Biodiversity for kids during the June holidays!
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
Tue 25 May 2010: 4pm – “Do apes really not get the point of human communicative behaviour?” from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS
‘Leaf’ Me Alone
from My Itchy Fingers
Raffles Museum Treasures: Annandale's rat
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales
Brown-throated Sunbird eating flowers of Hura crepitans
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Should attempts be made to tame wild birds?
from Bird Ecology Study Group
# YES, SAYS NUS STUDY
# NO WAY, SAYS THE GOVERNMENT
Study says country's rapid development took toll on environment but Govt says it's unfair
Victoria Vaughan Straits Times 14 May 10;
A NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) study which ranked Singapore as the worst environmental offender among 179 countries has drawn a sharp response from the Government, but its authors are standing by it.
The study, jointly done by NUS and the University of Adelaide, found that Singapore's headlong rush into developing a modern megalopolis over the last 30 years had taken a terrible toll on its natural environment.
The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, however, has slammed the 16-page paper - which looks at relative environmental impact of countries - for not taking into account the 'unique circumstances of each country'.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, a ministry spokesman said that the study was based on a proportional environmental impact index, which is defined only in terms of total land area.
'As such, countries with limited land size which have high intensity of land use would be necessarily disadvantaged in this proportional index,' said the spokesman.
'Correspondingly, the main indices which contributed to Singapore's poor ranking were contingent on total land area. For example, natural habitat conversion, which is the area of human-modified land divided by total land area, unfairly penalises Singapore's high urban density.'
In response, Professor Corey Bradshaw, 38, director of ecological modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and one of the paper's three authors, was adamant that the data spoke for itself.
'We didn't make it up,' he said. 'It's publicly available data so anyone can look at this.'
The study, which took about three years to complete, was published by peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE.
Professor Navjot Sodhi, 48, from the NUS department of biological sciences and co-author of the paper, said Singapore's rapid development in the last 30 years has seen it lose 90 per cent of its forest, 67 per cent of its birds, about 40 per cent of its mammals and 5 per cent of its amphibians and reptiles.
The study is thought to be the first in the world to adopt a new rating system which looks only at environmental indicators such as forest loss, natural habitat conversion, marine captures, carbon emissions and biodiversity.
As the index focuses on modern environmental impact, it 'ignores some elements of historical degradation such as deforestation in Europe', the authors said in the paper. It therefore 'might penalise developing nations more heavily'.
Although a country like Brazil, for example, has chopped down more rain-forests, Singapore, proportional to its size, has wreaked greater destruction as nearly all its forests have made way for urbanisation, explained Prof Bradshaw.
He added: 'Singapore's development over the last 20 to 30 years has meant that it has done the worst damage to its environment.'
Developing and developed nations such as South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Netherlands were also penalised by the proportional index.
While Singapore fared poorly in terms of proportional environmental impact, it is too small to figure in terms of global or absolute environmental impact. For that, the 10 worst countries are: Brazil, the United States, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.
The authors conceded that Singapore was something of an anomaly as it is a city state, and a fairer comparison would be between it and other cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.
The negative rating is not the first Singapore has received in environmental studies.
The Republic has frequently been cited as having one of the highest per capita carbon emissions globally by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics to the US government, factoring in data such as carbon emissions from bunker fuel, aviation and refining processes.
Latest EIA data taken in 2006 indicated that Singapore emitted 141 million tonnes of carbon emissions, ranking it as the 33rd-highest emitter of greenhouse gases among 215 countries.
Singapore - which adopts a measurement standard that does not include bunker fuel, aviation and refining emissions, which is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines - puts its own carbon emissions figure as 40 million tonnes.
In this year's Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, Singapore did better, coming in 28th with 69.6 points. Iceland fared the best with a score of 93.5 and Sierra Leone came in last with 32.1.
Speaking to leaders at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended Singapore's environmental record, saying it had taken environmental issues seriously since its independence more than 44 years ago.
He said Singapore had recently set a voluntary and domestically funded target to reduce emission growth by 16 per cent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, subject to a globally binding climate change deal.
He described this as 'a substantial commitment which will entail significant economic and social costs'.
Related articles
Animal activists want entry barriers and measurable standards for industry
Kimberly Spykerman, Carolyn Quek & Grace Chua Straits Times 14 May 10;
WITHIN the kennels at Pasir Ris Farmway 2 are thousands of dogs that spend their lives producing puppies, mostly for the 45 pet stores in Singapore.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority's (AVA) count of the number of such breeding dogs: 3,600, up from 2,300 in 2001.
Scattered over 10 licensed dog farms, their welfare is causing concern among animal activists, especially after 75 breeding dogs were abandoned last month when their owner gave up his business.
There has been a boom in the dog breeding business over the years, but the activists say regulations and penalties have not kept pace.
'You get a worse penalty for vandalising a car than for cruelty to animals,' said Mr Ricky Yeo of Action for Singapore Dogs.
Several animal welfare groups and shelters such as Action for Singapore Dogs and Mutts & Mittens met last month to discuss possible solutions to the problem of 'irresponsible' breeders. They want measurable yardsticks for what is considered acceptable breeding conditions and some barriers to entry into the largely unregulated industry.
Only recently has the AVA introduced standards and guidelines.
In 2007, it required all licensed dogs to be microchipped. In the same year, it introduced a grading system so customers know which pet stores are up to the mark. Last year, it published more than 20 guidelines for all pet shops as well as breeding farms to follow, such as providing suitable flooring for all caged animals, among others.
Then from January, it required staff in pet stores and farms to go for training in pet animal management and welfare.
AVA's animal welfare assistant director, Dr Lou Ek Hee, told The Straits Times that dog farms are inspected once every two months. Officers look at the general condition of the farms, size of cages, number of dogs on the premises, cleanliness and ventilation.
The Straits Times observed that in some of the farms' shops, a number of dogs were housed in cages far too small for them, leaving them with no room to turn around. In other cases, two or three dogs were placed in a single cage. This violates the AVA's guidelines for cage sizes.
The farms do not allow casual visitors and customers into the back where breeding dogs are kept.
At some kennels, the stench was overpowering.
While there are just 10 licensed farms, owners can rent out space on their premises to several breeders, charging between $2,600 and $6,000 a month depending on the space leased out.
Breeders do not even have business names; they go by kennel numbers. At Pet Hotel, there are nine kennels housing as many as 100 dogs each advertising the sale of puppies.
Five breeders The Straits Times spoke to said they did not allow customers to look at the conditions in the kennels. When reporters posed as customers, kennel owners were willing to make a sale - with no questions asked about ability of the buyers to care for the animals.
Said one kennel owner: 'I'm a businessman at the end of the day. Screen my customers?'
The going rate for puppies at some kennels is much cheaper than at pet shops. At one kennel, for example, a male chihuahua was being sold for less than $500 without pedigree papers, when the average market price for this breed is at least $1,000.
One kennel owner, however, did say he could provide pedigree papers but at an additional cost.
Activists and vets say some unscrupulous breeders knowingly in-breed the dogs to select for looks or a sweet temperament. What buyers get are sick puppies with genetic problems like arthritis and hip dysplasia.
Veterinarian Cathy Chan said common problems she has treated in breeding dogs are contagious skin diseases like scabies and mange, as well as heartworm and tick fever - diseases that are easily transmitted because of the crowded conditions.
She has even found stitches in the uterus of breeding dogs she sterilised, indicating that they had been impregnated not long after their caesarean sections.
The AVA is hoping that the new requirements on staff training in animal management will arm the breeders with some knowledge on what to do.
The authority rarely punishes errant owners and breeders, preferring to coax or warn them into compliance.
But if it receives complaints from the public about breeders behaving badly and starts investigations, it hopes that the whistle-blowers will testify to what they have seen.
'AVA as the authority cannot just go and take action based on hearsay,' said Dr Lou.
Ultimately, AVA hopes that the industry will be able to regulate itself, as is the practice in countries like Australia, Britain and the United States.
Dr Wong Hon Mun, the agency's deputy director for risk communication, said: 'Essentially, we would like to see industry standards go up and once they up the standards, then they will be in a better position to look into all the things that AVA is looking into, like welfare, and eventually move into self regulation.'
This will take a few years, so the agency has to work with the industry to set standards, he added.
Customers, too, need to step up their game and learn about responsible pet ownership.
'If the consumer makes an effort to be informed, then you'll only go to the farms or shops with good standards. (Those with) bad standards will not be able to carry on...so in this case, this is self-regulation, but by the consumer,' Dr Lou added.
Homes found for nearly half of rescued canines
Grace Chua, Straits Times 14 May 10;
THE dogs rescued from a Pasir Ris kennel last month are putting on the pounds and are happier, say rescuers.
And nearly half of them have already been adopted or fostered out to new homes.
A group of rescuers bought over the adult dogs, of various breeds, after a breeder gave them up, saying he could not manage his dog farm.
Recently, there has been an Internet posting, and an SMS has been making the rounds, stating that the dogs will be put down by May 17 if they are not adopted.
But Mr Derrick Tan, 29, one of the original rescuers, said this was not true.
He said the dogs are housed at a shelter in Pasir Ris, and those who wish to adopt them can visit dogmilllrehomers.blogspot.com or e-mail dogmilllrehomers@hotmail.com for more details.
The site also provides information on the condition of the adopted dogs.
To date, rescuers have amassed about $19,000 in donations through the vet clinic Allpets and Aqualife Vets, and through pet shelter the Mutts and Mittens Foundation. The sum raised will go towards housing, feeding and treating the animals till they find homes.
Previously, Mr Tan and his friends had spent $11,000 to rescue, treat and feed the dogs.
Some have criticised the rescuers for buying over the dogs from the breeder and thus possibly encouraging more such 'dumping' of unwanted dogs.
Responding to this, Mr Tan said: 'If you can save one life, it's a good thing. We changed the lives of 75 dogs.'
If faced with a similar situation now, he said he would do things differently, by informing the authorities first and organising more volunteers to handle emergency care.
'At the time, it was a very urgent situation. If we hadn't made a decision, at least half the dogs would probably have been passed to other breeders,' Mr Tan said.
Or, he added, some of the sicker dogs might have died.
Time to take deterrent action against cruel dog breeders
Straits Times 24 May 10;
THE May 14 feature, 'Good breeding practices urged for dog farms', laid bare the unscrupulous practices of dog breeders on farms.
This was a follow-up to the previously reported case of an owner recently giving up his business and abandoning his 75 breeding dogs.
It is evident that there are breeding farms existing that are substandard when it comes to providing adequate care for their animals, and stronger action and enforcement is necessary to raise the quality of these establishments.
There have been new guidelines and standards introduced by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), including compulsory animal management courses. However, dogs are still enduring extreme suffering because of the indifferent and callous attitudes of dog breeders.
Coaxing or warning errant owners and breeders into compliance instead of prosecuting them has encouraged further abuse in the industry.It goes to show that a mere slap on the wrist is no deterrent to improving the poor conditions.
If standards are not up to the mark, then breeders have to be taken to task and enforcement stepped up.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has for some time been advocating to the AVA the revoking of licences of breeders who are cruel to the animals under their care, because only when stronger penalties are meted out can we hope to see standards improve.
AVA officials say the onus should be on the consumers to make an effort to be informed and people should patronise only farms or shops with good standards (that is, self-regulation by the consumers).
The SPCA is of the opinion that the licensing authority - which has the veterinary expertise and access to the breeding animals - should be the one to urgently raise the industry standards.
In the interest of animal welfare, AVA, as the veterinary authority, has the mandate to ensure the humane treatment of all animals under Section 42, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of the Animals and Birds Act.
It is time to take strong deterrent action when animals are made to suffer.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Officer
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
AVA to take stern action against animal cruelty
Straits Times 10 Jun 10;
I REFER to the letter by Ms Deirdre Moss of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ('Time to take deterrent action against cruel dog breeders'; May 24).
We agree with her that animal cruelty should not be tolerated. To this end, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) does not hesitate to take stern action against anyone found guilty of animal cruelty, which carries a maximum penalty upon conviction of a $10,000 fine and 12 months' imprisonment.
Even in less severe cases where reasonable care and supervision were not provided, the AVA has compounded two dog breeders in the past for the maximum composition sum of $1,000 under the Animals and Birds Act.
Since January, to further enhance standards and competencies of pet shops and dog farms, employees in this industry must undergo a compulsory structured training course in pet animal management and welfare. The AVA will monitor the improvements in the pet industry.
Dog farms must also meet our licensing conditions of having adequate health-care and disease prevention programmes approved by the AVA. These farms employ the services of private veterinarians.
In addition, the AVA conducts regular surveillance and monitoring of pet shops and dog farms. We also carry out surprise inspection visits to dog farms to ensure that animal welfare standards are adhered to. Regulatory action is taken where there is evidence of a breach of conditions. We are also continuously reviewing and improving our regulations.
In addition, we believe in working closely with the industry to continually uplift standards of animal welfare through partnership and education, which is a long-term solution.
At the same time, the public continue to play an important role in encouraging pet shops and dog farms to raise their standards by patronising only the responsible ones. The public should also quickly bring to the attention of the AVA any errant dog farm or pet shop they come across. We thank Ms Moss for her feedback and welcome the SPCA to provide the AVA information on pet shops or farms that are not meeting welfare standards.
Goh Shih Yong
Deputy Director, Media Division
For Chief Executive Officer
Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority
Errant pet farms ply trade despite inspection regime
Straits Times Forum 12 Jun 10;
I REFER to Thursday's letter by Mr Goh Shih Yong of the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, 'AVA to take stern action against animal cruelty'.
Mr Goh said dog farms must meet licensing conditions and disease prevention programmes approved by AVA and that these farms employ the services of private veterinarians. He also said AVA conducts regular surveillance and monitoring of pet shops and dog farms, including surprise inspection checks on farms.
A report published in The Straits Times after a visit to some farms told a different story ('Good breeding practices urged for dog farms'; May 14). The conditions there were appalling and the stench from some of the kennels was unbearable.
The Straits Times also highlighted the case of a dog farm which was bought over by a group of animal lovers from an owner who was obviously overwhelmed by the problems of his farm and sick dogs. Some of these dogs were suffering from heartworm disease. How can such serious conditions go undetected by AVA inspectors and private veterinarians if checks are carried out regularly and vigilantly?
I agree with Mr Goh that educating the public on animal welfare is the way to go. By choosing to patronise only the responsible breeders, the indiscriminate ones will naturally be weeded out. This solution, though effective, takes time. Until then, how many more animals will be made to go through unnecessary pain and suffering?
AVA must hasten improvements to its rules and enforcement actions. Its penalties should deter irresponsible pet traders and breeders from making profit out of animals, rather than serve as just a rap on the knuckles.Mahatma Gandhi once said: 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.'
Chay Whye Peng (Madam)
Recreation use will help us appreciate water sources
Letter from Johnnie Chia Today Online 12 May 10;
IN THE report "PUB drains out message" (May 11), the Public Utilities Board says it intends to create more awareness about not littering the waterways by providing information on which reservoirs the drains are headed to.
Although the objective is laudable, I fear that the move may result in security problems. Since water is a national security issue; why make it easier for terrorists to harm us and our families by feeding them with information on our waterways?
Conversely, the public may not appreciate the link between where the water catchment areas are, and where they get their water from.
From the PUB's example, the Marina Barrage collects water from as far away as Ang Mo Kio. Unless an Ang Mo Kio resident thinks that water from the Marina Barrage will be used by him and his family, he will not really feel the consequences of his negative actions.
Perhaps, we could get a more responsible reaction from the public if the drains and waterways were used for recreation.
Selected drains that are unsuitable to be channelled to water catchment areas can be adapted for water sports, such as canoeing.
The surrounding areas could be turned into picnic spots with barbecue facilities. Flowering plants could also be grown along such waterways.
Such usage would allow us to share responsibility and recognise the importance of keeping our drains litter-free.
Our reservoirs start from drains: PUB
Letter from Yap Kheng Guan Vice-President, Divisional Services Director, 3P Network, PUB
Today Online 14 May 10;
PUB, the national water agency, thanks Mr Johnnie Chia for his feedback "Let's go canoeing - in our drains" (May 12).
Rainwater which falls in our drains and canals are channelled into the reservoirs, the source of our water supply. This means our reservoirs start from the drains.
Through the colourful drain cover stickers, PUB hopes to drive home the importance of keeping our drains clean. Even though technology enables us to treat the water to drinking water standards, we want to keep the waters clean so all of us can enjoy active and beautiful waters. This is especially important as two-thirds of Singapore will become water catchment areas next year.
We would like to assure Mr Chia that PUB has put in place a stringent water quality monitoring system to assess and ensure that our water meets the World Health Organisation's Drinking Water Guidelines.
More than 80,000 tests are conducted monthly, based on more than 290 parameters. In addition, representative water samples are taken daily from the distribution network and customers' taps at different locations throughout the island and tests are done to ensure that our water supply is of good quality and meets WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality.
Like Mr Chia, we want more Singaporeans to develop a relationship with water, bond with it and take greater ownership of the reservoirs. Since 2004, PUB has worked with sports organisations to introduce watersports such as canoeing, kayaking and sailing at selected reservoirs. Under PUB's Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters programme, PUB is also transforming our utilitarian drains, canals and reservoirs into beautiful, vibrant and sparkling streams, rivers and lakes.
Three projects have been completed at Kolam Ayer, Bedok Reservoir and MacRitchie Reservoir, creating new postcard-pretty community spaces offering a host of recreational options for everyone to enjoy.
More information on the various ABC Waters projects being carried out across Singapore can be found at www.pub.gov.sg/abcwaters. The public is also welcome to provide feedback by contacting our 24-hour call centre at 1800-284 6600.
Sivaramakrishnan Parameswaran, BBC Tamil Service 13 May 10;
A new species of "brightly coloured frog" has been discovered in a remote peak in the southern part of India, scientists have told BBC News.
This reddish orange amphibian, spotted in the Eravaikulam National Park of the Western Ghats mountain range, has been named Raorchestes resplendens.
The scientists found the frog at an altitude of 2698m above sea level on the Anaimudi peak.
It inhabits a very small area of less than three square kilometres.
The discovery was made by a team of scientists including Dr S D Biju, from the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Delhi.
His collaborators were Yogesh Shouche of the National Centre for Cell Sciences in Pune; S Dutta from North Orissa University, Franky Bossuyt of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and Alain Dubois of the France-based organisation Reptiles et Amphibians.
The frog was initially identified back in 2001. Dr Biju, who led the authentication study, explained that it took almost a decade to show, via careful study of its anatomy and genome, that this brilliantly coloured specimen was in fact a new species.
"This new species of frog has got extremely short limbs and multiple glands and swellings almost like a toad," Dr Biju told BBC News.
The species is a unique new member of the tree frog group, he explained. It is the only tree frog to have what the researchers call "macro glands".
Mysterious glands
The purpose of these glands is uncertain, and the scientists are now carrying out further studies of their role and function.
The team's first step in confirming the frog as a news species was to study its breeding behaviour, comparing it to more than 200 species of frogs living in South East Asia.
"This took almost seven years," said Dr Biju.
Molecular labelling techniques were also used to distinguish this species from the other varieties.
The team also made the genome map of the new specimen available via the International Gene Bank, so it could be verified and studied further by other researchers.
Tribute to a pioneer
In naming the newly discovered species Raorchestes resplendens, the scientists have paid tribute to a pioneer in the field of herpetology - the study of amphibians.
Franky Bossuyt, a member of the team chose the first part of the name in honour of late Professor C R Narayan Rao, a herpetologist who was internationally renowned for his contribution to the study of amphibians in India.
The second part, resplendens, comes from the Latin word meaning brilliantly coloured or glittering and is based on the bright reddish-orange colouration of the frog's body.
According to the observations made by the scientists, females of the new species may mate with multiple males and possibly breed more than once in a single season.
The tree frog also has extremely short limbs. "[These] have resulted in a much more pronounced crawling behaviour," said the researchers.
The scientists also observed that the frog buried its eggs under the moss-covered forest floor, deep inside the base of bamboo clumps.
Tiny habitat
These frogs may be represent a classic example of "point endemism" in amphibians, says Dr Biju. This means that the species lives in a very limited range of environmental conditions, making it very vulnerable to extinction.
The team say that fewer than one thousand of these frogs survive in a unique ecosystem that is less than three square kilometres in size.
Its habitat will require "special attention" in order to conserve the species, says the team.
About one third the world's amphibians are under threat from extinction. Habitat destruction due to human activity identified as a primary cause of their numbers being so drastically reduced.
TRAFFIC 13 May 10;
"Don't buy trouble" posters will be on display around Noi Bai airport in Viet Nam until May 2011 to remind travellers to think twice before purchasing protected wildlife Click photo to enlarge © TRAFFIC 13 May 2010, Ha Noi—Members of the Vietnamese Government, environmental enforcement agencies, conservation NGOs, airport authorities and national media outlets gathered this week for the launch of a new anti-wildlife trafficking campaign at the Noi Bai airport in Ha Noi.
The “Don’t Buy Trouble” campaign consists of 15 evocative posters of some of Viet Nam’s most common illegally traded species, including Tiger, bears, elephant, rhinoceros, marine turtles, and pangolins (scaly anteaters). The posters warn that such species are protected by law and the trade in their products could result in fines and/or prosecution.
Also included in the exhibit is a permanent glass case display in the departures area, which will allow passengers waiting for flights to peruse information on wildlife trade in the region and see replicas of comonly encountered illegal wildlife products.
“Raising awareness among travellers regarding wildlife protection laws will be essential in halting the illegal and unsustainable trade that is pushing many species towards extinction in Viet Nam and across Southeast Asia,” said Mr Phạm Văn Linh, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee for Communications and Education (CCCE), an advising agency to the Communist Party of Viet Nam and the lead organizer of the airport campaign.
Wildlife is commonly trafficked through airports worldwide, which also makes this transport hub a good place to educate people about the problem. Viet Nam, like other countries in South-East Asia, has developed in recent years as a source, consumer, and conduit for illegally traded wildlife products, with networks stretching worldwide. Noi Bai is Viet Nam’s largest international airport in the north, serving nearly 4 million passengers annually, and was chosen as a prime location in the battle against the regional illicit wildlife trade.
The “Don’t Buy Trouble” campaign was first introduced in India at New Delhi’s domestic and international airports.
“Bringing this successful campaign to Ha Noi will highlight the global nature of wildlife trafficking and demonstrate that Viet Nam is serious about halting this crime,” said Tom Osborn, Co-ordinator of the Greater Mekong Programme of TRAFFIC. TRAFFIC is providing technical advice for the airport exhibit.
Joining CCCE as the lead government organizer is the Ministry of Transportation, with assistance from TRAFFIC, WWF, Northern Airports Corporation, the Forest Protection Department, Environmental Police.
The campaign is funded by DANIDA and Intrepid Travel and designed by Galaxy Creative. The exhibit is one activity under a four-year Wildlife Trade Campaign funded by the Embassy of Denmark and led by TRAFFIC and WWF that aims to raise awareness and change consumer behaviour regarding wildlife consumption.
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Morgan, Communications Officer, TRAFFIC Greater Mekong Programme Tel. +84 4 3726 1575 Ext 204, E-mail: smorgan@traffic.netnam.vn
Bangkok Post 14 May 10;
Thirty animal and plant species at risk of extinction have been listed with the environmental protection agency.
The species listed include 20 animals and 10 plants such as the black-necked stork, Thai giant soft shell, Irrawaddy dolphin, hornbills, Asian elephants, Eld's deer, tigers, sea turtles, water lily, and Sangyod, a native rice strain.
The Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (Onep) made the inventory to mark the International Year of Biodiversity.
Onep secretary-general Mingquan Wichayarangsaridh said Thailand, which had already signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, had to a fulfil biodiversity conservation mission.
"The listed species are at risk of extinction and we already have a plan to increase their populations, or reduce the rate of loss. We will present the result of plant and animal protection at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil [this year]," she said.
Yahoo News 13 May 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Global warming could kill off as many as a fifth of the world's lizards by 2080, with potentially devastating consequences for ecosystems around the world, a study released Thursday said.
Researchers who conducted a major survey of lizard populations worldwide said in a study published in the May 14th issue of Science that lizards appear to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change and are dying off at an alarming rate.
The loss of the lizard populations could wreak havoc with ecosystems in which they are a crucial part of the food chain, since they are important prey for many birds, snakes, and voracious predators of insects.
The biologists in the study ruled out factors other than global warming as being responsible for the rapid decrease in the lizard population.
"We did a lot of work on the ground to validate the model and show that the extinctions are the result of climate change," said Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
"None of these are due to habitat loss. These sites are not disturbed in any way, and most of them are in national parks or other protected areas," he said.
The scientists worked up models based on predicted probabilities of local extinction showing the likelihood of species extinction was estimated to be six percent by 2050 and 20 percent by 2080.
Earlier models, they said, have accurately predicted the extinctions of lizard population on five continents around the world.
The researchers said they first noted the disappearance of lizard populations in France and later in Mexico, where 12 percent of lizard populations are thought to have died out.
Although generally thought to be sun-loving creatures, higher temperatures have proved to be too much for many lizard species, causing them to restrict their activity, including limiting their efforts to find food.
Villanova University professor Aaron Bauer, who specializes in African lizards, said scientists are engaged in a race against time to find and document research on the endangered amphibians.
"In many parts of the world, lizards are almost certainly going extinct due to climate change before their very existence is known to biologists," he said.
Lizards Face Extinction From Global Warming: Study
Mica Rosenberg, Reuters 14 May 10;
Lizards are in danger of dying out on a large scale as rising global temperatures force them to spend more time staying cool in the shade and less time tending to basic needs like eating and mating.
Scientists warn in a research paper published on Thursday that if the planet continues to heat up at current rates, 20 percent of all lizard species could go extinct by 2080.
"The numbers are actually pretty scary," said lead researcher Barry Sinervo from the University of California Santa Cruz. "We've got to try to limit climate change impacts right now or we are sending a whole bunch of species into oblivion."
A mass extinction of lizards, which eat insects and are eaten by birds, could have devastating effects up and down the food chain, but the extent is difficult to predict.
Sinervo made models of lizards with thermal monitors and left them in the searing sun of southern Mexico to measure how the reptiles would react to temperatures at different altitudes.
Lizards bask in the sun not to relax but for self-preservation. As "ectotherms" they depend on the external environment to control their body temperature.
Unlike mammals, when the reptiles overheat they cannot sweat or pant and they have to retreat to the shade or burrow under a rock to cool down.
This biological quirk has already led to the extinction of 5 percent of lizard populations around the world, Sinervo said, as the creatures spend more time scrambling to find shade and less time doing what they need to do to survive.
"(Temperatures are rising) too fast. Evolution can't keep up," said Jack Sites, a herpetologist at Brigham Young University who collaborated with Sinervo's research.
HIGHER GROUND
Lizards come out during the day to warm up and use the time to find food needed to breed.
"The warming temperatures sort of eclipse that activity period ... It gets too hot to forage and they have to go back," said Sites.
"So they don't die directly but they can't reproduce. It only takes a couple of generations of that and the population is going to spiral downward until it goes extinct."
Elizabeth Bastiaans, a doctoral student in Sinervo's lab, started studying lizards in a wilderness outside Mexico City near the Aztec pyramids of Teotihuacan where tourists huff and puff up hundreds of stairs in the blazing sun.
"I've been out there doing a lot of sampling over the past few years and you see the lizards in the morning and you see them in the evening. But in the hottest part of day, it's just too hot, you don't see them at all," Bastiaans said.
Some of the spiny lizards with blue bellies she studies went extinct at lower, warmer altitudes. Some moved to higher, cooler ground but, as temperatures continue to rise, that habitat is shrinking.
"If the climate continues to warm, they are going to get pushed off the top of the mountains," Bastiaans said. "There is only so much mountain they can climb."
(Editing by Maggie Fox and John O'Callaghan)
Rising global temperatures cooking lots of lizards
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Yahoo News 13 May 10;
WASHINGTON – Sometimes it can be too darn hot even for a lizard.
Cold-blooded creatures that have to soak up the rays to get going might seem like the last animals you would expect to be threatened by global warming.
Well, you would be wrong, researchers say.
It turns out lizards are going extinct in many places, and scientists who have studied them say it's because of rising temperatures. The heats affects reproduction.
"The results were clear. These lizards need to bask in the sun to warm up, but if it gets too hot they have to retreat into the shade, and then they can't hunt for food," said Barry Sinervo of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
He said he was "stunned and saddened" by the finding, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"This is an extinction alert for all areas of the globe and for all the various species of lizards," Sinervo said.
Lizards are an important part of the food chain because they are major consumers of insects and in turn are eaten by birds, snakes and other animals.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Sinervo said. "It heralds that we have entered a new age, the age of climate-forced extinctions. Extinctions are not in the future. They are happening now."
In Mexico's Yucatan region, scientists found that the time lizards could be out foraging had disappeared. "They would barely have been able to emerge to bask before having to retreat," Sinervo said.
Jack Sites, a biology professor at Brigham Young University, said high temperatures during the reproductive cycle prevent the animals from eating enough to have the energy to support a clutch of eggs or embryos.
"The heat doesn't kill them. They just don't reproduce," he said. "It doesn't take too much of that and the population starts to crash."
According to Sinervo, the extinctions are concentrated in what biologists call hot spots of biodiversity, where there are lots of species.
This includes locations in Mexico, where a large number of species have evolved in the different volcanic mountain ranges. He said there also are massive extinctions occurring in the Amazonian Basin and equatorial Africa, though researchers don't know the magnitude because not all the species have been described from these areas.
In Madagascar, the Indian Ocean island off the southeastern coast of Africa, the estimate is that one-fifth of all the local lizard populations are now extinct, Sinervo said. "This will surely have driven some endemic species to the brink of extinction, if not over the precipice," he said in an interview via e-mail.
Sinervo was doing field work in France when he noticed a decline among lizards. While resurveying areas that had been studied in the 1990s, it became clear that lizards were gone from some spots — levels of 30 percent extinction across southern Europe, for example.
He and French researchers contacted colleagues around the world and found similar trends in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere.
"I was surprised at how fast researchers began sending us data," he said. "That's what happens though. When scientists see a problem, with global evidence backing it, they come together."
Funders of the research included the National Geographic Society, University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States; University of California, Santa Cruz; U.S. National Science Foundation; University of Paris; University of Toulouse; National Council on Science and Technology of Mexico; National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina; Academy of Finland; National Autonomous University of Mexico; American Museum of Natural History; Australian Research Council; and Brigham Young University.
Bernama 13 May 10;
KOTA KINABALU, May 13 (Bernama) -- The Department of Environment (DoE) is expected to take three months to study the environmental impact assessment report on the proposed coal-fired power plant project in Lahad Datu.
Lahad Datu Energy Sdn Bhd's director Ahmad Faraid Mohd Yahaya said as the project's terms of reference had been completed, the report was expected to be handed to a special committee under the department before end of this month.
"The public, including Felda Sahabat settlers, were given the opportunity to give their feedback for the environmental impact assessment report," Ahmad Faraid said.
"We will gather comments from community representatives and then go back to the DoE for feedback before a final decision is made," he said at a briefing for community leaders of the Likas area here Thursday.
Lahad Datu Energy, which is supporting the project, is a joint venture company of Tenaga Nasional Bhd and several private companies, including state-owned companies.
The 300-megawatt power station project in Felda Sahabat is intended to meet the shortage of electricity supply in the east coast area but has been opposed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerned over the environmental impact.
Lahad Datu Energy has appointed experts from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Sabah to carry out the environmental impact assessment, covering aspects such as the effect on the health of residents, marine life, land animals, forest reserves and pollution.
According to Ahmad Faraid, DoE approval will only be given if the environmental impact assessment report showed that the project has fulfilled the conditions laid down by the department.
DoE authorities will also monitor the project throughout the implementation, he said.
Ahmad Faraid said the proposed project site was in a 69-hectare palm oil estate in Kg Sinakut, Felda Sahabat 16.
"The implementation needs 40 months and if approved, the first unit is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2013 and the second unit in 2014," he said.
-- BERNAMA
Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 14 May 10;
Forests have a growing value as a result of climate policies, but the complexity of carbon markets coupled with the effects of the financial crisis are deterring investment, investors and analysts said in London on Thursday.
In plantation forests, new demand for wood to generate low-carbon renewable power generation to replace fossil fuels is adding to traditional pulp and paper demand, potentially fuelling values.
For managers of natural and virgin forests, new carbon markets to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) are emerging to pay owners not to chop down trees.
But investors said they were deterred by the complexity of those new markets, and were wary of making investments in plantation forests for bio-energy.
"We see potential in the REDD process, but from an investor perspective it's difficult to make a convincing case right now," said Marko Katila, a partner at Finland-based timber fund Dasos Capital, which raises money from institutional investors.
"Our fund right now is not looking seriously at these types of investments," he added, referring to payments for not chopping natural forests, speaking on the sidelines of an Environmental Finance forestry conference in London.
COMPLICATED
Discussions on REDD are part of stalled U.N. climate talks, and are complicated by issues of how to measure carbon savings from reduced deforestation.
"Frankly the discussions are not progressing at all," said Pedro Costa, co-founder and former president at carbon offset company EcoSecurities, and now at Oxford-based E2 Advisors.
"I find it extremely unlikely that REDD will favor any individual investment at least in the short-term, if ever. It's hellishly complicated."
Costa was focused on projects in the Brazilian Amazon, where he said philanthropic capital may be drawn by returns to investments in sustainable forestry, including a combination of selective logging and conservation.
A draft U.S. climate bill unveiled on Wednesday may boost forest carbon markets, however, proposing to allow foresters and farmers to earn tradable carbon offsets from emissions cuts they make in the United States.
The American Power Act also recognized payments for avoided deforestation, or REDD, in developing countries, but experts said the draft bill had little chance of passing Congress this year.
Low-carbon energy targets in the Europe Union are fuelling demand for wood chips from plantation forests, or careful, selective thinning of natural forests.
Britain's Helius Energy, for example, recently won planning consent for a power plant which it said, if built, would consume the equivalent of 8 percent of Britain's total annual tree cut.
"It looks like there'll be a massive demand for biomass products," said Helius feedstock director Daniel Davidson.
Investors were still wary of funding new plantation forests, said Dasos Capital's Marko Katila.
That reluctance reflected the long cycle of forest investments, which were largely up-front, making these rather illiquid and more difficult to justify against a backdrop of financial uncertainty.
"Since the financial crisis it has been difficult to sell something very illiquid," Katila said.
(Editing by James Jukwey)
Ruben Sario, The Star 14 May 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Oil palm industry players here are being asked to create forest corridors to enable wildlife such as orang utan and Borneo pygmy elephants to move within their habitats.
State NGO Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) officials will be meeting members of the East Malaysia Planters Association, Malaysian Palm Oil Council and Malaysian Palm Oil Board to seek their help.
(The Sabah government was instrumental in setting up BCT four years ago to preserve the habitat and migration route of Borneo’s wildlife, especially along the Kinabatangan and Segama rivers.)
Newly appointed chairman Tan Sri Ibrahim Menuddin said the BCT had so far acquired 20ha of alienated land at a cost of nearly RM600,000 from donations for the creation of the forest corridors.
Speaking after chairing the BCT board meeting here yesterday, he said the BCT was encouraged by a plantation’s move to set aside 1,000ha of riverine land near the Tabin Wildlife Reserve and rehabilitate the area by planting it with jungle fruit trees for the benefit of wildlife there.
Ibrahim said it was helpful to have prominent oil palm players, such as TSH Resources Bhd chief executive Datuk Kelvin Tan and Wilmar International Ltd group head Jeremy Goon, on the BCT board.
“We want to show the world that oil palm plantations and wildlife can co-exist side by side,” he said.
The long-term goal of BCT was to get some 13,000ha of land to be converted into forest corridors, said Ibrahim, who is Suria Capital Bhd chairman.
Others on the board are Japanese businessman Yasuke Saraya, Sabah Forest Department director Datuk Sam Mannan and state Wildlife Department Laurentius Ambu.
Bengkulu offers biodiversity project
Antara 13 May 10;
Bengkulu, Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Bengkulu has offered a biodiversity project to the world in order to get compensation funds, according to a local official.
The biodiversity project covering 15,000 hectares of forest area, is located in Mukomuko District, Bengkulu Province, Khairil Burhan, head of the Bengkulu provincial forestry office, said, here, Thursday.
The project being implemented by Sipef foundation has been offered internationally since two years ago, he said. The Sipef foundation was set up by a Belgian plantation company which owns majority shares of PT Agro Muko, an oilpalm plantation and crude palm oil processing company in Mukomuko District.
The Sipef foundation has been ready to financially support the preservation of biodiversity in Mukomuko for a 10-year period, according to Burhan.
"The budget has been allocated and is ready to be disbursed for the preservation of biodiversity after all prerequisites have been met," he said.
Based on a report of the Sipef foundation, the activities would be implemented from 2010 until 2014.
The Mukomuko authorities have also made an inventory of biodiversity in the location of the biodiversity project and prepared a master plan with the assistance of David Gaveau, a French conservationist who has been researching Sumatran forests, especially the South Bukit Barisan National Park, for tens of years. (*)
Fidelis E Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 13 May 10;
Officials in Sumatra who plan to engage in forest conversion activities need to check their proposals against a new set of guidelines specifically aimed at preserving the region’s ecosystem, the Ministry of Forestry said this week.
During Tuesday’s introduction of these guidelines, called The Road Map for Saving the Sumatra Ecosystem: Sumatra’s Vision 2020, key government agencies were joined by all 10 provincial governors of Sumatra and agreed to be more vigilant about saving the island’s ecosystem.
“I know that all the governors have shown their commitment to consider this road map into spatial planning. It will only make our job easier,” Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said.
If any provincial official would come forward with a proposal that had the potential to harm the environment, such as displacing elephant and tigers from their natural habitats to give way to plantations, Zulkifli said, such plans would immediately be rejected. “We will check the guidelines to ensure that some areas will not be converted for any such purpose,” he said.
For their first project, the governors chose Bukit Barisan, a 1,700-kilometer mountain range that runs the entire length of Sumatra, to carry out the environment road map.
Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said the regulations were drafted with respect to the region’s spatial planning, so that territorial boundaries would not overlap. He added that similar plans were being prepared for Kalimantan, Java and Sulawesi.
Emil Salim, an adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the environment and sustainable development, said local governments needed to be monitored in order for ecosystem-based spatial planning to work.
At the national level, Emil added, ministries were continually engaged in dialogue, but such concern was not seen on the local level.
“The road map is definitely a good idea, because it shows the governors’ initiative in terms of saving Sumatra’s natural resources,” Emil said.
“However, it must not end there. The challenge is to be able to enforce these guidelines on the lower administrative levels.”
Hermien Roosita, deputy minister for spatial planning and pollution-control management at the State Ministry for the Environment, said such a task needed time to accomplish.
“At the beginning, we had problems including [lower-level administrative officials] in discussions, but we changed our approach,” Hermien said.
“We started reaching out to three regions first, then everything went more smoothly from there.”
Besides the Forestry Ministry, representatives of the State Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Public Works also attended Tuesday’s conference.
The Sumatra ecosystem road map was declared on Sept. 18, 2008, and was officially published at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in October 2009.
Tan Ee Lyn, PlanetArk 14 May 10;
A once minor pest has ravaged fruit orchards and cotton fields in China after farmers stopped spraying insecticide in crops of a genetically-modified type of cotton resistant to bollworms, experts said.
China started growing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton in 1997 because it gave better yields and stood up to bollworms, but a key fallout has been a thriving population of mirid bugs, which were earlier just an insignificant pest.
"Entire swathes of agricultural land that never had any problem with this pest are facing a major problem," said Kongming Wu at the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests in Beijing.
The bug had infested plantations of apples, strawberries, pears, peaches and vegetables, Wu told Reuters by telephone, adding that the problem emerged after regular insecticide spraying had been halted.
"Bollworms love to go to cotton fields in June," he said. "So when we were cultivating normal cotton in the past, we would spray insecticides every June. That meant every June, other pests were also eradicated.
"After we started cultivating Bt cotton, we no longer needed to spray insecticides. That's why other pests like the mirid bug are thriving in cotton fields and have become a major pest."
In a paper published in the journal Science on Friday, Wu and his colleagues said they began monitoring cotton fields and fruit orchards in six major cotton-growing provinces in northern China -- Anhui, Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong and Shanxi -- in 1997.
The study covered 3 million hectares of cotton and 26 million hectares of other crops grown by more than 10 million farmers.
As mirid bugs eat a wide variety of plants, the researchers warned the pest was emerging as a threat to other crops for the first time.
"Before 1997, it was never a problem. It couldn't even be seen and we needn't guard against it. Now we have to spray insecticide every year to fight it," Wu said.
"In fact, from 2000, the problem was already seen in cotton fields, and from 2005 was seen in other cultivated land."
The findings show how controlling one pest can trigger the spread of others, the scientists said, urging the need to study such scenarios before adopting large-scale farming strategies.
"We have to develop a centralized system to control it," Wu said. "We have to study the whole ecosystem."
(Editing by Chris Lewis and Clarence Fernandez)
Rachel Kaufman National Geographic News 11 May 10;
In the past 20 years we've traded pagers for smart phones and library cards for Kindles. But the joint federal-industry task force charged with responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is still using cleanup methods that haven't changed much since the days of the Exxon Valdez.
Nearly four million gallons of oil have already spewed into the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank last month.
Amid efforts to cap the seafloor leak, cleanup workers have been using boat-based skimmers to pick up the oil, booms to gather the slick for burning, and chemical dispersants to break the crude into smaller droplets—all parts of the oil-fighting toolkit for decades.
But options for cleaning up oily disasters may soon be more cutting-edge. New sponges, microbes, and chemicals are in development that could change the ways we respond to oil spills.
1. Sponges to Sop Up Oil Spills
Matt Gawryla was a graduate student at Case Western University when his lab professor presented him with a challenge: Make something of "a fluffy pile" sitting on a lab workstation, Gawryla said.
By the time Gawryla graduated, that fluffy pile had become AeroClay, a "sponge" made of clay and plastic that absorbs oil from water, but leaves the water behind.
Theoretically, enough of the material could soak up all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico spill, and the oil would still be usable. Other cleanup methods, such as skimmers, collect even more water than oil, making the crude too diluted to be useful. (See aerial pictures of the oil spill cleanup.)
AeroClay, Inc., a startup formed to turn the oil-sopper from prototype to reality, should have the sponge on the market within five years, said Torrey Glass, the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Until then, Gawryla and colleagues are tweaking the formula to determine the best shape and size for the sponge, making sure it works reliably outside the lab.
The team is considering solid blocks of the stuff or smaller pellets inside "pillows," depending on which form is easier to wring the oil from. Either option would be reusable.
"It's frustrating to all of us," marketing manager Glass added, "because we wish we had this thing commercialized today."
2. Oil-Eating Superbugs
Some microbes naturally break down petroleum, so several companies are working on oil-munching superbugs, which have been genetically altered to devour a spill more efficiently. (See "Nature Fighting Back Against Gulf Oil Spill.")
But the plan can't work—yet, said Terry Hazen, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
"A lot of companies are saying they have 'magic bugs' that have the ability to degrade all types of oil," he said. But "a lot of the bacteria are grown in high-nutrient conditions in the lab."
When the bugs are added to the salty, lower-nutrient environment of the ocean or coastline, "they die immediately," he said.
Other research is looking at bacteria that already live in ocean conditions but don't naturally crave crude.
"It's technically possible that we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage"—a virus that infects bacteria—to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil, Hazen said
Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live, so the superbugs could be killed off after they'd done their jobs.
3. Herding Chemicals to "Fatten" the Spill for Burning
Chemical herding agents have been around since the 1970s to round up oil spills, making the stuff easier to remove—usually via burning. These agents force the oil slick to contract, the same way a drop of dish soap in a wet, greasy pan forces the grease to the edges.
As oil spills shrink in surface area, they get thicker—growing from about a millimeter (0.04 inch) to 6 millimeters (0.24 inch), said Ian Buist, director and senior engineer at SL Ross Environmental Research, a spill-control consulting firm.
This contraction makes for more efficient burn-offs: The thicker a spill is before it's burned, the more oil gets removed.
Future herders—silicon-based surfactants called superwetters—would be able to corral even more oil than traditional versions, making the process more efficient, Buist said.
Still, experts caution that even when high-tech cleaners become available, oil-spill response will continue to be a messy, hard job. That means spill prevention, not damage control, should always be a top priority.
Once a spill is in the ecosystem, Buist said, "there is no magic powder that makes oil go away."
Straits Times 14 May 10;
A FAILURE to reach global agreement on climate change could threaten international trade regimes, visiting World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief economist Patrick Low warned yesterday.
This could happen when governments, especially in more developed nations, respond to domestic demands and pressure from environmentalists by introducing measures like taxes on firms with high carbon emission levels and their products.
But the concern among such governments is that their products would become more costly, and that foreign investment would flow instead to economies that were 'less green'.
Dr Low explained that in order to remain competitive, these countries would then resort to imposing a tax on imports based on the carbon emission levels during the manufacturing process.
'Such moves are deemed to be unfriendly and contentious, which could spark retaliatory actions and lead to a downward spiral in trade,' he said here.
The solution is to get enough governments to accept that climate change is a real problem that needs to be tackled urgently, he added.
He was speaking on the relationship between climate change and international trade at the inaugural Distinguished Speaker Series of the Centre for International Law. The research centre, under the National University of Singapore, focuses on transboundary legal issues.
During the lecture, which drew 40 academics, students and government officials, he said trade wars could lead to tensions and scuttle cooperation on climate change.
Last December's global summit on climate change in Copenhagen succeeded in 'blurring the lines' between developed and developing countries on their responsibilities towards the challenge, he noted.
He also fielded questions, including one on whether the ability to afford and use environmentally friendly technology would lead to a new divide between rich and poor countries.
Agreeing, Dr Low said what had to be done was for developed nations to share the fruits of their research and development in green technology with developing nations.
On whether the WTO should take on the task of coordinating international efforts on climate change, he said this would be stretching the agency beyond its competencies. The United Nations currently oversees this and he said it would be difficult to see an alternative institution taking on the role.
'Perhaps parallel activities among governments most implicated in climate change could be a supplement to the UN,' he said.
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