EXTINCTION NEWS
. . A finding of chaos theory is that the more complex a system is, the more stable it is.
EXTINCTION NEWS '07
See extinction news back to '04.
Also see exotic species over-population.
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Dec 29, 07: Some UK wildlife species will have to find new habitats as climate change causes temperatures to rise, the Wildlife Trusts have warned. Animals, birds and plants will have to move north and westwards to find suitable habitats, the trusts say.
. . The Wildlife Trusts says that while some species are already moving, development and loss of habitat is preventing movement for others. The voluntary organization is trying to link up natural areas of woodland, heathland and pasture so creatures like pipistrelle and barbastelle bats and sand lizards can extend their habitats.
. . Wildlife made a similar move in search of food and homes following the last Ice Age, the trusts said. New species are also arriving. Upland birds and animals such as the mountain hare which could migrate uphill may become isolated at the mountain tops, the trusts said. A lack of snow could threaten birds such as the ptarmigan which turns white in winter to hide from predators.
Dec 27, 07: A conservation group sued the Interior Department seeking documents about decisions on endangered species the group alleges were tainted by political pressure from a former senior Interior official.
Dec 27, 07: Almost 80% of the Earth's surface has experienced a sharp fall in the number of large mammals as a result of human activities, a study suggests. By examining records dating back to AD1500, US researchers found that at least 35% of mammals over 20kg had seen their range cut by more than half. South-East Asia only had 1% of the mega fauna that roamed the region in AD1500.
. . They said urgent action was needed to protect the animals, which were being hunted or suffering habitat loss. "Perhaps the most striking result of our study is that [the] 109 places that still retain the same roster of large mammals as in AD1500 are either small, intensively managed reserved or places of extremes", revealed lead author John Morrison, WWF-US's director of conservation measures. "Remote areas are either too hot, dry, wet, frozen [or] swampy to support intensive activities."
. . In the new paper, scientists explained why large mammals were so important for maintaining the ecological equilibrium. "Large carnivores frequently shape the number, distribution and behavior of their prey", the researchers wrote. "Large herbivores function as ecological engineers by changing the structure and species composition of surrounding vegetation. "Through strategic re-introductions - such as returning wolves to Yellowstone --we can restore... places missing one or two species and recover the ecological fabric of these important conservation landscapes."
. . Just as the tiger and the rhinoceros depend on creatures you cannot see without a microscope and would not willingly give house room to if you could, so does the polar bear stand, literally, on a patchwork lattice of invisible, miniscule life.
. . Life-forms such as polychetes (or bristleworms), copepods and amphipods that live just under the ice, around its edge, or even inside the floes themselves. "There are polychetes, for example, which have juveniles or larvae that instead of living in the water column as they usually do, they go into the ice", Bodil Bluhm relates. "And the sea ice consists of crystals, of course; and between the crystals, there's a liquid network of brine channels, and this network houses algae, and the ice algae are abundant at a time when the water column has very little food."
. . "Larvae in the sea ice are probably at the top of the food chain; these juveniles", says Professor Gradinger. "They are living on algae, and you find bigger algae in the ice channels, bigger by a factor of 10, than you will find in the water column.
. . If Arctic temperatures continue rising, if the ice melts earlier and freezes later each year, conditions will change for the polychetes. "Eventually you would run into a mismatch, where the ice melts before they're ready to have their larvae", comments Professor Bluhm. In the central reaches of the Arctic, varieties of amphipods, tiny crustaceans, pick algae from the bottom of the ice. They are eaten in turn by Arctic cod, from whence the food chain leads to birds, seals, and polar bears.
Dec 27, 07: The widow of TV "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin announced she will launch non-lethal research of whales in Antarctic waters next year in hopes of showing that Japan's scientific whale kill is a sham.
Dec 24, 07: Plans are in the pipeline for beavers to be released into the Scottish wild for the first time in 500 years. The Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland believe the animals will improve the eco-system and boost tourism. Beavers were hunted to extinction in Scotland in the 16th Century. The mammals have been successfully reintroduced elsewhere in Europe, including parts of Germany and the Netherlands.
. . Beavers are thought to play an important role in aquatic and wetland eco-systems, and on the wider biodiversity of the area in which they live.
. . Approval for the trial reintroduction would see 15 to 20 beavers from Norway introduced to the trial site following a period of quarantine.
Dec 24, 07: Sucking up sugarcane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest.
. . Shows that feature elephants painting pictures, playing polo and whirling hoola hoops on their trunks have become an economic lifeline for more than a thousand domesticated elephants, who lost their incomes when Thailand banned logging in 1989. But entertaining locals and tourists has become a life or death business for elephants and their keepers
. . Asia's pachyderms, who are endangered throughout their 13 range states, and ten times less numerous than their African cousins. Estimates put the total wild Asian elephant population at 30,000 to 50,000 and captives at 12,000 to 15,000, he said. In Thailand, where elephants have been domesticated for more than 4,000 years, there are probably 1,000 domesticated or captive elephants, compared to 3,000 left in the wild.
Dec 24, 07: Federal marine mammal experts in Alaska studying the effects of global warming on walrus, polar bears and ice seals warn there are limit to the protections they can provide. They can restrict hunters, ship traffic and offshore petroleum activity, but that may not be enough if the animals' basic habitat —-sea ice-— disappears every summer.
. . Instead of spending the summer spread over sea ice, thousands of walruses were stranded on land in unprecedented numbers for up to three months. 3,000 to 4,000 mostly young walrus died this year in stampedes on land.
. . Polar bears hunt and breed on sea ice and are poor candidates for survival if they are based on land, where grizzly bears dominate. Polar bears' primary prey are ringed seals, the only seals that thrive under sea ice. They dig breathing holes with their thick claws and create lairs on top of the ice where they birth their young. With warming, those lairs collapse earlier in springtime, leaving hairless pups susceptible to freezing, foxes, polar bears and even ravens and gulls.
. . And then there's the Pacific walrus, which face at least three problems: Their ocean habitat may be changing, they may be forced to shore for long periods, and their weakest members are in danger when crowded on land.
. . Walruses dive to the ocean bottom to eat clams, snails, crabs, shrimps and worms. Research suggests that diminished sea ice and warmer water may decrease plankton, which are food for creatures on the bottom.
. . Unlike seals, walruses can't swim indefinitely. Females and their young traditionally use ice as a diving platform, riding it north like a moving sidewalk over offshore foraging areas, first in the northern Bering Sea, then into the Chukchi Sea. If animals are on shore for three months every summer, they can't reach offshore foraging areas. An adult walrus can eat 200 pounds of clams in a day. If the walrus population stays within 50km of shore in summers, they could overharvest the available clams and other food.
Dec 24, 07: Thailand's parks and wildlife reserves could hold up to 2,000 wild tigers, about three times their current level, but only if the government steps up efforts to control poaching, researchers said. The country's Western Forest Complex, 6,900 square miles of protected jungle habitat, currently holds 720 tigers.
. . Tiger numbers have plummeted across Asia, from 100,000 more than 150 years ago to only about 5,000 today. From India to Indonesia, tigers are mostly under threat due to habitat loss and poachers who sell their skins and body parts to booming medicinal and souvenir markets, mostly in China. Part of the problem, they said, is that the courts until now have refused to jail tiger traffickers, choosing instead to impose small fines.
Dec 21, 07: A controversial Japanese mission to hunt humpback whales in the Antarctic has been temporarily abandoned, a top government official says --although the fleet will still hunt about 1,000 other whales in the area.
. . The move comes after pressure from the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Japan is regularly condemned for its annual whaling missions. But this year's Antarctic expedition was particularly controversial because, in addition to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales, the fleet intended to kill up to 50 humpbacks.
. . It was the first time Japan had targeted the humpbacks since a moratorium was introduced in the mid-1960s --when the species had been hunted almost to extinction.
Dec 21, 07: Group seeks protection for ribbon seals: Frustrated by a lack of regulations to limit global warming, a conservation group is looking to spur action with the aid of Arctic animals.
Dec 19, 07: Australia will send a patrol ship and aircraft to monitor Japan's whaling fleet off Antarctica, the government in Canberra has said.
. . Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the vessels would collect evidence to assess whether legal action could be taken against the whalers. Australia would also lead a formal international protest against Japan over the issue, the minister said. Several nations have condemned Japan's annual hunt, which it says is for scientific research purposes. Japan's fleet set sail in November, aiming to kill over 1,000 whales.
Dec 17, 07: Clark Haynes is hoping for a wet spring and more money from Congress. If both fail to materialize, the assistant director for the state Department of Agriculture's forest health protection programs says next year's gypsy moth season could be the state's worst.
. . The number of acres defoliated by gypsy moths has steadily increased. This year 78,000 acres were harmed. Haynes predicts that number could easily reach 160,000 acres next year if dry conditions prevail. West Virginia has had three dry springs in a row. During that time, the number of acres defoliated increased substantially per year: 2,641 in 2005; 17,272 in 2006; and about 78,000 this year. Oak is the favorite target, but the caterpillars will eat about anything.
. . Adding to Haynes' concern is President Bush's proposed federal budget. Funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's gypsy moth program has been drastically cut, he said. Proposed funding for a nationwide cooperative suppression program has been cut and a second program designed to control the moth's spread has been cut $10 million to $6 million, Haynes said.
Dec 13, 07: In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers.
. . Unlike seals, walruses cannot swim indefinitely. The giant, tusked mammals typically clamber onto the sea ice to rest, or haul themselves onto land for just a few weeks at a time. Walruses came ashore earlier and stayed longer, congregating in extremely high numbers, with herds as big as 40,000 at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a "haulout" for a century, scientists said.
. . Walruses are vulnerable to stampedes when they gather in such large numbers. The appearance of a polar bear, a hunter or a low-flying airplane can send them rushing to the water. Sure enough, scientists received reports of hundreds and hundreds of walruses dead of internal injuries suffered in stampedes. Many of the youngest and weakest animals, mostly calves born in the spring, were crushed.
. . If the trend continues, and walruses no longer have summer sea ice from which to dive for clams and snails, they could strip coastal areas of food, and that could reduce their numbers even further.
Dec 14, 07: As many as 26 endangered crocodiles have been found dead over the last three days in northern India and experts attribute the rare mass deaths to cirrhosis of the liver, authorities said. Poisoning was not suspected as fish in the river had not died, Suman said, adding that scientists would test the water for the presence of any liver-damaging toxins. Cirrhosis is marked by the loss of liver tissue, leading to the loss of function of the vital organ.
Dec 13, 07: Infestations of sea lice at salmon farms on Canada's west coast are threatening local wild pink salmon populations and could result in their extinction in another four years, Canadian researchers said.
Dec 11, 07: Scientists are trying to determine what caused Lake Champlain's populations of American eels to decline to almost nothing over the last two decades. And biologists and fisheries experts from Vermont and Quebec are trying to come up with a plan to bring back the population of the snakelike fish, which until the early 1980s were so abundant commercial anglers would harvest tons of them every year. By the early 1990s Quebec banned the commercial fishing of eels.
. . American eels start life in the Sargasso Sea, an area in the Atlantic Ocean between the West Indies and the Azores. After hatching, eel larvae float on ocean currents to East Coast rivers, including the St. Lawrence. Historically, immature female eels swam up the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers and lived 10 to 20 years in Lake Champlain before returning to the Sargasso Sea.
. . Theories include climate change, pollution, and overfishing of young eels. But the decline could also be due to the reconstruction in the 1960s of two hydroelectric dams on the Richelieu River in Quebec. The dams could have prevented the eels from reaching Lake Champlain.
. . A decade ago, Hydro-Quebec installed an eel ladder at one of the dams. "Within 10 days we measured eels going up the ladder", said Quebec fisheries biologist Pierre Dumont. In 2001 a second ladder was placed on the other dam.
Dec 11, 07: Indonesia has begun a 10-year program to save endangered orangutans from extinction by protecting tropical jungle habitat from logging, mining and palm oil plantations, its president said.
Dec 11, 07: Saving the world's remaining tigers will require as much as $500 million a year, but average annual international funding only comes to $5 million, a conservation group said.
Dec 7, 07: Brazil announced a sharp drop in the rate of Amazon deforestation but environmentalists warned it could be a short-term trend masking the broader threat against the rainforest.
Dec 6, 07: At a time when a quarter of the world's fisheries are considered depleted, can commercial fishermen make more money by fishing less? A study says they can, with one condition. They must be in a cooperative fishery, like those operating in New Zealand and Australia, where individual fishermen own a share of the total harvest —-known as individual transferable quotas-— rather than the competitive fisheries more common in the US, where it is a race to catch the most fish.
. . The idea is that when there are more fish and no race to catch them, fishermen spend less on fuel and other costs chasing far and wide to fill their nets. Leaving more fish in the sea —-a fishery management target called maximum economic yield-— leads to higher profits than the traditional target known as maximum sustainable yield, the study said.
. . The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has classified 25% of the world's fish stocks as depleted, meaning populations are below a level that produces a maximum sustained yield.
Dec 6, 07: Police raided clandestine sawmills near a threatened nature reserve where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter, arresting 45 people and confiscating enough illegally logged wood to fill 600 heavy trucks, the government said.
Dec 6, 07: More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps.
. . While humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve.
. . "A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble", said Stephen E. Williams, the director of the Center for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook U in Australia. "I don't think there is any doubt we will see a lot of (extinctions)", he said. "But even before a species goes extinct, there are a lot of impacts.
. . Globally, 30% of the Earth's species could disappear if temperatures rise 4.5 degrees F —-and up to 70%, if they rise 6.3 degrees F, a U.N. network of scientists reported last month. It wouldn't be the first time. There have been five major extinctions in the last 520 million years, and four of them have been linked to warmer tropical seas.
. . The hardest hit will include plants and animals in colder climates or at higher elevations and those with limited ranges or little tolerance for temperature change.
. . Butterflies that lived at high altitudes in North America and southern France have vanished, and polar bears and penguins are watching their habitat melt away. The CO2 emissions that are a leading cause of global warming also turn oceans more acidic, killing coral reefs and the microscopic plankton that blue whales and other marine mammals depend on for food.
. . A few will benefit, chiefly those that breed quickly, already exist in varied climates and are able to adapt swiftly to changing conditions, scientists said. Think cockroaches, pigeons and weeds.
. . The spread of a deadly fungus that thrives in warmer conditions has at least decimated [reduced by 10%] some frog populations in South America, Africa and Europe.
. . Then there are Australia's flying foxes. More than 3,500 gray-headed and black flying foxes —-huge bats-— died in 2002 after temperatures rose above 107 degrees Fahrenheit in New South Wales.
. . In Australia's Queensland state, temperatures are projected to rise 5.4 degrees F, an outcome that could drive half the species to extinction in a mountainous stretch of tropical rain forest.
. . As temperatures rise, animals are seeking cooler climes. In a study of more than 1,500 species, U of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan concluded that 40% had shifted their ranges, mostly toward the poles.
. . A dozen bird species have moved about 12 miles north in Britain, and 39 species of butterflies have shifted north by as much as 125 miles in Europe and North America. Millions of Mediterranean jellyfish have turned up off Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Humboldt squid, which can grow up to 7 feet long, has moved up the California coast.
Dec 5, 07: Police in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state say they have arrested 16 people in connection with hunting tigers and smuggling skin and bones.
. . India's last major survey in 2002 put tiger numbers at 3,642. In May, a census commissioned by the government showed that India had far fewer tigers living in the wild than had been thought. It is estimated that there were 40,000 tigers in India a century ago.
Nov 30, 07: Four rare gorillas arrive back in Cameroon, five years after they were smuggled to Malaysia.
Nov 30, 07: A protected colony of rare fruit bats in Cyprus has almost been wiped out by unidentified gunmen using them for target practice, conservation groups and authorities said.
Nov 30, 07: 53 bird species face extinction in S.C. Nearly 30% of the nation's most threatened birds species can be found in South Carolina, according to a conservation report.
Nov 30, 07: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from a former senior Interior Department official.
. . In a letter to Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., the agency acknowledged that the actions had been "inappropriately influenced" and that "revising the seven identified decisions is supported by scientific evidence and the proper legal standards." The reversal affects the protection for species including the white-tailed prairie dog, the Preble's meadow jumping mouse and the Canada lynx.
. . The rulings came under scrutiny last spring after an Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were being pressured to alter their findings on endangered species by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service. MacDonald resigned her position last May.
. . Rahall in a statement said that MacDonald, who was a civil engineer, "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program." He called MacDonald's involvement in species protection cases over her three-year tenure as an example of "this administration's penchant for torpedoing science."
. . Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists said the acknowledgment of seven instances of wrongdoing "does not begin to plumb the depths of what's wrong" at the wildlife agency and its implementation of the Endangered Species Act. There are at least 30 cases "where we have evidence of interference" over the last seven years, maintained Grifo, director of the group's scientific integrity program.
. . MacDonald resigned in May after the Interior Department's inspector general rebuked her for pressuring wildfire agency scientists to alter their findings about endangered species and leaking information about species decisions to industry officials. The IG found that she had broken federal rules by those actions.
. . In her three years on the job, MacDonald also was heavily involved in delisting the Sacramento splittail, a fish found only in California's Central Valley where she owned an 80-acre farm on which the fish live.
Nov 29, 07: National wildlife refuges more than make up for their cost to taxpayers by returning about $4 in economic activity for every $1 the government spends, according to a federal study.
Nov 25, 07: Mexican President Felipe Calderon unveiled a sweeping plan today to curb logging and protect millions of monarch butterflies that migrate to the mountains of central Mexico each winter.
Nov 26, 07: Marine scientists called for a $2-3 billion study of threats such as overfishing and climate change to the oceans, saying they were as little understood as Luna.
Nov 24, 07: Three adult black rhinos have been shot at the Imire Safari park in Zimbabwe. The park, 100km southeast of Harare, is home to one of the only breeding centers. The shooting has brought the local breeding program to a standstill. "We've been left with four little orphan rhinos, which won't be able to reproduce for about 20 years."
. . There are only about 3,000 black rhinos left in the wild, and the species is listed as Critically Endangered. Last year, one of the four sub-species was declared as "already extinct".
. . Black rhinos are sometimes shot by poachers, who sell their horns as dagger-handles or for use in Chinese medicine, but the Imire rhinos had recently been de-horned as a precaution, so they didn't have any value to hunters. This has led to fears that black rhinos are instead becoming a target in Zimbabwe's battles over land-ownership.
Nov 19, 07: To help protect the endangered bonobo, a great ape that is the most closely related to humans and is found only in this Central African country. U.S. agencies, conservation groups and the Congolese government have come together to set aside 11,803 square miles of tropical rain forest, the U.S.-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative said. The area amounts to just over 1% of vast Congo.
. . Bonobos —-often lauded as the "peaceful ape"-— are known for their matriarchal society in which female leaders work to avoid conflict, and their sex-loving lifestyle.
. . The bonobo population is believed to have declined sharply in the last 30 years, though surveys have been hard to carry out in war-ravaged central Congo. Estimates range from 60,000 to fewer than 5,000 living, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Nov 19, 07: The UK, Australia and New Zealand have sharply criticized Japan for the launch of its largest ever whaling expedition. The hunting fleet has instructions to kill up to 1,000 whales. Humpback whales will be hunted for the first time in over 40 years. Japan says the five-month hunt is for research purposes and that numbers are too small to have a major impact on populations.
. . As well as up to 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales, it will kill up to 50 humpback whales for the first time since a moratorium was introduced in 1963. The species had been hunted almost to extinction before the ban.
. . New Zealand PM Helen Clark said this claim was "deception" and that the whalers should not have left port.
. . Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said there was no evidence of Japan producing any data from its research. "Scientific whaling is a phrase they use to camouflage the fact that they still indulge in whaling." He said he had asked to see the Japanese ambassador but he ruled out deploying military defence forces, saying that Australia would not go to war with Japan over the issue.
. . Britain has said it is considering high-level diplomatic action to protest against the hunt. Greenpeace is hoping to locate the fleet in order to shoot video footage, but claims the ships have turned off their identification equipment, making them hard to find. The more radical Sea Shepherd group said its activists will attempt to intercept the ships once the hunt is under way.
. . Greenpeace said its protest ship Esperanza was searching for the fleet south of Japanese territorial waters and would shadow the ships to the South Pacific to try to reduce their catch.
. . The four-ship expedition also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever "scientific" whale hunt. The Japanese hunt, which puts meat from the whales on the commercial market, is growing rapidly despite an increasingly vocal anti-whaling movement. This winter season's target of up to 1,035 whales is more than double the number the country hunted a decade ago.
Nov 19, 07: Catches of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea will not be cut, despite evidence that fishermen caught more than they were allowed in 2007. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (Iccat) made the decision during its annual meeting.
. . Environment groups described the decision as a "shocking failure".
. . EU fleets caught about 4,000 tons above their 2007 quotas; seven nations face legal action as as result. The US and Canadian governments, supported by environmental groups, proposed a moratorium on bluefin catches to allow stocks time to recover.
. . Instead, Iccat allowed requests for small quota increases. These decisions brought ringing condemnation from environmental groups. "Iccat has proved itself to be entirely incompetent, and has failed again in its duty to sustainably manage our common marine resource", thundered WWF Mediterranean's head of fisheries Sergei Tudela. Greenpeace was equally dismissive. "The northern bluefin is on the road to extinction."
Nov 16, 07: The US is calling for a ban on the fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. A three-to-five-years ban is being proposed to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat). The call comes amid deep concerns that the stock may collapse if the level of overfishing continues.
. . The European Commission recently closed its bluefin tuna fishery for this year after quota limits had been exceeded.
Nov 15, 07: Two environmental groups are asking the Interior Department to declare loggerhead sea turtles that inhabit the Atlantic coast officially endangered, maintaining that tens of thousands of the turtles are killed annually by commercial fishing and because of coastal development. The loggerhead sea turtle already is classified as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act, but environmentalists say a higher level of protection is needed.
. . The environmental groups argue in their petition that climate change may put the loggerhead in yet more peril. If sea levels rise along coasts where there is development, beaches the turtles use for nesting may disappear and even a 1 degree temperature increase could significantly affect their reproduction.
Nov 14, 07: A record 30.5 billion tons of industrial, farming and human waste were dumped last year into China's Yangtze River, the country's longest, state media reported. The quantity was twice as much as two decades ago and an increase of 900 million tons, or 3.1%, from the previous year.
. . The widespread dumping of industrial, agricultural and domestic waste has seriously polluted the Yangtze, a situation some ecologists warn will be worsened by the massive Three Gorges dam, which they say will create a "giant toilet bowl" of trapped sewage behind it.
. . The Asian Development Bank last month warned that water pollution in China, driven by rapid industrialization and urbanization, had reached "alarming" levels. Numerous unique species have been driven to the brink of extinction in the river, including the white-fin dolphin and Yangtze river sturgeon.
Nov 14, 07: The number of endangered Steller sea lions along a long stretch of Alaska coastline remains stagnant, federal scientists said. Previous surveys had shown the western population of Steller sea lions —-listed as endangered since 1997-— was growing at about 3% a year.
Nov 13, 07: Giant pandas are being forced to move from a remote mountainous area in southwestern China due to food shortages as their staple bamboo withers, an animal expert said.
. . Most of the pandas' favorite arrow bamboo in a 217,000 square-mile region of Sichuan province is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating. Pandas will not touch the plant once it flowers.
. . Hundreds of pandas died of starvation in Sichuan in the 1980s when arrow bamboo in some reserves flowered and then died.
Nov 11, 07: Giant pandas are being forced to move from a remote mountainous area in southwestern China due to food shortages as their staple bamboo withers, an animal expert said.
Nov 11, 07: Habitat loss and commerical hunting have been blamed for a decline in the number of sun bears --the world's smallest species of bear. An assessment by World Conservation Union (IUCN) has re-classified the animal as "vulnerable". Experts estimate that sun bears, found in south-east Asia, have declined by at least 30% in the past 30 years. The IUCN's bear expert groups warn that six out of the world's eight bear species are threatened with extinction.
Nov 9, 07: Assessment and recovery teams hit the skies, waters and beaches today trying to contain the damage from a 58,000-gallon oil spill that has stained some of Northern California's coastline. The spill, caused by a tanker colliding with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, has fouled miles of coastline and could harm the wildlife system for years.
Nov 6, 07: Endangered humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of miles north of their usual habitat this summer in what environmentalists say is another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem.
. . Humpbacks were spotted over the summer in the Beaufort Sea east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the US.
. . Cacy also said fin whales were detected this summer by acoustic monitoring in the Chukchi Sea, more than 300 miles north of their normal range. Both humpback and fin whales normally stay south of the Bering Strait in Alaska waters.
. . Environmental groups are calling for more study of the endangered animals' habits before industrial activity is allowed to expand off Alaska's northern shores. No one was expecting humpbacks near the activity connected to Outer Continental Shelf lease sales.
. . Full-grown humpback whales average more than 40 feet long and weigh 25 to 35 tons. Fin whales are longer and more slender, growing to nearly 88 feet —-second only to blue whales.
Nov 6, 07: The number of loggerhead turtle nests in Florida was substantially lower in 2007 than in past years, according to preliminary numbers from scientists statewide.
Nov 6, 07: As many as 3,000 bluebill ducks have died along the western shore of Lake Winnibigoshish in northern Minnesota, and wildlife biologists say they were likely poisoned by a parasite present in snails.
Nov 6, 07: To avoid getting steamrollered by developers, ranchers, loggers, miners, oilmen, and biopirates, tribes across the Amazon Basin have begun acquiring high tech tools to defend themselves. Much of the help in this effort has come from the Amazon Conservation Team, a Virginia environmental and cultural preservation organization, which provided equipment, cartographic expertise, and financial assistance. Now dozens of men like Wuta are walking the forests, mapping their lands with the aid of portable GPS devices.
. . Of course, just because the tribes have mapped the lands doesn't mean they control all the legal rights to them. But it's a step in that direction. In Ecuador, the Shuar tribe, long embroiled in a struggle with American oil companies, was recently granted title to its communal lands, as mapped by GPS. The massive sandals-on-the-ground charting campaign and delineation of once imprecise boundaries have also given the tribes greater confidence in asserting their interests —-in some instances, natives have driven out illegal miners and have established settlements and guard posts on their borders.
. . In addition to GPS mapping, tribes are using Google Earth as a tool for territorial vigilance. The app's satellite imagery can identify threats — an encroaching soy farm, say, or a river stained by the runoff from a gold mine. A few tribes in Brazil with Internet access are marking the coordinates of surreptitious activity they see in the images, then investigating on foot or passing the information to government enforcers.
. . Ultimately, though, this advanced technology may just help the Indians turn on the forest to enrich themselves. (And who can blame them, really?) Carrying a carved wooden cane and wearing slacks, a plaid shirt, and a Casio watch, the Trio's chief hints at this uncertain future when I ask whether his newfound territorial security makes him more likely to get into the business of extracting natural resources. Education and technology, he says, have helped his tribe make more-responsible decisions. He then adds, "The maps have helped us realize our assets."
Nov 5, 07: Salmon advocates filed a lawsuit to force the Bush administration to obey a 5-year-old court order requiring it to make permanent rules to keep agricultural pesticides from killing salmon.
. . Filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the lawsuit asks a judge to order NOAA Fisheries, the agency in charge of protecting salmon, to formally consult with the Environmental Protection Agency over the use of 37 pesticides. Several are commonly found in rivers around the country and can kill salmon at minute concentrations.
. . "Apparently what it takes to get this administration to do its job under (the Endangered Species Act) is to have someone there enforcing the law every step of the way", said Joshua Osborne-Klein, an attorney for Earthjustice.
Nov 1, 07: More than one in three of Europe's freshwater fish species faces extinction because ecosystems are being destroyed, the World Conservation Union said. Scientists from Switzerland and Germany have found that 200 of the 522 species of European freshwater fish are threatened by the rapid development of agriculture and industry over the past 100 years. The union, a network of nations, agencies and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries, said 12 species are already extinct.
Nov 1, 07: A vividly colored fish could be the key to saving the Caribbean's coral reefs from plummeting into terminal decline, scientists claim. Their research forecasts that reefs risk being damaged beyond repair by the influx of seaweed. But urgent action such as protecting parrotfish, which graze upon the floral invaders, may prevent the ecosystems from reaching this tipping point.
. . Professor Peter Mumby, a marine ecologist from Exeter U and lead author of the paper, said: "We are seeing more and more coral reefs becoming just overgrown with seaweed."
. . Reefs in the Caribbean are among some of the most heavily affected. They are rapidly transforming from coral-dominated domains into algal-flooded havens. The seaweed growth is boosted by human activity, such as fertilizers washing off from agricultural land into the coastal waters, and over-fishing.
. . "Then to compound these problems, you have the climate stresses that are more and more inevitable now, which cause major problems with warming waters and hurricanes." "We found you can push a reef so far and then it becomes extremely difficult for a reef to recover --it's like the straw that broke the camel's back."
. . "The key message is that you have to act fast. It is not OK to wait until a reef is in a degraded state and to say: 'now we are going to act'; we need to stop these reefs getting unhealthy in the first place."
. . "Parrotfish cruise around, grazing away much of the seaweed. They play a very important role in the ecosystem." However, these tropical fish are under threat. They are a sought-after delicacy in many parts of the Caribbean and are susceptible to becoming caught in fish traps. Professor Mumby said: "We need to manage them as a fishery and maintain large numbers of these fish.
Oct 29, 07: Researchers are studying a colony of bats that live in an underground concrete structure at the Hanford nuclear reservation in hopes of determining how to provide a new home for them once the structure is demolished.
Oct 29, 07: The Forever Wild Land Trust has purchased nearly 10,000 acres of mountain and aquatic habitat along the Coosa River to protect it from development, state conservation officials announced.
Oct 26, 07: Mankind's closest relatives are teetering on the brink of their first extinctions in more than a century, hunted by humans for food and medicine and squeezed from forest homes, a report on endangered primates said.
. . There are just a few dozen of the most threatened gibbons and langurs left, and one colobus may already have gone the way of the dodo, warned the report on the 25 most vulnerable primates. "With what we spend in one day in Iraq, we could fund primate conservation for the next decade for every endangered and critically endangered and vulnerable species out there."
. . China's environment and its animals are suffering from its rapid, dirty economic growth that may already have pushed a species of dolphin to extinction, scientists say. But although its Hainan gibbon is thought to be the most endangered of all primates, with fewer than 20 surviving, the country's efforts to save the golden monkeys of remote southwestern Yunnan province have set a global model.
. . "What they have done, which I find really amazing, is they have local villagers following these groups on a daily basis", Mittermeier said. "We are looking now at applying that in Vietnam, in Madagascar and a few other places."
. . He said climate change --a long-term threat to the most endangered species because it could wipe out the forests they survive in-- could also prove a "magnificent opportunity" if tropical forest protection and regrowth projects were included in U.N. programs to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Oct 25, 07: Grizzly bears in the region in and around Yellowstone National Park have suffered unusually high mortality rates so far this year, likely because of a dearth of natural food sources, a researcher said.
. . The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team is a group of researchers that has monitored grizzlies in Yellowstone since the bears were put on the endangered species list. It is funded by the U.S. Geological Survey. Earlier this year, Yellowstone grizzlies were taken off the endangered species list, a decision that is being challenged by environmental groups.
Oct 25, 07: A large stretch of the rugged, pristine northern shore of Lake Superior will become the world's largest freshwater marine protected area, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced.
Oct 23, 07: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today designated rocky stream banks and privately owned land in southeastern Puerto Rico as critical habitat for a threatened species of the coqui frog, a national symbol of the Caribbean island.
Oct 22, 07: With 90% of its wildlife found nowhere else, Madagascar is a powerful draw for poachers. Meanwhile, deforestation and other environmental assault has left only 10% of its original habitat to support all that life.
Oct 19, 07: The number of young cod in the North Sea has shown a slight rise for the second year in a row, research shows. But the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (Ices) warned that heavy cuts in cod catches were still needed to help numbers recover. It said numbers were still well below the historical average and called for a 50% cut on 2006 catch levels. Ices' findings will now be considered by EU ministers at the annual fishing quota negotiations in December.
Oct 19, 07: While biologists and politicians fight over whether the greater sage grouse should be labeled an endangered species, 10 Western states allow hunters to take aim at the reclusive, ground-dwelling bird.
Oct 18, 07: Malaysia faces the extinction of 45 bird species in the next five to 10 years if it fails to introduce protected areas and breeding programs for endangered species, a report said. A recent survey by conservation group BirdLife International found that rapid development has led to the loss of bird habitats, and that protected areas and breeding programs were needed to save the populations.
Oct 18, 07: The number of wild farmland bird species breeding in England is at the lowest level since records began, a key government wildlife "indicator" shows.
. . The data showed that these species had declined by about 60% since 1970. The charity warned that cuts in "set-aside" payments, which take land out of food production, could hit bird numbers even harder in the future. "Farmland birds are the barometer by which the government measures the health of the countryside.
. . Defra suggested that the decline of species included in the index was a result of changes to agricultural processes, "including the loss of mixed farming, the switch to autumn sowing of cereals... and the loss of field margins and hedges".
Oct 16, 07: British Columbia leaders announced a plan to rebuild endangered mountain caribou herds, including protecting about 8,500 square miles of land and killing some of the caribou's predators.
Oct 18, 07: Visitors to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve were in for a treat this summer: A record number of humpback whales were sighted either in Glacier Bay or in waters just outside the stunning marine wilderness in southeast Alaska.
Oct 17, 07: Bluefin tuna may just be the coolest fish on the planet. They are big --in fact huge, the biggest weighing more than 800kg and attaining 3m in length.
. . Most amazingly, they have evolved to be warm-blooded, allowing them to hunt from the tropics to near-polar seas, while maintaining the capacity to accelerate as fast as the sports cars that emulate their streamlined shapes.
. . Unfortunately for them, they are also delicious --therefor, the fish we hunted to the very door of global extinction. In the last five to 10 years they have seen a reduction in the average size, and that means you are catching more of the spawning stock."
. . Conservation groups have an unkind nickname for Iccat --the International Commission to Catch All Tuna. In truth, it can only do what its member governments instruct and allow it to. It has no powers to enforce, no sanctions with which to punish; these remain the preserve of national governments, and the European Union.
. . It appears to have happened on the Grand Banks near Newfoundland, where cod fishing was banned in 1992. There are still cod there; but their numbers do not appear to be increasing. Boris Worm from Dalhousie U in nearby Nova Scotia believes the ecosystem has moved into a new, probably stable, state.
. . "Other species have increased in abundance, species that usually were preyed upon by cod", he says. "Things like herring or capelin or sand lance, for example, are now thought to prey heavily on the larvae and eggs of cod; so the prey now is the predator, and that may diminish the ability of cod to recover."
Oct 17, 07: Malta should stop hunting quail and turtle doves during the spring mating season, the European Commission said, warning the Mediterranean island to change its hunting laws to ensure the birds' survival.
Oct 17, 07: The U.S. government and environmental groups will trim $26 million off Costa Rica's debt rolls in exchange for the country spending the same amount on tropical forest conservation, according to an agreement.
. . As part of the U.S. Tropical Forest Conversation Act, the US will spend $12.6 million to buy back Costa Rica's debt at discounted rates. Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy will each contribute $1.26 million.
Oct 15, 07: Europe's trawlermen should cut back drastically next year on trawling for cod in the North Sea and aim to take less than half their 2006 catch from the sea, a group of international scientists said.
. . Cod, one of Europe's most threatened species due to years of chronic overfishing, has long risked a collapse in numbers. But matters seem to have improved slightly, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) said. "Our scientific surveys show that the number of young fish has increased, although only to half of the long-term average."
. . But this, combined with evidence that recent EU controls on restricted catches and time that vessels spend at sea were helping raise fish numbers, was still not enough, Pastoors said. "We recommend constraining catches in 2008 to less than 50% of the 2006 catches. And this should include measures to constrain discards and illegal catches", he said.
. . "The worst thing we could do at this stage would be to slacken our efforts by trying to cash in immediately on the first positive signs. This would be the quickest road to ruin", EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said.
. . ICES recommended large quota cuts for blue whiting, a small member of the cod family most abundant in the northeast Atlantic, due to a much lower supply of young fish. For anchovy in the Bay of Biscay, the subject of a row between France, Spain and Commission experts, numbers were so poor that there should be a complete fishing ban, it said.
Oct 12, 07: A rare bird that breeds in a remote Russian province is facing extinction, conservationists warned, after a survey found that the numbers of the spoon-billed sandpiper had dropped dramatically.
. . BirdLife International blamed the decline of breeding pairs in Chukotka province on loss of key feeding sites during their migration from Russia to its wintering grounds in South Asia. The bird is also fighting a losing battle at its Russian breeding grounds against foxes and dogs that eat the eggs.
. . The World Conservation Union list the bird as endangered with only 200 to 300 pairs left in the wild.
Oct 12, 07: A South China tiger has been caught on camera by a hunter-turned-farmer, the first confirmed sighting for 30 years of a sub-species experts had feared was extinct in the wild.
. . In the early 1950s, an estimated 4,000 of the tiger subspecies, one of the world's smallest and the only one native to central and southern China, roamed the country, but its habitat has been squeezed by the country's rapid economic growth.
. . The Forestry Department of Shaanxi province, where the tiger was sighted, plans to set up a special protection area for them.
Oct 11, 07: A strategy on how to better conserve Scotland's bugs and insects is to be drawn up for the first time. Conservation trust Bug Life and entomologists will meet near Perth to discuss the issues affecting everything from bees to snails.
. . Craig Macadam of Bug Life said a strategy specific to invertebrates would be a first --not just in Scottish terms, but possibly the UK. Mr Macadam said: "When people think about wildlife they think about cuddly and feathered things such as birds and foxes. But they are only the tip of the iceberg. "Many people don't realize the services invertebrates play in the environment. They are a food source, waste disposal and recycle garden waste."
Oct 11, 07: State and federal biologists, still smarting from research showing that they may have been protecting the wrong fish the past 20 years, are regrouping in their efforts to restore the rare greenback cutthroat trout to Colorado waters.
Oct 8, 07: Rebels have seized an area in eastern Congo that serves as a wildlife habitat for endangered mountain gorillas, threatening one of the last known populations of the animals, conservationists said.
Oct 8, 07: A lack of genetic diversity in Australia's Tasmanian Devil means it has failed to launch an immune defense response to a facial cancer decimating populations, Australian researchers say. [if it was merely decimating, they wouldn't be worried about it. It's far worse than 10%.] It faces extinction in 10 to 20 years due to the facial cancer. The grotesque facial tumors were first spotted in the devil population around a decade ago in northeastern Tasmania state, where 90% of the species have died of the disease.
. . The facial cancer produces large tumors on the face and neck of the Tasmanian Devil, found only on the southern Australian island state of Tasmania, which interfere with feeding. Death usually occurs within six months.
. . The Tasmanian Devil is a carnivorous marsupial about the size of a small muscular dog. It has black fur, gives off a skunk-like odor when stressed, and earns its name for its ferocious temperament and disturbing call.
. . "Essentially, there are no natural barriers to the spread of the disease, so affected individuals must be removed from populations to stop disease transmission."
. . The study also found that the facial cancer was genetically identical in every animal and had originated from a single contagious cell line, spread throughout the population by biting during fights for food and mates.
Oct 8, 07: Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the U of California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any this year.
. . He fears that the species —-Franklin's bumblebee-— has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species —-one on the East coast, one on the West-— have gone from common to rare.
. . Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.
. . But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species. Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15% of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.
. . Unlike honeybees, which came to North America with the European colonists of the 17th century, bumblebees are natives. They collect pollen and nectar to feed to their young, but make very little honey.
. . Scientists hoping to pinpoint the cause of the nation's honeybee decline recently identified a previously unknown virus, but stress that parasitic mites, pesticides and poor nutrition all remain suspects.
Oct 6, 07: Indonesia, which is losing its forests faster than any other country, hopes to plant 79 million trees in a single day ahead of a major U.N. climate change meeting this year, a forestry ministry spokesman said.
Oct 4, 07: In a study with great implications for captive breeding programs, U.S. researchers found that after being set free, steelhead trout reared in hatcheries produced offspring far less fit than those of wild-bred fish.
. . In fact, when these captive-bred trout are released in the wild, they are roughly 40% less successful at producing offspring that survive to adulthood than their wild cousins, according to the research.
. . The researchers used genetics to track generations of steelhead trout in the Hood River in Oregon. They said the findings showed definitively that while they may look the same, wild fish and fish from hatcheries are not the same. They added that the findings suggest that the idea of releasing captive-reared fish into the wild to help boost the wild population should be carefully reconsidered.
. . This is probably because the offspring of captive-reared fish inherited traits that might work in the slow-moving world of a hatchery but turn them into sushi in the fish-eat-fish world of the wild, the researchers said.
. . Blouin noted that there are two different missions for fish hatcheries. The traditional mission has been to produce fish for harvest, and Blouin said they are really good at that. "If you're trying to create hatchery fish that are going to perform well in the wild, you want to minimize the number of generations in captivity. Even just a single extra generation through the hatchery causes a really large, detectable decline", Blouin said.
Oct 1, 07: Japanese demand for its fatty flesh to make sushi has sparked a fishing frenzy for the Atlantic bluefin tuna --a torpedo-shaped brute weighing up to half a ton that can accelerate faster than a Porsche 911.
. . Now a system of corralling the fish into "tuna ranches" has combined with a growing tuna fishing fleet to bring stocks dangerously close to collapse, warn scientists from ICCAT --the body established by bluefin fishing countries to monitor the stock.
. . "There are plenty of signs that we might be seeing the start of the collapse", said Susana Sainz, a fisheries officer with campaign group WWF. The environmental impact would be catastrophic, she said: "The bluefin is a top predator so the whole ecology of the Mediterranean would be destabilized."
. . Over-exploitation, pollution and climate change have devastated many of the world's commercial fish stocks and campaigners say a U.N. agreement to restore them by 2015 fails to set strong enough targets.
. . Some campaigners say it may already be too late to save the bluefin after high-tech fleets --many guided by illegal spotter planes-- this season converged on an area near Libya that had been considered one of its last refuges.
. . Ranches --giant underwater cages where freshly caught tuna are fattened on squid and sardines-- have revolutionized the industry. The innovation allows fishermen to scoop up shoals of spawning tuna, transfer them to the 50-meter-wide cages and return to fish until the last is caught.
. . "It's not right that a resource that has sustained thousands of families for 3,000 years should be finished off by a new technology in 10 years", said Crespo.
. . Gerald Scott, the American chairman of ICCAT's scientific committee, said he estimated just 6% of the original stock of Mediterranean bluefin remained. "We haven't necessarily seen a rapid and drastic decline yet. The point is once you have, it is probably too late."
. . For almost a decade, fishermen in the Mediterranean have smashed quotas, taking around 50,000 tons a year, says Scott. Critics, including the US, say European countries that control ICCAT (the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna), should take much responsibility for setting quotas at twice the level their own scientists recommend and failing to enforce them.
. . The Commission did take action last month, banning bluefin fishing for the rest of 2007 and threatening Greece, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Cyprus with court action if they could not prove they were not over-fishing.
Sept 29, 07: The surprising fall of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, removes a longtime obstacle to efforts by Democrats and environmentalists to promote salmon recovery on Northwest rivers.
Sept 27, 07: Chimp populations are in steep decline in Sierra Leone, as in much of Africa. Many people adopt cute baby apes after their parents are killed by hunters, without realizing the perils.
. . The orphaned chimps are scarred by years of abuse. For almost all of them, their first experience of mankind was the slaughter of their families. Many were forced to drink alcohol to entertain humans; some had their teeth smashed or were kept in tiny cages.
. . Chimps are fierce and territorial and their powerful bodies are five times stronger than a man's. Wild chimpanzees will not attack humans because the latter are taller, but domestic chimps quickly realize their physical advantage.
. . Home to more than 30,000 chimpanzees in the early 1970s, Sierra Leone now harbors less than a tenth of that number, ecologists believe, as man has chopped down almost all the country's original jungles and hunted apes for bushmeat.
. . One of the four species of great apes, chimpanzees share 99% of man's genes and live in structured groups of up to 100 animals. Primatologists have listed 38 chimp vocalizations, from soft grunts and lip smacks to barks, squeals and screams.
. . Family bonds are strong; mothers suckle their children for three to four years. Chimps are prodigious toolmakers, using rocks to shell nuts and beating hollow trunks to signal their presence to other apes through the thick jungle.
Sept 27, 07: Scientists have discovered 11 new species of plants and animals in Vietnam, including a snake, two butterflies and five orchid varieties, the World Wildlife Fund said. The new species were found in a remote region known as the "Green Corridor".
Sept 24, 07: Horrific deformities in frogs are the result of a cascade of events that starts when nitrogen and phosphorus from farming and ranching bleed into lakes and ponds, researchers said.
. . These nutrients from fertilizers and animal waste create dramatic changes in aquatic ecosystems that help a certain type of parasitic flatworm that inflicts these deformities on North American frogs, researchers said.
. . While scientists had blamed parasitic infections for deformities seen in recent years in some types of amphibians, this study documented how runoff from farms and livestock ranches drives the process. The runoff sets in motion a series of events in lakes and ponds where frogs live.
. . The nutrients stimulate the growth of algae, which in turn increases the population of snails. Microscopic parasitic worms called trematodes infect the snails --and more snails means more worms. The worms reproduce asexually inside the snails, which Johnson said are turned into "zombies" castrated by the parasites, allowing the worms to expel thousands of offspring. The worms then swarm over tadpoles --the water-dwelling larvae of frogs-- and burrow at the spots where limbs are developing, forming cysts and causing developmental deformities.
. . But how would a worm benefit from an amphibian having such deformities? Predators such as birds eat the infected frogs and spread the worm back into the ecosystem through defecation. Deformed frogs are more easily caught and eaten, benefiting the worm's life cycle.
Sept 22, 07: After encouraging gains in the 1990s, populations of loggerhead sea turtles are now dropping, primarily because of commercial fishing, according to a federal review.
Sept 21, 07: The Chinese crested tern, a rare sea bird whose eggs are prized by some as a delicacy, is likely to be extinct in five years if authorities do not step up protection efforts, a conservation group said.
Sept 21, 07: The rich may have to take black caviar off the menu to let sturgeon stocks recover, Russia's first Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
Sept 20, 07: In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster. Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom. Eventually, the vault will have capacity for around 4.5 million bar-coded seed samples and it hopes in its first year to collect half a million.
. . It is the brainchild of a soft-spoken academic from Tennessee who is passionate about securing food for the masses, and will back up seed stores around the world that are vulnerable to loss through war or disaster. Work progresses for February's opening.
. . "This is a safety deposit box, like in a bank, where you put your valuables." Although this is one of the world's most northerly settlements, an electric freezer will be used to keep the seeds in the three-chambered concrete-lined vault at minus 18 degrees C. If the power fails, permafrost will still keep them frozen, but not as deeply.
. . They'll safeguard strains of 21 essential crops, such as wheat, barley and rice. Rice alone exists in about 120,000 different varieties. "Millet and crops like cow pea receive so little attention." Fowler calls such varieties "orphan crops" because they have no one to take care of them. The aim is to preserve genetic diversity, needed by plant breeders in the future to produce varieties able to adapt to challenges like climate change.
. . If such a store had existed 10 years ago, he said, the seeds would have been needed about once a year as seed collections have been wiped out --for instance by a typhoon in the Philippines and war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
. . Not all seeds can be stored by freezing. Banana, the world's fourth or fifth most valuable crop, is one example. "The longest viability under these conditions would be that of sorghum --about 19,500 years", Fowler said. Other varieties will need to be replaced more frequently. "Extinction happens when a species loses the ability to evolve."
Sept 19, 07: Europe bans the fishing of endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic for the rest of 2007.
Sept 19, 07: France cracks down on a songbird delicacy. On the world's list of weird foods, ortolan —-a bite-size songbird roasted and gulped down whole-— can claim a place of distinction. It's an illegal place, though, since the ortolan is a protected species.
Sept 19, 07: A kite-sized, unmanned airplane is joining the effort to protect endangered Hawaiian monk seals and coral reefs in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Sept 18, 07: Eighteen prominent scientists and researchers say there is no question that sea lice from fish farms are lethal to wild salmon, no evidence to the contrary and a need for greater protection.
Sept 18, 07: An evaluation of Pacific herring stocks in Lynn Canal could land the fish on the endangered or threatened species list, blocking or slowing development in the area. The National Marine Fisheries Service said the Pacific herring population appears to be in enough trouble to warrant a review under the Endangered Species Act.
Sept 17, 07: Conservationists are urging the Australian government to protect the Coral Sea, one of its last tropical marine wildernesses. The sea was recently declared a "predator diversity hotspot" because of its abundant shark populations. Wildlife groups want the government in Canberra to give it full environmental protection and create what would be the world's largest marine park.
. . Campaigners fear the region could be targeted by illegal shark fishermen as well as oil and gas prospectors. The area is a haven for hammerhead and white-tipped sharks, as well as manta rays.
. . "Sharks are increasingly rare in our oceans today. These are the sort of lions and tigers of the sea and unfortunately they are prized for their shark fin, which commands a high price in the Asian marketplace. "So illegal fishers looking for sharks for their fins are becoming increasingly bold. Without formal protection for the Coral Sea, we are afraid it might be vulnerable to that in the future."
. . An Australian government spokesman said that calls for the Coral Sea to be protected were being investigated by a specialist panel.
Sept 17, 07: Malaysia has begun using kits, similar to pregnancy tests, to check for bile and other ingredients made from bears in traditional Chinese medicines, officials said.
. . Wildlife Department enforcement director Misliah Mohamed Basir said officers were using the kits in a program started early this month to check traditional medicine shops nationwide. They want to make sure the remedies do not contain extracts from the organs of bears, which are protected by law.
Sept 16, 07: Mussels may start disappearing from restaurant menus as species increasingly become extinct or endangered by human activities, scientists say.
. . North America has historically had a very diverse community of freshwater mussels -—providing ample supplies for diners. But populations have been on the decline for the past few decades, and mussels now are one of the most endangered groups of animals on the continent, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
. . Humans are primarily responsible for the disappearance of mussels through water pollution and changes to their physical habitat wrought by the construction of dams, dredging and the introduction of exotic species.
Sept 15, 07: On the Mississippi River, below the verdant bluffs that mark the far southern Minnesota-Wisconsin line, the federal government is waging a multi-million dollar campaign against the elements. For the last few weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has transformed a 3-mile stretch of river into a floating construction zone, restoring and creating new river islands.
. . The goal: restore wildlife habitat lost to a half-century of erosion and, in turn, bolstering fishing, waterfowl migration and the overall health of the river's northern stretches. No one has tried a restoration program of this size on such a large river. Officials are considering it as a model for restoration on the Rio Grande as well as the Parana River in Brazil and the Yangtze River in China, Hubbell said.
. . Problems on the upper Mississippi began in the mid-1930s, when the corps installed dams that transformed it into a chain of shallow lakes. For a quarter-century the dams were a boon because they expanded fish habitat, corps biologist Randall Devendorf said. But no one realized the wind whipped across much larger bodies of water, creating intense waves that eroded islands like never before. A 5-mile portion of river between Brownsville and Genoa, Wis., lost 495 of its 625 island acres between 1939 and 1989.
. . The corps also is building islands in Chesapeake Bay and off Louisiana and Mississippi. Most of the new Mississippi River islands are rock and sand bars, but their designs have evolved.
. . Bluegill samples taken from Onalaska to Genoa —-where island building and depth reductions have occurred-— increased from about 20 fish taken per 15 minutes in the late 1990s to about 60 fish per 15 minutes from 2002 to 2004.
Sept 13, 07: Papa salmon plus mama salmon equals ... baby trout? Japanese researchers put a new spin on surrogate parenting as they engineered one fish species to produce another, in a quest to preserve endangered fish. Japanese researchers' ultimate goal: Boost the rapidly dwindling population of bluefin tuna, a species prized in a country famed for its tuna appetite.
. . Idaho scientists begin the next big step next month, trying to produce a type of salmon highly endangered in that state —-the sockeye-— this time using more plentiful trout as surrogate parents. The new method is "one of the best things that has happened in a long time in bringing something new into conservation biology", said U of Idaho zoology professor Joseph Cloud, who is leading the U.S. government-funded sockeye project.
. . They injected newly hatched but sterile Asian masu salmon with sperm-growing cells from rainbow trout —-and watched the salmon grow up to produce trout. The striking success is capturing the attention of conservation specialists, who say new techniques are badly needed. Captive breeding of endangered fish is difficult, and attempts to freeze fish eggs for posterity so far have failed.
. . "Future work should look to expand this approach to other fishes in need of conservation, in particular, the sturgeons and paddlefish", he added. "We have a lot of species of fish around the world that are really in danger of becoming extinct."
. . The team started with "salmonids", a family that includes both salmon and trout, and one of concern to biologists because several species are endangered or extinct.
. . Initial attempts to transplant sperm-producing cells into normal masu salmon mostly produced hybrids of the two species that didn't survive. This time, Yoshizaki engineered salmon to be sterile. He then injected newly hatched salmon with stem cells destined to grow into sperm that he had culled from male rainbow trout. Once they were grown, 10 of 29 male salmon who got the injections produced trout sperm, called milt.
. . Here's the bigger surprise: Injecting the male cells into female salmon sometimes worked, too, prompting five female salmon to ovulate trout eggs. That's a scientific first, Yoshizaki said.
. . The stem cells were still primitive enough to switch gears from sperm-producers to egg-producers when they wound up inside female organs, explained Idaho's Cloud. Then Yoshizaki used the salmon-grown trout sperm to fertilize both wild trout eggs and the salmon-grown trout eggs. DNA testing confirmed that all of the dozens of resulting baby fish were pure trout, he reported. Moreover, those new trout grew up able to reproduce.
Sept 11, 07: In the 1980s, there were only about 10 left alive. But, in a rare success story, a two-decade conservation program in a wooded corner of Mauritius has brought the Echo Parakeet back from the brink of extinction.
Sept 11, 07: Fla. - Wildlife officials should hold off before deciding whether to downgrade the manatee's status from endangered to threatened, Gov. Charlie Crist said. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had been scheduled to take up the issue Wednesday, but its chairman said he agrees with Crist and will also recommend that the panel push the decision back.
. . Crist said a better way to count manatees needs to be found before such a decision can be made. He notes what officials say was a record number of manatee deaths —417— in 2006. The method for counting manatees has always been controversial, and its results questioned.
Sept 11, 07: t least 20 tigers have resurfaced in a tropical rainforest in western India, almost three decades after it was thought that poaching had wiped them out there, experts said.
Sept 10, 07: Recent claims that mobile phone signals may be responsible for the decline in honeybee numbers have been quashed by research.
Sept 10, 07: Biologists say an endangered minnow is rebounding in central North Carolina, thanks largely to demolition of an old dam.
Sept 10, 07: In the aftermath of this summer's Murphy Complex Fire in southwest Idaho, state biologists studying damage to sage grouse habitat drew a quick conclusion: The fires dealt another blow to a species already in trouble.
Sept 10, 07: The Pacific gray whale population, thought by some experts to have rebounded fully from the ravages of whaling, & one of the great success stories of the ocean, actually is back to a mere fraction of historic levels, scientists said. It may have been based on a miscalculation, scientists reported in a study based on whale genetics.
Sept 10, 07: “The 1.5-million-square-mile Brazilian Amazon, larger than the entire nation of India, contains more than 40% of the world’s rain forests, and about a fifth of it already has disappeared, mostly in an “arc of deforestation” along the forest’s southern and eastern edges.
Sept 6, 07: A number of young sharks are washing up dead on Oregon's beaches this summer, but researchers are unsure why.
Sept 6, 07: A newly discovered virus may be killing bees or may be making some bees vulnerable enough to disappear, U.S. researchers reported. While the virus probably does not alone account for what scientists call colony collapse disorder, or CCD, it could help explain what is happening to bees across the US, they said.
. . The virus, called Israeli acute paralysis virus, or IAPV, was discovered in Israel in 2004 and is new to science.
. . CCD hit an estimated 23% of all beekeeping operations in the US during the winter of 2006-7. "These beekeepers lost an average of 45% of their operations."
. . Ground-up bee samples from across the US and compared them to non-affected bees from Pennsylvania and Hawaii. They then sequenced the genomes --the entire collection of DNA-- and looked for genes from bacteria, viruses and parasites. They found five major bacterial groups, four lineages of fungi and seven types of viruses.
. . "We found a remarkably high viral burden in bee populations --both those that have CCD and not", biologist Edward Holmes of Pennsylvania State U. Only one was always associated with CCD -- IAPV. "Whether it is a causative agent or a very good marker is the next major question that we need to address", said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomology professor at Penn State. A marker might mean that something else that was making the bees disappear also helped them become infected with the virus. IAPV can by transmitted by the varroa mite, a parasite known to affect U.S. bees.
. . "I hope no one goes away with the idea that we have actually solved the problem", Pettis told the briefing.
. . As for why the bees disappear, Cox-Foster said they may deliberately avoid returning to the hive when they begin to feel ill, perhaps to protect their sisters and the queen.
Sept 5, 07: A study led by U of Colorado researchers says an effort to restore the endangered greenback cutthroat trout has been using the wrong fish for two decades.
. . Researchers say genetic tests show that some fish believed to be remnants of the greenback were actually the more common Colorado River cutthroat trout. The study says the results could mean that more than two decades of trying to save the greenback from extinction haven't improved the species' chances.
Sept 5, 07: The spread of farms and towns on Malaysia's coasts has destroyed some of the world's most important winter homes for migrating birds, said a report.
Sept 5, 07: A rare European leech seems to be headed towards extinction as global warming dries out the Austrian forest home of the tiny blood-sucker, scientists said.
Sept 5, 07: Wildlife officials counted a record 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests this summer on Texas beaches. The majority were found in the Corpus Christi area, including 81 on North Padre Island and four on Mustang Island.
. . National Park Service staff and volunteers patrolled daily looking for the endangered turtles and their nests during the nesting season, which runs from April to mid-July. The patrollers jointly covered 73,632 miles over 8,895 hours this year.
. . It's difficult to find the nests, because often the only hint a mother turtle leaves is a faint trail in the sand, and they tend to nest on windy days.
. . Wildlife officials released 10,594 Kemp's ridleys hatchlings along the Texas coast this year. Kemp's ridley sea turtles have been on the endangered species list since 1970. Adults grow to about 2 feet in length and weigh up to 100 pounds.
. . The turtle population has been threatened by factors including shrimpers' nets and their popularity in Mexico as boot material and food.
Sept 3, 07: If the market of Mong La is anything to go by, the remaining wild elephants, tigers and bears in Myanmar's forests are being hunted down slowly and sold to China.
. . Besides row upon row of fruit, vegetables and cheap plastic sandals, the market offers a grisly array of animal parts, as well as many live specimens, to the hundreds of Chinese tourists who flock across the border each day. Bear paws and gall bladders, elephant tusks and chunks of hide, tiger and leopard skins, as well as big cat teeth and deer horn are all openly on display next to crudely welded cages of live macaques, cobras, Burmese star tortoises and pangolins.
. . The live creatures, some of them on the IUCN Conservation Union's "Red List" of critically endangered species, are destined for the cooking pots of exotic animal restaurants in China's neighboring Yunnan province, or further afield.
. . Food stalls in the market openly advertise dishes of pangolin or black bear. The body parts --some of which will not be real, given the ease with which a pig bladder can be passed off as that of a bear-- will either be ground up for traditional medicine, worn as amulets or simply hung on the wall as trophies.
. . "Burma is being raped ... of its natural resources --trees, plants and animals. They've got to get a hold of the situation quickly before it becomes a barren ground", said Steven Galster, Bangkok-based director of the Wildlife Alliance.
. . Experts also say the junta that has run the country for the last 45 years may not be as oblivious to wildlife protection as might be expected from its reputation as an international pariah and ruthless crusher of political dissent.
. . Illegal logging of Myanmar's famed teak forests is a major problem --London-based environmental group Global Witness estimates that 1.5 million tons of timber worth $350 million was shipped illegally into China in 2005. But in 2004, the junta did set aside a stretch of jungle the size of Vermont in the isolated Hukawng Valley to become the world's largest tiger reserve.
Sept 3, 07: Farm scientists warned that hardy breeds of livestock vital for world food supplies were dying out across developing countries, especially in Africa, and called for the creation of regional gene banks to save them.
Sept 1, 07: The Navy can use high-powered sonar during exercises off the Southern California coast, despite the technology's threat to whales and other marine mammals, a federal appeals court ruled.
A federal judge has upheld the government's practice of allowing development to proceed even if it is discovered after a project begins that the work could endanger protected species.
Sept 1, 07: A federal judge imposed limits on water flows caused by huge pumps sending water from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta to users around the state, saying the pumps were drawing in and destroying a threatened fish.
Aug 29, 07: Tunnels will be built to prevent the carnage of Canadian salamanders. Canadian researchers know why the salamander crossed the road, and now they hope to fix things so it won't have to.
Aug 29, 07: Hedgehogs and house sparrows are on an updated list of UK species and habitats which need protection.
Aug 26, 07: Brazilian scientists hope that two captivity-raised male Amazon manatees they plan to reintroduce to the wild will spark a bout of reproduction that might save the endangered species from extinction.
. . In Feb 08, scientists at the National Amazon Research Institute (INPA) plan to take the two manatees (Trichechus inungis) and drop them into the Rio Cuieiras, a tributary of the Rio Negro, where researchers hope they will seek out females and begin repopulating the area.
. . Despite being protected, the manatee population of the vast Amazon has steadily fallen with habitat loss, slow reproduction --females give birth only once every two years and to only one offspring-- and due to hunting by people who eat the huge, sluggish fresh-water mammal.
. . Hunters in the region capture baby manatees and use them to attract their mothers who are captured and killed for their meat. The hunters wait for the manatees to rise to the surface to breathe, thrust plugs in their nostrils and asphyxiate them. The babies are meanwhile cast off, according to Silva.
. . Together with turtles and capybara --both also in danger of disappearing from the region-- hungry, grazing manatees are crucial in transforming the plants floating on the surface of Amazon waters into biomass needed to fuel the entire aquatic food chain.
Aug 23, 07: Conservationists announced the rare birth of a mountain gorilla in Congo, but warned the threat of extinction remained with nearly 10% of the animals' population there wiped out this year alone.
Aug 22, 07: Brazil says it will investigate claims that loggers are exploiting its policy of settling the poor in the Amazon.
Aug 17, 07: Malaysia has defended its decision to allow the export of macaque monkeys for meat and scientific research purposes, saying it will help curb their booming population in cities where they attack people and raid homes for food.
Aug 17, 07: Conservation experts appealed for help to improve security and animal safety at a wildlife park in the Democratic Republic of Congo where four mountain gorillas were massacred in July.
Aug 17, 07: An international conservation group launched an ambitious plan today to raise tens of millions of dollars to save 189 endangered birds over the next five years by protecting their habitat and raising public awareness about their plight.
. . U.K.-based BirdLife International is calling on environmental groups, corporations and individuals to contribute the $37.8 million needed for what it is dubbing the Species Champions initiative.
. . The campaign comes as the numbers of extinct birds is on the rise, mostly due to poaching, habitat loss and overdevelopment. In the last three decades, 21 species have been lost.
Aug 17, 07: A newly discovered dodo skeleton has raised hopes for extracting some of the legendary extinct bird’s DNA. The dodo, a flightless bird related to pigeons and doves, once thrived on the small island of Mauritius, located off the coast of Africa to the east of Madagascar.
. . Dodos --Raphus cucullatus-- stood almost a meter tall and laid their eggs on the ground, which made them easy targets for predators such as rats and pigs introduced to the island by European explorers. Humans also destroyed the dodos' habitat. The dodo became extinct in the late 1600s, just 80 years after the arrival of explorers.
. . The skeleton's bones were badly decomposed and fragile, but there is still a good chance of extracting some dodo DNA because of the stable temperature and dry to slightly humid environment (keys to DNA preservation) of the cave.
. . Dodo DNA would be of great scientific value because scientists know very little about the genetics of the dodo. Also, it would allow scientists to figure how long the skeleton was lying in the cave.
Aug 16, 07: An unusually high number of walrus carcasses missing their heads and ivory tusks have washed up on beaches this summer, alarming wildlife officials. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't know whether the dozens of walrus carcasses counted along a 40-mile stretch in Norton Sound are part of a crime or whether sloppy hunters are responsible.
. . Pacific walruses are not considered endangered but can be hunted only by Alaska Natives, who are required to use a certain amount of the animal or face fines for being wasteful. The tusks are often carved or used in native arts and crafts.
Aug 16, 07: The Bush administration's plans for saving the northern spotted owl from extinction have flunked a peer review by scientists.
Aug 16, 07: An eagle that disappeared from Ireland more than 100 years ago took flight again as part of a scheme to reintroduce native birds of prey to the country.
Aug 10, 07: Deforestation of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil fell by about a third in the 12 months through July to the lowest rate in at least seven years...at least according to their government.
Aug 10, 07: The increasing popularity of winter sports is placing an ever increasing strain on fragile mountain ecosystems.
Aug 10, 07: The US Navy is ordered not to use sonar off the Californian coast because it might harm marine mammals.
Aug 10, 07: The black-footed ferret, once the rarest mammal in the world, has made an astonishing comeback in Wyoming after a captive breeding program, researchers said.
Aug 9, 07: Coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans are vanishing faster than had previously been thought, a study shows.
Aug 9, 07: Satellite tracking of pygmy elephants has found that the endangered animals —-unique to Borneo island-— are under threat due to logging and commercial plantations encroaching on their habitat, conservationists said.
Aug 6, 07: Snow leopards, Asiatic lions, Gangetic dolphins and wild buffaloes are among Indian wildlife species that are "gravely endangered", the government has warned.
Aug 5, 07: Porbeagle shark, a species that was once fished to the brink of extinction in the frigid waters off Atlantic Canada during the 1960s. Federal fisheries officials don't want to make that mistake again, and so marine biologists are crunching data from Canada's first "census" of a shark population with the porbeagle as its focus.
. . The stakes are high as sharks globally are threatened by exploitation for their meat and fins. Some conservationists say Canada's porbeagle fishery should be closed though government scientists maintain it appears sustainable at current levels. Eastern Canada has already witnessed the spectacular collapse of its once-teeming cod fishery, and scientists understand their margin for error is thin.
. . Porbeagles grow to about 2meters in length and are not considered a threat to humans.
. . Tens of millions of sharks are estimated to be slaughtered annually for their fins, a coveted soup ingredient in Asia, with the rest of the animal wastefully thrown back into the sea.
Aug 5, 07: The secrets of the bluefin tuna's migration have been unlocked by one of the most comprehensive studies of the giant fish, say scientists. Researchers believe two separate populations of the fish share feeding sites in the Atlantic before heading to opposite sides of the ocean to breed.
. . To help reveal their migratory pattern, an international team has tagged almost a thousand specimens. The team also studied historical records that showed how bluefin numbers, once abundant in the North Atlantic, collapsed after the emergence of industrial fishing.
. . Foraging areas included waters off the eastern shores of Canada and the US, and off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Ireland. "But when it is time for these fish to go back to their spawning grounds, they separate out", he added.
. . Dr Boustany said the data also revealed that northern bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) not only returned to a specific spawning site year after year, but also chose the location in which they were born. He said this behavior suggested the fish were genetically hard-wired to do this.
. . Laboratory tests showed there were "significant genetic differences" between the two populations. "This would not happen unless the fish were natally homing and the two stocks were not interbreeding at all. "We are now thinking of ourselves as CSI: Ocean", he joked. "Ignorance is no excuse anymore."
Aug 2, 07: The tiny Atlantic piping plover, a federally protected bird, has given beachgoers headaches for decades. The species breeds on East Coast beaches during warm weather, which means entire stretches of shoreline can be put off limits just as people want to enjoy the coast. But today, two decades after the plover was declared a threatened species, biologists are crediting the beach closures, twine barriers and other buffers between birds and humans for a 141% increase in the Atlantic piping plover population.
. . The birds' numbers dropped to just 722 mating pairs in 1985, prompting federal officials to require that property owners protect the birds. They also began issuing recommendations that interfered with humans' beach life.
Aug 4, 07: A bill to restore land rights to millions of poor tribal people in India could mean the end for India's endangered wild tigers, eliminating much of their protected habitat, conservationists warned.
Aug 2, 07: Scarlet macaws threatened by illegal poachers and land invaders who slash and burn their jungle habitat in Guatemala now have scientists watching out for them from space.
Aug 2, 07: A rare mountain bird is to be radio tracked, following concerns that its numbers are declining because of climate change. Ring ouzels could be struggling because warmer weather is drying out soil making it harder for them to catch earthworms.
Aug 2, 07: A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop Weyerhaeuser Co. from logging in spotted owl habitat on four parcels of private land in Washington.
July 30, 07: Reef-building glass sponges, thought until recently to be long extinct, have been found off the coast of Washington state, scientists announced. Solitary glass sponges, so named because they are made of silica (the same material as beach sand and that is used to make glass), can be found living in many parts of the world's oceans, but they are different species than those that build themselves into reefs.
. . The three reef-building species were thought to be extinct for 100 million years until they were found a few years ago in protected Canadian waters. The same three species were recently discovered 30 miles west of Grays Harbor off Washington state, showing that they can also thrive in the open ocean.
. . The Washington reefs are each hundreds of feet in length and width, and rise between 2 to 4.5 meters above the sea floor. They host a thriving community of creatures including zooplankton, sardines, crabs, prawns and rockfish in an otherwise sparsely populated stretch of seafloor.
. . Glass sponges range in color from a creamy white to bright yellow and grow in shapes similar to cups and funnels, unlike other sponges.
July 25, 07: More than 400,000 acres of wildlands in the Eastern Sierra Nevada should be made protected habitat for an endangered mountain sheep rebounding from the threat of extinction, the federal government said.
July 21, 07: Scientists and conservationists called on Pacific countries today to step up efforts to protect leatherback turtles that are on the brink of extinction.
July 20, 07: Missouri and Illinois conservationists are seeing troubling signs in amphibian populations, mirroring problems seen elsewhere in the world.
July 18, 07: Scotland's seabirds are having a "disastrous" breeding season, according to RSPB Scotland. It said mid-season reports had found cliffs, where there should be thousands of birds, almost empty. It said that for some areas the season was worse than last year and heading towards being the worst since a "dreadful" 2004 season. The charity said Scotland's coastline supported 45% of the European Union's seabird breeding population.
. . RSPB Scotland said climate change appeared to be disrupting food supply, but added that more research would need to be done. "We're fairly certain that on the east coast, rising sea temperatures are leading to plankton regime shifts, which in turn affects fish like sand eels - a major food source for seabirds."
July 17, 07: A healthy American chestnut tree discovered on a New Hampshire farm may serve as the "mother tree" to bring back a species nearly wiped out by Asian blight.
July 16, 07: The tiny Kauai creeper, a rare four-inch tall bird, is still trying to get on the endangered species list as its numbers have dwindled to 1,500 worldwide.
July 16, 07: A wood-boring insect that kills pine trees and also has turned up in New York, Pennsylvania and Ontario has been detected in Michigan, state and federal officials said.
July 16, 07: A foul-smelling orchid that flourishes only in Yosemite National Park and was first collected in 1923 is a distinct species, scientists announced, after re-evaluating the flower.
. . Botanist Alison Colwell said the species' minute, tennis-ball yellow flowers weren't what first led her to it, but rather the smell of sweaty feet that the Yosemite bog-orchid emits to attract pollinators. The plant, which is the only known orchid species endemic to California's Sierra Nevada range, grows in spring-fed areas between 6,000 and 9,000 feet.
July 15, 07: A species of egg-laying mammal, named after TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is not extinct as was previously thought, say scientists.
. . On a recent visit to Papau's Cyclops Mountains, researchers uncovered burrows and tracks made by the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna. The species is only known to biologists through a specimen from 1961, which is housed in a museum in the Netherlands. The team will return to Papua next year to find and photograph the creature.
. . "Attenborough's echidna is one of five monotremes (egg-laying mammals) that first inhabited the Earth around the time of the dinosaurs. "This group includes the duck-billed platypus, which helps demonstrate how different these are from all other mammals."
July 15, 07: Scientists in Southern California have discovered a mysterious booming population of endangered desert pupfish in man-made research ponds designed for an entirely different purpose. Although no one knows exactly how they got there, the fish probably took a 1.5-mile joyride through the piping used to deliver water to the ponds.
. . Last year, Douglas Barnum, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Salton Sea Science Office, and his colleagues built four small ponds to study how ongoing changes in the Salton Sea -—the largest lake in California, which is 25% saltier than the ocean—- will affect nearby wildlife as part of the state’s ongoing Salton Sea Restoration Project.
. . The Salton Sea, an important habitat for migratory birds, is slowly drying up and growing saltier. It is also becoming tainted with selenium as it is fed by a number of rivers, including the Alamo River, contaminated by selenium from the upper Colorado basin. The element, which may be leaching into the basin from agricultural sites, can be toxic to wildlife, especially as it accumulates through the food chain.
. . The plan was to study how bird populations respond to the different ponds, which are all carefully filled so as to prevent fish and other wildlife from being pumped in too.
. . The scientists estimate that there are thousands of these endangered fish living in the research ponds, although most of them are young, and no one knows how many will survive into adulthood.
July 12, 07: The unexplained death of a breeding-age ocelot in southeast Texas has brought the endangered cat a step closer to extinction in the US, a wildlife biologist said.
July 12, 07: Malaysia is launching a $9 million project to try to clone some of its threatened leatherback turtles in a last-ditch bid to save them from extinction.
July 9, 07: Corals get cold sores too. Only, for corals, a herpes virus infection isn’t just annoying. It can be lethal, and it and other diseases are possibly a big factor in the deaths of coral reefs that humans are causing throughout the world’s oceans, new research shows.
. . Scientists have known for years that humans are killing corals indirectly and directly through global warming, overfishing and pollution. Many reefs off populous coasts have been decimated, while those near uninhabited areas are often thriving. “For some reason, when you put people next to reefs, they die”, said microbiologist Forest Rohwer of San Diego State U. A 2004 study found that 70% of the world’s reefs had been destroyed or were threatened by global warming and other human activities.
. . Coral reefs are some of the most stunningly diverse habitats on the planet. They are home to thousands of species at all levels of the food chain: invertebrates such as sponges and starfish, small fish such as angelfish and clown fish, big fish such as parrot fish, barracuda, groupers and snappers,and even sharks.
. . But the most amazing variety, he said, is actually found in the realm we can’t see: “We know [from DNA sequencing] that the most diverse things on a coral reef are actually the microbial community.” There are about 10 million bacteria and 1 billion archaea on every square centimeter of coral, and two neighboring corals can have completely different microbes living on their surfaces.
. . The reefs are also constantly interacting with the water surrounding them -—in only a milliliter of ocean water (about one-fifth of a teaspoon) there are about one million bacteria and 10 million viruses.
. . When humans overfish a reef, there’s nothing left to eat the food produced by the algae, so all that carbon builds up in the water column and feeds the microbes, sort of like "MicrobeGro" fertilizer, building up their numbers and overwhelming the coral. "The coral is actually losing control of its microbial community", Rohwer said. Even though these microbes normally live in a harmonious balance with the coral, they are still potential pathogens.
. . And what was the number one disease affecting the corals? Herpes viruses.
. . Herpes viruses are naturally found in many different animals (95% of humans carry some kind of herpes virus). “Everybody in this room has at least a couple herpes viruses running around,” Rohwer said at the symposium, causing some in the audience to chuckle. “And when you get stressed, or immuno-compromised, they’re going to start hopping out and giving you little cold sores or other wounds that we won’t talk about.”
July 8, 07: The wet summer is having a "dramatic effect" on ground nesting bumblebees, according to a conservation trust. It said rain-sodden ground and moss was a threat to certain species.
. . The Bumblebee Conservation Trust launched a national garden watch and a drive to boost the insect's numbers earlier this year.
July 4, 07: Low sperm counts and other reproductive problems are preventing pregnancy among Malaysia's endangered rhinos, a worrying trend that wildlife experts say could hasten the animals' extinction. Experts meeting on Borneo island this week to discuss ways to save the Borneo rhino said a major threat --besides poaching-- was the animals' own inability to reproduce. "Maybe because they live in fragmented locations deep in the jungles and because of that, they rarely get the opportunity to mate." ~Sabah Wildlife Department deputy chief, Laurentius Ambu.
. . But scientists also found that male rhinos suffer from low sperm count while many of their female counterparts have cysts in their reproductive organs.
. . The wildlife department says there are between 30 and 50 rhinos left in the dense jungles of Malaysia's Sabah state, on Borneo. Scientists consider the Borneo rhino to be a subspecies of the Sumatran rhino, with different characteristics from those found in Indonesia and the Malaysian peninsula. The Sumatran rhino is one of the world's most critically endangered species, with small numbers found only in Indonesia, Sabah and peninsular Malaysia. It is the smallest and hairiest of all the rhinos, but can weigh from 600 to 800 kg. Its numbers are believed to have halved in the decade to 1995, with fewer than 300 left today.
. . Rhino horns, made of hair-like keratin fibers, have reputed aphrodisiac qualities and are a prized ingredient of traditional Asian medicine.
Jun 29, 07: Oman's Arabian Oryx sanctuary this week became the first site to be removed from UNESCO's World Heritage list after the rare species dwindled and the government cut the park size by 90%. It's the first site to be deleted since UNESCO's 1972 convention on the protection of cultural and natural heritage sites.
. . The Arabian Oryx sanctuary was added to the list in 1994 but the United Nations cultural organization said that poaching and habitat degradation had led to a decline in numbers. In 1996, the population was 450 but it has since fallen to 65 with only around four breeding pairs making its future viability uncertain, UNESCO said
. . "After extensive consultation with the state ..., the committee felt that the unilateral reduction in the size of the sanctuary and plans to proceed with hydrocarbon prospection would destroy the value and integrity of the property, which is also home to other endangered species including, the Arabian Gazelle and houbara bustard", it said. [ah-ha! oil!] "The committee expressed regret that the state ... failed to fulfil its obligations regarding the conservation of the sanctuary as defined by the World Heritage Convention."
. . Oryx that had been bred in captivity in the US were released into the sanctuary in the ensuing years and in 1994 an official sanctuary was established. But as the number of Oryx grew, they attracted more poachers who tried to catch them alive for sale outside Oman.
Jun 29, 07: The remains of a dodo found in a cave beneath bamboo and tea plantations in Mauritius offer the best chance yet to learn about the extinct flightless bird, a scientist said. It's basically a giant pigeon.
. . The remains were likely to yield the first excellent DNA and other vital clues, because they were found intact, in isolation, and in a cave. Hume said the dodo was almost certainly finished off by animals introduced by Europeans about 400 years ago.
Jun 28, 07: Seabirds on the remote islands of St Kilda are being killed by discarded fishing gear, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) has warned. Great skua, gannet and fulmar have been found dead after becoming entangled in, or choking, on fishing line. NTS said abandoned line and hooks continued to "ghost fish" for many years, snaring wild birds instead of fish.
. . A breeding ground for more than 500,000 seabirds, including the largest northern gannet colony of over 60,000 pairs.
Jun 22, 07: Fear of predators is not instinctive but is a learned behavior that only develops when prey species share space with animals that eat them, according to a new study. Conclusion: remove the lions, and the zebras will lose their fear of them. But add wolves to a new territory and the resident elk or moose will soon learn they spell trouble.
. . The study compared the behavior of four prey species in three different settings: locations where predators still prowled; areas where top predators no longer exist; and places where carnivores had been reintroduced. Such research is regarded as important to understanding the dynamics of reintroducing predators to ecosystems where they had been exterminated by humans.
. . When wolves returned to the Yellowstone region, they caused a cascade of events including a change in elk distribution, more wariness in moose, and a change in coyote densities."
Jun 19, 07: Conservationists in Indian Kashmir are planning to breed rare red deer to save a species found only in the Himalayas from the verge of extinction. Environmentalists say there are less than 200 red deer known commonly as the Hangul left in Kashmir's forests from more than 900 in 1989 because of poaching and neglect by authorities aggravated by a 17-year-old separatist rebellion in the region.
Jun 17, 07: 84 Siberian tigers, among the world's rarest animals, have been born since March at a northeastern China breeding center, an official said.
Jun 16, 07: Management plans for 18 national forests in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming are being changed to conserve the threatened Canada lynx and its habitat, U.S. Forest Service officials said.
Jun 16, 07: The volunteers tote a butterfly net, binoculars and field guides around the Miami Metrozoo grounds, scanning the plants and flowers for fluttering wings. But they aren't searching for a rare species or collecting specimens for display — they're counting butterflies for the Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network, then leaving the insects to continue their zigzagging flights through the humid air.
. . As the summer butterfly watching season warms up, researchers hope similar counts organized by the North American Butterfly Association and a few separate state monitoring networks will contribute new data to help track butterfly populations and develop land management strategies.
. . The counts may help scientists prevent any more butterflies from becoming as rare as the Miami blue, a quarter-sized species now found only on one island in the Florida Keys, Daniels said. The Miami blue was abundant throughout South Florida a generation ago, and scientists were slow to recognize the extent of its decline.
Jun 16, 07: Elephants and eels may find life slightly easier as a result of trade curbs imposed after UN talks in a modest attempt to slow what may be the worst wave of extinctions since the dinosaurs.
Jun 15, 07: The populations of 20 common American birds —-from the fence-sitting meadowlark to the whippoorwill with its haunting call-— are half what they were 40 years ago, according to a National Audubon Society analysis.
. . The Denver Zoo has a newly hatched Andean condor, only the second condor to hatch at a zoo anywhere in the world over the past year, zoo officials said.
Jun 14, 07: The only surviving pair of endangered pygmy rabbits released as part of a program to increase their numbers in the wild have dodged coyotes, badgers, hawks and owls and found time for love. Proud scientists announced that the rabbits have successfully bred. The rabbits, slightly larger than a man's hand, eat sagebrush and are the only rabbits in the US that dig their own burrows.
. . No Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits are known to be left in the wild. Predators nearly wiped out the population of 20 captive-reared Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits released in March in central Washington.
Jun 14, 07: Trade in red and pink corals prized as jewellery for 5,000 years will be restricted to try to help the species recover after drastic over-exploitation, a U.N. wildlife conference agreed.
Jun 14, 07: A Bush Proposal Would Cut Spotted-Owl Habitat for Logging: The administration would eliminate 1.5 million acres of timberland from the bird's habitat to boost the logging industry.
Jun 14, 07: African nations fail to find a compromise on the ivory trade at a major wildlife trade meeting.
Jun 12, 07: A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt —-more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
. . Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.
. . It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890. The small metal cylinder was filled with explosives fitted with a time-delay fuse so it would explode seconds after it was shot into the whale. The bomb lance was meant to kill the whale immediately and prevent it from escaping.
. . The 49-foot male whale died when it was shot with a similar projectile last month, and the older device was found buried beneath its blubber as hunters carved it with a chain saw.
Jun 12, 07: Turtles in the Caribbean are under threat from over-fishing and illegal trade, with almost all eggs laid in Guatemala taken by humans, a wildlife trade monitoring network said.
Jun 11, 07: Ten of Nepal's 250 endangered elephants are suffering from tuberculosis in a national park and the disease is threatening to spread to humans and other wildlife, authorities said.
. . Park authorities said tests had confirmed at least 10 of 100 domesticated Asian elephants in Chitwan had contracted the disease in the past two years. Park officials said this is the first time that tb in elephants had been reported in the Himalayan nation.
. . Nepal has about 150 elephants in the wild and about 100 domesticated pachyderms, some of which are used in safaris by private hotels and state-run national parks. Elephants are a protected species in Nepal and killing them carries a jail term of up to 15 years.
Jun 10, 07: Indonesia's tropical rain forests are disappearing 30% faster than previously estimated as illegal loggers raid national parks, threatening the long-term survival of orangutans, according to a U.N. report.
Jun 10, 07: A U.N. wildlife forum imposed trade restrictions on European eels and outlawed trade in shark-like sawfish, famed for a long toothed snout, to prevent a slip towards extinction.
Jun 9, 07: From outside, Cameroon's Ngambe-Tikar forest looks like a compact, tangled mass of healthy emerald green foliage. But tracks between the towering tropical hardwood trees open up into car park-sized clearings littered with logs as long as buses. Forestry officers say the reserve is under attack from unscrupulous commercial loggers who work outside authorized zones and do not respect size limits.
. . From central Africa to the Amazon basin and Indonesia's islands, the world's great forests are being lost at an annual rate of at least 13 million hectares --an area the size of Greece or Nicaragua.
. . Evidence of rampant deforestation around the globe points in one direction: booming demand in China, where economic growth is fuelling a timber feeding frenzy. In just the past decade, China has grown from importing wood products for domestic use to become the world's leading exporter of furniture, plywood and flooring.
. . Chinese firms might not be chopping down the trees themselves, but their insatiable appetite is driving up prices, spurring loggers to open more tracks like those torn through Ngambe-Tikar and drawing huge global investment to the companies.
. . About a fifth of Brazil's Amazon has already been destroyed, and Chinese demand for commodities such as iron ore, bauxite and especially soy, has been a big factor in pushing the country's agricultural frontier further north. The government has long been criticized for deforestation and has a very public policy of stopping illegal clearing and slowing clearing rates overall. But the frontier area is very remote, and police are underfunded, disorganized and often corrupt.
. . Spinning the globe further west, the problem is perhaps even more acute in Indonesia. Without drastic action, the UN says, 98% of its remaining forests will be gone by 2022, with dire consequences for local people and wildlife, including endangered rhinos, tigers and orangutans. In parts of Borneo and Sumatra, for instance, scientists are still finding new species of animals and plants but fear these could be lost to science before being studied fully.
. . Jakarta says illegal tree felling is ravaging 37 of its 41 national parks, and now accounts for about 3/4 of all logging in Indonesia.
. . Many poor nations want the rich world to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the main U.N. plan for fighting global warming, to give farmers credits for letting forests stand rather than sell trees to loggers or clear land for crops.
Jun 9, 07: The American multimillionaire who founded the North Face and Esprit clothing lines says he is trying to save the planet by buying bits of it. First Douglas Tompkins purchased a huge swath of southern Chile, and now he's hoping to save the northeast wetlands of neighboring Argentina. He has snapped up more than half a million acres of the Esteros del Ibera, a vast Argentine marshland teeming with wildlife.
. . Wealthy foreigners have bought an estimated 4.5 million acres in Argentina and Chile in the past 15 years for private Patagonian playgrounds. Sylvester Stallone, Ted Turner and Italian fashion designer Luciano Benetton all have large holdings set amid pristine mountains and lakes.
. . Argentine officials took notice and eagerly courted Tompkins' philanthropy, flying him to several areas of ecological significance in the late 1990s — when the government was strapped for cash because of the economic crisis.
. . He now owns well over 1 million acres in Chile and Argentina, a combined area about the size of Rhode Island. Opposition lawmakers in both countries have sought unsuccessfully to expropriate Tompkins' purchases or put limits on extremely large landholdings.
Jun 9, 07: Attempts to restrict trade in two threatened shark species fail at a conference on endangered species.
Jun 9, 07: A judge has struck down Delaware's two-year ban on harvesting horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, saying the crustaceans' population is healthy enough to allow a limited harvest.
Jun 8, 07: A port being built on India's eastern coast is a "killing field" of rare Olive Ridley turtles and other marine life, and should be shut down, Greenpeace said on Friday.
. . It said the Dhamra port in Orissa state, being built by Indian conglomerate Tata group, is close to the beaches of Gahirmatha, one of the few remaining mass nesting sites of the Olive Ridleys in the world.
. . The group recently conducted a 40-day study of the ecology around the port site and came across more than 2,000 turtles, rare horseshoe crabs, crab-eating frogs, dolphins and snakes, killed by mechanized fishing boats.
. . The Tatas had earlier said the port would not harm the turtles and if it did they would not build the project, Fernandes said.
Jun 7, 07: The number of species on the endangered list in Britain has almost doubled in 13 years, according to a new study. There are now 1,149 species of plants, mammals, birds and insects, and 67 different types of habitat under threat from climate change and human activity. But the largest proportion of species are invertebrates like insects and spiders, with more than 400 at risk.
Jun 7, 07: Europe's seas are in a "serious state of decline" as a result of coastal development, overfishing and pollution from agriculture, warn scientists. It focused on the continent's four regional seas: the North-East Atlantic Ocean, and the Black, Baltic and Mediterranean seas. "In every sea, we found serious damage related to the accelerated pace of coastal development, transport and the way we produce our food", said Professor Mee.
Jun 7, 07: Six species of reef-building coral could vanish from the Caribbean due to rising temperatures and toxic runoff from islands' development, according to a new study. Nearly two dozen scientists from U.S. and Caribbean universities, as well as nonprofits, identified the threatened species while reviewing studies and scientific data.
. . The species —-about 10% of the 62 varieties capable of forming reefs in the region-— include staghorn and elkhorn corals, which were once among the most prominent. "One of the Atlantic Ocean's most beautiful marine habitats no longer exists in many places because of dramatic increases in coral diseases, mostly caused by climate change and warmer waters."
. . The team also reported significant damage to mangroves, which filter pollutants, reporting the plants cover 42% less area in the Caribbean than they did 25 years ago.
Jun 6, 07: Japan's efforts to have restrictions lifted on the trade in whalemeat are rebuffed at an international meeting.
Jun 5, 07: The large quantity of illegal worked ivory entering the US from China and Japan is a sign of the strong demand that is contributing to an alarming increase in elephant poaching in Africa, a conservation group said.
Jun 2, 07: A tiny shorebird is edging closer to extinction, threatened by fishermen who destroy its food staple for bait and loved by ornithologists who are drawn from around the world to count it.
. . The red knot, once a numerous springtime visitor to the beaches of the Delaware Bay on the U.S. Atlantic Coast, has declined to an all-time low of 12,300 birds, down from some 15,000 last year and around 100,000 in the mid-1980s.
. . Biologists led by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection have been monitoring the bird for the last 23 years amid signs that it may soon join the dodo on the list of birds never to be seen again.
. . After a monthlong ground and air search of the beaches of Delaware Bay in New Jersey and Delaware, scientists this week concluded that the red knot's population is now even closer to the level where it may not survive. They consider the population would be sustainable at about 100,000.
Jun 2, 07: A senior UN official urged a 171-nation U.N. wildlife forum to take action to help protect animals from climate change. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will also discuss measures at its two week-week meeting to help commercially valuable animal and tree species threatened by over-use.
. . A U.N. report has said human activities were wiping out three animal or plant species every hour and has urged the world to do more to slow the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs by 2010. Global warming, blamed mainly on human use of fossil fuels, is widely expected to add to existing threats and wreck habitats like the Amazon rain forest.
. . "CITES is not a forum for discussing climate change but decisions taken here do have an impact on species in a climatically challenged world. We will need robust species populations if they are to survive rising temperatures and more extremes."
Jun 4, 07: A purple fluorescent frog is one of 24 new species found in the South American highlands of Suriname, conservationists reported on Monday, warning that these creatures are threatened by illegal gold mining. The discovery of so many species outside the insect realm is extraordinary and points up the need to survey distant regions.
. . Scientists combing Suriname's Nassau plateau and Lely Mountains found four other new frog species aside from the purple one, six species of fish, 12 dung beetles and a new ant species, the organization said. They also found 27 species native to the Guayana Shield region, which spreads over Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and northern Brazil. One of these was the rare armored catfish, which conservationists feared was extinct because gold miners had contaminated a creek where it was last seen 50 years ago.
Jun 2, 07: The agency that oversees international trade involving rare animals approved on Saturday the sale of 60 tons of ivory to Japan despite fears it could lead to increased poaching of endangered elephants.
Jun 2, 07: Japan failed to ease an international ban on commercial whaling, leading it to warn it may leave the IWC.
Jun 1, 07: The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to replace four decades of federal protections for the American bald eagle with new rules against disturbing it.
Jun 1, 07: An international forum this week on the fate of the world's whales barely addressed what scientists consider one of the most serious threats to marine life: global warming.
. . A warming climate threatens food sources in Antarctic waters for the world's largest creature and has been linked to unusual migration patterns and the strange behavior of whales off Alaska's coast, scientists say.
. . A proposed International Whaling Commission resolution expressing concerns about global warming and its impact on whales never came up for a vote. The group opted instead for a climate change conference at some point in the future. "In light of the massive impacts that stand to be made on whales and their habitat, we would have liked this body to take action on that and express their concern", said Patrick Ramage, whale program manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "This forum is still kind of stuck in 1946, where they're debating whether whales should be harpooned or not."
. . Whales from the Arctic appear to have altered some of their migration patterns, while ice-dependent whales in Antarctica might be losing some of their primary food, krill, and their overall habitat, said Donovan. In addition, whales swimming in temperate climates might find the location of their prime habitats shifting due to warming water. Whales used to migrate to the Arctic for only the long-daylight days of summer, but they are arriving earlier and staying longer.
. . "We've even documented whale singing in the dead of winter, in January and February", said North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta. This past winter, borough officials detected some gray whales that instead of making normal migrations to the sunny south, apparently spent the winter in the waters northeast of Barrow, the northernmost U.S. community.
Jun 1, 07: Great apes are facing an "inevitable crisis" arising from climate change, a leading conservationist has warned. Dr Richard Leakey said that growing pressure to switch from fossil fuels to biofuels could result in further destruction of the animals' habitats. The chair of WildlifeDirect called for immediate action and proposed financial incentives to save forests from destruction as one possible solution. He said: "Climate change will undoubtedly impact everything we know."
. . The Great Apes Survival Project (Grasp), a UN Environment Program (Unep) initiative, has warned that great apes are at risk of imminent extinction unless drastic action is taken.
. . The former director of the Kenyan Wildlife Service said: "I am concerned about the pressures on the land as a result of changes to the climate, but also the pressures on the land in terms of people's reaction to climate change and the shift away from fossil fuels to biofuels."
. . Dr Leakey suggested "biodiversity credits" could be a possible solution. "Being paid for not cutting down indigenous forests and getting credit for that is a further step that builds on the idea of getting paid for planting new forests", he explained.
. . "It does seem that we cannot stop development, but it does also seem that perhaps we can stop development where critical species are threatened, and perhaps there could be a price added to that." He said that there could be creative ways to solve the problems that climate change could bring, but added that it was crucial that action was taken now.
May 30, 07: If you think the problem of endangered species is all about tigers, elephants and orangutans, ask a violinist where he gets his bow. The best violin bows are made from pau brasil, a tree from the Brazilian rain forest that has been exploited for 500 years, and was once so economically vital for the red dye it produced that it gave its name to the only country where it grows.
. . Pau brasil is among dozens of plants and animals threatened with extinction that are on the agenda of the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, which opens its meeting Sunday. About 7,000 animals and 32,000 plant families now are regulated, including more than 800 species which are banned completely from commerce.
. . It takes a lot of wood to make a violin bow —-of every 3,300 pounds, only 220 to 440 pounds are usable, experts say, and 80% of that is wasted in carving the bow. The tree has a trunk only about 15 feet long, meaning a tree can produce only a few bows.
. . Peru may face sanctions for failing to control the export of mahogany, which is used for guitars. About 90% of the mahogany from the Peruvian Amazon is logged illegally, said Kris Genovese of the Defenders of Wildlife.
. . One new item on the agenda is a German proposal to regulate trade in the spiny dogfish, a small migratory shark commonly used for fish-and-chips. Stocks of reproductive females have declined by 95% in the Northeast Atlantic and by 75% in the Northwest Atlantic, says WWF. A female takes up to 23 years to mature.
Mar 30, 07: A majority of nations voted today to create a whale sanctuary in the southern Atlantic Ocean, but failed to get 75% of the vote needed to pass the proposal raised by Brazil and Argentina.
May 30, 07: Military exercises planned by Australia and the US next month off the Australian coast could result in large-scale whale deaths or injuries, the International Whaling Commission said.
May 30, 07: Debate over a proposed 20-year ivory trade ban has split African countries between those who want to protect the beloved elephant and others who say elephant populations have grown at an unsustainable rate.
May 28, 07: The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is opening in Alaska with a new spirit of conciliation in the air. Pro and anti-whaling countries, including Japan, say they are looking to co-operate wherever possible. The 21-year moratorium on commercial whaling will not be changed by this meeting, with anti-whaling countries appearing to command a clear majority.
. . However, conflict appears likely over hunting by some indigenous peoples. Aboriginal (or subsistence) permits are given to groups judged to have a strong whaling history and a need for whale meat.
May 28, 07: Fish and chips, coral jewelry and wooden musical instruments will take centre stage at a U.N. wildlife forum next week which seeks to curb the billion-dollar trade in endangered marine and tree species.
. . Commercially valuable species like the spiny dogfish and the porbeagle shark, the European eel, pink coral and rosewood and cedar trees --all threatened by over-use-- feature high on the agenda of the June 3-15 meeting in The Hague.
. . The talks will also help shape the future of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), whose restrictions were once aimed at exotic species like leopards and parrots but are now focusing on more commercial species.
. . Elephants are expected to be a controversial issue. CITES is credited for stemming the slaughter of the African elephant with its ban on international ivory trade in 1989. But scientists say the killing of elephants for their tusks, mainly in central Africa, has now reached levels not seen since the ban, as Asian-run organized crime syndicates push the illegal ivory trade to unprecedented levels.
. . Now elephants are back on the agenda. Botswana and Namibia want looser conditions on ivory sales from southern African countries, while Kenya and Mali seek a 20-year moratorium from those states to reduce poaching.
May 28, 07: India indicated it could back China's push to lift a blanket ban on trading tiger parts, if certain conditions were met to protect wild tigers and a new study showed their numbers would not be affected.
. . China is expected to ask permission to relax the ban at the next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species at The Hague in June. It wants the ban lifted for farmed tigers.
. . Numbers of the endangered animal have fallen sharply in recent decades due to poaching, fuelled by demand for Tiger skins and parts used in traditional Chinese medicines.
. . China has about 30 tigers in the wild but has several tiger breeding centers or farms which collectively house about 5,000 tigers. Conservationists say that if the tiger trade is made legal it would result in a massive surge in demand for parts and increased poaching in countries like India, which is facing a crisis in trying to save its own tiger populations. Early results of a census of tigers in central India showed numbers were drastically lower than previously estimated.
. . Conservationists say pressure on the Chinese government to lift the ban is coming from powerful investors at breeding farms, who stand to make enormous profits if the trade becomes legal.
May 28, 07: International wildlife experts have located hundreds of wild elephants on a treeless island in the swamps of south Sudan, where they apparently avoided unchecked hunting during more than 20 years of war.
May 25, 07: A planned law on Indian coastal management threatens marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen by favoring development over conservation, experts and activists said. Around 10 million people live along India's 8,000 km coastline --three million of whom are fishermen and their families.
. . The draft Coastal Management Zone law, due to be announced next month, is a response to India's drive for development as well as strong lobbying from business sectors such as tourism and construction.
. . "The new law doesn't recognize the rights of fishing communities and also allows for development to take place almost anywhere along the coast", said Sudarshan Rodriguez from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. "It will devastate fishing communities and destroy vital marine ecosystems."
. . "There are estuaries, salt marshes, lagoons, mangroves, mudflats, sand dunes and coral reefs, all of which are renewable resources which we depend upon in some way or another."
. . The existing law does not permit development for up to 200 meters from the coast and also recognizes the customary rights of fishing communities. Although the law is poorly enforced, experts said it did help to protect the environment and coastal populations. They want the government to scrap the new draft act and actively enforce the existing law.
May 24, 07: A group of 125 international marine scientists urged the head of the World Trade Organization to push for a global accord to slash subsidies paid by many countries to their fishing industries.
. . In a declaration to be delivered to WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, they warned that unless support was reduced soon, overfishing would damage the ecosystem of the world's oceans beyond recovery. "The WTO has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to demonstrate that it can not only balance trade and the environment, but make one of the greatest contributions to protecting the world's oceans", said one of the signatories, Andrew Sharpless. "It is up to the WTO to call a halt to this short-sighted race to capture the last fish in the ocean", added Sharpless, who heads the campaigning group Oceana.
. . Earlier this month, Oceana and the Swiss-based conservationist organisation WWF called on countries in the 150-member WTO to back a U.S. proposal on ending subsidies that have boosted the size of world fishing fleets.
. . Scientific studies cited by both groups say the world's fishing stocks are in steep decline and could collapse within 50 years if current trends continue.
May 23, 07: Early results from a tiger census in India indicate the population of the endangered big cats is drastically lower than previously assumed, wildlife experts and conservationists said, after a new count of tigers in 16 of India's 28 tiger reserves and their surrounding areas.
. . The WII, which has been monitoring tiger populations across India for the past two years, did not give a new estimated national total for tigers but said habitat destruction and human encroachment were leading to declining numbers.
. . India has half the world's surviving tigers, but conservationists say the country is losing the battle to save the big cats. There were about 40,000 tigers in India a century ago, but decades of poaching had cut their number to about 3,700, according to a count conducted in 2001 and 2002.
. . Conservationists said they believed the new census results suggested there was a decline of 65% in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, which has one of the largest populations of tigers in India. "The indications are that all over India, it will be the same."
. . "The human population, where we add one Australia every year to the country, and demand for natural resources going higher by the day, (mean) a large carnivore living in your neighborhood is not possible", said Jhala. The WII said full national figures would be released at the end of the year.
May 22, 07: Global warming is the top suspect for the disappearance of 17 amphibian species from Costa Rican jungles, scientists said, warning monkey and reptile populations were also plummeting.
. . Five of the amphibian species were found only in Costa Rica, meaning their disappearance from the country's jungles spells extinction, said Alvaro Herrero, a biologist with Costa Rica's National Biodiversity Institute. Among the now-extinct species is the Golden Toad, named for its shimmering yellow color, and two varieties of Harlequin frog, identified by their black and green stripes.
. . Scientists have yet to identify a precise mechanism for the disappearance of the amphibians, which began decades ago, but a prime suspect is a fatal fungus that has invaded their habitats. "It is believed climate change is raising temperatures allowing a skin fungus to enter the places where the amphibians resided", he said.
. . Several studies in recent years have linked the rapid disappearance of many of the world's frog and toad species to global warming. About a third of the 5,743 known species of frogs, toads and other amphibians are classified as threatened, according to the Global Amphibian Assessment survey. Scientists suspect that higher temperatures are inhibiting plant growth and thus diminishing the volume of decomposing leaves in which the amphibians thrive.
. . Another disturbing trend in the country is the decline of Costa Rica's monkeys. Monkey populations have fallen by 30% in recent years. Costa Rica occupies about 0.03% of the Earth's land mass, but contains about 4% of its animal and plant species.
May 22, 07: Human activities are wiping out three animal or plant species every hour and the world must do more to slow the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs by 2010, the UN said.
. . Scientists and environmentalists issued reports about threats to creatures and plants including right whales, Iberian lynxes, wild potatoes and peanuts on May 22, the International Day for Biological Diversity. Global warming is adding to threats such as land clearance for farms or cities, pollution and rising human populations.
. . "Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate", U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said. "Extinction rates are rising by a factor of up to 1,000 above natural rates. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct."
May 22, 07: One in six European land mammals faces the threat of extinction, mainly through habitat loss and deforestation, a leading conservation group said.
. . For marine mammals, the figure is higher at nearly one in four, but even this could be an underestimate because insufficient information is available on 44% of European marine mammal species, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said.
. . The Balkans and particularly Bulgaria and Romania are the most affected by declining land mammals, principally because they are also home to the greatest number of species.
May 21, 07: Time may be running out for polar bears as global warming melts the ice beneath their paws. Experts say the long-term outlook is bleak. An estimated 20,000-25,000 bears live around the Arctic --in Canada, Russia, Alaska, Greenland and Norway-- and countries are struggling to work out ways to protect them amid forecasts of an accelerating thaw. "If there's no ice, there's no way they can catch the seal."
. . On Svalbard, bears may have become less scared of people since the hunting ban, and are more likely to see humans as a meal.
May 21, 07: Congolese militia are threatening to slaughter rare mountain gorillas in Congo's Virunga National Park after they raided the eastern reserve at the weekend, killing a wildlife officer. Up to three more local wildlife workers were injured in the attacks early on Sunday by Mai Mai militia fighters on three conservation and tourism camps in the park.
. . "This was an unprovoked attack on our Rangers and other wildlife officers who protect Virunga's wildlife. And the Mai Mai said that if we retaliate, they will kill all the gorillas in this area." Conservationists also accuse the Mai Mai of slaughtering hundreds of hippos with machine guns on the southern shores of Lake Edward in late 2006.
. . Park officials believe the attacks may also have been motivated by a long standing conflict between conservationists and local people living illegally within the Virunga reserve, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Besides mountain gorillas, it is also home to eastern lowland gorillas and chimpanzees.
. . "The assailants said they would continue this kind of violence, if the local people continue to be chased out of the park."
. . Richard Leakey, Chairman of WildlifeDirect and credited with ending the slaughter of elephants in Kenya in the 1980s, said that since the beginning of armed conflict in eastern Congo more than 150 wildlife rangers have been killed on active service.
May 21, 07: For 60,000 years, they have withstood the bone-chilling extremes of the Ice Age, the blistering temperatures of the desert and an ever-shrinking habitat. These days, however, the Devils Hole pupfish rely on an eight-foot high fence which surrounds their murky pool of water in this remote corner of Death Valley National Park.
. . At only 2.7 centimeters long, the Devils Hole pupfish are one of nature's great survivors, an evolutionary miracle which for thousands of years has called home some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth.
. . But with only 38 of the pupfish remaining, down from around 500 at the start of the 1990s, the species is in peril --and trying to get the world to notice is harder than ever. The pupfish's refuge, a 150-meter deep pool that is only a few meters wide. Scuba divers descend into Devils Hole twice a year to count the fish manually, while the water quality and chemistry are monitored regularly.
. . Although Death Valley, which lies 400 km north-east of Los Angeles, is known as one of the hottest and driest places on earth, where temperatures hit 50 degrees Celsius in summer, the pupfish's habitat was left over from the end of the Ice Age, when lakes and rivers covered the region.
. . Falling water levels caused by agricultural interests threatened the fish's home in the 1960s and early 1970s, resulting in a legal battle that ended with a US Supreme Court ruling in 1976 which outlawed tapping into the region's water table for irrigation by farmers.
. . Barrett and Baldino said there were several reasons for ensuring the pupfish's survival. "This fish has been there for 60,000 years, estimated."
May 19, 07: Nepal has begun a census of the endangered Great One-horned Rhinoceros population in a wildlife reserve where sightings of the majestic animal have become rarer. Officials said dozens of rhinos, which face extinction in the wild, appeared to have disappeared from part of the reserve in recent years, amid nationwide violence sparked by a bloody Maoist rebellion.
. . Conservationists say rhino poaching increased after authorities closed down security posts due to threats from Maoists who targeted soldiers. Rhino parts and horns are in high demand for traditional medicines in China as they are believed to have aphrodisiac qualities
. . Between 2000 and 2005, the rhino population in the Chitwan National Park in central Nepal, their biggest refuge in the Himalayan nation, fell from 544 to 372. The Kaziranga National Park, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, is their only other home.
May 20, 07: An endangered white stork egg laid in the wild has hatched naturally in western Japan for the first time in more than 40 years.
May 19, 07: In order to stop running over whales, the Canadian Department of National Defence is deploying a series of robots to track whales and alert their activity to government ships.
May 17, 07: A team of Pacific Northwest scientists has recommended capturing many or all of British Columbia's remaining northern spotted owls and breeding them at zoos throughout the region in an effort to prevent their extinction.
May 16, 07: A rare soft-shell turtle thought to be on the brink of extinction has been discovered in Cambodia in a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, conservationists said.
May 15, 07: Authorities said they want to shoot more than 3,000 kangaroos on the fringes of Australia's capital, noting the animals were growing in population and eating through the grassy habitats of endangered species. [Not the story you first thot, huh?]
May 15, 07: There's a new chirp in the forest but it may be choked by the slashing and burning of trees by coca farmers, researchers said. The Gorgeted Puffleg, a rare hummingbird that boasts a plumage of violet blue and iridescent green on its throat, has been discovered living in the cloud forests of southwestern Colombia.
May 14, 07: The elephant, the world's largest land mammal, is being threatened with global extinction by a "rampant trade" in ivory on the eBay online auction site, animal welfare campaigners said.
May 14, 07: Dolphins could be wiped out in South West UK waters within four years unless the EU takes action, conservationists have warned. A report found strandings were up and sightings were down over the last 15 years and blamed this on dolphins being caught in nets slung between trawlers. In 2004, the practice of "pair trawling" was banned for British trawlers within 12 miles of the UK coast. But other European boats can continue because they are outside the rules.
. . Sightings of bottlenose dolphins in the region were at an all-time low, with just 16 reported so far this year.
May 14, 07: Federal wildlife biologist Mike Coffeen is ecstatic these days. His efforts to save North America's fastest mammal —-the endangered Sonoran pronghorn-— are succeeding beyond expectations.
. . Five years after drought whittled the deer-like animal's population to a handful, pushing it to the brink of extinction, its numbers are back above 100. Biologists are especially encouraged by the 18 fawns born within the past three months in a square-mile captive breeding enclosure within this sprawling national refuge in southern Arizona —-what Coffeen calls "our disaster ace in the hole."
. . The goat-sized pronghorn, which are often mistaken for antelope but are genetically distinct, live only in the harsh deserts of southwestern Arizona and in northern Mexico. They can run at speeds approaching 60 mph.
. . In 2002, lacking water and forage, the Arizona pronghorn population crashed from nearly 140 to an estimated 21. By the following year, Coffeen and others were hauling water into the desert to try to save the species.
. . Everything undertaken aims to avoid human contact and prevent domestication, which compromised a similar program in Baja California, Coffeen said. Fawns caught in the wild were bottle-fed and hand-raised in that program.
May 14, 07: With the number of Bald Eagles in the US hitting the highest level since World War II, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it will decide on removing them from the list of threatened and endangered species.
May 13, 07: Every spring, fishermen wait for a peculiar-looking fish to swim up the Wabash River between southern Illinois and Indiana. The shovelnose sturgeon, a prehistoric survivor covered with bony plates and wearing a strip of barbs down its back, is plentiful in the river and live up to 60 years.
. . But scientists worry that the decline of another type of sturgeon half a world away could mean trouble for the shovelnose, North America's smallest sturgeon. The shovelnose and its eggs have become increasingly popular in the caviar trade because the beluga sturgeon, a much bigger cousin that produces the king of caviar, has declined due to overfishing in the Black and Caspian seas. That prompted the U.S. and other countries to restrict or ban the import of beluga caviar.
. . As a result of the increase in demand for the shovelnose, states are beginning to look for ways to protect the fish. Because shovelnose are slow to reproduce —-females mature between ages 6 and 9-— and don't spawn every year, scientists worry that without restrictions it wouldn't take long to damage the Wabash population and, in the worst case, push it toward collapse. Fishermen can sell the female shovelnose's shimmering black roe for $40 to $50 a pound —-far more than the pennies a pound they get for other fish.
. . Sutton and other researchers tagged about 5,000 shovelnose over two years and found low mortality rates and a stable population. Still, "We didn't really catch any young fish", he said.
May 13, 07: Tens of thousands of migratory birds are facing starvation in South Korea, the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says.
. . 15 years ago, the government revealed plans for the world's biggest land reclamation project in order to drain the estuary and create fertile paddy fields. The group says a land reclamation project has destroyed key wetlands used by the birds on their way from Asia to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. Without the food at the Saemangeum wetlands, on the east coast, many of the birds will not survive the journey. Two endangered species of wading bird face extinction because of the changes.
May 11, 07: The Maltese government has closed the spring bird hunting season early amid threatened legal action by the European Commission, which says the hunt violates EU rules on protecting wildlife.
May 8, 07: The case of the Hawaiian Haha is no laughing matter to environmentalists, who say the rare plant went extinct while waiting for U.S. wildlife officials to put it on the Endangered Species list.
. . The Haha's fate is a symptom of wider problems at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which oversees programs aimed at protecting threatened species, according to a report for release on Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity.
. . The report said that the Bush administration has listed 57 species as protected since 2001, far fewer than the 512 species listed in the Clinton administration and less than the 234 species listed during the four-year presidency of George H.W. Bush, the current president's father.
. . "There are a certain number of species on the candidate list right now that are close to extinction, and that ought to be listed, and what the administration has done to date is to say that they don't have enough money and resources to list these species", said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the biodiversity center.
May 7, 07: Puget Sound steelhead were listed today as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act.
May 6, 07: A quarter of the world's oceans will be protected from fishing boats which drag heavy nets across the sea floor, South Pacific nations have agreed. The landmark deal will restrict bottom trawling, which experts say destroys coral reefs and stirs up clouds of sediment that suffocate marine life. Observers and monitoring systems will ensure vessels remain five nautical miles from marine ecosystems at risk.
. . It will close to bottom trawling areas where vulnerable marine ecosystems are known or are likely to exist, unless a prior assessment is undertaken and highly precautionary protective measures are implemented.
. . The delegation from New Zealand, whose fishermen are responsible for 90% of bottom trawling in the South Pacific high seas, said the restrictions would "severely constrain" its fishing vessels.
. . The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an alliance of leading environmental and conservation groups, welcomed the agreement. "It can be done, it has been done, and it's time for all countries to do the same in all other ocean regions."
. . In addition to the weighted nets and rollers which crush coral reefs, bottom trawling targets slow-growing species of fish, such as orange roughy, which take decades to reach breeding age. Last month, leading scientists warned there would be no sea fish left in 50 years if current practices continued.
May 3, 07: Hundreds of dead seals have washed up on Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea shoreline in the past several days, bringing the total number of the animals found dead along the shoreline in recent weeks to 832, the Emergencies Agency said.
. . Environmental officials in the Central Asian nation were trying to determine what killed seals —-most of them young. Preliminary tests showed some of the animals were infected with the distemper virus. A series of viral epidemics have killed thousands of Caspian seals since the late 1990s.
. . Environmentalists also have been concerned about the effect on wildlife of increasing exploration of the inland sea's extensive oil reserves. Last year, 350 seals and thousands of sturgeon died as a result of a heavy metal leak from an oil field.
May 3, 07: A butterfly found only at a popular Nevada off-road vehicle site won't receive federal protection as a threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided.
May 2, 07: About one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80% of that pollination. Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water", said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program. "This is the biggest general threat to our food supply."
. . Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite. USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them. The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
. . A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
. . The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees.
. . However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
. . The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October. First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America's honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the US shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
. . Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins.
. . Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the US in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem. "The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer", Pettis said. "And it may not be a simple answer."
May 1, 07: More than three dozen scientists have signed a letter to protest a new Bush administration interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, saying it jeopardizes animals such as wolves and grizzly bears.
. . The proposed policy revision would enable the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect animals and plants only where they are battling for survival. The agency would not have to restore the animals in areas where they have died out, or protect them where they're in good shape.
. . The changes were revealed last month in draft department documents released by environmentalists, who said the changes would amount to a gutting of the federal Endangered Species Act.
May 1, 07: "The bees were gone", David Hackenberg says. "The honey was still there. There's young brood (eggs) still in the hive. Bees just don't do that."
On that November night last year in the Florida field where he wintered his bees, Hackenberg found 400 hives empty. Another 30 hives were "disappearing, dwindling or whatever you want to call it", and their bees were "full of a fungus nobody's ever seen before."
. . The discovery by Hackenberg, a beekeeper from Pa., was the first buzz about a plague that now afflicts 27 states, from the East Coast to the West. Beekeepers report losses of 30% to 90% of their honeybee hives, according to a Congressional Research Service study in March. Some report total losses.
. . The $15-billion-a-year honeybee industry is about more than honey: The nimble insects pollinate 90% to 100% of at least 19 kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts nationwide, from almonds and apples to onions and broccoli. "Basically, everything fun and nutritious on your table --fruits, nuts, berries, everything but the grains-- require bee pollinators", Hackett says.
. . Colony collapse disorder differs from past outbreaks:
. . •Instead of dying in place, the bees abandon the hives, leaving behind the queen and young bees.
. . •Remaining bees eat sparsely and suffer the symptoms --high levels of bacteria, viruses and fungi in the guts-- seen by Hackenberg.
. . •Collapses can occur within two days, Hackett says.
. . •Parasites wait unusually long to invade abandoned hives.
Daniel Weaver, head of the 1,500-member American Beekeeping Federation, estimates that about 600,000 of 2 million hives (a more conservative number than other estimates) nationwide have been lost.
. . A colony collapse disorder working group based at Pennsylvania State U has become a central clearinghouse for all the suspected causes, which include:
. . •An overload of parasites, such as bloodsucking varroa mites, that have ravaged bees. The parasites reportedly spread to Hawaii only last week.
. . •Pesticide contamination. Hotly debated suspicion centers on whether "neonicotinoid" insecticides interfere with the foraging behavior of bees, leading them to abandon their hives.
. . •Fungal diseases such as Nosema ceranae, which is blamed for big bee losses in Spain. It was spotted by U of California-San Francisco researchers who were examining sample dead bees last week.
. . •The rigors of traveling in trucks from crop to crop.
"When you sit down to dinner, the question will be what sort of grain do you want -- corn or wheat or rice-- because that's about all the choice we'll have left."
Apr 30, 07: Grey whales in the eastern Pacific appear to be in some trouble, with the cause far from clear, scientists say. Researchers with the conservation group Earthwatch found that whales are arriving in their breeding grounds off the Mexican coast malnourished. The same thing happened just after the 1997/8 El Nino event, which warmed the waters and depleted food stocks. Scientists are not sure whether the current decline is climate related or part of a natural predator-prey cycle.
. . There are thought to be between 15,000 and 18,000 grey whales in the eastern Pacific, a population that has been in generally good health since pulling back from the brink of extinction when hunting stopped in the 1940s.
Apr 28, 07: The U.S. government has arbitrarily and capriciously sought to ease rules for foreign fisherman on "dolphin-safe" tuna, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Friday in upholding current standards.
. . The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the latest in a long dispute on what tuna sold in the United States can be labeled "dolphin safe" --a designation that means tuna is fished using practices that protect dolphins. Previous such decisions angered Mexican and South American fishing industries.
. . The dispute involves the use of huge "purse seine" nets, which fisherman have used since the late 1950s to boost their capture of tuna swimming beneath dolphins. The nets get their name as they can be closed like a drawstring purse. Dolphins, which are air-breathing mammals, can be easily spotted by fishermen when they surface for air.
. . As decades of such fishing dramatically lowered the numbers of certain species of dolphins, the U.S. Congress enacted a law in 1990 that said companies could not market tuna as "dolphin-safe" if they caught the fish by purposely surrounding dolphins with the nets.
. . Worrying they could be shut out of the U.S. tuna market, officials in Latin America have since lobbied for a less stringent rule that would allow the "dolphin-safe" label if observers on the foreign boats had not seen dolphins killed or seriously injured.
. . The San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute and other environmental groups have led the litigation against the U.S. government and Latin American fishing interests in the case. The court said such fishing practices have killed more than 6 million dolphins.
Apr 27, 07: Where have all the flowers gone? Over-harvesting fuelled by surging market prices is threatening to wipe out several species of wild orchids in eastern China, some of which command as much as $175,000 a pot, state media reported.
. . Chinese horticulturalists warned that the lucrative trade had taken 10 species native to mountainous areas of Zhejiang province to the brink of extinction. Of more than 3,000 species native to China, Zhejiang used to be home to 2,400, but only 740 varieties remained.
Apr 26, 07: Britain's Millennium Seed Bank filed away its one billionth seed today in a race against time to save the world's plants from global warming wipe-out. The bank, in a deep basement near the sleepy town of Ardingly some 50km south of London, already holds seeds of more than 18,000 wild plant species from 126 countries.
. . "Plant diversity is a vital part of the system upon which we depend. The need for the kind of insurance policy the Millennium Seed Bank provides has never been greater", said bank chief Paul Smith.
. . The billionth seed is from an African bamboo, Oxytenanthera abyssinica, and was collected in Mali, West Africa. The species is a priority for conservation for a number of reasons -- its natural habitat is under threat, it is a very useful plant, and it sets seed only once every seven years.
. . The goal of the seed bank is to have 10% --or 30,000-- of the world's flowering plant species safely in storage by 2010 --a target it is well on the way to achieving. But then the money runs out. Dried, sorted and stored in underground vaults at -20 C, the seeds sit in glass jars in vaults, awaiting the day the scientists hope will never come --when the species no longer exists in the wild.
Apr 26, 07: Taiwan's bee farmers are feeling the sting of lost business and possible crop danger after millions of the honey-making, plant-pollinating insects vanished during volatile weather.
. . Over the past two months, farmers in three parts of Taiwan have reported most of their bees gone. A beekeeper on Taiwan's northeastern coast reported 6 million insects missing "for no reason", and one in the south said 80 of his 200 bee boxes had been emptied. Beekeepers usually let their bees out of boxes to pollinate plants and the insects normally make their way back to their owners. However, many of the bees have not returned over the past couple of months.
. . Possible reasons include disease, pesticide poisoning and unusual weather, varying from less than 20 degrees Celsius to more than 30 degrees C over a few days, experts say.
. . "You can see climate change really clearly these days in Taiwan", said Yang Ping-shih, entomology professor at the National Taiwan U. He added that two kinds of pesticide can make bees turn "stupid" and lose their sense of direction.
. . Billions of bees have fled hives in the United States since late 2006, instead of helping pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees also have been reported in Europe and Brazil.
Apr 26, 07: A tiny mite that has devastated mainland honeybee populations showed up in Honolulu hives for the first time this month and has now been confirmed in bee colonies across Oahu.
. . The infestation by varroa mites has led the state to ask beekeepers to restrict transport of bees around the islands. There are concerns it could threaten the Big Island's thriving queen bee export industry, which has so far tested free of the mites.
. . "This is going to be for us a nightmare", said Michael Kliks, head of the Hawaii Beekeepers' Association and owner of Manoa Honey Co. "When I saw that mite I knew exactly what it was. I knew exactly what it meant and I fell to my knees and almost began to weep because it's inexpressible what that sea change is for us in Hawaii."
. . The parasites are blamed for destroying more than half of some mainland beekeepers' hives and wiping out most wild honeybees there. It's too late to hope to eradicate or even contain the infestation. "The only thing we can try and do is keep the levels of infestation in our managed colonies below what's called the threshold level ... so that we can still produce honey. But keeping it at that level will certainly require quite regular, heavy application of permitted pesticides."
Apr 24, 07: Hundreds of whales and dolphins could be saved thanks to a new listening system designed by Plymouth U. The equipment, which is towed behind a ship, scans for calls and songs to pinpoint their exact location. Scientists launched a prototype in Plymouth, & hope that the equipment will become integral to seismic survey equipment.
. . Conservationists think underwater explosions used in surveying could be behind the beaching of whales. The system uses marine microphones, or hydrophones, to scan the seabed. These sounds are then analyzed to tell seismic operators if there are whales and dolphins in the area. There are more than 100 seismic surveys a year in British waters, each one involving dozens of blasts.
Apr 24, 07: Something strange is happening to honey bees. They seem to be getting lost while they are away from their hives, leaving queen bees and immature workers alone, without food, in a syndrome called "Colony Collapse Disorder." The thing is, these insects are the ultimate in social producers, pollinating plants and crops that account for up to a third of the U.S. diet. All free, as long as there are bees to do the work.
. . Researchers at Landau U in Germany, have found evidence that wireless phone radiation can interfere with bees' navigational abilities. According to WirelessWeek, "up to 70% of bees exposed to radiation from a cordless phone docking unit placed in their hive later failed to find their way back to the hive."
. . The rise of Colony Collapse Disorder does seem to correlate to the increased use of wireless communications in human society, especially when you consider that wireless-intensive regions of Europe and Brazil are reportedly severely affected. The research has focused on wireless phones, but a wide range of products for the office and home today and intended for the near future are based on wireless data transmission that may impact the local bee population.
. . Would you give up your wireless phone to save the bees? What about to prevent your grocery bill from climbing by 50%, or 100%? Or starve?!
Apr 20, 07: Beluga whales have long delighted residents and tourists alike when spotted swimming the silty waters off of Anchorage, but a federal agency says the gregarious white whales are in danger of becoming extinct.
Apr 20, 07: [this is about extinction of *humans, if we think that we can claim all food everywhere.] The competition between protected sea lions gobbling Columbia River salmon and impatient humans with empty fishing lines has led to vigilante action. A fisherman shot a sea lion who stole a salmon off the line of a fellow angler. The sea lion was hit twice with a .22-caliber rifle but reported alive in the river.
. . By some accounts, the sea lions eat up to 4% of the salmon run. Oregon has trapped a few and trucked them to the river's mouth near Astoria, but the sea lions can cover the 144 river miles back to the dam in two days.
. . Robin Brown of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said there are perhaps 300,000 California sea lions along the Pacific coast, at least six times the number in 1972. He said only 100 or so show up at the dam each spring.
. . The Humane Society of the US says the sea lions are a red herring. It blames the plight of the salmon on poor fishery and water management, hydroelectric dams, damage to spawning areas and other factors. "It won't save declining salmon runs in the Columbia River, because the sea lions aren't the problem." said Sharon Young, national marine issues field director for the group.
Apr 18, 07: Scientists taking a new look at old videotapes of the muddy seafloors off southern Oregon found that places showing tracks from the nets of fishing trawlers had fewer numbers and kinds of fish than areas that were undisturbed.
Apr 23, 07: Hunters in Russia's Far East have shot and killed one of the last seven surviving female Amur leopards living in the wild, WWF said, driving the species even closer to extinction.
Apr 18, 07: Logging, building, farming and poaching have virtually killed off the Amur Leopard, environmentalists said. Chinese medicine substitutes crushed leopard bones for tiger bones in some of its remedies, creating demand for the cat.
. . There are only 25 to 34 of the graceful animals still living in the wild, WWF said at a news briefing in Moscow to report on the results of a census of leopard numbers in Russia's Far East. At least 100 would be needed to guarantee the species' survival.The Amur leopard has longer legs and fur than other leopard species, allowing it to prowl and hunt with ease in the snowy eastern fringe of Siberia. The animal shares its natural habitat with the stronger Amur Tiger, whose numbers have soared from near-extinction in the 1940s to around 600 today.
. . This year, the Russian government changed the route of a planned oil pipeline to avoid slicing through the area.
Apr 18, 07: A decline in the amount of leaves on the ground could be behind the rapid demise of frog species, a study of a rainforest in Costa Rica has suggested. Until now, the prime suspect for the amphibians' population crash was a deadly chytrid fungal infection.
. . By studying data over a 35-year period, researchers found that lizards, which were not susceptible to the infection, had also declined by a similar rate.
. . The team said the global decline of amphibian populations ranked "among the most critical issues in conservation biology". Of particular concern, the scientists wrote, were "enigmatic" declines --where there had been a rapid fall in species populations but no obvious human cause, such as the destruction of habitat.
. . A paper looked at biodiversity hotspots in Central and South Amercia and found that changes to the local climate had created perfect conditions for the spread of the frog-killing fungus. But the PNAS paper found another potential culprit --the lack of leaf-litter on the forest floor.
. . Scientists examined data of amphibian and common reptile populations in La Selva, a protected area of rainforest in Costa Rica. Between 1970 and 2005, the data showed that the number of amphibians had declined by about 75%, which supported the idea that frogs were being wiped out by the chytrid fungus.
. . However, the data also showed a similar fall in the area's reptiles, which were not susceptible to the fungus. Over the same period, the data showed that there had been a 75% reduction in the density of leaves falling to the ground from the rainforest's canopy. Leaf litter provides a vital habitat, offering food and shelter, for the amphibians and lizards.
. . The team, from Florida International U, the U of Costa Rica and San Diego State U, suggested shifts in the area's climate had led to a decline in the habitat needed to sustain the creatures.
Apr 18, 07: Giant tortoises doze in the shade as rare lizards slip under bushes and endangered birds chatter in the sunlit trees overhead. On a small wooded island off southern Mauritius, environmentalists are trying to turn back time to an era before humans ever set foot on the volcanic Indian Ocean archipelago.
. . The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) is a local non-governmental organization. Sadly, they are too late to help the Mauritius giant skink --a type of large grey lizard-- its broad-billed parrot, scops owl or lesser flying fox, and many other species now extinct.
. . Separate from the continents since it emerged from the seas some eight million years ago, the island developed hundreds of unique species of flora and fauna that evolved in isolation. But the arrival of Europeans led by the Portuguese in the 16th century triggered an ecological disaster with the slashing of forest habitats and the introduction of predators like rats. By far the most famous victim was the flightless dodo bird, which is believed to have died out in the late 1600s. About 98% of the island's indigenous forest has been cut down, most of it to grow fields of sugar cane.
. . But on Ile Aux Aigrettes, in sight of the mainland, experts are now trying to recreate the environment of those bygone days and provide a haven for species in danger today. The archipelago once had two types of giant tortoises, but the gentle beasts --each weighing on average more than 200 kg-- on Ile Aux Aigrettes today were imported from the Seychelles.
. . Conservationists have removed rats, cats, goats and the hedgehog-like tenrecs from the small island. And the importance of tight "biosecurity" means boats or equipment coming to the island and its straw-roofed buildings are checked for stowaways. Once a rat made it across from the mainland and set up home in a thatched roof, workers said. It took days to catch.
. . Their findings have been encouraging. Both the Echo Parakeet and Mauritius Kestrel were also down to just a handful of birds before being rescued from the jaws of extinction. The Mauritius Kestrel was the world's rarest bird: with just four examples known to exist in 1974. Now there are about 1,000.
. . Some 10,000 visitors are expected on the Ile this year, up from 8,300 in 2006, including many local schoolchildren. "Mauritius is very green but the green should not be mistaken for native vegetation existing before", the MWF's Khadun said, referring to the sugar cane plantations.
Apr 14, 07: One of the nation's most ambitious plans to protect marine life was approved today when a state panel voted to ban or restrict fishing across more than 200 square miles of water off Central California.
. . The Fish and Game Commission unanimously designated 29 marine preserves between Santa Barbara and Half Moon Bay, 13 of which would be off-limits to all anglers, commercial and recreational. Deep water fishing would be prohibited in the rest.
. . The plan is the first piece envisioned in a statewide network of similarly protected areas. The regulations, expected to go into effect this summer, were designed to maintain the diversity of a marine population that includes mammals such as otters and whales, crustaceans like crabs and abalone, and migrating Coho salmon and steelhead trout.
. . While California already has 80 coastal reserves, including a dozen in territory covered by the new rules, the latest designations offer greater protection. "The existing 80 areas, while providing appearance of protection, are all very small and all basically allow all types of fishing to occur", Ugoretz said.
. . By contrast, only trolling for fish near the ocean's surface will be allowed in the conservation areas where fishing still will be allowed when the plan goes into effect, he said.
Apr 16, 07: Britain's bumblebee population is under threat in a crisis that could wipe out entire species and have a devastating knock-on effect on agriculture, scientists say. The furry yellow-and-black creatures, essential for pollination, are being killed off by pesticides and agricultural intensification, which have cut back on hedgerows and removed their source of food.
. . "There just aren't enough flowers around", Professor Dave Goulson, the director of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust said. "If we knock out an important group like bumblebees, it can have a huge knock-on impact on other things, such as the pollination of important crops and flowers."
. . Britain once had around 25 native species of bumblebee, but three of those have been wiped out in the past 50 years and 10 more are now "severely threatened", Goulson said. "There are two that are teetering on the edge of extinction and could be gone in five to 10 years quite easily."
. . The loss of species could lead to sweeping changes in Britain's countryside, with many rare plants disappearing and the production of crops such as raspberries, oil-seed rape, runner beans and broad beans sharply curtailed.
. . The problem is not just in Britain --it has been spotted in North America and Europe too. That could make it more difficult to reintroduce any species that goes extinct locally. Goulson and other scientists want farmers to adopt more wildlife-friendly farming methods to help sustain the bumblebee population, and are encouraging people to look after the bees.
Apr 13, 07: Ambushing locals as they return home from work, foreign invaders are dismembering French natives and feeding them to their young. This horror scenario is playing out in France's beehives, where an ultra-aggressive species of Asian hornets — who likely migrated in pottery shipped from China — may be threatening French honey production. The hornets are thought to have reached France in 2004 after stowing away on a cargo boat.
. . France's 1.1 million hives produce up to 30,000 tons of honey a year, about 2,500 tons of which are exported. Experts fear the hornets —-which also sting humans-— may spread to the warmer reaches of southern Europe. They could begin colonizing Spain as early as this summer. Even Britain could be vulnerable if they hornets cross the English Channel through freight
. . North America is already suffering its own bee troubles. An invasion of highly aggressive Africanized bees has spread across the southern US. These "killer bees" are easily provoked and attack in huge numbers. Since the hybrid Africanized bees are considered less efficient than European bees, beekeepers worry they could lower honey production and pollination.
. . A mysterious illness has killed tens of thousands of honeybee colonies in at least 22 U.S. states, threatening honey production. The cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder, is unclear.
. . The honeybees are beginning to mount a counteroffensive, Villemant says: They gather around an invading hornet, flap their wings to increase the temperature and effectively roast it. Beekeepers also are fighting back —-they can change the size of the entrances to the hives so the smaller bees can get in but not the hornets.
. . Some have suggested destroying all hornet nests in the region, including those of French and European hornets. But Villemant says that would be ecologically disastrous. Hood said French beekeepers "could go back to where (the hornets) came from to find natural predators." But he added, "You have to be careful with this kind of solution as what you bring back might be worse than the pest problem you already have."
Apr 13, 07: A strong earthquake that struck Indonesia's Sumatra island two years ago caused one of the biggest coral die-offs ever documented, a study by scientists from two conservation groups found.
. . "In contrast to other threats like coral bleaching, none of the corals uplifted by the earthquake have survived." "At many sites, the worst affected species are beginning to decolonize the shallow reef areas. The reefs appear to be returning to what they looked like before the earthquake, although the process may take many years." "This is a unique opportunity to document a process that occurs maybe once a century and promises to provide new insights into coral recovery processes that until now we could only explore on fossil reefs."
. . The government has banned the use of chemicals such as cyanide and bombing to catch fish, but such practices still go on in many parts of the huge tropical nation made up of more than 17,000 islands.
Apr 12, 07: The bald eagle has made a soaring comeback from the edge of extinction but wildlife experts in two Western U.S. states are concerned that eagle populations may be poised for a nose dive.
. . The Amur tiger, the world's biggest wild cat, has pounced back from the brink of extinction to hit its highest population level for at least 100 years, the WWF said.
Apr 13, 07: Florida manatees are dying in record numbers and the lumbering marine mammals face growing threats from speedboats, a toxic foe called red tide and the potential loss of their warm winter havens at power plants. So why is the U.S. government talking about removing its protective "endangered" label, conservationists ask.
. . A change from endangered to threatened would not diminish the manatee's protection, but advocates say it could be hurt by public perception that it is no longer in danger.
. . An annual census found 2,812 manatees in Florida this year, down from 3,113 in 2006. Reported deaths numbered 417 last year, the highest on record, and 101 died in the first three months of this year.
. . The West Indian manatee, related to the West African and Amazon versions and to the dugong of Australia, is a giant that grows to an average of 10 feet and more than 450 kg. Its wrinkled and whiskered face, reproduced as a stuffed toy, has won the hearts of generations of children. It has no natural predators. But its penchant for resting on the water's surface has made it a frequent victim of boat propellers. Manatees are also routinely crushed or drowned in canal locks or hurt by stray fishing line and hooks. They are vulnerable to red tide algae blooms and to winter cold.
. . Conservationists say the potential closure of aging electric plants is an unsolved problem for the survival of the species. Water temperatures below 16 degrees C (61 degrees F) put a manatee in danger and every winter hundreds gather at waterfront power stations to take advantage of warm discharge water. Florida Power & Light, the state's largest electric company, has five plants that are refuges and as many as 1,500 manatees can be found at the plants on a chilly winter night.
Apr 11, 07: Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has declared the Galapagos Islands, home to dozens of endangered species, at risk and a national priority for action. Mr Correa's call came as a UN delegation was visiting to see if the islands should be declared "in danger". The Galapagos Islands were made a World Heritage Site 30 years ago for their unique plant and animal life.
. . "We are pushing for a series of actions to overcome the huge institutional, environmental and social crises in the islands", Mr Correa said, adding that these problems were the result of years of neglect by previous governments.
. . Last month, several rangers of the ecological reserve in the islands clashed with members of the Ecuadorean Armed Forces over what the rangers say was illegal fishing in protected waters. The incident provoked an outcry in Ecuador as it illustrated for many the practices which are damaging the site.
. . Ecologists say the problems in the Galapagos run much deeper than the government has acknowledged. They fear that a rapid increase in the human population and the gradual introduction of external species of flora and fauna are threatening the entire ecosystem on the islands. About 20,000 people, working mainly in fishing and tourism, also live there.
Apr 10, 07: A bald eagle egg has hatched in the wild on Santa Catalina Island, only the third since chemical contamination there wiped out the iconic birds several decades ago, conservation officials said.
Apr 10, 07: Scientists are planning to move Tasmanian devils —the Australian marsupial made famous as a snarling, whirlwind character in Warner Bros. cartoons-— to an island sanctuary to avert the animals' threatened extinction from a mysterious cancer.
. . But some scientists fear that in their haste to save the species, authorities could wreak further environmental damage and risk the survival of other endangered animals by introducing the devils into a habitat unaccustomed to them.
. . They're being wiped out on the island state of Tasmania by a contagious cancer that creates grotesque facial tumors. [get that? Contagious. Q: could it possibly jump species?!]
. . Scientists estimate that within five years, there will be no disease-free population in Tasmania —-the only place in the world where the devils exist outside zoos. "I think there's a real risk of extinction within 20 years across the whole of Tasmania", said Hamish McCallum, a professor of wildlife research at the U of Tasmania.
. . The move, which state and federal governments are expected to approve within weeks, is controversial because scientists can only guess at the impact the introduced carnivores will have on the uninhabited island's ecology. Maria island has been identified previously as a potential species-saving haven.
. . Kangaroo numbers on Maria have exploded, and hundreds have to be shot at regular intervals to prevent them starving through overgrazing. Advocates hope that if devils are wiped out on the Tasmanian mainland, the disease will die along with them, and the animals placed in havens can then be safely reintroduced.
Apr 8, 07: Nearly 250 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan in the past week, emergency officials said. Authorities were conducting tests.
Environmentalists have been concerned about increasing exploration of the Caspian Sea's extensive oil reserves. Last year, 350 seals and thousands of sturgeon died in a northern part of the Caspian region as a result of a heavy metal leak from the Kashagan oil field. Also, several epidemics of a viral disease have killed thousands of Caspian seals since the late 1990s.
Apr 8, 07: A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped a milestone. Six years into the program, the total has reached 1,009,000. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75 million species.
. . The finished catalog will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses. The listing does not include fossil species from the past.
Apr 6, 07: Hundreds of new guards and closed-circuit TV cameras will be used to protect rare Asiatic lions threatened by poachers and villagers in their only natural habitat, Indian officials said.
Apr 3, 07: The scattered carcasses of dead turtles bake on the hot sand. Scraps of the white shells of turtle eggs surround a hole where stray dogs have dug up a nest.
. . Until a decade ago, this beach on India's east coast used to witness one of nature's most spectacular sights --the mass nesting of tens of thousands of Olive Ridley turtles on a single night. Not since 1995 has that happened. These days just a handful of turtles come to the beach at Devi to nest.
. . Fewer turtles than normal arrived this year at the nearby beaches of Gahirmatha, where a marine sanctuary has failed to check illegal fishing by trawlers, and the construction of a large port nearby presents a major environmental threat. No mass nesting has yet been seen on the southern beach of Rushikulya, and time is running out if that beach is not to witness its third "no-show" in just over a decade.
. . At the same time, more than 8,000 carcasses have been washed ashore since November, most caught and drowned in the nets of trawlers fishing too close to the shore, conservationists say. Greenpeace says more than 120,000 turtles have been washed up dead on Orissa's shores in the past 12 years, most caught in the nets of trawlers which the law says should not be there. Total deaths may have been significantly higher.
. . The trawlers also scatter the turtles as they gather in offshore waters to nest, and rampant trawling is thought to be a major reason for the demise of Devi. But although turtles enjoy the same level of protection under Indian law as tigers, Mohanty said there was simply no enforcement or political will to protect them. A single gill net was found to contain 265 dead animals a few years ago. "Boats are seized, nets are seized, but then they are released after a couple of months," he said. "Not a single conviction has taken place."
. . The forest department may unwittingly have contributed to the demise of Devi when they planted casuarina trees on the beach in a bid to protect nearby villages from cyclones. That narrowed the beach and made much of it unsuitable for nesting.
. . Traditional fishermen hate the trawlers every bit as much as Mohanty. They say their catch has fallen sharply since trawlers came and is worth perhaps half what it was five years ago, while more expensive fish like pomfret and hilsa have all but vanished.
Apr 2, 07: The spectacular bloom of a magnolia may be a very common sight in gardens but in the wild, it is a different story. A new report has found that over half the world's magnolia species are facing extinction in their forest habitats. Some specimens growing in the precincts of Chinese temples are estimated to be up to 800 years old.
. . "Apart from garden plants, magnolias are used as food sources and for medicinal purposes. They're also used as timber products. They have a whole variety of uses because magnolias produce a very durable, light-colored wood."
. . The BGCI and FFI say the significance of the plants' decline lies not only in the threat to the genetic diversity of the family, but also because magnolias are a highly sensitive indicator of the well-being of the forests in which they are found.
Mar 30, 07: A blind spider-like animal has stopped development of a multi-billion-dollar iron ore mine in Australia after an environmental body rejected the project for fear the tiny cave-dweller would become extinct. They would die from ultraviolet light. Even short exposures to sunlight can be fatal.
. . The troglobites measure just 4 mm (0.16 in) in length. A troglobite is an animal that lives entirely in the dark parts of caves. It has adapted to life in total darkness. [troglo: from the Greek, meaning cave-dweller.]
Mar 29, 07: Overfishing of big sharks in the Atlantic has cut stocks by 99%, dooming North Carolina's bay scallop fishery and threatening other species including shrimp and crabs, researchers reported.
. . With most of the great predatory sharks --bull, great white, dusky and hammerhead-- gone from northwest Atlantic waters, the rays and skates the sharks normally feed on had a population explosion.
. . "With fewer sharks around, the species they prey upon --like cownose rays-- have increased in numbers, and in turn, hordes of cownose rays dining on bay scallops have wiped the scallops out", said study co-author Julia Baum. This coincided with a rise in Asian demand for shark fins for medicinal uses and for food. Shark fins currently sell for about $22 a pound.
. . Now that the ravenous rays and skates have feasted on bay scallops, they are likely to look for food in protected areas along the coast where other fish and shellfish shelter in their early months of life. Rays and skates are good diggers and can excavate seagrass beds. Seagrass beds are normally used as nurseries for young fish and shellfish like shrimp and crabs because they protect against predation by what Peterson called "wimpier predators" such as crabs; they are not build to stand up to raids by bigger species like rays.
. . Many Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico fisheries are dominated by animals and plants that depend on estuaries, the parts of rivers that connect to the sea. If rays and skates prey on these shellfish and some of the young grouper and snapper fish that begin their lives in the seagrass, these species could also be threatened.
. . When fishing agencies looked for an unexploited resource to replace cod as a mainstay, they settled on shark about 25 years ago. Sharks, in huge demand in Asia, are also frequently caught inadvertently by nets meant to snare swordfish.
Better architecture and energy savings in buildings could do more to fight global warming than all curbs on greenhouse gases agreed under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. study showed.
. . Better use of concrete, metals and timber in construction and less use of energy for everything from air conditioners to lighting in homes and offices could save billions of dollars in a sector accounting for 30-40% of world energy use.
. . Simple measures include more blinds to keep out the sun in hot climates, switching to energy efficient lightbulbs, better insulation and ventilation. "By some conservative estimates, the building sector worldwide could deliver emission reductions of 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2", said Achim Steiner, the head of UNEP. "A more aggressive energy efficiency policy might deliver over two billion tons or close to three times the amount scheduled to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol", he said.
. . China is the world's top builder, adding almost 2 billion square meters (21.53 billion sq ft) of new building space every year, it said.
Mar 29, 07: This egg hunt shortly before Easter was not for the faint-hearted. A team at Beekse Bergen safari park in the Netherlands successfully harvested eggs from Ans, a 4,190-pound southern white rhino.
Mar 29, 07: Under court order, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to take another look at protecting two rare salamanders that live in old-growth forests in Oregon and California.
Mar 27, 07: The first stage of Canada's controversial annual harp seal hunt is likely to be scrapped because the ice floes where pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned, officials and animal rights activists said.
. . The first part of the hunt, which had been due to start, occurs in the Gulf of St Lawrence to Canada's East Coast. Hunters move across the ice floes, shooting and clubbing to death young seals. Canada's federal fisheries ministry, which oversees the hunt, said the pups had been born as usual this year but the ice floes had then been blown far out to sea and started to break up before the seals learned how to swim properly. "This is the first time I've ever seen this in 25 years."
. . The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said unusually warm weather meant the ice cover south of the Magdalen Islands was almost completely missing, adding it feared thousands of harp seal pups had drowned.
Mar 26, 07: Jane Goodall, 72, is in Chicago for a three-day conference billed as the first scientific meeting on how chimpanzees think —-not just how they behave. "When I began in 1960 there must have been at least a million chimpanzees across Africa in 25 countries", Goodall said. "We don't think there are more than 150,000 now.
Mar 23, 07: Nevada. Federal land managers trying to keep a rare butterfly off the list of endangered species have closed dozens of off-road vehicle trails at one of the largest sand dunes in the West.
Mar 22, 07: Fears that crocodile numbers have exploded in northern Australia, with more sightings off surf beaches, in swimming holes and near towns, have sparked calls for the re-introduction of crocodile culling.
Mar 20, 07: The U.S. Navy said it had asserted the "state secrets" privilege in a lawsuit by environmental groups, a move to keep the military from being forced to disclose classified information about the use of sonar believed to injure whales and other animals. The state secrets privilege, if upheld, renders information unavailable for litigation. It can be challenged, although the federal government often succeeds in asserting the protection.
. . "It can be challenged and we intend to challenge it", said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. They and other environmental groups say sonar used in routine training and testing violates environmental laws. They also argue the Navy's sonar injures and kills marine mammals, including whales and dolphins. Animal welfare organizations have documented cases of mass whale strandings and deaths around the world that they say are associated with sonar blasts thought to disorient marine mammals and sometimes cause bleeding from the eyes and ears.
. . "Our position here is not that the Navy cannot train with sonar, not that the Navy cannot use sonar during combat, but only that whales and other marine species should not have to die for practice", Reynolds said.
Mar 21, 07: A global computerized system that tracks wood from stump to store is aiding the battle against illegal logging and helping consumers choose sustainable products, says Scott Poynton of the Tropical Forest Trust.
. . Mar 21, 07: Poachers have killed four great one-horned rhinoceros in a reserve in northeast India over the past two weeks, conservationists said, warning of a renewed threat to the endangered animals.
. . The number of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming continues to grow, with at least 1,300 in the three states at the end of 2006, federal officials say.
Mar 20, 07: Federal land managers working to keep a rare Nevada butterfly off the list of endangered species have closed scores of off-road vehicle trails at one of the biggest, most popular sand dunes in the West.
Mar 20, 07: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declassified the American crocodile as an endangered species Tuesday, saying the animal has rebounded from the edge of extinction.
Mar 20, 07: A beetle thought to be extinct in the UK since the 1940s has been rediscovered in south Devon. The beetle gets its name from the highly toxic oil secretions it produces when threatened. The flightless creature's natural habitats and the populations of bees they rely on have been decimated [reduced by 10%] by intensive farming practices.
Mar 15, 07: A type of leopard found on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo and believed to be related to its mainland cousin is in fact a completely new cat species, WWF said. The conservation group said American scientists compared the DNA of the clouded leopard with that of its mainland cousin and determined the two populations diverged some 1.4 million years ago.
. . The clouded leopard is Borneo's largest predator, has the longest canine teeth relative to its size of any cat, and can grow as large as a small panther. There are estimated to be between 5,000 and 11,000 of these animals left.
Mar 14, 07: The diamondback terrapin, a turtle species that lives on the U.S. east coast, is under siege from Asian gourmets and American developers, but now officials and lawmakers are coming to its rescue.
. . Scientists in the Maryland Department of Natural Resources this week proposed to ban capturing the reptile from the Chesapeake Bay, where thousands are snatched every year destined for China and other Asian countries where they are commonly made into soup.
. . The moratorium, expected to take effect from June 18, would ban the terrapin harvest indefinitely and help to reverse a predicted continuing decline in its population. It takes between eight and 13 years for them to reach sexual maturity, and they only lay around 40 eggs a year.
. . They are also threatened by predators such as raccoons, which prevent about 95% of young terrapins from reaching breeding maturity, as well as recreational crabbers, who unintentionally catch them in crab traps where they are unable to breathe.
Mar 13, 07: Wildlife officials today released 20 Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits that were raised in captivity to a sagebrush-covered area of central Washington state where their ancestors roamed before teetering on the edge of extinction.
Mar 13, 07: Europe and North America have reversed centuries of deforestation and are showing a net increase in wooded areas, while most developing countries continue to cut down their trees, a U.N. agency said.
. . The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said in its biannual report on the State of the World's Forests that economic prosperity and careful forest management had positive effects. Among the major causes of deforestation cited by Killmann were conversion of land for farming or livestock.
. . However, poor or conflict-stricken countries —-where clear-cutting and uncontrolled fires are especially severe-— still face serious challenges in managing their wooded areas, the agency said. "Deforestation continues at an unacceptable rate" of about 32 million acres a year." However, he noted in a positive sign that the net loss had decreased over the last decade from 22 million acres to 17 million acres.
. . Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are currently the regions with the highest losses of wood-covered regions, especially in tropical areas. Africa, which accounts for about 16% of the global forests, lost over 9% of its trees between 1990 and 2005, the agency said. In Latin America and the Caribbean, home to nearly half of the world's forests, 0.5% were lost every year between 2000 and 2005 — up from an annual net rate of 0.46% in the 1990s.
. . On the positive side, wooded area increased in Asia between 2000 and 2005. The increase was limited to East Asia, where investment in tree plantations in China offset high rates of clear-cutting in other regions, the report said. Forested area in most European countries is also increasing, while it is stable in Canada and the US.
. . Forests cover just under 9.88 billion acres, about 30% of the world's land area. The world lost 3% of its wooded areas between 1995 and 2000, the agency said.
Mar 12, 07: Many species of waterbird are in decline because of a loss of wetland habitats and governments need to do more to protect "flyway" migration routes, an international study said. "Global actions for the protection of migratory waterbirds are losing the race with economic development", according to the report about birds such as ducks, geese, plovers or sandpipers and based on the work of about 450 experts in 59 nations.
. . The report was presented by the Dutch and British governments and Wetlands International and was backed by U.N. agencies and more than a dozen governments including the US. "In areas where governments are working to protect sites along important migratory routes, the results are promising", it said. The study said 170 of 614 waterbird species reviewed were now endangered. It blamed falling bird numbers mainly "on loss and degradation of wetland (and other) habitats." Wetlands are being drained for uses such as farming, roads or towns.
. . The report also said many species were under threat from global warming. It said there was a need for greater surveillance of diseases, amid worries about bird flu.
Thai veterinarians announced that an artificially inseminated elephant has given birth to a bouncing baby boy --a first in Asia that could be a crucial step in conserving the endangered species.
Mar 7, 07: Captive-bred mountain gazelles have been successfully released into the wild for the first time in 10 years. Conservationists released 17 of the creatures into the Ibex reserve in Saudi Arabia. It's at a high risk of extinction because of factors such as habitat loss and hunting.
Mar 7, 07: Cambodia's rare Mekong dolphin is making a tentative comeback from the edge of extinction after net fishing was banned in its main habitat, Cambodian and World Wildlife Fund officials said.
Feb 28, 07: Twenty new species of sharks and rays have been discovered in Indonesia in a five-year survey of catches at local fish markets, Australian researchers said.
Feb 28, 07: South Africa unveiled a new policy to manage its swelling elephant population, including resuming a controversial cull of the animals if needed.
Feb 27, 07: Frogs that started life as male tadpoles were changed in an experiment into females by estrogen-like pollutants similar to those found in the environment, according to a new study.
. . The results may shed light on at least one reason that up to a third of frog species around the world are threatened with extinction, suggests the study. In a laboratory at Uppsala U in Sweden, two species of frogs were exposed to levels of estrogen similar to those detected in natural bodies of water in Europe, the US and Canada.
. . The results were startling: whereas the percentage of females in two control groups was under 50% --not unusual among frogs-- the sex ratio in three pairs of groups maturing in water dosed with different levels of estrogen were significantly skewed.
. . Even tadpoles exposed to the weakest concentration of the hormone were, in one of two groups, twice as likely to become females. The population of the two groups receiving the heaviest dose of estrogen became 95% female in one case, and 100% in the other. Some of sex-altered males became fully functioning females, but other had ovaries but no oviducts, making them sterile.
Feb 27, 07: The call of the rare Sumatran ground cuckoo, which was widely believed extinct until a decade ago, has been recorded for the first time, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society said. A fairly large and striking bird with a long tail, green plumage and blue facial markings, it is found only in the remote jungles of the tropical Indonesian island of Sumatra.
. . "Our team will use the recording to hopefully locate other Sumatran ground cuckoos, and to eventually secure their protection." It was known by only a handful of specimens collected over the past century and many scientists had written it off as extinct until one was briefly spotted in 1997. The bird that was recorded is being nursed back to health and will be released back into the wild.
Feb 26, 07: The Spanish navy advises ships in the busy Strait of Gibraltar to slow down to avoid hitting whales.
Feb 22, 07: Scientists added several species of deep sea sharks today to the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) endangered Red List due to overfishing.
Feb 21, 07: Swarms of giant hornets renowned for their vicious stings and skill at massacring honeybees have settled in France. Its bite has been compared to a hot nail entering the body. And there are now so many of the insects that entomologists fear it will just be a matter of time before they cross to Britain.
. . Global warming has largely been blamed for the survival and spread of the Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, which is thought to have arrived in France from the Far East in a consignment of Chinese pottery in late 2004. Thousands of football-shaped hornet nests are now dotted all over the forests of Aquitaine, the south-western region of France hugely popular with British tourists.
. . A handful can destroy a nest of 30,000 bees in just a couple of hours — a major concern among the beekeeping industry. The French beekeeping industry has already been decimated by pesticides and long, hot summers. Honey production from the 1.3 million hives run by 80,000 beekeepers has been decreasing annually —-down by 60% in south-western France during the past decade.
Feb 20, 07: South Africa's environment minister announced long-awaited restrictions on hunting, declaring he was sickened by wealthy tourists shooting tame lions from the back of a truck and felling rhinos with a bow and arrow.
Feb 19, 07: Fuel subsidies that allow fishing fleets to "plunder" the deep seas should be scrapped, claim a group of leading international scientists. They said more than $150m (£80m) was paid to trawler fleets, promoting overfishing of unviable resources.
. . In particular danger were slow-growing deep-sea fish and coral species caught by bottom trawling, they argued. 2006 UN talks failed to implement a ban on the method, which uses heavy nets and crushing rollers on the sea floor.
. . "Eliminating global subsidies would render these fleets economically unviable and would relieve tremendous pressure on overfishing and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems," said Dr Rashid Sumaila, of the U of British Columbia. Eleven nations have bottom-trawling fleets, with Spain's being the biggest. Researchers at the U of British Columbia estimate that without subsidies, these fleets would operate at a loss of $50m (£27m) annually.
Feb 19, 07: With declining catches close to shore, commercial fishing is turning to deeper waters, threatening species that live in the cold and gloom of the deep oceans, according to researchers.
. . A panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said today that overfishing in deep waters is putting at risk the least sustainable of all fish stocks. "We're not really fishing there. We're *mining there. We're taking what appears to be a renewable resource and turning it into a nonrenewable one."
. . Selina Heppell of Oregon State U said slow growth and reproduction makes deep-living species particularly vulnerable because they are slow to replenish their stocks. Some deep species don't mature until they are 40 years old and then may live 240 years. While skipjack tuna may spawn every day in summer, deep-living orange roughy spawn only every two years. "Never eat anything that could be older than your grandmother."
. . Rising market value of fish has led to marketing campaigns to increase sales, such as renaming the slimehead fish "orange roughy" and the toothfish "Chilean sea bass".
. . Krista Baker, a graduate student at Memorial U of Newfoundland, Canada, reported that about 40% of deep sea species in Canadian waters are either endangered or show significant decline.
Feb 14, 07: A rare blind snake has been rediscovered in Madagascar a century after its last sighting. The snake, which looks like a long, skinny pink worm, was only known from two other specimens, both discovered in 1905. “They’re really rare because they’re subterranean.” There are about 15 species of blind snakes on the island.
Feb 14, 07: Two conservation groups sued the federal government today claiming marine mammal regulators are not doing enough to protect polar bears and walruses against the combined threat of oil and gas exploration and global warming.
Feb 13, 07: A meeting called by Japan to plan the end of the whaling moratorium is boycotted by most anti-whaling nations.
Feb 13, 07: The Navy says it won't comply with sonar training restrictions that aim to protect marine mammals off the California coast, arguing that the commission that imposed the rules does not have the jurisdiction to do so.
Feb 13, 07: This year's unusually warm winter could cause large numbers of amphibians to die in Germany, an environmental organization said. Unseasonably warm weather and rain over the last few days has already brought amphibians out of hibernation.
. . With daily temperatures averaging 8-9 degrees F above normal, 2007 tied with 1975 as having the warmest weather in January since temperatures were first recorded in 1901.
. . If a cold spell hits now, it could be especially deadly for newts, toads and other amphibians. Eggs could cease developing and adult animals, which are not able to return to hibernation in time, could die.
. . Shorter winters and hotter summers in Germany and other changes attributed to global climate change have depleted native amphibian populations, shortened the lifecycle of already threatened animals, and dried up small water pools that amphibians inhabit during the summer's hotter months.
Feb 12, 07: Conservationists in Nepal have opened a special "restaurant" to offer safe food to vultures, whose existence is being threatened from eating carcasses of cattle treated with drugs.
Feb 12, 07: Researchers are planning a worldwide effort to track the movement of sea creatures tagged with tiny electronic devices. Following pilot testing in the north Pacific, the Ocean Tracking Network will expand to the Atlantic, Arctic, Mediterranean and Gulf of Mexico.
. . Sea life ranging from salmon to whales, turtles to sharks, will be tagged so they can then be tracked as they swim past arrays of sensors placed at critical locations in the oceans. The goal is to eventually have 5,000 ocean receivers arranged in 60 lines worldwide, capable of tracking up to 1 million animals at the same time.
Feb 12, 07: The catch of the day brings up a squirming pandemonium of creatures from the deep: sea bream and red snapper, miniature lobsters, an electric ray packing 150 volts, a baby octopus watching with one unblinking eye. But skipper Mariano Lopez, gazing at this mound of exuberance on his trawler's deck, is disappointed. Like many patches of the Mediterranean, this overworked fishing ground is not yielding the bounty it once did.
. . Fishermen were long seen as Europe's last true hunters, but the romance that comes with the struggle against nature has dwindled as fast as the once-bountiful fish. The European Union has desperately implemented fishing curbs and other measures to keep Mediterranean and Atlantic waters alive —-policies fishermen complain are destroying their traditions and livelihoods.
. . But Europe's campaign to save fishing stocks could be a losing battle. North Sea stocks of cod, the emblematic fish in the Atlantic, have dropped by three quarters in 30 years, according to EU figures, and special EU campaigns to revive the species over the past three years have failed. Bluefin tuna, once the pride of the Mediterranean, has seen stocks drop by 80% over the same time.
. . The situation is no different in the rest of the world. The journal Science warned recently that already 29% of seafood species had collapsed —meaning stocks were down 90% or more from peak levels-— and all commercial species would follow suit by 2048 if current trends continue.
. . Monster-size tuna are now extremely rare and fishermen are sapping stocks further by catching very small tuna before they can reproduce, and placing them in cages to be fattened until they are big enough for sale. The species might be commercially extinct worldwide in 10 to 15 years.
Feb 12, 07: A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.
. . Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers —-who often keep thousands of colonies-— have reported losing more than 50% of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
. . The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.
. . A recent report by the National Research Council noted 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.
. . One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival. An analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.
Feb 10, 07: A rain forest is in the making in northeastern Bangladesh and the men who for years stripped it of its inhabitants are now its guards. The 1,250 hectares (3,125 acres) reserve is home to more than 50 species of plants and rare animals including hollock gibbons.
. . The forest is being developed by the government, with help from U.S. aid organization USAID and other local non-government groups who decided that the best people to protect it are the poachers who illegally benefited from it for years.
. . USAID gives the former poachers a monthly salary of 2,250 taka ($32). They are also trained in raising cattle, or fishing, and their families often receive a sewing machine to help supplement their income.
. . Forest officer Abul Bashar Miah said illegal felling of trees had diminished by nearly 90% since the ex-poachers started patrolling the forest some three years ago.
Feb 9, 07: The mass nestings of leatherback turtles on Malaysia's beaches was once one of nature's great spectacles but since 2000, not a single baby leatherback has scampered to the sea. The demise of the iconic turtle, which many scientists say is now effectively extinct here, is blamed on a local appetite for their eggs, coastal development, destructive fishing practices --and a heartbreaking scientific mistake.
. . In the 1950s, up to 10,000 female turtles struggled up the beach to lay their eggs each year, but by 1984 this had fallen to 800 and by 2006 only five nests were found from two turtles, with no hatchlings emerging. It is believed the breeding population is now too small to be sustainable. The previously common Olive Ridley Turtle is also thought lost to the area, and the hawksbill and green turtles are also in danger.
. . They have hopes to resuscitate the population with a complicated egg relocation program in which fertilized eggs around the world would be flown to Malaysia where they would hopefully survive and return to breed. "There is some hope; we've released nearly half a million hatchlings and they will come back. The leatherback takes 30 to 50 years to reach breeding time, they are out there."
. . A hatchery program for the leatherback was begun in Malaysia in the 1960s when concerns were first raised about turtle numbers, but unfortunately what was designed as a helping hand turned out to be disastrous. Turtle eggs are extremely sensitive to heat and movement. If the ambient temperature sits above 30 degrees C the offspring are almost guaranteed to be female, but if it is below 28 degrees, it will almost certainly be male.
. . Early on, turtle eggs were kept in open boxes to collect the sun's warmth, but unknown to the scientists, for 30 years Terengganu's turtle hatcheries were releasing hundreds of thousands of almost exclusively female turtles.
. . "In the 1970s, a lot of leatherbacks were killed by the high-seas drift nets. They were dubbed the curtains of death", Chan said.
Feb 9, 07: Hawaiian forests are the nation's most threatened bird habitats, according to a report released Thursday by American Bird Conservancy. "Saving these species is important but meaningless if the habitats they come from are also not protected", said Alan Lieberman, director of the Hawaiian Endangered Bird Conservation Program for the San Diego Zoo.
. . Hawaiian forests were listed ahead of the open ocean and sea bird nesting islands, which ranked second and also includes Hawaii territory. Third on the list was sagebrush areas found in Western states such as Washington, Oregon and Montana. And fourth was the Edwards Plateau Savannah of Texas.
. . The tropical chain of Hawaiian islands isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was home to about 140 native breeding species and subspecies before the arrival of humans in the archipelago. More than half of the bird species are now extinct. And among the 71 remaining Hawaiian birds, 30 are listed as endangered or threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources' Web site.
. . The zoo's bird program has centers on Maui and the Big Island that have been breeding seven endangered species of Hawaiian birds. And in August, the program plans to release its last Hawaii creepers and Hawaii akepas on the slopes of Mauna Kea. That's because state and federal authorities are now managing the two species' habitat well enough that propagation of the birds is no longer needed.
Feb 9, 07: Beneath the ocean, microphones listen around the clock for the mooing calls of endangered North Atlantic right whales in an eavesdropping experiment that could help save them from extinction.
. . For 20 years, researchers have relied on airplanes and their own eyes to keep tabs on right whales that migrate south to the coasts of Georgia and Florida every winter to birth their calves before returning to the North Atlantic.
. . Collisions with ships killed four of six right whales known to have died in the Atlantic Ocean last year. Scientists believe only about 350 of the whales still exist, so losing even one is a step toward extinction.
. . Cornell U scientist Christopher Clark thinks he's got a more efficient method that can be used to warn boaters and commercial ships to steer clear of the rare whales —-use sound to pinpoint their whereabouts.
. . Aerial surveilance is expensive —costing up to $500,000 per winter— and gets limited results. George estimates the planes spot only about 25 percent of the right whales present off the southeastern coast. His microphones can pick up whales up to 15 km away.
Feb 9, 07: Japan expressed outrage after anti-whaling activists poured acid on the decks of a whaling ship in the Southern Ocean and slightly injured two crew members, terming their activities "piratical, terrorist acts."
Feb 8, 07: Hundreds of endangered sea turtles have been found dead along Bangladesh's coast in the past two weeks, triggering concerns about pollution and local fishing practices.
Feb 7, 07: Researchers in the remote forests of Cambodia said they have discovered the only known colony in Southeast Asia of slender-billed vultures and scores of other endangered birds. "Amazingly, there were also a host of other globally threatened species of birds and primates."
. . Song's team set up measures to protect against poaching and egg collecting, and are now working with local communities to ensure that they are involved in longer-term conservation measures.
. . The Slender-billed vulture is one of several vulture species in Asia that have been driven to the brink of extinction in the past 12 years after eating cattle carcasses tainted with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory painkiller that's given to sick cows and is highly toxic to vultures. Diclofenac has lead to global population declines as high as 99% in slender-billed and other vulture species, especially in India. Diclofenac is now being slowly phased out in South Asia, but not at a pace that assures the recovery of the vultures.
. . Because diclofenac is almost entirely absent from use in Cambodia, the WCS said the country remains one of the main hopes for the survival of the species. Even so, the birds face numerous other threats, including lack of food due to the over-hunting of large-bodied mammals, loss of habitat, and poaching.
Feb 6, 07: The rapid disappearance of a once common plant from UK hillsides has been blamed on infertile females. A study of the aromatic shrub juniper by charity Plantlife found that many are now too old to reproduce.
. . In the past, the tree was highly valued for firewood and for making gin, ensuring a constant turnover of plants. But around the turn of the last century, interest in the plant started to wane and land was no longer managed in a way that encouraged its growth. "A lot of our juniper is now between 100 and 200 years old."
. . Estimates suggest that up to 46% of juniper plants may have disappeared across England since the 1970s. At the same time, Ireland has seen a 35% decline, whilst Scotland has lost 30% of its plants, and Wales a further 18%.
. . The shrub is dioecious, meaning there are both male and female plants. Unlike normal trees where the different sexes occur on the same plant, male and female junipers may be widely dispersed. Male bushes produce a lot of pollen, so only a few of them are required.
. . The evergreen plants provide a valuable habitat for wildlife including more than 40 types of invertebrate. It is also home to specialised lichen and fungi, whilst the dense prickly foliage is used as a nesting site for birds. The fragrant wood was also used to cleanse houses and ward off spirits. In Scotland, it was the fuel of choice for illegal whisky stills, as it is said to burn with less smoke than other woods.
Feb 6, 07: The Knoxville Zoo says it has become the first U.S. zoo to successfully breed Northern spider tortoises, a subspecies so rare they can no longer be exported from their native Madagascar off Africa's southeastern coast.
Feb 6, 07: The marbled murrelet, a threatened sea bird whose rare trait of nesting in old-growth forests made it a factor in logging battles in the U.S. Northwest, is also declining dramatically in Alaska and Canada, where most of the birds live, according to a U.S. government review.
. . The first comprehensive look at population surveys in Alaska and British Columbia found an overall decline of about 70% over the last 25 years. Even areas like Alaska's Glacier Bay, where there has been no logging, saw dramatic declines, raising the likelihood that something larger was a major factor, he said.
. . That could be changes in the ocean climate, such as a 1977 shift in the North Pacific that altered the availability of fish and zooplankton the birds feed on, and an increase in predators such as ravens and bald eagles in the forests where the bird nests, which could be related to logging and urban development.
Remember The Marvellettes' song, "Too Many Fish in the Sea?" Well, there aren't. A study published last fall in the journal, Science, warned of a "global collapse" of all wild seafood by mid-century if fishing continues at its current pace.
. . Shrimp? "We don't know if that's domestic U.S. shrimp or if it's being farmed somewhere where it's harming the environment," said Faison. Farmed shrimp from Southeast Asia can pollute the seas.
. . Atlantic salmon? "It's farmed because there's no wild Atlantic salmon left", Boots said. "And it's generally farmed in open net pens, and there are a bunch of issues with that." Swordfish? Not if they're caught by unregulated foreign fleets, and we won't even get into the health issues raised by mercury contamination.
. . Catfish and tilapia are good choices, he said. They're vegetarian fish, and they're farmed in closed ponds that don't pollute the ocean. Bay scallops, farmed or wild, are said to be a sustainable resource. Wild salmon from Alaska come from a well-managed fishery. Scallops are guilt-free.
Feb 6, 07: Rampant illegal logging is destroying the tropical forests of Southeast Asia far quicker than had been feared, with dire impact on endangered orangutans and other wildlife, the UN said.
. . Without urgent action, 98% of remaining forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo could be gone by 2022, with serious consequences for local people and wildlife including rhinos, tigers and elephants. "The rapid rate of removal of food trees, killing of orangutans displaced by logging and plantation development, and fragmentation of remaining intact forest, constitutes a conservation emergency."
. . The world body blamed a shadowy network of multinational firms for increasingly targeting Indonesian national parks as one of the few remaining sources of commercial timber supplies.
. . Indonesia made a plea for Western consumers to reject smuggled timber. "We are appealing today to the conscience of the whole world: do not buy uncertified wood," Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's environment minister, said on the fringes of a major U.N. environment meeting in Kenya. He said illegal logging was ravaging 37 of his country's 41 national parks, and now accounted for more than 73% of all logging in Indonesia. Ruthless loggers are often protected by heavily armed militia commanded by foreign mercenaries.
. . Combined with forest fires, encroachment by farmers on their dwindling habitat and poaching, illegal logging is having a devastating impact on orangutans, which once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across Southeast Asia.
. . It was estimated in 2002 that there were about 60,000 of the shaggy ginger primates left in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. Some ecologists say the number has now been halved and others say the species could be extinct in 20 years.
Feb 4, 07: A whooping crane was spotted alive today after it was believed killed with 17 others in severe Florida storms.
Feb 3, 07: America's northern fur seal pup population continues a marked decline this decade, federal biologists reported. The number of pups born between 2004 and 2006 in Alaska's Pribilof Islands, home of the world's largest rookeries, fell by 9% from the previous two year estimate, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
. . "We have seen a significant decline in the abundance of fur seals on the Pribilof Islands starting about 1998, and we have not been able to identify the factors responsible."
. . Less pollock, herring, squid and other seal food because of global warming or commercial fishing are possibilities, as is increased predation by killer whales. Entanglement in marine debris, parasites, disease and pollutants may have contributed to past or present declines, according to federal researchers.
. . The Pribilofs are a group of five islands in the Bering Sea about 300 miles from the mainland.
Feb 2, 07: The Indiana bat, as well as all bats, are important to the environment because they control insect populations, researchers say. (A single bat can eat up to 2,000 insects a night, on average.) The difficulty in helping the species recover deals with how sensitive it is to environmental change.
. . In Laurel Cave, for instance, the temperature is not steady or in the range the Indiana bat likes while hibernating during winter. Biologists have taken measures to not only close caves during the hibernation season —both Bat Cave and Saltpetre Cave are gated and off limits in winter— but also to redirect airflow and take other measures in the species' more historic homes.
Feb 2, 07: From a boat at sea, Australia's Great Barrier Reef seems invincible --its myriad corals stretching 2,300 km beyond sight. But the reef's vastness and wave-smashing outcrops mask fragility in the face of climate change threatening to bleach its fluorescent depths the stark white of death. The reef, and possibly the A$5.8 billion ($4.5 billion) tourist industry it underpins, will be "functionally extinct" by 2050, a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned.
. . "Climate change is clearly a threat to the corals and the tiny plants that live in the tissues, but the issues go far beyond coral. Corals build a structure in which thousands of species live",: Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral bleaching researcher.
. . It occurs when corals living at the edge of their temperature tolerance expel the tiny animals that live inside, turning colorless and exposing their calcium skeletons inside. Death follows unless the water soon cools. Global warming bringing temperature rises of between 2 to 3 C makes future salvation less likely. The reef is home to more than a third of the world's soft corals, more than 1,500 species of fish and six of the world's seven marine turtle species. Indian Ocean corals were harder hit than Australia's in 1998, with 50% dying along its western rim in months.
. . "But of course we're only in the early days of climate change and it's of great concern that we've been seeing the type of increase in bleaching in severity and frequency that we've seen in other parts of the world", Hoegh-Guldberg said.
. . The new Australian of the Year, scientist and climate warrior Tim Flannery, said a new IPCC report on climate change blaming humans for rising global temperatures underestimated the speed of climate change, warning its findings were conservative. "The actual trajectory we've seen in the arctic over the last two years if you follow that, that implies that the arctic ice cap will be gone in the next 5 to 15 years. There's a 10% chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we're looking there at 6 degrees C or so, that would be a disaster for all life on earth."
Feb 2, 07: Russian and Chinese conservationists began searching for signs of the last remaining Amur leopards in Russia's Far East and adjacent Chinese border regions, as part of a triennial census of the nearly extinct cats.
Feb 5, 07: Nearly a thousand large turtles have washed up dead on Bangladeshi and Indian beaches in the Bay of Bengal in recent weeks, officials and activists said today, blaming the deaths on fishing nets.
Feb 3, 07: All 18 endangered young whooping cranes that were led south from Wisconsin last fall as part of a project to create a second migratory flock of the birds were killed in storms in Florida.
Jan 31, 07: Reintroduction of wild wolves into the Scottish Highlands would benefit the ecosystem, a study concludes.
Jan 30, 07: The US made modest progress on protecting its oceans last year, but still needs to boost funding for desperately needed reforms, a commission on ocean policy said today.
Jan 29, 07: The U.S. government took gray wolves living near the Great Lakes off its list of endangered species and also proposed removing protections for similar wolves near the Rocky Mountains.
Jan 29, 07: Conservationists call for compassion to be shown towards great white sharks after an Australian diver had a recent lucky escape from a predator's jaws.
Jan 29, 07: Humans, not climate change, wiped out large beasts such as marsupial "lions" and tree kangaroos that roamed Australia thousands of years ago, scientists have concluded based on a remarkable new set of fossils. Some researchers had previously argued that harsh dry conditions during the height of several ice ages in Australia might have caused some of the region's large mammals to disappear.
. . The well-preserved fossils offer clues about the region's animals that lived in the Middle Pleistocene—130,000 to 780,000 years ago —before human arrival.
. . By examining the isotopes in the tooth enamel of the fossils and comparing them with living animals of known climates, the researchers were able to identify that the animals roaming the Nullarbor between 200,000 and 800,000 years ago inhabited an extremely arid environment.
. . The animals had previously experienced the very worst that nature could throw at them in terms of climatic downturns, Roberts said. "So glacial aridity cannot have been the main driving force behind their extinction. They had suffered but survived such episodes many times before. The only new ingredient in the mix at that time was humans, who first entered Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago", Roberts said. "So humans, very likely, played the decisive role in the extinction event -—through hunting of juveniles and through burning of the vegetation cover and changing the plant composition to disadvantage the browsers and grazers."
Jan 28, 07: Conservationists have been awarded almost £50,000 to help save a rare species of red ant from becoming extinct in mainland Britain. Red-barbed ants have declined as a result of a loss of habitat, and are now only found at one site.
. . A team, led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), plans to captive breed the species at London Zoo before releasing them into the wild next year. "The ants are quite unusual because they form nests that are either all female or all male. We have only got one nest left in Surrey, and that nest is only producing females. No-one has been able to get them to reproduce in captivity before." Scientists will take females from the nest in Surrey, and males from colonies found on the Isles of Scilly.
. . Another threat facing the nests, surprisingly, comes from another species of ant. "They can be invaded by a species called slave-maker ants, which seem to be spreading quite rapidly across the UK."
Jan 26, 07: Wolves in the northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list within the next year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, a move that would open the population up to trophy hunting.
Jan 26, 07: The UK is stepping up attempts to secure an anti-whaling majority on the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Last year, pro-hunting nations gained their first IWC majority for 20 years.
. . The British government will publish a brochure this coming week aimed at encouraging nations opposed to whaling to join the Commission. It says whales are "sensitive, social creatures", with some species risking extinction. Japan says these arguments are "old rhetoric and half-truths".
. . In two forewords, the distinguished natural history broadcaster David Attenborough writes, "There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea", while Tony Blair makes a direct call to arms. "We urge your government to join the UK and the other anti-whaling nations in the IWC", writes the British Prime Minister, "to ensure that our generation meets its global responsibility to protect whales."
Jan 24, 07: Japan has called a special meeting of members of an international whaling group next month to help lift a global moratorium on hunting of whales, but several countries opposed to the practice may boycott the assembly.
Jan 24, 07: Congolese rebels accused of killing and eating at least two of the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas in recent weeks have agreed to stop killing the rare primates, a conservation group said.
Jan 24, 07: The world's first rhino conceived by artificial insemination has been born at Budapest Zoo, officials said. She weighed in at 128 lbs. Mum has been protective of her newborn but has so far failed to nurse the baby. The zoo said she had also turned aggressive, but added an initial refusal to feed was natural with inexperienced mother rhinos.
Jan 23, 07: Pregnant polar bears in Alaska, who spend most of their lives on sea ice, are increasingly giving birth to their young on land, according to researchers, who say global warming is probably to blame.
Jan 23, 07: Nearly half of the world's waterbird species are in decline, mostly due to rapid economic development and the effects of climate change, according to a global survey released today. The fourth Waterbird Population Estimate found that 44% of the 900 species globally have fallen in the past five years, while 34% were stable, and 17% rising. [sure; taking advantage of the abcence of the other species.]
. . The worst decreases occurred in Asia, where 62% of the waterbird populations had declined or become extinct. That was followed by a 48% decline in Africa, 45% in Oceania, 42% in South America, 41% in Europe and 37% in North America.
. . The survey represents about 50,000 hours of field work done in 100 countries.
Jan 23, 07: Conservationists have hailed Madagascar's decision to establish a 300,000 hectare protected habitat for birds unique to the giant Indian Ocean island.
Jan 22, 07: A major effort to try to reverse the decline in tuna stocks worldwide is getting under way in Kobe, Japan. They are to discuss plans to set up a global tracking system to certify the origin of every tuna that is sold.
. . Conservationists blame illegal and unregulated fishing and unsustainable quotas for tuna's dramatic decline. In the western Atlantic, the number of bluefin tuna capable of spawning is less than one-fifth of what it was 30 years ago, according to the body that monitors fish stocks there.
. . Last year, Japan admitted overfishing southern bluefin tuna and accepted a deep cut in its quota as punishment.
Jan 18, 07: Dams, pollution and overfishing have wiped out a third of the fish species in the Yellow River, China's second longest waterway, state media reported. The news heightens fears that the country's big rivers are losing their ability to support life as rapid and poorly regulated economic growth takes an increasingly heavy toll on the environment.
. . Its water flow has fallen in recent years as it has become synonymous with over-exploitation of natural resources. As well as providing water for millions of people and 15% of China's farmland, it has been heavily dammed to generate power. "The Yellow River used to be host to more than 150 species of fish, but a third of them are now extinct, including some precious ones. It can be mainly blamed on hydroelectric power projects that block fish's migration routes, declining water flow caused by scarce rainfall, overfishing and severe pollution."
Jan 18, 07: An investigation into the cleanliness of rivers feeding Washington's Potomac River has revealed the presence of sex-changing chemicals. Pollutants which contain the chemicals, known as endocrine disrupters, were found in several tributaries and in the smallmouth bass fish living within.
. . The US Geological Survey (USGS) study followed the discovery of high numbers of intersex fish in the Potomac basin. Endocrine disrupters can mimic or block hormones in the body. Either naturally occurring or man-made, they can interfere with the endocrine system causing birth defects and reproductive irregularities. The chemicals were also found in all of the smallmouth bass examined by the team.
Jan 18, 07: Rebels in eastern Congo have killed and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas, conservationists said Wednesday, warning they fear more of the endangered animals may have been slaughtered in the lawless region.
Jan 16, 07: Beluga whales were once so thick in the waters along Alaska's biggest city that boaters had to take care to avoid bumping them. But now Cook Inlet's population of small white whales, beloved by locals and tourists, may be headed for extinction, according to a report from government biologists last week.
. . A new count by the National Marine Fisheries Service puts the Beluga whale population at 302, less than half the number in 1994 and well below the 1,000 to 2,000 believed to have been swimming in earlier years in the glacier-fed channel that runs from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska.
. . Biologists say the reason for the precipitous decline since the 1990s was simple --overharvesting by the area's Alaska Natives, mostly Athabascan Indians, who are entitled by law to pursue their traditional whale hunts. Native groups agreed to curb hunting until stocks return to higher levels, but that does not appear to be helping the whales recover.
. . Smith said it may be the nonpollution factors, such as noise, inadvertent harassment, large-scale beach strandings, disease outbreaks and the occasional predation by killer whales that are keeping the beluga population low.
Jan 16, 07: A California aquarium released a great white shark in the ocean today --only the second of the predators to be released back into the wild after surviving months of captivity.
Jan 16, 07: Conservation scientists have identified eight "biodiversity hotspots" around Britain's coast which they say ought to be priorities for protection. The Marine Biological Association (MBA) and WWF want these areas to be given protected status under the government's proposed Marine Bill.
Jan 16, 07: Scientists launched a bid to save some of the world's rarest and most neglected creatures from extinction. With an initial list of just 10 --including a venomous shrew-like creature, an egg-laying mammal and the world's smallest bat-- the program will give last ditch conservation aid where to date there has been little or none. The list includes the bumblebee bat, the Hispaniolan solenodon and the golden-rumped elephant shrew.
. . "We are focusing on EDGE species --that means they are Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered", said Zoological Society of London scientist Jonathan Baillie. By "distinct", he means unique... the last of their type, not just species. "Our goal is to ensure that over the next five years there are conservation measures in place for the top 100 species."
. . Global warming and human depredations on habitat are cited as root causes of the problem. Baillie said the top creature on the agenda, the Yangtze River dolphin, may already have disappeared.
Jan 15, 07: Beavers may be helping to halt the decline of some amphibian populations, a study suggests. Researchers, surveying streams in the forests of Alberta, Canada, found significantly more frogs and toads where beaver dams were present. They believe the beaver "ponds" may be providing favorable conditions for developing tadpoles.
. . It found about six times more wood frogs, 29 times more western toads and 24 times more boreal chorus frogs at the beaver bonds compared with the beaver-free streams.
Jan 10, 07: State coastal regulators voted today to impose restrictions on the
U.S. Navy's use of sonar, which has been linked to harmful effects on whales and other marine mammals. The Navy has been using sonar during training exercises off the California coast for decades, although this was the first time it sought approval for the practice from the California Coastal Commission.
. . The commission voted 8-1 to place restrictions on how the Navy conducts the training, including moving the exercises away from areas with high concentrations of marine mammals and lowering sonar levels when they are present.
. . The Navy decided to seek the commission's consent because of new internal guidelines requiring it to ensure major exercises are environmentally compliant. The Navy's sonar exercises have been responsible for at least six cases of mass death and unusual behavior among whales in the past decade, a U.S. Congressional Research Service report found last year. Many of the beached or dead animals had damaged hearing organs. Sonar is also believed to affect other marine life including fish reproductive rates and the behavior of giant sea turtles.
Jan 10, 07: Harbor porpoises in Scottish waters are suffering as climate change impacts sandeels, a staple food.
Jan 10, 07: A rare "Groucho Marx" penguin found exhausted on an Australian beach after a 2,000 km swim has been saved by Sydney zookeepers but will soon have to earn his keep by snuggling up to two lonely females of his vulnerable species. He is now the only male of his species in captivity in the world. There are estimated to be only 1,000 breeding pairs left in the wild.
. . The Fiordland Crested Penguin, also known as Groucho Marx penguins because of their distinctive bushy eyebrows, is one of the world's most endangered penguin species and is usually found in the frigid sub-Antarctic waters off southern New Zealand.
Jan 10, 07: Scientists are struggling to explain the stranding of 31 dolphins and a pilot whale off the coast of Massachusetts since the start of the year, including some found with brain deformities or chronic diseases.
Jan 10, 07: Thai villagers have caught a river terrapin turtle that was thought to be extinct in the country, a leading conservation group said. The female turtle —known for its egg-shaped shell and upturned snout— was found Jan. 3 in a mangrove canal in Phang Nga province on the country's Andaman coast, said the World Wide Fund for Nature-Thailand. It was the first time the species was found in Thailand in two decades.
. . It will be raised in captivity, the WWF said. It will eventually be released back into the wild.
Jan 8, 07: The beluga whales swimming off Alaska's largest city are at considerable risk of going extinct unless something changes, a federal study says. The study by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle says if the Cook Inlet belugas go extinct, another group of the white whales probably won't come in to swim the silty waters off Anchorage.
. . To make matters worse, it finds that the whales are becoming increasingly vulnerable to a catastrophic event because they are tending to gather in a restricted area in the upper Cook Inlet.
. . It was thought that subsistence hunting, where about 70 whales were killed each year, was to blame. However, severe restrictions on subsistence hunting in place since 1999 have failed to turn the situation around.
Jan 8, 07: One of the world's most endangered birds, the oriental white-backed vulture, has bred in captivity for the first time in India, scientists said.
Jan 8, 07: About 2,000 rare freshwater turtles, whose meat is sold as an aphrodisiac on the black market, were rescued from poachers in a north Indian town after a tip-off from a resident.
Jan 5, 07: Once down to about 15, the world's only naturally migrating flock of whooping cranes has continued its comeback, now numbering a record 237 birds in wintering grounds along Texas' Gulf Coast.
Jan 2, 07: Dozens of endangered Great One-horned rhinoceros have mysteriously gone missing from a nature reserve in southwest Nepal over the past few years, a wildlife official said.
. . Authorities introduced 72 rhinos, also known as the Indian rhinoceros, in the Babai Valley, 320 km southwest of Kathmandu, as part of a conservation drive that started in 1984. "We have records showing 23 rhinos had died due to poaching or other causes. The rest are missing."
Jan 3, 07: A mini-baby boom last year has pushed up the number of pandas bred in captivity in China to 217, state media said.
Jan 2, 07: A experimental electronic "crosswalk" designed to keep Arizona's animals and drivers safe will begin operating east of Payson for the first time this month.
. . The high-tech crossing is part of an extensive system of wildlife underpasses and electrified fencing along a three-mile stretch of Arizona 260 about 12km east of Payson. The fences funnel the creatures to places where they can cross under the road, or, to the electronic crossing. The crossing uses infrared cameras and military-grade software to set off large signs and warning lights so that drivers will be prepared for an elk, mule or another animal of significant size that may be about to cross the highway.
Jan 2, 07: A pair of scimitar-horned oryxes from the Kansas City Zoo are among six from North America and four from Europe that are being reintroduced in Tunisia, the animals' native scrubland where they have been wiped out.
India's world-famous Bharatpur sanctuary has a shortage of birds because water is so scarce.
Jan 1, 07: 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.
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