nature conservation

Wait, there's a dam in the Grand Canyon? Why don't we just leave these rivers alone!!!! US rescue crews have airlifted some 170 people to safety from a remote village in the Grand Canyon after a dam burst following days of heavy rain. Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said water from the Redlands Dam had caused flooding in a side canyon containing Supai village. The area, accessible only by foot, on horseback or by air, is home to 400 members of the Havasupai tribe. Most people have been accounted for but searches will resume later on Monday. Well, at least the dam is…
Unspoilt Amazonian rainforests covering an area almost as large as Texas have been provisionally earmarked for oil and gas exploration. A new report reveals that the area has been divided into 180 "blocks" designated for exploration by governments of countries that own the land on the western fringe of the Amazon. Their intention is to lease the blocks to oil and gas companies for exploration and extraction, taking a cut of any revenues as a royalty. About 35 oil companies are vying for the contracts. More information here.
There is a constant battle between conservatives (aka Republicans, or stoopid people) and liberals (aka Democrats, or smart people) as to how to regulate industry. Republicans say "don't regulate industry at all." Why? because they are paid by industry to say this. If you think there is anything else going on here you are not even a tiny bit as smart as you think you are and should go back to school. Each Republican congress tries to remove regulation, and each administration tries to weaken the existing regulation. Currently, the Bush Administration is planning to remove all the…
I noted earlier that hundreds of baby penguins are being washed, dead, onto beaches thousands of miles away from their native lands. Various causes have been suggested, including the idea that the penguins are swimming into unfamiliar and penguin-hostile waters in search of fish, diminished in supply owing to overfishing. Well, this phenomenon has continued, and sifted northwards. While penguins commonly wash up as far north as Rio de Janeiro state in July and August - hundreds have done so this year. Bahia is roughly 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) northeast of Rio. P. Dee Boersma, a…
Wild game is good. More wild game and fewer cattle, in some habitats, would better. But when wild game is extracted en masse from a wild area (usually a rain forest, usually in Africa) and shipped to a city, or an enclave of logger's camps, or overseas to nostalgic African populations in Europe, it is no longer called wild game, or venison, or just food or meat. It is called bushmeat, and bushmeat (in modern parlance) is bad. Havalook: Although illegal wildlife poaching is conducted worldwide, the impact in Africa has been devastating. Unsustainable commercial hunting for bushmeat will…
A dead Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans drowned on a longline. Photo by Graham Robertson/Australian Antarctic Division From Birdlife International: BirdLife International presented the European Parliament with alarming data about the extent of seabird bycatch globally and in Europe yesterday. At the same time, BirdLife welcomed the long awaited first steps of the European Commission to tackle the problem by developing a Community Plan of Action on seabirds with the intention of completing it next year. "With 300,000 seabirds, including about 100,000 albatrosses, dying annually as…
The Golden-winged Grosbeak - Socotra Grosbeak Rhynchostruthus socotranus shown in image - has been chosen as Yemen's national bird. Photo by Richard Porter The Golden-winged Grosbeak has been declared, by the Yemen Council of Ministers, to be the Yemen National Bird. This bird is endemic to the Saudi peninsula. The national mammal for Yemen is the Leopard, and the Dragon Blood tree is the national tree. Oh, and the Aloe is the national plant. Environment Minister His Excellency Abdul Rahman Al-Eryani issued a statement to the Yemen cabinet and the press saying: "I am proud we have…
NASA's JPL has a new web site which focuses on surface conditions on one specific planet: The Earth. It has a Sea Level Viewer which is basically a very fancy menu for a number of multi-media presentations, and a list of current or proposed missions. I am not overly impressed with this, but it may be a good resource for the kiddies. Much more interesting, and in fact, quite impressive, is the "Climate Time Machine" ... This shows ice melting, sea level change, CO2 emissions, and average global temperature. The CO2 emissions is fascinating, because CO2 emissions are an assay of…
Utah announces 'major dinosaur fossil discovery' from PhysOrg.com (AP) -- A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago. [...] Finally, the Congo totally screws up, as expected, and the very last of the only remaining northern White Rhinos are probably dead. There is little reason for optimism... Group: Northern white rhinos near extinction from PhysOrg.com (AP) -- The northern white rhino of central Africa is on the verge of being…
On Sale in Madagascar: Carbon This time, the forest product for sale is 100 percent sustainable and guaranteed to return on the investment. The product is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that healthy forests can store in vast reserves and prevent from being released into the atmosphere. Put simply, protecting an intact forest keeps its store of carbon from heating the planet. In a landmark agreement, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the government of Madagascar announced the sale of more than nine million tons of carbon offsets to help safeguard this African nation's wildlife-…
By African standards, Kenya's Amboseli itself is small, but it is part of two or more large scale systems that extend far beyond its boundaries. One is the Serengeti Ecosystem, which extends far to the south in Tanzania. The other is the Nilotic (mainly Maasai) Pastoralist cattle keeping culture. It is being reported that lions in Amboseli are in crisis because of conflict between these two systems. From a National Geographic Society press release: Lion populations in and around Kenya's Amboseli National Park have dropped so low due to spearing and poisoning by local Maasai that…
Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory A new study led by NASA links anthropogenic climate change to a wide range of effects. The study involved scientists from about a dozen institutions and agencies, and looked at biological impacts arising from global temperature increase since the 1970s. The article is published in Nature. According to lead author Cynthia Rosenweig, "This is the first study to link global temperature data sets…
In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.
Audubon California has announced that it has reached an agreement with a farmer to safeguard a single colony of about 80,000 Tricoloured Blackbirds Agelaius tricolor - nearly a third of the world's population of this Endangered species. The estimated global population of Tricoloured Blackbirds is 250,000 to 300,000 birds, with at least 95% of these occurring in California. Tricoloured Blackbirds have declined dramatically in the past century as native wetland habitat has been lost and the species has consequently been classified as Endangered. Tricoloured Blackbirds form just a few large…
I woke up to an icky world this morning. After painfully clearing my lungs and scarfing down some medication, I scanned the TV channels for news. and the blogosphere for inspiration. The TV was giving me mainly god, while the blogosphere was giving me measles, pandemics, murdered sea lions, and this poor eagle with its beak snapped off. TV land was still in it's pre-day stage (which runs an hour later here in the Midwest). Therefore, fully half or more of the stations were busy peddling Christianity. I learned that it was easier to accept faith and know that God has a plan than to…
It is always nice when an extinct animal shows up and announces that rumors of its extinction were exaggerated. In this case, we have the dwarf cloud rat just discovered by an international research team. Lawrence Heaney, team leader and curator at the Chicago-based Field Museum of Natural History, said the rare dwarf cloud rat was last seen by British scientists some 112 years ago. He said the rat was dead when the team found it in a canopy of a large tree whose branches were covered by thick moss, orchids and ferns at a national park in Mount Pulag in northern Luzon, the Philippine Daily…
Pterodroma magentae is the Magenta Petral (also known as the Chatham Island Taiko). There are between 8 and 15 breeding pairs in the New Zealand home range of this species. Indeed, this bird was thought extinct for quite some time before it was rediscovered in 1978. A recent study indicates something funny is going on with sex ratio and mating strategies in this bird, which may, although I'm not quite sure how, lead to improved conservation efforts. From a BirdLife press release: A study into one of the world's rarest seabirds provides knowledge that could help avoid extinction.…
The world's rarest great ape has found a safe haven in the mountains of the west central African nation of Cameroon. With guidance from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Cameroon's prime minister, Ephraim Inoni, has created the world's first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla. Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary spans only 19.5 square kilometers but contains an important segment of the Cross River gorilla population. The species' range consists of 11 scattered sites in Cameroon and Nigeria. Of the estimated 300 or fewer Cross River gorillas that remain, approximately 20 live in…