Experience the Amazon in Singapore!
from Green Drinks Singapore
Mating of Grey Herons
from Bird Ecology Study Group
My artworks of other places
from Art in Wetlands
Singapore nudibranch wins!
from wild shores of singapore
November work and walks
from talfryn.net
Satiman Jamin, Johor Buzz 23 Nov 09;
[Pulau Merambong lies just off Tuas in the Johor Straits]
A whole island with its own self-supporting ecosystem awaits the discovery of scientists. SATIMAN JAMIN hopes that they get there before it is too late
PULAU Merambong in Gelang Patah, a tiny unexplored island with a self-supporting ecosystem, could be a new star for ecosystem researchers.
That is if the two-hectare island could be saved from wanton destruction
Situated about four kilometres from Gelang Patah, Pulau Merambong is unique as it has a small rainforest at its hilly centre surrounded by three types of beaches -- muddy, mangrove, and rocky and sandy.
The nearby sea grass bed, said to be the biggest in Malaysia, has received much coverage as the habitat for dugong and seahorses, but the island itself has not been thoroughly studied.
Unknown parties have cut down all vegetation around a light-house on the island, an act that could have wide repercussions as it would take years for new seedlings to take root on the jagged rocks that form the beach. On a tiny island like this, a tree may be the sole representative of a species.
Even the merambong (Scaevola taccada) shrub, from which the island got its name, had been decimated, with only a small clump of the hardy plant left on one side of the island.
The merambong is not a rare plant as it can be found on almost any beach in Malaysia, but the hordes of insects climbing all over the succulent shrub on the island suggest that it is an important food source for the insects.
A strange looking bee with the colours of the giant honey bee (Apis dorsata) is found here. It has a much longer and slender abdomen like that of the nocturnal hornet (Provespa barthelemyi).
An in depth study of the ecosystem, flora and fauna of Pulau Merambong may lead to the discovery of new sub-species or even a new species altogether.
An expedition to the island organised by the Johor Malaysian Nature Society, Marine Parks Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Tanjung Pelepas Port and the state government recently had sought to list the flora and fauna on and around the island, a step towards understanding the island's unique ecosystem.
It was a continuation of the collaboration between the port and the society to study the natural heritage on the island, which started in 2005
Tanjung Pelepas Port exco member Shahrull Allam Shah said an allocation of RM100,000 was given to produce a coffee table book on the island's ecosystem, flora and fauna.
"Our strategic location as a port also put us in an ecologically sensitive area. That was why we decided to do our part to preserve the surrounding ecosystem, including Pulau Merambong," he said.
Johor Malaysian Nature Society adviser Vincent Chow said it was not feasible to halt all development works to protect our natural heritage as the government needs to ensure the creation of jobs for the growing population.
"Humans produce kids, and when the kids graduate, they will need jobs. Therefore, we think it is more feasible to work with the authorities to safeguard our natural heritage while allowing development works to continue," said Chow.
One of the spots that need to be conserved is the sea grass bed near Pulau Merambong. It was popular with the Gelang Patah villagers who hunted for the siput gonggong or pearl conch (Strombus canarium).
When the expedition team arrived on the scene, it was already teeming with people searching for the mollusc, which could fetch up to RM10 per kg.
Apart from over-exploitation, Johor Malaysian Nature Society chairman Dr Maketab Mohamed pointed out that the sea grass bed was slowly being suffocated by seaweeds.
"The seaweeds rob the sea grass of sunlight, space and nutrients. We are trying to find a solution to this as the seaweed has no natural enemy to curb its spread," he said.
The spotted seahorse (Hippocampus kuda), noble volute (Cymbiola nobilis) and mantis shrimps are just a few of the marine animals that depend on the sea grass bed to survive.
If it is lost, it would mean losing a treasure trove as it could be home to plants or animals that could hold curative properties.
The study of the marine life around Pulau Merambong will, hopefully, lead to a full study of the plants and creatures on land.
The tiny island may just be what we need to understand our own fragile existence and help provide cures for our ills.
But first we must not let Pulau Merambong fight the battle of survival on its own.
Related posts
Pulau Merambong: an island off Tuas on the wildfilms blog.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean and Green campaign. Insight takes stock of an issue that continues to raise the hackles of many Singaporeans.
Nur Dianah Suhaimi, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;
EACH morning when Mr Dennis Tan leaves home for work, he feels like he is walking through a field of landmines.
Along the corridor of his HDB flat, he sidesteps trash left behind by neighbours. While taking the lift down, he is careful not to step in possible pools of urine.
When he reaches the carpark, he avoids the grass patches so that his shoes will not be soiled by dog poo.
The 40-year-old engineer cannot help but feel disappointed that his living environment in Woodlands is more akin to that of a dump.
'The cleaners will come and clean up everything every day. But the moment they leave, people will start dirtying the place again,' he sighs.
'Judging by their bad habits, people would think Singaporeans never went to school.'
Mr Tan's lament is reflective of the many 'horror' stories that Singaporeans tell about the state of their neighbourhoods these days. Newspapers are full of reports and letters about social untidiness and littering.
Why is environmental cleanliness still a persistent problem after four decades of official campaigning to keep Singapore clean?
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean and Green campaign, which started off as the Keep Singapore Clean campaign.
When the plan of action was drawn up to transform Singapore into a clean city, it was declared a matter of national priority, second only to defence and economic development.
Today, Singapore has won worldwide fame as a garden city with spotless streets and sparkling waterways.
The achievement should be a cause for celebration, yet the question that keeps bugging Singaporeans these days is: Yes, Singapore is greener, but is it cleaner?
Of course, if you compare Singapore with what it was a few decades ago, there is no doubt that it has made gigantic strides in environmental and social cleanliness.
Older folk will remember the 1960s when sanitation was rudimentary, and human waste had to be carried away by night soil workers.
Back then, unlicensed hawkers peddled by the roadside, dishing out cooked food to customers at the front of their pushcart stalls while dumping waste into the drains behind them. The Singapore River was better known for its overpowering sewer-like smell.
As Mr Tan Teck Khim, a National Environment Agency (NEA) environmental health executive who used to crack down on illegal hawkers, recalls: 'It was common to find cockroaches and maggots in food because the stalls were left in the open at night.'
That was when the massive and never- ending exercise to keep Singapore clean was initiated by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Launching the inaugural Keep Singapore Clean Campaign in 1968, he said that 'only a people with high social and educational standards can maintain a clean and green city'.
'It requires organisation to keep the community cleaned and trimmed, particularly when the population has a density of 8,500 persons per sq mile (3,269 persons per sq km),' he added.
Call it social engineering if you like, but this nationwide drive reflected Mr Lee's political will and personal obsession. Without fail each year, he would turn up to launch the Clean and Green Campaign.
Each successive prime minister - Mr Goh Chok Tong and now Mr Lee Hsien Loong - would retain this practice to signal to the population the importance of keeping the country clean.
As NEA officials have noted, Singapore became much cleaner when kampungs and farms disappeared and HDB flats came with their own toilet and sanitation systems.
Farming waste no longer clogged up the waterways. Unlicensed hawkers were moved into hawker centres, keeping the drains and roadsides free of waste. The Singapore River underwent a major clean-up.
From the 1960s to 2000, much arduous work went into building the system for a cleaner country. But fixing the infrastructure solved only part of the problem. There is still another problem.
As Mr Foong Chee Leong, director-general of the Meteorological Services Division and an NEA veteran, puts it: 'The infrastructure is already in place. Now the question is - how do you convince people to be clean?'
It is a very good question which is still hard to answer, even after 40 years of clean-up campaigns.
Today, with a population nearing five million and a density of about 6,800 persons per sq km, Singapore has indeed become very organised in the way it maintains its cleanliness.
Each day, legions of cleaners descend upon the residential neighbourhoods and streets to sweep away the mess and spruce up the environment. Without fail, rubbish trucks dutifully collect trash from every HDB block and every apartment building and house in the country.
It is this efficient and methodical clockwork system - which people take for granted - that has earned Singapore a worldwide reputation for cleanliness.
But unfortunately, there is more to cleanliness than meets the eye, say observers.
Despite economic progress and rising standards of education among the people, they note, the social habits of Singaporeans seem to have retrogressed.
What a shame, they say. After 40 years of Clean and Green campaigns and massive education efforts, and despite the imposition of penalties such as fines and corrective work orders, Singaporeans continue to perpetuate their bad habits - from urinating in public lifts to littering.
As Dr Geh Min, a former Nominated Member of Parliament and immediate past president of the Nature Society, describes it: 'Singapore is more a cleaned city than a clean city. The city is clean because of our army of cleaners. The people, however, are still a work in progress.'
Politicians, policymakers and community leaders have spoken despairingly of the problem. Indeed, a recent survey by the NEA shows that hygiene standards in public places are still lax.
The evidence is unmistakable. The first nine months of this year saw a total of 32,258 litterbugs being caught, compared with 33,164 for the whole of last year. That figure also marked a significant jump from 21,269 in 2007, and 7,027 in 2006.
Killer litter continues to be a longstanding problem. In 2000, a falling flowerpot killed a five-year-old girl. Two years later, a man died after a falling metal chair hit him on the head and fractured his skull.
Two people died and 152 others fell ill this year after eating contaminated hawker food. It was later revealed that the hawker centre and market were overrun by rats.
Figures from NEA show that food poisoning cases went up by 40 per cent last year, from the year before.
Speak to the Clean and Green campaigners and they would say they have almost exhausted all avenues to get the message across, from using peer pressure in 1995 to hiring TV actress Zoe Tay as environment ambassador in 1999.
Mr Khoo Seow Poh, NEA's director-general for public health, admits that constant reminders, such as television advertisements, have helped to educate the public and that the majority of Singaporeans have brushed up on their social habits.
'But there are still black sheep with dirty habits. There is still a lot of room for improvement. We need Singaporeans to be clean voluntarily and not have to be constantly reminded.'
Retiree Steven Foo, 60, is among the Singaporeans who are convinced that the social habits of his fellow countrymen have regressed over the years.
He singles out the younger generation as being the worst culprits.
'They grew up with maids at home. Outside the home, foreign workers do the cleaning for them. So they are not used to cleaning up after themselves,' he says.
Others point the finger at the hundreds of thousands of permanent residents and foreign workers who flock here with different social habits.
They say that many come from rural areas and countries where spitting and littering are second nature. Just look at the mess left behind in places where foreign workers congregate, they mutter.
But some environmentalists say it is not fair to blame foreign workers, especially when they are the ones doing most of the cleaning jobs for Singaporeans.
On the contrary, Mr Howard Shaw, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council, believes that it is the cleaning up by foreign workers that has resulted in Singaporeans becoming 'over-nannied'.
'We are so used to having things done for us by foreign workers,' he says.
There is also the possibility that cleaning standards have slackened, says Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Lee Bee Wah, who is deputy chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for National Development and Environment.
'Many residents and friends gave me feedback that Singapore was cleaner when our agencies, such as HDB and NEA, used direct workers, unlike now, when they outsource to contractors,' she says.
The reason: Many cleaners had their wages cut when the cleaning jobs were outsourced to contractors, and thus had less incentive to work hard. Furthermore, the contractors may not be as stringent in their inspections as the agencies.
The cynical view is that Singapore has fallen victim to the organisational efficiency of the Government, which will not let anything go amiss in the maintenance of the country.
This has resulted in many Singaporeans not assuming ownership and responsibility for public places, and treating them as the 'Government's problem' or the 'cleaners' job'.
So what else can be done to tackle what seems like an unsolvable problem?
The pessimists feel there is no way out of the problem unless Singaporeans develop a stronger sense of citizen ownership, like the Japanese.
To be like the Japanese, says sociologist and NMP Paulin Straughan, Singaporeans would have to abandon their 'mind-your- own-business' attitude and warm up to the idea of informal social policing.
Citing the effectiveness of social policing, she recounts how she once walked along the streets of Tokyo with some empty drink cans.
No bins were in sight. So what could she do? Two considerations stopped her from dumping the cans by the side of the street.
'First, I don't see any other empty drink cans around. So that sends a very strong signal that it will not be socially acceptable for me to be the first to leave an empty can there.
'Second, I get the sense that should I litter, I will be reprimanded by those around me. So, even as an outsider, I feel very strongly that I should conform.'
The NEA plans to carry on its educational campaigns with children as its next target group. It aims to impress on young, eager minds the importance of cleanliness.
At the same time, the agency is taking steps to strike where it hurts most - by imposing stiffer fines on litterbugs.
More radical solutions are called for, argue some people. Dr Geh proposes that schoolchildren be made solely responsible for cleaning up their schools. And yes, this includes scrubbing the school toilets.
Between the relentless efficiency of the Government and the army of lowly paid cleaners, how can Singaporeans be shaken out of their 'couldn't care less' attitude and develop greater civic consciousness?
There is one shock suggestion that often surfaces which the authorities find hard to contemplate. But perhaps it is time to bite the bullet and just do it.
Once in a while, declare a 'cleaners' holiday' - leave a housing estate or a neighbourhood without the services of its cleaners for a day, and let the people get a reality check when they see the mess around.
A garden city needs tender loving care
Straits Times 21 Nov 09;
THE beginning of the video shows an aerial view of a dense, tropical jungle. The lush, uninterrupted greenery stretches as far as the camera can see.
Suddenly, in a clearing amid the trees, a city emerges, its skyscrapers sprouting high above the treetops.
A shockingly sensational sight indeed, but this city is Singapore, the only tropical garden city in the world.
The video, titled Singapore, A City In A Garden, was shot by NParks recently.
Contrary to what some may think, this lush garden city did not come about by chance.
It took decades of planning, policies and funds to make it happen, says Mr Simon Longman, director of Streetscape at NParks. He has been with the agency and its predecessor, the Parks and Recreation Department, since 1980.
Take, for example, the row of shady rain trees lining the East Coast Parkway, which loom into view as you leave the airport. That was intentional - to give visitors a good first impression of the country.
How about the fact that every single building constructed in Singapore has a landscaped garden, or at the very least, some greenery surrounding it?
That, too, was intentional. It is a requirement in Singapore for developers to provide some greenery around the properties they build.
Like architectural plans, these 'green plans' have to be submitted to NParks before construction can commence.
Today, despite being highly urbanised and having one of the highest population densities in the world, almost half of Singapore is covered by greenery.
This could not have been possible without the Government's strong political will to create a green Singapore.
Mr Longman says: 'If you go to Jakarta or Bangkok, it feels much hotter than in Singapore. There is some scattered tree-planting in these cities but it is not coordinated. You need a strong political will to have this coordination.'
Singapore owes its beautiful landscapes to its leaders. Sir Stamford Raffles was said to be a plant enthusiast who started his own little spice garden on what is now Fort Canning Hill.
But it was then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who made the nationwide green push.
When he launched the inaugural tree-planting campaign in 1963, he envisioned a city-state within a garden environment.
Not only would a garden city benefit its residents, it would also send a strong message to investors that Singapore is well-tended by an efficient government.
He, too, made sure he did his share. Without fail, he plants a tree on the annual Tree Planting Day.
In its nascent years, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the 'backbone' of the garden city had to be formed. This consisted of planting shady trees everywhere, from the roadsides to the residential areas.
In the beginning, Mr Longman notes, the area reserved for tree-planting was hard fought over, with various government agencies clamouring for their own slice of the land.
But this was put to a stop in 1973, when an umbrella body called the Garden City Action Committee was formed to ensure landscaping was given sufficient space.
Until today, the monthly minutes of the committee, which plans and tracks projects that beautify Singapore, are faithfully monitored by the Prime Minister.
Once the main foliage was in place, then the beautifying work began. By the 1990s, more flowering and fruit plants were planted all over the island.
Today, around two million trees have been planted, not including the ones left untouched in the reserves and patches of rainforest. Every single tree is recorded in the NParks database, which tracks when each one is checked and pruned.
Singapore has done very well in realising the dream of becoming a city within a tropical garden but the challenge now, says Mr Longman, is bringing the greenery closer to the masses.
Various initiatives, such as the Plant a Tree and the Community in Bloom programmes have been introduced to bring out the green spirit in Singaporeans.
As Mr Longman says: 'The garden city was not some fancy scheme dreamt up by the Government to make Singapore look good. People need to realise that it is also their job to sustain it.
'If it is just appreciated and not supported, this garden will eventually die.'
NUR DIANAH SUHAIMI
Far from clean and green in the heartland
Straits Times Froum 24 Nov 09;
I REFER to last Saturday's commentary, 'Singapore's greener, but is it cleaner?'
Forty years after the launch of the campaign to keep Singapore clean and green, the cleanliness of our city remains in a sad state. Nowhere is this more evident than in the HDB heartland.
While visitors sing praises of Singapore's cleanliness and greenery, it is far from the truth. What visitors do not see is places where Singaporeans spend most of their time: coffee shops, hawker centres, markets and the vicinity of HDB blocks.
Lack of social grace is evident everywhere - from letting wet laundry drip to the floor below, sweeping dust into the common area and indiscriminate spitting, to commuters not giving way to alighting passengers, eating on buses and trains, littering, not picking up dog poo, inconsiderate drivers, filthy toilets and not holding the lifts for another.
The irony is that those who display such incongruous behaviour are the ones who demand good service from others.
Can we see the light at the end of the tunnel? If we want to be a gracious society, it is imperative to take the clean and green campaign to greater heights. Instil awareness from kindergarten onwards. Keep up the momentum and do not let up on the drive to spread the message. Parents and community centres can play a pivotal role in our quest to achieve the dream of a clean and green city.
Bennie Cheok
Clean and green - logic fails in absolving foreign workers
Straits Times Forum 24 Nov 09;
I REFER to last Saturday's commentary, 'Singapore's greener, but is it cleaner?' Singaporeans pointed out that foreign workers have to shoulder part of the blame in dirtying the environment, as many are from rural areas with lower cleanliness standards. But the commentary absolved foreign workers of their guilt with the following sentence: 'But some environmentalists say it is not fair to blame foreign workers (for littering), especially when they are the ones doing most of the cleaning jobs for Singaporeans.'
This sentence contains a red herring logical fallacy. Such a fallacy is committed whenever an irrelevant topic is presented to divert attention from the original issue. The fact that a roadsweeper is a foreign worker has no causal effect on an act of littering by another foreign worker. I can use this fallacy to claim the point that 'it is not fair to blame Singaporeans for littering, since most cleaning companies are owned by Singaporeans'. Whether or not a cleaning company is headed by a Singaporean does not make it more or less likely that another Singaporean will litter.
The commentary highlighted the importance of shaping Singaporeans' social mindset to reduce filth and bring about a cleaner country. With Singapore approaching a ratio of one foreigner to every four Singaporeans, the growing presence of foreign workers cannot be ignored. In my opinion, instead of using 'diminished responsibility' on foreign workers as the commentary suggests, we have to target education efforts and punitive laws on them as well.
Wu Guanglong
Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com 24 Nov 09;
A tiny chameleon species with a scaly horn atop its snout and blue dots on its limbs has been discovered in Tanzanian forests.
"It would sit quite easily on one finger," said Andrew Marshall of the University of York, adding the chameleon's body spans just 2.8 inches (about 72 mm) with a tail of nearly equal length.
Marshall first spotted the animal, now called Kinyongia magomberae, while surveying monkeys in the Magombera forest. He disturbed a twig snake that had been eating one of the chameleons. Once startled, the snake dropped its already dead prey.
So far, four specimens of the species have been observed in Tanzania's Magombera forest, which is unprotected, and the Mwanihana forest within the Udzungwa Mountains National Park.
Marshall and colleagues examined the specimens, comparing physical traits with other chameleons in the genus Kinyongia. They also ran genetic analyses, confirming the newly found animal as a separate species. Their findings are detailed in the African Journal of Herpetology.
The chameleon has a short horn-like structure on its snout. Some other chameleon species sport a longer so-called rostral process with a flexible tip, though scientists aren't sure the function of such a movable tip. Males often use their horns for fighting.
"'Our' chameleon has a very short 'horn,' maybe because it is a gentle animal," said study researcher Michele Menegon of the Tropical Biodiversity Section at the Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali in Italy.
K. magomberae usually sports a green-brown color to blend in with its surrounding habitat, the researchers suspect. But like its relatives, the newly identified chameleon changes skin color depending on its mood.
"While being photographed this individual had almost certainly changed color in response to our close proximity," Marshall told LiveScience. In the photo, the chameleon shows off limbs colored green with blue spots.
As for why Marshall and his colleagues are excited about this particular finding, he says, "It was discovered in a very threatened forest of huge importance for biodiversity, so it highlights the plight of the area."
Ultimately, the team hopes the finding will lead to protection for the Magombera forest
"Chameleon species tend to be focused in small areas and, unfortunately, the habitat this one depends on, the Magombera forest, is under threat," Marshall said. "Hopefully this discovery will support efforts to provide this area and others like it with greater protection."
New Chameleon Species Discovered in East Africa
ScienceDaily 23 Nov 09;
Dr Andrew Marshall, from the Environment Department at the University of York, first spotted the animal while surveying monkeys in the Magombera Forest when he disturbed a twig snake eating one.
The specimen was collected, tested and compared to two others found by scientists in the same area and has now been named Kinyongia magomberae (the Magombera chameleon) in research published in the African Journal of Herpetology.
Dr Marshall is co-author of the study alongside researchers from the Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Stellenbosch.
He said: "Discovering a new species is a rare event so to be involved in the identification and naming of this animal is very exciting.
"Chameleon species tend to be focused in small areas and, unfortunately, the habitat this one depends on, the Magombera Forest, is under threat. Hopefully this discovery will support efforts to provide this area and others like it with greater protection."
Dr Marshall, who is also Director of Conservation Science at the Flamingo Land theme park and zoo, is leading a research project investigating changes in the Magombera Forest. The forest is an important resource for people in the area and home to wildlife, including endangered red colobus monkeys.
The project combines research into the biology of the forest with education for local people on how to manage it in a more sustainable way. The ultimate aim is to develop protected status for the forest and find alternative ways of meeting the needs of local communities.
Snake spits out new species of chameleon at scientist's feet
Latest find in natural world was result of reptile coughing up lizard as conservationist studied monkeys in the jungle
Esther Addley, guardian.co.uk 23 Nov 09;
It was so nearly known as dinner. Instead, a small and not terribly impressive chameleon has become the newest discovery of the natural world, after a startled Tanzanian snake spat a still-undigested specimen at the feet of a British scientist, who identified it as a previously unknown species.
Dr Andrew Marshall, a conservationist from York University, was surveying monkeys in the Magombera forest in Tanzania, when he stumbled across a twig snake which, frightened, coughed up the chameleon and fled. Though a colleague persuaded him not to touch it because of the risk from venom, Marshall suspected it might be a new species, and took a photograph to send to colleagues, who confirmed his suspicions.
Kinyongia magomberae, literally "the chameleon from Magombera", is the result, though Marshall told the Guardian today the fact it wasn't easy to identify is precisely what made it unique.
"The thing is, colour isn't the best thing for telling chameleons apart, since they can change colour for camouflage. They are usually identified based on the patterning and shape of the head, and the arrangement of scales. In this case it's the bulge of scales on its nose."
Happily for Marshall, shortly afterwards he spotted a second chameleon, this time alive, and was able to photograph it. The two creatures were found about six miles apart, which he believes may be the full extent of the area colonised by the extremely rare species. Though he found the specimen in 2005, his paper on the discovery, published this week, puts the find formally on record. "It takes quite a long time to convince the authorities that you have a new species," he said.
Had Marshall hoped it might be named after him? "Oh crumbs, no. The thing is, if you work in an area of conservation importance and you can give a species the name of that area it can really highlight that area. By giving it the name Magombera it raises the importance of the forest." The tiny area of jungle is currently unprotected, he said, and he hopes the find will persuade the Tanzanian authorities to extend protection.
"When we presented our findings to the local village people they were just amazed that the world now knows an animal by the Swahili name Magombera," he said.
Nicholas Wade, The New York Times 23 Nov 09;
One day in spring 1979, Robert E. Heggestad walked into a small antique shop in Arlington, Va. Mr. Heggestad, a young lawyer from Iowa, was looking for Chinese carpets. The selection of rugs in the small back room was disappointing, and he was about to leave when he noticed a handsome rosewood cabinet behind the cash register.
The owner wanted a sum that far exceeded Mr. Heggestad’s budget — a colossal $600. “I was just out of law school, I had no money and no business buying it,” he said. But the owner was willing to take installments of $100 a month, and into Mr. Heggestad’s possession fell an incomparable scientific treasure.
The cabinet belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace, the English naturalist who conceived the idea of evolution through natural selection independently of Charles Darwin. It arrived earlier this month at the American Museum of Natural History on loan from Mr. Heggestad and will be on display starting Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.”
The cabinet is “a national treasure,” said David Grimaldi, a curator at the museum, citing its historical value and Wallace’s role in the theory of evolution.
Wallace, a naturalist and explorer, conceived the idea of natural selection while in Indonesia and described it in a letter to Darwin, prompting Darwin to announce his own theory, on which he had been working for many years. Work by the two authors describing their versions of the theory of evolution were announced at a meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858.
After Darwin published “Origin” a year later, his book became the definitive statement of the theory, and Wallace’s role faded. But Wallace was a true co-discoverer of the greatest theory in biology, and an explorer and collector, like Darwin. Through their collecting, each developed a keen appreciation of natural variation. And each had read Thomas Malthus’s theory of the struggle for existence at the edge of starvation, the background against which natural selection favors the fittest.
What fell into Mr. Heggestad’s hands three decades ago was Wallace’s personal collection of specimens, like fireflies he caught as a boy and prized items that formed the basis for his scientific work and are referred to in his books.
One other personal collection of Wallace’s is known. Owned by the British Museum of Natural History, it is one-third the size and no longer in its original cabinet.
Mr. Heggestad’s cabinet holds some 1,700 specimens, mostly botanical items, butterflies, dragonflies, moths and shells. The collection is in surprisingly good condition, mostly because he noticed some beetle damage and has added mothballs to every drawer for the past 30 years.
“Dermestid beetles,” Dr. Grimaldi said, “would have rendered the collection to dust if he hadn’t taken care of it.”
What happened with the cabinet after it left Wallace’s possession is mostly a mystery. Before turning up in Virginia, the cabinet was bought in 1964 by an antiques dealer from an unclaimed baggage sale in Philadelphia. He suspected that the cabinet belonged to Wallace, but never took the pains to prove it. Mr. Heggestad made some inquiries after he bought the cabinet and then let the matter drop. He kept the cabinet in his dining room until a friend advised him in 2007 that it should be in a museum. That inspired him to a flurry of research in which he compared the handwriting on the specimen labels with those in the British museum and studied the source of the specimens, putting beyond doubt that the collection was Wallace’s.
The cabinet will be returned to Mr. Heggestad after being displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. After that, he said, “I’m going to place it with a national museum, but I haven’t decided which.”
Bradford Plumer, The New Republic 23 Nov 09;
Can we stick a price tag on nature? And even if we can—does that mean we should? In recent years, ecological economists have argued that people will never value natural resources properly unless that value can be expressed in terms of dollars and cents. And that's the logic behind the U.N.'s big, ongoing study of "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" (TEEB)—a project that's trying to quantify just what the world's actually losing as species and habitats vanish at an alarming rate, casting the damage in raw monetary terms.
In its latest report for policymakers, the TEEB authors point out that people typically make decisions to harvest natural resources without taking into account the full value of those ecosystems. For instance, in southern Thailand, shrimp farmers who plow down mangrove forests and set up commercial shrimp farms can pull in about $1,220 per hectare per year. Not too shabby, except that those mangroves provided an estimated $12,392 per hectare per year in benefits, by providing wood to nearby communities, nursing offshore fisheries, and protecting the coasts from storm damages.
So there's a real mismatch at work. Partly this is just your run-of-the-mill "tragedy of the commons" situation—the gains from razing the mangroves are concentrated and private, while the broader benefits from leaving the forests untouched are diffuse and not "owned" by any one person. Government regulation needs to play a role. But, the TEEB report argues, the much bigger problem here is that those broader ecological benefits are rarely even considered.
Take another example: In Costa Rica, forests are often plowed down for cattle and sugar cane production, earning those farmers an annual income of around $400 per hectare. But recent studies have found that forest-based pollinators actually boost yields in nearby coffee farms—bringing a yearly value of around, oh, $400 per hectare. And that's not even taking into account other benefits of rain forests, like carbon sequestration. So there's a strong economic case for leaving the forests intact. But when cutting down forests, people often only think about the immediate benefits (wood, space for cattle) and not the wider ecosystem's value.
On the flip side, investing in conservation can reap huge—and measurable—economic returns. The Vietnamese government has spent $1.1 million planting and protecting some 12,000 hectares of mangroves. That's not just a feel-good waste of money: Since the trees reduce inland flooding and landslides, the country has saved $7.3 million in dyke maintenance. Likewise, Cambodia's Ream National Park generates far more money (from research and tourism) than opening it to development would yield.
But is a strict cost-benefit analysis the best way to think about conservation? Sure, it may seem distasteful to put a grubby dollar amount on biodiversity, but, like it or not, we live in a world dominated by economics. Governments are more likely to be persuaded to conserve by a solid analysis showing that, say, mangroves are worth more intact than razed than by uplifting appeals to the ineffable beauty of nature. And, in many cases, market-based systems that give people financial incentives to preserve forests or soil or fisheries will be most effective. (As the TEEB report notes, if people in poorer countries aren't being paid for the benefits they generate by leaving a forest standing, then why on earth would they?)
On the other hand, though, reading the TEEB report, it's clear how relatively little we really know about the importance of biodiversity and how different ecosystems interact. Sure, coral reefs generate money from tourism and storm protection, but are we really sure we know everything about how they anchor marine food chains? It was only recently that people understood how forests in Costa Rica helped boost coffee yields. What if an analysis shows that it's "worth it" to harvest a certain region and then we later find out that actually, the benefits were actually much bigger than we thought? What's more, isn't there room for uplifting appeals to nature? Isn't that why we have national parks in the United States? (Teddy Roosevelt certainly wasn't thinking in raw cost-benefit terms.) Maybe putting a price on the biosphere and using cost-benefit analysis is the best method available for thinking about conservation and sustainability, but it doesn't seem totally airtight, either.
Jon Herskovitz and Christine Kim, Reuters 23 Nov 09;
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea launched an ambitious and costly project this week to overhaul its four major rivers in a way the government says will be a model for green growth but conservationists say will do far more harm than good.
President Lee Myung-bak, a former CEO of Hyundai construction, has been campaigning globally to show his country as an environmental industry leader, with the four rivers project at the center of his plans to reshape Asia's fourth largest economy.
Critics said the project is more about local politics, aimed at creating jobs in rural areas that will provide crucial votes for Lee's conservative camp in South's Korea's next presidential election in 2012, which is when construction is due to end.
South Korea has budgeted 22.2 trillion won ($19.23 billion) to dredge, dam and beautify the four waterways with golf courses and bike trails in the plan that is supposed to increase supplies of fresh water, improve water quality and prevent flooding.
"Upon completion, not only will flood control be possible, but cruise ships and various water sports will be seen in the rivers," Lee said on Sunday to mark the start of construction.
South Korea has few supplies of fresh water and two of its major rivers flow from rival North Korea, which has built dams along the waterways that can severely alter water flow.
"Local governments are frantically trying to include their own development plans into the massive project and construction companies are said to see it as the biggest windfall in the country's history," said the Chosun Ilbo, the biggest newspaper and a backer of Lee, in an editorial this month.
Jun Yong-ki, an analyst at Meritz Securities, said the project would "certainly provide some liquidity into a struggling construction industry, which will help the labor market."
MASSIVE DREDGING
Environmental groups said pouring concrete down river banks and building 16 planned dams will decrease or alter water flows, killing fish and threatening water quality.
Massive dredging will release silt into the water and could damage water quality permanently without proper planning, they said.
About 420 South Korean groups have joined forces and plan to file this week a joint lawsuit to stop the four rivers project before they say it will wipe out habitats.
"By damaging the rivers, they will be destroying the building blocks of the ecosystem," said Jung In-chul, an activist with Green Korea, a leading environmental group that is helping to spearhead the lawsuit.
The controversy over the project could slow down things in parliament, where many of Lee's pro-business economic reforms have languished. Opposition MPs have threatened to hold up measures until they receive more data on funding and the environmental impact of the river projects.
The government says it will use advanced technologies in dam construction that will increase water supply and protect fish stocks with gates that allow fish to swim upstream and can also manage water flows, leading to cleaner rivers.
It also says it will use the dams for hydroelectric power stations to provide clean energy for the resource poor country, which relies heavily on nuclear power.
(Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Bill Tarrant)
Sunanda Creagh, Reuters 23 Nov 09;
JAKARTA (Reuters) - A World Bank study that cited Indonesia as the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases was wrong, an Indonesian report sent to the United Nations on Monday said, although it did not provide its own ranking.
Indonesia is seen as a key player in forthcoming international climate talks in Copenhagen because its greenhouse gas emissions from peat bogs and deforestation are a major contributor to global warming.
But the 2007 World Bank report which described Indonesia as the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China was not accurate, according to the Indonesian government's Second National Communication -- a formal report on the state of Indonesia's emissions.
"When I hear people say we are number three, I feel put out. It's not right," Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta told reporters at the launch of the report in Jakarta.
"Other countries have not reported their data so how can they say we are number three? Maybe Indonesia is just too honest."
The Second National Communication found that in 2000, Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions were around 1,415,988 gigagrams, far lower than the 3,014,000 gigagrams of emissions that the 2007 World Bank study found.
Hakan Bjorkman, country director for the United Nations Development Programme, also said that the 2007 study was not accurate.
"That ranking that was done a few years ago didn't use comparable years and data," he told reporters.
Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has promised cuts of up to 26 percent by 2020, or 41 percent by 2050, with funding and technological support from developed countries.
The Second National Communication listed several possible ways that Indonesia could reduce its emissions but did not set a target date for implementation.
Among the strategies were proposals to develop more geothermal and waste energy sources, increase power plant efficiency, reduce illegal logging by 43 per cent and restore production forests by 35 per cent.
Bernama 23 Nov 09;
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 (Bernama) -- Malaysia will take a consultative approach, rather than confrontational, in dealing with anti-palm oil campaign, the Dewan Rakyat was told Monday.
Deputy Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Hamzah Zainuddin said that the country would rather held discussions with other edible oil producers than confronting anti-palm oil lobbyists.
He added that Malaysia did not regard producers of soy oil, rapeseed oil and corn oil as adversaries.
"What we want to do is to tell them that we are their friend and that it is better for us to sit together and discuss our respective strengths," he said when winding up the debate on the Supplementary Supply Bill 2010 today.
Hamzah said Malaysia and Indonesia as well as other palm oil producing countries were working together in tackling anti-palm oil campaign launched by environmental activists and non-governmental organisations in the West which was aimed at blocking palm oil imports.
He said that the success of the palm oil industry in Malaysia and in other countries posed a stiff competition to other edible oil producers.
"They employ all kinds of tactics, either in the form of tariff or non-tariff barrier, to keep palm oil at bay," he said.
Hamzah said that Malaysia, through the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), had carried out various activities to address the issue, including disseminating information on the sustainability of its palm oil industry through websites such as the www.mpoc.org.my.
"The MPOC has also taken up advertisements and aired documentaries on the sustainability of the Malaysian palm oil industry on various television channels, including CNBC and Bloomberg," he said.
The MPOC also carried out various activities including financing research related to palm oil especially on its benefit to health, organising working visits headed by the minister and holding dialogues with non-governmental organisations.
"Through these programmes, the ministry hopes that there will be more facts on the sustainability of the palm oil industry and its benefits to health can be disseminated to the international community, and that the baseless allegations against the industry would taper off over the long term," he said.
Hamzah said that an initial allocation of RM24.1 million and another RM10 million for next year would be sufficient to finance programmes to address anti-palm oil campaign.
-- BERNAMA
Martin Hickman, The Independent 23 Nov 09;
Multinational companies should be “named and shamed” into sourcing sustainable palm oil to protect the world’s tropical rainforests, says Britain’s Energy Minister, Joan Ruddock.
In an interview with the The Independent, Ms Ruddock, who saw the devastation of virgin rainforest first hand on a trip to Indonesia last week, urged companies to improve their sourcing of the world’s cheapest vegetable oil.
She backed the new league rankings introduced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which last month ranked 59 European retailers and manufacturers on their degree of involvement with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Rspo).
Among 14 British firms that had not bought any Rspo oil were Boots, Waitrose, Morrisons, the Co-op, and Tesco.
While avoiding the mention of the worst performing companies, Ms Ruddock praised the best, Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer, and suggested that rather than introducing a labelling scheme for sustainable palm oil NGOs should focus on the reputatations of corporations and "show consumers which are supporting sustainability and which are not.”
Asked if she supported WWF’s ‘naming and shaming,’ she replied: “Yes, I do and I want to encourage all companies using palm oil in their companies to work with the Rspo to support the production of sustainable palm oil.”
She said she had been “quite depressed” by the blackened degraded landscapes she had found in heavily logged or burnt jungles, and could see several forest fires raging in the distance.
The Government, she disclosed, is funding a climate change standard for palm oil plantations to run as a voluntary scheme alongside the Rspo programme.
Environmental groups Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace complain the Rspo is full of loopholes and works with companies which have only partly certified their plantations.
Ms Ruddock nonetheless believed the scheme represented the best chance of saving further destruction of primary forests which leads to the eviction of native peoples, loss of wildlife and greenhouse gas emissions.
“I think what matters is with the Rspo is there’s a spectrum of companies and that have both the sustainable and unsustainable views but it’s a unique combination of companies that are in production,” Ms Ruddock said.
“So I think this is a body that we very much want to support. Of course we want to move further and faster on their commitment to sustainable growing - and we want to get the criteria improved.”
Britain is spending £165m on a scheme to pay developing countries to keep their forests, REDD, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, which will be discussed at the Copenhagen summit on climate change next month.
WWF 23 Nov 09;
A first-time high seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) has been established in the Southern Ocean, eliminating fishing and giving scientists a special opportunity to study the effects of climate change in a region that is home to more species than the Galapagos Islands.
At its recent meeting, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) approved the new high seas marine protected area south of the South Orkney Islands in the Antarctic Peninsula Region. The Commission further agreed to a work plan to create networks of high seas MPAs across 11 other high priority areas in the Southern Ocean by 2012.
The marine protected area, the result of four years of development work, covers about 94,000 square km of the Southern Ocean, an area slightly larger than Portugal.
"The Commission should be proud of this remarkable achievement,” said Rob Nicoll, WWF-Australia Antarctica and Southern Ocean Initiative Manager.
“But it is just the first step in the Commission’s new work plan to create a network of high seas MPAs across the whole of the Southern Ocean by 2012 and they must continue working towards this goal.”
“Members must ensure they make good on this decision and commit the required resources and political will to achieve comprehensive protection of the Southern Ocean’s unique marine environments and species.”
Once the MPA comes into force in May 2010, no fishing activities and no discharge or refuse disposal from fishing vessels will be allowed within its boundaries
WWF was deeply involved in laying the groundwork for the MPA's designation. In 2006, a WWF led initiative to classify important bioregions of the Southern Ocean directly led to 11 large areas being identified as priorities for MPA designation, the South Orkney’s being one of these areas. These bioregions form the basis of the scientific case for the MPAs designation with two bioregions represented with the MPA.
A bioregion is an area where habitats, communities, and physical features will be more similar to each other than other areas. The two bioregions represented within the MPA are the Weddell Gyre and Antarctic Shelves bioregions.
In addition to containing these bioregions, the new MPA is an area of high biological productivity, a key habitat for krill and an important foraging area for Adelie penguins. Submarine shelves and seamounts within the area also contain important habitats for benthic (bottom dwelling) creatures.
A recent comprehensive study in and around the South Orkney Islands by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Hamburg found the region was home to 1,200 species of sea and land animals - more than the Galapagos Islands.
A third of these were not previously known to live in the region and five species were entirely new to science.
The Orkney Islands MPA will also play a key role in detecting climate change. It is easier to detect changes to the distribution of species around the South Orkney Islands than many other areas in the Southern Ocean. Such changes, far from the impact of humans, could act as early indicators of climate change near Antarctica.
According to scientists, changes to species distribution would likely occur as the waters around the islands become warmer. Under these conditions, some species may shift south to cooler regions while others species used to more temperate conditions could move in.
“The research carried out on these species' movements within this protected area could alert us to the affects of climate change not just in Antarctica but also the rest of the world,” said Nicoll.
“These distant regions need to be protected not just to preserve their species but because they could offer an early warning system for us all.”
It's cute and it's cuddly. And in 30 years, campaigners say, the koala will be extinct. But this emblematic animal has a curious history – and its fate is mired in politics
Gideon Haigh, The Guardian 23 Nov 09;
When south-eastern Australia was consumed by bushfires in February, one image shut out all others. Nearly 200 humans might have perished, but a koala had been saved: videoed in a blackened landscape imbibing thirstily from the water bottle of a volunteer firefighter, Sam featured in newspapers from the New York Times to the Sun, and became a hit on CNN, YouTube and a website created by her veterinary carers.
According to the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, she was the subject of widespread comment at the G20 summit in London in April this year, and he issued a personal tribute to this "symbol of hope" when Sam died six months later. "It's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us," Rudd said, just restraining himself from decreeing a state funeral.
Political leaders, however, appropriate symbols at their peril. A fortnight ago in Canberra, representatives of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) took a long and determined campaign for better protection of the creature to the government's "threatened species scientific committee", following a request for a review of the animal's status by environment minister Peter Garrett. The foundation presented what they say is definitive evidence of a sharp decline in koala numbers due to habitat destruction and disease. Its message was stark: the koala would be extinct "within 30 years". Hits on its website instantly doubled, and concerns were expressed about the impact on Australia's tourist industry: polls consistently show the koala to be the country's most popular animal with visitors.
In the AKF's chief executive Deborah Tabart, meanwhile, Rudd faces an implacable and outspoken critic, one who will now be dogging his steps at next month's Copenhagen climate change conference. Rudd may have been nice about Sam the koala, but Tabart does not think Rudd is doing enough for the species; she describes him as a "bureaucrat who hides behind policy and writing documents". The koala, she mutters darkly, "has many powerful enemies".
It has certainly had its detractors. The koala features in fossil records as far back as 25 million years ago, and has an honoured place in aboriginal creation myths, but when Gerald Durrell described it as "the most boring of all animals", he was far from the first to do so.
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Nor was the koala then prized for cuddliness, being widely hunted for its fur from the 1870s, and provoking relatively little interest overseas. The first specimen to make it to England met an untimely end in the office of the superintendent of the Zoological Society, asphyxiated by the lid of a washing-stand that fell on its head.
Cuddly anthropomorphism
The koala's installation in national favour owes much to eager exercises in anthropomorphism in the early 20th century, first in cartoons published in the legendary nationalist periodical the Bulletin, then in children's tales such as Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918) and Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill (1933).
Lindsay offered Bunyip Bluegum as a koala of culture, with boater, bowtie and walking stick, while Wall's Blinky was a marsupial of mischief, dressed in knickerbockers and bearing a knapsack, although sufficiently patriotic to join the army during the second world war.
If it was considered inadequately industrious for the 19th century, the koala was exquisitely suited to the cuteness-conscious 20th. Indeed, it is appropriate that the AKF's case is accented to the environmental pressures the koala faces in Rudd's home state of Queensland, where it is the faunal emblem, and has always had political claws.
It was in Queensland that the koala was the subject of Australia's first concerted environmental campaign after the state Labor government, in response to pressure from trappers who had denuded koala populations to the south, proclaimed an open season on the animal in August 1927.
Resistance orchestrated by the Queensland Naturalists Club and the Nature Lovers' League inspired one newspaper to print an edition bordered in black, and flushed out celebrity apologists including the writer Vance Palmer. "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous," he thundered. "There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account . . . He affords no sport to the gunman . . . and he has been almost been blotted out already in some areas."
The trappers had their way, slaughtering and skinning no fewer than a million koalas, but the Labor government paid the price, being swept from power at the next election. Australia's first three fauna parks, set up in the late 1920s, were then dedicated to koalas.
Researching all this for his book Koala: The Origins of an Icon (2007), biologist Dr Stephen Jackson was astonished by the ardour he encountered. "You read now what was being published then, and you think: 'Wow! These people really went off.' It's almost the beginning of the conservation movement in Australia, because it mobilised people as never before." And although nobody has since posited a Queensland koala equivalent of the Curse of Gnome, there is some evidence for it.
Seventy years after that pioneering koala campaign, for example, federal tourism minister John Brown famously dismissed the animals as "flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things"; he left politics soon after following allegations he had misled parliament over a tender submitted by a contractor.
The 1995 state election was then dominated by a Labor government plan to drive a major roadway through a key koala habitat. An apparently unassailable majority dwindled unsustainably when Labor lost what became known as the "koala seats" in Brisbane Bayside. Oddly, Rudd – then chief-of-staff to the premier of Queensland – was mixed up in the row over that koala habitat.
In the end, those koalas probably did Rudd a favour – and now Tabart thinks it is payback time. She is an unpredictable political opponent. An entrant 40 years ago in the Miss Australia pageant, she explains her failure candidly: "I didn't sleep with one of the judges, so I didn't win."
Tabart has made a particular target of Professor Bob Beeton of the University of Queensland, the chairman of the aforementioned threatened species scientific committee, which four years ago rejected an AKF application for listing of the koala as "vulnerable". "That determination sits on my desk to this day, and it outrages me," she says. To Beeton's statements that his committee might take up to a year to report back to environment minister Peter Garrett, she retorts: "The minister doesn't have that time – and nor does the koala."
Beeton has a droll line or two as well. While naturalists describe the koala as representative of "charismatic megafauna", Beeton is unmoved by charisma: under pressure from a television interviewer last week, he responded that his committee would grant protection of the koala as much consideration as protection of the death adder – the subject of another recent determination. Asked about advocacy groups in general, and the proposition that no such group has ever prospered from buoyant pronouncements of abundance, he invokes Francis Urquhart in House of Cards: "You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."
Threatened by disease
Far from being new, Beeton observes, disease is a perennial problem in the koala community. The Chlamydia organism, which finally carried off Sam, may be present in as many as half of Australia's koalas – just as it is also present in about a third of humans.
Another spectre cited in recent publicity concerning the koala is a newly identified but little understood retrovirus, originally given the acronym KoRV, but now more catchily abbreviated as Kids (Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Beeton believes that a great deal more needs to be known about the condition: "It's very hard for a single disease to kill a species. We couldn't kill rabbits in Australia with myxomatosis."
There is clearly much argy-bargy to come. The AKF's prospects will depend on its ability to use global concerns to influence domestic policies; for Australians, the koala reposes, at least at the moment, on a list of "things-to-be-concerned-about-had-I-the-time".
So far, it has made its case with only a broad brush. Because of her suspicions of the Species Committee, Tabart says that the foundation is unprepared as yet to divulge full details of its data, on grounds that earlier data presented to the Species Committee was "used against the koala". She will say only that it results from the examination of 80,000 trees at 2,000 field sites and concludes that the population may be as low as 43,000, compared with previously assumed figures comfortably in six figures. This leaves the foundation open to criticism because, as Jackson points out, koala numbers depend quite heavily on where you look: "If you talk to biologists [in Victoria], they'll tell you: 'Koalas are falling out of the trees down here. We don't know what to do with them.'"
Statistics that are public, however, include those of widespread land clearing in Queensland until its cessation in January 2007, after a decade in which up to 700,000 hectares of habitat was being destroyed annually under the influence of property developers and resources companies – a reckless abandon whose environmental effects are still little understood.
In this sense, Sam the koala was an ironic representative of her species, survivor of a calamity amply publicised and readily understood; far greater ecological damage on Australia has been inflicted by easy government acquiescence.
Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers.
Chew leaves – sleep for 18 hours The life of a koala
When a koala dies, a new occupant won't move into its home range for about a year – the time it takes for scratches on the trees and scent markings to disappear. Then, as long as they are not disturbed, koalas keep their home ranges (a group of several trees that they regularly visit) throughout their lives – up to 18 years.
Often called koala bears because of their cuddly teddy-bear appearance, they are of course marsupials – and can be aggressive. They breed once a year (koalas usually only produce a single cub, or joey, though occasionally give birth to twins), and once a cub is born – 2cm long, blind and hairless after a gestation period of 35 days – it relies on its sense of smell and touch to crawl into its mother's pouch, where it stays for the next six months, feeding on milk. After it emerges, the cub will remain with its mother until it is a year old, riding on her back or clinging to her belly.
The adult koala's days are filled with sleeping and eating. They survive on a diet of predominantly eucalyptus leaves and bark – to most animals, eucalyptus leaves are incredibly poisonous, but the koala's digestive system has evolved to manage the toxins. It is often said that eucalyptus makes koalas "stoned" – probably because they sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wedged between branches of eucalyptus trees – but this isn't true: their high-fibre, low-nutrition diet means they have to sleep to conserve energy.
They also don't tend to drink, getting almost all the water they need from leaves. In fact, the name koala is thought to come from a name in one Aboriginal language meaning "doesn't drink". Emine Saner
Going, going . . . Endangered flagship species
Giant panda
The poster-bear of the wildlife conservation movement and symbol of the WWF since 1961. "Charismatic or flagship species tend to be larger animals that take up a larger space," says Amanda Nickson, director of its international species programme. "By conserving these, you help to conserve everything smaller that shares their habitat. Pandas were one of the earliest species that people became aware were threatened; they show we can bring species back from the brink of extinction." There is still much work to do, though: only 1,600 pandas are left in the wild in southern and eastern China.
Tiger
In the last 100 years, the tiger population has decreased by 95%, three sub-species have become extinct and a fourth has not been spotted in the wild for 25 years. There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss. "The global community needs to take action now," says Nickson.
African elephant
Elephants losing their habitat as human populations encroach is a relatively recent threat, but while the global ban on illegal ivory in 1989 helped, poaching remains a problem. It is thought the population of around 600,000 is decreasing by 38,000 every year, and one recent estimate suggested large groups could be extinct by 2020. "Elephants are still being slaughtered daily to supply the illegal trade in ivory," says Robbie Marsland, UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Blue whale
Before the extensive whaling of the 20th century – in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season alone – it is thought there were around 250,000 blue whales at any one time. By 1966, when the International Whaling Commission banned blue whale hunting, they were almost extinct; now there are around 2,300. "Despite our best efforts, their numbers aren't recovering as well as we would hope," says Nickson. "Blue whales are a symbol of why we can't allow species to become too endangered. We allowed their numbers to get too low, and we need to learn lessons." ES
Michael Scwirtz, The New York Times 23 Nov 09;
MOSCOW — Amid the torrent of bad environmental news in recent years, the story of Amur tigers in Russia offered a flicker of optimism. Nearly extinct half a century ago, the tigers rebounded when the government imposed protections, and their numbers remained more or less stable for much of the last decade.
But new data suggest that Russia’s tiger population is once again declining.
Results from an annual survey conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society, an environmental group based in New York, along with several Russian organizations, has shown a 41 percent drop in the Amur tiger population from its average over the past 12 years.
“The most dramatic decline happened in this last winter, 2009, where on our survey units there were dramatically fewer tigers than any of the past years,” said Dale G. Miquelle, head of the society’s Russia Far East program. “It’s time to react.”
Mr. Miquelle cautioned that random factors like heavy snows last winter when the survey was conducted could have interfered with the data. Nevertheless, he said, the evidence points to a steady drop in the past several years.
The decline of the Amur tiger in Russia is especially vexing because the animal had been considered such a conservation success story. Tiger populations in China, India and elsewhere have been rapidly dropping for years, and many species are extinct. “We’re down to the low thousands of tigers around the word, and that’s really very few indeed,” said John Robinson, an executive vice president at the society.
In Russia, the Amur tiger was once found as far as Lake Baikal in central Siberia, some 2,000 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, and in China and North Korea. Before the recent survey, an estimated 400 to 500 animals were thought to be confined to the Primorsky and Khabarovksy regions in the southern portion of what is called Russia’s Far East.
This sparsely populated area was considered the animal’s last bastion of survival. In the last three years, the government has opened three national parks with more than a million acres in tiger territory. Nevertheless, the recent survey noted declining populations in all five protected zones, indicating that the animals were no more secure inside the parks.
Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, has expressed dismay over the decreasing numbers of Amur tigers, also known as Siberian or Ussuri tigers. The animal is a favorite of Mr. Putin’s, who was given a tiger cub for his birthday last year shortly after returning from an expedition in which he personally tranquilized and tagged a large animal.
“For Russia this is particularly grievous,” Mr. Putin said on a visit to a Russian tiger reserve last year, according to his tiger Web site. “Animals like the Ussuri tiger, the largest and most beautiful tiger in the world, are like our calling card.”
The Amur tiger is a fitting mascot for the steely tough image of Russia that Mr. Putin likes to present to the world. It is the largest tiger subspecies: the male can reach 10 feet long and weigh 650 pounds. The big cat stalks the vast snowy wilderness of the Russian east, hunting deer, wild boar and, as food supplies dwindle, household pets.
The Russian government has called for an international tiger summit meeting to be held in the far eastern city of Vladivostok in 2010 to address the problems.
Not surprisingly, logging and infrastructure development in the tigers’ habitat have contributed to part of the decline, environmental workers say.
But it is an increase in poaching that is the greatest cause for concern, said Igor E. Chestin, the head of WWF Russia. In recent years, he said, the federal authorities have cut back on resources to prevent poaching.
“Our calculation is that for the time being we have about three times less people controlling poaching in the woods within the tiger range than 10 years ago,” Mr. Chestin said.
Scientists estimate that humans cause from 65 percent to 80 percent of tiger deaths, mostly by poaching. Tiger parts like bones, internal organs and whiskers fetch huge prices in Asian markets where they are coveted for traditional medicines. The deep amber-to-orange pelts are also prized acquisitions inside Russia.
Those caught poaching suffer only minor penalties.
“You can catch a poacher dragging a tiger out of the forest here, and he’ll be given a 1,000 ruble fine,” Mr. Miquelle said, citing the equivalent of about $35.
Siberian tiger in severe decline
Victoria Gill, BBC News 25 Nov 09;
The last remaining population of Siberian tigers has declined significantly, according to research.
The work was carried out by the Siberian Tiger Monitoring Programme, which is coordinated by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Its report says that tiger numbers have shown a "declining trend" over the last four years, and the latest assessment counted just 56 of the animals.
The researchers attribute the decline to poaching and habitat loss.
The organisation carries out annual tiger surveys at 16 monitoring sites scattered across the tigers' range.
The scientists did point out that deep snows during the last winter may have forced tigers to reduce the amount they travelled, making them less active and therefore less detectable
But, in 2005, the total number of Siberian tigers across their entire range was estimated at approximately 500 individuals. This recovered from fewer than 30 animals in the late 1940s.
"The sobering results are a wake-up call that current conservation efforts are not going far enough to protect Siberian tigers," said Dr Dale Miquelle a researcher from the WCS's Russian Far East Program.
"The good news is that we believe this trend can be reversed if immediate action is taken."
Russian scientists and conservation organisations are now recommending changes in law enforcement regulations, improvements in habitat protection, and a strengthening of the protected areas network to help protect the tigers.
Siberian tiger population falls sharply: survey
Yahoo News 25 Nov 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The population of Siberian tigers is dropping sharply, with researchers blaming the slump on poachers who are killing the feline for its pelt and bones, a report showed Wednesday.
A survey of a representative portion of the tigers' range in the Russian Far East found only 56 of the large felines, according to the report coordinated by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Russian government and non-governmental organizations.
That represents a 41 percent decline from a 12-year average of around 95 tigers in a monitoring area of around 15 percent of the tigers' total natural habitat, the report said.
Researchers are "extrapolating there's a decline across the board" from a range-wide count of the tigers completed in 2005 that showed there were 500 of the beasts roaming Siberia, WCS spokesman Stephen Sautner said.
The report's authors blame the decline mainly on increased poaching of the big cats and their preys.
The animals are being killed for their fur and for tiger bone, which is used in traditional medicines, Sautner said.
Annual tiger surveys aimed at detecting changes in the tiger's numbers are conducted at 16 monitoring sites scattered across the feline's habitat.
Range-wide surveys of the tigers are conducted less frequently, largely because of the logistical problems associated with working in icy Siberia, tracking a secretive animal whose habitat covers hundreds of thousands of square miles (kilometers).
A 1996 survey covering the tigers' entire habitat of around 69,500 square miles (180,000 square kilometers) found over 400 of the felines in the Russian Far East, and the most recent range-wide survey counted up to 500 tigers in 2005.
"They were never an abundant species. But they have come back quite a bit since the 1940s when there were only 30 Siberian tigers," said Sautner.
Russia has taken many key steps to conserve the species, starting with a hunting ban in 1947.
The new slump in the number of tigers was "a wake-up call that current conservation efforts are not going far enough to protect Siberian tigers," said Dale Miquelle of WCS's Russian Far East Program and a lead author of the report.
The Independent 22 Nov 09;
Skipjack and bluefin are dirty words among conscientious diners, but a guilt-free alternative could see tuna back on the menu. Guy Adams boards a Californian fishing boat to find out whether albacore is truly sustainable
Silver-blue and shaped like a miniature torpedo, the albacore tuna is one of nature's great migrants. Fast and tough, it spends life on a constant journey, covering thousands of miles each year to gorge on anchovy, squid, and small crustaceans that inhabit the upper reaches of our planet's fragile and unimaginably vast oceans.
Most albacore measure two or three feet in length, and weigh around 30 pounds. But at the peak of their 10-year existence, they can tip the scales at twice that. Anglers call them "longfin", thanks to the distinctive, highly evolved pectorals that propel them at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour. Chefs seek out the delicious, pale, meaty flesh that inspires their other common nickname: "chicken of the sea".
There is, however, a third name that you can call this fish, perhaps the most important of all: "sustainable". Albacore is currently the only type of tuna that can be eaten responsibly; the sole species that happens to boast a healthy breeding population, that is commercially harvested in a manner which doesn't always involve the pointless destruction of hundreds of thousands of dolphins, sharks, rays and sea birds.
Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you'll have read about the ecological crimes currently being committed in the name of seafood. You'll have seen the frightening statistics. In a generation, mankind has wiped out 90 per cent of the earth's fish stocks. The remaining 10 per cent is being removed from oceans at a rate of 95 million tonnes each year. In another generation, there will, at this rate, be almost nothing left.
Tuna, as a global staple, is on the front line of the now high-profile battle between conservationists and the fishing industry. Everyone, we've been told, should steer clear of it. If you're a celebrity munching the highly endangered bluefin in Nobu, you might as well be tucking into giant panda. If you're a Home Counties housewife emptying canned tuna into a salade Niçoise, you're sending skipjack the way of the dodo.
Now, though, a guilt-free alternative has finally hit British supermarkets: tinned albacore, caught in the Pacific by members of an organisation called the American Albacore Fishing Association (AAFA). It is the first tuna ever to get Marine Stewardship Council [MSC] certification as sustainable, a status signified by a blue, fish-shaped slogan on its label.
American albacore recently began being sold as own-label canned tuna by Sainsbury's, Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose, for around £1.99 a tin. Should it catch on, it might, in its own way, become as common as the energy-saving lightbulb. British consumers eat 56,000 tonnes of tinned tuna a year; this, at last, gives us a chance to do so with a clear conscience.
The product is endorsed in the loftiest foodie circles. Tom Aikens, the Michelin-starred chef whose eponymous Chelsea restaurant has blazed a trail for sustainability in the world of gourmet cuisine, says its launch symbolises a revolution in public attitudes to the seafood they put in their shopping bags and on their plates. "There's been incredible change in the past few years. People are demanding sustainable fish, but it can still be very hard to get," he says. "Even I sometimes struggle, and I make it my business. Products such as this give consumers a choice. They need to have these kinds of alternatives. Otherwise fish will simply become extinct."
As to the contents of the can, he adds: "Obviously I can't charge £30 for a main course and serve tinned tuna, so I'm not going to tell you that I'd use this stuff in my restaurants. But for the sort of things it'll be used in, such as sandwiches and jacket potatoes, tinned albacore more than does the job. And it's very nutritious."
So what exactly is this remarkably ethical, glamorously endorsed, healthy food product? Where does the American albacore come from? How is it caught? By what process does it end up in a can on your supermarket shelf? And should we really trust the little blue label that calls it "sustainable"? You'll have to go all the way to San Diego to find out.
Each summer, vast shoals of albacore swim north, from the waters of South America and the South Pacific, to cooler seas off California, Oregon and Washington State. Each shoal holds tens of thousands of tuna, and measures several miles across. Among the people trying to track them down is a cigar-chomping, 48-year-old fisherman called Jack Webster.
Webster owns the Millie G, one of 75 vessels that make up the AAFA fleet. Every June, he and four crew members fill ' the 60ft boat with food and fuel, kiss goodbye to their wives and families, and set sail from their home port in San Diego, the prosperous US city perched next to the Mexican border. God willing, they return in November.
A few miles from shore, they'll sling a small net into the ocean, pulling up a few hundredweight of anchovy. These small silvery fish, which are later to become bait, are kept alive in a water-filled tank below deck as Millie G chugs west. American territory extends just 200 miles; after that, the fishing vessel is in international waters. Sometimes, they travel for weeks, crossing the International Date Line.
To you or me, one patch of the Pacific would look the same as another: blue, clear, endless. But to Webster, it is a sort of jigsaw puzzle. A small ripple on the horizon or the silver flash of a jumping fish half a mile away might indicate the presence of a shoal of albacore. Seabirds – particularly terns or seahawks – are another sign. It takes patience to track down the shoals of migrating fish. And luck. "Ninety per cent of fishing is looking. At best, 10 per cent is catching," he says. "The fish are only on surface a short time. They're elusive, they come and go, and there's a tremendous amount of water for us to cover. But sometimes you get 'fish sense' – a feeling there's something around. It can be as subtle as seeing a few birds. And then... bang! Suddenly the ocean is full of silver."
Webster catches his tuna the old-fashioned way: using poles and lines, baited with small metal and rubber lures. When he hits albacore, one of his crew begins "chumming", or throwing live anchovies into the sea around the boat. The other three stand in a small knee-high basket, suspended perilously from the stern, and attempt to extract them from the ocean.
This part is art as much as science. The lure (called a "squid") is dropped a couple of feet beneath the water's surface, and tweaked sharply upwards. Every now and then, a fish will strike. Using the pole for leverage, a fisherman will flick the albacore on deck, shake it off the hook, and return the lure immediately to the water. The process continues as long as the shoal is there, and fish are biting.
"This is something we have a lot of passion for," says Webster. "It's just incredibly exciting. I used to sport-fish, but this type of commercial fishing is one level higher in terms of the excitement and rush, and the high you get. It's sport-fishing on steroids. That's how I see it. You get this chase and this hunt. You've got to use your gut feelings, and work out the fish and what they're up to. It gets into your blood."
The Millie G has six storage tanks, which can freeze and hold 35 US tonnes, or 70,000 pounds, of tuna. When they're full, a process that normally takes several weeks, Webster will return to the nearest port, and drop off his cargo. He stays at sea as long as albacore remain in US or international seas, or the arrival of hurricane season permits. At the end of the season, profits are split between the crew.
It's a skilful, beguiling and labour-intensive process, a world removed from the means by which the vast majority of the world's tuna is removed from the ocean. This, of course, is the key to its sustainability. Webster's crew use poles and lines to selectively remove a small number of fish (the "biting" ones) from a large shoal; by contrast, most fisheries have developed more productive, and damaging, techniques.
When you see the words "line-caught" on a tuna steak, don't be fooled into thinking it was ethically captured. The chances are that it was instead hooked by "longlines" – enormous lengths of nylon baited with thousands of lures, which stretch back many, many miles. Sometimes an individual longline can extend the distance from London to Brighton.
This causes significant "bycatch", the industry term for the process by which sea creatures are accidentally caught, killed, and discarded as rubbish. As much as 20 per cent of the weight of tuna caught by longlines is chucked away as "bycatch". Often, casualties include turtles, dolphins, sharks, rays and endangered albatross, which mistake the glistening lures for an easy meal. Broken longlines can drift across the ocean, snagging and killing marine life, for years.
Most other tuna sold in the UK is caught via "purse-seine" netting: encircling a shoal with a large net and effectively scooping it from the sea. For years, this method also killed vast numbers of dolphins. Now, most cans are labelled "dolphin-friendly", meaning the net is raised in a manner that allows the cute mammals to escape.
Unfortunately, purse-seining still kills swordfish, turtles and myriad other creatures. A recent Greenpeace report revealed that this is undermining not just the sustainability of tuna, but also the viability of other marine life. "Dolphin-friendly" tuna sitting in your kitchen cupboard is extremely unfriendly to other creatures, it concluded.
In stark contrast, AAFA albacore has no bycatch. The only fish killed by Webster and his crew (and the 74 others like them) are the ones that end up being eaten. Pacific stocks of albacore are also in robust shape: at present, just seven per cent of the total is caught each year. As a species, it isn't ' as critically endangered as the prize species of bluefin and bigeye; neither is it hammered like skipjack or yellowtail.
"In terms of the MSC label, we have some scepticism, particularly with regard to fisheries it endorses that are catching things such as Alaskan pollock, Australian rock lobster, hoki and Patagonian toothfish," says Willie Mackenzie, a fisheries campaigner for Greenpeace. "But I'm not going to say everything they do is rubbish. Albacore is a relatively healthy type of tuna. Pole and line is the best and cleanest way to catch it. So in this instance, it's hard to be critical."
Spend time with Webster and his colleagues, though, and it soon becomes clear that the American albacore fishery isn't just a sustainable source of tuna. It is also a resource that helps protect a way of life.
San Diego was built on albacore. A century ago, when Mediterranean immigrants headed to the American west, they were amazed by the riches of its ocean. Fish were caught within a few miles of the coast, in their thousands. By the 1960s, the city was known as the tuna capital of the world. Its port was home to almost 1,000 fishing vessels, big and small.
Today, just a dozen tuna boats are left. Dogged by over-regulation, or financially ruined by the volatile price of seafood, most of the commercial fleet disappeared during the 1980s and 1990s. The harbour berths where tuna vessels once sat now play host to vast aircraft carriers, or cruise-ships, ferrying overweight tourists to the Baja Mexico.
This represents a particularly pointless development, since Jack Webster's albacore ought to be a valuable, premium product. Pole-caught fish are not battered and bruised, as their net-caught siblings are. Neither do they die at sea hours before being landed, as with tuna killed by longlines. They are in better, tastier condition than mass-produced rivals.
Their flesh is also healthier. By targeting fish feeding on the surface of the water, traditional pole-and-line boats such as Webster's kill smaller, younger specimens with low mercury levels, and leaner flesh than their mass-market rivals. Though he might catch less than a longline fisherman, logic dictates that he ought to be able to sell it for more.
Logic has historically been wrong, though. Webster and his colleagues' albacore has historically been sold to wholesalers on the same commodity market as mass-produced tuna, at exactly the same price. With ever-rising fuel and insurance costs, the entire financial model for their industry had therefore, in recent decades, been all but destroyed.
In 2003, they decided to do something about it. Six fishing families formed the AAFA, with a view to creating demand for sustainable, line-caught albacore, and marketing it as a valuable product. Today, the association has grown to 75 vessels, and is responsible for more than half the albacore caught off America's Pacific coast each year. "We were founded on the premise that these families, these fishermen, needed a voice," says Webster's wife, Natalie, who runs the AAFA. "In the past, they would leave dock not knowing what they'd be paid for fish, not knowing where they would sell the fish. And the perpetual message from buyers was that the market was bad, so fishermen should accept bottom, bottom prices."
"We knew that if we marketed our product properly, talked about its low mercury levels, and method of harvest and handling, the public would respond." And so it proved: in the past three years, the price per tonne at which they've sold albacore has almost doubled, from $1,275 to nearer $2,400.
The AAFA also began making its own-label canned tuna, at a factory in Oregon, where albacore steaks are packed into tins and steamed. It is now stocked by every branch of the US retailer Whole Foods. (The canned albacore sold in the UK is made by European food-processing firm MCM.) "As soon as we started telling our story, we had consumers wanting to support us. So we needed something to drive them to. We needed a product," says Natalie. "Now we have it." The result, for the first time in a generation, has been financial stability.
The effect of this change is perhaps best illustrated by albacore fisherman Bobby Blocker, whose father and grandfather both ran tuna boats out of San Diego. Now, he says, he feels confident that his son Waylon, 23, who stands on the dock behind him, can, if he so desires, become the fourth-straight Blocker to make a living from the seas.
"AAFA really turned around this industry for us," he says, from the bridge of his boat Her Grace. "It gave control back to fishermen. We are now selling a brand, not just a fish. Now I feel there's a future for this boat. It will be around a long time after I die and it's an incredible thing to know that it will still have people fishing in it."
And that's the greatest legacy of this sustainable brand of tinned tuna: it not only allows us to fill kitchen cupboards without dangerously denting fish stocks, it also helps a hardy community of fishermen while safeguarding the knowledge and fishing methods that built their industry. It's proof, if you like, that a good thing really can come in small cans.
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