Best of our wild blogs: 5 Apr 10

Murder in the name of Art??
from Butterflies of Singapore

SECORE Workshop - Coral spawning in Singapore (1-2 April 2010)
from Psychedelic Nature

New guided walk: Trees of the Fort 10 Apr (Sat)
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

Seringat-Kias in the mizzle
from wild shores of singapore and Singapore Nature

From Ascidians to Zoanthids: The Intertidal Zone of St. John’s Island from G33k5p34k's Blog

黄臀鹎 Yellow-vented bulbul@Chinese garden
from PurpleMangrove

Mangrove Pitta breeding: 3. Vigilance and parenting
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Monday Morgue: 5th April 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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SHARKS ALIVE! See what Singapore supermarts are selling

Esther Au Yong, my paper AsiaOne 5 Apr 10;

A LONELY baby nurse shark in a tiny tank caught his eye - while he was in a branch of a well-known supermarket chain. It was being sold at $13.80 per kg at a Sheng Siong outlet in the east, while two others were being sold at $12.80 per kg.

Assistant manager Tay Zhi Qi, 29, was shocked to see the sharks, as well as sea anemone and clownfish, being kept in tanks in the supermarket. He told my paper: "The shark couldn't even move as it was slightly longer than the tank it was housed in. Is the sale of a "live" shark allowed?"

Indeed, the sale of such "live" wildlife is legal in Singapore. It is "driven by consumer demand", said a Sheng Siong supermarket spokesman.

She said: "Demand from consumers led us to bring in a wide variety of seafood, including "live" and fresh shark. As a retailer which caters to the daily needs of its customers, the things that we source for and bring in are all based on serving the needs and wants of consumers.

"As long as they are legal, of good quality, are safe for consumption, and command reasonable prices, we will give due consideration." But animal-welfare and conservation groups feel that the sale of sharks should be banned. Mr Louis Ng, the executive director of the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society, said: "This practice should be made illegal. Sheng Siong can also take the initiative as a socially responsible corporate citizen and stop the sale of sharks."

Under the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority's (AVA) Pet Shop Licence Conditions, pet shops are not allowed to sell fish with a large territorial range in their natural habitat, such as sharks and rays, he said.

He added: "We clearly acknowledge that it is detrimental to the welfare of sharks, to keep them in small tanks in pet shops, and it should similarly apply to the small tanks at the supermarkets." Animal activists are also concerned about the survival of shark species worldwide.

Ms Amy Ho, the managing director of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Singapore, said: "Our advice to the public is to avoid consuming sharks, especially young ones, and shark products, so as not to create demand, and not to aggravate the overfishing of these species. As consumers, you can make a difference through your choices and help safeguard marine life."

Last month, WWF launched the Singapore Seafood Guide, which advises consumers on the types of seafood to eat via a "traffic-light" system: Green means "recommended", yellow stands for "eat only occasionally" and red means "avoid". All sharks are labelled red. Mr Howard Shaw, the Singapore Environmental Council's executive director, said that, generally, "all wildlife should not be kept alive in tanks in supermarkets".

"It sends a wrong signal to the public that wildlife can be taken for granted," he said. AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong said that AVA officers have investigated the matter. He said: "As the turnover rate of food fishes is quick, the important factors to consider for short-term housing are that the water quality is good and that the fishes are able to turn around.

"The shark on display is a nurse shark. It does not need to swim constantly, unlike other types of sharks. Nevertheless, as the size of this particular shark is too large for the tank, AVA officers requested that the manager of the outlet house it in a larger tank or to return it to the supplier."

On the anemone and clownfish, which are not for sale, Mr Goh said: "The management of Sheng Siong agreed to remove them from all its outlets." Last month, four species of sharks failed to get listed under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Appendix II, despite studies showing that their numbers were plunging due to a booming fin trade in Asia and demand for their meat in Europe.

Once a species has been listed in Appendix II, exporters need special permits before they can export it, and experts will regularly assess the population of the species to determine that trade in it is not detrimental to its survival.

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Sabah energy players defend coal-powered plant

The Star 5 Apr 10;

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s energy players are fighting back against a campaign by an influential environmental lobby to push for the scrapping of a controversial 300MW coal-powered plant in Lahad Datu.

Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd took out a full-page advertisement in major dailies here yesterday to debunk any immediate and practical green energy alternative to the plant.

The advertisement featured SESB general manager for corporate services Wan Maria Wan Othman as saying that alternative sources like biomass, solar and wind were too expensive to implement and that these would not be able to provide enough energy as required at 300MW.

SESB, Wan Maria pointed out, had already committed to taking 120MW from other parties providing renewable energy in the future although the 30MW given to the company currently was not performing as expected.

“We all need a world fit to live in. We also need a secure energy supply. Balancing the two needs is a matter of both ecology and economics. Both have advantages and disadvantages,” she said, calling for the “rational calculation on the potential cost and risks” between the coal-fired plant and green energy.

Wan Maria said bringing power from Sarawak’s Bakun Dam was too expensive and would also put Sabah’s east coast in a vulnerable position as it would have to continue relying on power from a source outside the state.

She said the main aim for the proposed coal-fired plant was to provide stable power for the east coast as it now had to get its supply from Sabah’s west coast via the power grid.

The advertisement also contained graph tables indicating the use of coal-powered plants around the world and how these had improved with environmentally acceptable technology.

The utility company, which has already come under fire for failing to provide stable and reliable power supply, has been caught up in the controversy after the plant proposal was questioned by a coalition of five environmental non-governmental bodies calling themselves Green SURF.

SESB first proposed the plant in Lahad Datu’s Silam area but subsequently moved it to Sandakan after it was rejected by the Sabah government, and then to the Felda area in Tungku in Lahad Datu after local residents objected.

The state government had said that its decision to approve the coal plant would depend on the Detailed Environment Impact Assessment report.

Influential Sabah east coast leaders such as Kalabakan MP Datuk Abdul Ghapur Salleh and former Chief Minister Datuk Harris Salleh are among those backing moves for cleaner energy sources to meet the state’s power needs.

They have all argued that the state could be powered by green energy, especially from the availability of oil palm biomass.

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Oil-leaking ship: Salvage operation could take weeks on Barrier Reef

Yahoo News 5 Apr 10;

BRISBANE, Australia – A salvage team could take weeks to remove a grounded coal-carrying from Australia's Great barrier Reef where it is leaking oil in a pristine marine environment, a state leader said on Monday.

The Chinese Shen Neng 1 ran aground late Saturday on Douglas Shoals, a favorite pristine haunt for recreational fishing east of the Great Keppel Island tourist resort. The shoals — off the coast of Queensland state in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park — are in a protected part of the reef where shipping is restricted by environmental law.

Authorities fear an oil spill will damage the world's largest coral reef, which is off northeast Australia and listed as a World Heritage site.

The ship hit the reef at full speed, nine miles (15 kilometers) outside the shipping lane.

State Premier Anna Bligh said a salvage team had reached the 755 foot (230 meter) ship on Monday and were attempting to stabilize it.

"According to the safety experts who have briefed me, it could take some weeks," Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"It's in such a delicate part of the reef and the ship is in such a badly damaged state, managing this process will require all the specialist expertise we can bring to bear," she added.

She said the ship's owner could be fined up to 1 million Australian dollars ($920,000) for staying from a shipping lane used by 6,000 cargo ships each year.

"This is a very delicate part of one of the most precious marine environments on earth and there are safe authorized shipping channels and that's where this ship should have been." Bligh said.

Authorities fear the ship will break apart during the salvage operation or spill more of its 1,000 tons (950 metric tons) load of heavy fuel oil.

Marine Safety Queensland said in a statement a tug boat was at the site Monday trying to stabilize the ship and a second tug was due to arrive on Monday afternoon.

"One of the most worrying aspects is that the ship is still moving on the reef to the action of the seas, which is doing further damage" to the coral and hull, the government agency's general manager Patrick Quirk said.

Quirk said the initial damage report was that the main engine room was breached, the main engine damaged and the rudder seriously damaged.

Aircraft sprayed chemical dispersants on Sunday in an effort to break up an oil slick that stretched for about 2 miles (3 kilometers) long and 100 yards (meters) wide.

A police boat was standing by to remove the 23 crew if the ship broke apart and an evacuation was necessary.

The bulk carrier was taking about 72,000 tons (65,000 metric tons) of coal to China and ran aground within hours of leaving the Queensland port of Gladstone.

Conservationists have expressed outrage that bulk carriers can travel through the reef without a marine pilot with local expertise.

State authorities were seeking information about the effect the coal could have on the reef environment if the ship broke up before its cargo can be salvaged.

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Wild Elephants Trample Remote Villages in Aceh, Indonesia

Nurdin Hasan Jakarta Globe 4 Apr 10;

Banda Aceh. Hundreds of villagers in the district of East Aceh fled to safety after what has been called one of the worst recent outbreaks of elephant attacks in the area, an activist said on Sunday.

Bahtiar, a field officer from Leuser International Foundation of East Aceh, said that a pack of some 30 wild elephants had been rampaging through two remote villages in Serbajadi subdistrict almost daily over the past several days.

“This morning I received a report from some residents of those villages that on Saturday some wild elephants came into the villages, destroyed their houses and ate their crops,” he told the Jakarta Globe.

“Now the local residents are scared and cautious because the elephants chased a villager who tried to scare them off with some traditional methods that included a torch, a bamboo cannon and a carbide cannon,” he added

The neighboring villages that have become the target of the elephants are Kuala Panggoh and Ketibung Busara. Both are government-assigned transmigration areas that have been occupied since the early 1990s.

Bahtiar said that since the elephant attacks began, 48 houses in Kuala Panggoh village had been severely damaged while 52 more had sustained minor damage. Nearly 30 houses have been destroyed in Ketibung Busara.

“The villagers who have lost their homes because of the elephant attacks are now staying in mosques,” he said, adding that some forest rangers and volunteers from nongovernmental organizations were assisting displaced families.

The Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), East Aceh’s forestry agency and some environmental activists plan to visit the area on Tuesday.

The team plans to conduct a survey of the location, using the results to build a conservation response unit. Four tame elephants will be included in the unit to chase the wild elephants back to the jungle.

Bahtiar said most conflicts between wild elephants and humans in Aceh stemmed from the clearing of land for plantations. He said that when trees were cut, the elephants lost their natural habitat and food supply.

“Moreover, the newly cleared areas are often planted with rice and palms, which are elephants’ favorite foods,” he said.

Abu Bakar Chekmat, head of the Aceh BKSDA, said that the solution to elephant attacks was to simply stop illegal logging, especially in the elephants’ jungle habitat and along their migration paths.

“Actually, the regional government has made a mistake in the first place by creating a transmigration area in a place surrounded by jungles and mountains,” he said. “One of the solutions to stop these incidents would be to relocate the villagers to another place and restore the area into a conservation jungle.”

Four Riau elephants died in past three months
Antara 5 Apr 10;

Pekanbaru, Riau (ANTARA News) - Four elephants died in Riau over the past three months, bringing to 43 the number of elephant deaths in the province since 2007.

"The death of the four elephants in the January-March 2010 period suggests that the giant animals are facing a high risk of extinction," World Wide Fund (WWF) spokesman Syamsidar said here on Sunday.

One of the four elephants was found dead at a rubber plantation owned by a villager in Mandau subdistrict, Bengkalis district, he said.

The other two were found dead at their habitat in the Tesso Nilo National Park in Pelalawan district, and one young elephant died of improper care at the Minas Elephant Conservation Center in Siak district, he said.

According to WWF data, a total of 43 elephants in Riau had died since 2007.
Twenty-four of them died in 2007, six in 2008 and nine in 2009.

Syamsidar put the blame on prolonged conflicts between humans and elephants for most of the elephant deaths.

The death of an elephant at Petani village in Mandau subdistrict, Bengkalis district, and that of a young elephant at the elephant conservation center were the result of a human-elephant conflict, he said. (*)

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Mysterious Bale monkey of Africa loves to eat bamboo

Jody Bourton, BBC News 1 Apr 10;

Ethiopia's mysterious Bale monkey eats almost nothing but bamboo, according to the first study of the primate.

Discovered in 1902, little is known about the monkey, named after the region in Africa in which it lives.

But scientists have now discovered it spends most of its life in the trees of a bamboo forest, eating young leaves to avoid getting poisoned.

Very few primates depend on bamboo, and the Bale monkey's reliance on it makes the primate vulnerable to extinction.

Researchers from Ethiopia, US and Norway describe the behaviour of the Bale monkey for the first time in the International Journal of Primatology.

The Bale monkey (Chlorocebus djamdjamensis) is an arboreal and enigmatic primate restricted to the forests of the Bale Massif and Hagere Selam regions of southeastern Ethiopia.

Little information has been available on how this mysterious primate lives.

"They were always considered by scientists to be 'too difficult to study' due to the rough mountainous terrain and foggy conditions in the forests where they occur," says Dr Peter Fashing from California State University, California, US, one of the co-authors of the study.

Between 2007 and 2008 the team studied two neighbouring groups of Bale monkeys in the Obobullu forest in southeastern Ethiopia, which lies to the east of the Bale mountains.

The researchers spent many months deep in the forest, following the primates and recording their behaviour and ecology.

"At the beginning, I had to habituate the very shy monkeys to my presence, but over time they came to trust me enough to let me watch them from a distance," explains Mr Addisu Mekonnen from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, who led the study.

No taste for cyanide

The research team discovered several previously unknown Bale monkey populations.

The scientists also found that Bale monkeys are quite different to their closest relatives, other green or vervet monkeys belonging to the same genus.

"We found Bale monkeys to be highly specialised primates, relying entirely on the bamboo forest to meet their needs," Mr Mekonnen says.

The monkeys feed on just 11 plant species.

However, of those bamboo leaves account for a remarkable 77% of their diet.

Most other forest monkeys eat far richer diets, typically consuming between 50 and 100 different plant species or more, says Dr Fashing.

Bale monkeys also consume mainly young bamboo leaves, perhaps to avoid being poisoned by cyanide that accumulates in mature leaves.

Food for thought

Only one type of primate is known to rely more heavily on bamboo than Bale monkeys - the bamboo lemurs of Madagascar, of which there are three species, each consuming a diet that is 90% bamboo.

"Bamboo is a key resource for the existence of Bale monkeys," says Mr Mekonnen.

Yet bamboo in the Bale Massif is being commercially harvested.

"The loss of this resource would have [an equally profound] adverse effect on the long-term survival of this species."

The revelations about the Bale monkey also highlight how little we still know about some primate species, says Dr Fashing.

"If we are to ensure the survival of these mysterious primates, we must first study their basic ecology and behaviour to determine what their conservation needs are," he says.

"Prior to this study, we did not know just how dependent Bale monkeys are on bamboo for their survival."

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New orchid species discovered in Sumatra, Indonesia

Antara 4 Apr 10;

Bandung (ANTARA News) - New orchid species had been found by Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researchers.

The new orchid species was named "Dendrobium Kelamense" because it was a member of the Dendobrium genus, Calcarifera orchid species, one of the researchers, Destario Metusala, said here Sunday.

Destario said that the "Dendrobium Kelamense" spread in the western part of Indonesia in Sumatra Island.

He said that the joint research with senior orchid experts from Singapore and an English senior researcher from the Kew herbarium will not reveal the new species discovery site for conservation purposes.

"Because large scale exploitation of the species in their habitat usually occurs each time new species had been revealed," he said.

The new species has also been published in an international journal, "Malesian Orchid Journal in March 2010.

Dendrobium Kelamense grows in an epiphytes (a plant that grows on another plant, but does not feed on its host) cluster with adult 60-110 cm stem.

This orchid inflorescence appears to hang at the near end of the stem, with a length of 5 to 8.5 cm with five to 12 flowers.

Each flower that blooms has a width of about two centimeters and a length of 3-3.5cm, with bright yellow petals and a maroon parallel elongated patches.

According to Destario, the Dendrobium Kelamense orchid has a great potential for development.(*)

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Mekong River countries meet China over dam fears

Rachel O'brien Yahoo News 4 Apr 10;

HUA HIN, Thailand (AFP) – Southeast Asian nations on the shrinking Mekong River began talks with China Sunday over fears that its dams are further depleting the waterway which is at its lowest levels in decades.

A Chinese delegation held talks in the Thai coastal town of Hua Hin ahead of a Monday meeting to be attended by Beijing's Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao and the prime ministers of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

Leaders are discussing management of the vast river, on which more than 60 million people depend, amid a crippling drought in the region, controversy surrounding the role of China's hydropower dams and fears over climate change.

"All the attention is on China, I think all the bilateral meetings that China's having... I think these are going to be extremely important," said summit organiser Jeremy Bird.

The summit, the first to be organised by the inter-governmental Mekong River Commission (MRC) in its 15-year history, comes after the Mekong shrivelled to its lowest level in 50 years in northern Thailand and Laos.

Bird, head of the MRC's secretariat, dismissed activists' concerns that dams were behind the water shortage, but representatives for the Southeast Asian countries said better river data was needed to allay fears.

"It's mostly (about) clarification on water levels. I think there's speculation that's all, suspicion," said Thai delegate Isra Sunthornvut.

"We don't know the facts and we would like to know the facts," added Isra, an official in the Thai prime minister's office.

The Chinese embassy in Bangkok last week said China would "never do things that harm the interests of (lower Mekong) countries" and had agreed to share water level data from two dams during this dry season.

But nations in the lower Mekong basin are likely to press China for further information as well as financial help, said Anond Snidvongs, director of the Southeast Asia START Regional Centre, which researches environmental change.

After meeting with the Chinese delegation Sunday, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said talks were "laying the foundation for future cooperative activities".

He said he was "optimistic" that China -- currently only a dialogue partner with the MRC -- would join the four Southeast Asian nations downstream as a full member-state of the organisation in future.

Leaders arrived in Hua Hin on Sunday and gathered for a gala dinner ahead of Monday's meeting, where they will sign a joint declaration of their aims, said organisers.

Myanmar is also participating in the talks as a dialogue partner.

The MRC has warned that the health of the Mekong Basin and the river's eco-systems could be threatened by proposed dams and expanding populations.

The crisis has grounded cargo and tour boats on the "mighty Mekong" and alarmed communities along what is the world's largest inland fishery.

China -- itself suffering the worst drought in a century in its southwest, with more than 24 million people short of drinking water -- says the reason for water shortages is unusually low rainfall rather than man-made infrastructure.

It has eight planned or existing dams on the mainstream river in China and says they are effective in releasing water during dry seasons and preventing flooding in rainy months.

Vice Minister of Water Resources Liu Ning said Wednesday more were needed to guarantee water and food security, while 12 dams in lower Mekong countries have also been proposed.

Thailand has invoked a tough security law and has deployed thousands of troops in Hua Hin to ensure protesters do not disrupt the summit, in light of mass anti-government "Red Shirt" rallies in Bangkok since mid-March.

A year ago, regional leaders were forced to abandon a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) due to protests.

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Australian floods help ease the 'Big Dry'

Madeleine Coorey Yahoo News 4 Apr 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – For Australian farmers who have struggled to make a living in southern Queensland as their crops died and their dams ran empty during years of drought, recent floods have helped ease the "Big Dry".

But while the deluge has brought hope to some farmers, giving them guaranteed water and quality pasture for the next 12 to 18 months, the water is unlikely to make it down to southern areas still in the grip of drought.

"We've had the worst drought in a generation and now we're back to some of the best conditions in a generation," said cattleman John Cotter.

"It doesn't rain money but it rains potential to make money. And psychologically, it's got enormous positives," Cotter, who heads the farmers lobby group AgForce, said of the deluge which has flooded parts of Queensland.

"There's a real spring in people's step as to how they feel about it."

Neighbouring New South Wales has also benefited from the downpour which began earlier this year, with just 40 percent of the state now in drought, compared to 81 percent in January.

Across the country, the federal government estimates that the amount of agricultural land in drought has fallen from 32 percent to 29 percent.

"We certainly can't all relax and say, 'There's been all this rain, it's over'," Ian Prosser, acting director of water research at the government's science research body CSIRO, told AFP.

"It's certainly not over. The southern Murray Darling Basin and Victoria are still very much in drought," he said, adding that the southern cities of Melbourne and Canberra, along with Perth in the west, also had limited water.

"And there's every probability that that situation will continue into next summer because even if there was average rainfall this winter, there would still be below average irrigation allocations next year."

Beginning in late February, heavy rains fell over much of central and northeastern Australia. By early March parts of Queensland were flooded, with some areas receiving their average annual rainfall in one day.

The floods mean that hundreds of gigalitres of water held in Queensland catchments will be sent downstream into the parched southern states.

But Prosser said the floods would be of little help to the country's key farming zone, the Murray Darling Basin.

This region -- which generates 39 percent of the national income derived from agricultural production -- remains among the country's worst drought-affected areas.

And because it has been in drought for so long, it will take sustained heavy rains to bring it back to condition.

Prosser said the unprecedented drought produced the risk of some irreversible changes, including the acidification of lakes and habitat losses further downstream in areas of South Australia.

"We're probably at the cusp of some pretty big ones (changes)," he said.

"If things start to get wet again from here on in we'll start to rescue a lot. But if we get another five years of this (drought) there's just going to be an increasing number of things falling over."

Prosser also warned that the deluge in some areas could not mask longer-term concerns.

"Queensland is out of a drought, but it doesn't mean it is out of climate change," he said.

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U.N.'s Ban urges Central Asia talks on shrinking Aral Sea

Patrick Worsnip, Reuters 4 Apr 10;

MOYNAK, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea Sunday after local people urged the United Nations to resolve a regional dispute.

Much of the former bed of what was once the world's fourth largest lake is now a desert covered with scrub and salt flats. It shrank by 70 percent after Soviet planners in the 1960s siphoned off water for cotton irrigation projects in Uzbekistan.

"I was so shocked," Ban said after viewing the damage by helicopter, describing it as "clearly one of the worst environmental disasters in the world."

He was on a tour of the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia that lie on some of the world's biggest untapped oil, gas, uranium and gold reserves.

The people living around the Aral Sea are some of the poorest in the region and struggle with declining fresh water supplies and fish stocks, pollution and violent sand storms.

In 1990 the sea split into a large southern Uzbek part and a smaller Kazakh portion.

"I urge all the leaders (of Central Asia), including President (Islam ) Karimov of Uzbekistan to sit down together and try to find solutions," said Ban, hours before a scheduled meeting with the Uzbek leader.

"All specialized agencies of the United Nations will provide necessary assistance and expertise," he said.

The United Nations has billed Ban's week-long trip, also taking in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, as a chance to discuss regional cooperation, nuclear non-proliferation, climate change and development.

Once isolated from the outside world, the region has gained global significance because of its proximity to Afghanistan.

In Moynak, once on the coastline of the Aral Sea but now surrounded by sand, Ban was met by a group of about 20 townspeople who complained about the possible impact of the Rogun hydroelectric power plant that Tajikistan wants to build.

Tajikistan hopes the new Rogun plant will solve the country's chronic lack of energy by nearly doubling domestic electricity output.

Uzbekistan is concerned about the environmental and economic fallout of Rogun and other developments affecting the Aral Sea.

"If Rogun is constructed we will be in a much more difficult situation," local teacher Zhanabay Zhusipov told Ban. "There should be an international inquiry by the United Nations on all these hydro-electric power stations."

He and other local townspeople recalled playing in the sea as children and said that since the coastline had receded, local people's health had deteriorated.

Uzbek officials told Ban that wind blows up dust carrying toxic chemicals from the dried-out seabed.

Uzbekistan wants the U.N. to get involved in tackling the effects of the Aral Sea shrinking, but a U.N. official said privately that Uzbekistan was putting too much emphasis on international aid and not enough on regional cooperation.

(Writing by Conor Sweeney; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Factbox: Key facts about the disappearing Aral Sea
Reuters 4 Apr 10;

MOYNAK, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited the shrinking Aral Sea on Sunday and urged regional cooperation to tackle what environmentalists describe as one of the worst man-made ecological disasters.

Lakes and seas are disappearing around the world, partly as a result of global warming but mainly due to mismanagement of water resources linked to irrigation projects.

The Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest lake, has shrunk by 70 percent in recent decades.

Other endangered sites include Central Asia's second-largest lake, Balkhash, as well Lake Chad in Africa and Lake Qinghai, China's largest expanse of inland water.

Below are key facts about the Aral Sea.

* Fifty years ago, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth inland sea, after the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior and Lake Victoria. It started shrinking due to Soviet irrigation projects, its surface area declining by more than 50 percent, to 30,000 square km from 67,000 square km, between 1960 and 1996. The sea level dropped by 16 meters, according to the World Bank.

* The sea straddles the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It split into a large southern Uzbek part and a smaller Kazakh portion in 1990.

* Central Asia, one of the world's driest regions, has two main rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya. Both used to feed the Aral Sea. In the 1960s Soviet planners built a network of irrigation canals to divert their waters into cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, starving the sea of its life blood.

* Mismanagement of land and water resources has caused degradation extending to the entire Aral Sea basin, damaging fish production and causing high salinity and pollution as well as violent sand storms. Fresh water supplies have diminished and human health problems have increased, the World Bank says.

* Kazakhstan pledged to restore its portion of the Aral Sea when it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The Aral Sea region is among the poorest in the oil producing state. At least a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line, and the average monthly income is three times below that of Kazakh financial capital Almaty, according to official data.

(Writing by Maria Golovnina and Conor Sweeney; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Arctic thaw frees overlooked greenhouse gas: study

Reuters 4 Apr 10;

OSLO (Reuters) - Thawing permafrost can release nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, a contributor to climate change that has been largely overlooked in the Arctic, a study showed on Sunday.

The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas.

"Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range," the study said.

The scientists, from Denmark and Norway, studied sites in Canada and Svalbard off northern Norway alongside their main focus on Zackenberg. The releases would be a small addition to known impacts of global warming.

Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas from human activities, dominated by carbon dioxide ahead of methane.

It is among the gases regulated by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for limiting global warming that could spur more sandstorms, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Nitrous oxide comes from human sources including agriculture, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, and use of fossil fuels as well as natural sources in soil and water, such as microbes in wet tropical forests.

The scientists said that past studies had reckoned that carbon dioxide and methane were released by a thaw of permafrost while nitrous oxide stayed locked up.

"Thawing and drainage of the soils had little impact on nitrous oxide production," Nature said in a statement of the study led by Bo Elberling of Copenhagen University.

"However, re-saturation of the drained soils with meltwater from the frozen soils -- as would happen following thawing -- increased nitrous oxide production by over 20 times," it said.

"Nearly a third of the nitrous oxide produced in this process escaped into the atmosphere," it added.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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