Tanah Merah - More and more fishes
from Singapore Nature and wonderful creations and wild shores of singapore
Article at Nature Watch is out!
from Chek Jawa Mortality and Recruitment Project
Melissa's article on intertidal wetlands is out!
from God's wonderful creation
Sandflies: the bane of our shores
from wild shores of singapore
Juvenile Banded Bay Cuckoo fed by adult Common Iora
from Bird Ecology Study Group
938LIVE/Hoe Yeen Nie and Maggie Chong Channel NewsAsia 7 Aug 09;
SINGAPORE: The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore has begun work on preparing the next Concept Plan.
National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan announced at his ministry's National Day Observance Ceremony on Friday.
Concept Plan 2011 will be a major review of Singapore's long-term land use plans and strategies to cater to the changing needs of a growing economy and population.
Mr Mah said: "This is a very important exercise because from this concept plan we will derive some of the more detailed land use plans. We will determine what are the areas, in which areas will Singapore be concentrating on, how do we work, how do we play, how do we make this an even better Singapore."
URA will seek the public's views to ensure that the plans are in sync with the evolving lifestyles and aspirations of Singaporeans.
Mr Mah said a key focus of Concept Plan 2011 is to plan for sustainable growth.
The minister explained: "So that even as we grow economically, this has to be done in a way that is sustainable, that will make sure that our resources can be best used, not for just this generation but for the generations to come."
He said the Sustainable Singapore blueprint, which was launched in April, provides a good foundation, and the concept plan will build upon that.
Mr Mah added that keeping public housing affordable is also a priority.
"There's plenty of housing available. Old ones, resale ones, new ones under the BTO (Build-To-Order). It's like going to a supermarket, (there are) different types of housing available. Each one of them has its price, and you choose the one that you're able to afford," he said.
At the National Day Observance Ceremony, Mr Mah met some new citizens and he spoke of the need for them to make an effort to integrate.
Some new citizens said they were drawn to Singapore because of its emphasis on ability.
"It's because of the equal opportunities, and the system of meritocracy, and the open arms of the government for foreign talent. So long as you can contribute, I believe the Singapore government will welcome us," said Dr Wong Siew Heng, a new citizen who has lived in Singapore for 20 years.
- 938 LIVE/CNA/yb/ir
Mah: Sustainable growth for Singapore
URA's new Concept Plan to transform not just skyline but also create jobs
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
SINGAPORE'S transformation over the past 50 years has been remarkable but it will not stop here, said National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan yesterday at his ministry's National Day observance ceremony.
The country's physical landscape will continue to evolve under the Urban Redevelopment Authority's new 2011 Concept Plan, and these 'new developments will not only transform our skyline, but will also create new jobs and opportunities for many', said Mr Mah.
Public consultation will begin soon to 'ensure that our plans are in sync with the evolving lifestyles and aspirations of Singaporeans', he added. 'Even as we continue to grow economically, we want to do so in a sustainable manner.'
He noted that the economic downturn has not impeded growth plans: The new downtown at Marina Bay is taking shape fast. The 'double helix' bridge and the art park will be completed by the end of the year while the new waterfront promenade, the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort and the first phase of Marina Bay Financial Centre will open their doors next year.
Meanwhile, public housing will continue to 'play a major part in the Singapore story'. The home ownership policies provide 'not only a roof over the head, but also a social security net for many Singaporeans'.
This support was strengthened this year by new initiatives such as the enhanced additional housing grant for first-time buyers, and the Lease Buyback Scheme to help elderly home owners monetise their flats, said Mr Mah.
As Singapore celebrates its National Day this weekend, 'it is important that all of us, all Singaporeans new and old, rally together as one united people', said Mr Mah, who also presented a cheque for $39,000 that his ministry raised for the President's Challenge.
The organisation recently set a Singapore record for the 'largest national map made of wish cards'.
The display measuring 2.8m by 6.5m featured over 6,000 cards with well-wishes and hopes for Singapore written by ministry staff.
Threats to their habitats worldwide, including here, are killing off species
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
ONE in six - or 1,000 species - freshwater crabs known to thrive in the tropics of Asia, Africa and South America is in danger of going extinct, an international team of experts has warned.
The study, led by scientists from the Zoological Society of London and Northern Michigan University, said the loss of natural forest to land development and agriculture had impacted almost every habitat in which freshwater crabs live.
The crabs are known to thrive in habitats ranging from lowland forests to mountains such as rivers, streams, waterfalls and wetlands.
The conservation of freshwater crabs relies heavily on preserving patches of natural forest large enough to maintain good water quality, because many species are extremely sensitive to polluted or silted water and cannot survive exposure, the researchers explained.
The crabs help maintain tropical aquatic ecosystems by recycling animal and plant remains, for example, and their disappearance could adversely affect the nutrient cycles, while having knock-on effects on water quality, animal population and human communities.
The scientists conducted the research - the first global assessment of the extinction risk for any group of freshwater invertebrates - for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
The Red List categorises different animal and plant species according to extinction risk.
Crab species in South-east Asia are the most at risk from habitat destruction, pollution and drainage. In Singapore, six freshwater crab species are known to exist, three of which are not found elsewhere in the world. And crabs here are not immune to these threats.
For example, the Johora singaporensis is considered a critically endangered species. This species had previously been known to thrive in a 39ha patch of forest at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, but grew close to extinction last year.
A fragile ecosystem has meant the protected area has not been spared the effects of acid rain or climate change, said Professor Peter Ng, director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore and National Parks Board are studying the changing conditions in water streams found at Bukit Timah Hill.
The international study, which was published in the journal Biological Conservation, serves as an important reminder of the need to monitor endemic species, said Prof Ng.
Such a programme is lacking here, and efforts should be stepped up before it is too late, he said.
'Our Singapore crabs represent many of the species found in China, India and other parts of the world...Most of them are right at the edge of a cliff right now,' he said.
'If we kick a little harder, they will go down.'
More trying their luck
Ong Dai Lin, Today Online 8 Aug 09;
HIS pockets were bulging unusually and he was behaving suspiciously. That was reason enough for Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers at the Singapore Cruise Centre to body-search the Singaporean.
What they found: 48 live "Burung Pipit" - a species of house sparrow - hidden away in small boxes, inside his trousers and a cloth pouch round his waist.
This incident in April was just one of 2,700 smuggling cases involving flora, fauna and food items in the first half of this year - a 275-per-cent increase from the same period last year, and the most such cases recorded so far.
An ICA spokeswoman said most of the offenders had misdeclared the items - which included potted plants and food flavourings - or did not know they had to obtain approval from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.
In its half-yearly statistics released on Friday, the ICA said it saw a record 23,800 contraband smuggling cases, 35 per cent more than during the first six months of last year.
There was an 83-per-cent spike in security-related items smuggled - a record 3,300 cases - such as knuckle-dusters, live bullets and samurai swords.
Most were seized from persons who told officers they were bringing the items in as gifts or souvenirs.
The number of contraband cigarette packets recovered by ICA also spiked 87 per cent, to 734,000. But this was because most offenders were traffickers smuggling large quantities in - in terms of the actual number of cigarette smuggling cases, the figure fell 10.9 per cent.
When it came to pirated discs smuggled, however, the number of such cases detected rose slightly, though the number of discs seized fell by 57 per cent to 13,000.
The ICA said the culprits were "mainly travellers trying their luck against our checks".
Traffickers are using more ingenious methods to evade detection. For instance, two foiled contraband cigarette smuggling attempts this year saw traffickers pretending to offer tow truck services, towing broken-down buses through the checkpoints during peak periods.
As for immigration offences, the number of foreigners attempting to sneak into Singapore and stay here illegally, remained constant at about 3,100.
The number of people arrested for harbouring and employing immigration offenders has dipped for the third consecutive year, by 47 per cent and 63 per cent respectively.
The ICA attributed this to "greater community participation in public education programmes" on the consequences of such acts.
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
THE haze eased up yesterday, with the pollution standards index (PSI) dropping to 52, just inside the moderate range.
The National Environment Agency's (NEA) Meteorological Services Division said a slight shift in wind direction diverted the smoke.
But over in Sumatra, satellite imaging showed 107 hot spots, said a spokesman.
The raging fires have placed the spotlight on the ability of the Indonesian government to limit the burning being carried out deliberately, said Dr Lim Wee Kiak, a member of the Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development and the Environment.
The different layers of central and provincial governments have to act on the issue. 'It takes all hands to clap,' said Dr Lim, who was involved in the recent meeting of the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (Aipa), at which the issue of transboundary haze was discussed.
Speaking to The Straits Times, Dr Lim expressed 'deep concern' over the health implications of the double whammy of a potentially bad haze year and the Influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.
Yesterday, environmental groups based in the Riau province also described comments made by Indonesia's Forestry Minister as 'disappointing'.
Mr M.S. Kaban had said on Thursday that the central government would intervene in the slash-and-burn activities only if neighbouring countries protested, and flights were disrupted.
He said that the issue had been domestically exaggerated, and that it was not domestic affairs which were important, but Indonesia's 'international image'.
The comments were 'surprising', said Associate Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart from the National University of Singapore, an expert on South-east Asian politics.
'The issue of forest fires and land burning is of regional and global significance.
'But it seems strange to be more concerned with international opinion when it is their own people at the front line of the fires," she said.
Dr Lim expressed hope for the haze to be kept at bay over this weekend's National Day celebrations.
NEA said periods of slightly hazy conditions can still be expected in Singapore over the next two days.
Haze forces Riau airport closure
The Jakarta Post 8 Aug 09;
Authorities at Sultan Syarif Kasim (SSK) II Airport in Pekanbaru temporarily closed the facility on Friday because of thick haze reducing visibility in the area.
The haze enveloped the runway from 6 a.m. local time, airport duty manager Ibnu Hasan said Friday.
"Visibility is currently only 600 meters," he said, adding that the airport would reopen once visibility increased to 1,000 meters.
Antara, which was quoted by AP, reported that because of the unfavorable conditions, four domestic flights and two international flights previously scheduled to land in Pekanbaru had been postponed or diverted to Polonia Airport in Medan, North Sumatra.
The two international flights were an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur and a Riau Airlines flight to Malaka (Malaysia).
According to the Pekanbaru Meteorological and Geophysics Office, NOAA 18 Satellite detected 44 hotspots in eight districts in Riau.
The districts were Bengkalis (10 hotspots), Pelalawan (9), Indragiri Hilir (6), Rokan Hulu (5), Idnragiri Hulu (5), Rokan Hilir (3), Siak (3) and Dumai city (3).
The United States has offered to assist Indonesia in combating forest fires, and Malaysia has offered aid to organize a course on tackling forest and plantation fires in Riau province in particular.
Forest fires in Indonesia attracted international concern as they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to global warming, and create haze that crosses borders and impacts neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
Fires have become more frequent and widespread in recent years, especially in Sumatra and Kalimantan, because of human activity in forested areas. During the El Nino of 1982-83, fires burned about 3.7 million hectares of forests degraded by commercial logging and agriculture in Kalimantan.
Scrub, grassland, cleared forest and rainforest areas are often cleared (using fire) for cash crops like palm oil and rubber plantations.
In Jambi, governor H. Zulkifli Nurdin and other local officials joined fire-fighters to put out fast-spreading forest fires in the province while the thick haze blanketing Riau has forced residents to use masks on a daily basis.
In both provinces, fires were spreading fast in forests and plantations and swampy areas, exporting haze to neighboring countries. The same problem has also emerged in Kalimantan where thousands of hectares of bushland and lowland forests have been affected by fires.
Local authorities have complained at the difficulty of extinguishing the fires, claiming climatic elements and a lack of public awareness have compounded the annual problem.
Andy Coghlan, New Scientist 7 Aug 09;
We're a gloomy lot, with many of us insisting that there's nothing we can do personally about global warming, or that the human race is over-running the planet like a plague.
But according to leading ecologists speaking this week in Albuquerque at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, few of us realise that the main cause of the current environmental crisis is human nature.
More specifically, all we're doing is what all other creatures have ever done to survive, expanding into whatever territory is available and using up whatever resources are available, just like a bacterial culture growing in a Petri dish till all the nutrients are used up. What happens then, of course, is that the bugs then die in a sea of their own waste.
One speaker in Albuquerque, epidemiologist Warren Hern of the University of Colorado at Boulder, even likened the expansion of human cities to the growth and spread of cancer, predicting "death" of the Earth in about 2025. He points out that like the accelerated growth of a cancer, the human population has quadrupled in the past 100 years, and at this rate will reach a size in 2025 that leads to global collapse and catastrophe.
But there's worse. Not only are we simply doing what all creatures do: we're doing it better. In recent times we're doing it even faster because of changes in society that encourage and celebrate conspicuous and excessive consumption.
"Biologists have shown that it's a natural tendency of living creatures to fill up all available habitat and use up all available resources," says William Rees of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. "That's what underlies Darwinian evolution, and species that do it best are the ones that survive, but we do it better than any other species," he told me prior to the conference.
Spreading humans
Although we like to think of ourselves as civilised thinkers, we're subconsciously still driven by an impulse for survival, domination and expansion. This is an impulse which now finds expression in the idea that inexorable economic growth is the answer to everything, and, given time, will redress all the world's existing inequalities.
The problem with that, according to Rees and Hern, is that it fails to recognise that the physical resources to fuel this growth are finite. "We're still driven by growing and expanding, so we will use up all the oil, we will use up all the coal, and we will keep going till we fill the Petri dish and pollute ourselves out of existence," he says.
But there's another, more recent factor that's making things even worse, and it's an invention of human culture rather than an evolved trait. According to Rees, the change took place after the second world war in the US, when factories previously producing weapons lay idle, and soldiers were returning with no jobs to go to.
American economists and the government of the day decided to revive economic activity by creating a culture in which people were encouraged to accumulate and show off material wealth, to the point where it defined their status in society and their self-image.
Rees quotes economist Victor Lebow as saying in 1955: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate".
Insecure society
In today's world, such rhetoric seems beyond belief. Yet the consumer spree carries on regardless, and few of us are aware that we're still willing slaves to a completely artificial injunction to consume, and to define ourselves by what we consume.
"Lebow and his cronies got together to 'create' the modern advertising industry, which plays to primitive beliefs," says Rees. "It makes you feel insecure, because the advertising industry turned our sense of self-worth into a symbolic presentation of the possessions we have," he told me. "We've turned consumption into a necessity, and how we define ourselves."
The result is a world in which rampant consumption in rich countries is rapidly outstripping the resources in the world needed to satisfy demand.
For evidence, Rees developed in 1992 a process called ecological footprint analysis (EFA). Produced by combining national consumption statistics with calculations of the resources needed to meet reported consumption patterns, EFA generates figures that conveniently demonstrate where consumption is least sustainable, and how fast finite material resources are being used up (calculate your own here).
Big footprints
Rees's latest figures, presented in Albuquerque, show that, globally, we're already in "overshoot", consuming 30 per cent more material than is sustainable from the world's resources. At present, 85 countries exceed their domestic "bio-capacities", compensating for their lack of local material by depleting stocks elsewhere, in countries that have "surpluses" because they're not consuming as much.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the encouragement from Lebow, North Americans are the most consumptive, eating resources equivalent to 9.2 global average hectares per capita.
The world can only supply 2.1 global average hectares per person, so already, Americans are consuming four times what the Earth can sustainably supply. "North Americans should be taking steps to lower their eco-footprints by almost 80 per cent, to free up the 'ecological space' for justifiable growth in the developing world," says Rees.
The worrying thing is that if everyone on Earth adopted American lifestyles overnight, we would need four extra worlds to supply their needs, says Rees.
We haven't yet mentioned climate change or global warming. What's to be done? Marc Pratarelli of Colorado State University at Pueblo believes we need to snap out of our sleepwalking and begin to take real steps to cut consumption. "We have our heads in the sand, and are in a state of denial," he says. "People think: 'It won't happen to me, or be in my lifetime, or be that bad, so what's the point of change'."
What to do?
But there is hope, however slim, according to Rees, both from the top down and the bottom up. The hope from above is that governments will finally realise that never-ending economic growth is incompatible with the finite material resources Earth has to offer, and begin to manage those resources more fairly and equitably through some kind of world government.
Without global management, destruction will continue, producing food and energy "crunches" that make the credit crunch look like a tea party.
"We need to learn to live within the means of nature," says Rees. "That means sharing and redistribution of wealth, and for that we need leadership at the highest level to understand that the competitive instinct and the drive for power and more resources is mutually destructive, so governments must act in our collective interest."
From the bottom up, there are the glimmers of global grassroots organisations campaigning for global justice and global solutions, such as the internet-based justice organisation Avaaz, which collects email votes for petitions on issues of international or personal justice.
Desire to acquire
Solving the other problem – the advertising that feeds our desire to acquire – might be more tricky. In an ideal world, it would be a counter-advertising campaign to make conspicuous consumption shameful.
"Advertising is an instrument for construction of people's everyday reality, so we could use the same media to construct a cultural paradigm in which conspicuous consumption is despised," he says. "We've got to make people ashamed to be seen as a 'future eater'."
Whether we're capable of such a counter-revolution is doubtful, both because of our state of personal denial and because of the huge power of industry to continue seducing us.
"In effect, globalism and consumerism have succeeded in banishing moderation and sanctifying greed, thereby liberating Homo economicus from any moral or ethical constraints on consumption," says Rees.
Pararelli is even more pessimistic. The only hope, he says, is a disaster of immense scale that jolts us out of our denial. "My sense is that only when the brown stuff really hits the fan will we finally start to do something."
Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
BANGKOK: The mighty Mekong, meandering from China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, is the lifeblood of tens of millions of people.
But the huge volume of water coursing down half a continent through Indochina is a wounded creature.
As many as 53 dams have been built, are under construction or are being planned along the 4,500km river. Another 66 are at various stages of study.
Dams produce electricity and supply water for irrigation.
But they also disrupt the free flow of water, change the course and patterns of rivers and floods, and restrict the range and breeding of fish. They alter the subsistence livelihood base of millions of people, creating social and political tension.
One recent study estimates that the volume of migratory fish catch put at risk by dams on the Mekong is between 700,000 and 1.6 million tonnes a year. That is about five times the annual fish catch of a country such as Finland.
Civil society groups have for years been blowing the whistle on over-exploitation of the Mekong.
Now, environmental groups are waiting to see what the United States will bring to the table under a 'sister river' partnership between the Mekong River Commission and the Mississippi River Commission. The partnership came with the renewed engagement of the US in the lower Mekong region.
Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met for the first time ministers from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. At the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Asean Regional Forum in Phuket, she pledged a greater US role in issues such as the environment, health and education.
The ministers discussed collaboration on climate change, infectious diseases, the use of technology for education and development, and infrastructure at the talks.
Renewed American interest in the lower Mekong countries has largely been welcomed.
With Cambodia and, to some extent, Laos dependent on aid from donors, their governments are seen as welcoming enhanced US assistance, which also serves as a hedge against China.
This year, the US will spend more than US$7 million (S$10 million) on environmental programmes, US$138 million on health and US$16 million on education in the lower Mekong countries.
Washington's foot in the door, however, has drawn a less than enthusiastic response from Chinese analysts.
Professor Guo Xiangang, a scholar at the China Institute of International Studies, told the official Xinhua news agency on the day Mrs Clinton met the ministers that increased US presence in South-east Asia would complicate and bring uncertainties to regional issues.
For those who depend on the Mekong and are affected by water and rainfall disruption caused by global warming, the key issue is ecological security.
'We hope the increased presence of the US will be backed with a genuine commitment towards... sustainable development,' Mr Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, wrote to The Straits Times in an e-mail.
The 'sister river' partnership aims to share expertise and best practices in climate change adaptation, flood and drought management, hydropower and impact assessment, and water resource management.
But the Mississippi River is not exactly a shining example of good management.
A recent study by Louisiana State University concluded that marshland loss in the Mississippi Delta was being exacerbated beyond repair by dams.
'By learning more about what has happened along the Mississippi, the lower Mekong region can avoid making the same mistakes,' wrote Mr Ath.
The mighty Mekong
Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
ABOUT 4,500km long, the river passes through more countries than any other river in Asia - China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.
An estimated 61 million people, especially fishermen and farmers, depend on the river for their livelihood.
Rich in biodiversity, it is also a focus of substantial trade and commerce. Recent estimates put the annual value of the river's wild capture fisheries at US$3 billion (S$4.3 billion).
Mainstream dams, which disrupt the free flow of the river, have contributed to the endangerment of the giant Mekong catfish, which can grow up to 3m in length. The catfish population is reckoned to have fallen by about 80 per cent in the past 20 years or so.
In June, a petition signed by about 12,000 citizens of Mekong countries urged Thailand and other Mekong countries to keep the river flowing freely and pursue electricity options that are less damaging than dams.
Matt Walker, BBC News 7 Aug 09;
Conservationists have taken a massive stride toward saving the world's most endangered crocodile from extinction.
In a major reintroduction last week, they released 50 captive-bred Philippine crocodiles into the wild.
Prior to the release, hunting, habitat loss and overfishing had reduced the number of wild Philippine crocodiles to fewer than 100 mature animals.
The newly-released crocodiles should be ready to breed in just a few years, the conservationists hope.
Despite being a relatively small crocodile species that poses no threat to humans unless provoked, the Philippines crocodile has been pushed to the brink of extinction.
After World War II, crocodile populations in the Philippines became severely depleted by commercial hunters taking the animals for leather.
Across the densely populated country, marshes, swamps and creeks were converted to rice fields, removing the crocodile's natural habitat. Overfishing, fishing with dynamite and electricity and the use of pesticides all further reduced the reptile's numbers.
Today, just 100 mature wild Philippine crocodile ( Crocodylus mindorensis ) survive, restricted to the northern Luzon and southwest Mindanao islands.
Since 1987, Philippine crocodiles have been bred in captivity at the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Palawan.
Today, the Center is home to around 800 captive crocodiles. But there has been a problem reintroducing the crocodiles back into the wild.
"Philippine crocodiles in captivity are quite aggressive towards each other," says conservationist Jan van der Ploeg of Leiden University in The Netherlands and the Mabuwaya Foundation, a small non-profit organisation set up in Isabela Province to help save the crocodile.
"But the problem with the captive breeding and reintroduction project was not so much the crocodiles but the people. A lot of attention went to the breeding, and too little efforts were made to address the threats, disseminate information and mobilise local support for crocodile conservation," he says.
So van der Ploeg and colleague Merlijn van Weerd set up a community-based Philippine crocodile conservation project in the northern Sierra Madre on the island of Luzon.
There they laid the groundwork for last week's reintroduction, gaining the support of the local government and people to release the captive-bred crocodiles.
On 31 July, their project culminated in the release of 50 juvenile crocodiles, each about 1.2 long, into Dicatian Lake in the municipality of Divilacan.
Ten have been fitted with radio transmitters.
"Our team will closely monitor the released crocodiles in the coming months. We hope to collect information that can be used for future releases of Philippine crocodiles," says van der Ploeg.
Dicatian Lake is situated in the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park (NSMNP), the largest and biologically the most diverse protected area of the Philippines.
The NSMNP now protects the largest single Philippine crocodile population in the wild.
"The release of 50 Philippine crocodiles in Dicatian Lake is a major step towards a recovery of the wild population and the future survival of this species," says van der Ploeg.
"In a few years the captive-bred crocodiles in Dicatian will be sexually mature. Then we will know whether the release has been a success."
"The team is thrilled," he continues. "This is the crown on our work. We have worked more than eight years in Sierra Madre, and this is a major milestone."
However, the reintroduction almost didn't happen.
"It was a complex operation," van der Ploeg explains.
"The crocodiles went by plane from Puerto Princesa to Manila. Then a 12 hour long bus ride to Cauayan in Isabela Province. The provincial governor granted us permission to use the helicopters of the armed forces to transport the 50 animals from Cauayan to Divilacan in the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park."
"We almost had to cancel the release because of the bad weather, but the pilots somehow managed to fly in."
Carolyn Barry, National Geographic News 7 Aug 09;
A walking bat in New Zealand took its marching orders from an ancestor, a new fossil-bat discovery reveals.
Scientists had long thought that the lesser short-tailed bat evolved its walking preference independently. 
One of only two known bat species that regularly walk, the lesser short-tailed bat species—including this specimen seen on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand in an undated picture—may have descended from a distant ancestor from Australia, a fossil find announced in July 2009 suggests. Photgraph courtesy Mike Thorsen and Arkive
Since the bat's native habitat lacks predators, researchers reasoned that—much like flightless birds on isolated islands—the bat had adapted to its safer surroundings in part by walking.
But the discovery of fossils of a now extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that the modern-day bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives.
"We were amazed to find they were virtually identical to the bats in New Zealand today," said study leader Sue Hand, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
(Related: "Six New Prehistoric Bat Species Discovered in Egypt.")
The fossil bat had a similar groove in its elbow as its modern counterpart. This supports a specialized muscular system that allows bats to launch from the ground, where they spend about 40 percent of their time.
Unlike their modern relatives, the ancient bats had plenty of predators, Hand said, including marsupial lions and carnivorous kangaroos.
But the quick little bats, measuring up to three inches (eight centimeters) long, would have easily escaped capture.
"They're very agile on the ground, quick to fly, and reasonably aggressive," Hand said.
Bat Die-Off
The New Zealand bats "were in a perfectly good position to exploit a predator-free niche," she added.
(See a Australia and New Zealand map.)
Gaining the ability to walk and burrow opened up new food opportunities for the mammals, she added.
"Being on the ground allowed it to have an incredibly broad diet—an advantage when things became colder."
About 15 million years ago, when Australia underwent a climatic shift that made the continent cooler and drier, the Australian walking bats seemed to have died off.
Of the 1,100 known present-day bat species, the lesser short-tailed bat and the American common vampire bat are the only two known to walk on the ground.
The vampire bat is still thought to have evolved its walking ability independently, probably because walking allows the bat to chase after injured prey on the ground.
The finding was published July 20 in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.
Victoria Gill, BBC News 7 Aug 09;
Whole "chunks of life" are lost in extinction events, as related species vanish together, say scientists.
A study in the journal Science shows that extinctions tend to "cluster" on evolutionary lineages - wiping out species with a common ancestor.
The finding is based on an examination of past extinctions, but could help current conservation efforts.
Researchers say that this phenomenon can result in the loss of an entire branch of the "tree of life".
The message for modern conservation, say the authors, is that some groups are more vulnerable to extinction than others, and the focus should be on the lineages most at risk.
Lead researcher Kaustuv Roy, a biologist from the University of California, San Diego, focused on marine bivalves - including clams, oysters and mussels. The fossil record for these creatures dates back almost 200 million years.
By tracing this documented timeline of evolution and extinction, the team was able to see the effects of "background extinctions" as well as the mass extinctions, such as the one around 65 million years ago during which the dinosaurs finally died out.
Many species have become extinct during the relatively stable periods between those global calamities.
But even during such quiet periods, the team found that extinctions tended to cluster into evolutionary families - with closely-related species of clams vanishing together more often than would be predicted by chance.
Richard Grenyer, a biologist from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, told BBC News that by going "way back into the fossil record" this study provided important evidence of the patterns of extinction.
"Big groups of organisms tend to be similar to one another," he explained. "Look at the large cats for example."
But genetic similarities also mean, said Dr Grenyer, that "a bad effect that affects one of them, will likely affect all of them".
"It's like a casino of extinctions, with the odds rigged against certain groups."
Life's library
According to this pattern, the study's authors point out, extinctions are likely to eliminate entire branches of the evolutionary tree.
Professor Roy said: "If you have whole lineages more vulnerable than others, then very soon, even with relatively moderate levels of extinction, you start to lose a lot of evolutionary history."
Julie Lockwood, an ecologist from Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, who did not take part in this study, explained that because extinction events "hit certain lineages extremely hard... we lose whole chunks of life."
"There are examples of modern species where the same thing is happening," she told BBC News.
"In seabirds for example, the same drivers - climatic change and habitat loss - are threatening whole groups of species."
Richard Greyner likened this loss to a fire in a library.
"Because whole sections are lost - the whole of the physics section, or all of the romantic fiction, the overall loss is much worse than if you randomly burned every 400th book."
But Dr Grenyer said that this evidence could help to drive more focused, and therefore more effective conservation efforts.
"We can use this information," he said.
"It doesn't make the conservation of individual species any easier, but if we know the sorts of things that affect tigers, we can infer conservation biology about the tiger's close relatives."
Reuters 7 Aug 09;
ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss authorities on Friday defended granting permission for the hunting of three wolves that have killed dozens of sheep after fierce criticism from environmentalists.
Reinhard Schnidrig, head of hunting, wild animals and forest biodiversity at the Federal Environment Authority, said the Swiss rule was that a wolf could be hunted if it killed 25 farm animals within a month or 35 within a season.
"The wolf is an internationally strongly protected animal. We must find a way to guarantee this protection while minimizing the damage to farm animals," he said in an interview posted on the authority's website.
Wolves were wiped out in most of northwestern Europe a century ago, although small populations survived in Spain and Italy. Now protected, they have been returning to countries including Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Schnidrig said individual male wolves had moved over the border from France and Italy in the past decade and estimated there were now at least 11 wolves living in Switzerland and possibly another six. The animals reached the north side of the Alps three years ago and formed their first pack two years ago.
With quarter of a million sheep in the pastures of the Swiss Alps each summer, Schnidrig said it was critical to improve flock protection so that wolves hunted wild animals instead.
The Swiss canton of Lucerne said on Friday it had granted permission for a wolf to be hunted after it killed another three sheep. Hunters have until September 19 to kill the wolf, but it can only be shot in the area in which it attacked the sheep.
The Pro Natura environmental group said the granting of permits to kill three wolves this week made a mockery of the government's attempt to protect the animals.
"It legitimizes the killing of almost half the proven wolves in Switzerland," it said in a statement. "Switzerland must take care or else the wolf will become extinct for a second time."
(Reporting by Emma Thomasson)
Nina Lex, Reuters 7 Aug 09;
TORONTO (Reuters) - Hundreds of villages in Atlantic Canada that depend on seal hunting for much of their livelihood are already feeling a sharp economic pinch from a European ban on seal products that went into effect last month.
For more than 20 years Eldred Woodford has taken part in the annual seal "harvest" on the ice floes along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, home to more than 80 percent of the country's sealing industry. But the hunt now brings in much less money than it did only a few years ago, he says.
To be sure, there are still plenty of seals to hunt, but they are worth a lot less.
In April Woodford and his crew killed about 1,200 harp seals over 10 days in an annual hunt that usually accounts for about a third of his yearly income. But depressed prices for pelts mean this year's catch will sell for thousands of dollars less than in the past.
"When you talk about an income between C$30,000 ($28,000) and C$35,000 a year and you lose a potential income on sealing of C$8,000 to C$10,000, that's a substantial loss," said Woodford.
While the drop in pelt prices partly reflects the impact of the global recession on demand, the European Union's ban is also a big reason, says Frank Pinhorn, director of the Canadian Sealers Association.
In 2008 pelt prices were selling at C$30 each, while several years ago they were going for C$100. This year some pelts were selling for as little as C$15.
With the financial incentive waning, many hunters didn't bother to venture out on the ice this year. All told, only 72,156 harp seals were taken, a quarter of this year's quota of 280,000 animals.
"This year there wasn't very many boats that did go sealing because of the lower prices," said Woodford.
SEAL HUNT CALLED INHUMANE
On July 27 the EU gave the final go-ahead to ban all seal products after years of pressure from animal rights campaigners who view the annual hunt as inhumane.
The Canadian government continues to defend its sealing policies and will challenge the EU's decision at the World Trade Organization.
"It seems that 25 to 30 percent of (seal) exports initially go to Europe. A lot of it goes to Norway or Finland to be processed. But then is transited through Europe to our main markets," said Alain Belle-Isle, media spokesman at the federal Fisheries and Oceans Department. "It's not clear how much of it actually stays in Europe."
The main markets for seal products are in Russia and China. But the ban means Canada has lost a huge potential market in Europe.
"We know that there are growing markets for seal oil products like Omega 3 supplements in the EU, and that potential cannot be realized because we can't ship seal products as a source for Omega 3 to the EU any more," said David Barry, co-ordinator for the Seal and Sealing Network, an industry lobby group.
Over the last couple of years seal exports totaled C$10 million to C$12 million a year. "In smaller communities that's a lot of money," said Belle-Isle.
"For the average Newfoundland and Labrador fishing family, 15 to 50 percent of their income originates from sealing," said the Sealers Association's Pinhorn. "And the income per family here in rural Newfoundland and Labrador is already the lowest in Canada."
Woodford lives in Herring Neck, a coastal village in northern Newfoundland with just 150 residents, including 25 sealers. The money he makes from the hunt is vital to his livelihood, he says. He uses it to buy or repair boats and equipment for the rest of the fishing season.
FUELING AN EXODUS
The EU ban will also affect the Inuit people in Canada's Arctic. The ban exempts seal products from traditional hunts carried out by aboriginal peoples, and they can still export products to the EU, but only on a non-profit basis.
"History has shown that the entire market collapses when countries talk about banning seal products. Inuit in Nunavut will be affected by this decision, whether or not an exemption is in place, and that is not right," Premier Eva Aariak of the vast northern territory of Nunavut said in a release.
Canada's seal hunt is the largest in the world. Even so, less than 5 percent of the 6 million seals living in the North Atlantic are killed each year, said Barry.
Nationally, there are still 6,000 active sealing licenses, but that number could decline sharply in coming years.
The industry has already come under pressure as older sealers retire, and few younger people step forward to take their places on the ice floes.
Many prefer to leave Newfoundland and Labrador to find lucrative jobs in Western Canada's rich energy industry. With the potential income from sealing dropping sharply, the trend is only likely to accelerate.
"Sealers in their 30s are in the minority. Sealers in their 40s, 50s and 60s are the majority. One of the major issues in the sealing industry will be recruitment in the next 10 years, trying to get younger people into it and interested," said the Sealing Network's Barry.
"In Canada, we are one of the few places left that has a strong seal population that feeds into a commercial industry," Barry said. "That's not going to stop but it's just a matter of, will there be an end use? Will there be an industry around it or will there be a government subsidized cull?"
($1=$1.08 Canadian)
(Reporting by Nina Lex; Editing by Frank McGurty and Rob Wilson)
Seeing sand cats sunbathing in the Sahara or catching a glimpse the climbing coconut crabs of Christmas Island are some of the highlights of a new guide on the world's greatest wildlife wonders.
Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph 8 Aug 09;
From the million wildebeest stampeding across the Serengeti in June, to killer whales surfing Argentinian beaches in March to the "greatest shoal on Earth" – the sardine run off South Africa in June, the book highlights nature's most spectacular must-sees.
The Lonely Plant Year of Watching Wildlife is a collection of 192 of the world's best wildlife watching events and destinations.
These are presented chronologically in a yearly calendar. Each week, a different destination is profiled which offers some of the best, and most unexpected wildlife gatherings in the world.
A profile destination is followed by three interesting animals from other places across the globe and features practical information including when to visit, population size and which species are protected or endangered.
Each event is also given a difficulty ranking to show how involved travellers can get to the action and how difficult their journey will be.
A spokesman for Lonely Planet said: "This is a great moment in history to go on a wildlife expedition. Never before have there been more wildlife destinations opening up or as many people travelling in search of wildlife, and in response many countries are developing new access points, accommodation and tours in areas that were previously difficult to reach.
He said that in response to the growing threats to the earth's ecosystems, many countries are setting aside vast swathes of wilderness faster than they can be explored or documented, providing travellers with numerous opportunities to venture into brand-new national parks or nature reserves that are practically unheard-of and see almost no visitors."
The highlights include:
*January: Iguana breeding season on Galapagus and wolf watching in Yellowstone Park
*February: Diving off the reefs of Raja Ampat Islands of Indonesia to see more than 1,000 species of fish and hundreds of corals
* March: Killer Whales eating seal pups off the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina.
*April: Sea Otters pups in Monteray Bay, San Francisco. Millions of birds resting during migration on High Island on the Texas Gulf Coast
The boiling seas of millions of herring spawning off the Alaska coast.
*May: Snow leopards in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and birdwatching in Finland
*June: The world's biggest feeding frenzy that is the sardine run in South Africa – described as the "greatest shoal on earth".
A million wildebeest migrating across the plains of the Serengeti to the Masai Mara
*July: Brown bears fishing on the famous Brooks Falls in Alaska and Great Whites feeding on seals in South Africa. Basking sharks congregating off the Isle of Man.
* August: 10 million Atlantic Puffins gathering off Iceland
*September: Dolphin watching at Shark Bay, Australia and hundreds of sharks sleeping in underwater caves near Cancun, Mexico.
*October: Rutting red deer on the Isle of Rum, Scotland, watering hole gatherings in the Ngorongoro creator, eastern Serenegeti.
*November: Red crab migration on Christmas Island, Australia, (120million)
*December: Gorillas in the mist in the Congo, and hammerheads gathering in their thousands off the coast of Costa Rica
Judith Burns, BBC News 7 Aug 09;
The use of geo-engineering to slow global warming may increase the risk of drought, according to a paper in Science journal.
Methods put forward include reflecting solar radiation back into space using giant mirrors or aerosol particles.
But the authors warn that such attempts to control the climate could also cause major changes in precipitation.
They want the effect on rainfall to be assessed before any action is taken.
Gabriele Hegerl of the Grant Institute at University of Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado, write that "if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately".
They argue that climate change is about much more than changes in temperature. So using temperature alone to monitor the effects of geo-engineering could be dangerous.
Underestimating effects
They cite the powerful effects on rainfall of volcanic eruptions which also prevent solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, albeit by throwing up dust rather than reflecting the radiation back into space.
For example in 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo not only reduced global temperatures but also led to increases in drought.
The pair correlated 20th Century weather records with data for the increase in greenhouse gases and dates for major volcanic eruptions.
This revealed that greenhouse emissions tend to slightly increase rainfall in the short term but also showed that reduction in rainfall in the months following a major volcanic eruption is far more dramatic.
The authors note that current climate models tend to underestimate the effects on precipitation of both greenhouse gases and of volcanic eruptions.
The article warns that geo-engineering of this type, combined with the effects of global warming could produce reductions in regional rainfall that could rival those of past major droughts, leading to winners and losers among the human population and possible conflicts over water.
They conclude: "optimism about a geo-engineered 'easy way out' should be tempered by examination of currently observed climate changes."
DAEDALUS
Andy Ho, Straits Times 8 Aug 09;
ORGANIC food is no more nutritious than conventionally produced food.
Thus concluded a recent review commissioned by Britain's Food Standards Agency. Its scientists looked at 52,000 studies done in the last 50 years but found only 55 to be methodologically satisfactory enough for analysis. Their review, just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, did not look for chemical residues in the two types of food.
Let us assume this conclusion is valid. Yet people may not buy organic for nutritional value or even taste. Studies across societies from Europe to Asia show that consumers who buy organic do so primarily believing it is pesticide-free.
After all, organic farming is usually thought of as that carried out without chemicals. Eschewing the 800 different synthetic pesticides available, organic farmers rely on crop rotation, compost, manure and biological pest control.
Long-term experiments reported in a study published in Science in 2002 did find the amount of pesticides in organically cultivated fields to be 96.5 per cent lower than in conventional farms. (Some synthetic chemicals lurk in organic farm soil because it was previously contaminated, or chemicals may seep in from elsewhere - from contaminated ground water or wind drift of sprayed chemicals used in nearby conventional farms, and so on.)
In a 2002 survey carried out in Australia, over 99 per cent of certified organic food items tested in Victoria showed no detectable residues of 45 types of pernicious chemicals. (Australia has 12 million hectares of organic farmland, the largest in the world.)
Thus, an even more relevant review than the one conducted by Britain's Food Standards Agency would be one that looks at studies comparing the chemical content - especially pesticides, synthetic fertilisers and livestock feed additives - in organically and conventionally produced food.
Actually, a fine grain review of the best of such studies was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition three years ago. It concluded that organic 'fruits and vegetables... contain agrochemical residues much less frequently and at lower levels than their conventional alternatives'. But for 'other types of produce... and organic food of animal origin', the dearth of data meant no similar conclusions could be drawn.
Instead of chemical pesticides, organic farmers use biological pesticides including nicotine, pyrethrins and warfarin. This means, however, that organic food may have more of such natural but potentially harmful compounds, for which no authorities are testing at all.
Could the use of untreated or treated manure and compost render organic produce more liable to be contaminated by microbes? The review found no firm evidence for this.
However, it did note the problem of fungi. They produce mycotoxins, like aflatoxin that causes liver cancer. Organic farmers tend to use copper salts or sulphur to deal with fungi.
Though banned in the European Union from 2002, copper salts continue to be used by organic farmers elsewhere. Even after a ban, copper may persist in the soil and how much copper - or sulphur - is bad for humans is not really known.
In sum, 'organic' is not unequivocally safer. It only means that the food item comes to you having abided with some process standards in production, handling, processing and marketing. 'Organic is therefore a process claim, not a product claim,' the authors concluded.
Whether organic food is better would, anyway, depend not on the food item alone but also that total constellation of factors comprising one's genetic inheritance, individual metabolism, diet, overall lifestyle and any existing illnesses.
Beyond the question of whether it is more nutritious and/or safer, buying and eating organic food may simply be part of a broader cultural affinity that includes environmentalism, yoga, vegetarianism, 'fair trade coffee', hybrid cars and so on.
Going organic is part of a trend in which educated individuals reflect upon how their habits may impact society and try to change that conduct in accordance with certain ethical imperatives such as health considerations or green concerns.
It is embedded in an anti-industrialised agriculture sensibility, while its opposite is embodied in the 'upsize me', fast-food consumer. Ironically, the rise of the gentrified culture of ethical eating occurred in tandem with the McDonaldisation of the world. And ironically too, organic farming is now big business, with the world's total land acreage of organic farms doubling between 2000 and 2007.
McDonaldisation is powered by big business which also made high-wage economies possible. And it is such wages that empower yuppies to indulge in organic dining.
Such niceties are not available to the blue-collar slaves of capital. Going organic may affect to be counter-cultural but it is really the privilege of those who profit from the culture of big business.
As British academics Alan Warde and Lydia Martens showed in Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption, And Pleasure, where and what to eat have now become key signifiers of one's socio-economic class. If so, going organic may well be more about wearing a class badge than being pernickety about food.
andyho@sph.com.sg
Daedalus (meaning 'cunning worker' in Greek) was the man who built wings so he and his son Icarus could fly. As Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings melted and he crashed to earth. Daedalus is a weekly column on the triumphs and challenges of science and technology.
The Government's food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency, has rejected criticism of its study showing that eating organic food does not provide any significant health benefits.
Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph 8 Aug 09;
The FSA sparked a fierce debate last week after publishing an independent review which showed there were no important nutritional differences between organic and conventionally-produced food.
Dr Alan Dangour, who led the research team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), even received hate mail.
But in an open letter on the FSA's website, chief executive Tim Smith hit back at critics, saying the study was "the most scientifically rigorous and independent review of research ever carried out in this area" and the agency had "complete confidence in the validity of the work carried out".
The study reviewed all papers published over the last 50 years relating to nutrient content and health differences between the two kinds of produce.
Mr Smith said the review was commissioned to ensure the FSA's position was up to date and "reflects the weight and balance of current scientific evidence".
The Soil Association was among the organisations which criticised the study for excluding work on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health.
But Mr Smith wrote: "Pesticides were specifically excluded from the scope of this work. This is because our position on the safety of pesticides is already clear: pesticides are rigorously assessed and their residues are closely monitored.
"Because of this the use of pesticides in either organic or conventional food production does not pose an unacceptable risk to human health and helps to ensure a plentiful supply of food all year round."
He added: "Irresponsible interpretation of the review by some has resulted in misleading claims being made concerning higher levels of some nutrients found in organic food."
Mr Smith said the message of the study was not that people should avoid organic food but that they should eat a healthy and balanced diet and that "in terms of nutrition, it doesn't matter if this is made up of organic or conventionally produced food".
Organic farming, which focuses on protecting wildlife and the environment, means no artificial chemical fertilisers are used, pesticide use is restricted and animals are expected to be free range.
It has become increasingly popular in recent years, with supermarkets offering organic options on many items.
The FSA says it supports consumer choice and is neither pro- nor anti-organic food.
Reuters 7 Aug 09;
SAINT-MARTIN-DE-CRAU, France (Reuters) - Four thousand cubic meters (140,000 cu ft) of crude oil has spewed into a nature reserve on the edge of France's Camargue national park after an underground pipe burst, officials said on Friday.
"This is a real ecological disaster," junior environmental minister Chantal Jouanno told reporters after visiting the area in the far south of France.
The spill spread over 2 hectares (5 acres) of the Coussouls de Crau reserve near the town of Saint-Martin-de-Crau, which was created in 2001 and is home to thousands of birds.
The site lies at the entrance to the Camargue park, a vast expanse of plains and marshland, famous for its wild horses and bulls, that boards the Mediterranean Sea.
The fractured pipeline was operated by the Societe du Pipeline Sud-Europeen (SPSE), which supplies refineries and a petrochemical plant in France, Switzerland and Germany.
Jouanno said the SPSE was responsible for the spillage.
"We will have to draw the consequences for all the pipelines in France," she added.
Built in 1971, the broken pipe was a meter wide and buried some 80 cm (31.5 inches) under the ground.
A clean-up operation was already underway and officials said all the crude would be removed alone with the tainted earth.
A spokeswoman for SPSE said there would be no halt in supplies because the company had alternative pipeline networks.
The leak occurred at about 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT) and as soon as it was detected a 20-km stretch of pipeline was shut off.
On its website, SPSE lists shareholders including France's Total, U.S. firm ExxonMobil and Britain's BP.
(Reporting by Jean-Francois Rosnoblet, Mathilde Cru and Estelle Shirbon)
(Writing by Crispian Balmer; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Pipeline leak causes oil spill in southern France
Yahoo News 7 Aug 09;
MARSEILLE, France (AFP) – French emergency units were dispatched Friday to contain an oil spill from a pipeline in farm fields west of the southeastern city of Marseille, officials said.
This handout photo released by the French fire brigade services (SDIS 13) shows vehicles stationed near an oil spill in farm fields west of the southeastern city of Marseille. French emergency units were dispatched Friday to contain the oil spill, officials said. (AFP/SAPEURS POMPIERS 13)
Some 3,000 cubic metres of oil spilled over two hectares (five acres) of agricultural land near Saint-Martin-de-Crau but officials said the area was far from residential areas and water sources.
Environment Minister Chantal Jouanno travelled to the site to see the damage and an investigation was opened to determine the causes of the leak.
The pipeline is managed by the South European Pipeline (SPSE) operator, which supplies crude to plants from Fos in southern France to Karlsruhe in Germany.
"It is too early to determine the cause" of the leak, said a spokeswoman for SPSE, adding that there had been regular maintenance on the pipeline.
The Bouches-du-Rhone local authorities said there was no reason to fear an impact on water supplies as the spill took place at least five kilometres (three miles) away from the nearest source.
SPSE said the leak was detected shortly before 8:00 am (0600 GMT) and measures were taken to shut down the pipeline. An emergency security plan was put into action.
The spokeswoman said the incident would not affect supplies to clients.
Cleanup operations were underway, using three pumps and officials said tests would follow to measure the extent of the pollution.
"There are no risks from this type of incident," notably of an explosion, said the SPSE spokeswoman.
The pipeline of 769 kilometres (477 miles) has a capacity of 23 million metric tons per year.
Oil spill tarnishes French nature reserve
Yahoo News 8 Aug 09;
MARSEILLE, France (AFP) – Experts on Sunday will begin taking stock of the impact of an oil spill from a pipeline that runs through a nature reserve in the south of France, officials said Saturday.
Some 4,000 cubic metres of crude oil spilled from the pipeline that runs from Fos-sur-Mer, northwest of the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, to Karlsruhe, Germany via the Coussoulis de Crau reserve.
Efforts to clean up the oil were completed on Saturday, but the Societe du Pipeline Sud-Europeen said a survey will be carried out Sunday ahead of the excavation of two hectares (five acres) of polluted land.
Local drinking-water supplies are not at risk, but several protected species on the reserve have been affected -- prompting the Bouches-du-Rhone department to say that a "precise evaluation" of the impact on wildlife will be needed.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07