EXTINCTION NEWS 08
. . A finding of chaos theory is that the more complex a system is, the more stable it is.
EXTINCTION NEWS '08
starting Jan 1, 08
See extinction news from '07.
See extinction news back to '04.
Also see exotic species over-population.
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July 14, 09: Britain's honeybees are disappearing at an "alarming" rate, yet the government is taking "little interest" in the problem, a group of MPs has said. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says bees, vital for pollinating crops, are worth £200m a year to the economy. It wants Defra to spend more money on research into bee health and make registration compulsory for beekeepers.
July 9, 09: Rhino poaching around the world is set to reach a 15-year high as demand for the animals' horns grows, conservation groups warn.
July 6, 09: Increasingly acidic oceans and warming water temperatures due to CO2 emissions could kill off the world's ocean reefs by the end of this century, scientists warned.The experts told a meeting in London the predicted pace of emissions means a level of 450 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere will be reached by 2050, putting corals on a path to extinction in the following decades.
. . "If we act quickly and decisively we may be able to [reverse] it before the damage becomes irreversible."
. . Oceans absorb large amounts of CO2 emitted by the burning of fossil fuels. But scientists say the oceans are acidifying as they absorb more CO2, disrupting the process of calcification used by sea creatures to build shells as well as coral reefs.
. . Coral reefs --delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens made by tiny animals called coral polyps-- are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life. They also protect coastlines, provide a critical source of food for millions of people, attract tourists and are potential storehouse of medicines for cancer and other diseases.
. . "If CO2 is allowed to reach 450 ppm, as is currently widely regarded as being the most optimistic threshold target for world leaders to agree at Copenhagen, we will have put the world's reefs on a path to major degradation and ultimate extinction", John Veron, the former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told the meeting. "Such a catastrophe poses a dire threat to the future wellbeing of all humanity."
July 4, 09: Fleeting sightings of the world's rarest antelope, the hirola, in a new safe haven are cases of mistaken identity, a survey has found.
. . That has dashed hopes that some of the last hirola have managed to colonize a new territory where they would be less vulnerable to flooding and hunting. Fewer than 600 wild hirola remain, confined to a small area in Kenya. It is sometimes called a 'living fossil', being the sole survivor of a once diverse group of antelope species. Prior to 1970, an estimated 14,000 hirola existed in the wild.
July 2, 09: The world's largest cat, the Amur tiger, is down to an effective wild population of fewer than 35 individuals, new research has found. Although up to 500 of the big cats actually survive in the wild, the effective population is a measure of their genetic diversity. That in turn is a good predictor of the Amur tiger's chances of survival. The results come from the most complete genetic survey yet of wild Amur tigers, the rarest subspecies of tiger.
. . At the start of the 20th Century, nine subspecies of tiger existed, with a total world population of more than 100,000 individuals. Human impacts have since caused the extinction of three subspecies, the Javan tiger, Bali tiger and Caspian tiger, and world tiger numbers could now have fallen to fewer than 3000.
July 2, 09: The world's largest cat is down to an effective wild population of fewer than 35 individuals, new research has found.
July 1, 09: More than 800 animal and plant species have gone extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now threatened with extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported.
Jun 30, 09: Coastal development and declining water quality are threatening seagrasses worldwide, researchers report. A study of coastal grasses around the world shows that 58% of the seagrass meadows are in decline. Seagrass provides habitat for coastal life and helps reduce the impact of sediment and nutrient pollution.
. . "The combination of growing urban centers, artificially hardened shorelines and declining natural resources has pushed coastal ecosystems out of balance. Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes." The researchers said that since 1990, there has been about a 7% loss of seagrass per year, with the major impacts coming from coastal development and dredging and reductions in water quality.
Jun 30, 09: A plague of tree-killing beetles which swept across British Columbia is threatening to spread east, to the US. The mountain pine beetle has killed more than half of all lodge pole pine in the province and is now active in neighboring Alberta.
. . Cold winters usually kill off the beetle larvae, but the region has been warmer than usual in recent years. Scientists say the beetle could attack and kill jack pines, which are found throughout North America.
Jun 30, 09: Fans of the giant Palouse earthworm are once again seeking federal protection for the rare, sweet-smelling species that spits at predators. The worm can reach 3 feet in length, is white in color and reportedly possesses a unique lily smell.
. . The worm has been seen only four reported times in the past 110 years, but supporters contend it is still present in the Palouse, a region of about 2 million acres of rolling wheat fields near the Idaho-Washington border south of Spokane. Decades of intense agriculture and urban sprawl have wiped out much of the worm's habitat.
Jun 30, 09: The nightingale has effectively vanished from woodlands across the UK. A 30-year survey of British woodland birds has found that its population has fallen by more than 95%. Seventeen other bird species have also declined significantly, many of which overwinter in tropical west Africa, where their habitat is being destroyed. Numbers of starling, linnet, bullfinch and willow warbler all crashed, while 12 species, including the blackcap, magpie and collared dove, increased.
Jun 27, 09: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has approved a controversial bill allowing Amazon farmers to acquire an area of public land larger than France. But the president vetoed some of the most contentious clauses that would have enabled absentee landlords and companies to benefit from the measure. Smaller parcels of public land will be handed over for free, and larger ones at reduced or market rates.
. . Critics say it will amount to an amnesty for illegal land-grabbers. The law is intended to end the chaotic state of land occupation in the Amazon.
. . Environmental groups fear that could lead to a heating up of land speculation in the Amazon and encourage occupation of new forest areas. Federal prosecutors in the Amazon claim it is unconstitutional because it enables land to be given to people who have acquired it illegally, and because it could infringe the rights of indigenous communities.
Jun 26, 09: Almost a third of species of open ocean sharks are under threat of being wiped out by overfishing, say scientists.
Jun 25, 09: As the annual International Whaling Commission meeting stumbles to a close, unable to negotiate a compromise between whaling opponents and people who’ve killed more than 40,000 whales since 1985, scientists say these aquatic mammals are more than mere animals. They might even deserve to be considered people.
. . Not human people, but as occupying a similar range on the spectrum as the great apes, for whom the idea of personhood has moved from preposterous to possible. Chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos possess self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. According to a steadily gathering body of research, so do whales and dolphins.
. . In fact, their capacities could be even more ancient than our own, dating to an evolutionary explosion in brain size that took place millions of years before the last common ancestor of the great apes existed.
. . “If an alien came down anytime prior to about 1.5 million years ago to communicate with the ‘brainiest’ animals on Earth, they would have tripped over our own ancestors and headed straight for the oceans to converse with the dolphins”, said Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist at the Yerkes.
. . Industrial pollution has suffused their bodies with heavy metals and toxins. Noise pollution drowns out the vocalizations on which whales rely to find food and navigate. Overfishing punches holes in oceanic webs of life. Whales and dolphins are also accidentally caught in nets and struck by ships.
. . They have met one critical laboratory benchmark of higher cognition: self-recognition. With Wildlife Conservation Society cognitive scientist Diana Reiss, Lori Marino showed that bottlenose dolphins can use mirrors to investigate marks hidden on their bodies.
. . Cetaceans even surpass most primates in their use of sound. “We’ve known for some time now that the communication systems of these animals is more complex than we can imagine,” said Marino. “People are starting to use some interesting statistical methods to look at their vocal repertoires, and they’re finding structural complexity that suggests there may be something like grammar, syntax, even language.”
. . Researchers who’ve studied cetacean brains —-many of which are among the largest in the animal kingdom-— have found highly developed analogues to human structures. Whale brains appear to have undergone massive growth about 30 million years ago, a process linked in primates to the development of complex cognition and culture.
. . “The parts of the brain that are involved with processing emotion and social relationships are enormously complex, and in many cetaceans even more highly elaborated than in the human brain”, said Marino. “If we assume that the limbic system is doing what it’s doing in all mammals, then something very high-level is going on.”
. . They can use sound to form an image of each other’s insides —-whether you’re pregnant, hungry, sick.
Jun 25, 09: Mexico's twin crises --swine flu and the economy-- may derail a plan to save the world's most endangered cetacean. The vaquita, which is also the world's smallest cetacean, is emblematic of the plight of other dolphins and porpoises around the world, say campaigners. Earlier this year, the baiji or Yangtse River Dolphin was declared probably extinct, Only about 150 vaquita are left, and about 30 are dying each year through becoming entangled in fishing nets.
The government has cut funding aimed at taking fishing boats out of service or adopting vaquita-friendly equipment.
Jun 23, 09: A fossil study of the extinct giant kangaroo has added weight to the theory that humans were responsible for the demise of "megafauna" 46,000 years ago.
. . There has long been dissent in the palaeontology community about the cause for extinctions worldwide after the end of the last ice age. Central to the debate has been the demise of the Australian megafauna, including animals such as marsupial lions, hippopotamus-sized wombats and the 2M-tall giant kangaroo Procoptodon goliah.
. . Last year, researchers dated fossils from Tasmania with the best precision yet, finding that many species survived more than 2,000 years after the arrival of humans. The researchers concluded that the megafauna eventually met their end due to hunting.
. . Now, researchers from Australia and the US have combined radiocarbon dating with a so-called microwear analysis of the teeth of P. goliah to determine what it ate and drank. The team concluded that the giant kangaroos fed mainly on saltbush shrubs.
. . Because fire does not propagate well among saltbush, and because it thrives in a dry, arid climate, the case supporting two of the three potential causes for extinction was weakened. Evidence suggests therefore that the P. goliah was hunted to extinction.
Jun 23, 09: Whale watching generates far more money than whale hunting, according to a report released at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting here. Worldwide, the industry now generates about $2.1bn per year, it says.
. . However, Iceland's delegate here said the two industries were compatible and could grow together. Iceland recently announced a major expansion of its fin whale hunt and plans to take 150 of the animals this year, along with up to 100 minke whales.
. . The report follows on the heels of an analysis commissioned by another organization opposed to whaling, WWF, which suggested that the Japanese and Norwegian hunts were a net cost to their governments. The Ifaw-commissioned report, compiled by the Australian organization Economists at Large, found that income from whale watching had doubled over the last decade, with the fastest growth seen in Asia.
June 18, 09: Canada's fishermen catch only 25% of this year's seal quota, blaming falling prices for seal pelts and an expected EU ban on seal products.
. . Freshwater dolphins in the Mekong River are on the verge of extinction, according to the conservation group WWF.
. . Woolly mammoths lived in Britain as recently as 14,000 years ago, according to new radiocarbon dating evidence --much longer than had previously been supposed. Mammoths may finally have died out when forests encroached on the grassland habitats they favoured for grazing.
No traces of human occupation were found at the Shropshire site. But it is entirely possible that humans could have been in Britain at the same time as these last mammoths. Dr Lister said that humans might have finished off some of the last remaining pockets of mammoths in Siberia. But he did not think people were the main cause of megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age.
One population lived on in isolation on Russia's remote Wrangel Island until about 5,000 years ago, making them the most recent surviving population known.
June 16, 09: A blue butterfly died out in Britain 30 years ago because of disruptions to a life cycle that includes pretending to be an ant, according to a study published Tuesday that points to smarter ways to protect wildlife. Research into the large blue butterfly --now successfully re-introduced to Britain from Sweden-- hints at how governments can use science to achieve U.N. goals of slowing a loss of animal and plant species, scientists said.
. . For decades, over-zealous human collectors were blamed for dwindling numbers of the large blue until scientists found that wrong-minded conservation had let grass grow taller and made soils unsuitable for the red ants that its caterpillars eat.
June 13, 09: Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population. After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned.
June 12, 09: The federal government today will significantly expand the critical habitat for endangered Hawaiian monk seals to include beaches and waters of the main Hawaiian Islands, officials said.
June 11, 09: Cutting down the Amazon forest for cattle and soy does not bring long-term economic progress, researchers say. A study of 286 Amazon municipalities found that deforestation brought quick benefits that were soon reversed.
June 11, 09: Scotland's seabird numbers plunged by 19%, with the Northern Isles and east coast badly hit, a new report says.
June 11, 09: Reindeer/caribou numbers are plummeting around the world. The first global review of their status has found that populations are declining almost everywhere they live. The iconic deer is vital to indigenous peoples around the circumpolar north. Yet it is increasingly difficult for the deer to survive in a world warmed by climate change and altered by industrial development, say scientists.
. . Reindeer and caribou belong to the same species, Rangifer tarandus. Caribou live in Canada, Alaska and Greenland; while reindeer live in Russia, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Worldwide, seven sub-species are recognized. Each are genetically, morphologically and behaviorally a little different, though capable of interbreeding with one another.
. . "There likely will be more forest fires in woodland caribou habitat, as well as diseases and parasites transmitted to caribou from white-tailed deer, whose range is expanding northward in Canada. More roads are being built in the Arctic, as well as infrastructures like diamond mines, and these sometimes interfere with migration routes."
June 11, 09: Climate change has contributed to a flattening of the complex, multi-layered architecture of Caribbean coral reefs, compromizing their role as a nursery for fish stocks and a buffer against tropical storms, a study shows. The analysis of 500 surveys of 200 reefs, conducted between 1969 and 2008, showed the most complex types of reef had been virtually wiped out across the entire Caribbean.
. . Flatter reefs are also less effective in protecting coastal homes and villages from storm swells and tidal surges.
May 1, 09: Conservationists say livestock grazing poses a threat to a wide variety of fish and other wildlife across more than three-fourths of their dwindling habitats on federal land in the West.
Apr 27, 09: Plans for new curbs on the practice of removing fins from live sharks have been welcomed by wildlife campaigners. EU countries are the main exporter of shark fins to China, where they are used to make shark-fin soup. A meeting in Brussels drew up an action plan on "finning", which results in the deaths of the sharks.
Apr 27, 09: European MPs vote to allow farmers leave dead livestock in their fields --to help starving vultures.
Apr 22, 09: Gray whales are granted rare reprieve. Oil firms shelved plans to carry out undersea seismic work, to ensure the gray whales' breeding season is undisturbed.
Apr 22, 09: Numbers of giraffe, impala and topi have halved since 1979 in Kenya's Masai Mara wildlife reserve, scientists estimate.
Apr 21, 09: EU fishing fleets need major cuts if stocks are to be managed sustainably, the European Commission says.
Apr 17, 09: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar joined members of the Colorado congressional delegation and local officials to dedicate the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness Area, nearly 250,000 acres within the park that will be permanently protected from human impacts under the newly enacted Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009.
Apr 17, 09: Conservationists raised the alarm for Zimbabwe's rare rhinos after a sharp increase in poaching because of a breakdown of law enforcement in this troubled southern African country.
Apr 16, 09: The trade in Sumatran orangutans for pets shows little sign of decline and is taking the species to the brink of extinction, a report concludes. Compiled by Traffic, the international wildlife trade monitoring network, it suggests that more orangutans are being traded than in previous decades. The species is listed as critically endangered, with only about 7,000 left.
Apr 15, 09: The Sidamo lark could soon be the first bird on mainland Africa to die out since modern records began, a survey shows.
Apr 14, 09: Japan's annual Antarctic whale-hunting season has fallen short of its target catch because of disruptions by anti-whaling activists, officials say. Japan's Fisheries Agency said its fleet had killed 679 Minke whales out of a planned 935, and just one Fin whale, despite a target of 50.
. . It partly blamed the disruptions on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a US-based environmental group. Protesters had escalated their attacks on Japanese ships.
Apr 8, 09: Recent wet summers have hit the UK butterfly population hard, say conservationists.
Apr 4, 09: The two dozen or so gray wolves that wander an island chain in northwestern Lake Superior are suffering from backbone malformations caused by genetic inbreeding, posing yet another challenge to their prospects for long-term survival, according to wildlife biologists.
Although confirmed only recently, the problem apparently has been festering for decades in the small, isolated packs in Michigan's Isle Royale National Park. The abnormalities, also found in some domestic dogs, can cause pain and partial paralysis while limiting the range of motion so crucial for predators in the wild.
. . The discovery raises the ethically thorny question of whether scientists should try to dilute the gene pool by introducing wolves from elsewhere.
. . She identified malformed vertebrae in all wolf remains found the previous dozen years. Such abnormalities show up in just 1% of observed populations that are not inbred. Peterson and biologist John Vucetich found two dead wolves this winter with misshapen vertebrae.
Apr 1, 09: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a formal rule today to remove gray wolves from the federal endangered list in Montana and Idaho while keeping protections in Wyoming.
Mar 31, 09: Two young adult bald ibis spotted in Syria could be mean new hope for the critically endangered species, Scottish-based conservationists report. The bird, which was revered by the Egyptian Pharaohs, clings to survival in the Middle East and Africa. RSPB staff picked up a report of two birds that did not have identification rings during a visit to Syria to study rare migratory species.
Mar 26, 09: Surging demand for turtle meat in southeast Asia has prompted a huge jump in turtle harvesting, leading to concerns that populations of the reptiles could suffer permanent damage.
Mar 26, 09: Plastic fishing nets, some bought for poor fishermen with American aid money, are tangling up whales and turtles off one of Africa's most popular beaches.
Mar 25, 09: Jumping spiders, a striped gecko and a chirping frog are among more than 50 new species discovered in Papua-New Guinea, the environmental group Conservation International reported.
Mar 20, 09: Hawaii's native avian population is in peril, with nearly all the state's birds in danger of becoming extinct, a federal report says.
Mar 18, 09: Beavers could be successfully reintroduced in many parts of England, a conservation body has argued. Natural England says a study has shown beavers, already set for reintroduction in Scotland, could boost wildlife and reduce flooding, among other benefits.
. . It is now up to wildlife charities and other groups to decide whether they would like to embark on such a scheme. Farmers say landowners' concerns must be taken into account. Beavers were hunted to extinction in the 1500s.
Mar 18, 09: A frog so poisonous that it can kill up to 200 people has been successfully bred at a Fife aquarium. The golden arrow poison dart frog secretes toxin from its skin, which is used by south American tribesmen to poison their blow-gun darts.
. . The amphibian is under threat in the wild due to loss of habitat and pollution in its native region of Chaco in West Columbia.
. . Despite their deadly status, it is hoped that the golden arrow frog could one day help save lives. Medical researchers are developing muscle relaxants, heart stimulants, and anaesthetics made from the frogs' toxins which have the potential to become a far more effective and less addictive alternative to morphine.
Mar 17, 09: Montserrat's "mountain chicken" frog has become the latest victim of the killer fungal disease that is devastating amphibians worldwide.UK researchers say that only two small pockets of the animals on the tiny Caribbean island remain disease-free. Conservationists plan to take surviving frogs into captive breeding programs.
The mountain chicken (Leptodactylus fallax) is one of the world's largest frogs, and appears on the coat of arms of neighboring Dominica.
Mar 17, 09: Spanish politicians are planning a novel way to save vultures --by changing the law so dead animals can be left to rot.
Mar 5, 09: Bats afflicted with a mysterious and deadly disorder might be able to make it through winter with the help of heated boxes placed in hibernation caves, a pair of researchers say.
Feb 23, 09: The outlook for endangered seabirds looks better thanks to a scheme that reduces the numbers accidentally killed by the fishing industry. 3/4 of albatross species are at risk of extinction, largely due to the way long lines are deployed to catch fish such as tuna. The birds are attracted to the baited lines and can become entangled and pulled underwater to their deaths. A South African initiative shows how the lines can be made safer.
Feb 23, 09: The outlook for endangered seabirds looks better thanks to a scheme that reduces the numbers accidentally killed by the fishing industry. Three-quarters of albatross species are at risk of extinction, largely due to the way long lines are deployed to catch fish such as tuna.The birds are attracted to the baited lines and can become entangled and pulled underwater to their deaths. A South African initiative shows how the lines can be made safer.
Feb 18, 09: A record-low number of chinook salmon returned to rivers in California's Central Valley last year, indicating that severe restrictions on salmon fishing are likely again this year, federal regulators said.
Feb 9, 09: Amazonian forests may be less vulnerable to dying off from global warming than feared because many projections underestimate rainfall, a study showed.
Feb 5, 09: A decade after they were nearly wiped out by disease, the distinct wild foxes on Santa Catalina Island have made a huge recovery.
Feb 5, 09: The European Commission unveiled proposals to conserve sharks, many of which are threatened with extinction.
Feb 3, 09: a report being issued by an environmental group says prairie dogs are in dire straits across the West.
Feb 2, 09: With the Earth warming, a group of scientists wants to establish a home for polar bears near the North Pole in the area they project will remain filled with sea ice the longest.
Jan 26, 09: Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalized by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say. Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100. That corresponds to a decline to just 600 breeding pairs in the world.
Jan 22, 09: Forests in the Pacific Northwest are dying twice as fast as they were 17 years ago, and scientists blame warming temperatures for the trend, according to a new study.
Jan 21, 09: As many as one billion frogs are being harvested from the wild for human consumption each year, according to a new study.
Jan 20, 09: The DR Congo government cancels nearly 60% of contracts to cut timber in the world's second-largest tropical rainforest.
Jan 15, 08: Three shark attacks in Australia in two days this week sparked a global media frenzy of "Jaws" proportions, but sharks are more at risk in the ocean than humans with man killing millions of sharks each year. "You have more chance of being killed driving to the beach."
. . Sharks are the top of the marine food chain, a powerful predator which has no match in its watery realm, until man enters the ocean. Commercial fishing and a desire for Asian shark fin soup sees up to 100 million sharks, even protected endangered species of sharks, slaughtered around the world each year.
. . Yet in contrast, sharks, apparently, do not like the taste of humans. Very few shark attacks involve the shark actually eating the human, unlike a land-based predator like a lion or tiger. Unlike fat seals --the preferred meal of sharks like the Great White-- humans are bony with not much fat. Sharks use various sensors to hunt their prey and a quick bite will tell it whether its found a good meal.
Jan 14, 08: The Bush administration announced plans to remove gray wolves in the western Great Lakes and northern Rocky Mountains regions from the federal endangered species list.
Jan 14, 08: Alaska will sue over increased federal protections for beluga whales in Cook Inlet, officials announced.
Jan 12, 08: DNA taken from the hair of two extinct Tasmanian "tigers" suggests the Australian marsupials last seen 70 years ago may have become too inbred to survive as a species, researchers reported. They hope to study other extinct animals --and perhaps resurrect one or two of them.
Jan 12, 08: Centuries of crop diversity are at risk of being lost forever as farmers turn to just a few modern, high yielding varieties.
Jan 12, 08: A strategy to protect the UK's fungi is set up by some of the UK leading conservation and research organizations.
Jan 12, 08: In a rare Sunday session, the Senate advanced legislation that would set aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as wilderness --by a 66-12 vote, with only 59 needed to limit debate. Majority Democrats assembled more than enough votes to overcome GOP stalling tactics in an early showdown for the new Congress.
Jan 9, 08: Rare footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists. Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew; it can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite. Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species.
. . The mammal was filmed in the summer of 2008 during a month-long expedition to the Dominican Republic --one of only two countries where this nocturnal, insect-eating animal can be found (the other is Haiti).
. . The researchers were able to take measurements and DNA from the creature before it was released. It is the only living mammal that can actually inject venom into their prey through specialised teeth.
. . "The fossil record shows that some other now-extinct mammal groups also had so-called dental venom delivery systems. So this might have been a more general ancient mammalian characteristic that has been lost in most modern mammals, and is only retained in a couple of very ancient lineages."
Jan 7, 08: Wildlife experts are trying to figure out why sick, disoriented and bruised California brown pelicans are being found in record numbers along more than 1,000 miles of coastline.
Dec 23, 08: Google Earth is fantastic, but this might be its most amazing feat yet: A scientist stumbled across an unknown green patch that turned out to be an unexplored forest home to brand new undiscovered species.
. . Julian Bayliss was looking around Google Earth for a new conservation project when he came across patches of green in Mozambique that appeared to be previously unexplored. Sure enough, those green patches were "7,000 hectares of forest, rich in biodiversity" that had been left untouched by scientists thanks to minor blips like miserable terrain and constant civil war.
Dec 14, 08: A commercial fishing commission agreed to cut the catches of bigeye tuna in parts of the Pacific Ocean, a small step in an effort to save a threatened species that is a favorite among sushi lovers.
Dec 10, 08: The Bush administration issued revised endangered species regulations reducing input by scientists over major projects.
Dec 10, 08: Zoo elephants don't live as long as those in the wild, according to a study sure to stir debate about keeping the giant animals on display.
Dec 10, 08: Owners of inshore fishing boats in England are being offered £5m by the government to scrap their boats and leave the industry. Boat owners welcomed the move, saying that tight EU fish quotas had made it increasingly tough to make a profit.
. . The scheme will compensate owners who scrap their boats and allow their share of the quota to be redistributed among the remaining fishing fleet.
Dec 5, 08: Whale meat imported from Iceland and Norway goes on sale in Japan, sparking fears of trade growth.
Dec 5, 08: Countries that are home to gorillas have pledged to monitor how laws against harming the animals are being implemented on the ground. Most gorilla range states have laws against poaching, but environment groups say enforcement is often lax.
. . The agreement came on the final day of discussions in Rome on an international gorilla action plan that came into force earlier this year. With most populations falling, the UN has made 2009 the Year of the Gorilla.
. . The gorilla action plan is designed to tackle the three main threats facing gorillas --loss of habitat, poaching and the Ebola virus-- and all the 10 range states have signed up. The plan commits them to securing good habitat for the animals, including the creation of reserves that cross national boundaries where that is appropriate. They are supposed to clamp down on poaching and reduce the impact of conflict.
. . There was some good news this week from Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rangers were able to return to the area where mountain gorillas roam, after having been forced away by armed men a few weeks ago.
. . Tackling Ebola is likely to be a harder task. So far, there is no effective treatment or vaccine for the virus in humans or in other primates.
. . Looking after gorillas can be very beneficial for local communities. "In Rwanda and Uganda, tourism, with gorillas as the star attraction, has become the number one foreign exchange earner", he said.
. . Their role as "gardeners of the forest" was also vital to the long term ecological health of Africa's tropical rainforest.
Dec 4, 08: [not really an extinction story...] State wildlife officials are hoping deer hunters can reduce the population of another crop-damaging species in southern New Jersey: feral hogs. They're allowing deer hunters in an area of southern Gloucester County to also shoot free-roaming swine that have been destroying crops and landscaping.
Dec 3, 08: Increasing noise pollution in the world's oceans is threatening the survival of whales and dolphins, a UN-backed conference says.
Dec 3, 08: Measuring up to 6m long, with elongated narrow snouts, gharials are one of the world's most distinctive-looking crocodilians. Just 100 years ago, these fish-eating reptiles were prevalent throughout the Indian subcontinent; but by 2007, there were just 200 breeding adults found in only a handful of rivers in India and Nepal.
. . Last winter, this already critically endangered species was dealt another cruel blow. Over the space of just five months, more than 100 of the creatures washed up dead on the banks of India's Chambal river --and nobody knew why.
. . Why is it just a particular 40km stretch of the river that is being affected, and the deaths all occurred over winter? Why is it that only one particular size class - the medium sized ones - is dying? And why is it that only one fish-eating animal is being affected?
. . Autopsies have told us the deaths were caused by gout, which more or less indicates kidney failure --and this points to the build up of toxins.
. . The river that they live in --the Chambal-- is one of the cleanest rivers in India. But this flows into another river called the Yamuna, which is a big huge toxic mess. The gharial may move into the Yamuna and feed on fish that have big toxic loads.
. . The die-off happened in winter because when it is cold, the animals are unable to metabolize anything in their system --they sort of shut down. This will take a toll on weak, injured or sick animals. And in this case, if they had damaged kidneys, and the kidneys were trying to excrete the uric acid but were unable to, then the uric acid would have spread to the body, causing gout.
. . The little crocodilians can bask in what little sunshine is available in the winter, and because they are small they heat up very fast. Even if they have eaten polluted fish, they would be able to metabolize it.
. . The very large animals are at a stage of their life where they are not gorging on fish as they have no great incentive to grow fast. It is the medium-sized class that are dying. Being larger, it takes them a heck of a long time to warm up, and we think that they never do warm up enough to aid digestion and metabolize out the toxins. There is the sinister possibility that people who eat the fish may also be affected.
Dec 3, 08: Marine biologists are baffled by a dramatic decline in numbers of harbor seals from UK shores.
Dec 2, 08: Canada's killer whale population on the Pacific Coast remains at risk of extinction as its main food source continues to decline, a government panel said.
Dec 2, 08: A major international study says palm oil plantations reduce plant and animal diversity, and do little to reduce CO2 emissions.
Dec 1, 08: The first comprehensive inventory of the sea and land animals living in a polar region has been carried out by British and German scientists. More than 1,200 species were counted, including five new to science. The scientists will now use the inventory to monitor how this area will respond to future environmental changes.
Nov 28, 08: Cameroon created a new national park for the Cross River gorilla, the world's rarest, ahead of a key conservation meeting.
Nov 24, 08: Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says. Researchers say CO2 levels are having a marked effect on the health of shellfish such as mussels.
. . They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years. The findings showed that CO2 had lowered the water pH over time, demonstrating a year-on-year increase in acidity.
. . The mussel has a calcium carbonate -based shell, which can be weakened or even dissolved by exposure to acid. Professor Wootton says the increase in acidity may be responsible for the decline in mussels noted in the study.
Nov 25, 08: Environmental groups condemn the new quota for Mediterranean bluefin tuna, saying it is a "mockery of science".
Nov 20, 08: Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.
. . The rules must be published by 11-21-08 to take effect before Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. Otherwise, he can undo them with the stroke of a pen.
. . The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself if it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.
. . The House will be looking at ways to overturn the endangered species rules and other midnight regulations. "The House, in consultation with the incoming administration and relevant committees, will review what oversight tools are at our disposal regarding this and other last minute attempts to inflict severe damage to the law in the waning moments of the Bush administration."
Nov 19, 08: UK Sparrow numbers 'plummet by 68%'. The loss of green spaces in Britain has caused the number of house sparrows to drop sharply in the past 30 years.
Nov 19, 08: Two years after pledging to protect 10% of the oceans, governments have protected less than 1%, a survey finds.
Nov 19, 08: Researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered remains of a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.
. . The research suggests that the first humans in New Zealand hunted the newly found Waitaha penguin to extinction by 1500, about 250 years after their arrival on the islands. But the loss of the Waitaha allowed another kind of penguin to thrive —-the yellow-eyed species... that now also faces extinction.
. . The yellow-eyed penguin is considered one of the world's rarest. An estimated population of 7,000 in New Zealand is the focus of an extensive conservation effort.
Nov 18, 08: On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists for the first time in more than eight decades have observed a living pygmy tarsier, one of the planet's smallest and rarest.
Nov 18, 08: The Japanese government issued a licence for importation of a consignment of whalemeat from Iceland and Norway.
Nov 10, 08: East Congo's conflict has put more than a quarter of the world's last mountain gorillas at the mercy of armed groups who hunt and camp in their territory, park officials said.
Nov 5, 08: Climate change is bringing wetter winters to southern Norway, a bleak prospect for the region's lemmings.
. . Scientists found that numbers of the animals no longer vary over a regular cycle, as they did until a decade ago; there are no more bumper years. The snow is not stable enough, they think, to provide winter shelter.
. . The researchers suggest the lack of Norwegian lemmings is affecting other animals such as foxes and owls. In boom years, lemmings are the most plentiful and important prey for these carnivores.
. . Until the mid-1990s, the lemming population in the study area in southern Norway varied on a cycle of three to five years. On occasions, there were so many that snowplows were deployed to clear squashed animals from roads. These years often saw Norwegian lemmings having to compete hard for food. The desperate search led some to jump off high ground into water, leading to the popular --but wrong-- assumption that they were prone to commit collective suicide.
. . But the peak years are not occurring anymore. The research team, composed of Norwegian and French scientists, believes the winters are now too humid, leading to the "wrong kind of snow". This results in a less stable subnivean space (the space between the ground and the snow layer above), meaning substantially fewer animals survive until spring.
Oct 31, 08: A giant bat with a wingspan up to 5.5 feet has made a comeback from the brink of extinction in Tanzania in a rare conservation success, an environmental group said.
. . Numbers of the Pemba flying fox, a type of fruit bat, have risen to 22,000 since it was rated critically endangered two decades ago when "only a scant few individual fruit bats could be observed." The bats were once considered a delicacy and were hunted and eaten throughout Pemba island, the bats' only habitat, in the Zanzibar archipelago off Tanzania.
Oct 31, 08: A previously unknown fungus that thrives in chilly temperatures may be the culprit behind the deaths of at least 100,000 bats hibernating in caves in the northeastern US, scientists said.
Oct 29, 08: Officials from Mexico, the US and Canada are teaming up in a new plan to protect the vaquita marina, a highly endangered species of porpoise in the upper Gulf of California.
Oct 28, 08: Amphibian populations at Yellowstone --the world's oldest national park-- are in steep decline, a major study shows. The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change. The area has been protected for more than a century.
. . Amphibian populations are in crisis worldwide: pollution, diseases such as chytrid fungus and rana virus, invasive species, UV radiation and habitat destruction all contribute to the problem. Evidence suggests that a warming climate could also predispose amphibians to infection, particularly to chytrid fungus.
. . Climate change might affect amphibian populations in numerous ways. In addition to drying out aquatic breeding habitats --preventing spawning-- it could also make the land environment inhospitable to them.
Oct 28, 08: Conservationists said today they were planning a big push to protect Borneo's orangutans, pygmy elephants and other endangered wildlife by purchasing land from palm oil producers to create a forest sanctuary. The deal is meant to help stave off the demise of orangutans, whose numbers have dwindled amid illegal logging and the rapid spread of palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, the only two countries where orangutans are found in the wild.
. . The territory is needed to link two sections of a wildlife reserve that is home to an estimated 600 orangutans, 150 Borneo pygmy elephants and a vast array of other animals including proboscis monkeys, hornbills and river otters.
. . Environmental groups estimate the number of orangutans in Malaysia and Indonesia has fallen by half in the past 20 years to less than 60,000, largely due to human encroachment on forests. Researchers say more than 5,000 of the primates have been lost every year since 2004.
. . Borneo is also home to some 1,000 pygmy elephants, which are genetically distinct from other subspecies of Asian pachyderms because they have babyish faces, large ears and longer tails. They are also more rotund and less aggressive.
Oct 18, 08: The beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet are endangered and require additional protection to survive, the government declared, contradicting Gov. Sarah Palin.
Oct 17, 08: The population of the endangered West African chimpanzees in Ivory Coast has fallen by about 90% in less than 20 years, a study has suggested. Researchers found 90% fewer nests than a similar audit carried out in 1990, which suggested the chimp population had crashed from 12,000 to about 1,200. Increased levels of deforestation and poaching and were likely to be main factors for the decline, they added.
. . The number of people living in Ivory Coast is now estimated to be 18m, up from 12m in 1990. Civil unrest in the nation since 2002 was likely to have exacerbated the problems.
. . One of the sites was located within the boundaries of Tai National Park, where the local population of chimps had fared much better.
Oct 13, 08: A loophole in UK animal welfare laws that allows primates to be kept as household pets needs to be closed, an MP urges.
Oct 12, 08: The world's governments will fail to meet their agreed target of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010, conservationists tell.
Oct 10, 08: The global economy loses more money from deforestation than the current banking crisis, says an EU-commissioned report.
Oct 9, 08: While the most significant harm from climate change so far has been in the polar regions, tropical plants and animals may face an even greater threat, say scientists who studied conditions in Costa Rica. Some tropical species, insects are an example, are living near their maximum temperatures already and warmer conditions could cause them to decline.
. . The researchers estimated that a temperature increase of 3.2 Celsius over a century would make 53% of the 1,902 lowland tropical species they studied subject to attrition.
. . Moving uphill, the researchers said, temperature declines between 5.2 C and 6.5 C for every 1,000 meters. To get a similar reduction moving north or south, species would have to travel more than 1,000 km.
Oct 8, 08: The world's fishing fleets are losing billions of dollars each year through depleted stocks and poor management, according to a UN report. The World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculate the losses at $50bn per year. Half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in catch.
. . Entitled The Sunken Billions: Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, it argues that reforming the way fisheries are managed could restore stocks and build profits. Nearly one-third of the world's fisheries are severely depleted, and there have been several high-profile examples of complete collapse, such as the Grand Banks cod stocks off Canada's eastern coast.
. . A recent study estimated that if current trends continued, there would be no commercially viable marine fisheries left within half a century. There is less to catch, the fish available are generally of lower economic value, and costs are rising.
. . Other academics have pointed the finger at subsidies that they say drive the irrational expansion of fleets. A 2006 study put the extent of subsidies globally at about $30bn.
Oct 9, 08: Indonesia pledges to stop the loss of forests and species in Sumatra, one of the world's most ecologically important islands.
Oct 7, 08: The federal government will designate "critical habitat" for polar bears off Alaska's coast, a decision that could add restrictions to future offshore petroleum exploration or drilling.
Oct 6, 08: A quarter of the world's mammals are threatened with extinction, an international survey showed, and the destruction of habitats and hunting are the major causes. The report, the most comprehensive to date by 1,700 researchers, showed populations of half of all 5,487 species of mammals were in decline. Mammals range in size from blue whales to Thailand's insect-sized bumblebee bat.
. . Threats were worst for land mammals in Asia, where creatures such as orang utans are suffering from deforestation. Almost 80 percent of primates in the region were under threat. Among other threats, global warming blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels, was hitting species dependent on Arctic sea ice such as the polar bear.
Oct 4, 08: The ocean may soon begin to sound more like New York City to dolphins and whales. As CO2 levels rise and make the world's oceans warmer and more acidic, the increasing amounts of the gas could also make the seas noisier, especially in the soprano range, a new study suggests.
. . The more CO2 that water absorbs, the more acidic it becomes; this is why sodas, with their CO2 bubbles, are acidic. This change in seawater chemistry alters the way sound moves through the ocean, allowing it to propagate farther, particularly for sounds two and a half octaves above "middle C".
. . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the pH of ocean waters has decreased by about 0.02 units per decade over the last 20 years. The most conservative projections of the IPCC suggest that the pH of seawater could drop by a total of 0.3 units by 2050.
. . Not only does this increasing acidity threaten the ocean food chain by hampering the formation of shells and corals, it could also affect the communication of marine mammals by changing the way sound travels through the seawater. Essentially, the more acidic seawater gets, the farther sound travels in it.
. . The change in chemistry will have the greatest effect on sounds below about 3,000 cycles per second (or about two and a half octaves above "middle C" on the piano). This range includes most of the frequencies that marine mammals, such as whales, use to communicate to find food and mates, as well as many of the underwater sounds generated by industrial activity and ships. (This human-generated noise has also increased in recent years, with evidence that it is affecting marine mammal communication.) Hester and his team found that sound may already be traveling 10 percent farther than it did a few hundred years ago.
Oct 1, 08: Climate change threatens to kill off up to a third of the planet's species by the end of the century if urgent action isn't taken to restore fragile ecosystems, protect endangered animals and manage growth, scientists warned as a wildlife summit opened.
. . "Much of the predictions are gloom and doom. The ray of hope, however, is that we have not lost our opportunity. We still have time if we act now", said Jean Brennan, a senior scientist with Defenders of Wildlife and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
. . Coastal growth also must be controlled and limited to allow for "wetlands to migrate inland naturally as sea level rise accelerates, and they can't do that if there's a road or a condominium there", Burkett added.
Oct 1, 08: Conservation groups criticise Malta for failing to stop "rogue hunters" killing protected bird species.
Sept 30, 08: Oxygen-starved ocean dead zones may be more widespread than thought. Spanish researchers found that many species die off at oxygen levels well above what is now considered uninhabitable. The new study suggests that the extent of dead zones in coastal areas that support fishing industries is greater than previously known.
. . Since the mid-20th century, more than 400 dead zones have formed along continental coastlines, where fertilizer pollution causes algal blooms whose decomposition feeds oxygen-gobbling bacteria. And they're grouped in places critical to commercial fishing. They're also spreading, in both size and frequency: Since the 1960s, the number of hypoxic areas has doubled every 10 years.
. . As significant as the problem is, it's based on what may be outdated, overly permissive standards. The new study is a review of nearly 900 studies of 206 ocean floor-dwelling species, and suggests that the level of oxygen considered hypoxic needs to be raised. "If we went by this definition, we'd probably double the number of hypoxic zones."
Sept 29, 08: Brazil's Environment Ministry lists 100 of the worst illegal loggers --and names a government department as number one.
Sept 25, 08: More than half of Europe's amphibians could be extinct by 2050, a team of UK researchers has warned. Climate change, habitat destruction and disease were the main factors threatening the species' long-term survival. A recent global assessment found that a third of all amphibians were at risk of being wiped off the face of the planet.
Sept 18, 08: Scientists using DNA have catalogued and described 100 new species of sharks and rays in Australian waters, which they said would help conservation of the marine animals and aid in climate change monitoring. Cataloguing of the new species is critical for the management of sharks and rays, which reproduce slowly and are vulnerable to overfishing.
Sept 17, 08: The Bush administration released $100 million in disaster relief to West Coast salmon fishermen, $70 million less than the amount Congress approved to help those hurt by the sudden collapse of the Pacific Coast salmon fishing industry.
. . The salmon collapse left thousands of fishermen and dependent businesses struggling to make ends meet, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said, adding that the disaster aid package will help them get back on their feet.
. . The failure stemmed from the sudden collapse of the chinook salmon run in California's Sacramento River, where the salmon return to spawn. Scientists are studying the causes of the collapse, with possible factors ranging from ocean conditions and habitat destruction to dam operations and agricultural pollution.
Sept 16, 08: The Chilean Congress unanimously approved a bill declaring Chilean jurisdictional waters to be a whale sanctuary. Now, the bill heads to the desk of President Michelle Bachelet who originally submitted the measure to Congress. She is expected to announce the bill as a Law of the Republic.
Sept 10, 08: About four out of 10 freshwater fish species in North America are in peril, according to a major study by U.S., Canadian and Mexican scientists.
Sept 4, 08: Haddock, anchovies and five types of tuna should all be off the menu for UK eco-conscious diners, a charity says.
. . Along with monkfish, plaice and certain varieties of Dover sole, the species are included on the Marine Conservation Society's updated Fish-to-Avoid list. Five varieties of tuna --including all types of bluefin-- are on the Fish to Avoid list but the society recommends people can continue to eat the albacore species from the North or South Pacific or skipjack. Stock levels of anchovies in the Bay of Biscay are at an all-time low and the society says there is no sustainable alternative.
Sept 2, 08: According to a new mass extinction scoring system, the latest will likely be the greatest in Earth's history. Developed by researchers at Istanbul Technical U, the system offers a way to quantify those times when more than half of all species disappeared.
. . According to the researchers, the current global die-off --with species going extinct at rates 1,000 times faster than usual, if not more-- combines elements of both the End Cretaceous and the Permian. The global dominance of humans "represents a virtual Pangea formation", and human activities are a "global annihilating agent" comparable to any asteroid. "If unchecked, the current extinction threatens to be the greatest killer of all time."
Aug 30, 08: Amazon deforestation jumped 69% in the past 12 months —-the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said. Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year —-but they have not forecast how much.
Aug 30, 08: On the grasslands a few miles from the pinnacles and spires of Badlands National Park, federal wildlife officials have been waging a war since spring to save one of the nation's largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets.
. . The deadly disease sylvatic plague was discovered in May in a huge prairie dog town in the Conata Basin. The black-tailed prairie dog is the main prey of ferrets, and the disease quickly killed up to a third of the area's 290 ferrets along with prairie dogs. The plague, which is carried by fleas, is the biggest danger to ferrets' survival.
. . This summer, a crew of four has buzzed across the prairie on all-terrain vehicles, pausing frequently to spray white insecticide dust into prairie dog burrows to kill fleas. After dark, another crew moved into the area during part of the summer to shine spotlights across the grasslands, trap ferrets and vaccinate them against the plague.
. . About 5 to 15 people are infected by plague in the US each year, but it can be cured with antibiotics if treatment is prompt.
Aug 28, 08: Canada, criticized by environmentalists for not adequately protecting polar bears from the effects of climate change, said it will take more time to study its next step.
Aug 21, 08: The Bush administration is providing insufficient time for public comment as it seeks to loosen rules protecting endangered species, representatives of more than 100 conservation groups charged.
Aug 14, 08: Like a chronic disease spreading through the body, "dead zones" with too little oxygen for life are expanding in the world's oceans. "It is a global problem and it has severe consequences for ecosystems. It's getting to be a problem of such a magnitude that it is starting to affect the resources that we pull out of the sea to feed ourselves."
. . There are now more than 400 dead zones around the world, double what the United Nations reported just two years ago. Pollution-fed algae, which deprive other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones. Scientists mainly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning. He said he hopes that as fertilizers become more and more expensive farmers will begin seriously looking at ways to retain them on the land.
. . A portion of Big Glory Bay in New Zealand became hypoxic after salmon farming cages were set up, but began recovering when the cages were moved, he said.
Aug 14, 08: Oil exploration in the Amazon rain forest represents the latest, perhaps greatest, threat to preserving what remains of the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness, scientists said.
Aug 13, 08: In some finned species, like the Atlantic silverside --as well as in many reptiles-- sex is determined not by genetics but by temperature: the undifferentiated embryo develops testes or ovaries on the basis of whichever option conveys evolutionary advantages for that particular environment. Now, a study by Natalia Ospina-Alvarez and Francesc Piferrer have gone a little further in explaining how that mechanism works. In laboratory tests, they have demonstrated that higher water temperatures result in more male fish.
. . "We found that in fish that do have temperature-dependent sex determination [TSD], a rise in water temperature of just 1.5 degrees C can change the male-to-female ratio from 1:1 to 3:1" In the South American pejerrey, for example, an increase of 4 degrees Celsius can result in a population that is 98% male.
. . What makes these findings especially troubling, of course, is that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that ocean-water temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees over the course of this century - and they may even go up a few degrees more. "If climate change really does result in a rise of 4 degrees, which is the maximum the IPCC predicts, and if species can't adapt in time or migrate, then in the most sensitive cases of TSD, we're looking at extinction", says Piferrer.
Aug 11, 08: The humpback whale, nearly hunted into history four decades ago, is now on the "road to recovery" and is no longer considered at high risk of extinction, an environmental group said.
. . The International Union for Conservation of Nature —-the producer each year of a Red List of threatened species-— also upgraded the status of the southern "right" whale from vulnerable. There may be only 300 North Atlantic right whales along the Eastern Seaboard, Perrin said. While hunting them is illegal, many continue to be wounded or killed in collisions with ships or entanglements with fishing gear
. . IUCN said a number of other large sea animals were moving closer to extinction. Overall, nearly a quarter of all such species are threatened and over a 10th are listed as endangered or critically endangered, representing the greatest threat of extinction.
. . The Red List includes around 41,000 species and subspecies around the globe. IUCN, which is made up of more than 1,000 government and non-governmental organizations, says it has almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries.
Aug 10, 08: The extinction of many ancient species may be due to humans rather than climate change, experts say. Large prehistoric animals in Tasmania may have been wiped out by human hunting and not temperature changes, a team of international scientists argue. This pattern may have been repeated around the globe on islands such as Great Britain, the scientists say.
. . For many years, scientists have been arguing about the causes of widespread extinctions of vast numbers of species at the end of the last Ice Age. What has caused the most debate has been the fate of megafauna --large bodied creatures in Australia that included three-meter-tall giant kangaroos and marsupial lions.
. . But using the latest radiocarbon and luminescence dating techniques, the British and Australian scientists say they were able to determine the age of the fossilised remains of the megafauna more accurately than ever before.
. . They discovered that some of the giant animals survived for 2,000 years after humans arrived, and at a time when the climate was not changing dramatically. The researchers concluded that these species were driven to extinction by hunting. Previous research had found that on mainland Australia some 90% of megafauna disappeared about 46,000 years ago - soon after humans first settled on the continent.
Aug 10, 08: Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants. New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years.
. . The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats. If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1988. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.
. . The changes would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize. Government wildlife experts currently perform tens of thousands of such reviews each year. "If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years", said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.
. . They would be subject to a 60-day public comment period before being finalized by the Interior Department, giving the administration enough time to impose them before November's presidential election. A new administration could freeze any pending regulations or reverse them, a process that could take months. Congress could also overturn the rules through legislation, but that could take even longer.
. . Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the proposed changes illegal. "This proposed regulation is another in a continuing stream of proposals to repeal our landmark environmental laws through the back door", she said. "If this proposed regulation had been in place, it would have undermined our ability to protect the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the gray whale."
Aug 4, 08: A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests. More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered. "In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction."
Aug 4, 08: A crowd of gorillas has survived in the northern part of the Republic of Congo --so many that environmentalists can double population estimates, according to a report.
July 28, 08: A new species of Tanzanian monkey is threatened with extinction just two years after it was formally identified, conservationists have warned.
July 25, 08: Authorities in northeastern India have asked the army to help protect endangered one-horned rhinoceroses from poachers and have made the soldiers honorary wildlife wardens, officials said.
July 25, 08: Wetlands risk conversion to farmland as demand for food and biofuel grows, a conference in Brazil is told.
July 25, 08: A "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas-Louisiana coast this year is likely to be the biggest ever and last longer than ever before, with marine life affected for hundreds of miles.
July 23, 08: Disease spread to wild bees from commercially bred bees used for pollination in agriculture greenhouses may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations, researchers say.
July 17, 08: If the most dire climate predictions come to pass, the Arctic ice cap will melt entirely, and polar bears could face extinction. So why not pack a few off to Antarctica, where the sea ice will never run out?
. . Polar bears are just the tip of the "assisted colonization" iceberg. Other possibilities: moving African big game to the American Great Plains, or airlifting endangered species from one mountaintop to another as climate zones shrink.
. . Once dismissed as wrongheaded and dangerous, assisted colonization --rescuing vanishing species by moving them someplace new-- is now being discussed by serious conservationists. And no wonder: Caught between climate change and human pressure, species are going extinct 100 times faster than at any point in human history.
. . And some scientists say that figure is too conservative. The real extinction rate, they say, is a full 1,000 times higher than normal. The last time such annihilation took place was during the time of the dinosaurs. And though many conservationists say that saving species by transplanting them is foolish, others say there's no choice. "They want the world to be what it was before. But it's not going to happen", said Australian ecologist Hugh Possingham, author of an assisted-colonization article.
July 17, 08: Undersea volcanic activity has been blamed for a mass extinction in the seas 93 million years ago.
July 17, 08: Five years without fishing around the UK's Lundy Island have led to revival of its lobsters and other sea life.
July 16, 08: Bumblebees lose a bit of their buzz when ill, and like humans, have a tougher time doing daily tasks until they recover, British researchers said. Honeybees with activated immune systems also have memory problems, according to evolutionary biologist Eamonn Mallon of the U of Leicester, who said his findings can boost efforts to save dwindling bee colonies.
July 14, 08: Australia's endangered Tasmanian Devil, its numbers decimated by an infectious facial cancer, is mating earlier, scientists have found. "To our knowledge, this is the first known case of infectious disease leading to increased early reproduction in a mammal."
. . The disfiguring facial cancer, which often kills within months, has cut the island state's wild devil population by as much as 60% and it could become extinct in 10 to 20 years. But a study covering five sites found that juvenile females, or those around a year old, were becoming sexually more precocious.
July 8, 08: Almost half the coral reef ecosystems in US territory are in poor or fair condition, mostly because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a government report.
July 5, 08: Orangutan numbers have declined sharply on the only two islands where they still live in the wild and they could become the first great ape species to go extinct if urgent action isn't taken, a new study says.
July 3, 08: The risk of extinction for many species may have been seriously underestimated, according to new research. Current methods used to assess species on the brink overlook some key factors, a team of scientists claims. These include the ratio of males to females in a population. For some species, the risk could be a hundred times greater than previously thought, the team calculates.
. . Currently, two key factors are used to estimate risk --the birth-death ratio, and environmental conditions such as habitat destruction. But the US researchers believe other elements are under-weighted. As well as the male-to-female ratio, they point to the physical size of individuals in a species, and some aspects of behavior. They found that when populations are small and vulnerable, changes in the sex ratio can have a huge impact on survivability.
. . One in three amphibians, one in four mammals, one in eight birds and 70% of plants so far assessed for its Red Lists of Threatened Species are believed to be at risk.
Jun 30, 08: The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.
. . "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true."
. . Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.
. . The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are "facing a high risk of extinction in the wild", and two more as "near threatened".
. . Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000. The decline overall isn't caused by one factor, but several. For the ice-loving Adelie penguins, global warming in the western Antarctica peninsula is a problem, making it harder for them to find food.
. . For penguins that live on the Galapagos island, El Nino weather patterns are a problem because the warmer water makes penguins travel farther for food, at times abandoning their chicks. "What happens to penguins, a few years down the road can happen to a lot of other species and possibly humans."
Jun 30, 08: Two conservation groups have asked the federal government to impose new restrictions on oil and gas development in the West to protect the greater sage grouse, a popular game bird on the decline.
Jun 26, 08: A lack of suitable flowers may be forcing bumblebees to seek out aphids to feed on their sugary secretions... that do not contain the protein the insects need to stay healthy.
. . The Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BCT) said it was a behavior that appeared to be becoming increasingly common. A fascinating aspect of the behavior was the bumblebees' ability to apparently smell the sugar. They normally choose flowers by color, but are known to have "smelly feet" allowing them to detect if a flower has already been visited by another bumblebee for its pollen.
. . Three species are extinct in the UK and many more are threatened. "Bumblebees can only get their protein from pollen, which they feed to their growing young."
Jun 26, 08: The first vote at this year's International Whaling Commission meeting denies Greenland's request to hunt humpbacks.
Jun 26, 08: Cold temperatures did not stop the spread of pine beetles in Alberta this winter, and it may be too late to eliminate the tree-killing insects from the province, officials said.
Jun 26, 08: Reeling in a 45-pound grouper used to be just an average day on the water in the Florida Keys. An average grouper caught in the Keys now is about eight pounds.
. . Ault and others are studying whether putting large tracts of ocean off-limits to fishing in the Keys can help species rebound —-and prove a way to help reverse the effects of overfishing worldwide. "Once you liquidate the capital, you can't live off the interest anymore", he said.
. . Critics assert that it isn't working. They say limiting size and catch quantities, not fencing off the seas, will help restore ocean life.
. . Florida has the largest contiguous "no-take" zone in the continental U.S. —-about 140 square miles are off limits to fishing. Fish larvae produced here can be swept on ocean currents as far north as the Carolinas. The larger a fish grows, the more eggs it can produce. If anglers continue to snap up all the big ones, eventually, Bohnsack warned, the entire system could collapse.
. . Overfishing has cut deeply into the world's fish populations. A 2006 report in the journal Science warned that nearly a third of the world's seafood species have declined by 90% or more and all populations of fished species could collapse by 2048 if current fishing and pollution trends continue.
. . Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has the world's largest network of no-take areas, with more than 44,000 square miles off limits to fishing. The US' largest no-take marine reserve is a 1,547-square-mile network within Hawaii's remote Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, according to NOAA.
Jun 26, 08: The Navy is challenging Hawaii's authority to protect whales by restricting the use of sonar during training exercises, environmentalists and military representatives say.
Jun 24, 08: Sunbathing tree frogs may hold the key to understanding how a deadly fungus is wiping out amphibians around the world. The chytrid fungus has been implicated in many amphibian extinctions.
. . Most frogs avoid prolonged exposure to sunlight; the light and heat dry out their skin. However, some tree frogs from Costa Rica thrive in these conditions. "The chytrid fungus lives in the skin of the frog, but it can only live at certain temperatures. It has been shown with frogs in captivity that if you elevate the skin temperature for short periods, you can clear them of the fungus.
Jun 24, 08: A coalition of conservation groups and a leading fisheries scientist have accused Japan of damaging the fisheries interests of poorer countries.
Jun 18, 08: Bridging the Iran-West divide to save cheetahs. Iranian and Western wildlife experts are working together to save rare cheetahs from extinction in this arid, mountainous region.
Jun 18, 08: Animal welfare campaigners say Greenland's whaling, held under rules permitting subsistence hunting, has become too commercial in character. The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) found that a quarter of last year's catch was traded for profit through a private food company.
Jun 18, 08: Environmentalists in Kenya are worried that an insecticide is being used by farmers to kill lions and other predators.
. . Carbofuran is a very powerful and toxic insecticide. Spread in the soil, it destroys bugs in the ground and is taken up by plants and kills insects which feed on the sap or foliage. It is so powerful and toxic that it has been banned in Europe. But in Kenya, carbofuran can be bought across the counter without restriction.
. . According to world-famous naturalist Dr Richard Leakey, it is being bought not by farmers who want to control bugs and insects, but mainly by herdsmen who use it to kill lions, leopards and other predators. "I literally saw vultures dropping out of the sky just a few minutes after they had eaten the poisoned meat."
Jun 17, 08: Environmentalists are seeking emergency protection for nearly three dozen rare plants, animals and insects under the Endangered Species Act, saying all are at risk due to habitat destruction and other threats.
. . "The species we have chosen are all at the knife's edge of extinction", the petition states. "Given the location of these species on either no or only one known site on earth, a single event —-whether from drought, flood, habitat destruction, pollution, exotic species, or other factors-— could literally erase them from the world."
Jun 17, 08: Australia's honey bees, crucial to worldwide food production, need more protection from foreign invaders that could potentially wipe out their population, a parliamentary report said.
Jun 17, 08: The northern white rhino of central Africa is on the verge of being wiped out, a conservation group said.
Jun 14, 08: Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.
Jun 12, 08: Conservationists raised the alarm that lions in Kenya's Amboseli National Park face extinction within a few years unless action is taken to help them.
Jun 10, 08: Sharks in the Mediterranean Sea have undergone a massive decline over the last two centuries, scientists have discovered from historical records. Some species shrunk by more than 99% over the period, mainly due to fishing. Half of the world's ocean-going sharks face extinction. Sharks and their close relatives, the rays, are particularly vulnerable to over-fishing, as they grow and reproduce slowly.
. . The hammerhead population, they conclude, has declined by more than 99.99% over the last 200 years. The blue shark and the two mackerel sharks have also apparently vanished from coastal waters. Threshers are occasionally still caught in tuna traps; even so, their numbers across the Mediterrannean have fallen by more than 99.99%.
Jun 10, 08: Two genetically distinct groups of woolly mammoths once roamed northern Siberia, a new study suggests, with one group dying out long before humans showed up. The finding suggests humans were not the only reason for the beasts' demise, as some have suggested.
. . Scientists had long thought that woolly mammoths were one large homogeneous group, but an international group of scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA --the DNA in the genes of the mitochondria structures within cells-- to paint a new picture of the ancient pachyderms.
. . They extracted the DNA from frozen hair samples obtained from individual woolly mammoth specimens, found throughout a wide swath of northern Siberia. They compared 18 complete genomes of mitochondrial DNA and found evidence of two genetically distinct clades, or groups of the elephant-like beasts.
. . "The population was split into two groups, then one of the groups died out 45,000 years ago, long before the first humans began to appear in the region", said study team leader Stephan C. Schuster of Penn State U. Schuster and his team also found that each group had a low genetic diversity --in other words, individuals within each of the woolly-mammoth groups were very closely related to one another.
Jun 10, 08: Lesser prairie chickens have been reduced to a fraction of their population across five states, says a conservation group that is ratcheting up the pressure on the federal government to provide more protection for the rare bird.
Jun 6, 08: Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay have been all but wiped out, but amateur conservationists are signing on to the growing hobby of home aquaculture to help bring the struggling bivalves back.
. . Three endangered California condors were returned to the wild after undergoing treatment for lead poisoning at the Los Angeles Zoo.
Jun 5, 08: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva created three nature reserves in the Amazon today, while warning foreigners they lack the "moral authority" to tell Brazilians how to preserve the rain forest.
Jun 6, 08: The Caribbean monk seal has gone extinct.
. . Australian officials say they are having success with a captive breeding program aimed at saving an endangered native bird, the regent honeyeater.
Jun 6, 08: The disease that is devastating amphibian populations around the world could be tackled using "friendly" bacteria, research suggests. Scientists have found that certain types of bacteria which live naturally on amphibians produce chemicals that attack the disease-causing fungus. Recent results indicate the bacteria help frogs survive fungal infection.
. . The chytrid fungus is a major reason for the global decline which sees one third of amphibians facing extinction.
Jun 5, 08: Puffin numbers at the UK's biggest colony are falling, amid signs of dwindling food, scientists say.
Jun 2, 08: A moth found on only four previous occasions since 1853 has been rescued from a spider's web close to where it was first recorded. The black-winged and orange bodied Ethmia pyrausta is so rare it has gained almost mythical status, said Butterfly Conservation Scotland (BCS).
May 29, 08: New Zealand plans to ban commercial fishing near its coast and set up marine reserves to protect the rare Hector's dolphins, a government minister said.
May 29, 08: Fresh off a successful campaign to list polar bears as a threatened species, a conservation group is asking for similar protection for the bears' main prey --ice seals.
May 29, 08: The New Zealand government banned coastal net fishing and announced new marine mammal sanctuaries in a bid to prevent the extinction of two indigenous dolphin species.
May 26, 08: Restrictions by U.S. east coast states on harvesting horseshoe crabs, whose eggs provide food for endangered migrating shore birds, have boosted the animal's population after years of over-fishing, experts say.
May 24, 08: More than half of the world's ocean-going sharks are at risk of extinction, a new analysis concludes. Specialists with IUCN (formerly the World Conservation Union) found that 11 species are on the high-risk list, with five more showing signs of decline. Sharks are particularly affected by over-fishing as they reproduce slowly.
. . The scientists are calling for global catch limits, an end to the practice of removing fins, and measures to minimize incidental catches (bycatch).
May 23, 08: Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says.
May 22, 08: Destruction of the Amazon is again on the upswing despite a recent crackdown on illegal logging, Brazil's new environment minister said.
May 20, 08: Conservation groups returned to court to challenge Bush administration efforts to help save the polar bear, saying federal officials' refusal to include steps against global warming violates the Endangered Species Act.
May 20, 08: Scientists said they had "resurrected" a gene from the extinct Tasmanian tiger by implanting it in a mouse, raising the future possibility of bringing animals such as dinosaurs back to life.
. . In what they describe as a world first, researchers from Australian and US universities extracted a gene from a preserved specimen of the doglike marsupial --formally known as a thylacine-- and revived it in a mouse embryo. "This is the first time that DNA from an extinct species has been used to induce a functional response in another living organism."
. . The announcement was hailed here as raising the possibility of recreating extinct animals. The last known Tasmanian tiger, which took its name from the Australian island and the stripes on its back, died in captivity in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, having been hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s. Some thylacine pups and adult tissues were preserved in alcohol, however.
. . "Maybe one day this might be possible, but it won't happen in my lifetime. It might happen in my children's lifetime, but there's so many steps we need to achieve before you could actually make this work."
May 20, 08: Tasmanian devil to get endangered species listing.
May 20, 08: Iceland's minke whale hunt is set to begin, with environmental groups warning of damage to the country's reputation.
May 19, 08: Climate change is "significantly amplifying" the threats facing the world's bird populations, a global assessment has concluded. The 2008 Bird Red List warns that long-term droughts and extreme weather puts additional stress on key habitats. The assessment lists 1,226 species as threatened with extinction --one-in-eight of all bird species. The list, reviewed every four years, is compiled by conservation charity BirdLife International.
May 16, 08: Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London. Populations of land-based species fell by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29%, it says.
. . Humans are wiping out about 1% of all other species every year, and one of the "great extinction episodes" in the Earth's history is under way, it says. Pollution, farming and urban expansion, over-fishing and hunting are blamed.
. . Some of the worst hit are marine species which saw their numbers plummet by 28% in just 10 years, between 1995 and 2005. Populations of ocean birds have fallen by 30% since the mid 1990s, while land-based populations have dropped by 25%.
May 14, 08: A UK mountain-dwelling butterfly could be wiped out in Scotland because of climate change, experts say.
May 14, 08: The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species today, saying it must be protected because of the decline in Arctic sea ice from global warming. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses. Reflecting views recently expressed by President Bush, Kempthorne said the Endangered Species Act was "never meant to regulate global climate change."
. . Notwithstanding the secretary's disclaimers, this is the first time the Endangered Species Act has been used to protect a species threatened by the impacts of global warming. There has been concern within the business community that such an action could have far-reaching impact and could be used to regulate CO2.
May 6, 08: A survey of bee health revealed a grim picture, with 36.1% of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year. Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32%.
. . As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite. About 29% of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives.
May 7, 08: Koalas are threatened by the rising level of CO2 pollution in the atmosphere because it saps nutrients from the eucalyptus leaves they feed on, a researcher said. They also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus saplings rose when the level of CO2 within a greenhouse was increased. Some eucalyptus species may have high protein content, but anti-nutrients such as tannins bind the protein so it cannot be digested by koalas.
. . Out of more than 600 eucalyptus species in Australia, koalas will only eat the leaves of about 25, Hume said. Changing the toxicity levels in the trees could further reduce the varieties that koalas find palatable. "Koalas produce one young each year under optimal conditions, but if you drop the nutritional value of the leaves, it might become one young every three or four years."
May 7, 08: The fall in Cod numbers may speed a 'toxic tide'. Declining fish stocks could be partially responsible for algal blooms in parts of the oceans, researchers find.
May 6, 08: Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists have said. Researchers led by the U of Washington said insects in the tropics were much more sensitive to temperature changes than those elsewhere. In contrast, higher latitudes could experience an insect population boom.
. . Unlike warm-blooded animals, cold-blooded organisms cannot regulate their body temperatures by growing a coat of fur or shedding it when it gets warm. They are instead limited to either seek shade when hot or sun themselves when cool.
. . The scientists said changes in insect numbers could have secondary effects on plant pollination and food supplies.
May 6, 08: While global warming is expected to be strongest at the poles, it may be an even greater threat to species living in the tropics, scientists say. Tropical species are accustomed to living in a small temperature range and thus may be unable to cope with changes of even a few degrees, according to an analysis.
. . Concern over global warming has largely focused on arctic species like the polar bear. But such animals may be accustomed to living in a wide range of temperatures, while there tends to be little change in the tropics, so there has been no need for species there to adapt.
May 1, 08: South Africa has lifted a moratorium on elephant culling to combat a surge in population numbers.
May 1, 08: An attempt to protect the endangered right whale from being killed by commercial ships has languished for more than a year in part because Vice President Dick Cheney's office and White House economists questioned the conclusions of marine scientists, according to internal documents.
. . The documents were released by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who questioned why White House officials had raised "baseless objections" to findings by government scientists who for years had been studying the dangers posed to the whale by commercial shipping.
. . Only about 300 to 350 of the whales, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, remain in Atlantic waters off the eastern seaboard. At least 19 of the whales have been confirmed killed since 1986 and marine conservationists believe other fatal collisions likely were never reported.
. . Internal administration documents "indicate that the delay in protecting the right whale appears to be due to objections raised by White House officials, including officials in the office of the vice president", Waxman wrote.
Apr 29, 08: A collapse in revenues from wildlife tourism threatens big cats in Kenya's Maasai Mara reserve.
Apr 29, 08: Scientists have discovered a legless lizard, a toad and a dwarf woodpecker among 14 species believed to be new to science in central Brazil, a wildlife conservation group said.
. . A four-week expedition to the Cerrado region, a wooded savannah under threat from the expansion of farming, found eight apparently unknown types of fish, three reptiles, one amphibian, a mammal and a bird.
Apr 28, 08: Environmental and animal rights groups sued the federal government, seeking to restore endangered species status for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies.
Apr 25, 08: The fate of basic industries across the Intermountain West — grazing, mining, energy — soon could be at least partially tied to that of a bird about the size of a chicken. The federal government is under a judge's order to reconsider an earlier decision against listing the sage grouse as endangered, and wildlife biologists are scouring the species' customary mating grounds to see how many are left.
. . In December, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise overturned that decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, partly because it was tainted by political pressure from Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald. She resigned last May amid questions about alleged interference in dozens of other endangered species decisions. "Her tactics included everything from editing scientific conclusions to intimidating staffers", Winmill wrote.
. . The birds' reproductive and survival rates are also down in states hit hard by drought and invasive plants such as cheat grass, which elbow out sage brush and native grasses after fires. West Nile virus also is taking a toll. In Nevada, for example, the numbers of chicks per hen hit a historic low of 0.58 last fall compared to a more typical figure of 1.8 to 2.0, said Shawn Espinosa, a wildlife biologist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
. . Biologists are quick to remind that grouse populations operate in cycles, but Espinosa said "the highs and lows are getting lower and lower and the overall trend of sage grouse population is going down." Environmentalists who have been pushing for federal protection for more than a decade are convinced its population is on a path toward extinction.
Apr 25, 08: The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal. The narwhal, a whale with a long spiral tusk, edged out the polar bear for the ranking of most potentially vulnerable.
. . Polar bears are considered marine mammals because they are dependent on the water and are included as a species in the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act.
. . Scientists from three countries quantified the vulnerabilities that 11 year-round Arctic sea mammals have as the world warms. After the narwhal and polar bear, the most at risk were the hooded seal, bowhead whale and walrus. The ringed seal and bearded seal were least at risk.
. . This doesn't mean the narwhal —-with a current population of 50,000 to 80,000-— will die off first; polar bear counts are closer to 20,000 and they are directly harmed by melting ice, scientists said. "There could a bazillion of them, but if the habitat or the things that they need are not going to be around, they're not going to make it", Root said.
. . Polar bears can adapt a bit to the changing Arctic climate, narwhals can't, she said. The narwhal, which dives about 6,000 feet to feed on Greenland halibut, is the ultimate specialist, evolved specifically to live in small cracks in parts of the Arctic where it's 99% heavy ice, Laidre said. As the ice melts, not only is the narwhal habitat changed, predators such as killer whales will likely intrude more often.
Apr 24, 08: A federal appeals court handed an animal rights group a partial victory in a dispute over the fate of California sea lions in the Columbia River, allowing some to be trapped but none to be killed this spring, because of the amount of salmon they eat at the base of Bonneville Dam.
. . The states estimate the sea lions eat up to about 4.2% of the salmon as they pass through the dam's fish ladders en route to spawning grounds upriver. The federal authorization recommended an annual take of about 30 sea lions.
Apr 23, 08: Wild bee populations around the UK are experiencing "catastrophic declines", the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has warned. Mary Celeste Syndrome --where a honey bee hive is found almost completely deserted-- has appeared in Scotland. ["Colony-collapse" in the US.] Dr Darvill said: "The whole suite of pollinators are declining simultaneously." The UK has 18 true bumblebee species and many are seriously threatened due to habitat loss.
Apr 23, 08: The world risks losing new medical treatments for osteoporosis, cancer and other human ailments if it does not act quickly to conserve the planet's biodiversity, a senior United Nations environmental official said. Earth's organisms offer a variety of naturally made chemical compounds with which scientists could develop new medicines, but are under threat of extinction.
. . One example is the southern gastric brooding frog, or Rheobactrachus, which raises its young in the female's stomach. It was discovered in the Australian rainforests in the 1980s. In other animals, the young would have been digested by enzymes and acids in the stomach. But preliminary studies show the baby frogs produced a substance or a range of substances that inhibited acid and enzyme secretions and prevent the mother from emptying her stomach into her intestines while the young were developing.
. . Research on this species of frog could have led to new insights into preventing and treating human peptic ulcers, but such studies could not be continued because the two species of Rheobactrachus had become extinct. Last year, more than 16,000 species were labeled as threatened with extinction.
. . Steiner said his book looks at seven groups of threatened organisms for potential or known medical value: amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, non-human primates, horseshoe crabs and gymnosperms, a type of plant life.
Apr 19, 08: Many tigers held in captivity have "pure-bred ancestry" and could play a key role in the survival of diminishing wild populations, a study suggests. A team using a new method for assessing the genetic ancestry of tigers found that a number of "generic" animals were actually pure-bred subspecies. They added that these tigers also had genomic diversity no longer found in the wild.
. . Current estimates suggest that only about 3,000 tigers remain in the wild. In contrast, the international team of researchers noted, the global population of captive tigers numbered between 15,000 to 20,000. But they highlighted that only about 1,000 of these were managed within co-ordinated breeding programs that aimed to preserve the animals' genetic variability.
Apr 17, 08: Officials announced a deal to let a small number of bison migrate through a private ranch bordering Yellowstone National Park, sparing the animals from slaughter under a disease control program that has claimed more than 3,000 bison since 2000.
Apr 3, 08: Scientists have begun moving the Mojave Desert's flagship species, the desert tortoise, to make room for tank training at the Army's Fort Irwin despite protests by some conservationists. The controversial project involves transferring 770 endangered reptiles from Army land to a dozen public plots overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
. . Fort Irwin has sought to expand its 643,000-acre training site into tortoise territory for two decades. The Army said it needs an extra 131,000 acres to accommodate faster tanks and longer-range weapons used each month to train some 4,000 troops.
. . Desert tortoises are the longest-living reptiles in the Southwest with a potential life span of 100 years and can weigh up to 15 pounds. Their population has been threatened in recent years by urbanization, disease and predators including the raven.
Apr 3, 08: Bats play a bigger role than birds do in controlling tropical insects, and the loss of bats might mean that morning cup of coffee gets more expensive, researchers said. Two separate studies show bats eat far more insects than birds do, protecting plants of the rain forest and, in one of the studies, coffee plantations. The studies suggest that the loss of bat populations worldwide might affect agriculture --not to mention make warm evenings outside more uncomfortable.
. . They set up three types of enclosures --one that only excluded birds, one that only excluded bats at night, and nets that kept out birds and bats day and night. During the summer wet season, the coffee trees under the nets that kept the bats out had 84% more insects, spiders and other bugs than unprotected plants, they reported. Birds had far less of an effect. Plants netted at night to keep bats out had three times the usual insect damage.
. . "Bat populations are declining worldwide, but monitoring programs and conservation plans for bats lag far behind those for birds", they wrote. "People like birds better and they are more obvious --they are colorful, they are singing", she said. "Bats hunt in the dark so it is really hard to study them. They are completely overlooked."
Apr 3, 08: The populations of seven species of rare water birds have recovered significantly in Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake due to a program that employs former hunters as park rangers, conservationists said.
Apr 14, 08: Japan's whaling fleet has failed to catch its quota, after being disrupted by clashes with anti-hunting activists. The fisheries agency said the fleet caught 60% of the minke whales they had planned --551 from a target of 850. The ships, which were followed around the Antarctic by activists, are due to return to port in the next few days.
. . The BBC's Chris Hogg, in Tokyo, said it was the first time in 20 years that protests had prevented the whalers from reaching their targets.
Apr 12, 08: Two plants that were thought to have been extinct since the late 1800s have been rediscovered in far northern Australia, according to an official report.
Apr 11, 08: West Coast fisheries managers voted to cancel all commercial salmon fishing off the California and Oregon coasts this year.
Apr 10, 08: Sand dune lizard protection: A conservation group is demanding emergency listing under the Endangered Species Act for a lizard found only in isolated parts of New Mexico and Texas.
Apr 10, 08: Bison advocates and environmental groups requested a moratorium on the continued slaughter of bison migrating from the west side of Yellowstone National Park.
Apr 10, 08: Two men from the US have been arrested and charged with trying to smuggle about 1,300 native beetles out of Australia in empty yogurt containers, customs officials said.
Apr 9, 08: Colonies of rare seahorses are living and breeding in the River Thames, conservationists have revealed. The short-snouted variety are endangered and normally live around the Canary Islands and Italy. The revelation coincided with new laws which came into force to give the creatures protected status.
Apr 1, 08: Australia experts say a Tasmanian Devil called Cedric could hold the key to the survival of the embattled species. The world's largest marsupial carnivore is facing extinction from a mystery facial cancer. But scientists say Cedric appears to be naturally resistant to the contagious tumors which have killed half the devil population in Tasmania. Cedric is the first Tasmanian Devil to have shown any immunity.
Mar 31, 08: Environmental campaigners are calling for greater restrictions on shipping around Antarctica in order to prevent damage to its unique ecosystems. More tourists than ever before are visiting Antarctica, some in ships not designed for the harsh conditions. Campaigners say the sinking of the M/S Explorer last year was a wake-up call.
. . The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) is asking the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to strengthen its rules. ASOC and its allies are calling for the banning from Antarctic waters of ships that use heavy oil as fuel. They want to see tighter restrictions on the discharge of sewage and grey water, and a requirement that all vessels entering the region are strengthened to withstand icy conditions. They have documented six incidents in little more than a year which carried a risk of major contamination.
Mar 31, 08: A species of heavy flightless parrot edged back from extinction with the hatching of five new chicks in New Zealand in recent weeks and two more on the way, officials said. The latest births of owl-like kakapos in southern New Zealand brought the population of the rare bird to just 91. The birds only breed every few years.
. . The kakapo is an owl-like nocturnal parrot with finely blotched yellow-green plumage, a large gray beak, short legs, large feet, and relatively short wings and tail. The bird lost the ability to fly as it evolved because there were no ground level predators in the New Zealand environment to threaten the species.
. . Polynesian and European colonization that began several hundred years ago introduced predators such as cats and rats that wiped out most of the kakapo. Surviving kakapos are now kept on small, predator-free offshore islands.
Mar 31, 08: A new breeding program at the Memphis Zoo could nearly double the known population of an endangered frog species. Biologists estimate there are only about 100 adult Mississippi gopher frogs left in the wild.
Mar 30, 08: The saiga —-an odd animal which has a deer's body, a camel's head and a bulbous nose-— has seen its numbers drop from 1 million in the 1980s to as low as 50,000 in its range, which includes Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Republic of Kalmykia. [despite breeding like rabbits! google it.]
. . As affluent residents acquire motorbikes and cars in parts of western Mongolia, they are clogging roads that run along a key migration route for the saiga.
Mar 28, 08: Yosemite National Park must halt more than $100 million in planned construction projects because the developments threaten the park's fragile ecosystem, a federal appeals court panel ruled.
Mar 26, 08: Federal officials say they will consider listing four species of ice seals in Alaska as endangered.
Mar 25, 08: Environmentalists are suing the federal government, claiming promises to whittle down a backlog of plants and animals being considered for endangered species protection amount to "smoke and mirrors."
Mar 23, 08: Unusually large waves churned by an Atlantic storm system have littered the beaches of Barbados with broken coral in what could be a sign of damage to reefs across the region, a scientist said.
Mar 20, 08: A healthy fish population could be the key to ensuring coral reefs survive the impacts of climate change, pollution, overfishing and other threats. Australian scientists found that some fish act as "lawnmowers", keeping coral free of kelp and unwanted algae.
. . Warming seas are likely to affect the reef severely within a few decades. Pollution is also a growing problem, particularly fertilizers that wash from agricultural land into water around the reef, stimulating the growth of plants that stifle the coral.
. . His research group has conducted experiments which involved building cages to keep fish away from sections of reef. They found that three times as much new coral developed in areas where the fish were present as in the caged portions.
Mar 19, 08: Vietnam has become a major South-East Asian hub for processing illegally logged timber, a report says.
Mar 19, 08: The deaths of 22 dolphins in trawler nets prompted fresh calls for the New Zealand government to ban two types of fishing nets from the habitats of two critically endangered species of dolphin.
Mar 18, 08: Traps, pyrotechnics and beanbags shot at sea lions have failed to deter the annual springtime feast of threatened salmon at a Columbia River dam, so federal authorities gave some of them a death sentence.
Mar 18, 08: The vaquita, a tiny stubby-nosed porpoise found only in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, is on the brink of extinction as more die each year in fishing nets than are being born, biologists say. The world's smallest porpoise, growing to a maximum of 5 feet long and gray in color, are so timid that they are hardly ever sighted. They shun the showy acrobatics of other porpoises. Female vaquitas only produce young once every two years and the genetic pool is now too small for effective breeding.
. . A drop in vaquita numbers to as few as 150 from around 600 at the start of the decade could see the famously shy animal go the same way as the Chinese river dolphin, which was declared all but extinct in 2006. Conservationists are also trying to get fishermen to switch to new nets that are less likely to trap vaquita.
Mar 18, 08: Richard Leakey, the eminent African conservationist, gives qualifed backing to South Africa's elephant cull.
Mar 14, 08: Federal fisheries managers took the first step toward imposing what could be the strictest limits ever on West Coast salmon fishing amid a collapse of the central California chinook salmon fishery.
Mar 14, 08: Protesters gathered at an abandoned military site in the Australian capital to prevent the planned slaughter of 400 kangaroos blamed for ruining the habitat of rare lizards and insects.
Mar 14, 08: A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species and promptly recommended for endangered lists.
Mar 13, 08: Iceland's government is likely to approve the commercial hunting of whales for this summer.
Mar 13, 08: A device used to safely guide warships through mine fields could be used to reduce the number of dolphins and small whales caught in fishing nets. The football-sized "acoustic cat's eyes" reflect sonar signals. Around 80% of the received energy is beamed straight back.
. . They have been designed to mark underwater locations such as channels that have been cleared of explosives. But the developers believe a smaller version could be fitted to fishing nets to reduce the estimated 300,000 creatures caught in nets every year. Devices strung along the net will reflect cetaceans' (whales, dolphins and porpoises) own sonar, alerting them to the presence of a net.
Mar 10, 08: Groups vow to protest wolverine decision. Federal officials said that wolverines do not warrant endangered species protections in the contiguous US, despite lingering concern among government scientists that the rarely seen animal remains imperiled.
Mar 10, 08: Rare pygmy hippos are surviving hidden in Liberia's forests against all the odds, despite two civil wars that have ravaged their habitat, British scientists said.
Mar 10, 08: Three conservation groups sued the Department of the Interior for missing a deadline on a decision to list polar bears as threatened because of the loss of Arctic sea ice. A decision was due Jan. 9.
Mar 7, 08: The Interior Department's inspector general has begun a preliminary investigation into why the department has delayed for nearly two months a decision on listing the polar bear as threatened because of the loss of Arctic sea ice.
Mar 7, 08: A pale-bellied bird species last seen in the 1920s and long thought to be extinct has been rediscovered near Papua New Guinea. The Beck's petrel was photographed last summer.
Mar 7, 08: Rebels who seized control of DR Congo's Gorilla Sector say rangers will be executed if they enter the area.
Mar 7, 08: Commercial fishing continues to be a potential threat to Steller sea lions, according to a federal plan that lists dozens of actions necessary for the animals to recover —-but not increased regulations on fisheries. [oops!]
Mar 4, 08: The bittern, one of Britain's rarest birds, faces a new threat to its population from rising sea levels.
Mar 4, 08: More gray wolves mean more pronghorn antelope in the Yellowstone area, according to researchers who say the region's rebounding wolf population is killing and scaring off coyotes that otherwise prey on pronghorn.
. . The researchers said that during a three-year study, pronghorn fawns were three times more likely to survive in areas dominated by wolves versus those ruled by coyotes. That's because wolves favor larger prey, such as elk or cattle, and generally leave pronghorn alone.
Mar 3, 08: Japan is looking for new supporters of its pro-whaling stance ahead of a major meeting on the future of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In recent years, both camps have sought to bring new member countries into the IWC to bolster their numbers. At the 2006 annual meeting, the pro-whalers achieved superiority for the first time in 20 years with the passing of a resolution asking for the eventual return of commercial hunting.
. . By last year's meeting, enough new anti-whaling countries had joined to give this bloc the upper hand once more. Both blocs continue to lobby potential new allies --hence Japan's decision to host today's seminar.
Mar 2, 08: The Indian government plans to spend more than $13 million establishing a special ranger force to protect the country's endangered tigers, following pressure from international conservationists to save the wild cats.
Feb 27, 08: A coalition of environmental and animal rights groups notified the Department of Interior that they plan to sue to stop the removal of gray wolves in the northern Rockies from the endangered species list.
Feb 26, 08: Some 160 Brazilian troops have been sent to the Amazon to join hundreds of police officers involved in efforts to tackle illegal deforestation. The move follows clashes last week when local people and sawmill workers forced environmental officials out of the town of Tailandia in the state of Para. Officials say they do not want more confrontations but the operation against illegal logging will go on. Deforestation in the Amazon jungle rose sharply in the second half of 2007.
. . With around 160 timber yards in the area providing jobs for 2,000 to 3,000 people, the logging industry is a key employer, but it is believed that more than 70% of wood felled in the area is of illegal origin. The town was established 19 years ago and in that period it is believed that as much 60% of forest in the area has been destroyed.
Feb 25, 08: Shrimp-like krill can thrive in icy waters 3,000 meters deep off Antarctica as well as near the surface, according to a study that shows krill stocks can survive far deeper than previously thought.
. . The British researchers said, however, that the discovery of krill in the depths does not mean that stocks of the crustaceans sometimes called "pink gold" are far bigger than previously expected nor that trawlers can expect bigger quotas. "The discovery completely changes scientists' understanding of the major food source for fish, squid, penguins, seals and whales", it said in a report.
. . Krill, which spawn near the surface, were previously thought to live only in waters down to about 150 meters. Traveling down to 3,000 meters deep means exposure to crushing pressure shifts. "There aren't many organisms that will travel over that depth range. Krill is a lot more flexible physiologically and a lot more flexible behaviorally than we ever imagined."
. . Clarke, who co-authored the paper in the journal Current Biology, speculated that krill travel mainly to the sea floor to feed on algae falling from surface waters at the end of the Antarctic summer. If so, that would mean there was probably not a vast hidden stock of krill permanently in the depths.
. . Krill is used for everything from heart medicines to fish feed. Catches total about 120,000 tons a year, but Krill in the depths would be too costly to catch.
. . The British Antarctic Survey said that the total weight of Antarctic krill is calculated between 50-150 million tons but stocks seem to have dropped sharply since the 1970s, apparently because of a decline in winter sea ice. Krill grow under the ice, partly because algae also grow there and because it offers protection from predators.
Feb 25, 08: The South African government has said it will allow elephants to be culled for the first time in 13 years. The government said a cull was needed to control elephant numbers --thought to have grown from 8,000 to 18,000 since the government banned culls in 1995. The news will anger many animal rights campaigners. They have already threatened to call tourist boycotts and take legal action against the measure, which had been expected.
Feb 23, 08: Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list, following a 13-year restoration effort that helped the animal's population soar, federal officials said.
Feb 21, 08: Grey wolves in the Northern Rockies of the US have been removed from the endangered species list, the US Department of the Interior has said. The move follows efforts over the last 13 years to protect the animals and allow their population to grow. There are now an estimated 1,500.
. . Environmental groups have said they will sue the federal government to keep the animal listed.
Feb 19, 08: The numbers and distribution of Britain's last surviving native wildcat is to be assessed.
Feb 18, 08: Many efforts to curb climate change have paid little attention to conservation or helping the world's poor, a think-tank has warned. A paper by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said bad policy threatened biodiversity and made poor nations more vulnerable. The authors called for projects tackling global problems to work more closely together in the future. The findings coincide with the start of a UN biodiversity meeting in Rome.
. . She warned that "bad polices" could accelerate biodiversity loss and increase the vulnerability of the world's poorest communities.
Feb 18, 08: Over-fishing and demand for shark fins are pushing the scalloped hammerhead towards the brink of extinction, say experts.
Feb 16, 08: Wildlife rangers in Bangladesh said they have stopped tracking Royal Bengal tigers due to the mystery death of two of the critically endangered big cats who were fitted with radio transmitters. The first tiger was found dead in 2006, while the second is missing but reported to have "become frail after the fitting of a radio collar."
. . Little is known about the habits of an estimated 668 Royal Bengal tigers living in the Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and a United Nations heritage site that stretches along India's eastern coast to Bangladesh. Experts have estimated that only 5,000 to 6,000 Royal Bengal tigers are left in the world, down from about 100,000 in 1900.
Feb 15, 08: A jack rabbit found throughout much of the West has disappeared from the Yellowstone area, although the reason why remains a mystery, a new study concludes.
Feb 14, 08: Eighty-four spoon-billed sandpipers have been discovered in a coastal stretch of Myanmar, offering hope for saving the endangered birds, a conservation group said.
Feb 13, 08: Conservationists welcomed an Indian government plan to create eight new reserves to protect the country's dwindling tiger population, and called for more action to prevent illegal trading in tiger parts.
Feb 10, 08: The brown pelican, once on the brink of extinction, has become so abundant that it should be removed from the list of endangered species, U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said.
Feb 8, 08: A conservation group filed to protect Pacific walruses because of the threat to their northern habitat by global warming.
Feb 8, 08: A leatherback turtle has been tracked swimming from the coast of the Papua province in Indonesia to Oregon, researchers said, in what may be the longest trip for marine vertebrae between breeding and feeding sites.
Feb 5, 08: A US judge reimposed curbs on sonar which aim to protect whales, overturning a waiver by President Bush.
Feb 2, 08: From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests. The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists —-and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.
. . Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate. Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.
Feb 2, 08: Albatross looking for a free meal on the high seas often pay the price of being killed or injured going after baited hooks. Now, fishing fleets around the world have agreed to use measures to prevent hooking albatross and other seabirds whose numbers are declining.
. . The measures —-using streamer lines to drive birds away from boats' sterns as miles of baited hooks are being set as well as dying bait blue to conceal it in dark water-— will go into effect this year in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Feb 1, 08: The best available science indicates that the current level of sage grouse protection implemented in oil and gas fields is not enough to maintain the bird's population, according to wildlife biologists in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota and Utah.
. . Based on that research, the state biologists compiled recommendations on such things as well-pad densities, the pace of development and when development should occur. It is up to policymakers to decide whether to implement the recommendations.
. . "What the (Bureau of Land Management) has been applying, in terms of common stipulations to protect sage grouse, are leading to their local extinction", Deeble said. He said that if federal land managers do not impose more stringent standards on the industry, energy development could push the bird into a listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Jan 31, 08: The first consignment of seeds bound for the "doomsday vault" on Svalbard has arrived in Norway. Twenty-one boxes containing 7,000 seed samples from 36 African nations were sent by the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.
. . Built deep inside a mountain, the structure will eventually house a vast collection of seeds; safeguarding world crops against possible future disasters including nuclear wars and dangerous climate change. The temperature inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will drop to -18C (0F) in order to preserve the seeds.
. . The Norwegian government is paying the $9m (£4.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house 4.5 million seed samples. "At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 1,000 years."
Jan 30, 08: Bats are dying off by the thousands as they hibernate in caves and mines around New York and Vermont, sending researchers scrambling to find the cause of mysterious condition dubbed "white nose syndrome."
. . The ailment —-named for the white circle of fungus found around the noses of affected bats-— was first noticed last January in four caves west of Albany. It has now spread to eight hibernation sites in the state and another in Vermont. Up to 11,000 bats were found dead last winter and many more are showing signs illness this winter. One hard-hit cave went from more than 15,000 bats two years ago to 1,500 now.
. . The white fungus ring around bats' noses is a symptom, but not necessarily the cause. For some unknown reason, the bats deplete their fat reserves and die months before they would normally emerge from hibernation.
Jan 30, 08: The number of chinook salmon returning to California's Central Valley has reached a near-record low, pointing to an "unprecedented collapse" that could lead to severe restrictions on West Coast salmon fishing this year.
Jan 22, 08: Even coral reefs thought to be pristine are facing challenges, researchers said, launching the International Year of the Reef. The year of the reef is a "campaign to highlight the importance of coral reef ecosystems."
Jan 22, 08: Blind salamanders, legless amphibians with tentacles on their heads and ghost frogs whose favorite haunt is a human burial ground are just a few of the world's weirdest and most endangered creatures.
. . The Zoological Society of London announced this week these are among the 10 most unusual and threatened amphibian species, as part of the EDGE Amphibians conservation and fundraising initiative. Amphibians that made the list are deemed by the society to be the most evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered, aka EDGE species. They have few close relatives in the tree of life and are genetically unique, along with being on the verge of extinction.
. . he Chinese giant salamander, with a nose-to-rump length of up to nearly 1.8 meters, tops the list as the highest conservation priority.
Jan 22, 08: Potentially cancer-causing chemicals used as flame retardants have been found in the bodies of Tasmanian devils, suggesting a possible role in a disease that threatens to wipe them out, a report said. Scientists have for years been unable to explain why the animals --the world's largest marsupial carnivore-- have been afflicted with the disease, which causes facial tumors.
. . A study in which fat was taken from 16 of the animals, including some with the disease, found high levels of retardant chemicals commonly used in computers and foam in bedding and furniture. Activists seeking a ban on the toxins said the finding was significant as it showed "reasonably high" levels of a chemical that industry had argued was safe.
. . The National Measurement Institute found high levels of hexabromobiphenyl ether, known as BB153, and "reasonably high" levels of decabromobiphenyl ether, known as BDE209, the newspaper said. Lloyd-Smith said high levels of the chemicals can be found in dust in offices and at home, which can move thousands of km on the wind and fall to the earth when they hit a colder climate.
Jan 22, 08: Conservation groups say they have found an unusual threat to East Africa's wildlife --hunting by hungry refugees. A report from the wildlife trade monitoring body Traffic says wild meat is covertly traded, cooked and consumed in Tanzanian refugee camps. Traffic suspects species affected may include chimpanzee, buffalo and zebra.
. . Tanzania hosts more refugees than any other African nation, a legacy of conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
. . The UN says there are more than half a million refugees in the country, mainly living in camps near the western border. The border is also home to important wildlife refuges such as Gombe National Park, which achieved international fame as the site of Jane Goodall's pioneering studies of chimp behaviour.
. . In 1994, when intense ethnic fighting in Rwanda drove an estimated 600,000 refugees into the area of Tanzania surrounding Burigi National Park, wildlife in the park declined sharply. Buffalo numbers fell from about 2,670 to just 44. Roan antelope declined from 466 to 15 and zebra from 6,552 to 606, while the estimated population of 324 Lichtenstein's Hartebeest, a type of antelope, vanished completely. And when camps have closed, numbers have often recovered.
Jan 22, 08: Hundreds of medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, threatening the discovery of future cures for disease, experts warn.
Jan 22, 08: Conservationists and scientists scrambled to determine what has killed at least 50 critically endangered crocodile-like reptiles in recent weeks in a river sanctuary in central India.
Jan 22, 08: A giant Chinese salamander that predates Tyrannosaurus rex, and the world's smallest frog are among a group of extremely rare amphibians identified by scientists as being in need of urgent help to survive.
Jan 21, 08: Endangered heathland species in England could become extinct because of the poor condition of their habitat, conservationists have warned. Natural England says wildlife, such as the stone curlew, nightjar and sand lizard, could disappear if lowland heathland is not protected. It found all of the 104 sites surveyed were in poor condition, even those which were in conservation schemes.
Jan 18, 08: The Interior Department has abandoned attempts to craft a recovery plan for the endangered jaguar because too few of the rare cats have been spotted along the Southwest region of New Mexico and Arizona to warrant such action. [Say What?!]
Jan 17, 08: A federal agency recommended killing about 30 sea lions a year at a Columbia River dam where the marine animals feast on salmon migrating upriver to spawn. By many estimates, the sea lions devour about 4% of spring runs.
Jan 16, 08: At least 20 endangered sea turtles have washed up dead along the southern Bangladesh coast over the last week, an official said.
Jan 16, 08: President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast —-a practice critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.
Jan 15, 08: An Australian judge granted an activist group's request to ban a Japanese company from whaling in an Australian-declared animal sanctuary off Antarctica. The ruling puts pressure on the Australian government to demand that Japan end its current whale hunt in the region, some of which takes place in the sanctuary. However, Japan does not recognize Australia's declaration of the whale sanctuary, and has said previously it would ignore such an Australian court injunction if it was granted.
Jan 15, 08: Japanese detain whaling activists. Two activists who boarded a Japanese whaling ship to protest are taken into custody, officials confirm.
Jan 15, 08: Numbers of one of the UK's rarest breeding ducks have almost halved in the past decade, a survey has revealed. The breeding population of the common scoter is now found only in remote freshwater lochs in northern Scotland. There are just 52 pairs left in the country, according to research. One possibility is that climate change could be pushing the birds, which have disappeared entirely from Loch Lomond and Northern Ireland, further north.
Jan 14, 08: Greenpeace says it has chased off a factory ship from a Japanese whaling mission near Antarctica's coast.
Jan 14, 08: Colorado's fast-spreading infestation of bark beetles has killed 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pines and could largely wipe out the state's lodgepole forests in three to five years, state and federal forestry officials said. The infestation was first detected in 1996 and grew by half-million acres last year. "This is an unprecedented event."
. . While spruce and aspen trees are also affected by the infestation, it's the tall, slender lodgepoles that have been hardest hit. The infestation can leave entire mountainsides red with dead and dying trees. The devastation is apparent along some stretches of mountain highways.
. . Forest officials attributed the spread of the beetle to warm winters and drought. Only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles. "Unfortunately, it hasn't been cold enough long enough."
Jan 11, 08: At least 19 bald eagles died today after gorging themselves on a truck full of fish waste outside a processing plant.
Jan 11, 08: Squat, homely, dwarfed by stately oaks and poplars, and unnoticed by the tourists passing in horse-drawn carriages, it's a tree that only birds and nut-hungry squirrels could love. But the 100-year-old European beech on Central Park's Cherry Hill was the center of attention Thursday, chosen by city officials as the first of 25 "historical" trees to be cloned as part of a plan to add a million new trees to public spaces over the next decade.
. . They snipped off 6- to 12-inch sections of new growth, which will be sent to a scientific tree nursery in eastern Oregon. The target trees, five in each of New York's five boroughs, include nine different species. Among them is what may be the city's oldest tree, the St. Nicholas elm in upper Manhattan, which George Washington is said to have walked under 230 years ago.
Jan 8, 08: The federal government said it will consider endangered species protection for the pygmy rabbit, which is struggling to survive in eight western states.
Jan 9, 08: At least 50 rare jackals were poisoned to death in northern India by farmers angry over alleged attacks on children and damage to crops blamed on the animals, a forest official said.
Jan 9, 08: Three conservation groups notified the federal government today they intend to sue to get polar bears listed as a threatened species due to global warming.
Jan 7, 08: Citing the complexity of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would not meet a deadline for a recommendation on listing polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming.
Jan 3, 08: A federal judge ordered the Navy today to adopt measures that would lessen the impact of sonar on whales and other marine life during exercises near Southern California. The preliminary injunction requires the Navy to create a 12-nautical-mile no-sonar zone along the coast and have trained lookouts watch for marine mammals before and during exercises. Sonar should be shut down when mammals are spotted within 2,000 meters.
. . Critics contend sonar has harmful effects on whales, possibly by damaging their hearing, and other marine mammals worldwide. The council's lawsuit alleges the Navy's sonar causes whales and other mammals to beach themselves.
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