Dolphins spotted off Tekukor
on the wonderful creation blog
Red-winged Starling spotted in Jurong
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Peregrine Falcon in Singapore’s heartland
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Blue and orange
on the annotated budak blog
Marine spider at Cyrene reef
walks on water, video clip on the sgbeachbum blog
Mapping the Location of Recycling Bins in Singapore
on the Zero Waste Singapore blog
Antara 3 Feb 09;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday chaired a meeting at his office to discuss development of Nipah Island on the border with Singapore, Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said.
Speaking to the press before attending the meeting, Sudarsono said besides Nipah island`s development, the president and a number of cabinet ministers would also discuss matters related to the country`s outermost borders.
Present at the meeting were among others Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS, Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto, Transportation Minister Jusman Syafii Djamal, Home Affairs Minister Mardiyanto, acting Coordinating Minister for Economy Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu, and National Police Chief Gen Bambang Hendarso Danuri.
The government had since 2004 drawn up a master plan on Nipah island`s development for security and economic purposes.
The government was now planning to build a number of public facilities on Nipah Island, including a pier , plaza and monument, an integrated security post, mangrove and marine biota observation center, and a fishermen`s shelter.
The facilities would be constructed in accordance with the needs of visitors to the island which is located on the edge of a sea lane through which 50,000 merchant ships pass every year. (*)
Neighbours' first pact since 1973 paves way for talks on border's eastern segment
Salim Osman, Straits Times 4 Feb 09;
JAKARTA: - Indonesia and Singapore have agreed on the western segment of their maritime border after nearly four years of negotiations, officials here said.
The new borderline was drawn between Indonesia's Pulau Nipah and Singapore's Sultan Shoal, and is the first agreed upon since the two countries last signed a border pact in 1973.
Disclosing this, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that Indonesia can now further explore economic development in territories including the Batam, Bintan and Karimun islands.
'With a clearer boundary, there would be economic expansion in Indonesia, including forging cooperation with Singapore and Malaysia,' he said after a Cabinet meeting on Monday.
Yesterday, buoyed by the agreement, Dr Yudhoyono used another Cabinet meeting to call for a blueprint to develop Pulau Nipah, including setting up a military post to be manned by the Indonesian navy on the island. 'It is one of the outer islands with strategic value for our country,' presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng told reporters after yesterday's Cabinet meeting.
Pulau Nipah is located between the Indonesian islands of Batam and Karimun Besar.
In February 2004, then Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri placed a marker on Pulau Nipah to reinforce Indonesia's claim of sovereignty.
The move was made amid nationalist sentiment in the run-up to the legislative elections that year and followed reclamation works undertaken by Singapore.
Singapore has maintained that the reclamation works were carried out entirely within its territorial waters, and that they did not alter its maritime boundaries with Indonesia.
An Indonesian Foreign Ministry official involved in the border talks, Mr Arif Havas Oegroseno, told The Straits Times agreement was reached in December, after a series of discussions that started in February 2005.
'We achieved a breakthrough in the negotiation in Bali and the pact was finalised in Singapore,' said the director for treaties on political security and territorial affairs. He said Singapore agreed not to use its southern reclaimed shoreline as the basis to determine the border.
The line that forms the western segment of the boundary between both countries was finally drawn halfway between Pulau Nipah and Sultan Shoal.
Mr Arif noted that the two countries had agreed on the central segment of their territorial sea boundary in the Strait of Singapore in 1973.
'Now we are ready to negotiate the eastern segment of our maritime boundary,' he said.
Discussions on this segment could not previously get under way because of Singapore's dispute with Malaysia over Pedra Branca.
Last year, the International Court of Justice granted Singapore sovereignty over Pedra Branca and awarded Malaysia the Middle Rocks outcrop.
The court did not make a definitive ruling on South Ledge, a rock formation in the vicinity visible only at low tide.
Aeroponics method ranked among top 3 green solutions in Discovery Channel series
Jalelah Abu Baker, Straits Times 4 Feb 09;
HE HAS perfected the art of growing temperate vegetables in sunny Singapore.
Professor Lee Sing Kong's urban farming technique of growing top-grade produce in air - sans pesticide and fertilisers - is among 20 technologies worldwide, including Singapore's Semakau Landfill, that have been singled out as potential green solutions for the future.
Prof Lee's technique, called aeroponics, was ranked among the top three solutions chosen in the Discovery Channel's Ecopolis series, which explores environmentally-friendly ways to sustain an overcrowded, polluted world in 2050.
Aeroponics, developed 12 years ago, involves growing crops by suspending their roots in troughs and spraying them with a nutrient mist.
It has been touted as a possible urban farming solution, given how easy it is to set up and its compact land use.
One farm in Singapore has already been successful with it, and currently sells vegetables such as lettuce and basil commercially.
Prof Lee said he was proud to have been highlighted in the series.
'It is encouragement to continue pursuing new frontiers, even though the ideas may sound bizarre,' said the 57-year-old, who now gives technical advice to Aero-Green Technology, an aeroponics farm at Lim Chu Kang Agrotechnology Park.
The son of rubber and oil palm plantation farmers, Prof Lee added that his work had been driven by the dream of helping to alleviate poverty and hunger.
'Many farmers do not have the knowledge to optimise food production,' he said.
'I have worked with people who are still very primitive in agricultural practices. It is hard to teach them, but you need to persevere.'
The Semakau Landfill, which is managed by the National Environment Agency (NEA), was lauded as an example of eco-friendly urban waste management.
It features a clean and efficient way of getting rid of the toxic ash that is a by-product of incineration. The ash is stored in plastic-lined, watertight storage spaces on Semakau Island, which lies about 8km south of Singapore.
When these spaces are full, they are covered up with a layer of earth, and eventually become grassland.
As a result of this, the 350ha island has healthy mangrove swamps, forests and coral beds despite being a landfill.
The other top two solutions hailed by the Ecopolis series were nano solar technology and a form of transport called the e-Jeepney, which is powered by electricity.
Jeepneys are the most popular form of transport in Manila, and the e-version was cited for cutting down on air pollution in the city.
All the other innovations featured in the Ecopolis series were in the areas of food and water, transport, energy and buildings, and came from countries such as the United States and Australia.
Man hands over 7 of 10 reptiles but faces police probe as he resembles thief caught on CCTV
Nicholas Yong, Straits Times 4 Feb 09;
THE owners of 10 stolen exotic tortoises worth almost $75,000 have got seven of them back - but the man who returned them is now assisting the police with their investigations.
According to the owners of the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum at the Chinese Garden in Jurong, he resembles one of the two thieves caught on closed-circuit television (CCTV) making off with the reptiles.
The Indian Star Tortoises and highly endangered Radiated Tortoises were stolen on Saturday night.
On Monday morning, museum owner Danny Tan, 70, received a call by a man who offered to return the tortoises for a 'good lunch'.
The man in his 30s arrived at the museum at about 11.15am. He carried a haversack filled with five Indian Star Tortoises and two Radiated Tortoises, worth a total of $50,000.
He claimed to have bought them last Saturday night from a man at Lakeside MRT station for under $2,000.
The man added that he realised who the reptiles belonged to when he read a Straits Times article about the theft on Monday.
The story smelt fishy to Mr Tan, who also noticed that the man was of the same build and demeanour as one of the two thieves caught on camera.
His suspicions were further aroused when the man asked to see the CCTV footage from that night. So Mr Tan kept him talking while his wife signalled an employee to call the police. He was later asked to go with the policemen.
Police confirmed that seven of the tortoises had been returned. A man is currently assisting police with their investigations, which are ongoing.
It is the third time in two years that the museum has been burgled. The most recent was in June last year, when 18 tortoises worth more than $80,000 were stolen.
They were eventually recovered, thanks to the efforts of the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA). AVA officers traced the culprit to his home, where he was found with the stolen reptiles.
Mr Tan estimates that he has had 29 tortoises stolen over the years, though he has recovered most of them.
His collection of almost 3,500 tortoises and turtles is the largest in the world, making it to the Guinness World Records. He first began amassing them more than four decades ago.
But enough is enough, he said. He is now thinking of selling the museum.
'Each theft causes us a lot of pain and stress. If we can find someone who can take over, we will let go of the collection,' he said. 
Radiated Tortoise
# Native to southern Madagascar, and also found on the islands of Reunion and Mauritius
# Can grow up to 41cm long and weigh up to 16kg
# The oldest tortoise on record is a radiated tortoise, attaining an age of 188
# Classified by Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) as a highly endangered species which faces extinction if trade in it is not severely restricted
# Commercial trade in these species is generally prohibited
Indian Star Tortoise
# Found in dry areas and scrub forest in India and Sri Lanka
# Grows up to 30cm long
# Classified by AVA as a species which may become endangered if trade in it is not regulated
# Trade is allowed by the AVA if specimens have proper permits
A total of three Radiated Tortoises and seven Indian Star Tortoises were taken from the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum. One radiated tortoise and two Indian Star tortoises are still missing.
Theft of 10 exotic tortoises: Three men in dock
Straits Times 5 Feb 09;
THREE men were charged in court yesterday in connection with the theft of 10 exotic tortoises worth almost $75,000.
Lim Kah Kheng, 25, Arun Kumar Manivanan, 17, and Dave Tan Jui Seng, 19, were each charged with one count of housebreaking by night with the intention of committing theft.
On Jan 31, at about 9.50pm, the trio, together with three other accomplices, allegedly climbed over a side wall of the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum at the Chinese Garden in Jurong and gained entry into the premises.
They are believed to have made off with three highly endangered Radiated Tortoises valued at $66,000, and seven Indian Star Tortoises valued at $8,400.
On Monday, one of them allegedly tried to make a deal with the owners to return some of the tortoises in exchange for what he termed 'a good lunch', but was subsequently arrested by police.
The three men will appear in court next Wednesday. They are currently being remanded.
If found guilty, they could each be jailed for between two and 14 years.
Their accomplices are still being sought by the authorities.
Seven of the tortoises have since been recovered by the owners of the museum. One Radiated Tortoise and two Indian Star Tortoises are still missing.
It was the third burglary at the museum in two years.
Its collection of almost 3,500 turtles and tortoises is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest.
NICHOLAS YONG
Kristin Bragadottir, PlanetArk 4 Feb 09;
REYKJAVIK - Iceland's new government said on Tuesday it might revoke a five-year extension to whaling of fin and minke whales passed just last week by its predecessor.
Iceland ended a 20-year ban on commercial whaling in August 2006, issuing quotas that ran through August 2007. After a temporary halt, the country resumed whaling in May last year, despite protests by environmentalists.
As one of its last acts before it resigned over an economic crisis, the center-right administration of Prime Minister Geir Haarde announced last week Iceland would allow whaling of fin and minke whales for another five years.
Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson, who is also fisheries minister, told a news conference on Tuesday: "We agreed in a government meeting this morning to send a formal warning out to those with vested interests in whaling, saying that the recent decision of the ex-minister of fisheries about increasing the whaling quota for the next five years is now being reconsidered."
"We intend to make a policy statement about this issue in a few days."
Many countries and environmental groups oppose whaling, saying stocks are low after decades of over-hunting that only ended with the 1986 moratorium by the International Whaling Commission.
Icelandic supporters of whaling have said they seek to cultivate tradition in a responsible way while conservationists have argued that the whale-watching industry is equally, if not more, lucrative than hunting the mammals.
An internet poll published on the website of the Morgunbladid daily on Tuesday showed that 67.2 percent of the respondents said they were in favor of professional whaling while 41.1 percent said they thought the practice harmed Iceland's reputation.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Two-thirds of Icelanders back whaling: poll
Yahoo News 4 Feb 09;
REYKJAVIK (AFP) – More than two thirds of Icelanders favour the country's return to commercial whaling and more than half would support an increase of its whaling quota, according to a poll published Wednesday.
Just over 67 percent of the 1,597 people questioned by the Capacent Gallup polling institute between January 29 and February 2 said they were either very or rather supportive of Iceland's commercial whaling.
Nearly a fifth of those polled, 19.7 percent, meanwhile said they were rather or very opposed to the practice, which was relaunched in 2006 after Iceland ended 16 years of adhering to an international whaling moratorium.
Iceland and Norway are the only two countries in the world that authorise commercial whaling. Japan officially hunts whales for scientific purposes, although the whale meat is sold for consumption.
The Capacent Gallup poll was published just a day after Iceland's new Fisheries Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson said he might revise a six-fold increase in the country's disputed commercial whale hunt set by the previous government a week ago.
The exiting government increased the quota on January 27, a day after tendering its resignation, to 150 fin whales and up to 150 minke whales, up from a previous quota of just nine fin whales and 40 minke whales per year.
When asked if they supported the quota increase, 56.9 percent of those surveyed for Wednesday's poll said they were very or rather supportive of the hike, while 30.6 percent said they were opposed.
The response was far less positive however when Icelanders were asked how the controversial hunt was affecting their country's image abroad.
Forty-one percent said whaling would hurt the country's reputation, while only 3.1 percent said it would help and 55.2 percent said it would have no impact.
As the North Atlantic island nation of 320,000 struggles to ward off national bankruptcy after its financial sector crumbled in October, most of those polled meanwhile said they thought the whaling industry could improve the economy and help curb its soaring unemployment rate.
Nearly 58 percent said the industry would create more jobs in Iceland while a full 61.2 percent said it would help boost the country's overall economy. Only 13.2 percent said they though the hunt would be detrimental to the job situation while 12 percent said it would have a negative impact on the economy.
Yahoo News 3 Feb 09;
TOKYO (AFP) – Japan said Tuesday that it will not accept any proposal at upcoming international whaling talks forcing it to end its lethal research programme.
International Whaling Commission chairman William Hogarth has proposed that Japan scale down or stop its whaling in the Antarctic Ocean over the next five years.
In return, some Japanese towns with a tradition of whaling would be allowed to catch a limited number of minke whales in coastal waters, according to the IWC website.
The proposal is designed to lay the groundwork for the IWC's annual general meeting in June in Portugal.
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters that Tokyo "will not be able to accept any proposal that would prohibit Japan from continuing its research whaling."
Fisheries Agency official Shigeki Takaya said an end to research whaling -- which is allowed under the Commmission's 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling -- would be "unacceptable" to Japan.
Japan kills more than 800 whales a year in Antarctic waters and the western North Pacific in the name of scientific research.
In practice, most of the meat from such whaling ends up on Japanese dinner tables, and Australia and other anti-whaling nations regularly accuse Tokyo of using research as a pretext for commercial hunting.
Past IWC meetings have for years seen passionate showdowns pitting Japan, which insists whaling is part of its culture, and is supported by a few other countries, against Australia and other Western nations.
Hogarth, who steps down after the Portugal meeting, persuaded Japan to stay with the IWC and freeze its plans to expand the slaughter to humpback whales, which are a popular tourist attraction in Australia.
There is no easy exit in sight to the gridlock as Australia's Environment Minister Peter Garrett has also rejected the proposed compromise, pledging to bring about an end to lethal research whaling.
Michael Hill, Associated Press Yaho News 4 Feb 09;
ROSENDALE, N.Y. – A mysterious and deadly bat disease discovered just two winters ago in a few New York caves has now spread to at least six northeastern states, and scientists are scrambling to find solutions before it spreads across the country.
White-nose syndrome poses no health threat to people, but some scientists say that if bat populations diminish too much, the insects and crop pests they eat could flourish. Researchers recently identified the fungus that creates the illness' distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of hibernating bats, but they don't yet know how to stop the disease from killing off caves full of the ecologically important animals.
"The cause for concern is that this is going to race across the country faster than we can come up with a solution," said Alan Hicks, a wildlife biologist with New York state's Department of Environmental Conservation.
"Now that is entirely possible."
Bats with white-nose burn through their fat stores before spring, driving some to rouse early from hibernation in a futile search for food. Many die as they hunt fruitlessly for insects.
White-nose syndrome spread fast last winter to dozens of caves in New York and southern New England, within a roughly 150-mile radius of the caves west of Albany, N.Y., where it was first found. Early observations show it has reached farther still this winter, even before cave inspections and bat counts begin in earnest this month.
Bats with white-nose syndrome were found recently in northern New Jersey's Morris County and in an old iron mine in Shindle, Pa., more than 200 miles away from the outbreak's epicenter. In addition, the Pennsylvania Game Commission on Tuesday said that hundreds of little brown bats, a species devastated by white-nose syndrome, were found dead from the disease outside two mines in the northeastern part of the state.
The disease may have spread as far as 450 miles from the epicenter, to the John Guilday Caves Nature Preserve in West Virginia. The National Speleological Society has temporarily shut down the preserve as a possible white-nose sighting is investigated.
So far, there are 40 confirmed white-nose sites in the Northeast, said Jeremy Coleman, who is tracking the illness for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Cortland, N.Y.
Death tolls for the tiny creatures are hard to pinpoint, but some estimates run into the hundreds of thousands.
The news was grim on a recent day when more than a dozen researchers lowered themselves by rope into a sprawling old limestone mine in New York's Hudson Valley, about 80 miles north of New York City.
Bat counter Ryan von Linden's headlamp swept across isolated clusters of the mammals hanging off the rock ceiling. A chorus of squeaks echoed in the blackness.
"There are not as many as there are supposed to be," von Linden whispered. "Not even close."
With a precise total pending, Hicks estimated the cave's count of Indiana bats, an endangered species, was down 15 to 35 percent from last year's roughly 19,000. Researchers said the number of little brown bats also appeared to be down, although they didn't have enough specifics from prior years to measure the drop exactly.
Hoping to glean more information on the syndrome, the researchers plucked 14 groggy little brown bats from the rock, weighed them, measured them, snipped a bit of their hair and stuck tiny radio transmitters to them to track their activity levels.
Bats' nocturnal habits and some species' ability to carry rabies can give the flying mammals a fearsome image. But they can pollinate plants and play an important role in checking the populations of mosquitoes and insects that can damage wheat, apples and dozens of other crops.
Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Wildlife Health Center this fall established that the sugary smudges on infected bats are a previously undescribed fungus that thrives in the refrigerator-like cold of winter caves. The center is still working to determine whether the fungus causes the disease, but biologists are already focusing on potential ways to combat the fungus.
Since the fungus grows in the cold and damp, they could try to lower humidity levels in at least some crucial caves, though that could create other problems for those ecosystems.
Researchers also are looking at the possibility of a fungicide or even fungus-killing bacteria that could spread from bat to bat. Ward Stone, New York state's wildlife pathologist, said he has been able to culture bacteria that live on big brown bats and kill the white-nose fungus in a lab.
Tests need to be performed to see whether any of the options are realistic. And time is "our biggest enemy," said David Blehert, head of microbiology at the USGS center in Madison, Wis.
Terry Lacey, Jakarta Post 4 Feb 09;
Since 2005 the Indonesian Government has pursued a road map to promote biofuels. This stressed biodiesel rather than bioethanol, for power generation rather than vehicles.
Long term Asian prospects for biofuel may depend more on biofuels for vehicles rather than power, and on bioethanol rather than biodiesel, as in Brazil, especially once second generation biofuel technologies get under way. But this is not yet clear.
So far the Indonesian and Malaysian biofuel industries depends on crude palm oil (CPO) to produce biodiesel, reflecting that the two countries produce about 70% of the worlds CPO. Theoretically about 40 percent of production could go to biofuel.
Given the head start of the CPO industry its not surprising that Indonesia plans to produce 2.41 million kiloliters of biodiesel by 2010 , alongside 1.48 million kiloliters of bioethanol, as explained by Imelda Maidir, The Jakarta Post (Jan. 19).
Indonesia has signed investment agreements worth $12.4 billion with 59 foreign and local investors to boost CPO production of bio-diesel. But signals to investors remain somewhat mixed. Wild fluctuations in CPO prices have caused problems.
By January 2008 high CPO prices were making biodiesel too expensive. Biofuel Producers Association chairman Purnadi Djojosudirjo explained a crash in demand led to 17 biofuel companies postponing investments.
Pertamina deputy marketing director Hanung Budia said biodiesel needed the same subsidy as diesel fuel.
Later in 2008 the stock market and oil prices and CPO prices collapsed, with oil going so low that CPO biodiesel and bioethanol could not compete with it, whilst small CPO producers were knocked out of the market.
Initial dependence on CPO for biodiesel may prove to be the right move in Indonesian conditions or a false start. Other feed stocks may prove more sustainable.
Biofuels are attractive because they contribute to energy security , economic development and poverty reduction and are intended to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and air pollution. Developed countries can reduce GHG emissions and comply with the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries can reduce oil imports.
However the rush to biofuels can be counterproductive if they are not sustainably produced (see Climate Change Policies in Asia – IGES – 2006).
This report concludes there are widespread concerns that biofuels might hurt food security (Graham-Harrison 2005), could induce water shortages (AFP 2007), worsen water pollution (Englehaupt 2007) or actually increase GHG emissions (Searchinger 2008) and negatively affect biodiversity (Pearce 2005). Biofuel production could also consume more energy than it produces (Lang 2005).
The wider problems concerning biofuel development in Indonesia since 2005 include inconsistencies in policy and regulatory frameworks (including the negative impact of the subsidies on fossil fuels), and uncertainties in pricing and markets – especially since the recent global financial crisis and commodity price fluctuations.
Competition between domestic and export markets and related problems on pricing and domestic supply obligations, present similar issues to other energy sources where exports are in competition with new domestic markets (as with coal and gas).
Possible conflicts over land use and the use of food-crops to produce biofuel, potential aggravation of environmental problems and possible loss of forest cover, biodiversity loss and land degradation also arise and have to be answered.
Director General of Oil and Gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Evita Legowo explained that by late 2007 the Government hoped to create 3.5 million jobs from biofuel development by 2010, rising eventually to 40 million largely rural jobs. Biodiesel has already been sold to 200 biofuel gas stations in Jakarta. Up to 24 power stations were already using some biodiesel by 2007 but continual fuel supply has sometimes been problematic.
One step towards more coherent, renewed national effort to promote sustainable biofuels development would be to improve coordination of research-based biofuel development in cooperation between researchers, the private sector and government.
Asian sustainable biofuels development need to be articulated so that feed stocks, processing, production, and distribution to markets with realistic prices can be planned and promoted as one chain, addressing linkages as well as being informed on advantages and disadvantages.
The author is a development economist based in Jakarta.
James Morgan, BBC News 3 Feb 09
A mystery pest which has devoured crops and contaminated water in Liberia and Guinea has finally been identified.
The insects, thought to be armyworms, are in fact the caterpillars of the moth Achaea catocaloides, says the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
Cornering the culprit will allow the government to select the best pesticide to tackle the outbreak - the worst seen in Liberia since 1970. More than 20,000 people have so far had to evacuate their homes.
As well as devouring coffee, cocoa and plantain crops, the invaders have polluted drinking water sources with their faeces.
Emergency measures
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf declared a national state of emergency after caterpillars were reported to have infested more than 100 villages, including several over the border in Guinea.
During a field investigation last week, insect scientists from the FAO and the Liberian Agriculture Ministry took samples of the caterpillars, their larvae and their pupae.
They established that the insects were not armyworms, as had been reported, but could not identify the species.
The team sent pictures of both moths and caterpillars to experts at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria.
They confirmed that the species is A.catocaloides, a pest endemic to West Africa.
"The farmers in Liberia know these caterpillars but they have never seen them on this scale. It is extraordinary what has been seen here," said Dr Winfred Hammond, an FAO entomologist, based in Accra, Ghana.
Farmers were described as "shocked" by the scale of the swarms, in a report by the investigations team.
"The citizenry were horribly alarmed and frightened as they saw their environment (crops, water and buildings) covered by swarms of caterpillars and therefore had to cry for help," said the report.
"The government responded positively... but the country was ill-prepared for containment since it lacked the capacity for actual diagnosis of the situation and institutional structures and resources for efficient and effective containment."
One piece of good news for farmers is that the caterpillars are likely to be easier to control than armyworms would have been.
They spin their cocoons on the ground under fallen leaves, which leaves them relatively exposed. Armyworms bore 4-5cm into the ground to pupate and are thus much tougher to eradicate.
The next stage is to step up a program of pesticide spraying which until now has failed to reach any more than a dozen of more than 100 affected villages, according to Dr Hammond.
"We really have some homework to do now - because the caterpillars are still spreading. They are in Guinea already," he told BBC News.
Learning lessons
"We cannot avoid applying pesticides. Now that we have an accurate identification, we can choose a pesticide which is specific to this species of caterpillar.
"But in the long term, we have to take this as an opportunity to develop early warning strategies for countries in West Africa. Not only for these caterpillars, but for other migratory pests."
Dr Hammond spoke on his way to an emergency meeting in Liberia, where representatives from the governments of Liberia and Guinea, the regional grouping Ecowas, and the FAO will discuss strategies for halting the spread of the caterpillars.
One challenge will be reaching the sites of the caterpillar eggs - which are laid on the leaves of very tall Dahoma trees.
These eggs hatch into caterpillars which feed on the leaves of the trees until they mature and fall to the ground, where they pupate.
Caterpillars which are not yet mature begin migrating in search of food - leading them to crop fields, into water bodies and residential areas.
The cause of this year's unexpectedly large outbreak is likely to be unusual weather patterns, according to Dr Kenneth Wilson, an ecologist from Lancaster University.
"With such widespread outbreaks, something has to be done," said Dr Wilson, an expert on armyworms.
"Because the larvae pupate above ground, destroying these by trampling or fire is an option, but if the outbreaks are really extensive then this might have little impact at national level.
"Vigilance is the key, as control will be much easier if that they stamp down on the next generation of outbreaks early on, when the caterpillars are small and vulnerable.
"However, if they are feeding in tall trees, this can be extremely difficult without aircraft sprayers."
Crop-eating caterpillars 'worse' than army worms: Liberia
Zoom Dosso Zoom Dosso, Yahoo News 3 Feb 09;
MONROVIA (AFP) – Caterpillars laying waste to Liberian crops are not army worms as previously believed but a species which may turn out to be even more destructive, the country's agriculture minister warned Tuesday.
"Results indicate that the caterpillars that we are dealing with are not army worms," the minister, Christopher Toe, told journalists.
The caterpillars, which have ravaged central Liberian farms in recent weeks, have been identified as the species Achaea Catocaloides by international research institutions and renowned entomologists, the minister added.
Experts warned that the insects could even turn out to be more destructive that army worms as they attack more crops including coffee and cocoa.
"The destruction of caterpillars we are now confronted with, in my opinion, may be more severe than the army worms because it is attacking a wider range of species (of plants and trees)," said Joseph Subah, the head of the Center for Agricultural Research in Liberia.
The caterpillars have already begun devouring crops in neighbouring Guinea. Liberia's other neighbours Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast are concerned that the invasion could come their way.
Ivory Coast has extra reason to worry as experts warn that the Achaea Catocaloides also destroys cocoa and coffee plantations, crops that army worms do not attack.
Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and many of its plantations are in the west of the country in a region that borders Liberia.
Alan Schroeder, an entomologist from USAID, told journalist that he had seen this species in action before in Benin.
"If it is the now the same species as in Benin they (Ivory Coast) will suffer more because this species attacks cocoa plantations," Schroeder said.
Abidjan on Tuesday said it had sent a team of experts to Liberia to study the invasion.
In Liberia, Subah told journalists that, in all the affected areas, the caterpillars have gone into the pupa stage, from which they emerge as adult moths. No new case of infestation was reported since Monday, he added.
"We have a total of 107 towns and villages affected in four counties and there are huge amounts of moths in a new area in the northern county of Nimba," he said.
Experts warn the moths could produce a second wave of crop-destroying caterpillars as they start reproducing. It is not known how many eggs the moths can lay but they added that the caterpillar stage lasts about 23 days.
"That is a very long period to cause a lot of damage because it is the larvae (caterpillars) that destroys the crops," insect expert Ibrahim Shamie of Sierra Leone said.
Liberia has declared a state of emergency and called on the international community to help it deal with the plague, but authorities said Wednesday that they had not received substantial financial help so far.
The agriculture minister said Tuesday that he would meet his counterparts from the Mano River Union -- Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast -- in Monrovia on Friday to discuss the insect invasion.
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com 3 Feb 09;
The Earth's seasons have shifted back in the calendar year, with the hottest and coldest days of the years now occurring almost two days earlier, a new study finds.
This shift could be the work of global warming, the researchers say.
To figure this out, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard studied temperature data from 1850 to 2007 compiled by the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom.
They found that temperatures over land in the 100-year period between 1850 and 1950 showed a simple, natural pattern of variability, with the hottest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere landing around July 21. But from the mid-1950s onward (the period when global average temperatures began to rise), the hottest day came 1.7 days earlier.
This shift is happening at the same time that those summer and winter peaks are getting warmer and the gap between them is closing (because winter temperatures are rising faster than summer ones).
And with this shift of peak warming and cooling comes a corresponding shift in the onset of the seasons, which the researchers say explains the month-to-month pattern of temperatures over the past 50 years.
"Once we have accounted for the fact that the temperature averaged over any given year is increasing, we find that some months have been warming more than other months," said Alexander Stine, a graduate student at UC Berkeley. "We were surprised to find that over land, most of the difference in the warming of one month relative to another is simply the result of this shift in the timing of the seasons, and a decrease in the difference between summer and winter temperatures."
In recent years, scientists have noted other signs that the seasons are shifting: some birds are migrating earlier; plants are blooming earlier; mountain snows are melting earlier.
Possible causes
The timing of the shift along with the rise in global temperatures leads Stine and his colleagues to think that human-caused climate change is the ultimate cause behind the shift. But exactly which effects of global warming are driving the shift is less clear.
Stine and his colleagues think the shift in seasons is due in part to a particular pattern of winds, known as the Northern Annular Mode, which has also been changing over the same time period. A change in the direction and strength of the winds can move heat from the ocean onto land, which may affect the timing of the seasons. But the relationship between this wind pattern and seasonal shift isn't strong enough to explain the full magnitude of the shift.
Other possible influences the team is looking into are drier global soils, which would cause the land surface to heat more rapidly in response to the sun's rays, and changes in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere as a result of industrial pollution.
The research, detailed in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Nature, was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Richard Black, BBC News 2 Feb 09;
If you look at the numbers, it is hard to see how many East African communities made it through the long drought of 2005 and 2006.
Among people who study human development, it is a widely-held view that each person needs about 20 litres of water each day for the basics - to drink, cook and wash sufficiently to avoid disease transmission.
Yet at the height of the East African drought, people were getting by on less than five litres a day - in some cases, less than one litre a day, enough for just three glasses of drinking water and nothing left over.
Some people, perhaps incredibly from a western vantage point, are hardy enough to survive in these conditions; but it is not a recipe for a society that is healthy and developing enough to break out of poverty.
"Obviously there are many drivers of human development," says the UN's Andrew Hudson.
"But water is the most important."
At the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where Dr Hudson works as principal technical advisor to the water governance programme, he calculated the contribution that various factors make to the Human Development Index, a measure of how societies are doing socially and economically.
"It was striking. I looked at access to energy, spending on health, spending on education - and by far the strongest driver of the HDI on a global scale was access to water and sanitation."
Different lives
Two key questions arise, then.
Why do some communities have so little access to water? And how will the current picture change in a world where the human population is growing, where societies are urbanising and industrialising, and where climate change may alter the raw availability of water significantly?
The UNDP is unequivocal about the first question.
"The availability of water is a concern for some countries," says the report.
"But the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability."
Statistics on water consumption appear to back the UN's case.
Japan and Cambodia experience about the same average rainfall - about 160cm per year.
But whereas the average Japanese person can use nearly 400 litres per day, the average Cambodian must make do with about one-tenth of that.
The picture is improving to some extent.
Across the world, 1.6bn more people have access to clean drinking water than in 1990.
But population growth and climatic changes could change the picture.
In some regions, "the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis" could become one of physical availability, especially in places where consumption is already unsustainably high.
"There are several rivers that don't reach the sea any more," says Mark Smith, head of the water programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"The Yellow River is one, the Murray-Darling (in Australia) is nearly another - they have to dredge the mouth of the river every year to make sure it doesn't dry up.
"The Aral Sea and Lake Chad have shrunk because the rivers that feed them have been largely dried out; and you can see it on a smaller scale as well, where streams that are important for small communities in Tanzania may go dry for half the year, largely because people are taking more and more water for irrigating crops."
Wet and dry
Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took an in-depth look at how the raw availability of water might alter in the future as climatic patterns change.
Its projections are derived from computer models of the Earth's hugely complex climate system, and as such are far from being firm forecasts.
A warmer climate overall means a wetter climate; warmer air can hold more moisture.
But weather patterns are likely to shift, meaning that water will be deposited in different places with a different pattern in time.
"In general we see drying in the sub-tropics and mid-latitudes, from southern Europe across to Kazakhstan and from North Africa to Iran," recounts Martin Parry, who as co-chair of the IPCC's working group on climate impacts oversaw the water report's compilation.
"And the drying extends westwards into Central America. And there are equivalents in the southern hemisphere - southern Africa, Australia."
In some populated parts of North Africa and Central Asia, he says, people may struggle simply to get enough to drink.
Other areas, meanwhile, are projected to receive more rain - considerably more, in some cases.
The question then is whether societies can make use of it.
"If you look at India, Bangladesh and Burma, there are indications of an increase in water availability," says Professor Parry.
"But when you look in more detail you see that monsoonal precipitation will become more intense - there'll be a heavier downpour but over fewer days - so you might just end up with more runoff, which could actually mean less availability of water to the community."
Thirsty work
A changing climate is only one of the factors likely to affect the amount of water at each person's disposal in future.
A more populated world - and there could be another 2.5 billion people on the planet by 2050 - is likely to be a thirstier world.
Those extra people will need feeding; and as agriculture accounts for about 70% of water use around the world, extra consumption for growing food is likely to reduce the amount available for those basic needs of drinking, cooking and washing.
Industry can also take water that would otherwise have ended up in peoples' mouths.
On the other hand, as a society industrialises it tends to become less reliant on farming - which could, in principle, reduce its local demand.
It is a tremendously complex picture; and forecasting its impacts makes simple climate modelling look a trivial task by comparison.
Researchers at the University of Kassel in Germany, led by Martina Floerke, have attempted it.
Their projections suggest that some regions are likely to see drastic declines in the amount of water available for personal use - and for intriguing reasons.
"The principal cause of decreasing water stress (where it occurs) is the greater availability of water due to increased annual precipitation related to climate change," they conclude.
"The principal cause of increasing water stress is growing water withdrawals, and the most important factor for this increase is the growth of domestic water use stimulated by income growth."
The modelling suggests that by the 2050s, as many as six billion people could face water scarcity (defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres per person per year), depending, most importantly, on how societies develop - a significant increase on previous estimates.
Ideas pipeline
The irony is that the richer societies are the ones most likely to be able to adapt to these changes - perhaps relatively easily.
A century ago, a 500km-long pipeline was built to bring water from the Western Australian coast to the parched inland goldfields around Kalgoorlie; the economics of gold made it viable.
Now that the coastal capital Perth is drying out, there is talk of building an even longer pipeline to bring water from the north of the state.
The state recently acquired a desalination plant - an effective, but expensive, way of increasing the raw supply of clean water. A number of Middle Eastern countries are doing the same; it is even being contemplated near London.
Rivers can be diverted huge distances, as China is contemplating. Spain and Cyprus can take water deliveries by ship.
But can all societies afford such measures?
In any case, is adaptation possible to some of the really big projected changes, such as the rapid shrinking of Himalayan glaciers which may lose four-fifths of their area by 2030, removing what is effectively a huge natural reservoir storing water for more than a billion people?
"In principle you could do it, if you're equipped to do the engineering," says Mark Smith.
"But societies are going to have to get much better at deciding how they're going to use their water.
"And very often, in developing countries where institutions are not well established, decisions are made in a very ad-hoc way - someone says 'yes let's use this much for irrigation' but you're already using that much for a sugar mill, and before you know it you've allocated more than you actually have."
Two years ago I stood in a forest clearing in the west of the Amazon basin talking to researchers studying the deforestation and fires that are an increasing plague in the region.
They told me that some villages around there were experiencing water shortages.
How can that happen, I asked incredulously, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, in one of the most luxuriously verdant places on Earth?
What had brought the shortages was a combination of increased human settlement, deforestation, and a drying of some streams, possibly related to climate change.
If even the Amazon can feel these pressures, it is difficult not to think that the same picture will be played out in much starker and possibly much messier colours in parts of the world that are already feeling the heat of dwindling supplies and growing needs.
Laura MacInnis, PlanetArk 3 Feb 09;
GENEVA - Cholera infects millions of people each year, 10 times the number of cases reported by countries who fear losing tourist or trade income by acknowledging the real scale of an outbreak, experts said on Monday.
Claire-Lise Chaignat, cholera coordinator at the World Health Organisation, said the diarrhoeal disease that is spreading fast in Zimbabwe is also under-reported because the stigma attached to it means people often fail to seek treatment.
"People see it as a dirty disease," she said in the latest WHO Bulletin. "People don't want to talk about it. They think it's normal to have diarrhoea. Quite often, nobody is interested in providing the minimal support needed for prevention."
In 2007, governments reported just 178,000 cases of cholera, which is spread mostly through contaminated food and water.
According to Chaignat, about 120,000 people most likely died of cholera that year, compared to the 4,031 official toll reported to the WHO.
Angola, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Liberia, South Africa and Madagascar have all had large outbreaks in the past decade, and Iraq had more than 4,000 cases last year.
Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 3,000 people and infected 63,000, according to U.N. figures. In both Iraq and Zimbabwe, WHO and health officials have monitored the outbreak closely.
WHO disease control expert Francesco Checchi said in the WHO Bulletin that Zimbabwe's outbreak had its roots in damaged urban piping, and spread because of unsanitary conditions that caused bacteria from excrement to contaminate water sources.
The government in Harare initially recommended that people self-medicate with a home-made solution of sugar and salt to prevent dehydration, but ultimately oral rehydration salts needed to be shipped in to save lives, Checchi said.
"Unfortunately, the cholera epidemic has struck at a time when most Zimbabweans are unable to purchase salt and sugar," he said, referring to the country's severe economic crisis that has caused hyper-inflation and the collapse of health systems.
Cholera is characterised in its most severe form by a sudden onset of diarrhoea that can cause death by severe dehydration and kidney failure, sometimes within hours.
Health experts said countries need to do more to prevent the onset of cholera, such as improving water and sewage systems and encouraging hand-washing and other good hygiene practices.
More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion live without adequate sanitation facilities such as toilets. Major hotspots for cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases include Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and much of Africa.
Corn-based bioethanol has higher burden on environment and human health, says US study
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 2 Feb 09;
Some biofuels cause more health problems than petrol and diesel, according to scientists who have calculated the health costs associated with different types of fuel.
The study shows that corn-based bioethanol, which is produced extensively in the US, has a higher combined environmental and health burden than conventional fuels. However, there are high hopes for the next generation of biofuels, which can be made from organic waste or plants grown on marginal land that is not used to grow foods. They have less than half the combined health and environmental costs of standard gasoline and a third of current biofuels.
The work adds to an increasing body of research raising concerns about the impact of modern corn-based biofuels.
Several studies last year showed that growing corn to make ethanol biofuels was pushing up the price of food. Environmentalists have highlighted other problems such deforestation to clear land for growing crops to make the fuels. The UK government's renewable fuels advisors recommended slowing down the adoption of biofuels until better controls were in place to prevent inadvertent climate impacts.
Using computer models developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the researchers found the total environmental and health costs of gasoline are about 71 cents (50p) per gallon, while an equivalent amount of corn-ethanol fuel has associated costs of 72 cents to $1.45, depending on how it is produced.
The next generation of so-called cellulosic bioethanol fuels costs 19 cents to 32 cents, depending on the technology and type of raw materials used. These are experimental fuels made from woody crops that typically do not compete with conventional agriculture. The results are published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The dialogue so far on biofuels has been pretty much focused on greenhouse gases alone," said David Tilman, a professor at the department of ecology, evolution and behaviour at the University of Minnesota. "And yet we felt there were many other impacts that were positive or negative not being included. We wanted to expand the analysis from greenhouse gases to at least one other item and we chose health impacts."
The health problems caused by conventional fuels are well studied and stem from soot particles and other pollution produced when they are burned. With biofuels, the problems are caused by particles given off during their growth and manufacture.
"Corn requires nitrogen fertilisers and some of that comes on as ammonia, which is volatilised into the air," said Tilman. "The ammonia particles are charged and they attract fine dust particles. They stick together and form particles of the size of 2.5 micron and that has significant health impacts. Some of this gets blown by prevailing winds into areas of higher population density – that's where you have the large number of people having the health impact which raises the cost."
Health problems from biofuels and gasoline include increased cases of heart disease, respiratory symptoms, asthma, chronic bronchitis or premature death. The team has calculated the economic costs associated with these. "For the economy, it's the loss of good, productive workers who might otherwise have been able to contribute," said team member Jason Hill, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.
"These costs are not paid for by those who produce, sell and buy gasoline or ethanol. The public pays these costs," said Dr Stephen Polasky, an economist at the University of Minnesota, also part of the team.
A report published last year by Ed Gallagher, the head of the government's Renewable Fuels Agency, suggested that the introduction of biofuels to the UK should be slowed until more effective controls were in place to prevent the inadvertent rise in greenhouse gas emissions caused by, for example, the clearance of forests to make way for their production.
His report said that if the displacements were left unchecked, current targets for biofuel production could cause a global rise in greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in poverty in the poorest countries by 2020.
Gallagher also suggested the government should introduce incentives to promote the production of next-generation biofuels of the type studied by the Minnesota researchers. So-called cellulosic ethanol can be made from plants such as switchgrass or jatropha that can grow with very little fertiliser on poor land, but the technology to convert these plants into fuels is in its early stages.
Tilman said society needed to make the transition away from corn-based ethanol as soon as possible.
"We've gone one step further than the work that only looked at greenhouse gases and found some surprisingly large effects. Before we dedicate major resources to new biofuels, we should be trying to quantify other likely impacts to society – water quality, biodiversity and so on – and put all of those into our analysis." He hopes this will encourage society to make "a long-term commitment to the right biofuel".
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