Best of our wild blogs: 9 May 10

Life History of the Quaker
from Butterflies of Singapore

Migratory birds and Mangroves at Sungei Buloh
from wild shores of singapore

Variable Squirrel
from Manta Blog

Is it desirable to tame birds?
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Raffles Museum Treasures: Tiger shark
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

More than a few square feet
from The annotated budak

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Please don't release animals on Vesak Day

Creatures may find freeing process stressful; many can't survive on their own
Shuli Sudderuddin, Straits Times 9 May 10;

Freeing animals may do more harm than good.

That's why nature lovers are gearing up to address the issue of animals being released on Vesak Day.

Turtles, fish and birds are usually freed at temples, reservoirs, ponds, parks and beaches as a symbolic gesture of compassion.

Vesak Day, which falls on May 28 this year, celebrates Buddha's birth and his enlightenment.

It is illegal to release animals into Singapore's parks.

The National Parks Board (NParks) estimated in 2007 that nine out of 10 released animals died within the day.

Ms Ria Tan, who runs nature website WildSingapore, said the process of release could be stressful to the animals.

Many may be weak or dead upon release, and the exhausted animals may eventually perish.

On working as a volunteer with NParks this year, Ms Tan said: 'It's my first time in a long time. We'll be staking out regular points where people release animals and will speak with them to try to discourage them not to do it.'

Over at nature group Nature Trekker Singapore, its founder Ben Lee said he has been roping in volunteers for the past six years.

This year, 40 to 60 people will be mobilised.

Ten groups will be stationed at various hot spots like ponds and reservoirs to discourage folks from releasing, for example, the exotic red-eared slider, a terrapin, or the giant snakehead, a fish.

'Exotic wild animals may not be able to survive on their own, and even if they do, they will become a threat to our native wild animals due to competition for food,' he said.

Mr Lee added, however, that over the years he has seen fewer people releasing animals.

Pet shops noted that there has been a decline in the number of people buying animals for release on Vesak Day.

Mr Allan Tan, 51, owner of Kaki Bukit Bird Shop, attributed the lower demand to rising cost.

Ten years ago, a sparrow cost about $1.60. Today, the bill can be up to $7.

Mr Lee Seng Shun, 30, who works at Due Feng Birds & Pets Trading Enterprises in Serangoon North, said that five years ago, about 30 people would buy sparrows before Vesak Day.

Now, only about 20 do so.

'If they tell me they're buying to release them, I won't sell and will tell the customers it's not right to do so,' he said.

Similarly, Ms Angie Chew, a spokesman for the Buddhist Fellowship, said devotees are not encouraged to release animals into parks as it may harm the ecosystem.

'Instead, we will spend Vesak Day cultivating love and peace within ourselves and in the community,' she added.

An NParks spokesman said it is working with volunteers and nature groups on programmes to discourage the release of animals.

shulis@sph.com.sg

Keen to volunteer with NParks? Contact it at nparks_public_affairs@nparks.gov.sg

See also Help stop cruel "Animal Liberation" - volunteers needed
from wild shores of singapore

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Indonesian government ready to facilitate Greenpeace case against Sinar Mas

Antara 8 May 10;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The agriculture ministry is ready to facilitate a meeting between Greenpeace and PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology Tbk. (PT SMART) to clarify issue on environmental destruction by oil palm plantations.

Bayu Krisnamurthi, deputy agriculture minister, said here, Friday, that in a meeting between Greenpeace activists and Agriculture Minister Suswono on Friday, the international environmental NGO said it did not oppose the oil palm plantations in Indonesia.

"They are not against oil palm, but against deforestation activities. They are also against illegal logging activities," Bayu Krisnamurthi said.

Greenpeace also opposed the conversion of peat land which was not in accordance with the government`s regulations, he said.

The deputy minister said Greenpeace in the meeting with the agriculture minister, proposed that oilpalm plantations should be opened in barren land used to be forest area, he said.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Bustar Maitar said Indoensia has one of the fastest rates of forest destruction on the planet, with palm oil and pulp and paper plantations being major causes. As a result, it is now the world`s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, after China and the United States.

To avert catastrophic climate change, he called for an end to deforestation and, to begin with, the government must declare an immediate moratorium on destroying Indonesia`s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands, he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has an ideal foundation to implement his commitment expressed during the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, to forest protection in order to reduce gas emissions, he said.

Greenpeace has recommended an establishment of a global funds to stop deforestation in countries such as Indonesia an Brazil, by requesting advanced countries to invest US$45 billion annually for forest protection.(*)

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Animal welfare in China: Saving the Asiatic bear

A British charity is helping rescue China's abused animals.
Peter Foster, The Telegraph 7 May 10;

If you believe wild animals don't belong in cages, then you would be well advised never to visit a Chinese bear farm: the putrid stink of musk, faeces and urine hits you long before the threshold is reached, but this is scant preparation for what lies behind the doors of a crumbling building in the industrial outskirts of Weihai, a city on China's far eastern coast.

Out of the dinginess stare 10 pairs of mournful brown eyes, each belonging to an Asiatic bear that squats in a cage not much bigger than itself. Lying on a rack of steel bars, sometimes for decades on end, the bears are milked for the bile that is used as a "cure" for everything from hangovers to haemorrhoids by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

They make a truly pitiful sight, but happily this is the day that these bears – there are still estimated to be 10,000 others trapped in bear farms across China – will start a new life. It's all thanks to a British charity, Animals Asia, which has campaigned for almost 20 years to end bile farming.

One by one, the bears are anaesthetised and carried into the daylight to be inspected by Heather Bacon, the charity's chief vet. All are in a miserable condition, with pus and gooey brown bile weeping from infected holes in their abdomens. Many have ingrown claws as a result of scratching nothing but their bodies for years on end.

The rescue team gives each bear a name and a number. There is Monkey, a young female with oversized Minnie Mouse ears whose name is soon prefaced by the word "cheeky" and the menacing Rocky, a massive 280kg specimen who was sent to the farm after killing his zookeeper. He rocks his head back and forth in a demented fashion.

But most pathetic is Oliver, a listless, rheumy-eyed bear with a lion-sized head who is said to be 30 years old. His misshapen legs, stunted by three decades of living in a cage, are grotesquely out of proportion to the enormous bulk of his body.

"He'll need surgery to remove his gall bladder when we get back to the sanctuary," Bacon says as she waits for Oliver to wake from his anaesthetic before being loaded onto the truck, "and we'll have to fix up his teeth, which have been gnawed down to the gums. Given his age and condition, he's definitely a worry."

Ding Wenling, the farm owner's sister, quietly observes. She seems sombre. Will she miss the bears? "Of course we'll miss them," she says. "We've looked after them for the past 10 years. It's no different from losing a pet like a cat or a dog."

Western eyes might find it impossible to square her sentiments with such apparent cruelty, but Ding doesn't see it that way. "When we take the bile, the bears don't feel pain," she says.

It is hard to know if she believes this, but the Chinese don't anthropomorphise animals as Westerners tend to. Campaigners in China insist, however, that even compared to five years ago, public awareness of animal welfare issues is growing.

After some gentle prodding, Oliver wakes from his drug-induced slumbers with a growl like a Harley-Davidson and is loaded onto a truck for a three-day, 1,500-mile drive to the Moon Bear Sanctuary to enjoy whatever time he has left.

The sanctuary in Chengdu, central China, represents the life's ambition of 51-year-old Jill Robinson, a Nottingham-born animal lover who visited a bear farm in 1993 and was so overcome she decided to devote herself to closing down the industry. Nearly 17 years, an MBE and countless conservation awards later, she is at the helm of a charity that raises more than £7 million a year to fund bear rescues like this one, buying out and then shutting down the bear farms, which remain legal in China.

There is a long road ahead. Although the number of bear farms in China has officially dropped from 480 in the Nineties to 68 today, Animals Asia estimates that the total number of bears being farmed may have increased thanks to consolidation of the industry into bigger "super-farms".

Barely 12 hours into our journey Bacon's fears about Oliver's fragile condition are confirmed. After initially eating some fruit he has gone rapidly downhill. He lies on his side drawing heaving breaths, drooling and showing no interest even in the marshmallow treats pushed through the bars of his transit cage. For Robinson, who talks about bears like mothers do of their children, it is a low moment. "He's an old bear and he's had a hard and difficult life, but I think in all probability we're looking at a euthanised bear here," she says. "It just doesn't seem right that he could be so close to freedom and then not make it."

Bacon decides Oliver will die without surgery and the decision is taken to operate. The convoy is diverted to the nearest provincial hospital to borrow a bottle of oxygen needed for the anaesthetic apparatus. Local police provide an escort, sirens wailing.

An hour later, with the truck converted to a Mash-style surgical unit, Bacon is in her scrubs and up to her elbows in Oliver's insides, removing his gall bladder. Against expectations his vital signs stabilise almost immediately after the organ that has caused him so much pain is removed.

The Chinese doctors gather around to watch, marvelling at the state-of-the-art equipment being lavished on a bear that is at the end of his natural lifespan, but Robinson is in no doubt that the time, effort and money is worth it.

"You could ask why we bother with a bear of this age," she says. "But after all he's suffered over the past 30 years, I think we owe it to him to give him his last days in the sun, even if it's not for very long."

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Rising sea levels threaten Taiwan

Benjamin Yeh AFP Google News 9 May 10;

TUNGSHIH, Taiwan — When worshippers built a temple for the goddess Matsu in south Taiwan 300 years ago, they chose a spot they thought would be at a safe remove from the ocean. They did not count on global warming.

Now, as the island faces rising sea levels, the Tungshih township is forced to set up a new temple nearby, elevated by three metres (10 feet) compared with the original site.

"Right now, the temple is flooded pretty much every year," said Tsai Chu-wu, the temple's chief secretary, explaining why the 63-million-dollar project is necessary.

"Once the new temple is completed, we should be able to avoid floods and the threat of the rising sea, at least for many, many years," he said.

The temple of Matsu, ironically often described as the Goddess of the Sea, is only one example of how global warming is slowly, almost imperceptibly piling pressure on Taiwan.

Mountains cover two thirds of Taiwan, but the heart of the island's economy is concentrated in the remaining third, which stretches down the west coast and consists mostly of flat land near sea level.

This part of Taiwan is home to a string of populous cities, several industry zones, three nuclear power plants -- and a petrochemical complex, built in the 1990s by Formosa Plastics Group for over 20 billion US dollars.

And unlike the temple, none of these crucial economic establishments can possibly be lifted, leaving them exposed to the elements.

"If the sea levels keep rising, part of Taiwan's low-lying western part could be submerged," said Wang Chung-ho, an earth scientist at Taiwan's top academic body Academia Sinica.

An influential Taiwan documentary released earlier this year argued the risk to the petrochemical complex was very real. However, a Formosa Plastics official told AFP stringent construction measures meant there was no danger.

Still, environmentalists consider the risk too high to ignore, and they point out that it is compounded by the overpumping of groundwater both for traditional agriculture and for fish farming.

This has caused the groundwater level to fall and land to subside below sea level in some coastal areas, experts warn.

The greatest extent of seawater encroachment has been estimated to be as far as 8.5 kilometres inland with an affected area of about 104 square kilometres (40 square miles) in southern Taiwan's Pingtung county, according to a study co-written by Wang.

Once low-lying areas are routinely invaded by sea water, it is very hard to turn back the tide, analysts warned.

"They may not be restored and become wastelands within 100 years," warned Hsu Tai-wen, the head of the Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering Department of the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan city in the south of Taiwan.

In its 2007 assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations said that due to the global warming, the world's sea level is projected to rise by up to 0.59 metres before the end of this century.

However, Wang was more pessimistic, citing recent findings that greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than previously believed.

"As more records show that the global warming is turning for the worse, we estimate that the sea level would rise by up to two metres before the close of the century, or up to 10 times that of the last century," he said.

The residents of the capital Taipei may be among the first to suffer, due to the risk posed to Tamshui, a town within day-trip distance popular because of its lively and picturesque waterfront.

"The streets of coastal cities like Tamshui would be invaded by saline water," said Wang.

The authorities have started drafting the island's first climate change whitepaper, which aims to come up with comprehensive measures to prevent natural disasters caused by rising temperatures.

Apart from rising sea levels, scientists at Academia Sinica warned late last year that global warming would cause the amount of heavy rain dumped on Taiwan to triple over the next 20 years.

The projection was based on statistics showing the incidence of heavy rainfall has doubled in the past 45 years, which the scientists say has coincided with a global rise in temperatures.

The torrential rains unleashed by a typhoon could burst the Shihmen Dam, a reservoir on a river that flows past Taipei county, where millions of people reside, Wang warned.

The whitepaper draft calls for raising existing coastal embankments, constructing dams, improving conservation of river water and soil upstream, and laying idle some areas reclaimed from the ocean and rivers.

"This should have been done earlier," said Hsu, a member of an academic panel that reviewed the whitepaper.

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Oil spill adds to environment insults on Gulf Coast

Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 8 May 10;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The BP oil spill is the latest in a series of environmental insults to the U.S. Gulf Coast, from wetlands eradication to flood control measures that have starved marshes of new sediment deposits.

WETLANDS CLEARING: Early European settlers cleared coastal swamps and marshes in the Mississippi River delta to control malaria they believed was caused by the fetid air in wetlands. This destroyed coastal wetlands that filter pollution, shelter native species and act as buffers to slow down hurricanes that spawn in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

RIVER CHANNELIZATION: To keep the Mississippi navigable and protect against floods, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channeled the river and built a series of levees along its banks. This prevented the natural variation of the river's course in the lower delta, essentially blocking the formation of new wetlands or the building up of existing wetlands with sediment from the river's vast watershed, which draws from 31 states and two Canadian provinces over 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million square km). Louisiana has lost an estimated 2,000 square miles (5,180 square km) of territory since channelization was authorized in 1928.

SUBSIDENCE AND COMPACTION: Without new sediment deposits to build them up, as would occur if the river followed its natural varying course, coastal wetlands sink and squash down, allowing the salty waters of the Gulf to inundate them. Scientists are looking at this area as a kind of preview of what might happen to other river deltas and low-lying areas if global sea levels rise due to climate change. Species that thrive in marsh or swamp don't necessarily adapt to ocean habitat.

DEAD ZONE: Agricultural chemicals applied to farms throughout the Mississippi watershed flow toward the Gulf of Mexico, and because of the river's channelization, these chemical-laden waters and sediments are shunted away from wetlands and out into the deep Gulf. The nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers have created a recurring summer "dead zone" with oxygen levels so low in parts of the Gulf that few species can survive. The 2009 dead zone extended over about 3,000 square miles (7,770 square km), smaller than the average but more deadly because the hypoxic area was closer to the water's surface.

OIL AND GAS EXTRACTION: Drilling for oil and gas in the lower Mississippi delta can accelerate subsidence and compaction by creating empty underground pockets that are ripe to sink down. The pace of this kind of subsidence has slowed because much of the oil and gas has already been extracted; its peak was in the 1970s. Some engineers believe that the constant stream of heavy vehicles on a single two-lane road that leads to Port Fourchon, Louisiana, which supplies offshore drilling, also contributes to subsidence in the area.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

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China says new global climate deal still far away

David Stanway, Reuters 8 May 10;

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top climate negotiator said on Saturday although progress had been made in negotiations for a new accord to combat global warming, there was still some distance to go before a binding deal could be secured.

At a conference of ministers and environmental organizations in Beijing, Xie Zhenhua, also vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said all sides needed to "strengthen trust" and "deepen cooperation" in order to achieve positive results at the next global climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this year.

"Climate change negotiations have already made gradual progress, but there is still a relatively long way to go to reach a legally binding agreement," Xie said.

He said many developed countries had already committed to reducing emissions after last year's United Nations summit in the Danish capital of Copenhagen but the key issue was still "converting political will into concrete action."

Negotiators from 194 nations will gather in Cancun at the end of the year to try to build on the Copenhagen accord signed last December with the ultimate aim still a legally-binding treaty that will set the tempo for global CO2 cuts over the next decade.

The main stumbling block has remained the issue of "common but differentiated responsibilities," a principle enshrined in the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to recognize the fact that industrialized countries have been responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse emissions blamed for rising global temperatures.

Developing nations have not been obliged to set binding emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, and critics -- particularly in the United States -- claim it gives countries like China a free ride and competitive advantage in world trade.

The first phase of Kyoto is set to expire at the end of 2012, and many have expressed doubt about the prospects of a new deal, especially after the efforts to secure a full and binding agreement at Copenhagen ended in failure.

REALISM

Ministers at the conference said lessons needed to be learned from Copenhagen before a new international accord could be reached by the end of next year, and the key issue was toning down expectations.

"What we are looking for is not a repetition of the same old mistake of putting everything together and expecting a full and comprehensive negotiated result, but actually something that is the only way you can proceed in these negotiations -- which is by incremental progress," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister in charge of climate change talks.

Michael Church, environment minister of Grenada, which represents the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an association of nations vulnerable to rising sea levels, hurricanes and prolonged drought, also called for a more pragmatic approach -- but he suggested there was now too much pessimism as a result of last year's Copenhagen summit.

"What we need to do is to set ourselves some realistic goals and work toward satisfying those goals," he said on the sidelines of the conference. "Cancun is not the end of the world because already we have started talking about continuing negotiations the following year."

"In some quarters, you get the sentiment being expressed that there will be no deal -- it is like reaching a conclusion before you've started."

Groser said a more low-key approach to the negotiations was already yielding results.

"We now have a more politically mature atmosphere, and that is more likely to lead to progress than the razzle-dazzle, showbiz approach (of Copenhagen)," he said.

"Surrounding the delegates with film stars and 40,000 protesters was not conducive to progress."

Smaller nations like Grenada said the Copenhagen talks were scuppered when their bigger counterparts tried to "hijack the whole process" by imposing their own deal, but Church said attitudes had now changed noticeably, and the old conflict between developed and developing nations had eased.

"I have just come from the Petersburg dialogue (in Bonn, Germany) and I believe we have all learnt something from Copenhagen. I think if there is one positive thing that came out of Copenhagen it is emphasizing the need for trust.

"I sensed a different spirit -- a greater willingness to compromise," he said.

(Editing by James Jukwey)

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