Best of our wild blogs: 5 Apr 09

SPROUT! Environmental workshops with a twist!
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Life History of the Metallic Caerulean
on the Butterflies of Singapore blog

March Mayhem
on the Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs blog

Of insect diet and nesting Coppersmith Barbets (Part 7)
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Updates on whale shark at Resorts World Sentosa
on the wild shores of singapore blog

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Online petition against the import of whale sharks for Resorts World Sentosa

93.8Live 30 Mar 09;

It’s been more than two weeks since an online campaign was launched against plans by Resorts World Sentosa, RWS, to import dolphins and Whale Sharks for their Marine Life Park.

As of last week, more than 5,300 people had signed the petition.

Melissa Tan speaks to several activists to find out why they are against the import.

The online petition launched by seven Animal Rights Groups in Singapore has drawn much attention - both in Singapore and across the world.

Addressed to the Ministry of National Development, the Singapore Tourism Board and RWS, the petition points to several instances of Whale sharks faring poorly in Captivity.

One example it cites is that of two whale sharks that died within five months of each other at the Georgia aquarium in the United States in 2007

The person behind the online petition is Jaki Teo, who is a director of a local web design agency.

"It’s something I feel very strongly about. I’m a diver as well and I have seen whale sharks in the wild. I think it’s just the most horrible thing to put them in a tank and because I have an agency, it’s something I can actually do for the first time. "

Whale Sharks are the world’s largest fish and can grow up to 20 metres in length - or as large as the lenght of two buses.

They are listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the red list of threatened species by the International Union for conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Deidre Moss from the Soceity for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals feels holding such large creatures in captivity will jeopardise their welfare.

"Number one, they’re the biggest fish in the ocean. And they’re very deep divers. They’ve been recorded at depths of 1500 metres. Their migratory patterns also have been traced over 13,000 kilometres so confiding them in a man made structure will definitely compromise their welfare, not without great risk to their health this would be done."

Grant Pereira from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society agrees.

"It’s really not necessary to have an endangered species in a glass tank. What kind of tank can you build for it? If you love them, you don’t put them in a fish tank."

Plans by Resorts World Sentosa to import whale sharks also
angered people beyond Singapore's shores.

Maria Fernandez Salom is an activist with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, the world’s largest animal rights organization.

"We at PETA Asia Pacific believe that whale sharks are just as any other beings with feelings, have the right to be free. We believe that keeping animals in captivity causes them stress and trauma of being taken from their natural homes. Humans shouldn’t interfere with the course of nature, and that breeding these animals is just a way to bring more tourists who are attracted by the babies, just to earn more revenue."

Louis Ng of local NGO ACRES says the main issue is that wild animals should not be brought into captivity in the first place.

"And if we look at the history of people keeping whale sharks in the world, most of them have actually died in captivity. Mainly because we really don’t know how to cater to their needs and it’s hard to tell whether they’ve even eaten or not."

RWS has since posted a response letter on its website, to the online petition, saying that it is considering alternatives to the Marine Life Park design plans.

But it also noted that the whale shark exhibit at the park was submitted as part of the winning bid in an international competition for the Integrated Resort.

It is thus bound to deliver the pledge and any replacement has to be viable and compelling in bringing in visitors to Singapore.

In response to that, the animal welfare organizations point out that
marine parks elsewhere are already excluding captivity and that is the direction Singapore should take.

ACRES' Louis Ng again.

"If you look, other marine parks in the UK are saying no dolphins in captivity, there are government that are more progressive, who have said, no more dolphins in captivity. And I think we’ve progressed, but we have to progress in the right direction, and not do something other countries are stopping."

Jaki feels although the whale shark exhibit formed part of the winning bid, RWS should explore other ways to attract tourists.

"Granted it was part of the bidding agreement that they have whale sharks, but I’m sure if they had a think about it, there are so many other ways to bring in tourists. If there’s people from different countries, like America and Dubai and even Taiwan and China signing our petition and saying that that’s a bad idea, I don’t think anyone would really believe that it’s for conservation, I think it’s bad for our own image."

PETA’s Maria points out that any wild animal once bred in captivity, would no longer be able to go back to the wild.

"Even if these animals were bred in captivity, they wouldn’t be able to be released in the wild again, because they wouldn’t be able to hunt for themselves or to survive in the wild. So these breeding programmes don’t really help the conservation of the species."

Giving its take, the Singapore Tourism Board says in importing animals for the Marine Life Park, RWS will have to comply with international regulations as well as the requirements of the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.

The marine animals have to be provided with adequate space and care, among other requirements.

When contacted, AVA said that RWS would have to demonstrate that they have the necessary facilities and infrastructure in place for marine animals.

The facilities must be large enough to house the shark and have a good water maintenance system - and in addition, adequate professional staff, including veterinarians and marine biologists.

More than 5,300 people from all over the world have come on board since the online petition by animal rights groups got going earlier this month.

Louis Ng said he was heartened by Jaki’s initiative to launch the petition.

"That was what was a very good sign for us, that it’s not just the NGOs that are campaigning, but here’s an individual who came forward and said, I want to do something about this, I think that really is active citizenry, where someone says, here is a problem and wants to fix it, instead of just keep compaining."

You can visit www.whalesharkpetition.com to view the petition.

I’m Melissa Tan, for 938LIVE.

Letter from Marine Life Park
undated and unsigned letter from the Resorts World Sentosa website

Dear all,

Thank you for the interest that you have expressed towards our Marine Life Park. Although the feedback we have received till now is not always positive, it shows how concerned everyone is towards the success of the Marine Life Park and its ability to balance the need to educate the public on marine conservation while at the same time not doing anything to harm the marine environment.

As of today, over 3,000 of you have written to us and we hope you can spare a few minutes for our side of the story. As an organization that is committed to inspire the conservation of the ocean through education, we fully understand your concerns with regards to the feasibility of whale sharks in captivity. That is why we have been, and still are - to this date - considering alternatives for our overall Marine Life Park design plans, while simultaneously peer reviewing our animal collection and exhibits content.

While we go about our work, we also want to highlight that the whale shark exhibit at the Marine Life Park was submitted as part of the winning bid in an international competition for the Integrated Resort on Sentosa in late 2006. As such, the organization is bound to deliver the integrity of the bid, and any proposed replacement for the whale sharks must be defensible in that it must be viable and be as broad, if not compelling, in its appeal to bring in visitors to Singapore - the reason Singapore decided to have the integrated resorts.

Last week, we put out a press statement specifying that plans for the Marine Life Park are still being finalized and options are being explored. Two things are being done right now: consolidating the education and conservation studies of what aquariums have done for potential collection species, and assessing how the Marine Life Park and its conservation and research programs might contribute further to the scientific knowledge of the species.

We do not take these undertakings lightly and as such, we need time to investigate all available options to provide Singapore with a world-class Marine Life Park. The process of replacing promised attractions in a winning bid is neither simple nor unilateral. Papers, presentations, permits and many rounds of fine-tuning and debate are required. We welcome ideas at csr@rwsentosa.com.

We apologise for not being able to reply singularly to everyone. Do visit our website http://www.rwsentosa.com/en_marinelifepark.html to know us better. There, you can also read about our conservation efforts in both the marine and environmental fields. The Marine Life Park is committed to engage all persons who share our goal: the conservation of the oceans and its inhabitants. Our commitment has not changed.

See also Updates on whale shark at Resorts World Sentosa on the wild shores of singapore blog.

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Indonesian government claims of marine carbon reduction not yet proven

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 4 Apr 09;

The government says Indonesia’s marine environment can absorb millions of tons of carbon, but scientists say the claim has not yet been proven through scientific studies.

“It is merely a prediction, there is no scientific research yet,” Augy Syahailatua, head of marine resources at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said Friday.
He said Indonesia has never conducted research to determine how much carbon its marine ecosystems can absorb.

“Many countries like the United States and Australia have conducted research on their marine biodiversity,” Augy told a group of journalists in the run-up to the World Ocean Conference in May.

Indonesia will host the first-ever international conference on marine ecosystems in Manado, North Sulawesi, in the hopes of establishing commitment to the sustainable management of marine resources to help combat climate change.

Around 10,000 delegates, including ministers and scientists from 121 countries, are set to attend the forum, scheduled for May 11-15.

Organizers have said the Manado declaration, expected to be issued at the end of the meeting, would not be legally binding but would be tabled for discussion at a UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, by the end of this year.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference is expected to yield a new binding protocol for emissions cuts.

Abdul Halim, manager of the coral triangle at the Nature Conservancy also acknowledged that no research had been conducted to determine if Indonesia’s marine environments could absorb carbon.

He expressed hope that the ocean and Coral Triangle Initiative conferences in Manado will boost public awareness of the importance of marine conservation.

“We hope with the conferences more scientists will conduct marine research on this matter,” Halim said.

Augy said that scientific studies to find out whether the country’s marine and mega biodiversity can sink or release climate emissions were also crucial to boosting the country’s bargaining position in international arena discussing climate change.

After claiming that the country’s marine environments can absorb carbon, the government called on donor countries to help Indonesia finance conservation programs to save the world from climate change.

The blue print on a national plan of action on climate change, which was launched by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during the climate change conference in Bali in 2007, states that Indonesia’s marine biodiversity can absorb some 67 million tonnes of carbon, equal to about 245.6 million tons of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) per year.

CO2 is the main contributor to global climate change.

Indonesia has about 5.8 million square kilometers of marine territory.

The action plan states that the country’s 61,000 square kilometers of coral reefs has the capacity to absorb up to 73.5 million CO2 per year.

Moreover, the country’s 93.000 square kilometers of mangrove areas could absorb 75.4 million tons of CO2 annually.

Global warming has the potential to cause ocean acidification, rises in temperature and sea levels which could flood entire small island states, such as the Maldives.

The heads of states of six countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste — will launch the Coral Triangle Initiative with the aim of reducing carbon emissions on the sidelines of the WOC.

The region is home to 53 percent of the world’s coral reefs and 3,000 fish species and is considered important to the health of the world’s oceans, according to experts.

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As West warms, some fear for tiny mountain dweller

Mike Stark, Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Apr 09;

SALT LAKE CITY – The American pika — a short-legged, hamster-sized fur ball that huddles in high mountain slopes — isn't built for long-distance travel.

So as the West's climate warms, the tiny pika has little choice but to scurry a little farther upslope to beat the heat.
Problem is, in some places, they've run out of room to run, according to scientists. Without cool rocky refuges, the finicky pika can't survive.

Soon, if conservationists have their way, the pika could be the first species in the lower 48 states to get federal endangered species protections primarily because of the effects of climate change.

"It's feeling an exaggerated brunt of global warming," said Greg Loarie, an Earthjustice attorney involved with lawsuits to get the pika protections. "Unlike others, it can't move north. It's stuck."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is scheduled to decide by May 1 whether to take an in-depth look at the pika — a diminutive relative of the rabbit that inhabits 10 Western states — and whether it may need to be on the endangered species list.

The polar bear is already listed because of threats of global warming. The pika could be next. And more petitions naming climate change as a cause of species decline are likely in the coming years, said Dan Ashe, science adviser to the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"It's like the 'check engine' light that comes on in your car. It tells you something's going on here," Ashe said.

For pikas in the Great Basin, which includes parts of Nevada and Utah, the news is already grim.

Donald Grayson, a University of Washington archaeologist, studied 57 archaeological sites dating back 40,000 years. Where pikas once typically lived at about 5,700 feet above sea level, they are now averaging higher than 8,000 feet, according to Grayson's research published in 2005.

"In the Great Basin, pikas now are at such high elevations, there's not any place for them to go any higher," he said. "I actually think that pikas in the Great Basin are probably doomed."

The pika also lives in parts of California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

A study in 2003 found six of 25 previously known pika populations in the Great Basin had disappeared. Researchers have returned to the 25 sites since then but their results have not yet been published.

"Climate seems to be the single strongest driver but it's interacting" with other factors such as grazing, habitat loss, roads and human disturbance, said Erik Beever, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist in Anchorage, Alaska, who studied pikas for about 15 years, including the 2003 study in the Great Basin when he was a graduate student.

Part of the problem is that the pika's peculiar traits are suited for alpine conditions: dense fur, slow reproductivity and a thermal regulation system that doesn't do well when temperatures get above about 78 degrees.

"There's not a lot of wiggle room with these guys," Beever said, referring to the small difference between pikas' mean body temperature and the temperature at which they die.

That could spell trouble for the pika, especially in parts of the West where climate change is expected to produce some of the most significant temperature changes in the country.

But pikas aren't running into trouble everywhere.

Connie Millar, an alpine ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, spends much of her research time in the Sierra Nevada mountains. On her travels, she notes signs of pikas: sightings, distinctive squeaks, telltale heaps of grasses the animals gather and save for winter munching.

Over the last two years, she found only 2 percent of 279 pika sites were abandoned, and in some places pikas were showing up at lower-than-expected elevations. In parts of the western Great Basin she checked, about 17 percent of expected pikas sites showed no signs of the animals.

Climate change, interacting with complex ecosystems, isn't likely to have uniform effects, especially on a widespread species such as the pika.

"What it's doing in one place, it might not be doing elsewhere," Millar said.

Teams fanned out across Utah last summer looking for pikas at 113 spots where they might be living. Of those, about 75 percent had signs, state officials said.

Although pikas are well-known to hikers along high, rocky slopes in several flagship national parks, including Yellowstone, Glacier and Yosemite, population studies have been sporadic across their range.

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, sued the federal government to protect the pika under the Endangered Species Act. A similar suit was also filed against the state of California.

The federal lawsuit resulted in a settlement in February requiring a decision from the Fish and Wildlife Service by May 1. A hearing on the lawsuit in California — where state wildlife officials have disputed the assertion that pikas are threatened — is scheduled for later this month.

"What the loss of the pika shows us is that global warming is impacting wildlife here in our own backyard," said Shaye Wolf, a San Francisco-based biologist for the environmental group. "It provides an early indicator of what's to come if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas pollution."

But listing the pika or any other species because of threats from global warming raises a new set of questions for wildlife managers.

The Bush administration listed the polar bear as a threatened species in 2008, the first to be protected because of the threats of global warming. Officials quickly completed regulations, though, to ensure the listing couldn't be used to block projects that contribute to global warming. That decision is now being challenged in court.

Ashe said it's unclear exactly what steps could be taken to protect the pika from climate change. Recovery plans could address other specific threats such as grazing or roads — or target certain pika subspecies — but climate change has international causes and implications.

For wildlife managers, it's a new and shifting territory. But that doesn't mean efforts shouldn't be made, said Loarie, the Earthjustice attorney.

"The pika is the tip of the iceberg," he said. "Scientists are saying if global warming continues on this track, there are more extinctions coming. I don't think that most people are willing to accept that."

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Territorial claims, environment to dominate debate at polar summit

Sylvie Lanteaume Yahoo News 4 Apr 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Territorial claims targeting riches hidden at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and preservation of the pristine environment of Antarctica will top the agenda of the first meeting on the future of the North and South Poles that opens here Monday.

The State Department said the meeting, to be hosted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will focus on the use of both the Arctic and Antarctic.

Clinton will preside over the first joint session of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) and the Arctic Council on April 6 in Baltimore, Maryland, according to a press release from the State Department.

The joint meeting brings "together the two most important bodies involved with diplomacy at the Poles," the statement said.

"Ministers and other high-ranking officials will discuss accomplishments of the International Polar Year, an international and interdisciplinary undertaking that has mobilized thousands of researchers from more than 60 countries, to work on more than 160 projects in the polar regions," it said.

The ATCM meeting also occurs on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed in Washington.

It "will note its historic significance as the first modern multilateral arms control treaty," which stipulates that Antarctica be used "for peaceful purposes only and guarantees freedom of scientific investigation."

Although the official agenda focuses on peaceful activities in Antarctica as well as freedom of scientific research, participants are likely to focus on rich oil and gas deposits in the continental shelf around the North Pole.

Now that global warming has opened new navigation routes in the area, these deposits have sparked fierce competition among nations surrounding the Arctic, according to French ambassador for international negotiations Michel Rocard.

The US Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds about 90 billion barrels of oil and even bigger deposits of gas.

These resources constitute 13 percent of the world's untapped reserves of oil and 30 percent of reserves of natural gas.

The riches are being disputed by the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark, whose island of Greenland could become independent.

A Russian submarine symbolically planted a flag on the sea bed at the North Pole in 2007 and Moscow recently announced plans to militarize its part of the Arctic in order to protect its interests there.

Canada meanwhile is trying to extend its control over Arctic waters to 200 nautical miles.

Ottawa has been consistently reaffirming its sovereignty over the region, in particular the North-West Passage and its thousands of uninhabited islands, which due to melting ice could become an important future maritime route linking Asia to Europe.

The United States and other countries consider it an international waterway.

In order to protect the environment, France has proposed "improving governance" over the region. The suggested priorities include, according to Rocard, international control over fishing rights.

During the ATCM meeting, US delegates propose to "limit the size of vessels that can land passengers in Antarctica and to establish higher standards for the use of lifeboats aboard tourist vessels that visit Antarctica," the State Department statement said.

"US participation in International Polar Year included research conducted by a range of federal agencies," it added.

These include the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Geological Survey, it said.

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