A Quiet Afternoon @ MNT Boardwalk
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
Mangrove Plants 1: Getting to the root of things
from Darwinian Left
Masked Finfoot’s feet
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Happy Crabby Birthday at the Leafmonkey Workshop!
from wild shores of singapore
Immature sub-adult Chestnut-breasted Malkoha
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Bernama 16 Jan 10;
SINGAPORE, Jan 16 (Bernama) -- Nearly 400 international animal protection activists gathered here today to discuss concrete long-term solutions for ongoing animal protection and cruelty problems in the Asia region.
The activists representing over 200 organisations from 26 countries, including Malaysia, are participating in the five-day Asia for Animals Conference (AFA) hosted by Singapore's Acres (Animal Concerns Research and Education Society).
The conference will cover a wide range of issues including running effective education outreach programmes, improving the welfare of animals in captivity, providing optimal veterinary care, effective stray animals management, wiping out the wildlife trade, running a sustainable rescue centre and campaigning for change.
Singapore Member of Parliament Seah Kian Peng who in his opening address, said the world was now beginning to realise the need to preserve and take care of animals and the importance of their survival to mankind.
He said the European Union had recognised that animals were sentient beings and had started to include animal welfare in its Free Trade Agreement.
The World Organisation for Animal Health recently integrated animal welfare into its strategic priorities and the Doha WTO Agreement on Trade also placed animal welfare firmly on the agenda for future agricultural negotiations, Seah said.
-- BERNAMA
Neo Chai Chin Today Online 16 Jan 10;
SINGAPORE - The number of complaints about monkeys has gone up significantly, averaging about 250 yearly in 2007 to 611 last year.
While culling is a quick fix, it is not the solution, said experts on Friday at Asia for Animals conference hosted by the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres).
They called for greater collaboration among non-governmental organisations, governments and citizens to create co-existence rather than conflict.
Last year, the complaints resulted in 127 monkeys being impounded by the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), with most of the trapped monkeys getting euthanised.
But humans and monkeys can live in the same community, said anthropologist Agustin Fuentes of the United States' University of Notre Dame.
Man-modified environments can limit the spaces in which macaques can move, and one way to reduce conflicts is to create green spaces for the monkeys to "get away from humans", said Dr Fuentes at a workshop about managing human-macaque interactions.
In urbanised Singapore, this means having connections between parks and other green areas, instead of an isolated park among buildings. "When macaques are forced to move across buildings or through densely human-inhabited areas, you have an increase in conflicts," he said.
Another "core" strategy in managing conflicts is for the public not to feed the monkeys.
Macaques - with their broad diets and flexible, dynamic social systems like humans - are found across South-east Asia, as well as in places like Hong Kong.
Shatin, in Hong Kong's New Territories, is a macaque-human hotspot and an example of how progress can be made in managing macaques.
The government has deployed measures such as demonstrating monkey-handling techniques to educate the public, and introducing a neutering and contraceptive programme to manage the macaque population.
The number of complaints dipped from over 800 in 2007, to about 250 last year, according to numbers from Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.
Acres executive director Louis Ng believes Singapore can find similar solutions, and do away with culling. "Ultimately it's not a macaque problem, it's a human problem - the way we react to macaques," he said.
In 2007, Singapore's National Parks Board did a pilot study to test the effectiveness of sterilisation in two troops of monkeys.
The study showed sterilisation is a "recommendable alternative to culling", said Ms Barbara Martelli of the non-profit organisation Philozoophie, which conducted the pilot study. Neo Chai Chin
Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 15 Jan 10;
After successful breeding of Sumatran rhinos in captivity, Indonesia aims to produce seven offspring of the endangered species over the next decade, a conservationist said on Friday.
“If [rhinos] are in good condition in captivity, we can progress to 17 individuals in the next 10 years,” said Susie Ellis, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation. “There are 10 animals currently in captivity. Six of them are fertile and expected to breed seven offspring.”
In 2001, Emi, a female Sumatran rhino at the Cincinnati Zoo, gave birth to Andalas, followed by Suci in 2004 and Harapan in 2007. They are the first generation of Sumatran rhinos bred in captivity since 1889.
Emi died in September because of an iron overload, a disease known as hemochromatosis that normally affects animals in captivity.
The population of Sumatran rhinos has decreased 50 percent over the last 15 years because of poaching and habitat encroachment, Ellis said.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature reports there are only around 200 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, with 170 spread throughout Sumatra’s Way Kambas National Park, Bukit Barisan National Park and Gunung Leuser ecosystem. The remainder inhabit Sabah, Malaysia.
“We used to have the impression that captive breeding could decrease the population in the wild, which was rapidly declining. But it turns out that it’s much safer to breed them in captivity. However, they will be reintroduced [to the wild] so we still need to protect the habitat,” said Widodo Ramono, executive director of the Indonesian Rhino Foundation (YABI).
The zoo’s breeding program is part of the Global Sumatran Rhino Propagation Program, managed by the Sumatran Rhino Global Management and Propagation Board, which enlists government agencies from Indonesia, the United States and Malaysia, as well as YABI, the Cincinnati Zoo, the White Oak Conservation Center and the International Rhino Foundation.
Terri Roth, vice president of conservation at the Cincinnati zoo, stressed this was a global movement, so it was important for it to be managed as such.
“So when they needed a new male for the Indonesian sanctuary, we honored that by sending Andalas to Sumatra Rhino Sanctuary [in Way Kambas National Park]. This is how it works; animals move from one place to another to ensure that we succeed [in breeding them],” Roth said.
“We had a lot to learn when they came into captivity. We had to learn on how to feed them, care for them, and then breed them, and none of it was easy. In Cincinnati, we try to use science to try to learn more about the reproductive physiology of the species so we can pair them. It’s not an easy species to breed, but we’ve made tremendous progress,” said Roth, adding that Andalas could make better progress breeding in his native habitat in the park.
“He will be very successful in Way Kambas because the facility in Way Kambas is lovely. I wish we had the same in Cincinnati, but we don’t have the same environment, so it’s more natural [in Way Kambas].”
Ellis added that despite optimism that the captive breeding program could contribute to the growth of the rhino population on the planet, it was important to know that it was not a substitute for protecting the species in the wild.
Journal Watch Online 15 Jan 10;
Leaky faucetA new study has cast doubt on the idea that Antarctic minke whales are more numerous than usual and should be hunted to make way for other whale species.
Some researchers have suggested that the population of Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) shot up after hunters killed about 2 million large whales during the 20th century. Since large whales eat huge amounts of krill, the reasoning goes, their disappearance would have boosted the food supply for Antarctic minke whales. This species is now so abundant that it is holding back the recovery of other whales, some argue.
To find out if these whales really did undergo a population boom, researchers collected 52 samples of minke whale meat from markets in Japan. By studying the animals’ DNA, they were able to get a better picture of the population’s genetic diversity. That led the team to conclude that the number of Antarctic minke whales has historically been around 670,000 – close to the number thought to exist today.
It’s possible that commercial whaling didn’t affect the population size because there was already plenty of krill in the ocean, the researchers write in Molecular Ecology. Alternatively, Antarctic minke whales may not draw from the same krill supply as larger whales. For instance, they might eat different sizes of krill or hunt at different depths. – Roberta Kwok
Source: Ruegg, K., Anderson, E., Baker, C., Vant, M., Jackson, J., & Palumbi, S. (2010). Are Antarctic minke whales unusually abundant because of 20th century whaling? Molecular Ecology, 19 (2), 281-291 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04447.x
Muguntan Vanar, The Star 15 Jan 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui says he was caught by surprise with a Sarawak government move to classify the exploitation of coal as one of its renewable energy projects.
“It is news to me,” Chin told reporters when asked the Sarawak government’s much-criticised move to classify the exploitation and mining of 1.156 billion tonnes of coal reserves as a renewable energy project.
“I want to investigate this further, I read about it but I do not know where such a classification came from,” said Chin, who witnessed the signing of power purchase agreement between Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd and SPR Energy Sdn Bhd on Friday.
Chin said the Federal Government does not consider coal “renewable energy.”
On a question about the proposed coal-fired powered plant in Tungku in Sabah’s east coast Lahad Datu district, Chin said that a detailed Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report would be available by March.
He said Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman had informed him that the state was waiting for the EIA report before a decision is made on whether to allow the 300MW plant, which has been strongly objected to by environmentalists.
Chin however said that there was a need for a 300MW plant in the east coast of Sabah.
“We don’t have a reliable supply. We need to have the 300MW plant ready to meet the electricity demands in the east coast,” he claimed.
Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 14 Jan 10;
Indonesia will need at least Rp 83 trillion ($9 billion) to finance efforts to reduce its carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020, and another Rp 85 trillion in international support if it is to achieve the more ambitious 41 percent emissions cut target, an environment official said on Wednesday.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the bold emissions cut pledge at a G-20 meeting in the United States last year.
“The numbers were agreed to at a meeting between each [relevant] government agency and the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy,” said Sulistyowati, assistant deputy for climate change impact control at the ministry.
“We don’t have the budget breakdown yet for each sector and it can still change because the RPJM [the Medium-Term National Development Plan] has not been approved yet, but that’s the amount that has been approved.”
She said the government had still not decided on whether the funding to achieve the 26 percent figure would be allocated from the state budget or through international assistance.
But the head of the climate change working group at the Ministry of Forestry, Wandojo Siswanto, said it should come from the state budget because meeting the emissions cut target was a national effort.
Sulistyowati also said the government was now looking at seven sectors to meet the emissions cut target, up from the original three. Initially, the cuts were only going to come from the forestry, energy and solid waste sectors. The new plan includes peatland, transportation, industry and agriculture.
“The biggest cuts are coming in the forestry sector, with 13.3 percent coming from land-use change and 9.5 percent from peatland [management]. The rest will come from the other five sectors,” she said. “Why did they get the biggest portion? Because, based on the country’s emissions inventory, land-use change contributed 48 percent of emissions, peat fires 12 percent, energy 21 percent, waste 11 percent, agriculture 5 percent, industry 3 percent and transportation 0.3 percent.”
Sulistyowati said the breakdown of the 26 percent target could still change as each sector was still determining what reductions they could make.
This new breakdown of how the 26 percent target would be met is the third version released by the government.
Last October, former Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said the cuts would be generated from two sectors. He said 17 percent of the reductions would come from the energy sector through energy efficiency and renewable energy, and 9 percent from the forestry sector through a reduction in illegal logging, forest fires and improved peatland management.
Less than two months later, ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, those figures changed, with newly installed State Minister for the Environment Gusti Muhammad Hatta saying that 14 percent of the emissions reductions would come from the forestry sector through reforestation programs and the reduction of deforestation and degradation, 6 percent from the energy sector through energy management and 6 percent through waste management schemes.
Sulistyowati said the plan would be presented to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as required.
“Indonesia, as a developing country, is obliged to submit NAMAs [Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions] to the UN by the end of this month in order to follow the Bali Action Plan, which requires [actions to mitigate the impact of climate change] to be measurable, reportable and verifiable,” she said.
Indonesia ready for binding targets on emissions reduction
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 15 Jan 10;
State Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta has insisted that Indonesia will submit an official report on the country’s emissions cuts target to the United Nation by the end of this month, which will bind Indonesia to emissions reduction.
The Copenhagen accord obliges each country adopting the accord to submit a report outlining emissions cuts targets, including detailed plans to meet the pledged target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by Jan. 31 at the latest.
“We will meet the deadline, although we have not yet finished the details on how to reach the targets,” he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Hatta admitted that once the report was submitted to the UN secretariat, Indonesia would be bound to slashing its emissions by 26 percent by 2020.
“But we are ready for that [obligation],” he said.
Indonesia is one of 26 countries which signed the accord during the Copenhagen meeting last December. 192 countries are members of the UNFCCC.
It is not yet clear whether all the countries would submit their emission reports to the UNFCCC because most of them have not signed the accord.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono named Hatta’s office as responsible for coordinating other departments in slashing their emissions.
Indonesia was the first developing country to announce emissions cuts targets of 26 percent by 2020, 41 percent with international support after developed nations refused to put emissions targets on negotiation table.
Developing countries are not bound to emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding treaty on emission reductions, requires only developed nations to cut emissions by 5 percent until 2012. when the Protocol expires. Most countries have failed to meet the target.
The Copenhagen meeting failed to reach a new legally-binding treaty on emissions cuts.
But a number of countries have announced their emissions cuts targets to be included in the Copenhagen accord.
The United States pledged to cut 17 percent of emissions by 2020 from 2005 levels, equal to only about 3 to 4 percent from 1990 bases.
In contrast, China has promised to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2020, while India has offered a 20 percent cut by 2020.
A draft report on emissions targets from the State Environment Ministry showed that with the 26 percent target, Indonesia should cut about 0.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) with an expected cost of Rp 83.3 trillion.
If developed nations provided Rp 168 trillion, Indonesia could slash its emission by another 15 percent to meet the pledged 41 percent.
It said if business runs as usual, Indonesia would emit some 2.95 billion tons of CO2 in 2020, of which 48 percent would come from land conversion and the forestry sector, 21 percent from the energy sector, 12 percent from peat fires, and 11 percent from waste management.
The draft said emissions cuts would be focused on those sectors.
“We are still formulating the emissions cuts from each sector and where will it take place,” he said.
He admitted his office had reached an agreement with the Public Works Ministry on how to cut emissions from the waste management sector.
Hatta’s office said earlier that it would enforce the 2008 law on solid waste that required all districts to change from open dumping to more sanitary landfill systems and to separate methane (CH4) and use it as a source of electricity.
John M. Broder, The New York Times 14 Jan 10;
Todd Stern, the chief American climate change negotiator, said Thursday that the flawed and incomplete agreement reached last month in Copenhagen could provide significant benefits if countries followed through on its provisions.
The three-page Copenhagen Accord is not legally binding, and the 192 nations that took part in the December talks did not formally accept it. But a sizable group of those countries said they would accept its terms and provide plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by Jan. 31.
Wealthy countries also said they would follow through on promises to come up with $30 billion over the next three years to help developing countries adapt to global climate changes.
“It is incredibly important that those things happen,” Mr. Stern told investors gathered for a conference at the United Nations in New York, in his first public comments since the Copenhagen talks ended on Dec. 19. “The accord is lumbering down the runway, and now it needs to get speed so it can take off.”
Mr. Stern also said that the Obama administration remained committed to securing passage of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation to meet its own promises to reduce global warming emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
He said that the House had made a promising start by passing a bill last June but that the legislation had been sidetracked in the Senate by the health care debate. He said it was “tremendously important” for the Senate to act on some form of climate change legislation.
“There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind about the president’s commitment to this issue, and he fully understands the importance of putting together the strongest possible domestic program,” Mr. Stern said.
In his remarks to the investor conference, organized by Ceres, a group of environmentally minded business leaders, and the United Nations Foundation, Mr. Stern reviewed the two-week Copenhagen conference, which almost collapsed in failure.
He acknowledged that he was biased but said that the intervention of his boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and President Obama in the final 36 hours of the meeting saved it from utter disaster.
He said Mr. Obama’s main focus was on making sure major developing countries, like China, India and Brazil, provide a transparent way of showing follow-through on promises to reduce releases of carbon dioxide.
ScienceDaily 15 Jan 10;
An increase in the variability of local conditions could do more to harm biodiversity than slower shifts in climate, a new study has found.
Climate scientists predict more frequent storms, droughts, floods and heat waves as the Earth warms. Although extreme weather would seem to challenge ecosystems, the effect of fluctuating conditions on biodiversity actually could go either way. Species able to tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures, for example, may be eliminated, but instability in the environment can also prevent dominant species from squeezing out competitors.
"Imagine species that have different optimal temperatures for growth. In a fluctuating world, neither can get the upper hand and the two coexist," said Jonathan Shurin, an ecologist at the University of California, San Diego who led the project. Ecologists have observed similar positive effects on populations of organisms as different as herbacious plants, desert rodents, and microscopic animals called zooplankton.
Now a study of zooplankton found in dozens of freshwater lakes over decades of time has revealed both effects. Shurin and colleagues found fewer species in lakes with the most variable water chemistry. But lakes with the greatest temperature variations harbored a greater variety of zooplankton, they report in the journal Ecology Letters January 21.
Their study considered data from nine separate long-term ecological studies that included a total of 53 lakes in North America and Europe. In addition to sampling zooplankton, scientists had also taken physical measurements repeatedly each season for periods ranging from 3 to 44 years.
From these data, they calculated the variability of 10 physical properties, including pH and the levels of nutrients such as organic carbon, phosphorous and nitrogen. Temperatures and the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water at both the surface and bottom of each lake were also included. The authors also teased apart variation based on the pace of change with year-to-year changes considered separately from changes that occurred from season-to-season or on more rapid timescales.
Zooplankton populations respond quickly to changes because they reproduces so fast. "In a summer, you're sampling dozens of generations," Shurin said. "For mammals or annual plants, you would have to watch for hundreds or thousands of years to see the same population turnover."
At every time scale the pattern held: Ecologists found fewer species of zooplankton in lakes with fluctuating water chemistry and greater numbers of species in those with varying temperatures. The authors noted that the temperature variations they observed remained within normal ranges for these lakes. But some chemical measures, particularly pH and levels of phosphorous, strayed beyond normal limits due to pollution and acid rain.
Environmental variability through time could either promote or reduce biodiversity depending on the pace and range of fluctuations, the authors suggested.
"It may depend on the predictability of the environment. If you have a lot of violent changes through time, species may not be able to program their life cycles to be active when conditions are right. They need the ability to read the cues, to hatch out at the right time," Shurin said. "If the environment is very unpredictable, that may be bad for diversity, because many species just won't be able to match their lifecycles to that."
###
Shurin's 10 co-authors include scientists from environmental agencies in Canada, and universities and research institutes in Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported Shurin's work on this study.
Maria Cheng, Associated Press Yahoo News 15 Jan 10;
LONDON – Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.
Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven't gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.
"If we took the stem cells from one pig and multiplied it by a factor of a million, we would need one million fewer pigs to get the same amount of meat," said Mark Post, a biologist at Maastricht University involved in the In-vitro Meat Consortium, a network of publicly funded Dutch research institutions that is carrying out the experiments.
Post describes the texture of the meat as sort of like scallop, firm but a little squishy and moist. That's because the lab meat has less protein content than conventional meat.
Several other groups in the U.S., Scandinavia and Japan are also researching ways to make meat in the laboratory, but the Dutch project is the most advanced, said Jason Matheny, who has studied alternatives to conventional meat at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and is not involved in the Dutch research.
In the U.S., similar research was funded by NASA, which hoped astronauts would be able to grow their own meat in space. But after growing disappointingly thin sheets of tissue, NASA gave up and decided it would be better for its astronauts to simply eat vegetarian.
To make pork in the lab, Post and colleagues isolate stem cells from pigs' muscle cells. They then put those cells into a nutrient-based soup that helps the cells replicate to the desired number.
So far the scientists have only succeeded in creating strips of meat about 1 centimeter (a half inch) long; to make a small pork chop, Post estimates it would take about 30 days of cell replication in the lab.
There are tantalizing health possibilities in the technology.
Fish stem cells could be used to produce healthy omega 3 fatty acids, which could be mixed with the lab-produced pork instead of the usual artery-clogging fats found in livestock meat.
"You could possibly design a hamburger that prevents heart attacks instead of causing them," Matheny said.
Post said the strips they've made so far could be used as processed meat in sausages or hamburgers. Their main problem is reproducing the protein content in regular meat: In livestock meat, protein makes up about 99 percent of the product; the lab meat is only about 80 percent protein. The rest is mostly water and nucleic acids.
None of the researchers have actually eaten the lab-made meat yet, but Post said the lower protein content means it probably wouldn't taste anything like pork.
The Dutch researchers started working with pork stem cells because they had the most experience with pigs, but said the technology should be transferable to other meats, like chicken, beef and lamb.
Some experts warn lab-made meats might have potential dangers for human health.
"With any new technology, there could be subtle impacts that need to be monitored," said Emma Hockridge, policy manager at Soil Association, Britain's leading organic organization.
As with genetically modified foods, Hockridge said it might take some time to prove the new technology doesn't harm humans. She also said organic farming relies on crop and livestock rotation, and that taking animals out of the equation could damage the ecosystem.
Some experts doubted lab-produced meat could ever match the taste of real meat.
"What meat tastes like depends not just on the genetics, but what you feed the animals at particular times," said Peter Ellis, a biochemistry expert at King's College London. "Part of our enjoyment of eating meat depends on the very complicated muscle and fat structure...whether that can be replicated is still a question."
If it proves possible, experts say growing meat in laboratories instead of raising animals on farmland would do wonders for the environment.
Hanna Tuomisto, who studies the environmental impact of food production at Oxford University said that switching to lab-produced meat could theoretically lower greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95 percent. Both land and water use would also drop by about 95 percent, she said.
"In theory, if all the meat was replaced by cultured meat, it would be huge for the environment," she said. "One animal could produce many thousands of kilograms of meat." In addition, lab meat can be nurtured with relatively few nutrients like amino acids, fats and natural sugars, whereas livestock must be fed huge amounts of traditional crops.
Tuomisto said the technology could potentially increase the world's meat supply and help fight global hunger, but that would depend on how many factories there are producing the lab-made meat.
Post and colleagues haven't worked out how much the meat would cost to produce commercially, but because there would be much less land, water and energy required, he guessed that once production reached an industrial level, the cost would be equivalent to or lower than that of conventionally produced meat.
One of the biggest obstacles will be scaling up laboratory meat production to satisfy skyrocketing global demand. By 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization predicts meat consumption will double from current levels as growing middle classes in developing nations eat more meat.
"To produce meat at an industrial scale, we will need very large bioreactors, like those used to make vaccines or pasteurized milk," said Matheny. He thought lab-produced meat might be on the market within the next few years, while Post said it could take about a decade.
For the moment, the only types of meat they are proposing to make this way are processed meats like minced meat, hamburgers or hot dogs.
"As long as it's cheap enough and has been proven to be scientifically valid, I can't see any reason people wouldn't eat it," said Stig Omholt, a genetics expert at the University of Life Sciences in Norway. "If you look at the sausages and other things people are willing to eat these days, this should not be a big problem."
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