nature conservation
gregladen | March 23, 2009Blogfish has an interesting writeup on what they call "New England's War on Science" ( might think of it as "Coastal New England's War on Science")
Fishing interests in New England have convinced politicians to launch a new war on science and common sense. They want to keep catching fish faster than they can reproduce.
New England's war on science might be dismissed as simple regional protectionism if it didn't include Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Snowe, Collins, Reed, Whitehouse and Shaheen. That's not just a few fishermen throwing elbows. Or is it?
Which is, of course, a mix of Democratic and…
gregladen | March 22, 2009The Reef Tank is an enterprise that supports and supplies salt water aquarists and supports the use of captive raised organisms and knowledge about ecosystems and conservation issues. From their site:
The Reef Tank is a unique bulletin board with a unique philosophy. Our mission is to provide a supportive, flame-free environment for beginning and experienced aquarists to share ideas, ask questions, and learn about the marine and reef keeping hobby. We also aim to educate ourselves and others about responsible animal husbandry, promoting captive-raised livestock and aquacultured corals when…
gregladen | March 21, 2009You've heard about the dismal report of the state of birds in the US. Here is a detailed account of the USFW et al report.
And here are a few different items regarding migratory birds and what you can do about them.
Citizen Science Is for the Birds
Open Data: Help Migratory Bird Observations Fly into the Digital Age
Help Science: Build Your Own Bird Tracker, Cheap
New project aims to digitise hand-written migration records...
gregladen | March 16, 2009A California Condor was apparently ill (with suspected lead poisoning) so it was brought in for treatment. It was then discovered that it had been shot some time earlier .
Unable to eat on its own, the condor was under intensive care at the Los Angeles Zoo and its prognosis was guarded, said Susie Kasielke, curator of birds.
X-rays taken at the zoo turned up shotgun pellets embedded in its flesh, she said. Those wounds had healed.
It could not be determined if the pellets were lead or steel, but the poisoning was most likely caused by the bird ingesting spent lead ammunition in carcasses of…
gregladen | February 2, 2009"Amazon Deforestation: Earth's Heart and Lungs Dismembered"
Brazil has historically had the distinction of serving as the world's leader of deforestation. ... during the last three decades, an annual average of 6,500 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon -- an area that is greater than the size of Connecticut -- has been deforested.
Satellite data indicates that the rate of Amazonian deforestation is accelerating; in some areas, the rate increased by 50 percent since last year. And with over 20 million people and 70 million cattle now inhabiting the Amazon, about a 600 percent increase in…
gregladen | January 2, 2009Scientists monitoring at Mount Moreland - South Africa's largest Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica roost - have captured their first overseas ringed bird from a festively snowy location. The young Barn Swallow had flown all the way from Finland - a total of 11,000 km! "This is an amazing Christmas gift", said Hilary Vickers of the Lake Victoria Conservancy - sponsors of the Mount Moreland ringing programme.
"We were carefully fitting the swallows with rings so we can monitor their movements when we spotted a bird already carrying one", said Mount Moreland bird-ringer Andrew Pickles. "A magnifying…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Predatory rodents are eating the chicks of the Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena to the extent that they have had the worst breeding season recorded so far.
The mice are also affecting Gough Island's other Critically Endangered endemic species, Gough Bunting Rowettia goughensis. A recent survey of the bunting's population revealed that the population has halved within the last two decades. Now there are only an estimated 400-500 pairs left.
"We've known for a long time that the mice were killing albatross chicks in huge numbers. However, we now know that the…
gregladen | December 16, 2008It is too bad that we let Industry poison the part of our food supply that we really need to eat more of...
FDA reconsiders consumer advice on fish from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- For years, the federal government has recommended that pregnant women and young children limit their consumption of fish to avoid exposure to potentially harmful amounts of mercury.
[...]
gregladen | December 5, 2008The RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) and other partners have launched a last push to find one of the world's rarest birds.
They have issued a call to search for and find any remaining populations of Slender-billed Curlew Numenius tenuirostris. This announcement was made at the Ninth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species (UNEP-CMS COP 9), in Rome, Italy, 1-5 December.
Classified as Critically Endangered, Slender-billed Curlew is the rarest species found in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, with no confirmed records since 1999
More here.
gregladen | November 20, 2008In an act of utter cynicism, continuing with the right wing mandate that has propped up the Bush Regime for the last eight years, the Winged Monkeys of the Bush Inferior Department of the Interior plans to eliminate restrictions on federal agencies carrying out projects that negatively impact endangered species.
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 a regulation the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them…
gregladen | November 17, 2008Or, so says Drew Sandlin, in a letter to Oklahoma Christian University's student newspaper, ironically named Talon.
When I was a kid, I had an uncle who was a Franciscan Priest. I come from a long line of priests and nuns, mostly Franciscan. That's why I'm good with animals. Anyway, I liked this Uncle because he lived in foreign lands, fished, was a ham (I was a budding ham myself) and he was kind of exotic, being a priest and all.
Someday, I thought, I'd be a priest too. But I also had other interests, and some times there was a conflict....
One day I made mention of the fact that we…
gregladen | November 13, 2008In July 2007, armed men entered the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park and killed five critically endangered mountain gorillas at point-blank range, leaving the bodies where they fell.
Since September 2007, rebel forces have controlled the area, threatening to kill any conservationists or gorilla rangers who attempted to enter the area.
Recently, the rangers and their families had to flee from their homes and live in makeshift camps as the latest outbreak of violence engulfed the eastern part of the country. ...
Read the rest here.
gregladen | November 10, 2008 Cute baby lion kittens. When they grow up, they will want to eat you. I'll never forget the first wild lion I ever saw. It was a pitch black night, on the savanna in the Western Rift Valley. I had climbed on top of the hood of the Land Rover, engine off, but headlights on. My plan was to search the horizon for lights indicating the presence of the research camp I was trying to find. Once I was on the hood, I was about to tell my colleague, still in the vehicle, to cut the headlights so I could see better. That's when she walked into view.
She was a fully adult lioness. Eventually,…
gregladen | October 6, 2008But is it fair? Normally, I enjoy seeing Starbucks get slammed by pretty much anybody, for the usual reasons. But this time I'm wondering if we have a case of environmentalists being narrow minded, near sighted, and dumb.
A group identified by the BBC as an "environmental group" called "Water UK" claims that Sarbucks is wasting water by running the cold water tap in each establishment continuously. Starbucks claims that this tap is running a particular cleaning system through which water must flow continuously, and that the tap is not at very high pressure. No one has explicitly stated…
gregladen | October 6, 2008At least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.
The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species are falling, with Asian primates particularly at risk.
The biggest threat to mammals is loss of habitat, including deforestation.
Story at the BBC
gregladen | September 24, 2008I have received this message from the InterTubes:
I am contacting you on behalf of the Blog Monkey Initiative. The Blog Monkey Initiative is an attempt to get to get a monkey species named after the blogosphere and at the same time help renowned biologist and ... [so called] "Hero of the Planet" Marc van Roosmalen by raising money so he can get back to his important work.
You can find out more details here:
Proudly Presenting the Blog Monkey
and
Interview with Marc van Roosmalen
I'm not going to advocate for or against this project for the simple reason that I feel like I know something…
gregladen | August 18, 2008The future for a large primate in a tiny patch of African forest looks bleak. Just three years after it was discovered, Tanzania's kipunji monkey is threatened with extinction ... researchers conducted more than 2,800 hours of fieldwork in the Southern Highlands and Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania, where the kipunji was discovered. The team tallied just 1,117 individuals, and found that the monkey's range is restricted to 6.82 square miles of forest in two isolated regions.
The authors also discovered that illegal logging and land conversion has severely degraded much of the monkey's…
gregladen | August 18, 2008The Shy Albatross
A study of trawl fishing in South Africa suggests that around 18,000 seabirds may be killed annually in this fishery, highlighting trawl fisheries as a major threat to seabirds, especially several species of albatross already facing a risk of extinction.
Published in the journal Animal Conservation, the study was based on scientists monitoring catches on 14 different vessels, operating in the Benguela Current, off South Africa; one of the main hotspots for seabirds in the Southern Hemisphere. The vessels were trawling for hake, and the majority of bird deaths were a result…