hunting of whales. Icelandic ships will take nine fin whales, an endangered species, and 30 minke whales each year. In a statement, the fisheries ministry said the nation was dependent on living marine resources, and would keep catches within sustainable limits.
. . Norway is the only other country to hunt commercially; most are bound by a 20-year moratorium. Currently Iceland hunts minkes for "scientific research". The "scientific" plan will conclude at the end of the 2007 season, the government said.
. . The resumption will be greeted with dismay by conservation groups, alarmed by the passing of the first pro-hunting resolution in 20 years at this year's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting. "We are surprised and disappointed", said Arni Finnsson from the Iceland Nature Conservation Association (Inca). "There is no market for this meat in Iceland, there is no possibility to export it to Japan; the government appears to have listened to fishermen who are blaming whales for eating all the fish. "This decision is giving the finger to the international community."
Oct 17, 06: Most plants need to be pollinated by birds, bees, bats and other animals and insects to reproduce. And scientists say a decline in pollinators may spell trouble for crops.
. . Honeybees and bumblebees have been infected by the introduction of a parasite, while destruction of cave roosts has led to a decline in the bat population, according to a report by the National Research Council.
. . Other pollinator declines may also be associated with habitat loss but more research is needed to make sure, according to the council, an arm of the
National Academy of Sciences.
. . More detailed research has been done in Europe, where declines and even extinctions of pollinators have been documented.
. . The report pointed out that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants --including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs, and fuel-- rely on pollinators for fertilization.
. . Farmers often lease colonies of bees to ensure pollination. Yet honeybees, which pollinate more than 90 commercially grown crops, are one of the most affected pollinators. Indeed, honeybees had to be imported from outside North America last year for the first time since 1922, the report said.
Oct 17, 06: LA's palm trees -as much a symbol of L.A. as the automobile, movie stars and the beach- are vanishing. The trees are dying of old age and a fungal disease, disappearing one by one from parks and streets, and city planners are replacing them with oaks, sycamores and other species that are actually native to Los Angeles and offer more shade, too. Not all palms are infected, and there no danger of their vanishing altogether any time soon.
. . Tree surgeons don't know how to stop the fungus, which gets into the soil. Dunlap said it doesn't make sense to replace dying palms with new ones that will probably fall victim to the same ailment. Moreover, hundreds of Mexican palms, which look a lot like the Canary Island Date Palm and were planted throughout the modest neighborhoods of south Los Angeles to herald the 1932 Olympics, are still thriving.
Oct 16, 06: Called Oreo cookie cows because of their three distinct stripes, Dutch Belteds were brought to the United States from Holland in 1840 by P.T. Barnum for use in his circus. Fewer than 1,000 are left worldwide.
. . Concerned the animals could become extinct, the SVF Foundation is collecting germplasm -sperm, fertilized embryos, blood and tissue- from its cattle to try to preserve the breed. Dutch Belteds are one of 18 endangered breeds of cattle, sheep and goats the foundation hopes to save.
. . While modern breeds produce better meat, milk and wool, many older, endangered breeds are more resistant to heat and illness traits that make them worth preserving. If disease devastated a sheep population, farmers might want to revive the parasite-resistant Gulf Coast Sheep or crossbreed it with their animals to produce hardier offspring.
. . Females receive hormone injections to increase their production of eggs. Workers artificially inseminate cows because bulls are not kept on the property. The foundation's sheeps and goats mate naturally. About a week later, veterinarians collect the embryos. They put goats and sheep under anesthesia and flush the fertilized eggs from their wombs. The procedure can be done to cows while they are awake.
. . Healthy embryos are placed in thin vials called straws and stored in liquid nitrogen. Seventeen thousand straws filled with embryos and bits of semen -the bulk of the foundation's collection- fit in a tank the size of a water heater. The embryos could be used to resurrect an extinct breed within one generation. Saperstein said that's important because worldwide farmers are losing one to two breeds per week.
Oct 10, 06: Targeted vaccination against rabies and other infectious diseases could save from extinction threatened animals such as the Ethiopian wolf, the world's most endangered member of the dog family.
Oct 10, 06: Wobbles or variations in the Earth's orbit and tilt are associated with extinctions of rodent and mammalian species, Dutch scientists said. They studied rodent fossil records in central Spain dating back 22 million years and found that the rise and fall of mammal species was linked to changes in the Earth's behavior which caused cooling periods. "Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change."
. . The researchers found two cycles corresponding to the disappearance of rodent species. One lasts 2.4 million years and is linked to variations in the Earth's orbit. The other is a 1.2 million year cycle relating to shifts in the tilt on the Earth on its axis.
Oct 9, 06: A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups.
. . It's a new species --the bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch. The government has decided to set aside 500 acres of the pristine cloud forest where the bird lives to create a national park. "The bird was discovered in what is the last remnants of cloud forest in that region."
Oct 9, 06: A once-nomadic tribe of hunters and fishermen living in the frigid channels near the bottom of the world is nearing extinction. Down to just 15 full-blooded members, the Kawesqar people could soon go the way of other indigenous tribes in Chile, its language and culture disappearing to all but the history books.
. . Over the years, five of Chile's original 14 indigenous tribes --the Aonikenk, Selk'nam, Pikunches, Changos and Chonos-- have been lost to the onslaught of colonialism, succumbing to disease, displacement and overuse of their traditional sources of food. The 600,000-strong Mapuche tribe is the largest and most vocal indigenous group in Chile, a country with a population of 16 million.
Oct 5, 06: South American fishermen are making an unusual and potentially costly catch, but it's not some rare fish -it's a bird. In just one year, fisherman caught and killed about 1% of the world's waved albatrosses, the largest bird in the famed Galapagos Islands. "In a matter of decades, you could be talking about extinction."
. . The researchers put identification bands on 2,550 albatrosses living on Espaρola Island. In 2005, fisherman returned bands from 23 birds that had been killed, corresponding to a death rate of nearly one in every 100 birds.
. . While surveying Peruvian fishing communities where the albatrosses forage for food, observers found that some albatrosses accidentally became tangled in submerged gillnets. Instead of releasing the birds, many fishermen killed them for food. Some even intentionally caught the albatrosses on baited hooks.
. . The majority of the birds killed were males, which the researchers find troubling because the shortened life spans could limit successful breeding. Both parents take part in raising chicks, and an albatross pair must live several decades to raise even one offspring that outlives them.
Oct 4, 06: Large colonies of mountain pine beetles have become established in the central Black Hills S.D., and officials estimate that about 2 million trees have been lost in the last two years.
Oct 3, 06: The United Nations needs to stop the destruction of deep sea ecosystems by banning fishermen from trawling nets on the ocean floor, Australia, New Zealand and Palau, joined by actress Sigourney Weaver, said today.
. . The 192-member United Nations General Assembly is due to begin debating this week an Australian-led plan to ban deep sea bottom trawling in unmanaged high seas and impose tougher regulation of other destructive fishing practices.
. . The White House announced today that it would support a ban on deep sea trawling, while the European Commission --executive of the 25-member European Union-- declared its backing for the proposal last week. U.N. General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, but they reflect the will of the international community.
. . About 64 percent of the world's ocean is in international waters, of which about three-quarters is unmanaged, according to the Pew Institute for Ocean Science.
. . A bottom trawl is a cone-shaped net that is towed by one or two boats across the sea floor, as much as 1400 meters below the surface, its pointed end retaining all the fish that are scooped up. It can cause damage to extremely slow growing ecosystems, particularly coral reefs, and also depletes other marine life that is captured by the nets.
Oct 1, 06: Scientists hope to test a contraceptive dart next year as a new weapon to curb a koala population explosion that has destroyed thousands of trees on an Australian island.
Sept 28, 06: An environmental group claims the Mexican garter snake is in danger of extinction after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to designate it as an endangered species.
Sept 27, 06: Urgent action is needed to prevent further declines in albatross and petrel numbers, wildlife groups say.
Sept 27, 06: A Brazilian state intends to make cattle ranchers reforest land which they have cleared for grazing. The government of Acre in the Amazon has established a nursery growing seedlings of species such as mahogany which they will issue to ranchers.
. . Ranchers may be made to reforest up to 30% of their land. The government sees this as a vital component of its longterm aim to develop sustainable forestry as a key income generator for the state. Until a decade ago, private landowners were allowed to deforest 50% of their land. Now legislation has amended the figure to 80%; but many ranchers have not replanted at all.
Sept 27, 06: Bonobos --closely related to common chimpanzees... and human's very closest-- are the most threatened of the Great Apes. From some 100,000 in 1980, they are now thought to number less than 10,000. They are only found in the forests of central Democratic Republic of Congo.
Sept 27, 06: The tiger population of India will vanish within a handful of years, and governments in India and China have not done enough to stem the rapid decline, environmentalists warned today.
. . Markets for tiger skins and other pelts are flourishing in Chinese-controlled Tibet a year after they were first exposed, said representatives of two environmental agencies who secretly filmed the trade there. Pictures taken in Tibet and shown at a news conference today featured dozens of tiger and leopard skins openly on sale, while in others, Chinese police officers laugh and pose with people wearing illegal costumes made of tiger skins.
. . The groups -the Wildlife Protection Society of India and the international Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit British-based group -laid the blame at the hands of the Indian and Chinese governments for failing to stop the trade. India, meanwhile, has not put together an effective force to combat poaching after 12 years of talking about it, she said.
. . The U.S. National Geographic Society estimated in 2001 that only 5,000 to 7,000 Bengal tigers existed in the wild, about half in India. However, conservationists believe the official estimates of tigers in the wild are grossly exaggerated and that the true figure may be closer to 2,000 -or as little as several hundred.
Sept 27, 06: A judge has declared nearly 470 square miles of national forest land in northern Idaho off-limits to snowmobiles in an effort to save the last mountain caribou herd in the contiguous 48 states.
Sept 26, 06: The world's booming shark fin trade is killing up to 73 million sharks per year -about three times more than the official catch number reported to the United Nations, a new study concludes.
Sept 24, 06: The UK is pressing the EU for action to stop overfishing of the bluefin tuna, which campaigners say is being fuelled by the demand for sushi. The environment group WWF says many EU fishing fleets are breaking the law and catching far more tuna than allowed. Traditional fishermen who have caught bluefin tuna sustainably since Roman times now say their catches are down by 80%.
Sept 24, 06: A tuberculosis pandemic among an ancient mammoth-like creature probably contributed to the great beasts' demise, a new study suggests.
. . Scientists examining mastodon skeletons found a type of bone damage in several of the animal's foot bones that is unique to sufferers of tuberculosis. The disease would have weakened and crippled the animals, making them more vulnerable to humans and climate change, two factors that scientists have long speculated were behind their extinction in North America.
. . Mastodons were ancient elephants that resembled mammoths, but were shorter and less hairy. Both species lived in North America and disappeared mysteriously, along with other large mammals, around the time of the last major Ice Age about 10,000 years ago.
. . They looked at 113 mastodon skeletons and found signs of tuberculosis in 59 of them. That's 52%. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that commonly infects the lungs. It can also affect other parts of the body, including organs and bones. In humans, only about 1 to 7% of infected individuals develop bone damage. The fact that more than half of the mastodon skeletons examined had the bone lesions suggests tuberculosis was a "hyperdisease" that afflicted a large percentage of the North American mastodon population.
. . The infected mastodons were different ages and sizes and came from all over North America. They lived at different times, too. The disease appears to have struck the creatures as early as 34,000-years-ago and persisted in the species until as recently as 10,000 years ago.
. . That the disease was widespread and yet persisted for so long in the species suggests it was not immediately lethal, Rothschild said. Instead, it was probably a chronic disease, one that gradually weakened rather than killed the animals. They found similar tuberculosis-caused bone damage in North American bovids, a group of animals that included bison, musk oxen and bighorn sheep.
. . TB appears to have been just as prevalent in the bovids as in the mastodons, but the record of infection for this group of animals stretches back much further -at least 75,000 years. Bison and other bovids are believed to have originated in Asia and crossed into North America using the Bering Land Bridge, which connected the two continents. Humans made the same journey much later.
Sept 26, 06: Each September a months-long ritual starts up again in the Japanese villages of Taiji and Futo. Fishermen herd hundreds of dolphins into shallow bays by banging on partially submerged rods. Researchers say the dolphins are corralled into nets and then speared, hooked, hoisted by their tails, and finally eviscerated alive. The hunts kill bottlenose, striped, spotted and Risso's dolphins, as well as false killer whales and short-finned pilot whales. Most of these species are included on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species.
. . A new consortium of scientists and wildlife officials today called on the Japanese goverment to end the practice. The Act for Dolphins campaign includes members from the New York Aquarium, Emory University, and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The group called the annual hunt "inhumane by any ethical standard" and said it "should be discontinued immediately."
. . "The Japanese dolphin drive hunts are an abominable violation of any standard of animal welfare, and these hunts inflict measurable pain and suffering on animals that are intelligent, sentient, and socially complex."
Sept 15, 06: Wildlife groups have slammed a move by an Indian state to give contraceptives to domesticated elephants to control their numbers saying it would hurt the pachyderm population already under threat. India has nearly half of the world's 60,000 Asian elephants.
. . The eastern Indian state of West Bengal has said that it lacked funds for the upkeep of elephants that it employs for patrolling sanctuaries, and will start giving them birth control injections and pills next month.
. . But the move has been criticized by wildlife groups who say the animals are already under pressure due to increasing habitat destruction and poaching.
Sept 14, 06: One of the world's largest cases of great ape smuggling will draw to a close next week when around 50 orangutan rescued from a Thai amusement park fly home to their native Indonesia, a wildlife campaigner said.
Sept 14, 06: Thousands of protected birds are being killed in India's West Bengal state to meet demand from drummers who want to decorate their instruments with feathers, officials and activists said.
Egrets, pheasants and herons as well as endangered open bill storks are being trapped illegally or shot by arrows ahead of two important Hindu festivals. Experts estimate some 25,000 birds could be killed.
. . Authorities are meeting festival organizers to persuade them to stop hiring drummers who have decorated their drums with feathers and are also stepping up their vigil in wetlands and other areas where the birds congregate.
. . BirdLife International, a worldwide conservation group, recently warned that some 300 Asian bird species face extinction, particularly in India, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and China, due to poor protection and habitat destruction. In India, anyone convicted of killing a protected bird can be imprisoned for up to seven years or fined 5,000 rupees ($110) or both. But poachers are rarely convicted.
Sept 13, 06: Aspen trees have been dying off, leaving dwindling numbers of the white-barked fixture of the Western mountain landscape. Nobody is quite sure why. More than 100 researchers gathered at Utah State University this week for a two-day conference.
. . The trees reproduce with a wide root system, that spawns other trees nearby. Even if the parent tree dies, the surviving root system can support new trees. In some Colorado stands, the entire root networks have perished.
Sept 12, 06: Two Andean condors, considered the world's largest flying bird, were set free today in the Andes foothills just east of Santiago by veterinarians of the Santiago Metropolitan Zoo.
. . One of the condors was a three-year old male bird that was found seriously wounded by poachers, and the other one was a two-year old female specimen that was found malnourished and with its feathers damaged, the zoo reported.
Sept 13, 06: A federal proposal would slash the critical habitat in Oregon, Washington and California set aside under the Endangered Species Act for the marbled murrelet, a threatened sea bird, by about 95%, to 221,692 acres.
. . The Audubon Society of Portland, which worked to get the bird listed, said it fears for the marbled murrelet's future. The proposal opens the possibility of "rangewide extinction of this species within our lifetimes", said regional conservation director Susan Ash. "We will work to ensure that this does not happen on our watch."
Sept 13, 06: A giant freshwater carp nearly extinct in India's northern state of
Kashmir might soon swim again in the shimmering rivers of the Himalayas decades after it disappeared.
. . The Mahseer, known among Kashmiri anglers as "tiger in the water", all but vanished after Pakistan constructed a dam in the late 1960s that stopped the fish from migrating to India. Now, conservationists are breeding the Mahseer and hope to release them in rivers in Indian Kashmir. The program is the result of a peace process between India and Pakistan that has led to a drop in violence in the region.
. . The omnivorous red-finned Mahseer, scientifically known as Tor tor, is prized by anglers because of its huge size --reaching up to 2.75 meters and weighing up to 54 kg. The fish lives in clear rivers and lakes throughout India and Southeast Asia and needs fast-flowing rivers and streams in the mountains to breed.
Sept 11, 06: A new bird species has been found in India, the first time such a discovery has been made here in more than 50 years. The multicolored bird, Bugun Liocichla, was spotted in May in the remote Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, near the border with China. The bird has a black cap, a bright yellow patch around the eyes and yellow, crimson, black and white patches on the wings. It's 20 cm in length --about Robin-sized. The known population of the Bugun Liocichla consists of only 14, including three breeding pairs.
. . "With today's modern technology, we could gather all the information we needed to confirm it as a new species. We took feathers and photographs and recorded the bird's songs." Athreya caught two of the species, but released them.
Sept 10, 06: The return of the otter to many British waterways is helping to reverse the decline of another species --the water vole-- a study suggests. Otters have been taking on the water voles' enemy --American mink-- which thrived after escaping from fur farms.
Sept 10, 06: Sturgeon -prized for its caviar and smoked meat- are slowly starting to make a comeback in areas where water quality has improved. The fish, which are protected in just about every state where they're found, were overfished and nearly disappeared in the early 1900s despite being so abundant on Lake Erie that they were burned for fuel in steamships.
. . Many obstacles -from poachers to polluters- remain before efforts to restore the sturgeon population will allow them to be fished in more than a handful of waters. "The biggest problem is we have dams on nearly every spawning river", said Douglas Peterson, a fisheries researcher at the U of Georgia. The dams limit how far sturgeon can swim upstream to find a spawning site. And it's doubtful that dams built to provide drinking water and electricity will be removed. Sturgeon also are coveted by poachers who sell their pricey caviar eggs on the black market.
. . There are nine species in North America, and at least one can be found in most states. The Atlantic sturgeon can grow up to 800 pounds while the lake sturgeon can grow to 200 pounds. And they can live more than 100 years on the bottoms of rivers, which is why they have been able to survive as a species despite pollution and other threats.
Sept 8, 06: Wildlife rangers have made the first-ever sighting of a Sumatran rhino deep in the jungles of Borneo, taking video and photos of a single male after a decade-long search, conservationists said.
Sept 7, 06: It's a meter long, pinkish in color, smells like a lily and must be saved from extinction, conservationists said today in asking the federal government to protect the Giant Palouse Earthworm under the Endangered Species Act.
. . Long thought extinct, the worm was rediscovered in the past year to occupy tiny swatches of the heavily farmed Palouse region along the Washington-Idaho border. The worm was first found in 1897, and the species has always been elusive. It can burrow down to 5 meters deep. There have been only three reported sightings since 1987.
. . The Giant Palouse Earthworm is described as the largest and longest-lived earthworm on this continent. It reportedly gives off a peculiar flowery smell when handled, and can spit at attackers!
Sept 6, 06: A plan to create fish refuges off the South Carolina coast sparked a clash between fishermen and conservationists. More than 30 fishermen and environmentalists attended a public hearing to discuss the plan by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
. . The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council proposal would ban fishing for snapper and grouper, in effect bottom-fishing, along the three reefs offshore. The reefs are as large as 50 square miles, as deep as 600 feet and 50 miles out to sea. Snapper and grouper are popular seafood and among the most heavily fished species in the Southeast.
Sept 6, 06: Iceland is to begin exporting whalemeat from its scientific whaling program. Iceland's whaling commissioner told the BBC that up to two tons of minke whalemeat would be exported to the Faroe Islands.
. . Environmental groups say the deal breaches international rules on trading threatened species, though Iceland and the Faroe Islands say it does not. Campaigners also say the trade could become a smokescreen for illegal hunting of whales. Although commercial whaling is banned worldwide, Iceland, like Japan, hunts minke whales for "scientific research"; this year its boats caught about 60 individuals.
Sept 6, 06: Huge tracts of Brazil's Amazon rainforest were cleared legally and illegally in the past year, but the rate of deforestation slowed, the country's environment minister said. It was the second year in a row that the pace of the destruction of the world's largest tropical rainforest declined. Booming demand for farm exports caused land-clearing to peak in 2004.
. . A slowdown in farming-driven deforestation and a crackdown on illegal logging may have contributed to the reduction in the rate. The effort, however, was hampered in part by corruption within the ranks of the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA, where some employees have been arrested in illegal logging raids.
. . Preliminary figures show that deforestation slowed 11% this year from last year, when 7,255 square miles of rainforest were cleared. Officials estimate 6,450 square miles of forest --an area about the size of Hawaii or somewhat smaller than Kuwait-- could have been lost legally or illegally in the 2006 season.
. . Corruption inside Brazil's park service IBAMA has been part of the problem. Some 100 IBAMA employees have been arrested since mid-2003 in raids that have uncovered more than a dozen illegal logging rings. Police dismantled a group using front companies to harvest timber from protected areas in the western states of Rondonia and Mato Grosso. Seven IBAMA employees were involved.
. . Environmental groups in Brazil largely applaud Silva's efforts, although some say they would like to see more attention given to replanting already deforested land.
Sept 1, 06: Proposed changes to EU rules will not punish fishermen who cut off sharks' fins and dump the carcasses, campaigners warn.
Sept 1, 06: Experts in Indonesia say they have found evidence suggesting that four Javan rhino calves have been born in recent weeks, raising hopes over the prospects for a species on the brink of extinction.
Aug 29, 06: A century after they were wiped out by hunters and a burgeoning population, wolves have returned to parts of eastern Germany as factories close down, businesses fail and people move out.
Aug 23, 06: The icecap may not be the only thing shrinking in the Arctic. The genitals of polar bears in east Greenland are apparently dwindling in size due to industrial pollutants. Scientists report this shrinkage could, in the worst case scenario, endanger polar bears there and elsewhere by spoiling their love lives and causing their numbers to peter out.
. . In fact, all marine mammals could get affected by these pollutants, "especially the Arctic fox, killer whale and pilot whales." Polar bears from northernmost Norway, western Russia and east Greenland are among the most polluted animals in the Arctic, as they feast on ringed seals and bearded seals. The blubber of these seals accumulates high levels of organic pollutants loaded with halogens such as chlorine. These organohalogens can act like hormones.
. . Sonne and his colleagues looked at formaldehyde-preserved genitals from 55 male and 44 female east Greenland polar bears, collected from 1999 to 2002 by about 30 polar bear subsistence hunters regulated by the Greenland government.
. . The scientists found the higher the level of organohalogens in polar bear, the smaller testicle and baculum size and weight likely were. Ovary size and weight decreased as organohalogen levels rose as well.
. . Polar bears have among the lowest reproductive rates for terrestrial mammals. The scientists say reducing polar bear penis size would make sex less successful, upsetting naturally slow-to-grow polar bear numbers. Testicle and ovary shrinkage would upset polar bear reproduction too.
Aug 21, 06: Britain's native red squirrels, already in headlong retreat, are being wiped out not just by competition for resources with non-indigenous gray squirrels but from a virus the grays carry, research showed.
Aug 19, 06: Cambodia: Bucketfuls of lifeless water snakes are tossed into algae-green pools and pits seething with crocodiles, which gulp them down in a few power-packed bites. Some of the farm's 2,000 crocs fall back into their almost continual sleep with bits of snake still dangling from their clamped jaws. "They prefer snakes over fish. They have red blood and good protein", says Sen Rith, owner of one of Cambodia's 900 or so crocodile farms, which are growing increasingly dependent on snakes as stocks of fish are depleted in the Tonle Sap's once bountiful waters.
. . Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society estimate nearly 4 million snakes are plucked out each year, and fear that number can't sustain the snake population. That raises concerns among both the thousands who make their living off the catch and environmentalists monitoring the fragile and already battered lake. "The snakes have got to be rated as forming one of the most important components of the ecology of the Tonle Sap. They are an important predator, but also an important food source for large raptors, wild crocs (and other animals)."
. . This unique ecosystem forms each year as the Tone Sap expands to five times its dry season size to flood tropical forests and farm land around Southeast Asia's largest lake and is the source of at least 60% of Cambodia's protein intake.
. . If fishing and snake hunting don't remain sustainable, impoverished lake dwellers will inevitably turn to cutting down the forest and competing for other already dwindling resources, he says and Cambodia's greatest environmental battle will be lost.
Aug 18, 06: The latest health check on UK bird numbers paints an alarming picture of decline in several threatened species. Of 26 bird species targeted for special conservation efforts in 1995, nine --including the song thrush-- are bouncing back. But the rest --including the skylark and turtle dove-- are either still in decline or have only stable numbers.
Aug 17, 06: Marine scientists hope "test-tube coral babies" will take root to help restore a tract of reef ravaged by a 1984 ship grounding in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. A team of U of Miami marine science researchers is collecting coral eggs and sperm all this week during an annual reproductive ritual, dubbed coral spawning.
. . Researchers will install fine mesh enclosure tents around limestone-based, artificial reefs and place free-swimming larvae inside. Miller hopes the larvae will attach to the reefs and mature into polyps, initial building blocks for a coral colony. Even though coral maturation is extremely slow, growing anywhere from a third of an inch to less then 10cm each year, success of the project could eventually mean hope for declining coral reefs around the world, said Miller, adding that currently there is a high mortality rate for lab-produced coral larvae.
Aug 15, 06: China today denied accusations of plundering the world's rain forests to meet booming demand for wood. Environment groups say China is at the heart of a global trade for lumber it sells to markets in the United States and Europe and that much of its plywood exports comes from illegal logging. Domestic demand from a fast-growing economy only adds to the problem, they say.
. . Global Witness, a British-based non-governmental organization, said last year China imported timber from Myanmar alone worth an estimated $350 million (185 million pounds), almost all of it illegal. But the group conducted an investigation in May that showed Chinese checkpoints had been sealed to log transports from the former Burma, where years of military rule and ethnic unrest in remote mountain areas have lead to widescale forest clearances.
. . A report issued in March by the Center for International Forestry Research and other groups found about 70% of all timber imported into China, now the largest consumer of wood from tropical developing countries, was converted into furniture, plywood and other processed products for export.
Aug 14, 06: Japanese researchers are looking at the possibility of using sperm from frozen animals to inseminate living relatives. So far they've succeeded with mice some frozen as long as 15 years and lead researcher Dr. Atsuo Ogura says he would like to try experiments in larger animals.
. . "If spermatozoa of extinct mammalian species can be retrieved from animal bodies that were kept frozen for millions of years in permafrost, live animals might be restored by injecting them into (eggs) from females of closely related species." Elephants would be a potential candidate for insemination with frozen mammoth sperm.
. . Less enthusiastic was Dr. Peter Mazur, a biologist at the U of Tennessee who has worked with frozen eggs and sperm and is a past president of the Society for Cryobiology. Mazur thinks the chance that frozen sperm from mammoths could be used to fertilize a related species is near zero. If an elephant egg were used, "the offspring would not be a mammoth but a hybrid between an elephant and a mammoth. If one wanted a true mammoth one would have to find a source of viable mammoth (eggs) to fertilize and implant and this is a much dicier proposition." McGaughey agreed, "It is unlikely eggs from such frozen animals would survive." [eggs are much larger, thus more likely to be damaged by freezing.]
Aug 14, 06: Poland could face legal action for failing to protect its natural habitats, the European Commission says.
Scientists say the oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought.
Aug 7, 06: Sport hunting of mountain lions in the American West does not reduce the number of attacks by the animals, also called cougars and pumas, against man and livestock, said a study.
Aug 7, 06: One of Britain's rarest butterflies has returned to a spot where it has not been seen for more than 40 years. The Adonis Blue, classified as a priority species, is usually only found at a few places in southern England. The insect's numbers were decimated [reduced by 10%] 50 years ago when a lot of its natural habitat, chalk grassland, was lost.
. . When the rabbit-killing disease Myxomatosis broke out in the 1950s, the lack of rabbits meant grass grew too long and the Adonis Blue's former habitats became unsuitable.
. . But now, large numbers of the species have moved back to its former home around Rodborough and Minchinhampton Common, as trust officers have brought in cattle to keep the grass down.
Aug 6, 06: Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water that is larger than in previous years and may be triggered by global warming, scientists said. There are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
. . Scientists studying the 110-Km-long zone of oxygen-depleted water is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, then are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water.
. . The recurring phytoplankton blooms are triggered by northerly wind, which generates a process known as upwelling in which nutrient-rich water is brought to the surface from lower depths.
. . What is unusual about this condition is that it is moving into relatively shallow water, about 50 feet deep, and moving toward shore, where the richest marine ecosystems are. Deep water fish, such as ling cod, wolf eels and rockfish, are showing up in Oregon tide pools, apparently driven toward shore by the advancing dead zone.
. . "If we continue like we are now, we could see some ecological shifts", Barth said. "It all depends on what happens with the warming and the greenhouse gases."
Aug 6, 06: Fishing nets with "exit holes" being introduced under a project to salvage depleted world fisheries are helping shrimp trawlers reduce unwanted extra catches by up to 70%, a U.N. study showed.
Aug 4, 06: Tsunami boosts illegal Indonesia logging. No trees = no birds. The rebels of Aceh are trading their guns for chain saws and cashing in on a logging binge that is jeopardizing the future of the world's third largest tropical forest reserves.
Aug 4, 06: Hundreds of dead or dying purple sea urchins have washed up into tide pools at a Southern California marine refuge center in recent days, but no one is certain what is killing them.
Aug 4, 06: Australian researchers said today that analyzing the skin flakes of some whales could help determine their age, a development that could invalidate one argument for killing them.
Aug 1, 06: Foxes have been blamed for devastating native species on the Australian mainland, in some cases leading to extinction. "There should also be no stone left unturned finding and imprisoning the criminals who are responsible for foxes being brought into Tasmania."
. . A population explosion of species introduced to Australia since European settlement began more than 200 years ago is a growing threat to agriculture and native wildlife. The Department of the Environment lists animals posing a significant threat as including feral camels, horses, donkeys, pigs, cane toads, European wild rabbits and European red foxes.
. . Some of the animals were introduced as beasts of burden and others as food sources, while foxes were brought in for recreational hunting.
Aug 2, 06: The latest issue of the California Agriculture magazine carries several articles focusing on transgenic crops, fish and animals. And some discoveries are alarming: "one of the world's most important crops, sorghum, spontaneously hybridized with one of the world's worst weeds, johnsongrass, even when they were grown up to 330 feet apart; furthermore, the two plants are distinct species with different numbers of chromosomes."
July 27, 06: Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water that appears to be triggered by global warming, scientists say. The area is larger and more deadly than in past years, and there are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
. . Scientists studying a 110km-long zone of oxygen-depleted water along the Continental Shelf between Florence and Lincoln City have concluded it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom. The phytoplankton are eaten by bacteria, which use up the oxygen in the water. The recurring phytoplankton blooms are triggered by north winds generating a rollover of the water column in a process known as upwelling.
. . The off-and-on action of the upwelling builds up a thick layer of organic material that robs the water of oxygen as it rots. When a new upwelling occurs, it draws the deadly water toward shore, killing fish and crabs that cannot get out of its way.
. . Dead zones in other places around the country, such as Hood Canal in Washington and the Mississippi River Delta off Louisiana are caused by agricultural runoff fueling blooms of algae that rot and deplete the oxygen, said Lubchenco. But dead zones like the one off Oregon also occur off Namibia and South Africa in the Atlantic and off Peru in the Pacific.
. . "It all depends on what happens with the warming and the greenhouse gases. We never documented low oxygen conditions low enough to kill things", Antrim said. "This year we have."
July 25, 06: Efforts to save North America's tiny population of critically endangered California condors suffered what biologists called a minor setback last week when four 3-month-old chicks at an Idaho raptor center died of West Nile virus.
July 24, 06: Life on earth is facing a major crisis with thousands of species threatened with imminent extinction --a global emergency demanding urgent action. This is the view of 19 of the world's most eminent biodiversity specialists, who have called on governments to establish a political framework to save the planet.
. . The planet is losing species faster than at any time since 65.51 million years ago. Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal "background" extinction rate -- and say this is all due to human activity.
. . The call for action comes from some of the most distinguished scientists in the field: "For the sake of the planet, the biodiversity science community had to create a way to get organized, to co-ordinate its work across disciplines and together, with one clear voice, advise governments on steps to halt the potentially catastrophic loss of species already occurring", Dr Watson said.
. . In a joint declaration, published today in Nature, the scientists say that the earth is on the verge of a biodiversity catastrophe and that only a global political initiative stands a chance of stemming the loss.
. . Scientists estimate that 12% of all birds, 23% of mammals, a quarter of conifers, a third of amphibians and more than half of all palm trees are threatened with imminent extinction. Climate change alone could lead to the further extinction of between 15 and 37% of all species by the end of the century, the scientists say: "Because biodiversity loss is essentially irreversible, it poses serious threats to sustainable development and the quality of life of future generations."
. . The scientists believe that a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could help governments to tackle the continuing loss of species. "Biodiversity is much more than counting species. It's crucial to the functioning of the planet and the loss of species is extremely serious", Dr Larigauderie said. "Everywhere we look, we are losing the fabric of life. It's a major crisis."
. . The oceans were thought to be immune from the activities of man on land, but this is no longer true. Pollution, overfishing, loss of marine habitats and global warming have a dramatic impact on biological diversity. More than 100 species of fish, including the basking shark are on the red list of threatened species.
July 24, 06: Scientists have tagged three northern bald ibis, the rarest bird in the Middle East, among the last survivors of a species of Middle Eastern bird once so revered that it had its own ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, in an effort to save them from extinction.
July 23, 06: Only 56 butterfly species now remain in Britain as others have fallen victim to disappearing habitat. The Butterfly Conservation charity said urban sprawl, modern farming techniques and lack of woodland management had all played their part in habitat loss.
. . Conservationist Dr Martin Warren, from the charity, said: "Butterfly species are becoming extinct county by county. It is deeply worrying. Butterflies in profusion tell us that nature is in balance. Where butterflies are disappearing, nature generally is in trouble."
July 23, 06: A tiny mouse vying for survival in the Rocky Mountains may have gained an upper hand over Western developers. Scientists hired to review contradictory evidence for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is a unique subspecies, limited to parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
. . The mouse, which uses its 6-inch tail and strong hind legs to jump a foot and a half in the air, inhabits grasslands that include prime real estate along Colorado's fast-growing Front Range.
Traditional British delicacies such as bath chaps, jugged hare and brawn are under threat of extinction as youths in the kingdom haven't even heard of them, a survey showed. [Just kidding... those are foor dishes!]
July 21, 06: On the craggy, remote islands of the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge west of San Francisco, the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States throbs with life. But the steep decline of one bird species for the second straight year has rekindled scientists' fears that global warming could be undermining the coastal food supply, threatening not just the Farallones but entire marine ecosystems.
. . Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin's auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year's "unprecedented" breeding failure.
. . Scientists blame changes in West Coast climate patterns for a delay in the seasonal upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean's depths for the second year in a row. Weak winds and faltering currents have left the Gulf of the Farallones without krill, on which Cassin's auklets and a variety of other seabirds, fish and mammals depend for food. The Cassin's auklet is unlikely to adapt to the sudden loss of its main food source. And other animals could follow.
. . The absence of krill has led to a collapse of the juvenile rockfish population. This is the main food source for young of the common murre, a bird that resembles a flying penguin. Nearly three-quarters of murres breeding this year are not expected to raise chicks that survive.
July 20, 06: [Things usually don't go extinct alone.] Wild bees and the flowers they pollinate are disappearing together in Britain and the Netherlands, researchers reported today. It is not clear which started to disappear first, the bees or the flowers, but the trend could affect both crops and wild species.
. . Biesmeijer and colleagues looked at species surveys from hundreds of sites and found that bee diversity has fallen in 80% of them since 1980. They said many bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain. The number of different species of pollination-dependent wildflowers has declined by 70%.
. . "When we contacted our Dutch colleagues, we found out that they had begun spotting similar shifts in their wildflowers as well."
July 20, 06: A new study reveals how ecosystems crumble without the presence of top predators by keeping populations of key species from growing too large. It also provides a cautionary lesson to humans, who often remove top predators from the food chain, setting off an eventual collapse. Constant predation of the top consumers prevents a population from growing larger than the system can support.
. . Removing a top predator can often alter the gentle balance of an entire ecosystem. eg: When an area floods permanently and creates a series of islands, not all the islands have enough resources to support top predators. Top consumers are left to gobble up nutrients and experience a reproductive boom. The boom is felt throughout the system, though, as the booming species out-competes others, potentially driving the lesser species to extinction and reducing biodiversity.
. . Rooney refers to this type of ecosystem change as a "boom and bust cycle", when one species' population boom ultimately means another will bust. Bigger booms increased chances of a bust. "With each bust, the population gets very close to zero, and its difficult getting back."
. . After gray wolves were hunted to near extinction in the United States, deer, elk, and other wolf-fearing forest critters had free reign and reproduced willy-nilly, gobbling up the vegetation that other consumers also relied on for food. Or, more recently, researchers found that when fish stocks in the Atlantic Ocean are over fished, jellyfish populations boom. While jellyfish have few predators, removing the fish frees up an abundance of nutrients for the jellyfish to feast on.
. . Ecosystems provide us with the food we eat and help produce breathable air and clean water. But they're generally fragile and operate best when at a stable equilibrium, scientists say.
July 20, 06: Engineers next month will begin building one of the world's largest manmade reservoirs --the size of a small city-- as efforts continue to restore natural water flow to the Everglades. {a good fix, but I gotta wonder when Florida will be all awash in salt water!]
. . The reservoir, roughly 25 square miles in area, is set for completion in 2010. It will hold 62 billion gallons of water, equivalent to about 5.1 million residential swimming pools, and will be seven miles across at its widest point. 30 million tons of earth will be dug from flat land and surrounded by a 26-foot high, 21-mile long levee, making it larger than any other reservoir not connected to a natural source.
. . Decades of dikes, dams and diversions have left the Everglades in a state of sickness. Lake Okeechobee, once the vast wetland's liquid life source, has been encircled by a dike, its waters now laden with high levels of phosphorous from farms and suburban sprawl. The nutrient is choking life from the ecosystem.
. . And because officials have historically had few places to store water, Lake Okeechobee is maintained at a higher than optimal level, which keeps sunlight from reaching vital vegetation on the lake's bottom.
July 20, 06: Tiger habitats worldwide have shrunk 40% in the past decade and their survival depends on cracking down on poaching, working to reduce conflicts with humans, and protecting key ranges, according to a new study.
. . The worldwide tiger population has steadily declined to about 7,500 globally, and the big cats continue to face a myriad of threats. Tigers now reside in only 7% of their historic range --40% less than a decade ago, the World Wildlife Fund said.
July 14, 06: Norway's whaling fleet will catch only half its quota this season. Conservation groups say the industry is in crisis.
July 11, 06: When pronghorn "antelope" find a route they like, they stick to it. The animals have been making the same difficult trek between Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for at least 6,000 years, a new study shows. [They're not really closer to real antelope than they are to goats!]
. . However, continued development of lands outside the parks and along the route could disturb it, endangering the pronghorn population and potentially disturbing the Yellowstone ecosystem.
. . Using archeological data from historic kill sites and modern methods to track migration, the scientists discovered the 140Km unvarying migration corridor. The antelope, Antilocapra americana, travel up to 50K a day along the route, which teeters along 8,500-foot mountain passes. In places, the trail bottlenecks to about the width of a football field, with residential developments and petroleum extraction facilities on the sidelines.
. . Pronghorn are the sole living endemic ungulate in North America, and are second only to Arctic caribou for long-distance migration in the Western Hemisphere. While they are abundant in many areas of the American West, the Yellowstone population numbers roughly 200 to 300 animals.
July 10, 06: Nature abhors a vacuum. Wipe out one creature, and another will move in. Mammals leveraged this principle when the reign of dinosaurs ended.
. . Now, in a smaller way, jellyfish are taking over. [Is this a new horror movie?] In a region off the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, heavy fishing in recent decades has depleted fish stocks while leading to increased numbers of jellyfish. The jellyfish are so numerous in the study area that they now represent more than three times the biomass of all the fish combined. Their numbers, ironically, are beginning to "significantly interfere with fishing operations."
. . Similar increases in jellyfish biomass are occurring in many locations around the world, the scientists note. Overfishing and climate change might both contribute to the phenomenon. Jellyfish have few predators, the scientists say, so if fish are depleted and nutrients are available, the jellyfish do quite well.
July 10, 06: Social contact helped the Ebola virus virtually wipe out a population of gorillas in Congo, French researchers reported. A 2004 outbreak of the virus, which also kills people, killed 97% of gorillas who lived in groups and 77% of solitary males.
. . It also may shed light on how early humans evolved, they suggested. The findings may show that pre-humans were slow to live in large social groups because disease outbreaks could wipe out those who did.
. . Ebola hemorrhagic fever is one of the most virulent viruses ever seen, killing between 50% and 90% of victims. The World Health Organization says about 1,850 people have been infected and 1,200 have died since the Ebola virus was discovered in 1976. WHO and other experts say people probably start outbreaks when they hunt and butcher chimpanzees. The virus is transmitted in blood, tissue and other fluids.
July 7, 06: West Africa's version of the black rhino appears to be extinct, the World Conservation Union said. An intensive survey has failed to find any sign of the west African black rhino in its final refuge in northern Cameroon. On a more positive note, it said rhino numbers are on the rise elsewhere on the world's poorest continent after decades of rampant poaching and habitat loss.
July 5, 06: Wildlife officials in Mexico, the United States and Canada have agreed to work together to protect the Monarch butterfly, which makes a spectacular migration every year from Canada to Mexico.
July 5, 06: In a first, the Bat Conservation Trust will deploy inside the gothic-style premises of the Palace of Westminster in central London next Monday to determine exactly how many bats live beneath its rafters, towers and gargoyles. "We're hoping the evening will demonstrate that bats and people can and do live in harmony --whether it be in our palaces, our churches, our homes or our barns", said Amy Coyle, the charity's chief executive.
. . The trust is planning a nationwide bat count later this month to take stock of the 17 species of bat which live in Britain --the most common being pipistrelles, typically just five cm long.
July 5, 06: When Pennsylvania officials began a campaign in 1983 to re-establish the state's bald eagle population, only three pairs of the birds and 12 eaglets remained here. Now there are more than 100 bald eagle nests in the state.
July 5, 06: Illegal fishing has devastated Europe's stocks of the highly prized bluefin tuna and threatens the species' survival in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, environmental campaign group WWF said.
July 3, 06: National Academy of Sciences: Birds enjoy a relatively slow rate of extinction, but a new study suggests that rate might be severely underestimated. Even worse, if current human actions continue, bird extinction rates could skyrocket and 12% of the known bird species could be extinct by the end of the century.
. . Presently there are 10,000 known bird species --most identified after 1850-- and an estimated 130 of those have become extinct since 1500, setting the extinction rate at roughly one species every four years.
. . Taking a set of factors into account, the extinction rate is closer to one bird species per year, says Pimm, lead author of the study. And the rate could be triple that if not for recent bird conservation efforts. Before human impact, the estimated rate of bird extinctions would have been only one species per hundred years, researchers estimate.
. . Bird extinction rates are slower than for most animals, mainly because humans threaten higher fractions of other species and people take special efforts to protect birds. Still, if current trends continue, the researchers estimate that the bird extinction rate will continue to climb to as many as 10 species per year.
July 3, 06: Scientists who unearthed a mass dodo grave in Mauritius say they have found evidence showing the birds were killed by a natural disaster long before humans arrived on the Indian Ocean island. The bones were thought to be at least 500 years old.
. . Most theories about how the dodo became extinct blame early settlers who found the plump flightless bird on the Indian Ocean island in the 16th century and hunted it relentlessly. "There are indications that the fossil-rich layer represents the result of natural disaster wiping out a significant part of the Dodo-ecotope", a statement by the researchers said.
. . While the latest find does not disprove the human theory, the scientists are convinced there was a mass dodo death, possibly caused by a cyclone or flood, pre-dating the arrival of humans.
. . Since the deaths at his site occurred before the final extinction of the dodo more than two centuries later, the scientists believed it did not rule out the idea that bird became extinct by human causes. Portuguese sailors discovered Mauritius in the 16th century, and Dutch settlers colonized it the following century, which is when the dodo died out.
. . Unused to predators, the dodos were not frightened of the human settlers who hunted it and destroyed the forests that provided its habitat. Passing ships also brought rats, which ate the birds' eggs located in nests on the ground.
June 28, 06: The number of baby gray whales born along the Pacific Coast has rebounded from record low levels, suggesting that pregnant females are thriving despite a warming Arctic feeding environment, biologists said.
June 27, 06: Zoologists have developed a plan to save the Yangtze River dolphin, probably the world's most endangered mammal, from extinction. They hope to take some dolphins from the Yangtze and rear them in a nearby lake, protected from fishermen.
. . The species is threatened by overfishing which removes its food, industrialization, boat collisions, and through being caught in fishing nets. The most recent surveys found only 17 living individuals.
June 28, 06: Spain's parliament is to declare support for rights to life and freedom for great apes today, apparently the first time any national legislature will have recognized such rights for non-humans.
June 27, 06: A pair of whooping cranes has hatched two chicks in central Wisconsin, marking the first young of the species to be hatched in the wild in the eastern United States in more than 100 years.
June 26, 06: Thousands of marine animals could be tracked under a $150 million project to understand threats to life in the oceans with technology perfected for supermarket checkouts.
. . Scientists would implant electronic tags into creatures such as salmon, tuna, sharks, sturgeon, penguins or polar bears to register their movements via acoustic receivers on the floors of the oceans or via satellite. The scheme would build on an existing 1,750 km acoustic array on the seabed from Oregon to Alaska that has helped scientists track salmon migrating from U.S. and Canadian rivers.
. . Tagging of marine life is now limited to regional projects. The scheme could give insights into wider ocean migrations and the impacts of overfishing or climate change, helping governments manage dwindling stocks.
. . Scientists have only recently discovered the vast distances swum by many species. Tuna can criss-cross the Pacific, great white sharks swim from Africa to Australia and turtles from Central America have been found off Easter Island.
. . It also measures the temperature & thus, a record of climate change. Fish migrations may already be shifting in response to a warming of the oceans. Salmon have been caught north of both Canada and Alaska, far from their normal ranges.
Farmers in west central Ohio are hoping to preserve some breeds of livestock considered endangered by conservationists. ...Milking Devon cows along with Leicester longwool sheep, Narragansett turkeys, Nankin bantam chickens and Dominique chickens.
June 25, 06: A Massachusetts researcher is fuming about the governor's veto of money earmarked to help eradicate a leaf-eating moth that has already defoliated thousands of acres of trees in the state.
. . Republican Gov. Mitt Romney held up $150,000 for the winter moth control project when he vetoed $225 million Saturday from two economic stimulus bills passed by lawmakers last week. He slammed the proposed expenditure as one of the worst examples of "unnecessary and wasteful" spending by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.
. . That made entomologist Joseph Elkinton angry. "This is not some legislator's pet project", Elkinton said. "This is a threat to the entire state of Massachusetts."
. . Last year alone, the grayish-brown winter moths defoliated 34,000 acres of trees in eastern Massachusetts.
June 25, 06: Human activity has had a devastating effect on coasts since Roman times, research suggests. More than 90% of coastal life has declined and there is widespread degradation of water quality. Scientists studied 12 estuarine and coastal regions in Europe, North America and Australia from the onset of human settlement until today.
. . The group found that depletion of natural resources began during Roman times, then accelerated in Medieval times and in the wake of European settlement in North America and Australia. Many of the biggest declines were seen from 1900 to 1950 and 1950 to 2000 as populations grew and industry boomed.
. . Mammals, birds and reptiles were among the first to suffer, exploited for food, oil and luxury goods such as furs, feather and ivory, the authors say. Most were depleted by 1900 and declined further by 1950. Fish such as salmon, sturgeon, tuna, cod and sardines were quick to follow, with shellfish such as mussels only recently becoming the targets of expanding fisheries.
. . Plant life has also suffered badly, with 67% of wetlands, 65% of sea grasses and 48% of other aquatic vegetation lost through disease, destruction or direct exploitation.
June 25, 06: In the first field survey of the Rubeho Mountains in Tanzania, scientists have documented more than 160 animal species. Among the mix were a new species of frog, several bush babies, and 11 species found only in the Rubeho region.
. . However, deforestation in the Eastern Arc region --the heavily forested mountain chain that includes the Rubehos in eastern Tanzania-- threatens these animals and human residents too.
. . While the team observed rich animal life, they also spotted alarmingly large encroachments of human activity into the forests. In one spot, 20 hectares of an official forest reserve had been cleared for bean and tobacco farms, while other areas showed evidence of logging and hunting camps.
. . Protecting the rainforest range within the Eastern Arc is important for sustaining people as well. The trees in the region capture and direct water into two nearby rivers, which deliver drinkable water to towns and are used to generate hydroelectric power.
June 25, 06: The U.S. Fisheries Service proposed a speed limit for ships 30 meters and longer to reduce accidental killing of right whales. A limit of 10 knots would apply during certain times of year in three regions along the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. coast. Federal ships would be exempt. [!]
. . The North Atlantic right whale, protected under the Endangered Species Act, is among the most endangered species in the world. Only about 300 of the beasts are thought to remain. Commercial whaling depleted right whale populations, and now the remaining population is vulnerable to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, including countless "ghost nets" that haunt the sea.
June 23, 06: Miles from the shoreline, 10 baby brown pelicans lounge by a pool in a roomy cage, large buckets of fish there for the taking. Just days ago, these birds could not feed themselves at all. Scores of starving baby pelicans emaciated, cold and too weak to fly are washing up on California beaches in disturbing numbers this spring.
. . The underfed California brown pelicans have stirred concerns over the endangered species, which in recent years has shown strong signs of recovery. Biologists say the recovery could actually be the source of the problem: There are more pelicans competing for food.
. . The California brown pelican nearly disappeared in California in the early 1970s, a decline blamed largely on the pesticide DDT, which caused pelicans to lay eggs with shells so fragile that parents would break them when they tried to sit on them.
June 23, 06: China is giving an unusually endangered species of panda extra space, privacy and protection to help the animals reproduce, state media said today. The 300 pandas of a rare subspecies who call northwest China's central Shaanxi province home will soon be protected by five new reserves in the fog-shrouded Qinling mountains.
June 22, 06: Less than 2% of the world's tropical coral reefs are properly protected from illegal fishing, mining or pollution despite government promises of wider safeguards, an international study showed today.
June 21, 06: Many species of beetles in the UK are in danger of dying out, a conservation charity has warned. Buglife, which campaigns to protect endangered insects, says 250 of the UK's 4,000 species of beetle have not been seen since the 1970s.
. . The charity says it is vital for other animals that the variety of beetle-life is maintained, and "imperative" that action is taken now to protect them. It warns that habitat decline means many species may already be extinct. Conservationists say beetles play a unique and vital role in the planet's ecosystems.
June 20, 06: Giant pandas may not be in as much danger of extinction as feared with a new British-Chinese study finding there could be twice as many living in the wild as previously thought, scientists said.
June 20, 06: Blasts from undersea airguns fired by boats searching for oil could harm whales and should be studied further, said a report unanimously endorsed by the International Whaling Commission. Repeated bursts of air cause high levels of underwater sound that could affect whales' migration and mating patterns, said the report issued on Monday. It also noted that there might be a connection between the sound waves and humpback whale strandings. The IWC recommended that governments and international groups study the issue and explore ways to mitigate noise pollution in the world's oceans.
June 18, 06: A slim majority of nations on the International Whaling Commission voted Sunday in support of a resumption of commercial whaling, but pro-whaling nations still lack the numbers needed to overturn a 20-year-old ban.
June 18, 06: Australia is to present what it says is proof that Japan's scientific whaling program is cruel, at the meeting of the International Whaling Commission.
. . Environmentalists who filmed Japanese boats whaling in the Antarctic say that some animals took 30 minutes to die. Japan says these cases are exceptions, and may try to censure Greenpeace for interfering with what it says is scientific research.
. . On Saturday, Japan lost a third key vote at the meeting in St Kitts. But the margin of just one vote was narrower than on the first day, a factor explained by the late arrival of some African nations which usually side with Japan. The temperature of the meeting rose a notch, with heated exchanges between Australian and Japanese delegates.
. . The whales were asphyxiated, he said, because harpoons entered their bodies near the tail and the animals were held upside down in the water.
June 17, 06: Greenland asked an international whaling body today to examine whether it could extend whaling by its Inuit hunters to endangered humpbacks and bowheads, alarming environmentalists.
June 14, 06: Japan suffered a resounding defeat today at the International Whaling Commission, calming fears among conservationists that might finally win enough support in the world body to start attacking a ban on whaling.
June 16, 06: Urgent action is needed to protect the world's oceans from human exploitation, according to conservationists. They say over-fishing, pollution and climate change are pushing marine areas to the point of no return.
. . The warning comes from the United Nations Environment program (Unep) and World Conservation Union (IUCN). The report, Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas, is the centrepiece of talks on the law of the sea at the UN.
. . The report makes the case for marine protected areas in parts of the sea that are not included in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State. Ibrahim Thiaw, acting director general of the IUCN, said well over 60% of the marine world and its rich biodiversity, found beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, was vulnerable and at increasing risk.
. . "Governments must urgently develop the guidelines, rules and actions needed to bridge this gulf. Otherwise we stand to lose and to irrevocably damage unique wildlife and critical ecosystems many of which moderate our very existence on the planet."
June 14, 06: The first photograph of a member of a nearly extinct species of rhinoceros has been taken in the remote rainforests of Borneo, conservationists said.
June 13, 06: [Yes, humans can go extinct too!] The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said today.
. . Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, he told a news conference. "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system." He added that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species", Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."
June 13, 06: The Japanese public no longer likes eating whale meat and Tokyo's argument that whaling should be maintained to meet consumer demand is a fabrication, a conservationist group said. Reflecting falling demand, domestic stockpiles of whale meat have been increasing, said the Tokyo-based Dolphin & Whale Action Network.
. . Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 in line with an international ban, but began research whaling the next year and has campaigned for a return to limited commercial whaling. At the coming meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Tokyo plans to call for a new group for nations that support commercial whaling in a bid to end the 20-year-old ban.
. . Japan's take of whale on its Antarctic hunt earlier this year nearly doubled to 850 minke whales. Its vessels also brought back, for the first time, 10 fin whales -- which conservationists say are endangered.
June 12, 06: Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.
. . The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.
. . Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common. Researchers discovered the first kill in 1-04. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 80 meters away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males.
. . "In the face of the den's outer wall were deep impressions of where the predatory bear had pounded its forepaws to collapse the den roof, just as polar bears collapse the snow over ringed seal lairs."
June 12, 06: When death strikes a coral reef, whether from an oil spill off Mexico or sediment unleashed by a dam bursting in Hawaii, marine biologists know what to look for, but not how to document and preserve their findings so they will hold up in court.
. . Now biologists and criminalists from around the world are joining forces to develop crime-scene investigation techniques that work under water. "The coral reef is the body", Goddard said. "Except I can't take it in for an autopsy."
. . The "CSI"-type standards will govern such things as how to take notes under the sea, how to mark off the crime scene, how to photograph it, and how to preserve the "chain of custody" so that defense attorneys cannot argue that evidence was tampered with.
. . "This is going to be startling", said David Gulko, a coral reef ecologist for the state of Hawaii. "Once we have standards accepted by the resource management community within a region, it will no longer be a lone resource manager going up against the paid expert witness with a long list of credentials."
. . Coral reefs, some of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world, are suffering from higher ocean temperatures associated with climate change. As much as 40% of the coral in waters around the U.S. Virgin Islands died last year.
. . While no one has figured out what to do about warm water, they can take action against damage from ships spilling oil, running aground or dumping garbage, runoff from farm fields, pollution from factories and cities, sediment deposits from onshore development, and poachers using cyanide and chlorine to flush out fish.
June 12, 06: Pro-whaling nations appear to command a majority as this year's major whaling summit draws near.
June 11, 06: Conservationists have warned that poaching, logging and disease could soon wipe out the last of the world's great apes unless new strategies are adopted. There is also a health risk for humans: scientists think past outbreaks of
Ebola haemorrhagic fever in central Africa were caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat.
June 12, 06: Finding ways to curtail the bushmeat industry will be discussed at an international conference in Madagascar from June 20 - 24, which will seek ways to harness Africa's ecological treasures for development, while also protecting them.
. . "Bushmeat is probably the biggest threat to biodiversity in central Africa", said Juan Carlos Bonilla, head of the Central Africa program for Conservation International, the main organizer of the Madagascar symposium. "In the past, game was locally hunted and consumed as part of the diet of villagers. But now it is being consumed on an industrial scale."
. . From Ivory Coast in the west through Equatorial Guinea to Kenya in the east, poaching to feed the bushmeat market is rampant. And it is threatening entire species, including man's closest relatives, the great apes.
June 9, 06: Delighted conservationists said that they had found conclusive proof of the existence of a rare giraffe-like creature in Congo's Virunga National Park that has defied the odds of survival in a region battered by savage conflict.
. . First discovered in what is now Virunga in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1901, the shy forest-dwelling okapi had not been found in the park since 1959. It was known to be present elsewhere in the Congo, but there were concerns it had gone extinct in the place of its discovery because of violence and lawlessness.
June 7, 06: On a remote New Jersey beach, a loud bang, and the scientists sprinted to a spot on the beach where a net, propelled by an explosive charge, trapped about 100 birds that were flapping their wings helplessly. They included 24 specimens of one of the most endangered shorebirds in the world, the red knot.
. . The red knot, a 25-cm-long bird with a rusty red breast and mottled gray back, is the subject of increasing alarm among naturalists because its population has dwindled in the last decade to levels that may lead to extinction in the next five years.
. . The latest tally compares with 100,000 or more birds in the mid-1980s, the number that biologists consider sufficient for the species to survive. With just 13,000 birds left, the red knot species is highly vulnerable to natural dangers such as bad weather in its Arctic breeding grounds, biologists say.
. . The 19,300-km journey by the 135-gram bird is one of the longest avian migrations, and it includes stretches of nonstop flying for at least 5,000 km.
. . But numbers of horseshoe crabs have plummeted since the early 1990s because of over-harvesting, both on- and off-shore, by commercial fishermen who use the crabs as bait for conch and eel. The supply of the eggs is now a mere 5% of what it once was and, with insufficient food for their journey, some Red Knot don't leave New Jersey, others may not make it to their breeding grounds or may be too exhausted to breed if they do arrive.
. . New Jersey this year imposed a two-year moratorium on taking horseshoe crabs, but biologists say Delaware and Virginia, which also border the Delaware Bay, need to do the same.
. . In a bid to provide undisturbed feeding for the red knot, New Jersey closes 15 beaches at migration time in May each year. Also, an interstate organization that regulates fishing in the area has said only male horseshoe crabs can be harvested.
. . New Jersey's moratorium, which has angered some local fishermen, should help boost the egg supply, but it will be three or four years before the current generation of young horseshoe crabs are old enough to start producing eggs, Niles said.
June 7, 06: How did the dodo die out? Scientists in Mauritius launched a project on Wednesday to discover why the giant bird became extinct. Most theories blame settlers who found the plump flightless bird on the Indian Ocean island in the 16th century and began to hunt it relentlessly.
. . In an attempt to provide a scientific answer, the Dodo Research Program plans to study fossils from a mass dodo grave there, using carbon dating techniques and DNA analysis. The aim is to understand the dodo's world in the 10,000 years before humans discovered Mauritius, then to determine the impact human colonizers had when they arrived.
. . Mauritius was first settled by Portugese sailors and colonized by Dutch settlers in the 17th century, which is when it died out. Unaccustomed to predators, the dodo lacked fear of the human settlers who hunted it and destroyed the forests that provided its habitat. Passing ships also brought rats, which ate the bird eggs located in nests on the ground.
June 6, 06: [some rare good news.] Some coral reefs may be able to adapt to rising ocean temperatures, a consequence of global climate change.
. . Coral live in close partnership with algae, but lose the algae when temperatures rise, causing death. Australian scientists have discovered that coral may be able to exchange their algae for varieties which can survive at higher temperatures. They say this provides a "nugget of hope" for some reefs threatened by climate change. "It may, though, be enough to buy time while measures are put in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
. . Most warm-water reefs consist of colonies of coral polyps living in a symbiotic relationship with algae. Polyps provide carbon dioxide for the photosynthetic algae, which return oxygen and carbon. Rising sea temperatures can break the relationship. The algae are expelled, and coral lose their color, becoming bleached; the breakdown can be fatal to the reef.
. . Some coral associate only with one type of symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae. Others are more promiscuous, and it has been thought for some time that these may be able to switch to more heat-tolerant varieties as waters warm - a theory which the new Australian research apparently confirms.
. . Scientists took samples of Acropora millepora, a common Great Barrier Reef coral, and transplanted them from cooler to warmer waters by taking them to locations further north along the reef. Some of the transplanted populations responded by taking on algal varieties able to tolerate higher temperatures.
June 6, 06: In response to a lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed designating 1,200 miles of rivers and streams in Alabama, Florida and Georgia as critical habitat for seven federally protected mussel species.
. . Some scientists rank mussels as the nation's most threatened natural resource. Of the 300 species found in the United States, most live in the Southeast. American Indians ate them and used them to make tools and jewelry, and their shells were a major source of buttons from about 1890 until plastic buttons came along in the 1950s.
. . Scientists say mussels have declined drastically over the past 30 years because they can't tolerate changes in water quality resulting from pollution or sediment from dredging and soil erosion.
. . "Some people question, 'Why save mussels?'" Tutchton asked. "They're at the base of the food chain. Hey, if a mussel can't live in that area, it probably isn't good for people drinking from that river. If they're dying, your own kidneys are next."
June 6, 06: Europe's trawlermen should cut back drastically next year on trawling for herring in the North Sea as juvenile herring are not maturing properly, a respected group of international scientists warned today.
. . Serious reductions were needed in next year's catch due to worrying falls in the area's herring stock, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) said, adding that the EU's quota should be slashed by nearly 50% for 2007. European Commission fisheries experts use the ICES advice to calculate quotas for each commercial species for the following year that are presented to EU ministers for approval.
. . For once, the reason for the low fish numbers is not necessarily that there has been overtrawling and quota-busting by some of the more voracious EU fishing fleets --activities that have threatened the survival of cod and hake in European waters. This time, scientists appear genuinely baffled and say the main problem is that while younger herring are spawning properly, they are not maturing and increasing the adult stock.
June 6, 06: "Poaching is the main reason why we are losing the tiger. At the current rate, we could lose them all in 20-50 years", said Rahul Kaul, director of the Wildlife Trust of India.
. . About a century ago, there were some 40,000 tigers in India. But decades of hunting by the boisterous sons of innumerable royalties and poaching have cut their number to some 3,700 today. Some conservationists say the population could be under 2,000. Authorities say poachers killed at least 114 tigers across India between 1999 and 2003, while just 59 died of natural causes during that period. Forty-three tigers were killed by poachers last year alone, up from 34 in 2004, when a big-cat census was last carried out.
. . Forest officials concede the numbers could be much higher. "(It is) certainly possible there could be tigers killed and taken away without us coming to know", said Nayak. "For every two reported cases, (there are) two unreported cases. That is my guess."
. . Indian authorities say saving the tiger is almost impossible without the help of China, the biggest market for big cat parts that are used in traditional Chinese medicines. There is no market for tiger parts in India. a single tiger can fetch up to $50,000 in the international market.
. . The crisis has prompted India to strengthen existing laws in a country where the conviction rate for killing endangered species is less than 5%, with most offenders getting away for lack of evidence.
June 6, 06: After no sightings in 14 years, two frog species feared extinct have been rediscovered in Colombia, a boost for scientists battling to save rare amphibians threatened by a deadly disease before they actually go extinct.
. . A fungal disease that smothers amphibians' skin is decimating dozens of species of brightly-colored frogs in Central and South America, adding to pressures such as pollution, climate change, deforestation and expanding cities.
. . Scientists say amphibians are on the front line of what may become the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs vanished 65.51 million years ago.
. . The disease had killed frogs 40 km from the site of the two latest finds. Alarmed by extinctions, amphibian experts are seeking more than $400 million to fund captive breeding in zoos and aquariums -- already aiding about 35 species. However, frogs cannot be re-introduced to the wild because of the disease. Amphibians --toads, frogs, newts and some worm-like creatures-- are highly vulnerable to disease, pollution or changes in temperature because they live on both land and in water and have a porous skin that absorbs oxygen.
. . Some vanished species might have had skills valuable to humans. The Australian Northern Gastric Brooding frog, considered extinct and not sighted since 1985, could shut off its digestive juices to incubate its young in its stomach. [for ulcers]
2 items below bring up a Question... which animal do you protect, if both are threatened? Kill some of the larger (easy), or assist the lesser (difficult)?
June 5, 06: With few natural predators, cownose rays have become the bane of watermen and scientists intent on restoring Chesapeake Bay's oyster population. In late spring, they migrate from southern Florida into the bay, churning up the bottom to feast on oysters and other shellfish.
. . But now, the rays might have met their match: humans and their ever-evolving quest for new tastes from the sea. Scientists, regulators and commercial seafood representatives met recently at a workshop to find markets for ray wings and filets. A commercial ray harvest could protect delicate attempts to restore pollution-filtering oysters, reduce damage to ecologically valuable seagrass beds and create jobs.
. . Named for their distinctive heads, cownose rays glide through the water on wings sometimes mistaken for shark dorsal fins. They protect themselves with a poisonous stinger and grind shellfish inside their powerful mouths. Last month, rays ruined an oyster restoration effort on the Piankatank River, eating most of about 750,000 oysters.
June 5, 06: Wildlife managers in the Yukon-Delta National Wildlife Refuge are again killing arctic foxes to protect a small goose that travels north from Mexico to breed.
. . Arctic foxes steal thousands of waterfowl eggs and cache them under the tundra for lean times. Wildlife managers want to protect eggs of the Pacific black brant, whose numbers have been declining steadily. All-terrain vehicles that disturb coastal nests are partly to blame, as are increased fall floods and hunters who take several thousand brant every year, according to managers. Foxes in the refuge in 400 miles west of Anchorage may be the biggest reason black brant numbers are only about two-thirds what they were in 1960. A single fox will swipe several hundred eggs in a matter of weeks if it can't find tundra mammals to eat.
. . Research aims to help create a model that predicts when foxes are likely to raid nests and when they should be eradicated, he said. The study also will gather information to help scientists estimate vole numbers, which figure into determining the number of foxes.
. . One question is whether increasing fall floods are killing foxes and voles. A fall storm last year, the biggest in memory, sent saltwater at least 10 miles inland. The storm, fueled by rising global temperatures, may have killed thousands of voles and some foxes.
June 5, 06: Albatrosses on South Georgia are being pushed to the brink of extinction, according to research.
June 5, 06: A busy beaver's dam work is felt downstream in a major way, a new study suggests. Beavers are well known for creating large pond-like areas upstream from their dams, but scientists have found that the construction projects also spread water downstream with the efficiency of a massive once-every-200-years flood.
. . Researchers spent three years in the Rocky Mountain National Park examining downstream valley ecosystems in the Colorado River. They found that beaver dams force water out of the natural stream channel and spread it across and down the valley for hundreds of yards.
. . Dams also change the direction of groundwater movement. Instead of flowing down the center of a valley, dammed water infiltrates river banks and flows underground toward the sides of the valley. This raises the water table to sustain plant and animal life during the dry summer season. It would take a massive natural flood to reach these elevated levels without the help of beavers, the researchers suggest.
. . The beaver population in Rocky Mountain National Park is currently dwindlingonly 30 currently live there, down from an estimated high of 600 in 1940. Further reduction of the population, the authors caution, could harm the hydrologic balance in the river valley and disturb the area's water cycle and soil conditions, which could influence the overall plant and animal diversity of the ecosystem.
. . The research was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey and Rocky Mountain National Park.
May 30, 06: A frozen "Noah's Ark" to safeguard the world's crop seeds from cataclysms will be built on a remote Arctic island off Norway, the Norwegian government said.
. . Construction of the Global Seed Vault, in a mountainside on the island of Svalbard 1,000 km from the North Pole, would start in June with completion due in September 2007, with space for three million seed varieties. It would store seeds including rice, wheat, and barley as well as fruits and vegetables.
. . It would be a remote Arctic back-up for scores of other seed banks around the world, which may be more vulnerable to risks ranging from nuclear war to mundane power failures. The seeds would be stored at -18 C. If the power failed, the seeds would probably stay frozen.
. . For about 15 years, some varieties of seed have been stored in a disused Svalbard mine under a plan to see if they can germinate after 100 years.
May 27, 06: Africa will create a fund to promote its unique environment and seek new ways of funding green reforms such as carbon credits and canceling debts in return for conservation, ministers said. Africa has large areas of ecologically valuable rainforests and other habitat with many unique plant and animal species, but despite a small industrial base its environment faces many pressures including logging, climate change and poaching. This fund will be housed with the African Development Bank.
May 26, 06: Several bird species that make annual migrations between Africa and Europe have experienced drastic population declines and scientists are not exactly sure why.
. . "Scientists fear that their dwindling numbers --well over 50% down in some cases-- may be a warning of widespread environmental damage, which could soon affect man as well." Climate change, drought and desertification in Africa, and massive pesticide use on African farmland may all be to blame.
May 25, 06: Developing nations have got far better at protecting rain forests over the past two decades but are a long way short of doing enough to save the crucial global resource, a new report said.
While the area of tropical timber under sustainable management has surged to 36 million hectares from less than one million in 1988, that represents less than 5% of all tropical forests, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) said.
It said while there were plans in place for managing 96 million hectares, or one quarter of the 353 million hectares designated as production forests, only about 7% of this was actually being managed in a sustainable way.
May 25, 06: Modern Guatemalans are now watching slash and burn tactics by illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and drug traffickers destroy enough trees to fill an area the size of Dallas, Texas each year.
. . Peten region was created in 1990 to protect part of a wilderness that extends in patches across Central America and into Colombia and southern Mexico. The area represents less than .5% of the Earth's landmass, but at least 7% of the world's animal and plant species are found there.
. . But in recent decades, lax control in Guatemala has led to some of the highest deforestation rates in the world, with over a third of the forest already destroyed. "The government completely abandoned the national parks", said an official from the National Protected Areas Commission. "Now other interests have moved in with links to drug traffickers."
. . Estimates are that 70% of cocaine bound for the United States passes through Central America, often moving through unruly Peten where criminal bands smuggle not only drugs but people, exotic animals and looted Mayan artifacts.
. . Scant government resources means few forest rangers are charged with protecting the reserve, and drug traffickers routinely threaten them, along with ecologists and archeologists working in the region. "Narco-ranchers" use their resources to illegally buy up large swaths of land inside the park often from peasants who have invaded the protected areas.
. . In 2003, Guatemala declared a national fire emergency when thousands of smoldering acres choked the sky with dense smoke and left charred soil with a thin layer of nutrients easily washed away by rain. In as little as three years, land that has been slashed and burned is no longer fertile and the original forest can take as long as 50 years to grow back. One theory for the relatively sudden Mayan collapse 1,200 years ago is that clear-cutting of trees led to widespread erosion and evaporation.
. . In Brazil, scientists have shown burning and ranching in the Amazon accounts for 75% of the country's emissions, making the South American country one of the world's top 10 polluters.
May 23, 06: The endangered loggerhead turtle may face a greater threat than previously realised from longline fishing. Researchers found that many turtles spend considerably longer in the open ocean, where longline boats operate, than earlier studies had indicated. The boats aim to catch big predatory fish such as tuna and marlin, but accidentally snare other species including turtles and albatrosses.
. . Until now, scientists have believed that young turtles live in the open ocean, but change to a coastal habitat when they reach a certain size. But researchers working in Cape Verde found that most adults nesting there retain their open water behavior, with the attendant risk posed by longline boats.
. . Bird conservation groups have developed a set of simple measures which they say can substantially reduce the annual bycatch of albatross, thought to number about 100,000. These include trailing streamers behind the boats to scare birds away, weighting hooks so they stay below the surface, and fishing at night.
. . A similar set of measures to discourage loggerheads may not be so easy to develop, though keeping hooks deeper than the turtles usually dive may be one option, as may using blue-colored bait, which they do not see as easily.
May 23, 06: More than 100 Siberian tigers, one of the rarest animals, are expected to be born this year at a breeding center in China's northeast.
May 23, 06: The Northern Arapaho Tribe and a man accused of shooting a bald eagle on the Wind River Indian Reservation say the federal government should make it easier for American Indians to apply to kill bald eagles for use in religious ceremonies.
. . In the federal government's response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart Healy said allowing people to shoot eagles without permission would undermine the current balance between preservation and religious freedom. If convicted, Mr. Friday faces up to a year in jail and a fine up to $100,000.
. . Bald eagles were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1978. They were reclassified from endangered to threatened in 1995 and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now estimates that more than 7,700 nesting pairs of bald eagles inhabit the lower 48 states.
. . Even if bald eagles were removed from Endangered Species Act protection, they would continue to be protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
May 18, 06: Governments worldwide have failed to prevent overfishing in the oceans, where a proliferation of bottom-trawling threatens to wipe out deep sea species, conservation groups WWF and Traffic said. The environmentalists said the existing system of regional fisheries regulation, meant to control the depletion of ocean life, had responded slowly to new threats and done little to enforce fishing quotas or rebuild vulnerable stocks.
. . Their report, released ahead of a meeting on the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, argued that controls needed to be reinforced to prevent further damage to marine ecosystems and future food supplies. "Given the perilous overall state of marine fisheries resources and the continuing threats posed to the marine environment from over-fishing and damaging fishing activity, the need for action is immediate", said Simon Cripps, director of the World Wildlife Fund's global marine program.
. . Illegal fishing "by highly mobile fleets under the control of multinational companies" was cited in the report as one of the top threats to the sustainability of marine life. Governments were also at fault for not respecting limits.
. . "Vast over-capacity in authorized fleets, over-fishing of stocks ... the virtual absence of robust rebuilding strategies ... and a lack of precaution where information is lacking or uncertain are all characteristic of the management regimes currently in place", it said.
. . Stocks of some deep sea species, such as the orange roughy, have collapsed in the last decade as regulators failed to respond to an expansion of bottom-trawling in deep waters.
May 17, 06: The last male purebred Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit has died, leaving just two females in a captive breeding program created to try to save the endangered species from extinction. [who'd think a rabbit could go extinct?! Not an Australian.]
. . The tiny rabbits are only found in Douglas County in north-central Washington. None are believed to exist in the wild, which means the two females --Lolo and Bryn-- are the only known purebred pygmy rabbits left in existence. "This is a population that has existed since before the last Ice Age in Eastern Washington. The loss is something we can never calculate."
. . Biologists captured 16 rabbits in a remote area of Douglas County in 2001 to start the captive breeding program. The fate of the isolated species now rests entirely in a crossbreeding program with the closely related Idaho pygmy rabbit. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already determined that the crossbred rabbits will count toward recovery of the Columbia Basin species.
. . They now have 88 Idaho and mixed Idaho-Washington rabbits. There are 13 females in the breeding program with genes at least 75% Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. Some of the rabbits will be released into Douglas County, perhaps as early as October.
May 17, 06: Lake sturgeon have not spawned in the Milwaukee River in more than 100 years. State officials have released hatchery-raised sturgeon into the river in hopes the fish would recognize it as a future breeding site, but to no avail.
May 16, 06: Tropical forests that house El Salvador's famed coffee plantations and provide habitat for migrating birds are being depleted at an alarming rate, scientists warned. Between 2001 and 2004, the country lost 21,025 hectares of forest-covered coffee farms. 13% of El Salvador's so-called coffee forests were lost in the 1990s.
. . With the greatest population density and smallest land size in Central America, El Salvador was long ago cleared of virtually all its native forest. Coffee farms, where bourbon variety coffee trees flourish under a thick shade canopy, provide 75% of El Salvador's remaining forest cover.
. . The report blamed coffee forest depletion on urban expansion, a lack of investment and renewal of coffee trees, farmer indebtedness, migration and weak regulatory oversight of land-use changes.
. . The El Salvadoran coffee industry shed some 70,000 jobs during the period of low prices and now employs about 90,000 people directly.
May 16, 06: Rising ocean temperatures look set to cause lasting devastation to coral reef systems, a study suggests. An international team of researchers looked at reefs in the Seychelles, where an ocean warming event in 1998 killed much of the live coral. The group found the oceanic reef had experienced fish extinctions, algal growth, and only limited recovery.
. . The 1998 event saw Indian Ocean surface temperatures rise to unprecedented levels, killing off --or "bleaching"-- more than 90% of the inner Seychelles coral. Coral bleaching has been described as a vivid demonstration of climate change in action.
. . Corals live in a mutually beneficial relationship with photosynthetic algae. But when sea surface temperatures at a given location rise above summer limits, the corals expel their single-celled bedfellows (possibly because the algae start producing toxins). Algae provide corals with most of their energy and their color --hence the term bleaching. If the high temperatures are prolonged, the corals start to die off en masse.
. . In the seven years since, the damaged reefs have been largely unable to reseed. Many simply collapsed into rubble and became covered in algae. This collapse removed food and shelter from predators for a large and diverse amount of marine life. The survey showed four fish species could already be locally extinct, and six species are at critically low levels.
. . The survey also revealed that the diversity of fish species in the heavily impacted sites had plummeted by about 50%. The team says smaller fish have fallen in number more rapidly than larger species, but their decreased availability is having a more lasting effect on the food chain --and this effect is likely to be amplified as time goes on.
. . Since 1998, another three bleaching events have been recorded in the Indian Ocean and at least two in the Pacific. "Various [computer simulations] suggest we'll be having a 1998-scale bleaching event annually within 30 years, so the outlook is pretty bleak for how common these events will become", said Dr Graham.
. . Worldwide, coral reefs cover an estimated 284,300 sq km and support over 25% of all known marine species.
May 16, 06: The double-crested cormorant, a voracious fish-devouring bird that was vanishing only 35 years ago, has made a triumphant comeback. So much so that several states now want the bird dead.
May 10, 06: Climate shifts were probably responsible for the extinction of the mammoth and other species more than 10,000 years ago, not over-hunting by humans, according to new research. Radiocarbon dating of 600 bones of bison, moose and humans that survived the mass extinction and remains of the mammoth and wild horse which did not, suggests humans were not responsible. "It is not that people weren't hunting these creatures. But climate would have reduced the numbers considerably."
. . The disappearance of the mammoth and the wild horse, Equus ferus, which coincided with the arrival of humans from central Asia in North America more than 12,000 years ago.
. . One hypothesis suggested a virulent disease was responsible for the extinctions. Another theory was that by killing grazing animals, humans triggered changes in vegetation that resulted in the mass deaths.
. . The Blitzkrieg, or overkill theory, said human hunters devastated most large mammal species and drove some to extinction. "But contrary to that theory, my dates show numbers of bison and wapiti (elk) were expanding both before and during human colonization", Guthrie explained.
. . He suggests climate shifts transformed the dry, arid and cold region. The wetter, warmer summers led to changes in vegetation to which mammoths and wild horses could not adapt.
May 9, 06: The figures read like a real estate agent's lettings list; a hectare of marsh in Canada, $6,000 per year; a tropical forest in Cameroon, $3,500; a Caribbean coral reef, $10,000.
. . The estimates from United Nations-backed studies are part of a fledgling bid to put a price on nature's bounties, from the production of crops, fish or timber to clean water supplies or the prevention of erosion.
. . Skeptics say the estimates are little better than guesswork, but proponents argue that "Eco-nomics" shows natural systems, such as rainforests or mangroves, are usually worth more intact than if chopped down and harvested.
. . Costanza led a landmark 1997 study, published in the journal Nature, that concluded the world's ecosystems were worth $33 trillion --almost double world gross national product at the time. "The estimates we used were conservative", he said.
. . Another U.N. report in January estimated that an intact coral reef was worth $1,000-$6,000 per hectare per year, perhaps $10,000 if located off a Caribbean beach resort. Reefs provide nurseries for fish, act as protective barriers against coastal erosion from storms or tsunamis and draw tourists. Protecting a reef would cost just $8 per hectare if it was converted to a marine park.
. . An international study last year, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, valued a Canadian wetland at $6,000 a hectare per year against about $2,000 if converted for intensive farming. It said a hectare of tropical forest in Cameroon was worth about $4,000 if managed properly against $2,000 if felled for farming. Intact mangroves in Thailand were worth $1,000 a year against $200 a year if converted for shrimp farming.
. . In some studies, people are asked to place a value on forests or beaches near their homes while in others, economists try to work out what it would cost if humans had to pollinate flowers because bees had disappeared.
. . Dasgupta said one problem for Eco-nomics was that nature is inherently priceless --without it, all life would die.
May 9, 06: The number of butterflies migrating through California has fallen to a nearly 40-year low as populations already hurt by habitat loss and climate change encountered a cold, wet spring, researchers said. About half of the usual species haven't shown up. Part of the problem was that the erratic weather --a mild winter, warm February and wet March-- upset the usual cues that tell butterflies when to emerge from dormancy.
May 7, 06: Wild banana species are disappearing in India, the world's biggest producer of the fruit, due to shrinking forests and rapid urbanization, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has said. India is the world's biggest banana grower, with an annual production of 18.52 tons, or more than 20% of the total world output of 80.03 tons in 2005, the FAO said. "But over-exploitation and the loss of forests as a result of encroachment and logging, slash-and-burn cultivation and urbanization are causing a rapid loss of wild banana species that have existed in India for thousands of years", it said.
. . Bananas are the world's most exported fruit, and the fourth most important food commodity after rice, wheat and maize, the food agency added. India, as the largest producer of the fruit, had contributed significantly to the "global genetic base of bananas". "But due to ecosystem destruction, it is probable that many valuable gene sources have now been lost", Lutaladio said. "That could cause serious problems because bananas, particularly commercial varieties, have a narrow genetic pool and are highly vulnerable to pests and diseases."
. . The FAO is calling for a systematic exploration of the wild bananas' remaining forest habitat, which lies in some of India's most remote regions and in the jungles of Southeast Asia, to catalog the number and types of surviving wild species. The food agency, which tries to preserve agricultural biodiversity, has sought better land management in India and the introduction of wild bananas in developing new species of the fruit for cultivation.
May 6, 06: Two coral species in Florida and the Caribbean now have a spot on the federal threatened list because of dangers posed by human activity, hurricanes and higher water temperatures.
May 6, 06: Fishery managers in the Northwest predicted that 88,000 spring chinook would swim upstream past Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River this year, but fewer than 20% of that number have done so late in the season.
. . A multimillion-dollar sport fishing industry is on hold in many areas while anglers wait for the fish to arrive. Some fishing seasons might not open at all this year. Only 18 spring chinook had gone past Lower Granite Dam --the uppermost of the eight dams between the Pacific Ocean and Idaho by way of the Columbia and Snake rivers. The 10-year average for this time of year is about 18,000 fish.
. . Idaho, Oregon and Washington put about 14.2 million hatchery spring chinook into the Columbia River system each year above Bonneville Dam. About 1% or less survive the journey to the ocean and back, fishery managers say.
. . Most wild and hatchery spring chinook spend two years in the ocean, averaging 8 to 15 pounds when they head back up the Columbia. But some individual fish return earlier and some later; fish that remain an extra year or two in the ocean grow larger. The record in Idaho is 56 pounds.
May 6, 06: Endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles emerge here every spring from the Gulf of Mexico, leaving smeary trails of flipper prints from surf through sand to nests where they lay their eggs. But a planned beach-restoration project could mean vehicles intruding on the nesting grounds, sand dumped over eggs or new sand obscuring the paths to turtles' nests.
. . The city is awaiting a decision from the Army Corps of Engineers on a variance from the Endangered Species Act that would allow the project to begin this month or next. Officials say the beach erosion caused by tides and last year's hurricanes. If not alleviated soon, the erosion could harm hotels and other properties.
. . The town was prepared to provide some extra hands --college students or volunteers-- to help find the turtle nests. Each year biologists collect and guard the eggs until late summer, when thousands of baby turtles scamper to sea. Without biologists' intervention, only a few would survive.
. . A home movie from 1947 shows about 40,000 nesting there. But the population has diminished dramatically because eggs were harvested for food or because shrimp trawls and gill nets trapped and drowned the turtles.
May 4, 06: In Laos, scientists working in conjunction with the New York-based World Conservation Society, or WCS, say they have discovered eight new species of frogs in the past two years. Among them is one where the male is half the size of the female, and another which has a row of spines running down its belly.
. . They're concerned since many of the frogs depend on forests which are constantly under threat across the region. "When forests are cleared, we're losing this piece of biodiversity that we may never have known existed", he said. "I can't think of any tropical region where there isn't a threat to intact forest. Certainly, there is forest destruction in Laos."
. . Another threat -at least to the black and gold salamander Stuart's team discovered- is collectors. "Our concern is that the population will be driven to extinction before we understand it better."
May 3, 06: The world should double the area of forests under the control of local communities by 2015 as part of an effort to combat poverty, a new international group said. The Rights and Resources Initiative, backed by several governments and conservation groups, called for "an unprecedented effort to strengthen local rights to own and use forests and fight rural poverty, prevent illegal logging, and protect biodiversity."
. . U.N. goals for halving poverty by 2015 could not be achieved unless governments helped the 1.6 billion people who depended on forests for their livelihoods, it said. "That includes some 350 million indigenous and tribal people who depend on forests for food, housing, heat, and medicine." Their rights were often eroded by logging or by forest clearances by rich land owners or governments.
May 3, 06: Trees are blossoming, plants are flowering, and temperatures are warming up. Spring is finally is here and everyone seems happier. Well, except for the pied flycatcher, a small bird that can't schedule its breeding time to cope with the earlier spring season caused by climate change.
. . The pied flycatcher winters in West Africa then migrates to The Netherlands for spring breeding. Offspring feed on caterpillars. Because spring is arriving sooner than in the past, the caterpillar population peaks earlier than the flycatcher's arrival, resulting in scarcity of food for the chicks. This altered timing and resulting food shortage has led to a population decline of 90% over the past two decades in areas where the food peaks earlier. However, numbers dropped only about 10% in areas where food peaks the latest.
. . Other migratory birds could suffer similar population declines if they are unable to adapt their journey to warmer temperatures, the researchers said.
May 2, 06: Already charged with eradicating mammoths, the first North Americans might also have wiped out wild horses in Alaska, a new study suggests.
. . The end of the Pleistocene era, around 12,000 years ago, was coupled with a global cooling event and the extinction of many large mammals, particularly in North America. This was also when humans first made their way into Alaska from Asia, leading some researchers to believe that extensive over-hunting helped drive the extinction of the massive beasts. Mammoths, for example, were a prime target of early hunters and were driven to extinction within roughly 500 years of humans' arrival on the continent.
. . But another possibility is that a fast-spreading infectious disease brought down these and other animals.
. . Horses originated in North America, but all the wild ones were killed by early hunters, researchers say. Some horses snuck over to Asia before the land/ice bridge disappeared. Those were domesticated by Asians and then Europeans, who reintroduced horses to the Americas.
. . In the new study, researchers reevaluated some of the unreliable data used in previous calculations and determined that when gaps in the fossil record and radiocarbon dating errors are factored in, it is possible that humans and horses coexisted.
. . Radiocarbon dating techniques -the most common method of determining the age of organic material- can be off by 200 to 300 years, a significant error when considering a thousand-year window.
May 1, 06: A team of government scientists has voted to capture one of a handful of jaguars known to live in the United States, drawing protests from environmental groups. The scientists want to follow the jaguar's movements, along river corridors or through mountain ranges, to help authorities figure out which areas most need protection in the name of the species.
May 1, 06: The polar bear and hippopotamus are for the first time listed as species threatened with extinction in the Red List of Threatened Species published by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) which names more than 16,000 at-risk species. "The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching."
. . Many sharks, and freshwater fish in Europe and Africa, are newly included. Overall, 16,119 species are included in this year's Red List, the most detailed and authoritative regular survey of the health of the plant and animal kingdoms.
. . This represents more than a third of the total number of species surveyed; the list includes one in three amphibians, a quarter of coniferous trees, and one in four mammals.
. . The common hippopotamus has entered the Red List for the first time because the population in the Democratic Republic of Congo has declined spectacularly --by about 95% in a decade. The country's turbulent political situation has allowed unregulated hunting for meat and for the ivory in their teeth.
. . The angel shark has been declared Extinct in the North Sea and Critically Endangered globally, while the common skate's status has also been upgraded to Critically Endangered.
May 1, 06: The San Francisco Bay area, the threatened California red-legged frog breeds in the weedy creeks, part of more than 4 million acres that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in 2001 to designate as essential for the frog's recovery.
. . In mid-April, following years of litigation and debate, the agency announced the designation of just 450,000 acres of critical habitat -11% of the original proposal. It did not include a pastoral section of Livermore proposed for a 650-home development, or any part of the county commemorated in Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which introduced the red-legged frog to the world.
. . "This decision is political, it's not scientific", said Carlos Davidson, director of the Environmental Studies Program at San Francisco State University.
. . The largest frog species in the West was once common across much of California, but it's now found on just 30% of its former habitat, Davidson said. It was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1996.
Apr 28, 06: China has introduced a captive-bred giant panda into the wild after implanting it with a global positioning system (GPS) device.
Apr 28, 06: At least 300 dead dolphins washed ashore on a beach in Zanzibar overnight, residents said, but the cause of the deaths was unknown. [that's near Tanzania.]
Apr 28, 06: The Navy's use of sonar during maritime exercises may have contributed to the mass stranding of more than 150 whales in Hawaii's Hanalei Bay two years ago, government scientists said. [WELL!! Now that the gov't knows, I guess that's EVERYBODY!]
. . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the finding --along with information from other studies-- has led it to ask the Navy to reduce its sonar's power during exercises planned this summer in Hawaiian waters. It also asked the Navy to turn off its active sonar when the whales come within a set distance.
. . Some wildlife advocates believe the sound waves hurt whales, possibly by damaging their hearing or causing them to rise to the surface too quickly and get decompression sickness.
Apr 27, 06: Hundreds of starfish have been found dead on a beach on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, and a scientist says a nonnative parasite is likely to blame. The die-off coincided with the peak of the starfish reproductive cycle, when the creatures are most vulnerable to Orchitophrya stellarum, a protozoan that feeds on sea stars' sperm.
Apr 26, 06: The search is on for Britain's small, prickly, shy --and rapidly disappearing-- hedgehogs. On the eve of Hedgehog Awareness Week, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and People's Trust for Endangered Species are launching HogWatch --a plea for people to report where and when they last saw one of the inquisitive but shy animals. Their population fell by 20% in Britain between 2001 and 2005.
. . "It is vital to know where hedgehogs are still present and determine why their numbers appear to be falling. Hedgehogs have been around for 20 million years --we want to ensure they will be around in the next century."
Apr 25, 06: Two rare salamanders that live in rocky patches within old growth forests along the Klamath River don't need Endangered Species Act protection because existing state and federal protections are adequate to maintain their habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.
. . But environmentalists who sought listings for the Siskiyou Mountains salamander and Scotts Bar salamander said they would challenge the decision in court. They said moves are under way to remove the protections cited by Fish and Wildlife, and the agency itself is embarking on a study to see just how much harm logging does to the salamanders' habitat.
Apr 23, 06: Zoologists said they were delighted and perplexed at the birth of four rare Komodo dragons, whose paternity remains a mystery. She laid the fertilized eggs before even meeting her British mate --and the last time she is known to have had intercourse was two years ago.
. . There were two possible answers to the riddle. "Either female komodo dragons are spermthecal, meaning that they have the ability to store sperm or fertilized eggs for long periods, in this case for two years, or they are parthogenetic, meaning that they are self-reproductive --they produce clones of themselves." Genetic tests will be carried out to try to explain the mystery.
. . The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is the world's biggest lizard, reaching up to three meters long. The creature is carnivorous, killing goats, deer and other mammals through deadly bacteria in its saliva. It's found on the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motang and Flores, but its numbers have dwindled to around 6,000 as a result of poaching and invasive species.
Apr 22, 06: Today, the Japanese eat 40 times more beef-burger than whale, says Greenpeace; only 1% of Japanese eat whale meat regularly. Consumption was falling even before the 1986 moratorium on commercial hunting.
Apr 22, 06: Norway hit back today at 12 nations led by Britain for urging an end to whale hunts, saying a plan to raise catches to the highest in two decades in 2006 would not damage stocks of the giant mammals.
. . British Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw said on behalf of the 12 that an increase in Norway's quota to 1,052 whales in 2006 "is premature and not based on the best scientific advice." Britain's embassy in Oslo handed in the formal protest. Norway, which broke with a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1993, has harpooned about 750 minke whales each year in recent years and the 2006 will be the highest since the 1980s. The whales are eaten as steaks in Norway.
. . Oslo says that minke whales are plentiful, eat commercial fish stocks and do not need to be kept on endangered lists --unlike species like the sperm whale or blue whale, the biggest creature ever to have lived on the planet.
. . Animal welfare groups say hunting whales with exploding harpoons is cruel and that all nations should stick to a 1986 IWC moratorium on hunts. Along with Norway, both Japan and Iceland catch whales.
Apr 22, 06: Imported plants may be to blame for a contagious disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of oak trees along the U.S. Pacific coast, a University of California, Berkeley researcher said. He said research into plant and tree trade records will be needed to track the origin of the microbe responsible for Sudden Oak Death.
. . Sudden Oak Death, which has hit California especially hard, has confounded scientists, but their latest research at least shows the disease is not native to North America. "It's very likely the way the epidemic started in the U.S. is from importation of plants."
Apr 21, 06: Thailand will soon send home 53 endangered orangutans probably smuggled from Indonesia and seized two years ago at a private Bangkok zoo. The apes believed by activists to have been smuggled from Borneo or the Sumatran forests of Indonesia. They had made the animals perform daily boxing matches.
. . The zoo owners initially said the apes were the result of a successful breeding program, but DNA tests confirmed a number of them had not been born in Thailand.
. . Fewer than 30,000 orangutans are left in the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia and environmentalists say the species could become extinct in 20 years if the current rate of decline continues.
Apr 20, 06: A 130 million-year-old tropical rainforest in Malaysia is under threat from logging, environmental activists warned, as they launched a campaign calling for greater efforts to protect the national heritage.
. . Intensive logging, by both legal timber operators and illegal loggers, is damaging the ecological system in the 741,300 acre Belum-Temengor Forest complex in northern Perak state, the Malaysian Nature Society said. It is also home to some 10,000 indigenous people.
. . "Deforestation has caused river siltation, landslides and damage to the landscape. We urge the government to stop all logging activities and conserve these forests, which are older than the Amazon and the Congo."
Apr 15, 06: The first of thousands of double-crested cormorants -large, hook-billed birds accused of swallowing up Michigan's perch and other fish populations- began their annual return to the Upper Peninsula. Cormorants are large, dark-feathered birds with wingspans that can reach four feet. They have a voracious appetite for alewives, perch and other fish -so much so, they are considered at least partly responsible for declining fish populations in several northern Michigan communities. [So? Whose fish *are they? ]
. . Federal and state wildlife officials to clamp down on the cormorant population by either scaring them away or shooting them. A federal program to deal with cormorants by frightening them off or killing them is entering its third year in Michigan.
. . "Cormorants are native to Michigan", Butchko said. "They are here to stay. This will not be a cormorant elimination program."
Apr 15, 06: A tiny desert owl is set to be taken off the federal government's endangered species list, drawing praise from developers but protests from environmentalists. The owl is set to be removed from the endangered species list next month, a move that also will rescind critical habitat designation for 1.2 million acres in Arizona.
. . The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl is only about 6 inches long and weighs in at less than 3 ounces, but has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers for more than a decade. The bird is native to the Sonoran desert and its population has dropped below 30 at last count.
. . The decision is likely to be fought by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. He said the move was a political decision that ignores years of research. "It's anti-science, it's anti-conservation and it's anti-public interest."
. . The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association said the federal decision ends the fight.
Apr 13, 06: The last of Indonesia's pristine forests, in the remote province of Papua, are under threat and all commercial logging there should be halted, environment watchdog groups said.
. . "A handful of logging companies have wiped out much of Indonesia's forests. They must be stopped from finishing off our last intact forests in Papua", Emmy Hafild, from international environment group Greenpeace, told a press conference here.
. . Scientists from Conservation International last December found a virtual "lost world" home to dozens of new species, including frogs, butterflies, and an orange-faced honeyeater bird in Papua's remote Foja mountains. Greenpeace feared that "large-scale commercial logging is about to cut through the rainforest 'Eden' in Papua."
. . Indonesia has already lost 72% of its intact forests, and deforestation rates in the archipelago are among the highest in the world, Greenpeace says. They said the world's forests were in "critical condition" with less than 10% of the earth's land area covered in intact forests.
Apr 13, 06: Game capture is serious business in South Africa, where it has been honed to a fine science to supply niche markets. Almost unique in the world, South Africa's privately owned wildlife and game breeding has been a growth industry, although there are signs it has peaked with prices declining partly because of the large supply of animals. Animals are bred for a range of purposes: for conservation, for hunting, and for sale to other game reserves. They are captured on both state-owned and private land.
. . Sales from game auctions in the country last year amounted to 93.5 million rand ($15.30 million) compared with about 101.3 million rand in 2004, according to one estimate.
. . A young adult bull rhinoceros weighing almost a ton succumbs to the effects of a dart fired from the air. A hole is drilled in its horns to accommodate a microchip. "It's a bar code. It's unique, so if it ever gets poached we can trace it." The money will be used for the nearby villages and the running of the park.
Apr 13, 06: On a summer research cruise through the Arctic Ocean aboard the icebreaker Healy, scientists were surrounded by an unprecedented number of barking, abandoned walrus pups. Strict restrictions on interacting with marine mammals [Star Trek's Prime Directive!] prevented the researchers rescuing the nine pups, which were probably abandoned when their moms were forced to chase rapidly retreating seasonal sea ice.
. . "We would sail to a particular location and stay there for 24 hours at a time, and one or two of these pups would swim up to us, and the poor little guys would just bark at us for hours on end", said Carin Ashjian, a research team member from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. "It was really awful. I wouldn't go outside." The pups likely drowned or starved to death.
. . Adult Pacific walrus dive as deep as 200 meters and use sensitive facial bristles to forage for clams and crabs on the seafloor. But walrus pups can't forage for themselves and rely on their mother's milk for up to two years.
. . Mother walruses take their young nearly everywhere they go, but they need a safe place to leave the pups when it's time to find food or if they both need a rest from swimming. Ice platforms floating over shallow waters have traditionally been the perfect place for both these needs. The walruses follow these platforms as they retreat northward in summer.
. . In the summer of 2004, water 3 degrees C warmer than usual washed into the Canada Basin. This might have caused the seasonal sea ice over the shallow spots to melt quicker than usual or drift to deeper, colder waters.
. . In areas where the ice remained, the bottom is up to 3,000 meters deep. That's too deep for a walrus to dive and feed, so the mothers may have swam off looking for better feeding opportunities, leaving their pups behind to fend for themselves.
Apr 12, 06: Hundreds of rare snails were given their marching orders by the New Zealand government after an eight-month battle between conservationists and a mining company. Up to 250 powelliphanta augustus snails --only discovered in 1996-- live on a mountainous ridge containing five million tons of coal worth about 400 million dollars (245 million US).
. . The Conservation Minister, and the Associate Mining Minister announced the mine could go ahead if the mining company moved the snails to a new home.
Apr 11, 06: Using several models that project habitat changes, migration capabilities of various species, and related extinctions in 25 "hotspots", scientists predict that a quarter of the world's plant and vertebrate animal species would face extinction by 2050.
. . Biodiversity hotspots are some of the richest and most threatened biological pools on Earth. They contain 44% of plant and 35% of the Earth's vertebrate species on only 1.4% of the Earth's land. Each hotspot contains its own set of unique species.
. . Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto: "This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet."
. . In the most dramatic of the scenarios, for which carbon dioxide levels grow to double that of today's levels, the models forecasted a potential loss of 56,000 plant species and 3,700 vertebrate species in the hotspots. Such a climate scenario could become a reality in only 50 years, the study estimates.
. . The study found that certain hotspots were especially sensitive to climate change with extinctions sometimes exceeding 2,000 plant species per hotspot. These include the Caribbean, the Tropical Andes, Cape Floristic region of South Africa, Southwest Australia, the Atlantic forests of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.
Apr 10, 06: Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades, a study said. "Global warming ranks among the most serious threats to the planet's biodiversity and, under some scenarios, may rival or exceed that due to deforestation", according to the study in the journal Conservation Biology.
. . "This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet", said Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto and a lead author of the study with scientists in the United States and Australia.
. . The new study looked at 25 "hotspots" --areas that contain a big concentration of plants and animals-- and projected that 11.6% of all species, with a range from 1-43%, could be driven to extinction if levels of heat trapping-gases in the atmosphere were to keep rising in the next 100 years. The range would mean the loss of thousands, or tens of thousands, of species. Species in many of these regions have limited escape routes. Rare plants, antelopes, tortoises or birds found only on the southern tip of Africa, for instance, cannot move south because the nearest land is thousands of miles away in Antarctica.
. . The scientists said their study broadly backed the findings of a 2004 report in the journal Nature that suggested global warming could commit a quarter of the world's species to extinction by 2050.
Apr 10, 06: Environmental authorities shut down an illegal logging operation in the Amazon today, confiscating dozens of felled tropical hardwood trees in an area that only recently was pristine rain forest.
. . The Norte Wood logging company was operating without a license. The agency seized 500 cubic meters of wood and arrested one man in the raid. It was the largest seizure of illegal hardwood this year in Amazonas, the country's largest state.
. . Alencar said an overflight revealed extensive logging in the region, which only recently was largely untouched rain forest where scientists had discovered several new monkey species.
. . Over the past three years, loggers from the neighboring state of Para have been moving to Novo Aripuana after having largely deforested the southern edge of their home state.
. . The rain forest lost 19,000 square km -an area more than half the size of Belgium-- between July 2004 and August 2005, down from a loss of 27,000 square km the year before, according to Environment Minister Marina Silva.
Apr 8, 06: The federal government said Friday it will give protected status to California's green sturgeon, an ancient fish species that can grow to more than 7 feet long and weigh up to 350 pounds.
. . Green sturgeon, which can live up to 70 years, is one of the world's oldest fish species, emerging in its current form about 200 million years ago. Like salmon, they spend part of their lives in the ocean, returning to their native rivers to spawn. Salmon and sturgeon share many of the same habitat needs.
Apr 8, 06: Wash. - The state Department of Transportation will continue to use road de-icer on U.S. Highway 2 west of Leavenworth, even though it kills an endangered plant growing near the road. The lone surviving population of showy stickseed comprises about 600 plants.
. . It's a perennial and member of the forget-me-not family, was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2002. The plant's numbers have declined over the years because of a combination of factors, including fire suppression, human disturbance, noxious weeds, herbicides and road de-icer.
. . A new federal plan for saving the plant from extinction calls for immediate action to reduce threats, stabilize its numbers and increase the population size across its historic range.
. . The state is trying to find ways to reduce the impact of de-icer on the plants, but it will continue to use the calcium chloride compound for now. The irony of the road de-icer problem is that the agency switched from sanding the road to using the salt solution in 1998 partly because the sand washes into rivers and streams and can harm spawning areas for imperiled fish.
. . In a draft recovery plan for the plant, success hinges on collecting seeds, growing them in a controlled setting and then reintroducing them into different areas. Universities and botanic gardens are already experimenting with growing the plants. Other actions will include using prescribed fire, tree thinning and weed pulling to maintain and even increase habitat.
Apr 6, 06: A rodent that "came back from the dead" after supposedly going extinct millions of years ago appears to be more common than previously thought.
. . It was spotted at a hunter's market in Laos by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). A return visit has uncovered more specimens, suggesting the squirrel-like rodent may not be that rare. It was originally thought to be a new mammal, but scientists now believe it is the sole survivor of an ancient group of rodents that died out 11 million years ago.
Apr 6, 06: Many more spring migrant birds may soon be able to get through to nest in Britain and other European countries because curbs are finally being introduced to prevent one of the biggest dangers they face on their journey from Africa --massacre in Malta.
. . Restrictions are finally on the way for the savage and concentrated wildlife slaughter that is the annual shoot of wild birds on the small Mediterranean island. European Union law is at last catching up with a killing frenzy that has virtually no parallel on the continent.
Apr 6, 06: A brightly plumaged parrot and a long-tailed forest mouse unique to the Philippines have been discovered in the vanishing rainforest of a tiny tropical island, U.S.-based researchers said.
. . Camiguin's wildlife was at risk from deforestation, researchers, writing in "Fieldiana: Zoology", warned. "Knowing that at least 54 species of birds and at least 24 species of mammals live on Camiguin and that some of these animals are found nowhere else on earth, makes us realize how important this island is."
. . A diverse archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines hosts a wealth of endemic flora and fauna but more than 70% of its original forests have been destroyed. Camiguin was once almost entirely covered by rain forest but by 2001, only 18% was still forested due to logging, agriculture and human settlement. Half of the island, a popular diving destination, is covered with coconut plantations.
Apr 5, 06: Animal and plant species are dying off rapidly around the world due to climate change, but scientists are struggling to monitor the decline due to a lack of data, top scientists said.
. . Scientists say just a fraction of the earth's plant and animal species have so far been identified, while millions more may have already been lost. There was also little information of those identified.
. . "Only about 1.75 million out of an estimated 10 million or more species have been identified and the information on less than 10% of all the collected specimens has been digitized", Philemon Mjwara, director-general of South Africa's department of science and technology, told a biodiversity meeting in Cape Town.
. . It was essential that scientists, governments and museums share information to help increase the understanding of what the changes linked to global warming could mean for species, he told the annual Global Biodiversity Information Facility conference. "We are in a period of huge change that we don't really notice", he said, adding it was estimated the earth was losing species 100 times or even a 1,000 times faster than before.
Apr 7, 06: Federal regulators voted today to severely restrict salmon fishing off the coasts of Oregon and Northern California this summer to protect dwindling populations in the Klamath River.
Apr 3, 06: Environmentalists in Japan are claiming a rare victory after five key private companies quit the whaling business following a pressure campaign. The firms said they will transfer their shares in the country's largest whaling fleet to public interest corporations.
. . Greenpeace claims it is global pressure from consumers that has forced the financial backers to pull out. But the companies deny this and Japan's government says the transfer of shares will not affect its policies. The companies own shares in a firm which operates seven of the eight ships in Japan's whaling fleet. The Japanese fleet will continue to hunt for whales. But environmentalists insist this is a victory.
Huge nature reserves that stretch across national frontiers are being formed in Asia, South America and elsewhere, a sign that biodiversity has joined security and immigration as a border issue.
Mar 29, 06: Scientists call the growing oxygen-starved patches of world waterways "dead zones." That also could describe the not-so-swinging mating scene for some of the fish that live there. For zebrafish, low oxygen levels in the water turn their habitat into the equivalent of a freshwater locker room. When oxygen is reduced, newly born male zebrafish outnumber females 3-to-1, and the precious few females have testosterone levels about twice as high as normal, according to a new scientific study.
. . Scientists say the gender bending is something that could explain what they are seeing in the nearly 150 dead zones worldwide. This could be a serious problem because with the expansion of dead zones -such as the massive Gulf of Mexico area now the size of New Jersey- fish die, and those that don't die may not be able to keep the species alive, scientists say. In the Gulf of Mexico, sexual development problems have been found with shrimp and croakers.
. . The world's dead zones add up to about 100,000 square miles, and most of those zones are man-made because of fertilizer and other farm run-off, said Robert Diaz, a professor of marine sciences at the College of William and Mary. More than 30 dead zones are in U.S. waters and are part of key fisheries.
. . The stress of hypoxia -the lack of oxygen in water- tinkers with the genes that help make male and female sex hormones, said study lead author. "Hypoxia is emerging as a really important stressor, possibly of even greater significance than chemicals", Thomas said. "When it does act, it shuts things down completely."
Mar 24, 06: About 40% of the Amazon's rainforests could be lost by 2050 unless more is done to prevent what could become one of the world's worst environmental crisis, scientists said. Existing laws and preserving public wildlife reserves will not be enough. Measures are also needed to protect rainforests from the impact of profitable industries such as cattle ranching and soy farming, they added.
. . "By 2050, current trends in agricultural expansion will eliminate a total of 40% of Amazon forests, including six major watersheds and ecoregions." A watershed is an area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains from it goes into the same place.
. . Without further checks, the scientists predict nearly 100 native species will be deprived of more than half of their habitats and nearly 2 million square kilometers of forest will be lost. But if more is done to control expansion and increase protected areas, 73% of the original forest would remain in 2050 and carbon emissions would be reduced. The scientists said better conservation of the rainforest would have worldwide benefits so developed countries should be willing to pay to make it possible.
Mar 24, 06: Each year, endangered white sturgeon lay millions of fertilized eggs on the silty bed of the Kootenai River in the Idaho Panhandle. Yet experts estimate only 10 of the sturgeon hatched from those eggs survive.
. . The white sturgeon, the largest freshwater fish in North America, has not successfully reproduced in the Kootenai since Libby Dam was completed in Montana in 1974, reducing the river velocity and trapping critical nutrients upstream.
. . Downstream, however, pools at a hatchery run by the Kootenai Indian Tribe teem with thousands of year-old sturgeon, inch-long replicas of the two armor-plated wild adults in another tank, each measuring 6- or 7-feet long. Another tank holds medium-sized fish raised at the hatchery since birth.
. . Bred from captured wild sturgeon, the young sturgeon may represent the last hope biologists have of preventing the species' extinction. An estimated 500 wild sturgeon remain, a number expected to dwindle to 50 by 2030 unless scientists find a way to encourage successful reproduction.
. . Over the past decade, the hatchery has released 80,000 juvenile sturgeon into the river. But since the fish do not reach sexual maturity until about age 30, the oldest of those hatchery-raised sturgeon are not expected to begin spawning until 2025.
. . The first year the fish are released, about 60% survive. "After that, the rate is about 90% annually, so you play that out over 30 years and that's not a lot of fish."
Mar 22, 06: The United Nations should protect the world's oceans from deep sea fishing and pollution in the same way as environmentally sensitive land, the lobby group Greenpeace said.
Mar 20, 06: Virtually all indicators of the likely future for the diversity of life on Earth are heading in the wrong direction, a major new report says. The Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) is published as national delegates gather in Brazil under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention commits governments to slow the decline in the richness of living systems by 2010.
. . The GBO says "unprecedented efforts" will be needed to achieve this aim. It sets out 15 indicators of progress towards the 2010 target, ranging from trends in the extent of wildlife habitats to the build-up of nutrients such as nitrogen which can harm aquatic life.
. . Only one of the 15 --the area of the world's surface officially protected for wildlife-- is moving in the right direction for biodiversity. Forests continue to be lost at a rate of six million hectares a year.
. . The abundance and variety of species continue to fall across the planet, according to an index measuring the percentage of species with good prospects for survival; bird variety is on the decline in every ecosystem type from the oceans to the forests. Less complete indications are available for other groups of animals and plants, but it is feared they would show a similar picture.
. . The "drivers" are identified as:
. . * the loss of habitat, largely through the expansion of agriculture
. . * climate change
. . * the introduction of alien species which can badly disrupt ecosystems after being carried across the world, often accidentally in ship ballast tanks
. . * over-exploitation of wildlife, for example through overfishing
. . * the build-up of nutrients through chemical fertilisers, sewage and air pollution
Mar 20, 06: Birds which migrate long distances have suffered a population fall. It shows a 70% decline. Of 34 species, 11 showed national increases above 25%. Eight decreased by more than 25%. There has been growing concern about falls in woodland bird populations --down 20% between 1976 and 2001, according to the government's Wildbird Population Framework Indicator.
Mar 20, 06: Humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010, a U.N. report said. Habitats ranging from coral reefs to tropical rainforests face mounting threats, the Secretariat of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity said in the report. It estimated the current pace of extinctions was 1,000 times faster than historical rates.
. . It urged better efforts to safeguard habitats ranging from deserts to jungles and better management of resources from fresh water to timber. About 12 percent of the earth's land surface is in protected areas, against just 0.6 percent of the oceans. It also recommended more work to curb pollution and to rein in industrial emissions of gases released by burning fossil fuels and widely blamed for global warming.
. . "In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65.51 million years ago", said the 92-page Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report. Apart from the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the other "Big Five" extinctions were about 205, 250, 375 and 440 million years ago.
Mar 18, 06: A new study of Sumatran rhinos on Borneo puts the numbers of one group in the central region of the island as low as 13, a precariously small number. The population has declined due in part to poaching. Their numbers are so small that losing one or two rhinos to a poacher could upset the remaining rhinos' chances of survival."
. . The survey was conducted in 2005 and released today. The announcement was delayed so officials could be dispatched in an effort to protect the remaining animals. Rhino horns are used in traditional Asian medicines and sold on the black market.
. . Overall, there are fewer than 300 Sumatran rhinos in the world, the scientists say. They live only on Borneo, Sumatra and the peninsula of Malaysia. They are one of the most endangered species of rhinoceros.
Mar 17, 06: Scientists and policy makers who want to slow the rate at which species are being lost face a conundrum: No one knows how many different plants and animals there are."Some people who study insects think there may be as many as 100 million species out there", said Jeff McNeely, the chief scientist at the World Conservation Union. "But if you took a poll of biologists, I think most would say there are somewhere around 15 million."
. . According to the Collins English Dictionary, a species is "a class of plants or animals whose members have the same main characteristics and are able to breed with each other."
. . The conundrum will hang over a U.N. conference in Brazil next week where experts will discuss ways to slow the loss of species. The
United Nations agreed in 2002 to reduce the rate at which animals and plants are disappearing by 2010. "The implication of not knowing exactly how many species there are is that we can't tell if we are actually making progress on the 2010 target."
. . There are probably few large mammals on land left to be discovered although new deer and wild pig species were found in Vietnam in the 1990s in a region that had been heavily bombed by the United States during the war between the two countries.
. . Most birds have been named although new ones do crop up occasionally and a few "extinct" ones, such as the famed ivory-billed woodpecker of the U.S. South, have reappeared. Biologists say there are still many plant, insect and fish species that have yet to be named. "In southern Africa, there are between 3,000 and 4,000 described spiders. I would estimate this is less than 50% of what there is in the region", said John Leroy.
. . The dearth of knowledge about species numbers stems in part from the fact that there are only so many qualified scientists out there who can actually name a new plant or animal. And many of those who are qualified focus on known species.
. . Scientists said last month they had found a "Lost World" in an Indonesian mountain jungle, home to dozens of exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants. "Every expedition that goes into a place that hasn't been examined before finds new species", said McNeely.
. . "There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth --possibly as many as 40 million. But somewhere between 5 and 50 billion species have existed at one time or another", writes paleontologist David Raup in his book "Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?. Thus, only about 1 in 1,000 species is still alive --a truly lousy survival record; 99.9% failure!"
. . More than 800 plant and animal species have become extinct since 1500, when accurate historical and scientific records began. About one-third of described amphibian species are endangered compared to about 12% of bird and 23% of mammal species.
Mar 12, 06: Madagascar is a puzzle to development workers. Though warm and wet with a landmass bigger than France, the Indian Ocean island produces barely enough to feed its 17 million inhabitants. Child malnutrition is among the worst in Africa and yields of the staple crop, rice, are lower than in Mali, a country on the edge of the Sahara.
. . While much of drought-prone East Africa is going hungry because of too little rain, Madagascar's problem is that it got too much. A series of tropical storms that ripped through the island last year ruined subsistence crops.
Mar 12, 06: Frogs and toads are dying out in the jungles of Latin America, apparent victims of global warming in what might be a harbinger of one of the worst waves of extinction since the dinosaurs. Accelerating extinctions would derail a United Nations goal of "a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss" by 2010.
. . "We are facing an extinction crisis", said Anne Larigauderie, head of Paris-based Diversitas which promotes research into life on the planet. She estimated the rate of loss of all species was now 10-100 times faster than little-understood rates from fossil records. The task of gauging the exact rate is complicated by the fact that no one knows exactly how many species exist.
. . Many scientists say global warming --widely blamed on burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and vehicles-- is adding to other human threats including destruction of habitats from expanding cities, deforestation and pollution.
. . For now, amphibians such as frogs, toads, salamanders and newts are on the front-line-- they live both in water and on land and have a porous skin sensitive to changes in temperature and moisture. A skin fungus is also decimating amphibians. In coming decades, threats could widen to creatures ranging from polar bears to tropical butterflies. A few species might benefit, such as forests expanding north to the Arctic.
. . In one of the bleakest projections, a 2004 international study said a quarter of all species --perhaps a million-- could be condemned to extinction by 2050, partly because of a warming climate.
Authorities in eastern India have arrested 30 poachers in the world's largest tiger reserve this year against 40 caught in 2004 and 2005, officials said.
Mar 9, 06: The number of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has surpassed 1,000, a decade after wolves were reintroduced in and around Yellowstone National Park, a new report shows.
Mar 9, 06: Illegal logging in Mexico's national parks continues to threaten millions of butterflies, despite a government crackdown, environmentalists warn. Mexico's government has taken drastic measures to protect the butterflies. It has formed a team of 17 park rangers, armed with assault rifles and body armor, to protect the colonies of monarch butterflies in Michoacan state. Despite facing hefty jail sentences, the loggers have continued unabated, say environmentalists. "The illegal logging has actually accelerated in the last four to five years." In a country where kidnappings and car-jackings are run of the mill, the illegal timber trade is equally ruthless. Gangs are frequently armed and work at night to avoid detection. Mexico's environment ministry estimates the country's highland fir forests have shrunk by half since 1968, despite massive planting operations.
. . In 2004, numbers of the migrating monarch butterflies plummeted to 100 million --the lowest ever recorded. Numbers have tripled this season, but are still no where near the level --possibly 10 times this-- seen in the mid 1990s.
. . Jose Alvarez --head of the Michoacan Reforestation Fund, a group that has helped villagers plant more than 480,000 trees this year alone-- says "If this (logging) continues, we won't have any butterflies, there won't be any water and there won't be any villages; the trees are the basis for everything that is living in this area."
. . Professor Brower says international pressure is needed to help save not only the butterflies but the entire ecosystem.
. . The monarch has become a symbol of cross-border co-operation with the US, but some scientists fear it could become a symbol of a common failure to protect the environment.
[THIS one's different!] The WHO never announced or conducted any such study as: "blondes are going extinct". It sprang from a spate of new stories that were aired by major news outlets in September 2002 (such as BBC News) and attributed the information to "a study by the World Health Organization".
Mar 8, 06: Federal fishery regulators imposed a permanent ban today on bottom trawl fishing in nearly 150,000 square miles of federal waters off the West Coast.In making the decision, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rejected a proposal crafted by environmentalists and the fishing industry that would have covered twice as much area.
. . The agency also decided against listing 13 oil derricks within the waters as "habitat areas of particular concern", a designation that might have slowed efforts by some environmentalists and coastal residents to have the structures removed.
. . The action was spurred by a lawsuit by environmental groups that accused the federal government of mismanaging fish habitat.
Mar 7, 06: From frigid northern Canada and Alaska to tropical Asian islands, lands where wildlife seems safe today may pose some of the greatest extinction dangers in the future. In particular peril are animals with a relatively small geographic range and those that have a large body mass and reproduce slowly.
. . Researchers identified regions where they felt there was a high "latent extinction risk" for nonmarine mammals, often areas that have had little human impact so far. Latent risk is low in parts of the world already heavily populated by people, where species likely to succumb to the pressure have already done so.
. . The area with the most potentially endangered species, 284, is Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia, the report said. Next, with 224 species, is Borneo, followed by New Guinea, 205 species, western Java, 131 species and Sulawesi, 130 species. Other areas of high threat are Maluku, Indonesia, 99 species; Northern Canada and Alaska, 96 species; Melanesian Islands, 96 species; Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, 86 species; East Indian highlands, 70 species; Eastern Canadian forests, 57 species.
Mar 3, 06: Former Beatle Paul McCartney lay down on an ice floe next to a baby seal and pleaded with Canada to scrap an annual hunt that kills around 300,000 of the young animals.
Mar 2, 06: Imperial Beach, San Diego County --One of the last stops before you hit the Pacific Ocean on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border is the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve.
. . The reserve, a short drive from the grit of Tijuana to the south and the growing sprawl of San Diego to the north, is all that remains of wilderness in the area, a last refuge for many endangered birds, insects, reptiles and plants.
. . But in the name of national security, the Department of Homeland Security wants to build 5km of fencing just south of this federally protected land --a project environmentalists say could spell disaster for the sensitive ecology of the region. And despite laws and regulations that could usually prevent such a project from going ahead, the department has new powers to sweep such protections aside. The Department of Homeland Security, under powers given to it by Congress in May, has the authority to waive any law --including environmental protections -- in order to build barriers and roads at the border.
Feb 27, 06: In the 1970s, there used to be about 1,300 beluga whales in Cook Inlet, delighting locals and tourists alike. Last year, the number was estimated at just 278. Why their numbers are dwindling has scientists puzzled -and scared. The National Marine Fisheries Service is embarking on a status review to determine if the belugas need the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act.
. . A listing was rejected in 2000 because then it was believed that overharvesting was to blame. Seven years of strict limits on hunting have proved that theory wrong, said Lloyd Lowry, a professor of marine mammals.
Feb 24, 06: Rain falling on the surface of the ocean can be heard more than a mile deep, and at some frequencies it's louder than passing ships, according to oceanographer Jeff Nystuen. "We don't really know what is too loud underwater, and we need to know what the baseline is", Nystuen said.
. . Loud underwater noises, particularly U.S. Navy sonar, have long been blamed by environmentalists for the fatal beachings of whales. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other plaintiffs alleged in a federal lawsuit last fall that the Navy's mid-frequency sonar used for detecting enemy submarines disturbs and sometimes kills whales and dolphins.
. . Building up his inventory of sounds since 1999, Nystuen is looking for long-term patterns of relative loudness. His findings show that among higher pitched sounds, rain is the loudest, far louder than passing ships. Among lower-pitched sounds, shipping is the loudest sound, followed by rain.
Feb 22, 06: Greenland's government introduced the island's first hunting quota for polar bears, which scientists believe are threatened by the effects of global warming. The figure for 2006 was set at 150 animals. Previously, local Inuit hunters have killed about 250 bears annually. There are an estimated 7,500 polar bears in Greenland --the world's largest island-- mainly in the northern and eastern part.
. . The quota was introduced to protect the species' survival in Greenland as their natural habitat comes under threat from climate change in the Arctic. Scientists say global warming is melting the ice cap on which the bears hunt, making it difficult for them to find food.
Feb 22, 06: Sharks could be more vulnerable to the fishing industry than was previously thought, research has revealed. Marine scientists led by Aberdeen University have discovered that the deepest oceans of the world appear to be shark free. One possible reason could be due to lack of food. Researchers warn that the findings mean all shark populations are within reach of human fisheries and could be at greater risk than was thought.
. . Sharks are found throughout the world's oceans and it had been hoped new species would be discovered as exploration went deeper. However, 20 years of exploration combined with analysis of records over the past 150 years, has convinced the scientists that the world's oceans are 70% shark-free.
Feb 18, 06: The British moth population is in rapid decline, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind. A report by Butterfly Conservation says the number of common moths has fallen by a third since 1968. This has serious implications for animals such as birds and bats which feed on moths. It also raises concerns about the state of Britain's natural heritage since moths are an important indicator of biodiversity. They say habitat destruction, pesticides, pollution and climate change are the main suspects. Climate change is likely to be having an impact on moths, he said, since temperature governs the lives of many insects.
. . "If other insects are declining at the same rate --and we have no evidence to believe any different-- then we are really going through a big biodiversity crisis, and we've only just seen the tip of the iceberg."
Feb 18, 06: A parasite carried by cats is killing off sea otters, a veterinary specialist said. Cat feces carrying Toxoplasma parasites wash into US waterways and then into the sea where they can infect otters, causing brain disease. The parasite is familiar to medical researchers, as it can damage foetuses when expectant mothers become infected while changing cat litter. The Californian researcher has called for owners to keep their cats indoors.
. . Scientists have been documenting the deadly brain infections in otters for eight years. It is a major cause of mortality in sea otters living off the Californian coast: Toxoplasma caused 17% of deaths in sea otters examined from 1998 to 2001. And individuals with moderate to severe brain inflammation were about four times as likely to die from a shark attack.
. . Populations of southern sea otters have not recovered since they were hunted to the brink of extinction for the fur trade in the 1800s.
Feb 18, 06: As many as 100,000 tigers are thought to have roamed India 100 years ago. Based on a 2001 census, officials estimate there are just 3,500 tigers left, but conservation activists believe there are far fewer. The high profile villains are gangs of poachers that kill cats for their pelts and bones, which are used mostly in traditional Chinese medicine. A single tiger carcass can fetch up to $50,000. The discovery last year that poachers had wiped out every tiger in Sariska, one of India's premier tiger reserves, caused an outcry and demands for a beefing up of security in the parks.
. . At Palamau, park workers began projects to improve villagers' lives and reduce their dependence on the forest. Solar-powered lamps and energy-efficient pressure cookers were handed out, to reduce the need for firewood. Compensation was increased for land, houses and livestock destroyed by wild animals, to lessen pressures to kill animals to protect property.
Feb 16, 06: Already designated a depleted species under one federal act, Washington state's killer whale population is getting more federal protection under another. Since 2002, the orcas have been protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which kept them from being killed or harassed, but their listing under the Endangered Species Act gives them the highest protection available under the law.
Feb 15, 06: The rare Asian dolphin has moved closer to extinction in Cambodia after a series of deaths in fishing nets over the past few weeks, officials said. Two baby dolphins were found dead in nets, taking the toll to 10 since early December 05. There are believed to be about 1,000 of the dolphins alive. Leang Seng said it appeared unlikely Cambodia could save its population because villagers dependent on fish for protein ignored orders not to spread nets in areas where the dolphin lived.
Feb 15, 06: Manatee deaths jumped by a third in January compared with the same month last year, but exactly what killed half the animals remains unknown, state wildlife officials said. Last month, 48 of the endangered animals are known to have died statewide, 12 more than in January 2005.
Half of the deaths were listed as cause unknown because the manatees' bodies were decomposed when they were retrieved. Six of the manatees died due to cold stress, a cause that surprised wildlife officials because January's weather was mild, Arrison said. Others died from watercraft injuries and natural causes.
Feb 15, 06: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has created two new national parks in the Amazon rain forest and expanded another to protect an environmentally sensitive region where the government plans a major highway project. Silva signed a decree placing 3.7 million acres of rain forest off limits for development. He also created four national forests where sustainable logging will be permitted and an environmental protection zone where development is allowed under strict regulation.
. . In total, the decree granted some form of environmental protection to 16 million acres -an area roughly twice the size of Massachusetts- on the western side of the so-far unpaved BR-163 highway. The highway, stretching from the midwestern city of Cuiaba to the jungle port of Santarem, cuts through the heart of the rain forest and environmentalists warn that paving it will open a swath of destruction across the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness. Environmentalists, however, estimate that each road cut into the rain forest causes destruction for 30 miles on each side within a few years as invaders arrive to cut trees.
Feb 14, 06: Ancient Native Americans hunted some species of birds and fish almost to extinction in parts of California, according to research that challenges the Utopian myth that native people always lived in harmony with the land.
. . Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to localized extinction and wildlife returned to "fabulous abundances" only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s.
. . Broughton spent seven years studying thousands of bones of birds found in a Native American garbage dump in San Francisco Bay dating back 1,900 years. He said large birds and birds that lived closer to humans were hunted first and as their numbers shrank native Americans went further afield for geese, sea ducks and cormorant chicks on island breeding colonies. He believes California's wildlife rebounded only after early European explorers came into contact with natives in the 1500s and infected them with diseases such as smallpox and malaria that killed off up to 90% of the population. As a result, hunting diminished and by the mid-1800s geese and ducks "were so abundant you could kill them with a club or stick."
Feb 14, 06: Research into the effect of sound in the oceans on marine mammals should be commissioned by the UK Government, a report recommends. The Inter-Agency Committee (IACMST) brings together experts from government departments and academia and reports to the government's Office of Science and Technology. Its new report identifies 13 cases of strandings by whales and dolphins which appear to have been linked to specific sources of noise; most of those sources involved naval vessels.
. . Post-mortem evidence gathered after a number of whales beached themselves during military exercises in the Canary Islands four years ago indicated the presence of tiny gas bubbles in the animals' internal organs, particularly the liver, which scientists believe is linked somehow to sonar.
. . Legal cases have been brought against the US Navy, while in the UK, conservation groups are pressing for a Parliamentary inquiry.
Feb 14, 06: The American Bald Eagle, after battling back from the threat of extinction because of habitat loss and DDT, took another step toward coming off the endangered species list. The Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service issued draft voluntary guidelines spelling out how landowners, land managers and others should protect the bird once it no longer is safeguarded by the 1973 law. It also proposed prohibitions on "disturbing" the bald eagle, which could include anything that would disrupt its breeding, feeding or sheltering or cause injury, death or nest abandonment.
Jan 26, 06: An endangered species of red fox found only in Ethiopia may be wiped out unless it is protected from domestic animals bringing rabies into national parks, a senior wildlife expert said.
Jan 24, 06: Germany's forests are in a worrying state and nearly one third of all trees are showing signs of damage. The situation among oak trees is of particular concern, with half in poor condition, the study carried out by the agriculture ministry in 2005 found. The main causes of the damage were air pollution from motor vehicles and contamination of the soil from agriculture. The state of oak trees had worsened dramatically, while 20% of fir trees were in a poor condition compared with 17% in 2004.
Jan 24, 06: Costs of safeguarding the world's fast-disappearing coral reefs and mangroves are small compared to the benefits they provide from tourism to fisheries, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said. The report, part of a recent trend trying to place a value on the natural world, said that pollution, global warming and expanding human settlements along coasts were among mounting threats to reefs and mangroves.
Jan 23, 06: The dramatic collapse of orangutan populations has been linked to human activity, new genetic evidence shows. Researchers report that a population crash occurred during the past 200 years, coinciding with deforestation in the same area. By collecting the orangutans' hair and feces, the researchers were able to extract DNA to create genetic profiles, which could then be used to study genetic diversity.
. . When north Borneo became part of the British Empire in the late 19th Century, deforestation began in earnest. In recent years, conservationists have linked the orangutans' decline to forest clearance for palm oil plantations, which produce the raw materials used for products like lipstick and soap.
. . Orangutan numbers are now put at just 50,000, according to The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation which is published by the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies. Professor Bruford warns that the animals' habitat needs to be better preserved, and that steps should be taken to re-establish corridors between fragmented forest patches. He says it may even be necessary to move orangutans around to prevent inbreeding.
Jan 20, 06: Alaska: A survey of beluga whales in Cook Inlet finds that numbers remain stagnant and could be declining despite a lengthy effort to get the white whales to rebound.
Jan 17, 06: Whale sharks spotted off the coast of Australia are getting smaller, researchers said. In a decade, the average size recorded by observers has shrunk from 7m to 5m. Whale sharks, the world's largest fish, are caught for food in some east Asian countries and Australian researchers suspect this is causing a decline. "Now, if you consider that the sharks probably aren't sexually reproductive or mature until they're 6 or 7m long --that's a very worrying sign."
. . Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are filter feeders, eating small marine organisms such as krill. They can live for up to 150 years, attaining lengths of more than 15m, and are believed to reach sexual maturity around the age of 30. Under the IUCN Red List of threatened species, they are categorized as "vulnerable" to extinction.
Jan 17, 06: Sensors can inform scientists about changes in coral. With the ecology of coral reefs around the globe increasingly under pressure, scientists on Australia's Great Barrier Reef are establishing a network of sensors to better understand this beautiful part of the underwater world. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) is working with James Cook University on a project called Digital Skins.
. . Smart sensors, developed originally for use in nuclear power stations, are placed in the ocean and also in water catchments on the mainland. They are able to communicate with each other to monitor events such as coral bleaching as they happen. "One of our problems is that we tend to monitor after things happen, and so what we see is not so much the cause as the effect." Each sensor in the skin has its own numerical address and operating system. Using a global position system, the sensors know exactly where they are. Parameters such as salinity, temperature and nutrient levels are measured.
. . With 20% of the world's coral reefs already damaged and a further 50% under threat, the knowledge gained from the project could have profound implications for the future of coral around the globe.
Jan 12, 06: The world's largest wetland, Brazil's Pantanal, is being destroyed by increased farming, ranching and mining, according to a report by the environmental watchdog Conservation International. The threat mirrors the more publicized situation in the Amazon, where ranchers and loggers have cleared vast areas of the rain forest at an alarming rate.
. . The Pantanal, an area of low-lying forests, marshes, and dry plains, covers about 77,230 square miles in the western Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul near the borders with Bolivia and Paraguay. It is home to a huge variety of wildlife, including jaguars, anteaters, tapirs and crocodiles, and it floods in the rainy season.
. . The Conservation International report said deforestation had destroyed 17% of the natural vegetation of the Pantanal and if it continued unchecked, all the original forest would disappear within 45 years. It mentioned the hyacinth macaw, which is threatened with extinction because the manduvi tree where it shelters and breeds is being wiped out.
Jan 11, 06: Wildlife biologist David E. Naugle said that if global temperatures rise, duck breeding grounds in North America will dry up, greatly reducing duck populations. He said the best way to solve the problem is to work with other countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
. . The research focused on the prairie pothole region, which includes parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The region, which includes large swaths of wetlands, is the breeding ground for 50% to 80% of the ducks that migrate to Arkansas each year, he said. A 95-year climate history of the region shows that it has become warmer on average, he said.
. . Researchers produced computer models that tested what would happen if average temperatures rose 3 degrees Celsius. The result: the available breeding ground for ducks would shrink dramatically. The breeding ground would shrink even further if precipitation decreased 20% at the same time, he said.
. . Last month, an aerial survey in Arkansas counted 289,589 ducks, about half as many as last year.
Jan 11, 06: An infectious fungus aggravated by global warming has killed entire populations of frogs in Central and South America and driven some species to extinction, scientists said. "This is the first clear evidence that widespread extinction is taking place because of global warming", Dr Alan Pounds, an ecologist of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, said.
. . Warmer temperatures increased cloud cover over the tropical mountain which the scientists believe promoted conditions to spur the growth of the chytrid fungus that kills frogs. They are confident that global warming is a key factor in the disappearance of many amphibian populations in tropical forests.
. . About a third of the 5,743 known species of frogs, toads and other amphibians are classified as threatened. Up to 167 species may already be extinct and another 113 species have not been found in recent years. Habitat loss is the greatest threat to amphibians but fungal disease is also a serious problem.
Jan 11, 06: Norway is to build a "doomsday vault" in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels.
. . Built with Fort Knox-type security, the three-million-dollar vault will be designed to hold around two million seeds representing all known varieties of the world's crops. They are the precious food plants that have emerged from 10,000 years of selection by farmers.
. . It will be built deep in permafrost in the side of a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, 1,000 km from the North Pole, next year.
Jan 10, 06: It's taken just a generation to virtually wipe out Canadian populations of deep-sea fish that weren't even considered desirable before the 1970s, a study finds.
. . Commercially fished species, such as the roundnose grenadier and the onion-eye grenadier, declined 99.6% and 93.3% respectively from 1978 to 2003. Accidentally snared fish, such as the blue hake, spiny eel and spiny-tail skate, declined as much as 98% from 1987 to 1994, say researchers at Memorial University in Newfoundland.
. . Deep-sea fish, which reproduce later at age 15 and up than other species, were mostly ignored until the 1970s. That was because fishing in more shallow waters off the coasts was easier and more reliable. But as those fish populations began to decline in the 1970s, harvesting shifted to deep-sea species.
Jan 10, 06: Madagascar has reached a milestone in its plan to triple its nature reserves by the end of 2008, protecting a million extra hectares since the plan was drafted, a top conservation group said. President Marc Ravalomanana pledged to boost the huge Indian Ocean island's protected forests and wetlands to 6.0 million hectares from its then 1.7 million. "With the new system, local communities are involved in making protected areas. This approach enables better enforcement by motivating them (to protect wildlife)."
. . Three quarters of Madagascar's tens of thousands of plant and animal species are found nowhere else, making it second only to Brazil for unique biodiversity. But wildlife on the world's fourth largest island is under growing threat from poverty and population pressure. 75% of its 17 million people live on less than a dollar a day, most of them eking out a living as subsistence farmers, where competition for land is encroaching on the island's remaining forest.
. . Madagascar is known to have at least 10,000 plant species, 316 reptiles and 109 bird species found nowhere else. Conservationists say traditional "slash-and-burn" agriculture, in which forests are cleared for planting subsistence crops, has decimated the island's rainforest cover, threatening many species with extinction.
Jan 9, 06: The "King of the Beasts" may not rule beyond this century unless urgent action is taken to protect remaining lion habitat and halt conflict between humans and the big cats, a leading conservationist said. "Lions have lost 80% of their historic range in the last century, and we don't want the next century to be a repeat", said Kristin Nowell, a member of the cat specialist group of the World Conservation Union, the world's largest network of conservation groups.
. . Lions are considered to be threatened everywhere in Africa but are at particular risk in its densely populated west. "The estimates are that there are between 23,000 to 40,000 lions in Africa. Of that, only 2,000 to 4,000 are in west and central Africa and the rest in are east and southern Africa."
Jan 8, 06: To protect the marbled murrelet, logging stopped across wide swaths of coastal old-growth forests in Oregon. But a new study indicates the small seabird may have been forced into decline not just by logging, but also by overfishing.
. . Fleets that hauled sardines from the West Coast may have forced the murrelet to rely on poorer quality food, undermining their breeding, scientists from the University of California at Berkeley say. If correct, the theory may explain the dwindling of other populations of coastal birds, a point the researchers are now beginning to examine.
. . The study does not contradict the earlier assumption that logging has hurt the murrelet by eroding its habitat. Rather, the research shows that the seabird probably endured a "double whammy" from the slashing of its habitat and erosion of its prey.
. . The scientists reached their conclusion after examining the chemical makeup of feathers from 136 murrelets in museum collections dating from 1895 to 1911, before the arrival of large West Coast fisheries. They compared those feathers with the plumage from 201 modern birds.
Jan 6, 06: Marine reserves give a boost to coral reefs as well as fish stocks, new research shows. Scientists had been concerned that large fish returning to protected areas of the Caribbean could disturb the delicate balance of reefs. They feared that larger predators would eat the smaller fish which graze on coral and keep down harmful algae. But a study published in the journal Science found that coral in a marine reserve in the Bahamas is flourishing.
Jan 6, 06: Conservationists sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, seeking protection for a rare butterfly they say is threatened by off-road vehicles at one of the largest sand dunes in the West. Environmentalists want the agency to declare the Sand Mountain blue butterfly an endangered species because, they say, its habitat is being destroyed at the only place it is known to live the Sand Mountain Recreation Area in western Nevada.
Jan 5, 06: Timber researchers hope to create wood sniffers that could track lumber from forest to front-room furniture the way bloodhounds track criminals -by their scent. The devices are still in the imagination of their developers. They could allow the timber industry to certify that individual products come from woods managed in an environmentally sound way. They could make it harder to move pirated logs, reducing theft and illegal logging. Or they could help the industry be better at marketing and management.
. . So far, the $8,000 device he's using can track one distinct scent, but it can't deal with combinations of more. Five years from now, Murphy hopes to be able to track 25 aromas in various combinations. That would allow timber trackers to tag more than 33 million logs with a unique scent for each, he said.
Jan 5, 06: Protected ocean areas are needed to save deep-sea fish which have been driven to near extinction by commercial fishing, scientists said. Offish that live near the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, they found that five species have declined by 89-98% between 1978 and 1994.
. . They analyzed data on the five species of fish: the roundnose grenadier, onion-eye grenadier, blue hake, spiny eel and spinytail skate. Based on their findings, all can be classified as critically endangered according to guidelines set by The World Conservation Union (IUCN), a Swiss-based, multinational organization founded in 1948.
. . "The declines occurred on a timescale equal to, or slightly less than, a single generation of these species", said Devine. Deep-sea fish grow slowly, mature late, live long and have low fertility rates which make them very vulnerable to over-fishing.
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