Loving Couples @ CCA
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
Peace in a pod
from The annotated budak
Eat Shit
from Urban Forest
St. John’s Intertidal Walk
from Urban Forest by Siyang
Scratching among birds II
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Blue-throated Bee-eater: 5. Developmental threat
from Bird Ecology Study Group
New records of surf clams at East Coast Park
from wild shores of singapore
Straits Times 14 Jul 09;
I REFER to last Thursday's report, 'Green building practices may be mandated'.
I applaud City Developments for building a carbon-neutral building in Tampines. The remarks by Minister for National Development Mah Boh Tan, encouraging those in the construction industry to think green, are very positive.
Singapore has abundant sunlight all year round and it makes sense to tap this natural resource. The Government should insist that all new buildings are at least 10 per cent powered by solar energy. This should be a standard clause in all government building and renovation contracts.
This would show the Government walks the talk and not just talks the talk.
Grant W. Pereira
It harms environment, is unnecessary in Singapore where tap water is safe: Experts
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 14 Jul 09;
THE small Australian town of Bundanoon, south of Sydney, voted to ban bottled water last Wednesday. It is thought to be the first place in the world to do so.
Such a ban may not be feasible in Singapore, say experts, but two individuals are hoping to get people to boycott the bottle.
National water agency PUB guarantees the quality of its product, yet last year, more than 135,000 tonnes of bottled drinking water was imported to quench the thirst of this $126 million market.
Ms Leong Ching, a PhD student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Professor Tommy Koh, chairman of the Governing Council of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum, believe Singaporeans would change their habits if they knew of the negative impact of buying water that is bottled elsewhere and shipped at great expense to the country.
They wrote an article in PUB's magazine, Pure, reprinted in The Straits Times, in which they urged the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources 'to write to all ministries, statutory boards, agencies, Temasek-linked companies and educational institutions to consider stopping the practice of serving bottled water'.
Said Ms Leong, a former journalist: 'There is a place for personal informed choice, but currently the public is not well informed about the matter. They think bottled water is better than tap water...Drinking bottled water is 850 times more expensive than tap water.'
It wastes resources and harms the environment, she added. 'I can understand why they drink bottled water in countries where they have no choice. But it is senseless when the water is fit for drinking.'
In Singapore, most bottles are incinerated, adding to the country's carbon emissions.
Around the world, campaigns to ban bottled water are under way as consumers become aware of the environmental and economic costs involved.
Research company Euromonitor International found that health benefits and convenience rank among the top reasons for purchasing bottled water.
Nanyang Polytechnic student Melanie Ghui, 17, said: 'It's more convenient to buy bottled water when I'm out - and it's cheaper, especially at a supermarket.'
In terms of health benefits, experts agree that minerals needed by the body are obtained from food, not water. Nutritionist Velumani Deepapriya said: 'We (would) need to drink huge amounts of water in order to meet our daily mineral needs, which is not feasible.'
Prof Koh hopes that green groups in Singapore can take up the cause of public education. 'It is hard to change people's habits and I am also taking on a very lucrative industry.'
Though the Singapore Environment Council is not campaigning actively on this, its executive director Howard Shaw thinks Singaporeans can be persuaded to make a change.
'I think a ban is workable as tap water in Singapore is drinkable. But there is no incentive for restaurants not to serve bottled water as the mark-up on price is so high.'
PUB publishes online the components of its tap water. Water quality here is well within World Health Organisation guidelines.
Additional reporting by Goh Yi Han
Think globally, drink locally
Straits Times 14 Jul 09;
THE environmentally correct slogan 'think globally, act locally' obviously inspired the Australian hamlet of Bundanoon to start banning bottled water last week. The injunction to act locally is particularly apt when it comes to bottled water, but not every community can get by with only tap water. Bundanoon (population 2,500) is fortunate in having safe and reliable local sources. A billion of the world's six billion people do not have such access. In Asia alone, 700 million risk getting diarrhoea - or worse - with every mouthful. Anyway, they cannot afford bottled water, let alone the luxury of debating whether it should be banned.
Yet, the issue is of interest not just to thirsty tourists afraid to drink from the tap. Locals who can pay for it also depend on bottled water as the only safe supply in many countries. Or else they have to resort to boiling, which requires fuel and so also has an environmental cost. Thinking globally, the question is whether there are alternatives - to polluted and distant sources even more than to bottled water. An all too common obstacle to human progress in the developing world is not the plastic water bottle, but the long trudge women and girls endure to haul water from an often dirty well or muddy river. It is time they could devote to more productive work and other pursuits within or outside the home.
Bottled water nevertheless has emerged as an environmental threat. More expensive than other sources, it incurs additional so-called 'life-cycle' costs - in the plastic and energy to make the bottle, transportation from bottling plant to consumers, and collection and disposal of empties. These often do not figure completely in retail prices. Besides, the plastic container can leach harmful chemicals such as bisphenol-A. Studies have also shown that children who consume bottled water have more dental cavities than those who drink fluoridated tap water. Requiring consumers to pay fully for such impacts might help discourage demand.
Even then, bottled water may still serve to quench thirst as long as safer or cheaper alternatives are not available. Indeed, banning it might increase the demand for soft drinks, in containers that have the same life-cycle costs as water bottles. Such sugar-loaded beverages also contribute to elevating incidence of diabetes and obesity. Like Bundanoon, however, Singapore offers an adequate supply of safe and inexpensive water, much of it from its own reservoirs and recycling plants. Residents and visitors alike can and should think globally and drink locally, giving imported bottled water a miss.
Make it mandatory for eateries to serve plain water
Straits Times Forum 15 Jul 09;
I READ with interest yesterday's report, 'Bottled water: People should be told the facts'.
First and foremost, I must congratulate Professor Tommy Koh, chairman of the Governing Council of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum, and Ms Leong Ching, a PhD student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, for their noble endeavours.
I believe that along with providing the facts to the public, restaurants and other food establishments here should be made to serve plain water to customers. And water fountains could be installed at foodcourts and hawker centres. Many times I have had to buy bottled water just because the restaurant did not serve any.
National water agency PUB has developed world-class purification systems so that the residents of Singapore would not have to waste money on water that is 850 times more expensive (and harmful to the environment).
How long can we abuse our environment before it is time for payback?
Akhil Doegar
More water coolers in public places please
Straits Times Forum 15 Jul 09;
I REFER to yesterday's report, 'Bottled water: People should be told the facts'. I truly support the notion that drinking tap water is better than bottled water.
Since young, most Singaporeans have had an abundant supply of water from water coolers. For example, in schools, students brought water bottles and filled up during break time. Even now in university, I do not have to buy any water as there are many water coolers around the school.
However, there are very few water coolers in public areas. The only public place with water coolers is Changi Airport. This could be a reason why most Singaporeans resort to buying bottled water. They may take their own bottled water out, but once the water runs out, there is nowhere else to go for a refill.
Perhaps, there is a common misconception that the tap water from toilets must be boiled or filtered before drinking. Hence, most do not dare to refill their water from public toilet taps. Moreover, most public toilet taps are now automatic and cannot be easily used to refill bottles.
Therefore, I urge the relevant authorities and activists to promote drinking tap water in Singapore by installing water coolers in public areas such as shopping centres. Besides providing a service to the public, water coolers will provide an alternative to bottled water for people who wish to save money, as well as the environment.
If Changi Airport can install water coolers everywhere, why not at other places too?
Colin Tan
Campaigning against the use of bottled water only half the solution
Straits Times Forum 16 Jul 09;
I READ with interest Tuesday's report, 'Bottled water: People should be told the facts'. While I praise the efforts initiated by both Professor Tommy Koh and Ms Leong Ching for campaigning against the use of bottled water, I am wondering if we are barking up the wrong tree.
Yes, it is true that bottled water is harmful to the environment, but will knowing this fact curb the rampant usage of bottled water?
The situation is similar to smoking; most know that it is bad for one's health, but it does not deter people from lighting up. We need to face up to the fact that the use of bottled water is a lifestyle need and not a want.
In hot and humid Singapore, one can get dehydrated easily and bottled water is the only way to get refreshment on the go. Although we can argue that we can always hydrate ourselves with water bottled from home, it is is not a viable solution. Carrying a water bottle all the time is not always feasible and there is also the possibility of running out of water.
Instead of just educating the public on the detrimental impact of using bottled water, a two-pronged approach has to be applied. And that is to provide an alternative to bottled water for refreshment on the go.
For a start, we could launch a pilot project to install water coolers or dispensers in establishments like shopping complexes, and the cost could be borne by beverage companies.
Anthony Tan
Ban plastic bottles, but allow water sold in cans or cartons
Straits Times Forum 17 Jul 09;
I WOULD like add to the ongoing debate on drinking water.
The main problem with convenient and user-friendly bottled water is the plastic bottle. So here is a suggestion: Use ordinary recyclable aluminium-alloy cans or even paper cartons and ban the use of plastic bottles, even for aerated drinks. National water agency PUB should consider selling canned or cartoned Newater.
There is no point banning or imposing a tax on bottled water as people will only switch to bottled soft drinks. We should continue to allow the import of ready-to-drink water, but mandate that the water be contained in cans or cartons. As long as it is clean and affordable and people are willing to pay for their mineral or distilled water in a more environment-friendly container, we should let it be.
The fact that bottled water is 850 times more expensive than tap water makes no sense to the average man who buys chilled bottled water at $1 when he is outdoors and thirsty in a climate that is hot and humid.
Mike Chan
Make tap water freely available and ban bottled water at public events
Straits Times Forum 17 Jul 09;
I HAVE been reading with great interest the ongoing debate on drinking water.
Personally, I am in favour of tap water but it is not easily available at all places. At Sentosa, for example, there are no options for people to refill water bottles even if they take along their own containers. Hence, there is no option other than buying bottled water.
And what about at public events organised by government agencies? If tap water is not easily available, then people will naturally turn to bottled water.
To encourage more people to turn to tap water, the National Environment Agency, in liaison with other government agencies and private organisations, should consider:
- A ban on bottled water at all government-organised events and those by private sectors.
- Installing water tanks at major events and public places like Sentosa.
It is not enough to just talk about the problem. We need to put in place the infrastructure to support the use of tap water.
Mainak S. Panchal
Re-evaluate marketing of bottled water
Straits Times Forum 20 Jul 09;
I REFER to last Tuesday's report, 'Bottled water: People should be told the facts'.
I support the view that consumers should be encouraged to drink from taps instead of bottled water. Over and above the environmental advantages mentioned in the article, we should not overlook the research efforts and investment put into purifying our tap water over the decades.
If Singaporeans are still uncertain about the cleanliness of our tap water, despite the sound water management and effective water treatment PUB offers, no further amount of R&D would change this fixed mindset. Nevertheless, we should remember drink vendors prepare drinks with tap water (fruit juice, for instance) and people drink them with no reservations.
Also, some restaurants and cafes do not offer 'plain water', but sell bottled water at a mark-up. Apart from higher cost, this seems disadvantageous to consumers in two ways.
First, it encourages consumers to consume other drinks instead of distilled water, which is often less healthy.
Second, it discourages consumers from drinking tap water, which is more cost-effective. Business efficiency and profit-making measures should not be used as excuses to compromise our health and the environment.
Lastly, I would like to comment on the pricing of bottled water. It seems ridiculous that the same 500ml bottled water can cost 45 cents in some hypermarkets, but more than $2 in certain convenience stores. Some form of price control should be implemented.
There have been water campaigns encouraging Singaporeans to drink eight glasses of water per day, about 1.9 litres. In a busy city like Singapore, many people buy bottled water to quench their thirst. The difference in price consumers pay for four bottles of water (about eight glasses) is almost fourfold.
Our habits are often influenced by the society we live in. If we want to encourage drinking from taps, we should start by re-evaluating the marketing of bottled water, which indirectly affects consumers' perception of tap water.
Valerie Neo (Miss)
John Aglionby, Financial Times 13 Jul 09;
Wati Suka’s house in the Kamal Muara district of Jakarta is a barometer for an environmental crisis enveloping the Indonesian capital that an increasing number of its 10m residents are learning about first-hand.
“In the 1970s and ’80s we used to have to raise the house about 30cm every eight years or so because the land was sinking so much,” Mrs Wati says as she fries chicken to sell in her roadside food stall. “Now [raisings] are more frequent. We last did it in 2003 and I’d like to do it again this year if we can save enough money.”
Few places in Jakarta are sinking as fast as Kamal Muara but that could change because most residents are contributing to the main cause of the subsidence: extracting groundwater. Only 10 per cent of the city is connected to the piped water supply and just 2 per cent is on a sewerage system.
Slow as it may appear to the untrained eye, Hongjoo Hahm, an infrastructure specialist at the World Bank in Jakarta, says it is hard to overstate the emergency.
“I don’t know of another city [in the world] that has a sinking problem because of groundwater extraction to the extent that Jakarta does,” he says.
Subsidence is just one of several water-related crises Jakarta is facing that are combining to make severe flooding increasingly frequent. Unregulated population growth and associated construction are devouring crucial green spaces. Jakarta has less than half the undeveloped land called for in the city’s master plan.
Half a million squatters live along the city’s riverbanks and around its reservoirs, clogging them with 4,000 cubic metres of rubbish and human waste a day.
Then there are the tidal surges that inundate northern neighbourhoods a couple of times a month, and climate change, which is causing sea levels to rise and more frequent extreme weather events.
“Jakarta is under attack from the sea, the land and the air,” says Budi Widiantoro, the head of the city’s public works office. “We have no choice but to act decisively.”
The situation is bad enough that Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, last month began a project to offer Jakarta residents a severe flood microinsurance programme, the world’s first such scheme.
The need to “act decisively” sank in after a quarter of the city – affecting 2.6m residents, including Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president, – was hit by a 3m-deep flood in early 2007.
The flood was triggered by an extreme tidal surge that occurs on average every 18.6 years combined with exceptionally heavy rain.
Experts suggest that fewer than a quarter of the victims would have been affected if their recommendations had been adopted. These include building canals and other flood-control measures, changing a culture that considers waterways as rubbish dumps and, most significantly, addressing the subsidence.
Mr Hahm says that unless Mr Budi’s “decisive action” is realised, the presidential palace, which is 5.5km from the sea, “will become a seafront property” when the next surge occurs in 2025.
Unfortunately for Jakartans, implementing the needed measures is proving difficult.
The city has this year raised groundwater extraction fees for the first time since 1999, by almost 16 times for households and six times for businesses. Experts welcomed the move but doubt its efficacy because piped water is still very scarce and more expensive.
Then there is the East Jakarta Flood Canal. What was originally due, by December, to be a 20km-long state-of-the-art channel is currently a series of holes due to the authorities’ inability to secure the land from recalcitrant owners.
Moving the squatters, many who have lived on the riverbanks for decades, is expected to be an explosive issue, although city officials are touting a plan to build low-cost housing for 100,000 families.
Weak law enforcement is another challenge. High-rise building developers continue to defy regulations and drill bores more than 100m into the ground to extract water.
The groundwater extraction is triggering problems beyond subsidence, notably saltwater intrusion, which in turn is leading to corroding pipes and dirty groundwater.
Jimmy Juwana, a sustainable development expert at Jakarta’s Trisakti University, estimates it would cost several billion dollars to “fix” the city if everything was prioritised now, but sees only a fraction of the required funds in relevant budgets.
“It will probably take a major disaster for the government to wake up to the severity of the problem,” he says. “If we don’t spend the money now the bill will be many times higher in a couple of decades.”
Vikas Bajaj, The New York Times 13 Jul 09;
MUMBAI, India — As this city prepared recently to inaugurate a shiny new bridge that officials promise will ease Mumbai’s chronic traffic jams, Dilip da Cunha was peering at the underbelly of the city’s waterways and drainage systems.
Taking two visitors on a tour of the busy causeway where the city’s befouled Mithi River meets the Arabian Sea near the new bridge, the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, he pointed out a small clump of trees nearby under which several men were defecating.
The trees represented one of the last remaining species of the mangroves that once dominated the ecology of Mumbai, India’s financial capital and its most populous city.
Over the decades, most of the wetlands of the Mithi River estuary that were home to such trees have given way to highways, slums, office buildings and apartment towers.
While the mangroves’ retreat has provided valuable acreage for Mumbai’s growth, Mr. da Cunha, who is one half of a husband-and-wife team that recently finished an exhaustive study of the city’s landscape, said their disappearance, along with the degradation of the city’s waterways, has made the city increasingly vulnerable to flooding during the monsoons.
“At some point there were many species of mangroves here, and they must have made this a fantastic wetland,” he said. “We have reduced these mangroves to almost a single species that have survived with the bad waters, the sewage that is around.”
In the summer of 2005, a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and parts of Mississippi, Mumbai received a record 37 inches of rain in 24 hours during high tide. Approximately 900 people died in those floods in the city and surrounding areas.
While Mumbai has spent millions on its drainage system since then, last week an overnight rain about one-tenth as severe as the 2005 downpour brought traffic and suburban trains in many parts of the city to a crawl during the morning rush hour.
Inspired by the 2005 floods, Mr. da Cunha and his wife, Anuradha Mathur, who teach design and landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, have spent the last two and a half years studying Mumbai and its uneasy relationship with water. They recently released their findings and 12 proposals for making the city more resilient to floods in the form of a museum exhibit and a book, both titled “Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary.”
They have documented the current state of the city’s waterways and mangroves and collected a trove of historical maps, images and documents dating back hundreds of years. They previously did similar, though less comprehensive, work on the Mississippi River and Bangalore.
Their findings show that a series of natural features like mangrove swamps and interconnected creeks once protected and shaped Mumbai, just as the bygone swamps of the Mississippi River delta once protected New Orleans. But those defenses were weakened over the years, dating to the days of British rule, as swamps were filled in, land was reclaimed from the sea and creeks were narrowed or diverted.
The historical maps and documents show little appreciation for those long-lost natural features. Most old maps make no mention of swamps, which were often labeled simply as “badlands.” There are few images of the trees and plants that made up these areas.
Moreover, boundaries between land and sea were never drawn as they existed during the monsoon, when the wetlands of the estuary expanded, only as they stood during the summer or winter. “The monsoon was seen as foul weather,” Ms. Mathur said. And “all of the planning is based on fair weather maps.”
Ms. Mathur and Mr. da Cunha, who both grew up in India but met in San Francisco, said they set out on their work in part to provide an alternative interpretation of Mumbai — to have it be recast as an estuary where salt and fresh water coexist rather than as an island that has to be protected from the water.
“We are sort of trying to find ways to visualize these complex landscapes,” Mr. da Cunha said.
Yet they also seem realistic and do not advocate returning the city to an earlier, more idyllic landscape. They propose a series of projects that, they say, would alter and tilt the landscape in ways that could reduce or contain flooding during the monsoon without displacing its vibrant population and commerce.
For instance, they advocate that maidans, or empty fields, often used as playgrounds or fairgrounds should be redesigned so they can hold flood waters during storms and connect streams to one another. They also recommend creating more passages to the sea for the Mithi River, which currently has only one outlet. Another proposal recommends creating and widening ditches that could serve as green belts in fair weather but would carry rainwater and surging saltwater from the sea in the west to outlets in the east.
Ms. Mathur, Mr. da Cunha and partners like the Asia Society have been able to enlist the help of powerful and influential backers for their work. One of them, the chief minister of Maharashtra State, of which Mumbai is the capital, spoke at the public opening of their exhibit and made the prestigious National Gallery of Modern Art available to house their work.
But it is unclear how much weight officials will give to their ideas, which are a world apart from city and state plans to use more traditional flood control approaches like pumping stations and river dredging. The chief minister, Ashok Chavan, who exerts significant control over the local government, praised the exhibit as educational but did not speak about any of its proposals.
Still, Ms. Mathur and Mr. da Cunha are hopeful that their ideas will have some lasting impact. Members of a wealthy family recently asked how they could help. They plan to ask the patron to provide the prize money for a competition in which engineers would design prototypes of one their proposals: toilet barges for the poor who live near the water. The barges would be equipped with technology to treat the sewage and perhaps turn it into energy.
Ms. Mathur said the barges could even dock under the new Bandra-Worli bridge when they are full and treating their cargo.
IUCN 14 Jul 09;
Rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, compounded by lax laws is wiping out the unique toothless anteaters from their native habitats in Southeast Asia, according to a group of leading pangolin experts.
Illegal trade in Asian pangolin meat and scales has caused the scaly anteaters to disappear from large swathes of Cambodia, Viet Nam and Lao PDR, concluded a panel of experts whose findings were announced today by the wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, a joint programme between IUCN and WWF.
“China has a long history of consuming pangolin as meat and in traditional medicine,” the report states. “Due to continual demand and the decreasing Chinese wild population, in the past few years pangolin smuggling from Southeast Asia has resulted in great declines in these producing countries’ wild populations, as well.”
Although the animals are protected under national legislation in all Asian range states, and have been prohibited from international trade through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2002, this legislation is having little impact on the illicit trade.
Pangolins are the most frequently encountered mammals seized from illegal traders in Asia, and are highly unusual in not possessing teeth.
“Pangolins, like the laws designed to protect them, lack bite,” says Chris Shepherd, Acting Director for TRAFFIC Southeast Asia. “Pangolin populations clearly cannot stand the incessant poaching pressure, which can only be stopped by decisive government-backed enforcement action in the region.”
According to pangolin hunters and traders, there are so few pangolins left in forests throughout Cambodia, Viet Nam and Lao PDR, they are now sourcing animals from their last remaining strongholds in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Recent large seizures back up these reports. They include 24 tonnes of frozen pangolins from Sumatra, Indonesia, seized in Viet Nam this March and 14 tonnes of frozen animals seized in Sumatra this April. There have also been recent instances of African pangolins seized in Asia.
“Pangolins save us millions of dollars a year in pest destruction,” says Dr Simon Stuart, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. “These shy creatures provide a vital service and we cannot afford to overlook their ecological role as natural controllers of termites and ants.”
The key to tackling the pangolin crisis is better enforcement of existing national and international laws designed to protect pangolins, better monitoring of the illegal trade, and basic research to find where viable pangolin populations still exist and whether ravaged populations can recover given adequate protection, according to the report.
The experts on pangolins included scientific researchers, government law enforcement officers from most Asian pangolin range States, CITES Management and Scientific Authorities and animal rescue centres, who convened at a workshop hosted by Wildlife Reserves Singapore at the Singapore Zoo.
For the full report, please visit: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/pangolin_proceedings_final_print__2_.pdf
For more information, please contact:
* Elizabeth John, Senior Communications Officer, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, Tel: +603 7880 3940, jlizzjohn@yahoo.com
* Richard Thomas, Global Communications Co-ordinator, TRAFFIC, Richard.thomas@traffic.org +44 1223 279068.
* Sarah Horsley, Media Relations Officer, IUCN, sarah.horsley@iucn.org, +41 22 999 0127.
* Sarah Janicke, Species Communications Manager, WWF International, sjanicke@wwfint.org, +41 79 528 8641.
Notes to editors:
* ¨TRAFFIC’s work on pangolins was supported by National Geographic and Sea World Bucsh Gardens.
* There are four species of pangolin in Asia; Thick-tailed Pangolin (Manis crassicaudata), Philippine Pangolin (M. culionensis), Sunda Pangolin (M. javanica) and Chinese Pangolin (M. pentadactyla).
* All pangolins in illegal trade are wild-sourced as they cannot be captive bred on a commercial scale.
* In the wild, pangolins breed slowly, producing just one young at a time, making populations particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation.
Toothless laws encourage rising demand for pangolin
WWF 14 Jul 09;
Singapore, 14 July 2009 - Rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, compounded by lax laws is wiping out the unique toothless anteaters from their native habitats in Southeast Asia, according to a group of leading pangolin experts.
Illegal trade in Asian pangolin meat and scales has caused the scaly anteaters to disappear from large swathes of Cambodia, Viet Nam and Lao PDR, concluded a panel of experts whose findings were announced today by the wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC.
China has a long history of consuming pangolin as meat and in traditional medicine, the report states. Due to continual demand and the decreasing Chinese wild population, in the past few years pangolin smuggling from Southeast Asia has resulted in great declines in these producing countries wild populations, as well.
Although the animals are protected under national legislation in all Asian range states, and have been prohibited from international trade through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2002, this legislation is having little impact on the illicit trade.
Pangolins are the most frequently encountered mammals seized from illegal traders in Asia, and are highly unusual in not possessing teeth.
Pangolins, like the laws designed to protect them, lack bite, commented Chris R. Shepherd, Acting Director for TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.
Pangolin populations clearly cannot stand the incessant poaching pressure, which can only be stopped by decisive government-backed enforcement action in the region.
According to pangolin hunters and traders, there are so few pangolins left in forests throughout Cambodia, Viet Nam and Lao PDR, they are now sourcing animals from their last remaining strongholds in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Recent large seizures back up these reports. They include 24 tonnes of frozen pangolins from Sumatra, Indonesia, seized in Viet Nam this March and 14 tonnes of frozen animals seized in Sumatra this April. There have also been recent instances of African pangolins seized in Asia.
Pangolins save us millions of dollars a year in pest destruction, says Dr Simon Stuart, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. These shy creatures provide a vital service and we cannot afford to overlook their ecological role as natural controllers of termites and ants.
The key to tackling the pangolin crisis is better enforcement of existing national and international laws designed to protect pangolins, better monitoring of the illegal trade, and basic research to find where viable pangolin populations still exist and whether ravaged populations can recover given adequate protection, according to the report.
The experts on pangolins included scientific researchers, government law enforcement officers from most Asian pangolin range States, CITES Management and Scientific Authorities and animal rescue centres, who convened at a workshop hosted by Wildlife Reserves Singapore at the Singapore National Zoo.
TRAFFIC's work on pangolins was supported by National Geographic and Sea World Bucsh Gardens.
Chinese appetites wiping out threatened pangolins
Google News 14 Jul 09;
SINGAPORE (AFP) — China's insatiable demand for pangolins is threatening the survival of the vital pest eaters in Southeast Asia and governments must do more to protect them, experts and activists have warned.
"Due to continual demand and the decreasing Chinese wild population, in the past few years pangolin smuggling from Southeast Asia has resulted in great declines in these producing countries' wild populations," wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC said in a report.
"China has a long history of consuming pangolin as meat and in traditional medicine," it said. The animals are toothless, scaly mammals that provide natural pest control in the wild by eating ants and termites.
"Pangolin populations clearly cannot stand the incessant poaching pressure, which can only be stopped by decisive government-backed enforcement action in the region," said Chris Shepherd, Acting Director for TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.
The solution is better enforcement of national and international laws designed to protect the animals, improved monitoring of the illegal trade and more research on existing pangolin populations, TRAFFIC said.
A spokeswoman for TRAFFIC told AFP that no estimates of the remaining pangolin populations were available, but the report noted that they are the most frequently encountered mammals seized from illegal traders in Asia.
TRAFFIC quoted hunters and traders as saying there are so few pangolins left in forests in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos that they are now sourcing the animals from their last remaining strongholds in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Authorities seized 24 tonnes of frozen pangolins from Sumatra, Indonesia, in Vietnam in March 2008 and 14 tonnes of frozen animals in Sumatra four months later. African pangolins have also been seized in Asia, TRAFFIC said.
"Pangolins save us millions of dollars a year in pest destruction," said Simon Stuart, who chairs the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
"These shy creatures provide a vital service and we cannot afford to overlook their ecological role as natural controllers of termites and ants."
More links
PANGOLIN PHOTOS: Fetus Soup, Other "Cures" Drive Trade, some graphic photos on the National Geographic website.
ScienceDaily 7 Jul 09;
According to the most recent report on the status of the world's fisheries by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, fisheries supply at least 15% of the animal protein consumed by humans, provide direct and indirect employment for nearly 200 million people worldwide and generate $US85 billion annually. This same report indicates that 28% of the world's fisheries stocks are currently being overexploited or have collapsed and 52% are fully exploited.
A new study published in PLoS Biology provides the first global evaluation of how management practices influence fisheries' sustainability.
The study assessed the effectiveness of the world's fisheries management regimes using evaluations from nearly 1,200 fisheries experts, analyzing these in combination with data on the sustainability of fisheries catches. The results indicate that most fisheries management regimes are lagging far behind standards set by international organizations, and that the conversion of scientific advice into policy, through a participatory and transparent process, plays the most critical role in determining the sustainability of fisheries.
"The world's fisheries are one of the most important natural assets to humankind," says lead author Camilo Mora, a Colombian researcher at Dalhousie University and the University of California San Diego. "Unfortunately, our use of the world's fisheries has been excessive and has led to the decline or collapse of many stocks."
"The consequences of overexploiting the world's fisheries are a concern not only for food security and socio-economic development but for ocean ecosystems," says Boris Worm, a professor at Dalhousie University and co-author of the paper. "We now recognize that overfishing can also lead to the erosion of biodiversity and ecosystem productivity."
"The different socioeconomic and ecological consequences associated with declining fish stocks are an international concern and several initiatives have been put forward to ensure that countries improve the way they use their marine resources," explains Mora. "Some of these initiatives include the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Although these initiatives have been endorsed by most governments, a global assessment on the extent to which these ideals are actually implemented and effective remains lacking."
Mora and his colleagues analyzed a set of attributes upon which country-level fisheries could be evaluated. They pinpointed six parameters, including the scientific quality of management recommendations, the transparency of converting recommendations into policy, the enforcement of policies, the influence of subsidies, fishing effort, and the extent of fishing by foreign entities.
To quantify those attributes the researchers developed a questionnaire designed to elicit worst- to best-case answers. The survey was translated into five languages and distributed to over 13,000 fisheries experts around the world. Nearly 1,200 evaluations were used in the study. The responses of the surveyed experts were compared to, and found to be in accordance with, empirical data, supporting the validity of the data obtained in the study.
The results of this global survey showed that 7% of all coastal states carry out rigorous scientific assessment for the generation of management policies, 1.4% also have a participatory and transparent process to convert scientific recommendations into policy, and less than 1% also implement mechanisms to ensure the compliance with regulations. No one country was additionally free of the effects of excess fishing capacity, subsidies or access to foreign fishing.
"Perhaps the most striking result of our survey was that not a single country in the world was consistently good with respect to all these management attributes. So which countries are doing well and which are not is a question whose answer depends on the specific attribute you are looking at," says Mora.
The results of the study show that wealthier countries, though they have predominantly better science and enforcement capabilities, face the negative repercussions of excessive subsidies and larger fishing capacity, which have resulted largely from increased modernization of national fleets. In contrast, poorer countries largely lacked robust science and enforcement capabilities and although these nations have less fishing capacity nationally, they disproportionally sold fishing rights to nations that did. The study showed that in 33% of the coastal states classified as low-income (commonly countries in Africa and Oceania) most fishing is carried out by foreign fleets from either the European Union, South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan or the United States.
The only attribute in which poorer and wealthier countries overlapped significantly was their limited ability to convert scientific recommendations into policy. The mechanism for this pattern, however, was different. Poor countries reportedly struggle with the effects of corruption while wealthier countries often encounter more political or economical pressures.
For the second part of the study, Mora and his colleagues combined the database on management effectiveness with a recently developed index to assess the probability that the catch of a particular country is sustainable or not. This part of the study showed that out of several attributes analysed, the transparency with which scientific recommendations are turned into policy plays the strongest role in the fate of fisheries sustainability.
"Transparent policy-making is at the centre of the entire process," explains co-author Marta Coll, at the Institut de Ciènces del Mar in Spain. "If this is heavily influenced by political pressures or corruption, it is unlikely that good scientific advice will ever be translated into proper regulations. Similarly, authoritarianism in this process is likely to reduce compliance with the resulting policies."
"This study provided us with a look at both sides of the coin," says Andrew Rosenberg at the University of New Hampshire, who was not involved in the study. "On one hand, it reminds us of the difficult challenges facing fisheries management globally in protecting critical natural resources from overexploitation. On the other hand it delivers a message of hope that when policy-making is transparent, participatory, and based on science, things can improve."
Funding to CM, RAM, and BW was provided by the Sloan Foundation through the Future of Marine Animal Populations Project. KJG holds a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award. Funding to RUS was provided by the Pew Fellowship for Marine Conservation. Funding to DZ, RUS, and RW was provided by the Pew Charitable Trust, Philadelphia through the Sea Around Us Project. Funding to MC was provided by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement #GA-2008-219265 for the implementation of ECOFUN Project. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Journal reference:
1. Mora C, Myers RA, Coll M, Libralato S, Pitcher TJ, et al. Management Effectiveness of the World's Marine Fisheries. PLoS Biol, 7(6): e1000131 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000131
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
ScienceDaily 13 Jul 09;
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The rule goes into effect on August 12, 2009. Krill are a small shrimp-like crustacean and a key source of nutrition in the marine food web.
"Krill are the foundation for a healthy marine ecosystem," said Mark Helvey, NOAA's Fisheries Service Southwest Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries. "Protecting this vital food resource will help protect and maintain marine resources and put federal regulations in line with West-Coast states."
While the States of California, Oregon and Washington currently have regulations prohibiting the harvesting of krill within three miles of their coastlines, there was no similar federal restriction within the three to 200-mile confines of the EEZ.
The krill prohibition was adopted as Amendment 12 to the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan (FMP), which was developed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The krill harvest prohibition was originally proposed to the PFMC and NOAA Fisheries Service by NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. Today's rule implements Amendment 12 to the FMP and is intended to preserve key nutritional relationships in the California Current ecosystem, which includes five National Marine Sanctuaries.
"This is a great success for protecting the entire California Current ecosystem", said William Douros, West Coast Regional Director for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. "This decision reflects strong teamwork within NOAA and a commitment to addressing the issues raised by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and Sanctuary Advisory Councils."
Amendment 12 adds all species of krill under a new category, "prohibited harvest species." This new group may not be caught or taken by any fishery or gear type within the EEZ.
Krill are important because they convert microscopic phytoplankton into a food source for numerous other species and are a principal food source for many species of fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Some of the species that depend on krill as prey are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and many others are important as target species for commercial and recreational fisheries on the west coast.
Adapted from materials provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
• Public may lose access to 80% of nature reserves
• State's plan digs deeper financial hole, say critics
Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk 12 Jul 09;
It is hard to envisage a no-entry sign tagged to a towering redwood tree. But the recession – writ on an epic scale in California's proposal to close 220 state parks – is forcing the American public to confront the closure of the great outdoors.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, is trying to make up a $26bn (£16bn) budget shortfall, and has suggested that California can no longer afford to run its parks.
Conservationists are meanwhile arguing that California cannot afford not to. And this week the federal government appeared to partly agree, with the National Parks Service threatening to seize some of the sites if Schwarzenegger goes ahead with the closures.
The proposed shutdown of the parks would affect 80% of California's nature reserves, historic sites and recreation areas, and restrict access to 30% of the state's coastline. Affected areas would stretch from the mountains of the Sierra Nevadas to the beaches and wetlands of Big Sur, and to the deserts of San Diego, where some of the last peninsular bighorn sheep roam.
California is not alone. The crisis has also exposed hitherto hidden casualties of the economic downturn, with states from Oregon to Illinois, and New York to Tennessee, struggling to stretch resources.
Other states have proposed budgets that would put closed signs on parks and historic sites, though none so far has adopted measures as extreme as those being put forward in California.
Pennsylvania presented a budget proposal last month that would shut 35 of its 117 state parks. Several states have been forced to scale back opening hours and services, and dismiss rangers, faced with cuts to budgets – ranging from 39% in Georgia to 57% in Idaho.
The federal government does not have the resources to save more than a handful of California's parks, let alone all of those across the US. Nonetheless, the National Parks Service issued a letter warning Schwarzenegger that it would use protection clauses under the original land deeds to the states, so as to take control of six parks in the San Francisco area, the dunes around the Big Sur and elsewhere.
"We really are just looking for ways we can keep those places open," said David Siegenthaler, the National Parks Service's manager for the state of California. "In these economic times it is probably even more important that people have access to good places."
Conservationists believe parks can withstand a year or so of closure without lasting harm. But fewer ranger stations will mean increased risk of vandalism, and less maintenance will lead to environmental degradation.
"If it is a year or two I don't think the damage will be a long lasting situation," said Philip McKnelly, director of the National Association of State Park Directors. "But ultimately it is going to show as damage to resources."
A survey of state park directors in mid-May suggested most states had cut spending on parks by 15% in their 2008 budgets, and were considering steeper cuts in the next fiscal year, which started on 1 July for many. In California, the loss will be immediate, conservationists say, putting some of the state's most visited sites off-limits.
Critics also fear the closures could be irreversible. "Once those places are closed it becomes very difficult to re-open them," said Traci Verardo Torres, of the California State Parks Foundation, which is protesting against the proposal.
The impact would be felt from the northern limits of the Sierra Nevada mountains -- with the proposed shutdown of a park in memory of the doomed members of the Donner party, stranded travellers who resorted to cannibalism during the winter snows -- to the deserts south of San DiegoSchwarzenegger's proposal forces the closure of the only camp grounds inside the giant redwood forests to the north, and it blocks access to Lake Tahoe, though the site is shared by California with Nevada. "All of the parks in Lake Tahoe are proposed for closure," said Verardo Torres. "If [they] close there would not be a way legally for the public to access the lakes."
The order would also shutter urban tourist attractions such as San Francisco's Angel Island -- the Ellis Island of America's Pacific Coast, where the barracks where Chinese migrants were quarantined are preserved. It is not immediately clear, in any case, how California will put vast tracts of land off-limits. "They would have to fence it and guard it to keep people out, and the effort they would have to extend to keep people out would cost just as much to run the park," said Siegenthaler.
California could be digging itself into a yet deeper financial hole by its actions, some say. Many of the parks are a source of revenue for state and local communities. "Each visitor to a state park is worth $57 per visit. The parks have generated millions throughout California," said Tim Gibbs, programme manager at the National Parks Conservation Association. "It's almost as if they are shooting themselves in the foot."
ScienceDaily 9 Jul 09;
Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world.
"Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the sea," said Benjamin S. Halpern, first author, who is based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UCSB.
"One of the great challenges is to decide where and how much to allocate limited resources to tackling these problems," he said. "Our results identify where it is absolutely imperative that land-based threats are addressed –– so-called hotspots of land-based impact –– and where these land-based sources of impact are minimal or can be ignored."
The hottest hotspot is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, explained Halpern, with the other top 10 in Asia and the Mediterranean. "These are areas where conservation efforts will almost certainly fail if they don't directly address what people are doing on land upstream from these locations."
Nutrient runoff from upstream farms has caused a persistent "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi runs into this body of water. The dead zone is caused by an overgrowth of algae that feeds on the nutrients and takes up most of the oxygen in the water.
The authors state that they have provided the first integrated analysis for all coastal areas of the world. They surveyed four key land-based drivers of ecological change:
* nutrient input from agriculture in urban settings
* organic pollutants derived from pesticides
* inorganic pollutants from urban runoff
* direct impact of human populations on coastal marine habitats.
Halpern explained that a large portion of the world's coastlines experience very little effect of what happens on land –– nearly half of the coastline and more than 90 percent of all coastal waters. "This is because a vast majority of the planet's landscape drains into relatively few very large rivers, that in turn affect a small amount of coastal area," said Halpern. "In these places with little impact from human activities on land, marine conservation can and needs to focus primarily on what is happening in the ocean. For example: fishing, climate change, invasive species, and commercial shipping."
Coauthors from NCEAS are Colin M. Ebert, Carrie V. Kappel, Matthew Perry, Kimberly A. Selkoe, and Shaun Walbridge. Fiorenza Micheli of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station and Elizabeth M. P. Madin of UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology are also co-authors. Selkoe is also affiliated with the University of Hawaii's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
NCEAS is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the National Marine Sanctuaries, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship provided additional support for this research.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.
Matt Walker, BBC News 13 Jul 09;
Amphibians around the world synchronise their mating activity by the full Moon, researchers have discovered.
This global phenomenon has never been noticed before, but frogs, toads and newts all like to mate by moonlight.
The animals use the lunar cycle to co-ordinate their gatherings, ensuring that enough males and females come together at the same time. In doing so the creatures maximise their spawning success and reduce their odds of being eaten.
Details of the discovery are published in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Biologist Rachel Grant of the Open University was studying salamanders near a lake in central Italy for her PhD in 2005 when she noticed toads all over the road, under a full Moon.
"Although this might have been a coincidence, the following month I went along the same route every day at dusk and found that the numbers of toads on the road increased as the Moon waxed, to a peak at full Moon, and then declined again," she says.
A review of the scientific literature found little mention of any similar records, so Grant returned to the same site in 2006 and 2007 to survey the amphibians in more detail.
She then collated her data with a 10-year analysis of the mating habits of frogs and toads at a pond near Oxford, UK, collected by her supervisor Tim Halliday, and with data on toads and newts living in Wales collected by colleague Elizabeth Chadwick from Cardiff University, UK.
"We analysed the data, and found a lunar effect at all three sites," Grant says.
For example, the common toad (Bufo bufo) arrives at all its breeding sites, mates and spawns around the full Moon. The common frog (Rana temporaria) also spawns around the time of the full Moon.
"Newts also seem to be affected by the lunar cycle but the results are less clear," says Grant.
Newt (Lissotriton vulgaris, L. helveticus and Triturus cristatus) arrivals peak during both the full and new moons.
But "newts appear to avoid arriving at the breeding site when the Moon is in its third quarter. This could be because the Earth's magnetic field is highest at that time. More research is needed to clarify this," Grant says.
The researchers have also looked at historical data collected in Java on the Javanese toad (Bufo melanostictus) and found that it too mates by the lunar cycle, with females ovulating on or near to the full Moon.
"We now have evidence of lunar cycles affecting amphibians in widespread locations. We definitely think that Moon phase has been an overlooked factor in most studies of amphibian reproductive timing," says Grant.
"We think this may be a worldwide phenomenon. However, differences between species in ecology and reproductive strategy may mean that not all amphibians are affected in the same way. This is something we would like to investigate further."
Grant and her colleagues now hope to produce a statistical model that takes into account weather factors and other environmental variables such as geomagnetism, as well as the lunar cycle.
Making accurate predictions of mass amphibian movements is important in their conservation, she says. For example, roads could be closed at precise times to avoid cars killing thousands of mating frogs and toads.
"Given the current global crisis among amphibian populations, further understanding of [their] breeding behaviour is extremely important," she says.
Matt Walker, BBC News 13 Jul 09;
The great explosion in flowering plants during the Cretaceous Period is one of the great enigmas of evolution.
Charles Darwin had no explanation, calling it an "abominable mystery".
But now scientists think they have solved the riddle of how flowers came to dominate the conifers and ferns that preceded them.
The flowers' secret, they say, was to exploit a change in soil fertility, and create a feedback loop that allowed new flowers to feed off dead ones.
The relative explosion of flowering plants greatly worried Darwin.
In a letter written on 8 March 1875 to palaeobotanist Oswald Heer, he said: "The sudden appearance of so many Dycotyledons in the Upper Chalk appears to me a most perplexing phenomenon to all who believe in any form of evolution."
In a later letter to botanist Joseph Hooker, head of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Darwin described it as an "abominable mystery".
The great problem for Darwin and others at that time was that the Late Cretaceous was very rich in fossil angiosperm (flowering plant) species, while the Early Cretaceous was almost devoid of any early examples.
This rapid bloom in flowering plant species did not fit Darwin's belief that evolution was an extremely gradual process.
Since then, many more fossils of flowering species have been discovered, showing that they emerged over a longer period.
Today scientists believe that at the start of the Cretaceous Period, 125 million years ago, gymnosperms, the group of plants that contains cycads and conifers, dominated the globe.
Just a few groups of angiosperms had evolved, and these were rather small fragile plants that probably grew in aquatic environments, or alongside streams.
Some are also thought to have colonised extremely dry, possibly salty places, since they had quite thick leaves which would have helped conserve water.
But then, between 125 and 65 million years ago, these flowering plants exploded into life.
For example, around 105 million years ago between five and 20% of all plant species were angiosperms. By 65 million years ago, over 80% were flowering plants.
"The change from a gymnosperm- and fern-dominated world to a world dominated by fast-growing angiosperms is one of the most important changes in the history of the biosphere of our Earth, with enormous consequences for the opportunities of mammals," says Frank Berendse, an ecologist at Wageningen University in The Netherlands.
"Although the change in diversity occurred much more gradually than thought at Darwin's time, the change in abundance occurred very fast," Berendse says.
Berendse and Wageningen University colleague Marten Scheffer now think they can explain how it happened.
They outline their idea in the journal Ecology Letters.
Initially, gymnosperms flourished in poor soils. Such plants have longer-lived leaves which are capable of squeezing more nutrients out of the ground, but the litter they create tends not to decompose very fast. So while gymnosperms benefit from poor soils, they also do little to improve soil quality.
But then came some subtle changes in soil fertility. Angiosperms started colonising more fertile soils, gaining a foothold.
These early flowering plants then began changing the ecology of the soil. As they perished, they create a greater turnover in litter that replenished the soil, allowing yet more flowers to grow.
"From that time a positive feedback developed, where an increase in angiosperm dominance led to an increase in soil fertility and an increase in soil fertility led to a further accelerated expansion of the angiosperms," says Berendse.
The idea that such sudden shifts in vegetation can occur is supported by evidence from the modern day.
Over the past 30 years, heathlands in western Europe have gone from being dominated by dwarf shrubs to perennial grasses, the researchers say.
Like gymnosperms, the shrubs have long-lived leaves and stems which minimise the loss of nutrients but prevent the plants growing fast.
But once the grasses took hold, their faster growth rates created a feedback loop which added more nutrients to the soil, allowing yet more grass to grow.
A similar shift has also taken place in raised bogs, in which peat mosses can quickly be out-competed by vascular plants, say the researchers.
Berendse's and Scheffer's idea remains a hypothesis for now.
But it is one that "could explain the very fast expansion of angiosperms around the globe," says Berendse.
They hope to test the idea further by examining the geological record for tell-tale signs that soil fertility did increase during the rise of the angiosperms, and that flowering plants initially came to dominate at lower latitudes, which should have had more nutrient-rich soils.
Yahoo News 13 Jul 09;
BRUSSELS (AFP) – Intensive farming is damaging the habitats of hundreds of species of European animals, the European Commission warned Monday, and urged EU member states to redouble their efforts to protect them.
The warning came with the publication of what the commission said was the most comprehensive survey of EU biodiversity ever undertaken, looking at 1182 species in 216 habitats from 2001 to 2006.
"Only a small proportion of these vulnerable habitats and species have achieved good conservation status and member states will need to strengthen their efforts if this situation is to improve," a commission statement said.
The report found that the condition of grasslands, wetlands and coastal habitats were particularly poor, with only seven percent of those checked deemed to be up to scratch.
The problem was blamed on intensive agriculture, the abandonment of land and poor land management. The survey also said that wetlands and mountain glacier regions were being damaged by global warming.
Last month, the commission said it planned to take France to Europe's highest court for failing to protect the great hamster of Alsace, a species threatened with extinction.
The rodent requires around 240,000 hectares of protected land to thrive, but the species has been shoe-horned into under 3,500 hectares in eastern France mainly due to farming, reducing its food supply.
Once considered a pest for farmers in the region of Alsace -- where around 80 percent of land is used to grow corn -- the hamster has been protected since 1993 and is considered one of the most threatened mammals in Europe.
Its numbers have plummeted from over a thousand in 2001 to fewer than 200 in 2007, and have continued to decline over the last two years.
The commission survey was not all negative. It found that species like the wolf, Eurasian lynx, beaver and otter were beginning to return to their traditional habitats.
New Scientist 13 Jul 09;
ONE of Africa's most important food crops is likely to become increasingly toxic as a result of carbon emissions.
Cassava is a staple for more than half a billion of the world's poorest people. It is promoted by UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization as a saviour for Africa because it grows well in droughts. But now research shows that increasing carbon dioxide in the air boosts cyanide levels in its leaves.
Cassava leaves and roots both contain glycosides that break down to release toxic hydrogen cyanide when chewed or crushed. Villagers grind cassava roots to make flour, which can be processed to remove cyanide, but leaves are often eaten raw. The cyanide can cause a condition called konzo that permanently paralyses the legs. One study found that 9 per cent of Nigerians suffer some form of cyanide poisoning from eating cassava.
Now Ros Gleadow of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has found that doubling CO2 levels in the air doubles glycoside production in cassava leaves. Since CO2 levels are expected to reach twice pre-industrial levels by the middle of this century, Gleadow believes cyanide poisoning will be a growing problem. Although the plant's roots do not become more toxic, they do grow smaller.
"Cassava is a fantastic crop," Gleadow told a meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Glasgow, UK, last week. "But there is an urgent need to develop varieties that produce less cyanide."
The monsoon is late, the wells are running dry and in the teeming city of Bhopal, water supply is now a deadly issue. Gethin Chamberlain reports
Gethin Chamberlain, The Observer 12 Jul 09;
It was a little after 8pm when the water started flowing through the pipe running beneath the dirt streets of Bhopal's Sanjay Nagar slum. After days without a drop of water, the Malviya family were the first to reach the hole they had drilled in the pipe, filling what containers they had as quickly as they could. Within minutes, three of them were dead, hacked to death by angry neighbours who accused them of stealing water.
In Bhopal, and across much of northern India, a late monsoon and the driest June for 83 years are exacerbating the effects of a widespread drought and setting neighbour against neighbour in a desperate fight for survival.
India's vast farming economy is on the verge of crisis. The lack of rain has hit northern areas most, but even in Mumbai, which has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding, authorities were forced to cut the water supply by 30% last week as levels in the lakes serving the city ran perilously low.
Across the country, from Gujarat to Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, the state that claims to be "the rice bowl of India", special prayers have been held for more rain after cumulative monsoon season figures fell 43% below average.
On Friday, India's agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, said the country was facing a drought-like situation that was a "matter for concern", with serious problems developing in states such as Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
In Bhopal, which bills itself as the City of Lakes, patience is already at breaking point. The largest lake, the 1,000-year-old, man-made Upper Lake, had reduced in size from 38 sq km to 5 sq km by the start of last week.
The population of 1.8 million has been rationed to 30 minutes of water supply every other day since October. That became one day in three as the monsoon failed to materialise. In nearby Indore the ration is half an hour's supply every seven days.
The UN has warned for many years that water shortages will become one of the most pressing problems on the planet over the coming decades, with one report estimating that four billion people will be affected by 2050. What is happening in India, which has too many people in places where there is not enough water, is a foretaste of what is to come.
In Bhopal, where 100,000 people rely solely on the water tankers that shuttle across the city, fights break out regularly. In the Pushpa Nagar slum, the arrival of the first tanker for two days prompted a frantic scramble, with men jostling women and children in their determination to get to the precious liquid first.
Young men scrambled on to the back of the tanker, jamming green plastic pipes through the hole on the top, passing them down to their wives or mothers waiting on the ground to siphon the water off into whatever they had managed to find: old cooking oil containers were popular, but even paint pots were pressed into service. A few children crawled beneath the tanker in the hope of catching the spillage.
In the Durga Dham slum, where the tanker stops about 100 metres away from a giant water tower built to provide a supply for a more upmarket area nearby, Chand Miya, the local committee chairman, watched a similar scene. There was not enough water to go around, he said. "In the last six years it has been raining much less. The population has increased, but the water supply is the same."
Every family needed 100 litres a day for drinking, cooking and washing, he said, and people had no idea when the tanker would come again.
Not everyone gets a tanker delivery. The city has 380 registered slums, but there are numerous other shanties where people have to find their own methods. Some, like the Malviyas, tap into the main supply. Others cluster around the ventilation valves for the main pipelines that stick up out of the ground from place to place, trying to catch the small amounts of water leaking out. In the Balveer Nagar slum, 250 families have no supply at all. The women get up in the middle of the night to walk 2km to the nearest pumping station, where someone has removed a couple of bricks from the base to allow a steady flow of water to pour out.
A few communities have received help from non-governmental organisations. In the Arjun Nagar slum, a borewell has been drilled down 115 metres by Water Aid to provide water for 100 families, each paying 40 rupees (50p) a month.
Until the well was drilled, Shaheen Anjum, a mother of four, got up at 2.30am each day to fetch water, wheeling a bike with five or six containers strapped to it to the nearest public pipe in the hope of beating the queues. "Often we would get there and the water would not be running," she said. "It was so tiring: the children were suffering and getting ill because they had to come too. The tankers used to come, but there were so many fights that the driver used to run away."
Water Aid is working in 17 of the city's 380 registered slums, providing water and sanitation. "It's not just Bhopal. This has been a drought year for many districts," said Suresh Chandra Jaiswal, the technical officer. "Now it has reached a critical stage. We just don't know any more how long the water will last."
Fifty years ago, Bhopal had a population of 100,000; today it is 1.8 million and rising. In a good year the city might get more than a metre of rain between July and September, but last year the figure was only 700mm.
Neighbours of the Malviyas cluster around the hole in the street outside the house where Jeevan Malviya lived with his wife, Gyarasi, their son, Raju, 18, and their four other children. It was the evening of 13 May, said Sunita Bai, a female relative: a local man, Dinu, thought that the family had blocked the pipe to stop the water flowing further down the hill.
He and a group of friends slapped Gyarasi, 35; Raju tried to stop him. Someone produced a sword and, a few minutes later, the Malviyas lay dying. "We were too afraid to do anything," said a woman who gave her name as Shanno. "Dinu didn't want them to take any water. He wanted it for himself."
Everyone stood around, looking down at the hole in the ground. The pipe is dry. "It is a terrible thing, that people should be fighting over water," said Shanno.
El Niño expected to increase drought, floods and other extreme events, and cause a hot summer in the UK
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 13 Jul 09;
Climate scientists have warned of wild weather in the year ahead as the start of the global "El Niño" climate phenomenon exacerbates the impacts of global warming. As well as droughts, floods and other extreme events, the next few years are also likely to be the hottest on record, scientists say.
In the UK, a Met office spokesman said yesterday that the El Niño event was likely to cause a hot, dry summer, following a warm June, but said could have other unpredictable effects on weather in Britain and north west Europe. "Much depends on how much the El Nino deepens in the next few months."
El Niño - "the child" in Spanish - was named by fishermen in Peru and Ecuador because the phenomenon arrives at Christmas there. It is part of a natural meteorological cycle that happens roughly every 3-7 years and affects weather worldwide for a year or more. It is caused by changes in ocean temperatures, with the first sign being abnormal warming in the Pacific .
Sea surface temperatures across an area of the Pacific ocean almost the size of Europe have now been increasing for six months and will inevitably trigger worldwide weather turbulence for the next year, said a spokesman for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). "An El Niño has started. It has a significant influence on global weather, ocean conditions and marine fisheries. Its impacts have included damaging storms, severe flooding and drought in Indonesia", he said.
El Niño is also strongly linked to droughts in Africa, Australia and Asia, and wetter-than-normal weather in much of the US and South America. There are growing concerns that its intensity and frequency may be affected by climate change.
At this stage, both US and Australian climate scientists say this may be a medium-strength El Niño, but they have warned the temperatures in the eastern Pacfic are still rising and it could develop further.
"Temperatures in the Pacific are around 1°C above average, and sub-surface temperatures up to 4°C warmer than normal. " said a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
The last major El Niño in 1998 killed over 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage to crops, infrastructure and mines in Australia and Asia. It led directly to forest fires in South East Asia, to a collapse of fish stocks in South America and a drought threatening 700,000 people in Papua New Guinea.
Strong El Niños frequently have long-lasting social and economic effects on countries. The 1991-92 event led to the major droughts in Africa and food shortages that left 30 million people at risk of malnutrition and set back development for a decade.
Development groups yesterday said the arrival of a new El Niñowas worrying because it will add to the effects of climate change and the worldwide economic recession, which has led to hundreds of millions extra hungry people.
Oxfam said it had alerted its teams around the world. "This could be the hottest year in known history. Poverty and climate change is enough of a challenge: an El Niño will only make things harder," said Steve Jennings, Oxfam's disaster risk reduction manager. "We are really concerned it will result in intense droughts in Southern Africa and floods in Eastern Africa."
2009 has already been marked by an unusual weather patterns in SE Asia, and stubborn droughts and major floods in Australia, the US, China and Latin America.
India has been experiencing much weaker annual monsoon rains this year and searing temperatures. Rains have been up to two weeks late with temperatures reaching the high 40C in some areas. Water levels in the Ganges, Indus, Narmada, Sabarmati, Godavari and other rivers of the Kutch were this week at dangerously low levels.
Droughts in Australia, Argentina and Northern China, some of the worst ever recorded, have reduced food supplies and led to major water problems.
A recent academic study of El Niño patterns even suggests the French Revolution was caused in part by an unusually strong El-Niño effect between 1789-93, which resulted in poor crop yields Europe.
But the Noaa spokesman said not all not all effects of El Niño are negative. "On the positive side, El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. In the US, it typically brings beneficial winter precipitation to the arid Southwest, less wintry weather across the North, and a reduced risk of Florida wildfires."
Major recent El Niños:
1972-73 Peru: The world's largest fishery collapsed
1991-1992: Southern Africa experienced one of its worst droughts, affecting close to 100 million people.
1994-5: The US was hit with two of the most severe floods and storms ever recorded.
1997-8: Africa experienced a major drought, Ecuador and Peru suffered over 10 times more rainfall than usual. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil were hit by droughts leading to huge numbers of forest fires.
2002-3: The rise in sea surafce temperature was lower than other years but Australia suffered some of its worst ever droughts.
- Hannah White
Yahoo News 13 Jul 09;
PARIS (AFP) – A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.
Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.
The Arctic Ocean warmed to 23 C (73 F), or about the temperature of a lukewarm bath.
How PETM happened is unclear but climatologists are eager to find out, as this could shed light on aspects of global warming today.
What seems clear is that a huge amount of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases -- natural, as opposed to man-made -- were disgorged in a very short time.
The theorised sources include volcanic activity and the sudden release of methane hydrates in the ocean.
A trio of Earth scientists, led by Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii, try to account for the carbon that was spewed out during PETM.
They believe that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) rose by 70 percent during PETM's main phase to reach 1,700 parts per million (ppm), attaining a concentration of between four and five times that of today.
But all this CO2 can only account for between one and 3.5 C (1.8-6.3 F) of PETM's warming if the models for climate sensitivity are right, the team found.
There must have been some other factor that stoked temperatures higher.
Even though there are big differences between Earth's geology and ice cover then and now, the findings are relevant as they highlight the risk of hidden mechanisms that add dramatically to warming, says the paper.
Some of these so-called "positive feedbacks" are already known.
For instance, when a patch of Arctic sea ice melts, this exposes the uncovered sea to sunlight, depriving it of a bright, reflective layer.
That causes the sea to warm, which leads to the loss of more ice, which in turn helps the sea to warm, and so on.
But these "feedbacks" are poorly understood and some scientists believe there could be others still to be identified.
"Our results imply a fundamental gap in our understanding about the amplitude of global warming associated with large and abrupt climate perturbations," warns Zeebe's team.
"This gap needs to be filled to confidently predict future climate change."
After the big warm-up, the planet eventually cooled around 100,000 years later, but not before there had been a mass extinction, paving the way to the biodiversity that is familiar to us today.
Man-made global warming, driven mainly by the burning of oil, gas and coal, has amounted to around 0.8 C (1.12 F) over the past century.
Last week in L'Aquila, Italy, the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries and other economies that together account for 80 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions pledged to try to limit overall warming to 2 C (3.6 F) over pre-industrial times.
Past warming shows gaps in climate knowledge: study
David Fogarty, Reuters 15 Jul 09;
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A dramatic warming of the planet 55 million years ago cannot be solely explained by a surge in carbon dioxide levels, a study shows, highlighting gaps in scientists' understanding of impacts from rapid climate change.
During an event called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, global temperatures rose between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius within several thousand years. The world at that time was already warmer than now with no surface ice.
"We now believe that the CO2 did not cause all the warming, that there were additional factors," said Richard Zeebe, an oceanographer with the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
"There may have been an initial trigger," he told Reuters on Wednesday from Hawaii. This could be a deep ocean warming that caused a catastrophic release of methane from hydrate deposits under the seabed.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas but much of it is oxidised into CO2 when it is released from hydrate deposits.
Zeebe and his colleagues estimated the amount of CO2 released during the Palaeocene-Eocene event by studying sediment cores from seabeds around the globe. Their study is published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.
FUTURE WARMING
They estimated about 3 trillion tons of carbon (11 trillion tons of CO2) was released over several thousand years from the methane deposits, leading to a 70 percent rise in atmospheric CO2 levels from pre-event levels.
But Zeebe said this could only explain a 1 to 3.5 degree Celsius rise in temperatures, adding that a commonly accepted scientific range for a doubling of CO2 is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius.
This meant other factors must have been at work to drive up temperatures between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius.
"If this additional warming which we do not really understand, was caused as a response to the CO2 warming, then there is a chance that also a future warming could be more intense than people anticipate right now," Zeebe said.
He said the study suggested there could be atmospheric or ocean processes as yet unknown or poorly understood that might have accelerated the warming. Possibilities could be changes in ocean currents, a much larger release of methane or even greater impacts from higher CO2 levels than currently thought.
At present, CO2 levels have already risen from 280 parts per million to nearly 390 ppm since the Industrial Revolution and could exceed a 70 percent increase during this century, a rate much faster than the Palaeocene-Eocene event, Zeebe said.
While this would cause initial effects, much worse could follow in the coming decades and centuries as the oceans, land and atmosphere tried to deal with the higher CO2 levels, he said.
"The carbon that we put into the atmosphere right now is going to stay there for a very long time. Much of it will stay there for tens of thousands of years."
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Reuters 13 Jul 09;
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Electric car sales could jump to 86 percent of U.S. light vehicle sales in 2030 if consumers don't have to buy batteries themselves, according to a University of California, Berkeley study to be released on Monday.
A company called Better Place and emerging rivals plan to offer pay-per-mile plans, similar to cell phone minutes. A family would buy a car but Better Place would own the battery, offer charging stations, and swap out batteries as needed to extend the driving range.
The cost of building charging systems will be more than $320 billion over the next couple of decades, although health-related savings due to less vehicle pollution could be $210 billion, according to the study by economist Thomas Becker.
The main benefit to drivers would be cars with price tags and operating costs similar to or less than gasoline models.
Renault-Nissan is making cars for the Better Place project. Better Place has said its system would be cheaper than using gasoline. The Berkeley analysis predicted the per-mile cost of making and charging batteries, including the cost of building a charging system, would be similar to or sharply less than a gasoline car, depending largely on whether prices of petrol rise.
(Reporting by Peter Henderson, Editing by Richard Chang)
Yahoo News 13 Jul 09;
GENEVA (AFP) – An international agreement against climate change could hinge around steps to ease the transfer of green technology to developing countries, a Brazilian official said on Monday.
His comments at a World Intellectual Property Organisation conference came amid signs of a rift between rich and poor nations over the best approach to take on patented technology that can be used to tackle global warming.
"The key message is that a fair agreement on technology transfer is crucial to seal the deal in Copenhagen," said Haraldo de Oliviera Machado Filho, a senior advisor in Brazil's government committee on climate change.
He said intellectual property systems were often seen as "a significant barrier" in transferring technology from rich to poor nations.
Many key technologies that can help countries adapt to global warming or mitigate its effects, such as by cutting emissions, were patented or would be patented in the future, he underlined.
"With these technologies there should be an understanding that patents must not be an obstacle for developing countries," de Oliviera Machado Filho told the meeting.
Chinese deputy intellectual property commissioner Li Yuguang called for a broader approach than the traditional intellectual property regime, including a "joint development fund" that could also be used to "buy and disseminate free of charge the major adaptation and mitigation technologies."
British minister for higher education and intellectual property David Lammy insisted there was a need to "get the balance right" but he did not address funding directly.
"It's not just a question of getting hold of green technology, from, for example, increased licensing. We also need to build capacity so that poorer countries can develop their own knowledge and skills base," he said.
The negotiations to seal a climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December have been dogged by disagreements over targets for cuts in carbon emissions and a fund from rich nations to help developing countries tackle climate change.
Global climate deal still possible: Brazil's Lula
Raymond Colitt, Reuters 13 Jul 09;
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that a global climate deal could still be ready by a December summit in Copenhagen despite differences that resurfaced last week between rich and poor countries.
The Group of Eight leading industrial countries agreed on Wednesday at its annual summit to support a goal of cutting global emissions by 50 percent by 2050 and of reducing emissions in wealthy countries by 80 percent.
Developing countries like China, India and Brazil said more short-term targets were needed to make the pledge credible and called for rich country emissions cuts of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Even though the G8 could not agree with the G5 group of key developing nations on the issue at last week's summit in L'Aquila, Italy, "the issue advanced substantially", Lula said in his weekly radio address.
"I think we'll reach an accord for the Copenhagen meeting in December," he added.
The United States signed but never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty to be renewed in global talks culminating in the Copenhagen conference in December.
"The United States is assuming the responsibility to discuss this issue, something they haven't done since the Kyoto Protocol was signed," Lula said.
Still, Lula said more aggressive reduction targets for emissions by rich countries are a prerequisite for the establishment of a fund to finance carbon sequestration -- by planting or preserving forests.
"Otherwise what will happen? The rich countries, which have money, will pay the poor to plant more forests to absorb carbon, while they go on polluting," Lula said.
He said highly industrialized countries who have been emitting greenhouse gases for more than a century have a responsibility to adopt tougher targets.
"The United States has more responsibility than China; Europe has more responsibility than South America or Africa," Lula said.
China has replaced the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases because of its fast-growing economy and dependence on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Brazil also has large emissions due to extensive, albeit falling, destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Burning or decomposing trees emit carbon dioxide.
Last year the Lula government announced a target to reduce the rate of deforestation by 50 percent over the next decade. The government is recalculating its emissions as a basis for possibly adopting targets later this year.
In an interview with Reuters last month, Lula said Brazil "should not be afraid" of adopting emissions targets.
(Editing by Todd Benson and Mohammad Zargham)
Yahoo News 13 Jul 09;
MELBOURNE (AFP) – High-profile climate change campaigner Al Gore on Monday backed Australia's environmental policies and said this year's devastating brushfires were a savage reminder of the need to act.
The former US presidential candidate, in Melbourne to launch the Safe Climate Australia think-tank, said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had shown the environment was a top priority.
"In my country we have a new president and in only 30 days after taking office (he) was able to pass in the US Congress 80 billion dollars for renewable energy and for green infrastructure," Gore said.
"Your new leadership 18 months on here in Australia has done something similar."
Gore had earlier praised Rudd for pushing ahead with emissions trading legislation before a UN climate change conference takes place in Copenhagen in December.
Rudd also won plaudits from environmentalists by signing Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming as one of his first acts as prime minister.
Gore said Australia's worst ever brushfires, which were fanned by record temperatures and left 173 people dead, offered evidence that the planet had a "fever."
"It's difficult to ignore the fact that cyclones are getting stronger, that the fires are getting bigger, that the sea level is rising, that the refugees are beginning to move from places they have long called home," Gore said.
"The odds have been shifted so heavily that fires that used to be manageable now threaten to spin out of control and wreak damages that are far beyond what was experienced in the past."
Gore urges Australia to lead global warming fight
Yahoo News 15 Jul 09;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate campaigner Al Gore has challenged Australia to lead the fight against global warming, saying it was well placed to find alternative energy sources.
The former US vice president met Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney to discuss progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reaching renewable energy targets ahead of a UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.
"Australia is in the line of fire where the climate crisis is concerned, no nation is more vulnerable to the impact scientists have predicted," said Gore, at a joint press conference.
"And no nation has greater renewable energy resources and a greater capacity to develop alternative sources of energy and contribute to a solution for the climate crisis," he added.
Rudd, who was elected on a strongly pro-green platform in 2007 and ratified the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office, said Gore was "absolutely right."
"Australia is the driest continent on Earth," Rudd said. "Therefore the impact of climate change here will be felt earlier and harder than in all other continents in the world, that's the bottom line.
"We have a huge national interest in action on climate change, which is as much environmental as it is economic."
Gore said he chose to be "optimistic about the possibility of a successful outcome at Copenhagen," and urged heads of state to meet personally ahead of the December summit to resolve the political impasse.
"We're making progress, there was a bit of progress at (the recent G8 summit in) L'Aquila and there's been progress here in Australia and in my country," said Gore.
Leaders of the G8 countries, which together account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, last week set a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.
But they failed to spell out how they would achieve this vision or break a deadlock on helping emerging countries meet the climate challenge.
Rudd in May committed to cutting Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, up from five percent.
But he said the target would only apply if world leaders also signed up to an "ambitious" reduction goal in Copenhagen in December.
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