Best of our wild blogs: 12 Aug 09

NDP Exco turns a deaf ear on environment hazard warning
from Dee Kay Dot As Gee

First two days in the life of a Little Tern chick
from Bird Ecology Study Group

What's in a name of a wild thing?
from wild shores of singapore

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URA to survey lifestyle needs and trends

Rekha Manoharan, Channel NewsAsia 11 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE: The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is embarking on a survey to establish lifestyle needs and trends in Singapore.

The findings of the URA Lifestyle Survey will provide inputs to the ongoing Concept Plan 2011 Review, which maps out the long-term directions for land use and transportation plans over the next 40 to 50 years.

Through this survey, URA also hopes to discover the lifestyle needs and aspirations of residents so that it can work with relevant agencies to improve the current provision of amenities and facilities such as those for leisure and recreation.

The survey is conducted once every five years and will gather information from some 4,000 respondents, from all walks of life, on factors that contribute towards creating a sense of belonging to Singapore.

The survey will be conducted between August and November this year, and notification letters will be sent to the selected households.

- CNA/yt/al

URA survey on lifestyle
Straits Times 12 Aug 09;

THE Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is looking into Singaporean lifestyles in a survey that is set to guide land use and transportation policy.

Four thousand people, including singles, families with young children, the elderly and foreigners, will be surveyed between now and November. And focus group discussions will be used to gain deeper insight into key issues.

Those taking part in the survey will be asked for their views on a range of lifestyle issues, including living and working environments, recreational activities and factors that create a sense of belonging to Singapore.

The URA hopes the survey will highlight any gaps that need filling in the provision of facilities.

Also, the findings of the Lifestyle Survey will go towards the 2011 review of the Concept Plan, which maps out Singapore's land use and transportation over the next 40 to 50 years.

Letters will be sent to notify households that have been selected for the survey.

CHARISSA YONG

URA survey seeks to find out lifestyle needs in S'pore

4,000 people, including PRs and employment pass holders, to be polled
Kalpana Rashiwala, Business Times 12 Aug 09;

THE Urban Redevelopment Authority has commissioned a survey of 4,000 people, including some permanent residents (PRs) and employment pass holders, to establish lifestyle needs and trends in Singapore.

The findings will provide input to the ongoing Concept Plan 2011 Review.

'The Lifestyle Survey will sample a representative profile of the Singapore population which includes both locals and foreigners,' a URA spokesman told BT.

'We want to ascertain the lifestyle needs and aspirations of locals and foreigners so we can work with the relevant agencies to improve any gaps identified in the current provision of amenities and facilities.'

This is URA's second lifestyle survey. The first, conducted in 2002-2004, covered Singapore citizens and PRs. This latest survey will also include employment pass holders.

URA said the findings of the survey will facilitate the planning of residential and work locations, among other things.

Key areas in which URA will gather public responses include preferences for residential areas and housing types; leisure and recreational activities; mode of travel and travel times; and attributes that contribute to quality of life.

Respondents will also be polled on their satisfaction with amenities and facilities near work, home and for leisure, as well as factors that help create a sense of belonging.

The Concept Plan maps out the long-term directions for Singapore's land use and transport plans over the next 40 to 50 years.

URA has commissioned ML Research Consultants to conduct the survey between August and November this year.

Besides foreigners, other survey respondents who will be selected to participate from a 'broad spectrum of our population, including singles, families with young children and the elderly', URA said.

In addition, focus groups will be conducted to gain deeper insight into lifestyle needs and aspirations, it said.

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NEA raises efforts to achieve recycling target of 70% by 2030

Hasnita A Majid/Gladys Ow, Channel NewsAsia 11 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE: The National Environment Agency (NEA) is multiplying its efforts to ensure the recycling rate in Singapore reaches its target of 70 per cent by 2030. It is working with industry partners and households to achieve this.

The recycling rate in Singapore currently stands at about 56 per cent, up from just 40 per cent in 2000. But with land scarcity, Singapore needs to achieve its target of 70 per cent in 21 years' time.

Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, said: "If we continue at this rate, we cannot improve our recycling rate, we will have a big problem. So we can be very diligent in the amount of waste that we collect, burn it every day, but we will still need a landfill.

"Semakau will only last us another 30, maybe, 40 years. After that, what do we do? So I think this is a serious problem that will require a lot of Singaporeans to play their part."

Dr Yaacob was speaking at a ceremony to close the 30-year-old Ulu Pandan incineration plant on Tuesday.

Opened in 1979, the S$170 million incineration plant was a pioneering project in Singapore's search for new ways to cut down the amount of waste produced here every year. At the time, it was the first in the region to use the process of waste-to-energy incineration and the second in Asia, after Japan.

Dr Yaacob said: "It was of course a leap of faith, because there was no incineration experience across the region. But the then environment ministry took the bold step of learning from the experiences of others especially the Germans, convincing Cabinet that we had to do this.

"I think looking back, this was the right decision. And if we did not have incineration plants, we would not have been able to reduce the volume of waste that goes into our landfill. Given land is scarce in Singapore, we have no other choice."

Incineration reduces the volume of waste in Singapore's landfill by 90 per cent by converting solid wastes into carbon dioxide, water vapour and inert ash in the process.

The Ulu Pandan plant handles on average 1,100 tonnes of waste per day. This forms about 15.3% of the total waste disposed off per day last year. The amount of heat energy produced each month is enough to generate electricity for some 16,000 4-room HDB flats every month.

Staff have mixed feelings about the plant's closure.

Chong Kuek On, general manager of the Ulu Pandan incineration plant, said: "Yes, sure, I have mixed feeling. I have been working here for 15 years, so emotionally of course I have something attached to this plant."

Lee Boon Seng, an employee at the Ulu Pandan incineration plant, said: "In a way, we feel sad because we are leaving all our good friends. But after this plant shuts down, we will start a new life (as some of us will go to the new plant and some will go to new industries), so we face a new challenge ahead."

A new more efficient waste-to-energy incineration plant, operated by Keppel Seghers and located in Tuas, will take over the incineration load by year's end. Until then, the three other incineration plants will handle the old plant's incineration load.

The first public-private-partnership project, the new plant is part of the move to open up the waste-to-energy incineration industry to the private sector. It comes under the government's Design, Build, Own and Operate Scheme.

It can treat 800 tonnes of waste per day and produce energy of more than 20 MegaWatt hours per hour or 14,400 MegaWatt hours per month.

The NEA will continue to operate the other three waste-to-energy plants at Senoko, Tuas and Tuas South. The Ulu Pandan incineration plant will be demolished by 2011, and the land returned to the Singapore Land Authority.

- CNA/ir

Ulu Pandan Plant closes
Burning bright one last time
Incineration plant was key to coping with city's rising refuse volume
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 12 Aug 09;

FOR three decades, a familiar stench has risen from Ulu Pandan Industrial estate. But on Monday, the refuse plant that burnt rubbish such as food waste was lit up for the final time.

Opened in 1979, the $170 million incineration plant along Toh Tuck Road was a pioneering project in Singapore's search for new ways to cut down the amount of waste produced every year.

It was then the first in the region to use the process of waste-to-energy incineration and the second in Asia, after Japan, said Mr Low Fong Hon, director of National Environment Agency's (NEA's) waste management department.

Through a process of combustion, this method cuts the volume of waste by 90per cent, while the heat energy produced is used to generate electricity.

The ash residue produced is disposed of at the Pulau Semakau landfill, while ferrous metals, such as iron and steel, are recycled. The gas that leaves the boiler is then sent through an electrostatic precipitator, removing 99.5 per cent of the dust particles as well as pollutants before being released into the atmosphere.

But the Ulu Pandan Incineration Plant has reached the end of its economical life, said its general manager Chong Kuek On.

Most of its 135 technicians and engineers, many of whom have been working there for more than a decade, will be redeployed within the NEA, while the rest will either retire or be helped to find new jobs, said a spokesman.

At the closing ceremony yesterday, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim paid tribute to the staff, adding that the plant's closure was a 'historic' moment for Singapore.

'If we did not have the incineration plants, we would not be able to reduce the volume of waste that goes into our landfill,' he said.

Before its opening, refuse disposal here involved sanitary landfills, but an explosion in population, coupled with Singapore's rising affluence, meant that there was more trash but less land for use as dumping grounds, explained Mr Low.

The Ulu Pandan plant, together with three others - Senoko, Tuas and Tuas South - generated 1,048,072 MW per hour of electricity last year. That was enough to power all the street lights in Singapore three times over, said Mr Low.

But environmentalists argue that the burning of waste is a complex, costly and highly polluting method of disposal.

The release of harmful dioxins, for example, is associated with health problems such as cancer.

But Dr Yaacob said that Singapore has taken pains to ensure that the burning is done in a responsible manner.

'The flue gas is treated before being released into the atmosphere. We have done this in a responsible manner and gained the public's confidence we can do this well so as to maintain the environment,' he said.

He added: 'But if we cannot improve the recycling rate, we will have a big problem...Semakau will last about 30-40 years but after that where do we go?'

He said Singaporeans had to play their part in achieving a 70 per cent recycling rate by 2030.

The Ulu Pandan plant will be replaced by a privately run facility in Tuas that will open later this year. It is the first facility built under the Government's Design Build, Own and Operate scheme, which aims to privatise the sector.

The Ulu Pandan plant will be demolished by the end of 2011 and the 7.9-ha site returned to the Singapore Land Authority.

Incineration plant in Ulu Pandan shuts down, new plant in Tuas to open
Today Online 12 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE'S first waste-to-energy incineration plant at Ulu Pandan ceased operations yesterday, after 30 years in service.

It will be replaced by a new plant in Tuas operated by Keppel Seghers.

The Tuas plant is the National Environment Agency's (NEA) first public-private-partnership project, and it is part of a move to open up the waste-to-energy incineration industry to the private sector.

NEA's director of waste management Low Fong Hon said: "Our Government will pay just the monthly service fees to the operators.

"The businesses taken over by the private sector will be mainly the construction, operation and maintenance of the plant."

Prior to the opening of the $170-million old Ulu Pandan plant in 1979, all general waste in Singapore was disposed of in landfills on the mainland.

But growing affluence and rapid population growth led to a significant rise in waste generation.

The Ulu Pandan Plant helped to alleviate this garbage problem.

"Incineration was found to be the most cost effective method for land-scarce Singapore," said Mr Low, noting that it reduced the volume of trash by more than 90 per cent.

The Ulu Pandan Plant handled on average 1,100 tonnes of waste per day - about 15 per cent of the total waste disposed of each day in Singapore last year.

The plant also generated, on average, about 5,800 megawatt hour of energy each month, enough to power some 16,000 four-room HDB flats for a month.

The plant will be torn down by 2011. 938LIVE

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Semakau Island popular haunt for Singapore astronomers

'Trash island' by day, star-studded by night
Ng Tze Yong, The New Paper 12 Aug 09;

IN THE still of the night, Mr Ang Poon Seng clicks on a laser pointer, sends a neon-green beam a mile high into the sky, and proceeds to turn the galaxies into a PowerPoint slideshow.

He points out the Southern Cross hanging low over Batam and singles out the seven stars of the Big Dipper, sprawled over the CBD on the Singapore mainland.

He connects the dots above, and the constellations morph into scorpions and Greek gods.

A group of Singaporeans, young and old, hangs on to his every word, spell-bound.

Here at Semakau Island, Singapore's hobbyist astronomers have discovered their Holy Grail - Singapore's darkest night sky.

A 20-minute ferry ride from Pasir Panjang Ferry Terminal, Semakau Island is the world's first offshore landfill created entirely from sea space, an island paradise of grassland and mangroves created from what you chuck down the rubbish chute.

The Astronomical Society Of Singapore (Tasos), where Mr Ang is vice-president, has been organising trips there since 2006.

'It's one of the best places in Singapore to stargaze,' said Mr Ang.

'Almost the entire Singapore island is light-polluted. In the past, at least, you could stargaze at the seaside. But now, there are too many ships anchored offshore.'

The trips to Semakau Island take place about four to six times a year and groups vary in size from 20 to 60.

Tasos members pay $30 and members of the public pay $45.

These trips are just some of the many that Tasos organises.

During the total solar eclipse last month, for example, Tasos organised a trip to Wuhan in central China.

Weekend jaunts, however, are restricted to Mersing in Malaysia, forested areas near Singapore's reservoirs and Semakau Island.

The trip to Semakau Island begins at dusk via chartered ferry from Pasir Panjang Ferry Terminal, used mainly by workers from the oil refineries.

Upon arrival at the Semakau Island Ferry Terminal, the group, made up of families and young couples, is invited into an air-conditioned visitor centre where they are greeted by staff from the National Environment Agency (NEA).

After a video screening about the Semakau Island landfill project, the group tucks into a dinner of packet food and sandwiches.

There are no restaurants on the island.

A mini-van then takes them to the stargazing site 4km away.

At this isolated spot located at the end of a bund, there is only a shelter and a mobile toilet.

For the faint-hearted, NEA staff come by their mini-van twice in the night, at 10pm and 1am, to pick up anyone who wants to use the loo and shower facilities back at the visitor centre.

Tents, hammocks and safari beds are quickly set up. Those who brought telescopes point them at different corners of the night sky.

Everyone keeps an anxious eye on the sky conditions. Cloud cover can mean hours of waiting and a wasted night.

Heavens open

But thankfully, on the night I went, the heavens obliged, and at about 9pm, the astronomers begin their craft - with a quiet, almost reverent, joy.

Families shuffle from telescope to telescope with excited whispers.

A boy with a headlamp alternates between peering with a grimace through his telescope and furiously flipping through an astronomy manual.

An elderly man sits, as if in prayer, cradling his baby - a $3,000 telescope that resembles more a cannon.

It has a galactic GPS of sorts, he says.

Just punch in the latitude and longitude of your location and the time of the night. Then, punch in a planet's code and watch the telescope buzz and turn.

Peer in and - voila! - the planet turns up in the viewfinder.

Jupiter, which shows up just after midnight, appears as a striped, orangey dot with four white specks - its moons - suspended around it.

Saturn, high up in the western sky, resembles more of a symbol you might find on a computer keyboard - a white dot with a diagonal dash - its ring - neatly cutting it in half.

Somewhere between the two, but much further away from Earth, is a star cluster named Jewel Box, which is a disappointment at first glance - it looks like a cloud of specks - until Mr Ang tells you each speck is actually a star bigger than our sun.

The night passes like this. Planets, stars and galaxies rise in turn over the horizon, clear the lights of the container ships, and arch overhead before sinking back down into the sea.

The astronomers gaze, feet on trash, eyes on stars.

Just before daybreak, Mercury rises. The sun follows soon after, and the star show is over.

Mr Soh Kim Mun, a 43-year-old engineer, there with his seven-year-old daughter Mabel, hopes the hobby will, quite literally, broaden her horizon.

'Astronomy is kind of a selfish hobby,' he says. 'It's a very quiet activity. But as you slowly observe, you will find yourself asking: Why are we here?'

Contrary to what many believe, astronomy in Singapore is not difficult, says Mr Ang.

'We are situated at the equator so we have a good view of both the northern and southern skies,' he says.

'We also do not have the four seasons, so we can watch the sky 365 days a year.'

And that accessibility may benefit those who have an eye for more than just what's out there.

Raphael Loh, 11, the boy who was furiously flipping through his astronomy manual, confesses in the morning he was looking out for more than just stars.

'I think there are aliens out there,' he says.

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SMEs urged to follow environmental regulations

Aditi Nim, Straits Times 12 Aug 09;

LOCAL small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the electronics sector have been urged to comply with the latest environmental regulations.

The plea came at a conference arranged by Spring Singapore for the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO) held at Novotel Clarke Quay Hotel yesterday.

The conference aimed to provide local firms with updates on the latest developments in technical regulations - and ways businesses can implement them.

Recent regulations include the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), introduced by the European Union in 2003.

The directive, which came into effect in 2006, requires that electrical and electronic goods imported into Europe should be compliant with stringent regulations.

It particularly affects the electronics industry as it restricts the use of six hazardous materials in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment.

The electronics industry is one of Singapore's key sectors, representing about 28 per cent of manufacturing output in 2008. Governments worldwide have targeted some of the environmental damage caused by the sector.

Spring chief executive Ted Tan said: 'Other than in the EU,environmental regulations are also gathering momentum in countries like China, Japan, Korea and the United States.'

Since demand for compliant products is set to grow further, he feels that companies here must maintain their competitive edge by keeping up with changes.

Industry experts, such as GE Healthcare's global regulatory manager, Ms Beth Hulse, were asked to share their insights. She said stringent self-regulation was the key to maintaining globally compliant products. GE Healthcare requires suppliers to provide declarations of compliance as well as additional test results to maintain the company's standards of environmental responsibility.

However, some conference participants were concerned at the high cost of this sort of testing. Ms Hulse raised the possibility of introducing industry-wide best practice and regulations. Consistent regulations within Singapore and worldwide would cut costs for all companies.

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Now anyone can post on p65 blog

Young PAP MPs open blog to public to get wider exchange of views
Goh Chin Lian & Lynn Kan, Straits Times 12 Aug 09;

YOUNG MPs from the People's Action Party (PAP) have changed the format and aims of their blog in yet another move to connect with youth born after Singapore's independence.

The website, www.p65.sg, will no longer carry just their views.

Instead, it will be open to all post-65 Singaporeans, who can write about 'anything under the sun', from entertainment and the economy to race and religion, said Mr Teo Ser Luck, 41, who leads the group of 12 post-65 PAP MPs.

But the views are to steer clear of supporting a political party.

'We have our own Young PAP website for the politically inclined,' he added, referring to the PAP youth wing which he heads. 'The p65 blog is to allow other young people to share their views, which are non-partisan, neutral and can be constructive criticism of policies.'

The change is one of several moves the PAP and its MPs have taken to make themselves known online and gather feedback. In the past year, the party has revamped its website to include videos and podcasts, while the MPs have set up accounts on social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter.

The p65 blog was set up by the post-65 MPs five months after the 2006 election. The early postings were personal, non-political blogs for the young to get to know them. It was also a way for them to get feedback on issues.

But the blog languished from a lack of contributors, with some MPs simply posting the speeches they made in Parliament. With the change, the site has already lined up eight regular contributors, among them Singaporeans studying and working abroad.

They include Mrs Shereen Aziz-Williams, 26, Britain-based director of the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations, who wrote about her encounter with racism there when she wore a tudung or headscarf.

Others include unionist Mohamad Nazir Sani, 35, and businessman and grassroots leader Terence Quek, 34.

The contributors will set the blog apart from others, said post-65 MP Zaqy Mohamad, 34. 'They are people with real, not anonymous, identities...They have some credibility and are not celebrities trying to get attention,' he said.

Mr Mohamad Nazir decided to be a contributor because 'I don't see many blogs by unionists and I'll like to share what we do behind the scenes'.

He represents Young NTUC, the youth wing of the labour movement, on the Young PAP executive committee.

He began a personal blog a few months ago, but believes his blog on the p65 site will reach a wider audience.

As more Singaporeans contribute, the blog's administrator, Mr Tang Ho Wan, foresees it evolving to include 'photographs and videos, including snapshots of interesting things around their neighbourhood'.

Moderators will look out only for undesirable content like vulgarities, said Mr Tang, 32, who owns design agency Orgnix Creatives.

'We expect people will disagree with the writers, and they can put up what they want because readers can judge for themselves if the opinion is good or bad.'

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Geologist narrows down location of South East Asia's 'next big quake'

Grace Chua & Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 12 Aug 09;

THE next big earthquake to rock South-east Asia can be narrowed down to a 400km stretch off the west coast of Sumatra, says geologist and Earth Observatory of Singapore head Kerry Sieh.

The expected 8.8 magnitude quake will probably occur in the next three decades, with '10-to-one odds', Professor Sieh said yesterday.

This quake, which could set off a tsunami and threaten more than a million people living along Sumatra's coast, will be nearly as large as the one off Aceh, which unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec 26, 2004.
Prof Sieh was speaking at the 6th annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, held here this week at the Suntec convention and exhibition centre.

His prediction is based on global positioning system information, which measures horizontal movement, and historic data from coral.

The earth's crust is made of plates that are constantly moving, grinding apart or into each other, and the growth patterns of coral reefs reflect the movement of the plates they sit on, the professor explained.

Earth Observatory researchers studied such reefs off the west coast of Sumatra, along a fault line called the Sunda megathrust.

There, Prof Sieh and his colleagues found a pattern of large quakes every 200 years on a section of the west Sumatra coast and that the area was subject to tremendous strain.

An 8.4-magnitude quake there in 2007 relieved only some of the tectonic tension, and is but the first in a predicted series of earthquakes in the same area.

'We've begun the failure sequence. We've begun the countdown,' Prof Sieh said.

The Singapore researchers are working with their Indonesian counterparts and non-governmental organisations, such as tsunami preparedness organisation KOGAMI, to inform residents in affected areas of the risks.

Prof Sieh added that even if the west Sumatra earthquake does occur as predicted, the effect felt in Singapore will be small, as most buildings here are on bedrock or thin soils and are unlikely to shake much.

Dr Kenji Satake of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute said the forecast was convincing, but that 'there is a possibility that slow earthquakes (without causing strong shaking or tsunamis) could also generate similar phenomena, particularly for the shallower offshore parts of northern Sumatra.

'More geological evidence of ground shaking or tsunamis would make the forecast even stronger, but at this moment, I fully endorse his proposal and people should take his caution seriously,' Dr Satake added.

Yesterday's 7.6-magnitude Andaman Islands earthquake, across the Bay of Bengal east of mainland India, lies near the same fault line as the 2004 Aceh quake.

But it was different from the 2004 quake, which resulted from the India and Australia tectonic plates moving beneath the Burma and Sunda plates.

The US Geological Survey reported yesterday that the Andaman quake was likely caused by the Indian plate bending as it moved beneath the Burma plate.

After an earthquake of that magnitude, there is a 5 per cent chance of bigger earthquakes within 72 hours, Prof Sieh said.

He added that the Andaman tremor is not related to the forecast Sumatra quake, as the sites are too far apart.

Read more!

Quakes and Typhoons: What's Up with Mother Nature?

Andrea Thompson, livescience.com 11 Aug 09;

It may seem like Mother Nature is pulling out all the weapons in her arsenal, after a spate of earthquakes and cyclones struck Asia in recent days, but the fact that these events coincided is just that - a coincidence.

Typhoon Morakot was the first to strike, slamming into Taiwan Sunday and causing disastrous mudslides with its torrential rains. Scores are feared to have died in the maelstrom.

While the Taiwanese were lashed by the storm's wind and rain, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake rumbled off the Japan coast, also on Sunday. On Tuesday, Japan was struck again by a magnitude 6.5 earthquake that triggered a small tsunami and caused buildings to sway in Tokyo, some 90 miles away, according to news reports. While the Earth trembled, the country was also seeing rain from Typhoon Etau.

Minutes before, another earthquake had ruptured in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, north of India's Andaman Islands. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) put the magnitude of that temblor at 7.6.

The events have little to nothing to do with each other, except that they are happening in an earthquake-prone region of the world that is in the middle of its tropical cyclone season.

Stormy links

The western Pacific typhoon season lasts from about mid-May to November, about the same time as the Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 to Nov. 30). (Hurricanes and typhoons are the same phenomenon, collectively known as tropical cyclones. They just carry different names, because they occur over different ocean basins.)

While the Pacific typhoon season has been busy, no tropical storms or hurricanes have yet sprouted in the Atlantic. This is because of events a world away -the El Nino that has developed in the eastern Pacific. El Nino puts energy high into the atmosphere that tends to promote cyclone activity in the Pacific. That energy moves across the Americas, over the Atlantic, and tends to stifle hurricane formation in the Atlantic.

"That has worldwide effects," said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, referring to El Nino.

The Atlantic hurricane activity does seem to be picking up though, with the development of the second tropical depression of the season (tropical depressions have less intense winds than tropical storms, which in turn are less intense than hurricanes). Tropical Depression 2 seems to be on track to develop into Tropical Storm Ana, which will be the first named Atlantic storm of the season.

"We're seeing more activity now than we've seen all season," Feltgen told LiveScience.

The busiest months of the Atlantic season are typically August and September.

Shaky links

While the cyclone and earthquake activity in Asia aren't linked, there was initially some thought that the earthquake activity might have been.

The earthquake in Japan on Tuesday happened a mere 11 minutes and 29 seconds after the Andaman Islands quake in the India Ocean.

"They were very close in time," said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS.

Scientists looked to see if the seismic waves from the Andaman quake might have triggered the Japan quake, but saw that the waves from the first quake arrived too early to have caused the second one, about 8 minutes and 40 seconds after the Andaman quake.

"We don't think they're linked at all," Caruso told LiveScience.

Neither of the Japanese quakes was linked either, with the Sunday temblor happening very deep in the ground, and the Tuesday earthquake occurring farther north and at a more shallow depth, Caruso said.

While aftershocks have shaken the regions hit by earthquakes, whether or not more strong quakes will occur can't be predicted.

Read more!

Haze worsens in Sarawak

Stephen Then and Chew Wan Ying, The Star 12 Aug 09;

MIRI: Fires in some districts and oil palm plantations has created a thick blanket of smoke and haze over Sarawak’s northern region.

Firemen have been working around the clock to bring the blaze under control as well battle peat fires near the Sarawak-Brunei border.

The haze and smoke have resulted in flight disruptions and cancellation of public functions.

Fires were also reported at oil palm plantations in the Bakong sub-district, between Miri and the Baram hinterland.

Quick action by firemen prevented a wild fire on Canada Hill from burning down the RM16mil Oil Museum yesterday.

Poor visibility in the city resulted in the cancellation of flights from Miri Airport to the interiors yesterday morning.

At the Sarawak-Brunei border, 35km north of Miri, more than 200 firemen are battling to contain peat fires that have so far destroyed more than 3,000ha of forest land.

Assistant state minister for Infrastructure Development and Communications Datuk Lee Kim Shin said the peat fire might take a longer time to put out.

“The fire is burning deep into the peat soil. Spraying water on the surface will not douse it,” he said.

In the Lawas district near the Sabah border, a few public functions had to be cancelled.

In Kuching, cloud-seeding operations have started.

In Petaling Jaya, the Department of Environment said air quality in Sarawak had generally improved, with only two areas having unhealthy air quality.

The Air Pollutant Index (API) reading for Miri rose from 140 on Monday to a staggering 185 while Sibu recorded a reading of 104 as of 5pm yesterday.

Four areas in Sarawak, Kuching, Sarikei, Sri Aman and Samarahan, which were previously identified as unhealthy on Monday, have entered the moderate category, with readings of between 61 and 84.

Overall, 26 areas recorded moderate readings of between 51 and 84, while the air quality in 20 areas, including Petaling Jaya were declared as healthy.

Following the improved air quality, the visibility level in Bintulu increased to 8km. This is in contrast to Kuching which recorded a poor invisibility level of 2km.

A total of 106 and 74 hotspots were detected in Sumatra and Borneo respectively via satellite images.

Hot spots spreading over land belonging to 77 firms
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 11 Aug 09;

A government investigating team has found fire hot spots spread across concessions belonging to 77 companies operating in Riau during the first-seven months that forced the closure of thousands of schools due to thick haze.

A team from the environment ministry is still investigating the sources of forest fires on land owned by the forest concession holders and industrial timber and plantation firms.

“We want to find out for sure if the fires were lit by the respective firms or by local residents,” Hilmar Sirait, an assistant to the ministry’s deputy for law enforcement, said Tuesday.

“There’s also the possibility these companies are hiring local people to burn the land.”

Nine hundred hot spots have been recorded in the province in the period from January to July, ministry data shows. A hot spot is defined as a fire covering at least 1 hectare of land.

Neighboring nations ready to help RI tackle fires
Adianto P. Simamora The Jakarta Post 11 Aug 09;

With forest fires expected to fan out in the next few months due to a severe dry spell, neighboring countries are offering their help in controlling the infernos, a minister says.

State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said Monday he was scheduled to meet in Singapore with ministers from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei Darussalam to discuss the forest fires.

The steering committee for the meeting, to be held on Aug. 19, will also seek ways to prevent the repeated large-scale burning that blankets neighboring countries in haze.

"We have very good cooperation with neighboring nations in dealing with the fires," Rachmat told The Jakarta Post.

"They're committed to helping us tackle them."

He did not detail what sort of assistance had been offered.

"The governments of Malaysia and Singapore have provided equipment to monitor air quality, including in Riau," he said.

Indonesia is the largest forest nation in the region, with 120 million hectares of rainforest.

Rachmat warned Indonesia was very vulnerable to huge forest fires if the El Ni*o phenomenon hit the country this year.

Analysts say El Ni*o will cause massive forest fires, as it did in 2006, when fires ravaged more than 145,000 hectares of forest here.

The 2006 fire also affected millions of people in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and parts of Thailand, forcing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to apologize to the neighboring countries for the export of haze.

Those countries also deployed helicopters to put out the fires.

The Malaysian government said Monday it was ready to help Indonesia tackle forest fires, but only if Jakarta requested it.

Malaysia's Housing and Local Government Minister Kong Cho Ha said the country would send experts to Indonesia, but added no request had been made so far.

Malaysia is experiencing thick haze as fires continue to rage across 5,300 hotspots in Indonesia, mostly in Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra and West Kalimantan.

Kong said the haze drifting from Indonesia had been a regular event since 1998, between July and September, due to the winds.

Malaysia is also grappling with several forest and plantation fires that have caused an unhealthy air pollution index (API) in the cities of Sibu, Miri and Kuching.

"In the weeks following the haze, firefighters put out forest fires in 2,000 of 2,560 hectares, with the worst affected being Miri," Kong said as quoted by Antara.

Rachmat pledged to submit findings on forest fires in Riau to the police.

Thick haze from peatland fires has also blanketed Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan.

The Palangkaraya Health Office reported 1,882 people suffered from respiratory problems due to the haze in the first week of this month.

During El Ni*o of 1982-1983, fires razed 3.7 million hectares of forests in Kalimantan alone, worsened by commercial logging and agriculture.

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Illegal animal trading puts Malaysia on the world map for all the wrong reasons

Hilary Chiew, The Star 10 Aug 09;

KUALA LUMPUR: In 2006, Taiwanese authorities seized a three-tonne shipment of ivory from Tanzania worth RM25mil that had transited Penang port.

An Indian national who was caught with an illegal consignment of Indian star tortoises at the KL International Airport in 2007 said he was paid to bring it into the country for a Malaysian buyer.
In the second half of 2008, 167 pangolins were seized in four enforcement cases in Muar, indicating that the coastline was a thriving entry point for the anteaters from Indonesia. It is believed that the pangolins were destined for the restaurant and traditional medicine trade, as well as the mainland Chinese market.

Early this year, genetic fingerprinting of seized tiger parts in southern Thailand shows that the Malaya tiger, endemic to Malaysia and numbering only 500 in the wild, have been blatantly poached and smuggled through our land borders.

These are some of the cases that point to illegal trafficking of wildlife and its parts, and to Malaysia being a transit point, a source country, as well as a consumer hub for endangered wildlife.

Globally, Interpol estimated the illegal trade to be worth US$10bil (RM35bil) to US$20bil (RM70bil) a year. Conservation groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have declared wildlife trade the second biggest direct threat to species survival, after habitat destruction.

The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) did not respond to requests for the value of animals confiscated last year, but a conservative estimate based on media reports shows that at least RM5mil worth of wildlife was seized in Malaysia last year.

Wildlife trafficking is a trade so lucrative that it is said to rank second after drug trafficking, especially when there is no death penalty to fear in most countries.
Take the pangolin, for instance. According to wildlife trade researchers the creature’s scales and meat are sought after for its purported properties to alleviate rheumatic pains. And as an aphrodisiac too of course, as any purveyor of exotic meat would sell you the idea. That is why pangolins can fetch as much as RM150 per kg or RM500 per animal in the black market.

Traffic, a wildlife trade-monitoring network, fears that the illegal trade in pangolins is already out of control with large shipments of animals being smuggled across numerous international borders, often by the lorry load, to their final destination in China.

It says that shipments busted by Perhilitan are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What slips through the net are far more than one can estimate, in the millions of ringgit over the years.

The rampant smuggling of pangolins has forced Perhilitan to acknowledge that Malaysia has become both an attractive supply and transit country.

Its deputy enforcement director Celescoriano Razond said he feared that international syndicates had turned the country into their main source – not just for pangolin but other wildlife species too.

There have been numerous confiscations of Indian star tortoises at the KLIA with arrests of Indian and Malaysian nationals, yet the smugglers are undeterred. The shipments still come in and the authorities have no other choice but to maintain constant vigilance.

Until recently, the Indian star tortoise from the Indian sub-continent that was banned from export was easily available in local pet shops. The palm-sized exotic pet with star-like markings on its shell was sold at between RM100 and RM150 per creature.

In cases where the illegal shipments of Indian star tortoises were foiled, the authorities have found suitcases packed with the animal, some up to 2,000 pieces in one suitcase.

Perhilitan returns seized consignments to the country of origin but the syndicates involved remain at large.
Existing laws and inadequate manpower remain the biggest setbacks in tackling this scourge. The Wildlife Protection Act 1972 offers no protection for any turtle or tortoise species. A revised law, scheduled to be tabled in Parliament this year, is supposed to plug this particular loophole. However, a check on the draft bill showed that this reptile family is still being left out.

Azrina Abdullah, the immediate ex-director of Traffic, lamented the low fines and reluctance of the courts to put the culprits behind bars. In 2006, conservationists were appalled that a RM7,000 fine (maximum fine is RM15,000) was slapped on a poacher from Tumpat, in Kelantan, for possessing a chopped up tiger in his fridge, instead of the maximum five-year imprisonment. The black market value of a tiger is reported to be US$50,000 (RM180,000).

Currently, fines range from RM1,000 to RM15,000 and imprisonment from a minimum of one year to 10 years. The authorities have indicated a 100% increase in fines and a maximum jail term of 12 years in the pending new law.

Among the issues that need to be addressed is the issuance of special permits by Perhilitan to theme parks, private zoos and individuals for keeping an animal. There is fear that permits given would provide the holders a cover to launder illegal specimens.

At the regional level, a lack of law enforcement and poor investigation are obstacles to efforts in stemming this exploitation of biodiversity of a country and its neighbours.

Recognising that no country can fight this scourge on its own, governments in the region formed in 2005 a regional anti-wildlife trafficking network aimed at sharing intelligence and improving regional enforcement collaboration.

The 10-member Asean – Wildlife Enforce­ment Network (Asean-WEN) is the world’s largest entity of its kind. Despite the heightened awareness among law enforcers and seemingly higher number of seizures, it remains unclear if the network has managed to cripple the syndicates or apprehend the masterminds behind this hideous crime against nature.

Malaysia is a hub for a multi-billion-ringgit global trade in illegal wildlife
The Star 10 Aug 09;

KUALA LUMPUR: A former wildlife smuggler has, in a rare interview, talked about his arrest for the illegal trafficking of animals following a sting operation set up by the US authorities.

Nicknamed the “Pablo Escobar of the wildlife trade” after the Colombian drug lord, Penangite Anson Wong Keng Lian was convicted of trafficking in highly-endangered species by the US government in 2001 after a three-year probe by its Fish and Wildlife Services.

He was sentenced to 71 months in jail.

Wong’s illicit operations then was part of the worldwide illegal wildlife trade that Interpol estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year.

The smuggling of wildlife and animal parts is so lucrative that it is second only to drug trafficking.

> Interpol estimates that illegal wildlife trade worldwide is worth US$10bil (RM35bil) to US$20bil (RM70bil) a year.

> Consignments of live animals and body parts worth millions of ringgit have slipped through Malaysia undetected.

> Malaysia’s porous borders and unguarded shorelines make the country an ideal transit point for wildlife smuggling.

> Animal traffickers are not deterred by low fines and short jail terms.

Perhilitan D-G: Illegal trading in wildlife ‘an old story’
Yeng Ai Chun, The Star 11 Aug 09;

PETALING JAYA: The Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) is keeping mum over allegations that Malaysia is a major wildlife trafficking centre.

Perhilitan director-general Datuk Abdul Rasid Samsudin had replied: “it is an old story” when asked to comment on the Starprobe story yesterday alleging that illegal trading in wildlife had put Malaysia on the world map for the wrong reasons.

When pointed out that the problem was still going on and the number of cases were getting higher, Abdul Rasid said: “I cannot comment on that.”

However, Abdul Rasid said the department has established an inter-agency cooperation relationship with the Customs, police and army to curb wildlife smuggling.

When asked what happened to confiscated shipments now, he replied Perhilitan returned seized consignments to the country of origin, or release the animals back into the wild. The seized carcasses were disposed.

As for allegation that Anson Wong had benefited from auctions of confiscated shipments due to his connection to a high ranking officer in the department, Abdul Rasid said this was a “story from the past”.

Wong was convicted of wildlife smuggling and jailed 71 months in United States. He now resides in Penang.

He also refuted allegations that special permits by Perhilitan issued to theme parks, private zoos and individuals for keeping animals had been used to cover smuggling activities.

The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry said it would issue a statement on the matter today.

Malaysia Denies Allegation On Wildlife Smuggling
Bernama 11 Aug 09;

MARAN, Aug 11 (Bernama) -- Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Tan Sri Joseph Kurup has denied allegations that Malaysia is the world's largest wildlife smuggling centre.

He said the government would not compromise on the smuggling of wildlife and had taken stern action against culprits who committed such offences.

"We admit that such an activity exists, but we always take stern action against the culprits," he told reporters after launching the Rakan Alam Sekitar campaign here Tuesday.

He was commenting on a recent report in an English daily that Malaysia had become the world's largest wildlife smuggling centre.

Kurup said amendments to the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972 were being drafted to provide heavier penalties against those who committed offences related to wildlife and national parks.
-- BERNAMA

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Smaller premiums to slow "green" palm certification

Aloysius Bhui, Reuters 11 Aug 09;

JAKARTA (Reuters) - An 80 percent dive in the premium paid for certified "green" palm oil could discourage producers from applying for certification, an industry official said on Tuesday, marking a setback in efforts to control deforestation.

Vengeta Rao, secretary general of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), said in an interview that the slide in the premium would slow down interest but was unlikely to stop certification given continued interest from some buyers.

Under fire from green groups and some Western consumers, the palm oil industry established the RSPO in 2004 to develop an ethical certification system that includes commitment to preserve rainforest and wildlife.

But while more certified output is ready for sale, demand is lagging behind. The RSPO has so far sold about 100,000 tons, or about 6.2 percent, of certified green palm oil since the first shipment last November.

As a result, the premium to conventional palm oil had slumped to $10-15 a metric ton now from $50 in November, Rao told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry meeting.

He said the global economic crisis was partly to blame for the slump but he also urged buyers to show more commitment to sustainability.

"I think the RSPO certainly believes there should be a fair premium to cover all the direct costs to get certification," he said, adding the support from the supply chain should be reflected in a certain amount of premium.

Rao said there was no fixed level for a fair premium as costs for certification varied from company to company.

"In some cases we have plantations which have been around for three generation, while others just started," he said.

Rao said the commitment to sustainability was now becoming a global issue, not just an interest for Western world, so the palm industry could not afford to pull back from the certification process.

"As we go forward the whole world will be concerned about sustainability no matter where the consumer is. A significant amount of buyers in China and India will also be global multinationals," he said.

"These companies will require uniform buying policies. They cannot buy certified palm for Europe but non-certified for China," he said.

After initial skepticism more environmental groups appear to be backing the RSPO initiative.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) plans to publish a "buyer's scorecard" that would show companies that support sustainable palm oil and those which have not fulfilled commitments to buy.

Buyers include Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, L'Oreal and Cadbury.

Indonesia and Malaysia, the top palm oil suppliers, ship 34 million tons of the vegetable oil globally, with the European Union taking up roughly 15 percent for food and fuel requirements, industry data showed.

China and India, the world's top buyers of vegetable oils, absorb around 40 percent of global palm oil output.

(Editing by Ed Davies)

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Expert help sought to preserve Ho Chi Minh city mangroves

Vietnam News 11 Aug 09;

HCM CITY — Forest rangers and the local administration should preserve HCM City’s Can Gio mangrove forest using scientific forestry methods, ensuring the trees grow naturally, a city official said.

Nguyen Trung Tin, deputy chairman of HCM City People’s Committee, told the forest rangers and Can Gio District officials during a trip there last Friday that the forest is the city’s "green lung".

"It also shields the coast from the intrusion of salt water and strong winds," he said.

Trees in many parts of the forest have died of pests been destroyed by people trying to catch peanut worms that live in the marshy area.

Experts say the mangrove trees in Can Gio, a reforested area, should be trimmed when they reach the age of 15 or 16 to create space for other trees to grow and check the spread of pests.

In some areas, however, this has not been done, stunting the trees’ growth.

Tin praised the authorities for handing over the upkeep of the forest to local residents late last year.

The district chairman, Nguyen Huu Hiep, said 137 families maintain around 26,000 ha, generating a stable income from the forest and climbing above the poverty line.

Forest rangers and other officials manage the remaining 4,398ha.

Nguyen Dinh Cuong, director of the city Forest Guard Station, said thanks to handing over the forest to the residents, the incidence of logging and other illegal activities has decreased by 15 per cent compared to last year.

Le Van Sinh, director of the Can Gio forest administration committee, said hundreds of students come to the forest to do researc. They include foreign students, mainly from Japan.

He said that the city plans to earmark 50ha in Tam Thon Hiep Commune to develop an environmental study camp for students.

The Viet Nam Forestry Sciences Institution, the Southern Forestry Planning Sub-Institution, and the HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University are also carrying out four research projects in the forest.

The Can Gio mangrove forest, the world’s only regenerated reserve, is a symbol of Viet Nam’s efforts to recover forests and lands devastated by toxic chemicals and bombs the US used during the war. — VNS

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Japanese urged to take bluefin tuna off the menu

Leo Lewis, Times Online 11 Aug 09;

Japan should abandon its love affair with sushi and embrace a diet from the austere days of the past, according to the country’s leading fisheries expert.

Masayuki Komatsu, a long-serving minister in the fisheries agency and now head of a prominent think tank, said that Japanese urgently needed to accept that bluefin tuna, of which they consume 44,000 tonnes every year, would soon be far beyond the budgets of ordinary people as stocks dwindle and prices soar.

Sushi in general must become a dish served only on special occasions, he said, and the days of Tokyo restaurants serving a generous helping of raw bluefin on a bed of rice for about £5 must end.

Professor Komatsu blamed Japan’s all-powerful trading houses for encouraging people to become blasé about cheap bluefin, an attitude that has led to the collapse of worldwide stocks and growing fears of extinction.

The comments coincide with rising clamour for a ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna, a global market in which Japan buys about 80 per cent of every catch from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Japanese restaurants serving bluefin tuna worldwide have been targeted by protesters.

Britain, the United States, France and Germany are supporting a campaign — led by the principality of Monaco — for a ban. The moratorium would work by adding the bluefin tuna to those animals listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a panoply of 5,000 animals and 28,000 plants that includes the red panda, aardwolf, pangolins, whales, seahorses, even the probably extinct thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. A proposal is expected to be finalised in the next couple of months and may be ratified at a conference of the convention in Qatar next March. Washington may draft its own proposal for a ban on bluefin trade.

It is expected that Japan will fiercely resist such a move and rally a diverse mix of supporters to its cause, as it has on the issue of commercial whaling bans. The official line from Japan’s fisheries agency is that any curbs on the international tuna trade should be discussed in a different forum. Nevertheless, government sources say that many MPs already accept the need for worldwide tuna stocks to be rebuilt.

Professor Komatsu dismissed the idea that the Japanese taste for sushi deserved special protection. “The habit of eating such a valuable tuna in a casual setting is a very recent phenomenon, which only really dates back to the start of the Heisei era [1989] and the popularity of conveyor-belt sushi from that time,” he said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he added, sushi and sashimi were eaten only on rare “sunshine days” a couple of times each year, a practice that may be forced on Japan by the outside world if it does not adapt to the new market realities of its own accord. If the sushi habit proves too hard to kick, Japanese should wean themselves off bluefin by returning to more local fish, such as sardines and Alaskan pollock, he said.

Meanwhile, Japanese scientists are engaged in a huge research effort to cultivate bluefin tuna from birth to maturity in farm conditions, a process previously thought commercially impossible. Indeed, one institute claims that it has managed to engineer the progress of 100,000 eggs to the next stage of maturity.

Japanese urged to give up tuna in effort to save the species
A former Japanese diplomat has called on his countrymen to curb their cravings for endangered fish that are served up as sushi.
Julian Ryall, The Telegraph 12 Aug 09;

Masayuki Komatsu, who once described Minke whales as "the cockroaches of the ocean," said the Japanese were eating tuna into extinction.

"As stocks of northern bluefin tuna are so severely depleted and have been so poorly managed, then Japanese people must change their mindset," said Mr Komatsu, a fierce proponent of Japan's whaling programme when he was a minister with the fisheries agency and now head of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

"And it is not only tuna, but sardine, mackerel and other fish that are in decline," he said.

Born in a fishing village in Iwate Prefecture, Mr Komatsu said he recognised as a child the threat over-fishing posed, as catches declined and people left the industry.

He now believes that the only way to counter the public's appetite for tuna - which has been encouraged by trading houses that earn millions from the more than 45,000 tons that are consumed in Japan every year - is education.

"Western nations are educating consumers and providing information on the status of stocks, but while the Japanese government conducts research, that is not passed on to the public," he said.

Japan has no equivalent system to rank the fish on supermarket shelves as either red, for endangered, yellow or green, for plentiful, he pointed out.

There is rising support for a ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna, although any effort to reduce catches will inevitably be met with opposition by Japan.

And instead of catching tuna and other endangered species, Mr Komatsu advocates making more use of "plentiful Antarctic resources," such as the Minke whale.

"If we manage this resource, we can cut down on the consumption of cows and pigs, whish use large amounts of fertilizer, water and other resources that are not renewable," he said.

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Atlantic Salmon returns to Seine

Emmanuel Angleys Yahoo News 11 Aug 09;

PARIS (AFP) – After an absence of nearly a century, Atlantic salmon have returned to France's Seine River, with hundreds swimming past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral this year alone, researchers told AFP.

The reappearance of salmon and other species chased from these waters by dams and pollution is all the more remarkable because no efforts have been made to reintroduce them.

They came back on their own.

"There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine," said Bernard Breton, a top official at France's National Federation for Fishing.

"This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined: I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark," he told AFP by phone.

2008 was already a record-breaking year, with at least 260 tallied on a video system in the fish passage of the Poses dam above Rouen, a city roughly half way between Paris and the Atlantic Ocean.

Historically, the Seine hosted a flourishing population of salmon, a migratory species that return from the sea between December and June to their freshwater birth place to reproduce.

But the construction of dams, and especially the fouling of the Seine with chemical runoff from industry and agriculture along with organic pollution, led to their local extinction sometime between WWI and WWII.

Today, Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, is listed as a threatened species throughout Europe.

Imagine the surprise, then, of the weekend angler who reeled a six-kilo (13-pound) specimen just downstream from Paris at the end of last month.

Or the dozing fisherman in Suresnes, also downstream from the city gates, who snagged an even bigger one last October, the first such catch in over seven decades.

Salmon are not the only fish in the Seine making a comeback.

In 1995, only four species were known to swim its waters -- eels, redeye, bream and carp -- and at least one of these is invasive.

Today there are at least 32, according to the water purification authority for the larger Paris region. The lamprey eel, sea trout and shad have all joined salmon in the Seine over the last few years.

The reason, say scientists, is simple: cleaner water.

In the mid-1990s, "between 300 and 500 tonnes of fish died in the Seine up river from Paris every year because of pollution," said Breton.

But massive efforts over the last 15 years, including a new water purification plant, have removed much of the river's pollutants.

The results suggest that when it comes to conservation, restoring an ecosystem is probably a better strategy than restocking depleted waters, notes Breton.

Scientists at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research who track salmon say it is a "bellwether species", a living indicator of their habitat's state of health.

To find out more about how Atlantic salmon are recolonising their ancient river haunt, they recently captured and released seven adults in the Seine.

Four had spent less than two years at sea before returning to fresh waters, two had returned in the Spring after two years in open waters, and one had waited three years before leaving the ocean.

DNA analysis showed that the fish came from several different rivers, in France and elsewhere in Europe.

It also suggested that a new "embryo" population specific to the Seine might be forming, probably southeast of Paris at the headwaters of the Yonne River in the region of Morvan.

Atlantic salmon were once abundant throughout the north Atlantic, from Quebec to New England in the west, and from the Arctic Circle to Portugal to the east.

But over the last three decades, their populations have plummeted, with commercial catches declining by more than 80 percent.

Adults spend most of their lives in small groups roaming vast distances at sea in search of food, mainly squid, shrimp and small fish such as herring.

Salmon fast during the arduous, upstream journey to their birth place, where females lay eggs and males fertilise them before dying.

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Are Germ-Killing Soaps Affecting Dolphin Development?

Dolphins are swimming in waters tainted with triclosan, an ingredient in antibacterial soaps and other products, but they aren't winding up squeaky clean
Brett Israel and Environmental Health News, Scientific American 11 Aug 09;

Dolphins are swimming in waters tainted with germ-killing soaps, but they aren't winding up squeaky clean.

Triclosan, an antibacterial chemical found in everyday bathroom and kitchen products, is accumulating in dolphins at concentrations known to disrupt the growth and development of other animals. Scientists have found that one-third of the bottlenose dolphins tested off South Carolina and almost one-quarter of those tested off Florida carried traces of triclosan in their blood. It is the first time the chemical has been reported in a wild marine mammal – a worrisome finding, researchers say, because it shows it is building up in the ocean’s food web.

Triclosan is the germ-killing chemical of choice in hundreds of products, including liquid hand soaps, toothpaste, deodorants and cutting boards. Now some scientists are calling for its removal from consumer products.

“The fact that this chemical is found in the environment and is being detected in a top level predator certainly warrants concern,” said Patricia Fair, a research physiologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the dolphin study, which was published online in the journal Environmental Pollution in May.

Scientists cannot say what effect triclosan might have on dolphins, but lab studies conducted on other animals suggest that it could be jeopardizing their health. Studies in bullfrogs found that triclosan disrupts the endocrine system — blocking the tadpoles’ development into frogs at concentrations found in the environment. Another study found triclosan alters thyroid hormones in rats, which is another sign of endocrine system disruption.

Many scientists weren’t surprised to see triclosan turn up in dolphins, due to the chemical’s widespread use. In the United States, 76 percent of liquid soaps and 26 percent of bar soaps contain triclosan, according to a 2001 study in the American Journal of Infection Control. In Europe, approximately 350 tons are used in commercial products.

“With the sheer amount being used, it’s actually starting to accumulate [in more top predators],” said Caren Helbing, a molecular biologist at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada, who was not involved with the dolphin study.

After spitting your toothpaste down the sink or washing your liquid soap down the drain, it ends up in a sewage treatment plant, where 90 to 98 percent of the chemical is broken down, before the wastewater is discharged into freshwater or directly into oceans along the coasts. Triclosan was one of the most frequently detected chemicals in a survey of streams in 30 states conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Triclosan builds up in fatty tissues, so it passes up the food chain from animal to animal, including humans.

Three-quarters of people tested in the United States have triclosan in their urine, according to a 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also has been found in breast milk of Swedish women. The concentrations reported in humans are similar to those found in dolphins.

Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration regulate triclosan in consumer products.

Last October, after reviewing the existing science, the EPA decided to approve the chemical for continued use. The EPA said triclosan “may bioaccumulate, potentially posing a concern for aquatic organisms.” But it concluded that the levels coming from households are too low to be toxic to fish or other aquatic creatures.

Nevertheless, the agency added new requirements. Triclosan manufacturers must submit toxicology reports and an environmental monitoring plan. Also, the EPA decided that it will review the chemical again in four years because of “the rapidly developing scientific database for triclosan,” according to an agency document.

“Currently, the Agency intends to begin that process in 2013, ten years earlier than originally planned,” the document says.

In the meantime, Swiss-based chemical company Ciba, the major manufacturer of triclosan, announced in March that within a year it will stop using it for clothing, textiles, plastic and other uses registered with the EPA. The company says its decision was based on market decisions, not concerns over its safety.

Ciba, however, will continue to use the chemical in soaps and other personal care products and medical equipment, “where the proven safety and efficacy of triclosan is most clearly valued by our customers and supported by customer demand,” according to a statement by the company, now part of chemical giant BASF. Those products come under the control of the FDA, not the EPA.

Paul DeLeo, director of environmental safety for the Soap and Detergent Assn., which represents companies with products that contain triclosan, says that the amounts found in dolphins and other animals are too small to have any effect.

In the new study, the levels in 26 dolphins tested in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Indian River Lagoon in Central Florida ranged from 0.025 to 0.27 parts per billion.

Researchers say it’s how triclosan behaves, not the amount, that is critical. As little as 0.03 parts per billion has disrupted the endocrine system of frogs in the laboratory.

“It sounds like a very, very little bit, but in biology that’s in the range that normal hormones work,” said Catherine Propper, an endocrinologist at the Northern Arizona University who studies amphibians exposed to chemicals in wastewater.

The levels found in the environment concern scientists because of triclosan's remarkable biological structure. Triclosan is strikingly similar to thyroid hormone, so it might bind to hormone receptors, said Helbing, author of the frog study. Because frog and mammal endocrine systems are similar, triclosan can potentially “affect how hormones work in ways that aren’t intended” in dolphins, and maybe even humans, she said. Altering thyroid function in humans and animals might cause abnormal brain development and other developmental defects.

But making the leap from bullfrog studies to dolphins, or even humans, is not so simple. Rarely is triclosan the only chemical found in an ecosystem, so pinpointing cause and effect in the wild is a daunting challenge. But scientists say further lab testing can confirm these early findings and paint a clearer picture of triclosan’s long-term effects.

“Dolphins are mammals just like us," Helbing said. "They are telling us about potential health effects. We need to perk up and listen."

Even without triclosan, dolphins carry a chemical cocktail of toxic substances in their bodies. Several other compounds that have built up in ocean animals already have been banned because of concerns about their persistence in the environment and potential health effects in wildlife and people.

In 1990, high levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, which can suppress the immune system, were found in striped dolphins in the Mediterranean at extremely high levels. The pesticide DDT, brominated flame-retardants, perfluorinated compounds and mercury also contaminate dolphins around the world. Wildlife experts say these chemicals place dolphins at risk of reproductive failure and disease. PCBs may have contributed to large die-offs of dolphins in the Mediterranean and along the East Coast of the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.

While most animal studies have focused on these so-called persistent organic pollutants, newly emerging pollutants found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products are under increasing analysis.

“A lot of these compounds are in the environment and they do have impacts on [animals’] physiology. But whether they’ll have impacts on fitness and survival, that needs longer term study,” Propper said.


This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

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U.S. Bear Gallbladders Sold on Black Market

Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 11 Aug 09;

Healthy populations of U.S. black bears may be tempting poachers involved with illegal international trade in bear body parts, some environmentalists say.

Mild poaching activity has already been going on for years, thanks in part to lax laws in some states.

Existing trade and the threat of more poaching therefore spurred U.S. Representatives Raul M. Grijalva, Democrat from Arizona, and John Campbell, Republican from California, to reintroduce the Bear Protection Act on August 3.

In 2000 and 2001, a law similar to the new act passed the U.S. Senate, but did not pass the House.

The new legislation would ban any import, export, or interstate commerce in U.S. bear organs and fluids—most notably gallbladders and bile.

These and other bear body parts—like those of tigers, rhinoceros, and other species—have long been used in traditional Asian medicines.

By acting now, the U.S. can prevent a dramatic decline in bear populations like the ones seen in Asia, some conservationists argue.

But other experts say that the new bear-parts legislation misses the mark.

The global bear-parts trade is a "huge problem, especially in Asia," said Dave Garshelis, a bear biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and co-chair of the IUCN's Bear Specialist Group.

But in North America, "it's miniscule."

Tangled Web

Demand for Asiatic black bear parts—coupled by habitat loss—has earned that species a "vulnerable" listing with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Globally, six of the eight known bear species are threatened with extinction, according to IUCN.

This dearth of local bears is turning poachers' sights on the plentiful populations in North America, some conservationists say.

In the U.S., 34 states ban trade in bear gallbladders and bile, noted Adam Roberts, vice president of the animal-advocacy nonprofit Born Free USA, who backs the newly proposed bill.

But five states—Maine, Vermont, Idaho, Wyoming, and New York—allow such trade freely.

The rest have a tangled web of statues that sometimes allows the trade of parts taken from bears legally killed elsewhere.

"The majority of states have already banned the trade because they realized that commercialization of wildlife parts leads to poaching," Roberts said.

"The handful that allow the trade serve as laundering points for bear gallbladders taken elsewhere."

This confusing network of laws creates an enforcement nightmare, according to Roberts.

"Once you remove a gallbladder from a black bear, it's impossible to tell where that bear was killed," he said.

The proposed uniform federal legislation could end that problem, he added.

Little Evidence

But defining the scope of black bear poaching in the U.S. is extremely difficult, especially with scant evidence.

"It's hard for any enforcement agency to get a handle on wildlife crime. Unlike crimes against people [who report them], you usually have to catch a poacher or trafficker in the act," said Sandy Cleva, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Law Enforcement.

"However, we do know that while we investigate bear-parts trafficking when it violates federal wildlife laws, we don't see large numbers of these cases each year."

Minnesota's Garshelis notes that legal black bear hunters harvest nearly 50,000 North American bears each year.

"And occasional stings might find a dozen poached bears or something like that," he said. "Something like 20,000 black bears have been [fitted with radio collars] across North America, yet reports of poaching are rare."

Some state officials even say they have more than enough black bears to support a sustainable trade.

Vermont's bear population, for example, is "exploding," said Colonel David LeCours, director of law enforcement for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department in Waterbury.

LeCours said his state has no plans to alter its laws allowing trade in bear parts because there's no need.

For instance, Vermont investigators found that only a few of the gallbladders that hunters could have legally sold in the state made it to market.

"We encourage utilization of all usable pieces [including meat, fur, and bones] of any animal," LeCours said. "We don't want to see any waste that there need not be."

"Now, if the only purpose that an animal was being harvested for is for commercial reasons, then we'd have to reassess that," LeCours said. "But there is nothing to suggest that this has happened."

"Better to Act Now"

Minnesota's Garshelis, the bear biologist, said that his colleagues at wildlife-management agencies and universities know the reproductive rates, natural mortality, and other relevant data that help set a sustainable rate for legal harvest of black bears.

Such management has produced black bear populations that are stable or increasing across North America, even with extensive hunting.

"It's not like some underlying poaching is causing a population reduction. That's not happening anywhere," he said.

"Populations are increasing, most states and provinces have an issue with bear populations—and the biggest issue is human-bear conflicts."

Born Free's Roberts agreed that most states where bears reside have stable or growing populations, but he's concerned about other places.

"States like Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi have small bear populations," he said. "If a poaching operation were to be set up in one of those states, the entire populations could literally be wiped out."

Roberts also believes that the time to protect bears may be before the pressure becomes too heavy on them.

"In 1900 there were an estimated 100,000 tigers in the wild," he said.

"Trade in skins, bones, and organs have led to precipitous declines so that there are only about 4,000 today. Better to act now, before it's too late."

Wrong Focus

Meanwhile, the proposed bill may be focusing attention on the wrong issue.

Black bear poaching in North America is simply not a significant threat to the species, said Chris Servheen, who coordinates the USFWS's Grizzly Bear Recovery program at the University of Montana.

"There may be isolated areas that it may occur, and the bill could be a benefit to that," said Servheen, who has worked extensively on the Asian bear-parts trade with conservation groups WWF and TRAFFIC.

"But the big story is that the future of Asian bears is really being threatened by the trade in bear parts, and there are almost no conservation efforts going on [in Asia]—no organizational structure, and no funding."

In place of the new bill, Congress should instead allocate funds for Asian nations with declining bear populations, Servheen said.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species does ban the sale or transfer of bear gallbladders, Minnesota's Garshelis added.

But "just having those treaties doesn't work," he said. What's needed is better funding for international efforts to stop the bear-parts trade in areas where the animals are most at risk.

"It takes studies to find out where people are funneling all of these products, and it takes better law enforcement—and those things require more funding."

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Is the Frog-Killing Chytrid Fungus Fueled by Climate Fluctuations?

Laboratory research reexamines the controversial link between climate change and the chytrid fungus that has been killing frogs around the world

Brendan Borrell, Scientific American 11 Aug 09;

This much is clear: frogs are dying.

One third of the world's 6,260 amphibian species are globally threatened or extinct. The primary threat to their survival is still habitat destruction, which impacts 61 percent of known amphibian species. But climate change and the deadly chytrid fungus could potentially take the lead over the next century—or at least make things much, much worse for frogs, salamanders and their legless, subterranean cousins known as caecilians.

How much worse? It depends, in part, on whether climate change has the potential to spur—or slow—the growth of the chytrid fungus, which probably originated in South Africa and spread in the 1930s as clawed frogs were exported for frog-based pregnancy tests. Although more than 200 species have been diagnosed with the pathogen, 1,034 have been deemed "susceptible," according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). And that's where things get tricky.

Some scientists, like Alan Pounds of the Tropical Science Center's Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, believe that warming temperatures have single-handedly triggered the spread of the fungus. Others, like Karen Lips of the University of Maryland (U.M.), College Park, say that climate has played practically no part in its expansion. Still others, like Ross Alford at James Cook University in Australia, contend that hot, dry weather is directly driving most extinctions, and the fungus has had only a tangential role.

In 2008 disease ecologist Jason Rohr of the University of South Florida in Tampa, published a paper saying, in effect, that none of the amphibian extinction theories were quite right—and the parts that were correct were correct for the wrong reasons. To illustrate his point, he showed that frog extinctions were more closely correlated to beer and banana production than to air temperature.

Last week, Rohr traveled to the Ecological Society of America conference in Albuquerque, and presented results from a new analysis and a laboratory study that he hopes will bring the bickering scientists closer to a resolution—his resolution, that is.

First, he took a close look at the timeline of extinctions in Atelopus, the New World frog genus hardest hit by the chytrid: 71 of the 113 species are now presumed extinct. The extinctions have clearly been spreading geographically since 1979, but there's a great deal of year-to-year variation in their numbers.

In the early 1990s, for instance, about 8 percent of Atelopus species were winking out each year. But a closer look shows that just under 3 percent of Atelopus extinctions happened in 1991, whereas 18 percent occur the following year. These peaks and troughs correlate with the El Niño climate cycle, which creates warmer, wetter summers in Central and South America every three to eight years, due to shifts in trade winds and ocean currents. Rohr contends that the frog extinctions occur during cool swings in the midst of warm El Niño years, a hypothesis that goes against Pounds's theory that the fungus grows best at warmer temperatures.

To parse out this complex phenomenon, Rohr and his colleagues decided to bring the frogs and the fungus into the lab. Cuban tree frogs were raised in Styrofoam tanks at either 15 or 25 degrees C for four weeks and then were infected with chytrid fungus. The fungus grew better and killed more frogs at the cooler temperature.

More importantly, Rohr looked at how climate fluctuations would affect the frogs' ability to fight the fungus. If frogs were suddenly moved from the hot temperature to the cooler temperature, they ended up with 25 percent more fungus than if they were kept at the cooler temperature. Rohr suspects that the frogs' ability to secrete fungus-fighting skin secretions is temperature-sensitive.

The bottom line, he explained, is that climate change does matter for the fungus—but probably not as much, or as little, as some would like. Although El Niño events have become more frequent and intense in recent years, scientists are still undecided about their connection to climate change. "Temperature variability has increased in the region," Rohr said, "but I don't think climate is going to account for nearly as much variation as epidemic spread."

Amphibian experts say the new results seem promising. "On a month scale, temperature fluctuations could have strong effects on the immune system," explains immunologist Jacques Robert at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. "When you start to change temperature, going up or down, there is some suppression in the animals."

And chytrid expert Joyce Longcore of the University of Maine, Orono, also agrees that the theory seems reasonable. "I'm primarily on the side of not needing to have climate change to have these infections," she says. "That doesn't mean that in some instances it doesn't slow its spread or make it worse."

Of course, it is still too early to know whether the rest of the amphibian decline community will embrace—or dispute—the new results. Although U.M.'s Karen Lips saw Rohr present the new data, she declined to comment until she sees a paper in print.

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The wildebeest river is running dry

The animals' stampede through the Mara river is one of nature's most spectacular events. But now the watercourse is drying up, a sign of the damage being done to Africa's fragile eco-system
Daniel Howden, The Independent 10 Aug 09;

The scale of it is hard to comprehend. Even standing on the dented roof of an old jeep in the Serengeti and seeing hoofed animals stretching out to the horizon in all directions only affords you a glimpse of it. The great wildebeest migration is underway and more than a million of them, together with hundreds of thousands of zebras, are heading north from the endless plains of Tanzania's Serengeti region into the pastures of the Masai Mara in Kenya, seeking water and grass.

The quintessential image of the migration is the crossing of the Mara river: the surprising vulnerability of the wildebeest horde as they scramble down one bank and up the other, their fierce horns and grey-bearded heads turning nervously in search of predators. It's a spectacle routinely referred to as the seventh wonder of the world and one thatdraws tens of thousands of top-dollar tourists to both banks of the Mara every year.

But this year there is something missing – the water. "This is the first year we've ever seen the river this low," says Will Deed, who works with the Mara Conservancy, a not-for-profit group which manages one third of this huge reserve.

"In parts there's just small channel, one or one-and-a-half feet deep." In the same stretches of the river last year the water was as deep as five feet and "the wildebeest and zebra were up to their chests or necks, or even swimming," he adds.

"Normally it's an incredible ordeal for the wildebeest, with crocodiles waiting for them in the river."

At this point of the animals' migration north – which begins in earnest in early August – the ordeal has been reduced to a short hop and the grateful wildebeest can move on to the rich, green grazing of the reserve itself. "What we are seeing is not necessarily the end of the migration but it is the end of the spectacle of the crossing," says Mr Deed.

The drying-up of the river, which should be at its highest point at the end East Africa's long rainy season, is one of a series of ominous signs that conservationists believe could add up to an ecological disaster.

The sun-scorched boulders that ring the shore of Kenya's Lake Baringo are cut by a sharp brown line, running horizontally, that shows the watermark of the past. Beneath the dark divide is an expanse of white stone freshly bared to the elements as the lake has receded dramatically.

A report released last week by Kenya's Water Resource Management Authority has dismissed any hopes that these phenomena could be unrelated.

In the report, Simon Mwangi, the authority's Rift Valley regional technical manager, said that the River Perkerra, which feeds Lake Baringo, and the Malewa which drains into Lake Naivasha, were at their lowest levels on record.

The picture was similarly bleak, he reported, with the Ewaso Nyiro and Mara rivers. The country's great lakes from Turkana in the north to Nakuru, and the economically vital Naivasha, home to Kenya's flower industry, were also alarmingly low.

A similarly bleak report on endangered species and mass migrations from the American Museum of Natural History last month has even stirred fears of a repeat of the Emutai ("wipe-out") -– the ecological shock that struck the region inhabited by the Maasai ethnic group at the end of the 19th century, hitting people livestock and wildlife. The results were described in 1891 by the Austrian explorer Oscar Baumann: "There were women wasted to skeletons from whose eyes the madness of starvation glared ... warriors scarcely able to crawl on all fours, and apathetic, languishing elders."

The answer to the riddle of the Mara's dwindling waters, and the general drought conditions, lies upstream, in the Mau forest.

The Mara river originates on the Mau escarpment, eventually draining into Lake Victoria. The largest remaining forest in Kenya, Mau functions as a water tower for the East African country, feeding rivers and helping to regulate rainfall.

However shocking reports this year have a revealed that the eco-system is under siege from illegal loggers and land-grabbing farmers, as well as large and small recipients of political patronage. Many of those are smallholders receiving parcels of the forest as "land for votes", while Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper named two of the children of former president Daniel arap Moi as among the bigger owners.

There effect is a devastating fragmentation of what environmentalists call an ecological utility whose services stretch from watering Kenya's tea estates to feeding the rivers powering its hydroelectric plants, and regulating temperature and rainfall throughout an often arid land. Despite being home to the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme, Kenya has systematically ignored warnings over the importance of conserving the Mau forest. While the troubled coalition government in Nairobi has belatedly begun to recognise the problem, it has so far done next to nothing about it.

Wangari Maathai, the veteran Kenyan green campaigner and Nobel laureate, says the destruction of the Mau and other forests is possibly more damaging to the region than climate change."Life is unsustainable in East Africa without these environmental services from forests," she says. The former MP has launched a campaign called "Enough is Enough", urging the government to reclaim grabbed forests, rivers and wetlands. The American Natural History Museum study also outlined the effects of serious water loss. "Herbivore populations would almost certainly decline, carnivore populations would follow" and the Serengeti would lose tourism dollars, it said.

While there is scientific agreement on the importance of restoring the Mau for both Kenya's economy and environment, vested interests have so far managed to block the feeble power-sharing government, as land grabbers angle for lucrative compensation for the resources they hold.

Downstream, amid the luxury tented camps and lodges of the Masai Mara reserve, the extraordinary appeal of the great migration has helped to insulate revenue from the global recession. Occupancy rates for August have been close to 100 per cent. But the squadrons of Safari Land Cruisers on the river banks will not get quite the spectacle they came to see this year "During the migration we are always packed " says Mr Deed. "But you can go on much cheaper safaris in South Africa, and high-end ones in Namibia."

The portends are not good to the north of the Mara, where a smaller wildebeest migration from the Loita plains into the wetlands of the reserve has now stopped. A mixture of farming, fencing and water shortages are to blame.

For now the continued rainfall within the reserve means that the estimated 1.3 million Connochaetus taurinus, or common wildebeest will keep coming crossing from the Serengeti, even if there's not much of a river to cross. But in the longer term, there are profound choices to be made, scientists warn, if these great natural life cycles are to be preserved. As the US report concludes: "Eradicating migrations and relegating migrants to zoos or fenced parks represents one of the worst examples of destructive human impact."

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