Best of our wild blogs: 20 Mar 09

Observations on egrets at Semakau Landfill
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Malaysia lists 'gamat' sea cucumbers as endangered
on the wild shores of singapore blog

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Merlion, Singapore Flyer among participants in Earth Hour Singapore

Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia 18 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE: More Singapore icons, landmarks and commercial buildings will be taking part in Earth Hour.

At 8.30pm on March 28, the Merlion, Singapore Flyer, Fullerton Hotel and the Esplanade will stand in darkness for one hour in support of the fight against climate change.

Shopping malls like Raffles City, Plaza Singapura, Bugis Junction and Junction 8 have also committed to switching off their facade lights during Earth Hour.

Office buildings like Capital Tower, One George Street and Robinson Point, as well as some service apartments will also support the green cause.

In Singapore, organisers have a target of one million participants.

So far, only about 2,000 people and 350 companies have registered on the website to do their part for the environment.

But organisers believe there will be thousands out there taking part in Earth Hour in their own way and tracking numbers can only be done after the event is over. - CNA/vm

More links See the Earth Hour Singapore blog for a wide range of events organised by NGOs for Earth Hour.

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Water tech firm partners NUS in first Asian tie-up

$150m centre will provide clean water know-how to countries like China, India
Liaw Wy-Cin, Straits Times 20 Mar 09;

WATER technologies developer GE Water is partnering its first university in Asia in an effort to develop safe drinking systems for many parts of the region.

Its scientists and engineers will set up shop at the National University of Singapore (NUS) by the middle of the year.

They will be working at the new NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre, a $150 million collaboration between the university and the corporation.

The centre is the product of an agreement between the two sides in 2006 to collaborate. There are already ongoing projects between the two sides on turning seawater into safe drinking water.

The centre, expected to open in May, will focus on technology to provide clean water to countries such as China and India and regions like the Middle East.

What the partnership means for NUS researchers is that they will have easier access to industry specialists who can guide them better on the market viability of their research ideas, said Professor Michael Saunders, director of the NUS Environmental Research Institute.

Prof Saunders added: 'Now, we can talk to GE, ask them 'What do you think, guys?' and they can say 'We don't know, let's try it'.'

This is GE Water's first collaboration with a university in the Asia-Pacific. Its general manager for the Asia-Pacific region, Mr Kevin Cassidy, said that this new environment gave the company access to 'talented researchers from a world-class institution committed to working with industry'.

'It's also a talent pipeline for us. We can recruit NUS graduates,' he said.

The centre will occupy one of the buildings at the engineering faculty and space in the Temasek Engineering Building.

At this centre, GE Water will be developing and testing technology in areas such as desalination, water reuse, the generation of ultra-pure water for the semiconductor industry and chemical analysis of water and waste water.

Mr Cassidy said the company had looked globally before deciding to open an R&D centre in Singapore: 'We recognise the capabilities and strategic vision in Singapore from a water perspective.'

Water technology is one of the emerging areas that Singapore has recently earmarked as a new area of economic growth.

Its technologies in turning sea water and used water into drinking water have made it stand out in the industry, said Mr Cassidy.

Clean drinking water is making its way up the agenda of many countries now facing ballooning urban populations.

The United Nations projects that by 2030, 4.9 billion people, or 60 per cent of the world's population, will be living in cities, compared with 3.3 billion people or half the world's population doing so now.

About 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and this is expected to rise to 2.8 billion by 2025.

GE Water & NUS to set up Water Technology Centre
Channel NewsAsia 19 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE: A S$150million (US$100 million) research centre will be set up in Singapore by the middle of this year to look at water science and technology.

It will develop new solutions for low-energy seawater desalination, water reclamation and water reuse.

GE Water, a business unit of GE Energy, and the National University of Singapore (NUS) signed an agreement Thursday to establish the NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre on the campus of NUS.

They said this will help expedite fundamental research and industry innovation in water treatment.

It will also strengthen collaboration with government and industry in Singapore and abroad.

The centre joins a network of GE's technology centres located throughout the world to solve pertinent challenges facing water scarce areas by increasing the recycling and recovery of water.

- CNA/yb

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10,000 graves in Choa Chu Kang cemetery to be exhumed

Channel NewsAsia 19 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE: 10,000 graves in Choa Chu Kang (CCK) Chinese Cemetery will be exhumed from March 21.

The affected graves are at Blocks 4, 5 and 6 and date back to between 1968 and 1978.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) says this comes under the phase three exhumation programme, in line with the government's policy of limiting the burial period of all graves to 15 years.

It has been exhuming graves at the Choa Chu Kang cemetery in phases since December 2004.

The NEA is encouraging next-of-kin who wish to claim the remains to do so early.

They can also make claims for the remains of other family members buried outside Blocks 4, 5 and 6 on or before March 21, 1994.

Exhumation of the graves will start after registration of claims.

All unclaimed graves will be exhumed in June 2010.

NEA says signboards will be displayed at the cemetery to indicate the location of graves to be exhumed under phase three.

In the coming Qing Ming festival, its officers will be on site to provide pamphlets and the necessary forms to visiting next-of-kin.

For more information, the public can call the CCK exhumation hotline at (65) 679-555-11 or visit the website at www.nea.gov.sg/cckexhumation.

- CNA/yt

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Indonesia secures more territory through diplomacy: FM

Lilian Budianto, The Jakarta Post 19 Mar 09;

Despite pressure from powerful international countries, Indonesia had managed to secure itself additional marine territory, expanding the archipelago considerably through persuasive diplomacy, said Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda.

“Through persuasive arguments, Indonesia has not only maintained its existing territory but widened it to 6.2 million square kilometers by expanding our marine territory from the shoreline from 3 nautical miles to 12. All of this occurred through diplomacy, we did not use a bullet to defend our territory.”

Delivering his annual lecture at the University of Padjajaran in Bandung to commemorate the 80th anniversary of former foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja (1978-1988), Hassan said Indonesia was indebted to Mochtar, who struggled for the birth of landmark 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provisions for Indonesia. Mochtar, also a professor at the same university, attended the anniversary celebrations Wednesday despite his ailing health.

The 1982 UNCLOS regulations allowed archipelagic states to draw straight lines around the border of its most outlying islands and dry reefs, provided that within those lines were the main islands of the archipelago.

Mochtar was a member of the Indonesian delegation in the first and second Conference on Laws of the Sea at the United Nations in Geneva in 1958 and 1960. The provision, that proposed assigning greater sovereignty to archipelagic nations, was met with challenges from developed countries as it threatened their ability to explore for resources
in water territories surrounding archipelagoes. The provision was finally adopted in 1982 during the third conference and the UNCLOS was born.

“The archipelagic states are now being acknowledged by the world. This a significant change from the past, where our water territories served as international areas to benefit other states,” Hassan said.

He said as Indonesia’s marine zone borders 10 different nations, diplomats have treated border diplomacy as a top priority and engaged in thorough discussions over the years. Not all diplomatic efforts have gone without controversy, though.

“Indonesian diplomacy come under fire when we lost the Sipadan and Ligitan Islands to Malaysia after a judicial decision by the ICJ (International Court of Justice). But it should be noted that since then, Indonesia has never claimed those islands as part of its exterior territory [under the UNCLOS baselines],” he said.

“Despite the loss, Indonesia has recorded many successes in closing lengthy border discussions, a testament to our negotiators not giving up despite intense pressure from more developed nations.”

Indonesia had recently aligned its western-maritime borders with Singapore after a five-year negotiation that saw the city-state renounce its reclaimed shore land on the basis of establishing a solid border. Indonesia is currently still at odds with Malaysia over the Ambalat maritime area and with the Philippines over its southern border.

Hikmahanto Juwana, lecturer of international law at the University of Indonesia, said developing countries had not yet obtained benefits from the existing international law, most of which had been skewed to serve the vested interest of more powerful countries.

“International law is too Europe-centric and does not benefit developing countries. The military forces of the United States have frequently conducted exercises in the water territories of other countries.

We have to be strong enough to challenge them under a newly-defined international law,” said
Hikmahanto.

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Rare reptile hatchling found on New Zealand

Ray Lilley, Associated Press 19 Mar 09;

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A hatchling of a rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found in the wild on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, a wildlife official said Thursday.

The baby tuatara was discovered by staff during routine maintenance work at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital, Wellington, conservation manager Raewyn Empson said.
In this photo released by the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, a baby tuatara is held by a staff at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand, Thursday, March 19, 2009. The juvenile hatchling of the rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age was found on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years. (AP Photo/Karori Wildlife Sanctury,Tom Lynch,HO)

"We are all absolutely thrilled with this discovery," Empson said. "It means we have successfully re-established a breeding population back on the mainland, which is a massive breakthrough for New Zealand conservation."

Tuatara are the last lizard-like descendants of a reptile species that walked the Earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.

There are estimated to be about 50,000 of them living in the wild on 32 small offshore islands cleared of predators, but this is the first time a hatchling has been seen on the mainland in about 200 years.

The New Zealand natives were nearly extinct on the country's three main islands by the late 1700s due to the introduction of predators such as rats.

Empson said the hatchling is thought to be about one month old and likely came from an egg laid about 16 months ago. Two nests of eggs — the size of pingpong balls — were unearthed in the sanctuary last year and tuatara were expected to hatch around this time.

"He is unlikely to be the only baby to have hatched this season, but seeing him was an incredible fluke," she said.

The youngster faces a tough journey to maturity despite being in the 620-acre (250 hectare) sanctuary and protected by a predator-proof fence. It will have to run from the cannibalistic adult tuatara, and would make a tasty snack for the morepork (native owl), kingfisher and weka (New Zealand's endemic flightless rail), Empson said.

"Like all the wildlife living here, he'll just have to take his chances" Empson said.

"They've been extinct on the mainland for a long time," said Lindsay Hazley, tuatara curator at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery on South Island. He added that "you can breed tuatara by eliminating risk, but to have results like this among many natural predators (like native birds) is a positive sign."

About 200 tuatara have been released since 2005 into the Karori Sanctuary, which was established to breed native birds, insects and other creatures.

Tuatara have unique characteristics, such as two rows of top teeth closing over one row at the bottom and a pronounced parietal eye — a light-sensitive pineal gland on the top of the skull that gives the appearance of a third eye.

Rare "living fossil" reptile born in NZ
Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) – A rare "living fossil" tuatara reptile has been born in the wild in an area of New Zealand where it had been believed extinct for 200 years, conservationists said Thursday.

The tuatara -- a lizard-like reptile which has existed for 200 million years and shared the earth with dinosaurs -- had been believed extinct on New Zealand's three main islands for 200 years.

But since 2005, 200 have been reintroduced from offshore islands into the Karori Sanctuary in the capital Wellington, where the baby was discovered.

Staff at the 252-hectare (623-acre) sanctuary found the eight-centimetre (three-inch) long hatchling, thought to be about a month old, in an area where tuatara nests were found late last year.

"This is an extremely significant discovery," said sanctuary conservation manager Raewyn Empson.

"It means we have successfully re-established a breeding population... which is a massive breakthrough for New Zealand conservation," she said.

"He is unlikely to be the only baby to have hatched this season, but seeing him was an incredible fluke".

The infant tuatara will need to avoid the attentions of cannibalistic adult tuatara as well as some native birds if it is to reach adulthood, she said.

"Like all the wildlife living here, he'll just have to take his chances," Empson said.

"However, hatching within the safety of a mammal-proof fence has already given him a far better chance of survival than he would get outside."

Baby tuatara hatch about 12-15 months after their mothers lay, and then abandon, their eggs.

The reptiles became extinct on New Zealand's three main islands after the Pacific rat arrived with the Polynesian Maori in the previously uninhabited country about 700 years ago.

They live to about 100 years old but do not become fertile until aged about 13.

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Global crisis 'to strike by 2030'

Christine McGourty, BBC News 19 Mar 09;

Growing world population will cause a "perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned.

By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said.

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London.

Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he added.

'Complacent'

"It's a perfect storm," Prof Beddington told the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference.

"There's not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don't tackle these problems."

Prof Beddington said the looming crisis would match the current one in the banking sector.

"My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages," he said.

"We're relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise."

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025.

The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time.

The issue of food and energy security rose high on the political agenda last year during a spike in oil and commodity prices.

Genetically-modified

Prof Beddington said the concern now - when prices have dropped once again - was that the issues would slip back down the domestic and international agenda.

"We can't afford to be complacent. Just because the high prices have dropped doesn't mean we can relax," he said.

Improving agricultural productivity globally was one way to tackle the problem, he added.

At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested.

Professor Beddington said: "We have to address that. We need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures.

"Genetically-modified food could also be part of the solution. We need plants that are resistant to drought and salinity - a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding.

Better water storage and cleaner energy supplies are also essential, he added.

Prof Beddington is chairing a subgroup of a new Cabinet Office task force set up to tackle food security.

But he said the problem could not be tackled in isolation.

He wants policy-makers in the European Commission to receive the same high level of scientific advice as the new US president, Barack Obama.

One solution would be to create a new post of chief science adviser to the European Commission, he suggested.

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Trees: More than just carbon sinks

Mark Kinver, BBC News 19 Mar 09;

"In the absence of trees, our communities would simply collapse," states Andrew Dokurugu, a project officer for Tree Aid.

Speaking from the charity's West Africa offices in Burkina Faso, he explains how trees are vital for poor rural villages to survive in the long-term.

"We are looking at ways to promote sustainable agriculture and agroforestry," he tells BBC News.

"This will help ensure that the remaining trees are well looked after and that communities have access to the trees they require."

Using the Family Trees and Land Use scheme in northern Ghana, one of Tree Aid-led projects that have helped 600,000 villagers, Mr Dokurgu outlines why so many communities in West Africa are facing tough times.

"Rural settlements located close to big cities have particularly difficult challenges," he says.

"Urban developments damage the environment and remove trees for use in the cities.

"This quickly deprives rural areas of their sources of food, fuel and other tree products."

Rising urban populations and expanding cities makes life tougher both inside and outside the city boundaries.

Seeds of growth

Tree Aid was set up in 1987 by a small group of foresters who were keen to use their expertise to help people in Africa, explained programme director Tony Hill.

"They saw that trees, potentially, were a way for poor rural families to help themselves in the long-term," he told BBC News.

And in 1997, the charity established a permanent office in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Mr Hill described this development as a "step change" for Tree Aid, which has now planted more than 6.5 million trees.

"We were then able to work directly with local partners," he said.

"Projects always have a beginning and an end, but the needs of the villagers do not end when the scheme finishes - particularly when you are dealing with trees.

"You need to have the continuity of attention, care and protection if you are going to deliver the benefits long-term."

The need to plant and manage the region's tree stocks is becoming increasingly important, Mr Hill says.

"If you go back several decades, the wild tree resources were rich enough for villagers to get more or less all of the products they needed without having to plant trees.



"Now, growing populations and an erratic climate means that villages have to invest in trees, rather than letting nature do its own thing."

However, it is not simply the case of telling people to plant saplings and sitting back and waiting for them to grow.

Some cultures, Mr Hill reveals, have traditionally considered planting fruit trees as taboo: "People believed that if you planted a tree, you were bound to die before it bore fruit."

But he says one of the biggest challenges is the issue of land tenure.

"For farmers, it is like a declaration of ownership. Planting trees says 'this is my land and it is going to be mine for a long time.

"For many people, it is difficult to negotiate adequate secure tenure and get permission from all of the relevant authorities."

This is one area where Tree Aid has been focusing its efforts, especially for women, who generally are not allowed to own land.

"In the drylands of Africa, where Tree Aid operates, the real value of trees is the products that they can take: fruits, leaves, bark and roots, firewood, building materials," Mr Hill says.

He adds that healthy trees also help maintain the area's ecosystems.

"People rely on trees to recycle nutrients, prevent erosion and maintain moderate water flows.

"Without trees in the landscape, you cannot have a sustainable farming system.

"Without farming, you do not have any life in these communities."

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Thousands of olive Ridley turtle eggs floating near Rushikulya river

Santanu Barad, Odisha Today 19 Mar 09

Berhampur (Orissa) : Nature’s creation of a suitable place and weather condition near the Rushikulya river mouth in the Ganjam district along the Bay of Bengal had invited the rare species of the turtles to this place for the nesting.

However, the same; nature’s furry has endangered the lakhs of rare eggs of the turtles are perishing on the beach near river mouth along the sea coast and floating on the water due to unusual tide near the area which was the favorite place of laying eggs.
Notably, lakhs of olive ridley turtles had camped at the coast along the beach near the Rushikulya river mouth in the district of Ganjam.

The rare species of turtles had preferred this river mouth along the beach instead of the famous site; Gahirmatha due to the tidal wave, beach erosion and activities by the defense establishment at the ‘wheeler island’.

Since 1994, the rare species of turtles had been sighted nesting here at the sea and laying lakhs of eggs during favorable weather conditions and suitable place along the beach.

Even during this season that started from February, the turtles had begun nesting and laying eggs at the beach near Rushikulya river mouth.

The departmental sources had informed that more than 280,000 of eggs had been sighted at the beach along the sea coast which is located within 30 KM from the famous coastal town of Gopalpur in Ganjam district.

The forest department along with the help of the wildlife organization officials had been trying to provide a suitable location and to secure the eggs of the rare turtles during the season.

However, the lakhs of eggs have been sighted scattered along the beach and floating in the sea water due to unusual tide in March this year.

Normally, the turtles lay eggs in the evenings and after placing/ dumping the eggs beneath the sand at around 1.5 feet deep in the sand along the beach. And the turtles after placing the eggs, they leave the beach to the sea in the morning.

However, the unusual tidal waves at a height of 1.5 feet to 2 feet, has endangered the security of the rare turtle eggs. The tidal waves have washed away the sand deep 2 feet in the beach as a result of which the eggs place underneath the beach at a deepness of around 1.5 feet had been washed away.

The eggs in thousands are being sighted scattered on the beach and floating in the sea water near the Rushikulya river mouth during this week of March. Normally, such unusual tides are not being expected at the area by the natural experts and wildlife people working on the rare olive ridley turtles. Crows, dogs and other animals find the eggs as their food and the eggs in thousands are being taken away jeopardizing the lives of rare species.

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Fears grow for whale lost at sea in Hong Kong

Timothy Chui, The Standard 20 Mar 09;

Fears are mounting for a humpback whale stranded in Hong Kong waters - despite the latest sighting suggesting it may be heading for the freedom of the open sea.

The 10-meter whale, the first of its kind seen in local waters, came to light on Monday afternoon off East Lamma Channel. It was spotted off Stanley shortly after noon on Wednesday and off Cape D'Aguilar at 11am yesterday.

Ocean Park marine mammal curator Gary Wong Hoi-ming said if it keeps moving in an easterly direction, it may finally find its way back to the ocean.

But he warned: "The whale's arrival here suggests there may be something wrong internally, since healthy animals do not normally get lost.

"Whales usually travel in pods and have their own route so its presence here is of some concern."

Wong said the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation team is keeping tabs on the mammal together with the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and his main concern is whether it may find enough food.

"If its condition deteriorates, its stress levels will rise and it will only get more disoriented and may not be able to navigate," Wong said. This would increase the risk of it entering shallower waters and becoming beached.

Although the whale cleared the busier sea lanes of the East Lamma Channel - through which four ocean- going vessels pass each hour - it still faces the risk of being hit by ships or cut by the propellers of smaller craft.

Wong advises people to stay clear of the whale for safety's sake and warns boats may be overturned in its massive wake. He said emergency plans are in place in case the creature runs into trouble, but fears equipment may not be big enough.

Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project director and current Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society chairman Samuel Hung Ka-yiu said photos of the whale have been sent to Japan, the Philippines and the United States to determine whether it has been spotted before.

The Marine Department is warning the public in radio broadcasts to give the creature a wide berth.

Although experts monitoring the whale have yet to give it a name, Wong said the honor should go to the fisheries department.

Odyssey of lost humpback whale melts the heart of Hong Kongers
M&C 19 Mar 09;

Hong Kong - A humpback whale separated from a migrating group of the marine mammals was trying to find its way out of busy shipping lanes around Hong Kong, enthralling the former British colony.

The plight of the 10-metre adult whale made television and newspaper headlines in the normally money-obsessed city, providing a welcome distraction from a tide of bleak economic news.

The humpback whale, the first ever seen in Hong Kong waters, is believed to have become separated from a group of whales migrating from the tropical waters where they spend winter to their summertime Arctic feeding grounds.

It was first spotted surfacing, raising its tail and exhaling water through its blow hole Monday and Tuesday in busy shipping lanes close to Hong Kong's landmark Victoria Harbour.

By Wednesday, it had moved to the south of Hong Kong island and appeared to be heading eastward to the usual northerly migration route for whales in the South China Sea.

Experts said they believe once it finds its way into open waters, it should be able to rejoin other whales and continue its route toward the Arctic.

However, boatloads of sightseers with cameras have headed out to try to track the whale since it was first sighted, and an appeal has been issued for people not to sail too close to the lost whale.

There were also concerns that there is a lack of food for the whale in Hong Kong's heavily polluted waters, where fish stocks are critically low, and the whale could weaken if it fails to find its way out soon.

Whale expert Samuel Hung Ha-yiu, head of a research centre on dolphins and porpoises, told the Hong Kong Standard newspaper that trying to guide the mammal toward open waters could be counterproductive.

'We recommend the government refrain from doing anything outside of monitoring the animal,' he said, adding that trying to usher it out would 'raise its stress levels, making it aggressive and increasing the risk it could head to shore and become beached.'

Photographs of the whale, meanwhile, have been sent to experts in the United States, the Philippines and Japan to try to discover from where it has swum to reach Hong Kong waters.

Read more!

Big drop in reef fish linked to coral loss

Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;

CHICAGO (AFP) – The number of fish living in Caribbean reefs has dropped significantly since 1995, after decades of stability, and is likely due to a significant loss of coral, a study published Thursday found.

Researchers examined data from 48 different studies of 318 reefs across the Caribbean from 1955 to 2007.

They found that fish density grew from 1955 to 1985, when it began to decline slightly. The significant losses began in 1995, when density fell across the region by 2.7 to six percent per year.

"We were most surprised to discover that this decrease is evident for both large-bodied species targeted by fisheries as well as small-bodied species that are not fished," said lead author Michelle Paddack of Simon Fraser University in Canada.

"This suggests that overfishing is probably not the only cause."

Paddack and her colleagues point to an 80 percent reduction in coral cover since the mid 1970's and drastic changes in coral reef habitats over the past 30 years as the most likely culprit.

These changes are a result of a number of factors, including a rise in pollution from coastal development, warming ocean temperatures, coral diseases, and overfishing which led to the decline of many fish species important to keeping the reefs free of algae.

"All of these factors are stressing the reefs and making them less able to recover from disturbances such as hurricanes, which also seem to be occurring more frequently," Paddack said.

The delayed response to loss of coral implies a "degradation debt."

Paddack said her study, which involved a very large team of scientists from around the globe, should serve as a call to action.

"If we want to have coral reefs in our future, we must ensure that we reduce damage to these ecosystems," she said.

"On a personal level, this may mean not buying wild-caught aquarium fish and corals, not eating reef fish species that are declining, taking care not to anchor on reefs, and reducing our carbon emissions to help control climate change.

"But importantly, we need to let lawmakers and resource managers know that we care about these ecosystems and we need to push for changes in how they are managed."

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology.

Major Losses For Caribbean Reef Fish In Last 15 Years
ScienceDaily 20 Mar 09;

By combining data from 48 studies of coral reefs from around the Caribbean, researchers have found that fish densities that have been stable for decades have given way to significant declines since 1995.

"We were most surprised to discover that this decrease is evident for both large-bodied species targeted by fisheries as well as small-bodied species that are not fished," said Michelle Paddack of Simon Fraser University in Canada. "This suggests that overfishing is probably not the only cause."

Rather, they suggest that the recent declines may be explained by drastic losses in coral cover and other changes in coral reef habitats that have occurred in the Caribbean over the past 30 years. Those changes are the result of many factors, including warming ocean temperatures, coral diseases, and a rise in sedimentation and pollution from coastal development. Overfishing has also led to declines of many fish species, and now seems to also be removing those that are important for keeping the reefs free of algae.

"All of these factors are stressing the reefs and making them less able to recover from disturbances such as hurricanes, which also seem to be occurring more frequently," Paddack said.

Scientists had previously documented historical declines in the abundance of large Caribbean reef fishes that probably reflect centuries of overexploitation. However, effects of recent degradation of reef habitats on reef fish had not been established before now.

In the new study, the research team compiled data on reef fish densities from 48 studies representing 318 reefs across the Caribbean from 1955 to 2007. Their analysis found that overall reef fish density has been declining significantly for more than a decade, at rates that are consistent across all sub-regions of the Caribbean basin. Specifically, they show losses in fish density of 2.7 to 6 percent per year.

Paddack said her study, which involved a very large team of scientists from around the globe, should serve as a call to action.

"If we want to have coral reefs in our future, we must ensure that we reduce damage to these ecosystems," she said. "On a personal level, this may mean not buying wild-caught aquarium fish and corals, not eating reef fish species that are declining, taking care not to anchor on reefs, and reducing our carbon emissions to help control climate change. But importantly, we need to let lawmakers and resource managers know that we care about these ecosystems and we need to push for changes in how they are managed."

The study appears online on March 19th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

Read more!

Wildlife Smuggling Nets Big Bucks For Organized Crime

Illegally traded animals can end up anywhere from a cooking pot in Asia to a pet shop in Europe
Joan Delaney, The Epoch Times 18 Mar 09;

Humming birds bound and stuffed in cigarette packets, snakes and tortoises inside a hollowed out teddy bear, exotic birds’ eggs made into necklaces—these are just some of the myriad ways used to smuggle wildlife in a lucrative worldwide trade.

Run by organized crime, the illegal trade in wildlife and animal parts is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars per year, making it the biggest money-maker for organized crime after drugs, according to Interpol, the international police body.

Stingrays and piranhas from South America; star tortoises from India; pygmy slow lorises, a primate, from South Asia; rare albino carpet pythons from Australia; Hawaiian chameleons; endangered sea turtles; West African songbirds—the list of smuggled species is endless.

The animals are stolen from their natural habitat by poachers and spirited out, mostly to developed countries where collectors or those who simply want an unusual gift for their kid’s birthday can afford the exorbitant prices charged.

“Some of these rare parrots or deer falcons can fetch up to $100,000,” says Michael O’Sullivan, chairman and CEO of The Humane Society of Canada (HSC).

And although many creatures do not survive the trip because they are smuggled in cruel conditions, the trade still proves profitable to organized crime.

“The figure that is often quoted is that only one out of about every 10 animals that start out the journey actually survive it,” says O’Sullivan, a veteran of undercover work in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

The illegal wildlife trade, coupled with the destruction of habitat and the hunting of wild animals for food, has put the world’s wildlife “under assault,” he says.

In addition, many of the animals traded are already endangered. “The more rare they are, the higher the price they command. The endangered species are actually more valuable.”

Wildlife smuggled out of Canada includes falcons, especially deer falcons, which are highly prized in Middle Eastern countries. Eagle parts, bear paws, and bear gall bladders—which sell for up to $10,000 each in Asia—are also in demand.

Once a successful pipeline has been established for smuggling wildlife, crime networks will use it to smuggle drugs, illegal weapons, people, and other contraband. Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States are among the top 10 smuggling hubs for wildlife.

HSC partners with Interpol to fight the illegal wildlife trade. In a five-country sweep in Africa last November, Interpol, HSC, and other groups seized one ton of illegal elephant ivory. Fifty seven people were arrested. The African elephant was declared endangered in 1978.

In cooperation with Interpol, HSC has set up a fund to help provide support for the families of park rangers who are killed by poachers.

“It’s a very dangerous job. At least 100 [rangers] are killed every year throughout the world. The poachers are armed with automatic weapons, high tech gear, the latest and fastest boats and aircraft, and four wheel drives,” O’Sullivan says.

Drug gangs in Mexico and Colombia are known to be partial to exotic pets themselves, the most common being venomous snakes, lions, tigers, and hippos. Rumour has it that some cartel leaders throw the bodies of their rivals to the big cats as food.

Drug gang leaders like to own rare animals as a status symbol and often build private zoos at their mansions. A raid on a drug mansion last year in Mexico City uncovered two black jaguars, two lions, two Bengal tigers, and a monkey.

China and the U.S. are the largest markets for illegally traded wildlife. The demand in China for exotic meats for consumption, and for animal parts to make medicine has virtually wiped out the country’s small wildlife. Now, in a multi-million dollar smuggling business, poachers are branching out into surrounding countries in order to supply this market.

Conservationists fear that Bokor National Park, one of Asia’s last surviving wildernesses, is becoming rapidly depleted of its wildlife. According to a Sky News report, 50 rangers armed with AK 47s patrol the park, but they are losing the battle with the poachers.

While poor villagers do the poaching, the operation is actually run by organized crime. The stolen animals include chameleon lizards, poisonous cobras, and the protected leopard cat. Tigers are taken from the forests of Burma, brush-tailed porcupines from Indonesia, and makak monkeys from Cambodia.

The majority of the bear gall bladders smuggled out of Canada end up in China and Korea. With the Asiatic bear in danger of extinction, the illegal trade in bear parts is creating growing pressure on the black bear populations in other countries.

Canada’s black bears are protected by the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). CITES, to which 175 countries are signatories, sets controls on the international trade and movement of animal and plant species that are threatened due to excessive commercial exploitation.

However, while countries can be sanctioned and have trade prohibited under CITES, it doesn’t impose penalties; seizures, fines, and imprisonment are up to the laws of individual countries.

Wildlife organizations complain that, if caught, smugglers often face little more than an inadequate fine or a short jail term in most countries.

O’Sullivan says a “useful tool” in existence in many countries for fighting the illegal wildlife trade is conspiracy laws and organized crime laws that can be used to seize assets.

“The only way to attack these organized crime networks is to go after their money, throw them in jail, confiscate their homes and the aircraft they use, and smash these networks. Because they are in fact organized crime, I think it’s in everyone’s interest to shut these people down.”

In the meantime, he says, being domesticated “is a terrible life for a wild animal. We ought to leave them alone with their families in the wilderness where they belong. They don’t belong as pets.”

Read more!

New York Reptile Smugglers Are Arrested, Authorities Say

A. G. Sulzberger, New York Times 19 Mar 09;

The smugglers moved their goods across borders using secret compartments, a Maryland meat processing plant and the help of a corrupt Louisiana turtle farm. Their lucrative product: rattlesnakes, snapping turtles and salamanders.

This was the portrait of a trade in illegal reptiles and amphibians that New York State environmental authorities painted on Thursday, when the two-year undercover investigation called Operation Shellshock ended with criminal charges against 18 people. More charges were made by American and Canadian and officials in other states, the New York officials said.

The case had the familiar ring of a drug bust, but it was instead built in the unlikely world of herpetological shows and included charges against leaders at organizations like the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, the Long Island Herpetological Society, and the pet Web site turtlesale.com (a Florida-based company facing New York charges).

“Our investigators began this operation with a simple question: Is there a commercial threat to our critical wildlife species?” Alexander B. Grannis, the commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which conducted the investigation, said in a statement.

What they found was alarming, “A very lucrative illegal market for these creatures does exist, fostered by a strong, clandestine culture of people who want to exploit wildlife for illegal profit.”

In New York, 17 people were charged with 14 felonies, 11 misdemeanors and dozens of violations. Six people were charged in Pennsylvania, and one in Canada. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York is pursuing charges against the Maryland meat processor, Turtle Deluxe, and a Louisiana turtle farm that was not identified, the authorities said.

The authorities said that Emanuele Tesoro, a prison guard from Watertown, Ontario, drove 33 endangered Massasauga rattlesnakes hidden throughout his van in door compartments, behind speakers and in the trunk hatch, across the border to make a deal with undercover authorities in a parking lot in Niagara Falls, N.Y. To reduce suspicion his wife and children were also in the van as he crossed into the United States, said Capt. Michael Van Durme, of the environmental crimes investigation unit.

Two Long Island men, Adam C. Borisuk and Michael D. Brooks, sent tens of thousands of young snapping turtle hatchlings, collected from freshly laid nests of eggs from ponds and lakes throughout the area, to a turtle farm in Louisiana, Captain Van Durme said. The owner would then mix the illegally harvested “common snapping turtles” with the “alligator snapping turtles” he was licensed to farm, for export to China and eventually dinner plates, he said.

New York State law prohibits the illegal commercialization of wildlife, possession of protected species, and a 2006 law specifically protects all reptiles an amphibians.

The case began after an entire population of spotted turtles being studied by students at the University of Buffalo simply disappeared, said Captain Van Durme, who supervised the investigation. State environmental protection officials had learned of cases breaking up reptile smuggling rings in other states, and opened an undercover investigation. Officers made contacts while pretending to operate a wildlife photography booth at reptile shows, then moved to buying and selling animals as they built their case.

Buyers ranged from collectors who paid thousands of dollars to add a highlight to their collections with a hard-to-get specimen to the Chinese consumers with a well-known taste for snapping turtle meat, which can be had at roughly $1 a pound.

Frank Indiviglio, a former Staten Island Zoo and Bronx Zoo keeper, who has written and spoken extensively about reptiles, said while illegal trade is well-known, it did not reflect the reptile-loving community in general.

“The local herpetological societies are almost always conservation oriented,” he said.

Read more!

On the trail of wildlife traders

Sun2Surf 19 Mar 09

About 200g of cannabis is enough to put one away for 20 years but when someone is caught smuggling 200 turtle eggs, the maximum penalty would probably be a two-day jail term or RM200 fine. Azrina Abdullah, director of Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, speaks to Karen Arukesamy on wildlife smuggling in Malaysia.

Tell us about your organisation.
Traffic was set up in the 1970s, after the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It is an international convention of which Malaysia is one of its members. This convention enables countries to cooperate in the monitoring of the international trade of plants and animals, including local wildlife species. Traffic is a joint programme with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and International Union for Conservation of Nature. We monitor both legal and illegal wildlife trade including plants. The Southeast Asia team started off with only three people in its Kuala Lumpur office which was set up in 1991. Today we have expanded to 25 personnel within the region – KL, Hanoi, Bangkok and Jakarta. We are the biggest Traffic office in the world and the only NGO that has a memorandum of understanding with the Cites secretariat to develop training material and provide information and resources on the wildlife trade.

Every so often, we hear reports of wildlife shipments being confiscated or seized, just how bad is this trade in Malaysia or the region?
Malaysia has the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, which was a good start compared to other countries, which did not have such laws earlier. Despite the Act and Cites Act passed in 2007, we are seeing an increase in the illegal wildlife trade in Malaysia. If you look at sales – I’m not saying that the trade of all species but some have gone up. The sales of pangolin, for example, have gone up significantly. It is the most popular species that is smuggled, especially to China in frozen form for the meat trade and the traditional medicine market which uses its scales. You cannot breed pangolins or keep them as pets.

Hence, with the illegal trade itself, it is a worrying trend in Malaysia and nearby countries. First, we have an efficient transport network and good ports, that in itself is an advantage for the smugglers. Basically it facilitates, indirectly, a lot of smuggling because you don’t expect the enforcement agency to scan or check every cargo that passes through Port Klang, for example.

What animals are protected in Malaysia?
According to the Perhilitan website, in Peninsular Malaysia, there are 740 local species and 1,856 exotic species, which are listed under Cites and protected under the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972 (Act 76). There are two categories of protection – "protected" and "totally protected". (see full list at www.wildlife.gov.my)

What made Malaysia not just one of the top 10 global hubs for wildlife trafficking but also a harvest and transit point?
Yes, we are among the top 10 smuggling hubs together with the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the United States. Vietnam is also catching up.

As for the harvest point … it is because Southeast Asia is rich in bio-diversity. Recent seizures of tigers, fresh water turtles and pangolins reflect their abundance. They are not from outside but harvested in Malaysia.

Pangolins have a zero quota and are not for trade even though under Appendix II of the convention you can trade in them. Yet, you still find people trying to smuggle it because of the high demand and value of its meat.

But you do see a lot of species like fresh water turtles being heavily harvested. It again goes back to our good infrastructure and geographical location in the centre of the region. We have got one of the best infrastructures in the region and that makes it easy for the smugglers to transport the animals.

We have seen more reports of seizures at sea, especially in Johor, and at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Penang International Airport. However, we have not seen many seizures in Penang lately, we do not know if they are not reported or whether Perhilitan has not released the records of their seizures.

Are there buyers in Malaysia?
Yes, there are Malaysian buyers. In addition, there is also a new trend – trading through the Internet, and the buyers are both Malaysians and foreigners. There are a number of Malaysian websites that sell rare and endangered species. For example, the Madagascar tortoise is being sold widely through the Internet and there is no way of tracing the sellers because most of the time the information on their sites is insufficient to show if they are individuals or companies and their contact numbers are not registered.

Can you tell us how some of the smuggling is done?
Some of the popular methods include strapping birds eggs to the body, coiling snakes into stockings, hiding reptile eggs in clothing and stuffing birds into plastic tubes. Most of the time the most creative smugglers are not Malaysians. But there have been many cases where the Malaysian smugglers stacked up the legal load of dangerous animals like snakes, or the ones that bite, on the top of the box and hide the illegal and less dangerous ones at the bottom.

So, there is no way the Customs officers are going to put their hands into the box, although it is their duty to check. They are supposed to check but if you look at the quantity of cargo and containers and the number of items in them, how do you check them all?

Even with frozen fish, they pack the legal meat on top and illegal meat in the bottom. The methods are often the same.

There are ways of checking if the enforcement officers go through every single box or cargo. I mean it’s not impossible but it is time consuming and the items have to be sent for lab testing. The procedures are tedious with the amount of paper work involved. Not that I am defending them and saying that they need to get rid of paper work, it is their job to protect the wildlife but the lack of manpower and resources often come in the way.

Recently, there was a report about a man caught with live pigeons stuffed into each leg of the tights he was wearing under his trousers.

A few years ago, there was this woman who was caught at an Australian airport; she was wearing a huge skirt and when she was passing through the Customs, one of the officers saw that her skirt was moving, and when they checked, they found she had sewn pockets on the skirt to hide little bags of live fish.

The funny ones, tend to be in Thailand, going through the airport or up to Laos or to the borders.

Who are those involved? Are they collectors, businessmen or criminals?
It depends. Most are mules who do not know who the buyers are or where the item will end up. Some of those caught with wild orchids are collectors. There were even researchers who posed as tourists, and tried to smuggle wild orchids and seeds from Kota Kinabalu Park and got caught at the airport. Even ordinary people buy animal body parts for medicine but they do not know these are smuggled items and it is the same with pets, people don’t really know some of the animals they buy in the pet stores may be smuggled animals, especially when they are rare.

Why do you think smugglers are willing to go through so much trouble?
The risk is low and the profits are very high. If someone were caught for drug trafficking, the maximum penalty would be death. But when someone is found guilty of wildlife trafficking or smuggling, the maximum they would get is probably a few hundred ringgit fine. Another important factor is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to show that certain products contain protected species’ parts. Sometimes the smugglers are just fined RM50 or RM60.

What are the most easily smuggled animals?
It depends on how creative the smugglers are and – not that I am encouraging people – reptiles, especially tortoises, are one of the easiest to smuggle because at a certain temperature, you can easily bundle them up. The Madagascar tortoises are popular.

Where do smugglers get these animals from?
Selangor is one of the top illegal harvesting points in the peninsula for fresh water turtles. The surrounding states are also high on the list. We also see a lot of wildlife going to Johor and even KL, but it depends on what the wildlife will be used for, decorative items, food, pets or medicines.

What is the best way to curb this illegal trade?
It boils down to the police, Customs and Perhilitan (Wildlife and National Parks Department) ensuring that the provisions in the law are fully used and the judges are not ignorant of the seriousness of the issue. There have been many cases where the prosecutors pushed for the maximum penalty in the Protection of Wildlife Act but the judge or magistrate did not understand the seriousness of the crime. They don’t take it seriously. Usually, it’s a small fine and jail terms are rare. For example, the man caught in Kelantan with a frozen tiger was only jailed a day and fined RM7,000. We have been pushing for a review of the law since 1998. The government said the law was reviewed last year but I don’t know when it will be presented to Parliament and what the new provision are.

Do you think Malaysia has addressed this problem effectively?
To say that nothing has been done is not accurate. We need to also look at the challenges faced by the enforcement agencies. Governments tend to say that they do not have enough resources, budgets for manpower and equipment but if you look at the Wildlife Protection Act and Cites Act, the Customs and police can play a role in helping Perhilitan to seize smuggled wildlife items.

You can see collaborations in some seizures but not enough to act as a deterrent to smugglers. The police and customs have powers to take action on the smugglers, however, we don’t see it being done effectively.

That is one reason why Southeast Asia is one of the main players in this trade. The police, Customs, Cites and the judiciary should work closely with each other in combating the illegal wildlife trade.

How effective is the Protection of Wildlife Act?
The Act should be reviewed as it is outdated and has many loopholes. There are some provisions in the Act, which could not be revealed, and that alone has hampered the implementation of the law. It doesn’t serve as a deterrent to curb the problem and the lack of awareness and knowledge among law enforcers on the subject is yet another problem. The penalties are too low to act as a deterrent. Many offenders get away with a compound.

How many cases have been solved (over the last 10 years)?
Perhilitan solved a remarkable 6,587 wildlife trade cases from 2005 till January this year. Some 44 cases were taken to court. The department also seized 917 owls in Muar last November and 319 in Kuantan in January.

It conducted checks on pet shops under Ops Sayang and the premises of taxidermists and leather hide sellers under Ops 49 and Ops Kulit, last year.

Officers from its headquarters raided a house in Muar last November, where nine "totally protected" and four "protected" wildlife species were found in a freezer. The suspect pleaded not guilty and bail was set at RM19,000. The same suspect was apprehended in 2004 for having 182 pangolins and 1.3kg of pangolin scales. He was fined RM7,500. The estimated value of the seizures is RM86,000.

Officers also raided a store in Segamat, Johor, last November where 7,093 clouded monitor lizards with an estimated weight of 35 tons were confiscated. The black market value is estimated at RM50-80 a kilo.

The department’s officers seized more than RM3 million worth of live and dead exotic wildlife. The seizures followed raids at two locations in Johor. In other raids in the state, more than 13 species of protected animals were seized. Among the animals found were 7,000 clouded monitor lizards, 1,000 owls, pangolins, crested serpent eagles, pythons, mousedeer, Malayan porcupine, wild pigs and bear body parts.

Traffic has launched an online petition to push for a revision of the present law. What has the support from the public been?
The petition asks for changes to the protection of wildlife. The response is disappointing. We have only about 3,700 signatures altogether and our target is about 100,000. It’s been nearly a year and if you look at the list of people who have signed up, a lot of them are from outside Malaysia so we have a lot of foreigners signing in. One of the things about the public is that if they are not affected then it is not their problem. If a tiger is killed, how is it going to affect me and my family? It’s got nothing to do with my family so I’m not going to sign it or they don’t realise its importance. So it’s the understanding of the whole ecosystem that is lacking in Malaysia.

And I think environmental education is missing from the syllabus. So you see children, even my nieces, who have pets but they don’t understand where the animals came from and their habitat. So it’s just a matter of going to the pet store, coming back with an animal and playing around with it. I remember when I was a kid I used to go around the drains in Section 14 with some of my friends after school looking for tadpoles and tilapias – we were actually monitoring some of the tadpoles to see how they were growing.

It’s so different now in terms of the education before because I remember in school all those years ago, teachers made sure we went out of the class and walked around the school just to see what was around the school. If you ask any kid, "What’s the name of this plant?", they probably won’t know.

Some of the NGOs, for example Malaysian Nature Society and WWF, are doing a great job in educating the public on plants and animals and they’ve been doing it for years but you still see a lot of people not appreciating what is around them. This also reflects on our development: builders and contractors are given permits to develop just about anything. So you wonder who
needs to be educated – the children or the adults.

What are the programmes prepared by Traffic to create awareness among people especially the younger generation?
We give talks in schools. We have collaborated with Perhilitan to come up with a national tiger action plan which was launched last year. We go to the villages and towns to talk about the importance of conservation and we encourage villagers to report to Perhilitan or any of these NGOs if they see snares or suspected poachers. For adults, our main focus has been enforcement agencies because we feel we need to sensitise enforcement officers.

Read more!

Nearly a third of U.S. bird species in trouble: report

Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 19 Mar 09;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly one-third of all U.S. bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, with birds in Hawaii facing a "borderline ecological disaster," scientists reported on Thursday.

The State of the Birds report, issued by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar along with conservation groups and university ornithologists, also noted some successes, including the recovery of the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon and other species after the banning of the chemical DDT.

"When we talk about birds and we talk about wildlife, we're also talking about the economics of this country," Salazar told reporters as the report was released.

Wildlife watching and recreation generate $122 billion annually, the report said.

Salazar mentioned revenue from hunting, fishing and bird-watching, but added that President Barack Obama's stimulus package and proposed federal budgets for the remainder of 2009 and 2010 offer more money for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which aims to protect birds and other creatures.

The report, available online at www.stateofthebirds.org, presents data collected by government and academic scientists, as well as information contributed by amateur bird-watchers.

Wetland bird populations have soared since 1968, with an increase of up to 60 from levels 40 years ago. But birds in other habitats -- forests, grasslands and arid areas -- have declined as much as 40 percent.

HAWAIIAN BIRDS MOST VULNERABLE

It is in the perceived paradise of Hawaii that birds have declined the most, the report said.

"More bird species are vulnerable to extinction in Hawaii than anywhere else in the United States," according to the report.

Before humans arrived in the Hawaiian islands, possibly as early as the year 300, there were 113 bird species that occurred nowhere else on Earth. Since humans arrived, 71 species have gone extinct and 31 more are listed as threatened or endangered.

The main culprits are new plant and animal species introduced into the Hawaiian ecosystem, said George Wallace of the American Bird Conservancy, who wrote the report's section on Hawaii.

"Most Americans would be surprised that a place that we usually associate with being an idyllic paradise would have so many serious bird conservation problems," Wallace said in a telephone interview.

"These types of isolated island flora and fauna tend to be very, very sensitive to introductions of foreign organisms."

John Fitzpatrick of Cornell University went farther, calling Hawaii a "borderline ecological disaster" and "the epicenter of extinctions and near extinctions."

Overall, the United States is home to more than 800 species of birds; 67 of those are federally listed as endangered or threatened, with an additional 184 species causing concern because of they are narrowly distributed or have declining populations, the report said.

Report: Birds endangered by energy development
Dina Cappiello, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;

WASHINGTON – As the Obama administration pursues more homegrown energy sources, a new government report faults energy production of all types — wind, ethanol and mountaintop coal mining — for contributing to steep drops in bird populations.

The first-of-its-kind government report chronicles a four-decade decline in many of the country's bird populations and provides many reasons for it, from suburban sprawl to the spread of exotic species to global warming.

In almost every case, energy production is also playing a role.

"Energy development has significant negative effects on birds in North America," the report concludes.

Birds can collide with wind turbines and oil and gas wells, and studies have shown that some species, such as prairie chickens and sage grouse, will avoid nesting near the structures.

Ponds created during the extraction of coal-bed methane gas breed mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, leading to more bird deaths. Transmission lines, roads to access energy fields and mountaintop removal to harvest coal can destroy and fragment birds' living spaces.

Environmentalists and scientists say the report should signal to the Obama administration to act cautiously as it seeks to expand renewable energy production and the electricity grid on public lands and tries to harness wind energy along the nation's coastlines.

The report also shows that conservation efforts can work. Birds that reside in wetlands and the nation's waterfowl have rebounded over the past 40 years, a period marked by increased protections for wetlands.

"We need to go into these energies with our environmental eyes open," said John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped draft the report along with non-profit advocacy groups. "We need to attend to any form of energy development, not just oil and gas."

Many of the bird groups with the most rapid declines in the last 40 years inhabit areas with the greatest potential for energy development.

Among the energy-bird conflicts cited by the report:

• More than half of the monitored bird species that live on prairies have experienced population losses. These birds, such as the lesser prairie-chicken, are threatened by farmers converting grasslands into corn fields to meet demand for biofuels.

• In the Arctic, where two-thirds of all shorebirds are species of concern, melting ice brought about by climate change could open up more areas to oil and gas production. Studies show that trash near drilling rigs attracts gulls that prey on other species.

• Mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia clears patches of forest contributing to the decline of birds like the cerulean warbler that breeds and forests in treetops.

The U.S. State of Birds report, released by the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday, was requested in October 2007 by President George W. Bush.

Salazar, who wants to establish renewable energy zones and is drawing up rules for offshore wind energy production, said Thursday the report should "be a call to action, but it is action in our reach."

The report uses data from three long-running bird censuses to establish trends over time. It shows that birds in Hawaii are more in danger of becoming extinct than anywhere else in the United States. In the last 40 years, populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 and 40 percent.

While its findings are similar to earlier studies, it is the first to be issued by the government and the agency in charge of managing energy production on public lands and protecting the nation's wildlife.

The report did not indicate whether one form of energy production is more detrimental than the other.

Federal report highlights threat to Hawaii birds
Audrey Mcavoy, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Mar 09;

HONOLULU – Hawaii's native avian population is in peril, with nearly all the state's birds in danger of becoming extinct, a federal report says.

One-third of the nation's endangered birds are in Hawaii, said the report, issued Thursday by the Interior Department. Thirty-one Hawaiian bird species are listed as endangered, more than anywhere else in the country.

"That is the epicenter of extinctions and near-extinctions," said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped produce the study. "Hawaii is (a) borderline ecological disaster."

Hawaii's native birds are threatened by the destruction of their habitats by invasive plant species and feral animals like pigs, goats and sheep.

Diseases, especially those borne by mosquitoes, are another killer.

One of those in trouble is the palila, a yellow-crowned songbird that lives on the upper slopes of Mauna Kea. Its population plunged by more than 60 percent from 6,600 in 2002 to 2,200 last year.

Habitat loss and predators are part of the problem, said Holly Freifeld, a vertebrate recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu.

Another is that grazing feral sheep ruin mamane trees, which provide palila birds with their preferred food: mamane seed pods. The trees are also being killed by disease.

The Fish and Wildlife Service plans to fence off an area on Mauna Kea, and remove sheep from the fenced area, to give the palila an environment where it can flourish, Freifeld said.

The restored habitat would also likely help other endangered birds which also have lived in the same forest ecosystem, she said.

Similar habitat restoration projects have worked in the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.

Workers there installed fences, controlled invasive plant species, removed pigs, and planted koa and ohia trees.

The Interior Department's report, called "The State of the Birds United States of America 2009," noted Hakalau's populations of the Hawaii creeper and akiapolaau have increased dramatically.

"Application of these successful methods is urgently needed elsewhere," the report said.

Scott Fretz, wildlife program manager at the state's Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said he was confident such efforts could help restore all of Hawaii's endangered bird species, excluding those that have already become extinct.

"The basic, fundamental problem that we have is a lack of funding to do what we need to do," Fretz said. "If we had a lot more funding than we do, we would be able to recover most, if not all, of the species that we have that are endangered."

Fretz said legislation pending before Congress could provide a welcome boost. One would provide funding for restoration efforts. Another designed to provide money to help states cope with climate change would help Hawaii because warmer temperatures allow mosquitoes to enter habitats at higher elevations currently inhabited by the palila and other forest birds.

The U.S. State of Birds report was requested in October 2007 by President George W. Bush.

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Are Beetles Imported into the U.S. to Kill Invasive Trees Doing Too Good a Job?

Strategy that unleashed cedar leaf beetles on Tamarisk trees may have to be revised as the chompers spread to threaten endangered birds

Anne Minard, Scientific American 19 Mar 09;

A foreign beetle imported to attack invasive trees in the U.S. Southwest may have brought its own culinary agenda. Researchers in Utah and Arizona are sounding the alarm about salt cedar leaf beetles, which were imported from Kazakhstan several years ago to control invasive tamarisk trees.

"Now that the beetle is spreading to large areas, we need to start looking for unexpected consequences of defoliation and death of the tamarisk," says Philip Dennison, a geographer at The University of Utah and lead author of a study warning of the unintended risks published this month in the online edition of the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.

Tamarisk trees, native to Europe and Asia, were first planted in the U.S. in the early 1800s as ornamentals and to stabilize soil, especially on riverbanks. The trees took off, and now dominate 1.6 million acres (650,000 hectares) of mostly riverside habitat throughout the Southwest. Dense tamarisk stands have crowded out native trees like cottonwoods and willows. And tamarisk gets a bad rap for being thirsty enough to drop water tables and dewater small streams—although the new research says the rep may be undeserved. Tamarisk was first identified as a pest around 1900, and biologists since the 1940s have implemented various control strategies, including herbicides, manual removal, and defoliation by goats and beetles. Total cost estimates approach $100 million for the decades-long efforts.

Beginning in 2001 biologists in nearly all southwestern states—with input and funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)—released the beetles in tamarisk thickets.

The program has been "spectacularly successful, one of the most successful biological control projects ever in the U.S.," says Jack Deloach, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) research arm, the Agricultural Research Service.

But Dennison and his co-authors are now proposing that officials put on the brakes, based on satellite monitoring in 2006 and 2007 of 56 beetle-treated areas in southern Utah. The researchers report that beetles have been dutifully stripping the tamarisk of their needles but that some of the immediate effects are worrisome.

As it turns out, tamarisk trees have a silver lining, Dennison says. Their sprawling branches, which are covered with long, pliable needlelike leaves, provide coveted cover for native birds. Among them the endangered willow flycatcher, which routinely nests in the tamarisk thickets that replaced the willow trees there. Salt cedar beetles were originally kept out of Arizona and New Mexico to protect the flycatcher, but researchers report that the beetles are now creeping from Utah's Virgin River into flycatcher habitat in southern Utah and northern Arizona. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a Tucson, Ariz.–based conservation group, has filed a notice of intent to sue the USDA and APHIS to halt the beetle program, charging that the bugs have gotten out of hand and are threatening the endangered birds.

Nate Ament, a restoration ecologist with the nonprofit Tamarisk Coalition in Grand Junction, Colo., says the greatest risk to streamside ecosystems comes in tamarisk's wake. The new satellite data show tamarisk-related water loss is lower than previously believed. If tamarisk trees are killed off by the beetles, newer weedy arrivals—like Russian knapweed, Russian olive and pepperweed—could hammer the water supply even more.

"We really emphasize revegetation with native trees as a crucial component of the restoration process," Ament says.

On that point, all sides agree. The CBD's Robin Silver says one of the aims of the suit is to prompt revegetation with native trees, like willows, in places where the tamarisk might die off.

Read more!

Global warming greatest threat to polar bears

Pierre-henry Deshayes Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;

TROMSOE, Norway (AFP) – The five countries that ring the Arctic on Thursday declared climate change the single greatest threat to polar bears, calling for urgent action to curb global warming.

Months ahead of a crucial global climate conference, the five countries -- Canada, Denmark (with Greenland), Norway, Russia and the United States -- expressed their "deep concern" at the end of a three-day meeting in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe.

"The parties agreed that long-term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," they wrote in a joint statement following discussion on threats to the white bear that have emerged since they first signed a conservation agreement in 1973.

That agreement was aimed mainly at banning the hunting of polar bears, which at the time was considered the only real threat to the animal.

Nearly four decades later, however, the Arctic partners said they "agreed that impacts of climate change and the continued and increasing loss and fragmentation of sea ice... constitutes the most important threat to polar bear conservation."

They also "recognised the urgent need for an effective global response that will address the challenges of climate change."

While the statement was not legally binding, it was welcomed by environmentalists and scientists who said they hoped it would send a clear message to the international community ahead of talks to be held in Copenhagen in December on a new global pact on climate change to replace the Kyoto accord.

"It's a success," WWF polar bear expert Geoff York told AFP.

"The parties took significant steps in the right direction and the responsability now lies with governments to take action in order to reduce their emissions," he insisted.

Andrew Derocher, a Canadian who heads up scientific umbrella organisation the Polar Bear Specialist Group, was also pleased with the outcome of the Tromsoe meeting.

The final statement was "much more encouraging than I had feared at the beginning of the meeting," he told AFP, pointing out that he was "very pleased that the predominant threat of climate change was unanimously recognised by all nations.

"Now the question is how this message translates in Copenhagen and how the message of these two meetings (in Tromsoe and Copenhagen) will then translate in the global community and its willingness to cut emissions," he added.

Global warming is believed to be to blame for the increasingly rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice, which makes up the polar bear's primary hunting ground for its main prey, seals.

According to satellite pictures, the Arctic sea ice has over the past four summers stood at its lowest level in three decades, while some estimates say the ice could disappear completely during the warm months in the near future, which would have devastating consequences for the polar bear.

With the mercury rising ever higher, as many as two thirds of the 20-25,000 polar bears that roam the Arctic could disappear by the middle of this century, according to a recent estimate from the US Geological Survey.

The melting ice means not only shorter hunting seasons, but it also means the bears have to cross greater distances to reach their icy hunting grounds, something that has led to a deterioration of the bears' health, impacting their reproductive capacities and the cubs' chances of survival.

The polar bear is also threatened by chemical pollutants from industries and increased human activity in the once-pristine Arctic.

The Arctic states, which have only met twice since 1981, also agreed in Tromsoe to more frequent exchanges. They are now set to meet in Canada in 2011 and in Russia two years later.

Arctic nations take important first step towards saving polar bears
WWF 19 Mar 09;

Tromso, Norway - Five nations committed by treaty to conserve polar bears have come up with a resolution linking the future of the species to urgent global action on climate change.

“We are very encouraged by the final declaration from this meeting,” says Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for WWF International’s Arctic Programme.

“We were concerned that some countries were lagging behind the others in their commitment to dealing with climate change, but ultimately, the parties recognized climate change as the primary threat to the future well-being of polar bears. They also recognized formally “the urgent need for an effective global response that will address the challenges of climate change”, to be addressed at fora such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”.

The five Arctic nations signed a binding 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears that includes provisions to protect polar bears and their habitat.

The Norwegian government played a key role in bringing the parties together, and in setting high expectations for the meeting. Erik Solheim, Environment Minister of Norway told Norwegian television. “It would be an amazing crime against future generations if we did not save the polar bear.”

The meeting made some other important advances. It has agreed to come up with a circumpolar action plan for the management of bears, and to formally designate the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as the scientific advisory body to the Agreement. These were both measures proposed by WWF in advance of the meeting.

“Although we are generally very pleased with the meeting outcome, this is by no means the end of the story- it is the start on the path to polar bear survival,” says York. “The real proof of this new commitment to taking urgent and effective action on climate change is what leaders of these nations will commit to later this year. Ministers from these five countries are meeting in this same town toward the end of April at a meeting of the Arctic Council, and have a golden opportunity then to outline their national commitment to climate change.”

Ultimately, the polar bear nations must join with other countries at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 to sign an effective global deal on climate change that will save the polar bears’ Arctic sea ice habitat, along with the entire ice ecosystem.

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Will Success Kill the Pangasius?

Barbara Hardinghaus, The Spiegel 18 Mar 09;

The Pangasius, or striped catfish, began taking the European fish market by storm a few years ago. It satisfied a voracious appetite for inexpensive white fish. But its success may become its downfall.

Manuela Wendland looks through her round glasses at the many different kinds of fish in the fresh food counter. The saleswoman sees whole fish, half fish and fish fillets, all of them arranged on ice and surrounded by lettuce leaves.

Wendland wears a wide, blue apron and a hood over her ash-blond hair. These days, she says, she is seeing more and more Pangasius, a fresh-water species also known as the striped catfish.

It arrives frozen, Wendland says, and has practically no bones; it's mild-tasting and a good fish for kids. She picks up a piece and places it on a scale in a Hamburg supermarket. It weighs 198 grams (7 ounces) and costs €1.96 ($2.50).

The Pangasius made its first appearance in the fresh food counter three years ago. It was a new fish, a crisis fish that had been slated to fill the gap created by overfishing. Every year, the average German eats 16 kilograms (35 pounds) of fish, or about 50 percent more than in 1970. Varieties like cod, ocean perch and spiny dogfish are becoming scarce.

Nowadays, the customers standing in front of Wendland's counter know not to buy cod, wild salmon, ocean perch, tuna or North Sea plaice. According to a recent study by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 77 percent of edible fish populations have been fished to the limit or beyond. Even pollack, an inexpensive, white fish commonly used in fish sticks, is become harder to find.

The People's Fish

But customers want inexpensive white fish with low fat content, and the Pangasius has all the beneficial characteristics a fish variety needs for the wealthy world to buy it. It is the new people's fish -- born in Vietnam and bred to suit the tastes of people around the world. It could become the fish of the future -- if it weren't for the fact that mankind is producing the Pangasius to death.

The white and healthy filets of Pangasius in Manuela Wendland's counter are more than just fish filets. They represent a small slice of the global economy. Wendland wraps the Pangasius filet in paper, puts it in a bag, staples the price tag to the bag and says: "This fish swims in the Mekong." In fact, three million tons of Pangasius swim in the Mekong, almost 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) away from Wendland's fish stand, where they live in ponds the size of football fields or in cages in the water beneath houses.

This year, Vietnam will export 1.5 million tons of Pangasius filets to the rest of the world, including 143,000 tons to Germany alone. It arrives by ship in the northern ports of Bremerhaven or Hamburg, where it is loaded onto trucks bound for wholesale markets, from which it eventually reaches places like Wendland's or the frozen food sections of many other German supermarket chains as both filets and fish sticks.

Relative to 2006, 22 percent more Pangasius was shipped to Germany in 2007. And if importers have their way, the volume will continue to grow. But, if what the fishermen farming the fish halfway around the world say is true, there might not be as much Pangasius next year.

The Middle Man

One of the importers with a sense of what is happening to the Pangasius is Ulf Blaes. He is standing in a large building on the Mekong River with 1,500 women wearing numbers, white aprons, hoods and masks over their mouths. They look like doctors dissecting fish on long operating tables. "As a wholesaler," says Blaes, "you have to have Pangasius in your product line."

Blaes, a 49-year-old German businessman, runs the Food Company. He works as a middleman in the global food market whose job entails traveling around the world to transform the wishes of customers into demand and then convert the demand into supply. He buys fish from around the globe, including plaice from the world's oceans, zander from Kazakhstan, tuna, barramundi, swordfish and Pangasius from Vietnam.

Blaes mixes himself among the women to get a closer look at their work. Like them, he is wearing an apron, a hood and rubber boots. He travels to Vietnam six times a year to inspect the fish he is buying and the way they are farmed. Each trip involves flying from Germany to Ho Chi Minh City, driving six hours south in his dark Mercedes through small villages and on narrow roads, then taking a ferry across the enormous Mekong River to a fish farm owned by the Ntaco Corporation.

The fishermen arrive in their small boats to meet with Blaes behind the factory. They bring him fish in large tubs with water splashing from the top. The Pangasius industry is now responsible for the livelihoods of 5 million people. Workers in 34 plants can turn the fish into packaged fillets in two hours. The packages are then loaded into containers and shipped to 107 countries.

Blaes is the tallest person in the building and his head sticks out high above those of the Vietnamese workers. He wears canvas tennis shoes. Beneath his work coat, you can see his jeans, his untucked shirt and his Blackberry in his pocket. He uses the device often, reading and typing messages or making calls. His Blackberry connects him from here -- Long Xuyen, a city in the southern Vietnamese province of An Giang -- to the rest of the world. He also uses it to set prices and help him broker trades between the Mekong and the global community of consumers.

An example of the types of messages Blaes types into his Blackberry is: "Color: premium white or light pink. 120 to 230 grams. Five to no more than 10 percent protective glaze." The world wants a fish that is as standardized as a meat patty in a fast food restaurant. This is Blaes's goal -- and, on some days, his problem.

A fish is not an uncomplicated creature. It lives in a body of water that sometimes receives a lot of rain, and sometimes almost no rain at all. Sometimes there is a lot of oxygen in the water, and sometimes not much. Sometimes the fish does well, and sometimes it doesn't.

Global appetite and declining fish populations have made Pangasius a farmed species. But, for centuries, it remained a wild fish that traveled upstream to search for food along the riverbed.

As the fish grew and became more powerful, it reached lengths of up to 1.5 meters (five feet) and weights of up to 45 kilograms (100 pounds). When it was 3 or 4-years-old, it would leave the river's main tributary. The females would deposit their egg sacks and the males their sperm on tree roots in remote, flooded fields. Then, the fish would return to the Mekong and drift back downriver from Cambodia to Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Each year, 20-30 million fish would migrate into the delta region, where they were greeted by fishermen standing ready on the banks to catch the fish with fishing rods, nets and baskets.

French biologists were first to think about bringing the Pangasius onto the world market. They wanted to find out whether the fish could be cultivated, which entailed raising, feeding and breeding it. They wanted to intervene in the slow-moving course of nature.

The biologists built wooden cages, dug deep ponds and developed two species of the fish exclusively for farming purposes. The first was the Basa.

But the scientists soon realized that the Basa grew too slowly. It took an entire year before it weighed the two kilograms (4.4 pounds) it needed to go on the market, and it was also too fatty.

The Crisis of Falling Fish Prices

The second species they developed was the Tra, which spent most of its time swimming along the bottom of the river. But the Tra was a fast grower and only needed six months to reach the right weight. What's more, it also had little fat, was not susceptible to very many diseases, had white meat and was robust. By feeding the fish a mixture of rice bran and insects, the scientists coaxed it to the surface. This was the beginning of modern aquaculture in Vietnam and a new age, one in which an edible fish, the Pangasius, was added to the country's existing exports of coffee, cacao, pepper and crude oil.

Most of the fish went to the United States, that is, until American corn farmers -- who had themselves started farming Pangasius in flooded fields -- began protesting that Vietnamese producers were dumping their fish onto the market. Then, five years ago, the Pangasius-farming industry in the US successfully lobbied for legislation that slapped a 650 percent duty on Pangasius from Vietnam.

This made the American corn farmers happy, but now the Vietnamese fishermen needed a new market for their fish. They eventually found it halfway around the world and began exporting most of their fish to Russia, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. In 2001, Vietnam exported 300,000 tons of fillets. Seven years later, that number had jumped to 2.1 million tons.

'Constantly Going Uphill'

The Pangasius transformed the Mekong Delta into a proud region -- and made many fishermen rich. It became a source of affluence and attracted farmers, craftsmen and laborers to the region, including Ky Anh, a businessman. "In the past," he says, "things were constantly going uphill with the fish."

While men work nearby, sawing wood on a Sunday morning, Anh sits at a table with a calculator. A sign on the side of the driveway, which leads down to the bank of the Mekong, reads: "Sawmill, Buying and Selling, Round Logs as Construction Material."

Anh pushes up his visor and sets out a tray of red lemonade and ice. His wife is sitting on a bench, her lips painted a bright red. They own a big car and a big house. Anh can't say whether the wood or the fish has been more profitable. "At first," he says, "I just provided the fishermen with wood for cages. Then I started farming myself."

Houses on stilts stand above the water at the point where the edge of the sawmill reaches the riverbank. Beneath these houses are cages full of fish, which grow so quickly that they have to be removed from the enclosures after only eight weeks. At this point, they are six months old and weigh about one kilogram (2.2 pounds), which makes their filets the perfect size: between 120 and 230 grams (four-to-eight ounces).

If the fish are not removed from the cages at this point, they will continue to grow until they reach a size at which no one wants them anymore -- not the local factory and certainly not brokers like Blaes.

'The Crisis'

"We are hoping for a good price," says Ky Anh.

The price early last year was 12,000 dong (€0.50; $0.65) per kilogram. By June, the price had gone up to 14,000 dong, but it was still too low. And, in November, it fell to 13,000 dong. The only problem, Anh says, is that farming Pangasius costs him 15,000 dong a kilogram.

In the past, he says, he could sometimes get 17,000 dong or even 18,000 Dong a kilogram. That was when the fish was still a success story, "before the crisis," as Anh says.

If you ask Anh where the crisis comes from, he doesn't know -- at least not exactly. He shrugs his shoulders and speculates that the problem might have something to do with inflation or the financial crisis. But one thing he is sure of is that part of the problem can be attributed to the cost of feed.

In the past, when the fishermen sold their catch at the local market in Chau Doc, they knew what drove prices up and down. But now that they produce for the world market, things have become too complex. For instance, the exchange rate is unsteady, and the dong has lost value against the dollar.

In the evening, when darkness descends over the Mekong, Anh returns to his big house and sits down in front his computer to look up prices online. The price of soybeans, the main type of feed for the fish, is up. The beans -- which are produced in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and China -- are a rich source of protein. But that's not a problem exclusive to the Pangasius farmed in Vietnam -- it also applies to other animals around the world, including the cattle used to produce the meat that goes into hamburgers sold at fast food restaurants. Likewise, the fact that soybeans are also used to make biodiesel is also driving prices up.

Each fish has to be fed for four months, and feed makes up 3,000 dong of the total per-kilogram cost. When the fish are six-months-old, the farmers are suddenly faced with the need to get rid of them as quickly as possible -- and at any price.

The Farmers Respond

On Sundays, while Anh goes to work early, the other fish farmers attend a 5 a.m. mass at Pastor Khoa's church, a white building near the river. The men wear light-colored shirts, and the women colorful dresses. Together, they sing, pray and ask for favors under a banner that reads: "Dear God, please answer my prayers."

Anh goes to Pastor Khoa's white church, too, but he does it in the afternoon. There, he prays and asks God for favors. "If things remain this bad," says Anh, "I too will have to shut down my business."

And now that the price of Pangasius has dropped by 3,000 dong per fish, a third of the fishermen in the countryside have given up.

But Anh and 800 other fishermen have kept at it. To protect themselves against the vagaries of the world market, they formed the An Giang Fisheries Association, a professional association of fish farmers and factory owners. The association offered courses, such as "Techniques for Egg Incubation," "Standards and Norms," "Protection against Disease without Antibiotics." The members knew that there were problems a few years ago, and they wanted to make their Pangasius even better and more profitable.

But none of this did any good because higher feed costs forced the fishermen to cut their fish populations in half. Nowadays, the An Giang Fisheries Association is bracing itself against world markets in an effort to safeguard Pangasius revenues.

From Feast to Famine

Le Chi Binh is the chairman of the An Giang Fisheries Association. Today, he is sitting in his office several kilometers downriver from the factory where Ulf Blaes, the German businessman, is inspecting fillets. If the association's plan to safeguard revenues doesn't succeed, Binh says, the fish that brought prosperity to the delta could quickly turn into a big problem for Mekong fishermen.

Smoking a cigarette, Binh looks out the window at the river. "Now we are trying to prevent a situation in which there will soon not be enough fish," he says. In other words, where there was once a surplus, there might soon be a shortage.

First the fishermen could disappear, he says, followed by the factory owners and, finally, by the fish.

Can Pangasius Survive?

"We have asked for help," Binh adds, referring to the association's request for donations in the summer and the petition it submitted to the government. The association wants the government to reduce interest rates. However, since Vietnam is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which prohibits subsidies, this might be a difficult proposition. It also wants the government to order the banks to approve new loans to factory owners and fish farmers that they can use to buy new fish stocks.

In fact, at the moment, sales are so poor that, if they don't get these loans, the farmers and factory owners cannot continue to operate. The government, says Binh, should set a minimum price for the fish, adding that the association has proposed 14,200 dong each. He also points out that, at this price, the fishermen would still be losing money -- but at least it would be a start.

The High Price of Cheap

In recent years, as profits rose, the fishermen built themselves big red-brick houses on Tan Loc Island. Those who couldn't afford to live on the island referred to it as "Trillion-Dong Village." Today, the fishermen have become targets of ridicule because many are now -- unsuccessfully -- trying to sell their houses.

Ironically, the Mekong fishermen who had started out breeding a good variety of fish for consumers around the world now find themselves in the middle of the real-estate crisis.

Binh, who is also a former district secretary for the Communist Party, longs for the security that socialist Vietnam once offered the fishermen in the form of fixed prices -- but without the poverty. And Blaes, the fish broker, wants to force prices down even further so that he can buy cheap, good fish for customers in Germany and take advantage of the market. In addition to being at opposite ends of the market for Pangasius, Blaes and Binh represent two different worldviews.

Blaes says that he pays the factory $3.30 (€2.58) a kilogram. He also pays the laboratories that test the fish, duties and sea freight, which together costs him another €0.25 ($0.20) per kilo. He pays a lot for the fish, says Blaes, so that the world can eat inexpensive fish.

Blaes has put away his Blackberry and is now walking along the worktables, watching the Vietnamese women cut the fish into bite-size pieces for Germany's fish eaters.

He watches the still-living fish drop onto a conveyor belt and then onto the first table, where workers slice first into the gills, then along the spine. A third slice produces one fillet, a fourth the second. Then he walks past long tables where the women are cleaning the fish, removing the skin, the fat and their innards. The fillets are then tossed into small baskets, sorted by size and quality, and screened for red spots and blood. After inspection, the fish pieces are frozen on giant trays at minus 22 degrees Celsius (minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit) -- fillets next to fillets, white on white -- and packed into cardboard boxes, which are taken to the refrigeration building where they are stacked in storage rooms.

"We are scheduled to deliver 25 containers to Bremerhaven at the middle of the month," says Blaes, adding that he sends 3,500 tons a year to Germany. "Pangasius is inexpensive, too inexpensive for air freight," he says.

"At the moment, there is still enough fish," says Binh.

Michael Schulz arrives in Ho Chi Minh City on the same day Blaes is flying back to Germany. He is standing in the lobby of his hotel, showered and ready to go. He is about to head out to the countryside where, as he says, he wants to put his ear to the rail.

Schulz is from the western German city of Dortmund, where he is the head of HMF Food Production, a negotiator for Aldi, the discount supermarket chain and king of cheap food products.

"You look to see what's happening on the world market, and that's how we discovered Pangasius," Schulz says quickly, almost stumbling over his words. "It's certainly an attractive fish, especially when it comes to retail pricing."

For a long time, Schulz says, the fish was not consistent enough for a German discounter. "We need a stabile product," he says, "and that also applies to price." In other words, his company is looking for a fish that looks and tastes the same -- and costs the same -- 365 days a year. "We have this type of product now, an honest product," he says, referring to Pangasius and the fact that it is raised in water with no additives. It has no agents that make it absorb more water. It's all natural. It meets Greenpeace standards. And it comes in 500-gram (a little more than one pound) bags. "It's a beautiful bag," says Schulz.

Aldi's Aldi-South division has already tested Pangasius in some of its stores, "and customers want it," says Schulz. The fish, he says, is now ready -- ready for discounters, for Aldi and for the world. In that world, the borders are no longer an issue; but protection has vanished, too.

There is no longer any protection for fishermen like Ky Anh, who used to get eight cents for 100 grams of Pangasius. Today he earns six cents per 100 grams, which isn't enough to make farming the fish worth his while. Six cents for 100 grams. This is too little to guarantee the survival of the Pangasius, a species once lauded as the fish of the future.

But this is only one way of looking at the world. Another view is part of Michael Schulz's calculations.

If all goes according to plan, in 2009, Aldi will begin selling 500-gram bags of Pangasius in all of its German stores. Each bag will contain three to five fillets, which, with a 5 percent water content, comes to 475 grams of fish. A bag will cost €3.49 ($4.47), says Schulz.

That comes to retail price of 74 cents per 100 grams, or 25 cents less than the price of Pangasius at Manuela Wendland's fresh food counter.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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