Best of our wild blogs: 1 Aug 10

Life History of the Common Sailor
from Butterflies of Singapore

What have I been up to?
from Psychedelic Nature

Oriental Pied Hornbill eats Leucaena and Moringa seeds?
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Tiger orchids, Otters on Orchard Road and Tree Weeds
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

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Sabah stops export of endangered humphead wrasse fish

Daily Express 31 Jul 10;

Kota Kinabalu: Forty-five juvenile humphead wrasse - one of the most desirable fish in the world because of its delicious flavour and texture - were released to various reefs in Tunku Abdul Rahman Park Friday morning, aimed at restocking its rapidly declining wild population in Sabah.

Wildly over-fished, the humphead wrasse was one of the first fish to be listed as "endangered species" under IUCN in 2004.

The latest releases were excess tails bought from cage live reef fish traders around Sabah under a "buy back" programme funded by USAID Coral Triangle Support Partnership that include the Department of Fisheries Sabah, Sabah Parks, UMS and WWF.

The "buy back" programme was initiated to support a total export ban imposed on the fish since January 1 this year, said Datuk Haji Ujang Sulani, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry .

The fish is not only good to eat but ecologically vital for guarding the health of coral reefs, noted Dr Arun Venkataraman, Conservation Director of WWF-Malaysia.

"As one of the few ecologically critical top predator fish of crown-of-thorns starfish that feeds on corals and can destroy coral reefs, it reduces stress from the crown-of-thorns and therefore it is important in maintaining healthy and resilient reefs," noted Dr Arun.

In addition, although reefs are naturally resilient, they need this help to recover from the combined threats of pollution and bleaching related to climate change.

On the significance of the event, Sabah Parks Director, Paul Basintal, cited the "royal" of "stately" tag given to the wrasse otherwise known locally as "mameng."

"The humphead wrasse is one of the most spectacular sights in the ocean but if it is not protected across its range the species may be forced into extinction.

"Overall, the population status of the mameng is a 'disheartening' one because it is already extinct in a lot of reefs in Southeast Asia but Sabah is 'very fortunate' that there are still some fragmented populations in its coastal waters," said Sulani whose speech was read out by Rayner Stuel Galid, Director of Fisheries Sabah.

To date, a total of 812 humphead wrasse have been released into undisclosed protected areas across Sabah.

UMS's role is in tagging and taking DNA samples of the released humphead wrasses for later population monitoring, culture and analysis, said Dr Arun.

"In the future, we hope the population of humphead wrasse will become robust enough to allow it to be fished sustainably for the Live Reef Fish Trade throughout Sabah, in addition to within the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion and at the Apex of the Coral Triangle." Dr Arun said.

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Polluted rivers depriving livelihood of riverine residents in Baram

Stephen Then The Star 31 Jul 10;

AT ONE time the lagoons and river tributaries in the Baram hinterland were full of fishes that longhouse folk need to spend only a few hours fishing. They can catch enough not only for the day’s meal but some extras to sell for additional income.

The situation today, however, is a far cry from those bountiful days - no thanks to the increasingly polluted rivers now due to effluents discharged from the nearby plantations and also soil erosion caused by logging projects.

The pollution is slowly killing the river with the fish population said to be greatly reducing in numbers with some species either extinct or on the verge of extinction.

StarMetro recently visited several riverine settlements along the tributaries and banks of the Baram River in Marudi district, after hearing numerous complaints from the Baram folk, claiming that they were badly affected by river pollutants coming from both the oil palm plantations and logging activities.

A one-hour boat ride along the Baram River, its tributary Sungai Tarak and a lagoon Lubuk Aman, found numerous areas where the river channels had turned blackish in colour.

These channels were said to be coming out from huge plantations located along the river banks.

Along these banks are dozens of riverine longhouses, populated by dozens of families in each settlement.

StarMetro while on the trip also chanced upon an elderly fisherman, Empikau, who was in the midst of casting his nets at Sungai Tarak, some 30 minutes from Marudi town.

Accompanied by his wife Geli and grandchildren Imbat and Sintan, Empikau, who is in his 60s, said he had been fishing all his life.

“However, things are not longer what they used to be. I can still remember those days when I was young where our rivers were filled with big fishes.

“All we had to do was to lower our nets and within a few minutes, we will have enough to fill a big bucket.

“Nowadays, I have to come to the river very early in the day and go home very late in the evening. Even then, more often than not, I will return home with only a few tails, sometime barely enough to feed my family.

“I have to go deeper into the upstream just to make sure I don’t go back empty-handed. The rivers along the oil palm estates and logging camps are too polluted for the fishes to live,” he claimed.

Empikau said it was getting very difficult to catch enough even for their own daily consumption nowadays.

What more to say to catch extra for sale in the market,’’ he added while casting his net from his sampan.

A glance into his longboat found no fish at all. His bucket was still empty.

Geli said the river pollution not only deprived them of good catch and some side income but also affecting their health.

“Many among us are suffering from skin rashes after bathing in the river,” she added.

Meanwhile, a longhouse chief of Rumah Chabob Diau, when interviewed, said a huge oil palm plantation was opened adjacent to his longhouse last year and since then, they witnessed dark oily effluents flowing into the river systems daily causing the colour of the water to turn blackish.

“We don’t have clean piped water supply. Apart from rain water, the river is our only source for water either for drinking, cooking, bathing or doing our laundry.

“Hence, polluted or not thousands of riverine villagers have no choice but to use the river water for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing.

“Unless something is done to stop these river pollution, we will suffer even more serious health problems,’’ said Chabob.

Sahabat Alam Malaysia field officer for Sarawak, Jok Jau Evong when contacted called for more stringent measures to curb the alleged environmental pollution caused by plantation and logging activities.

“These problems are widespread. They are not only confined to Marudi district but in almost every part of the Baram region. The pollutants are not only damaging the rivers, but also the soil structure,’’ he stressed.

Meanwhile, State Disaster Relief Committee chairman Tan Sri Dr George Chan said oil palm estates were supposed to create a buffer zone between their estates and the rivers, and between their estates and human settlements.

“These measures are already in place. The enforcement authorities must make sure these are strictly adhered to,’’ he said.

StarMetro during the Marudi trip, found many huge plantations located right next to the riverbanks were without any buffer zone between them and the rivers.

It is no surprise the rivers in Baram are getting so polluted.

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Florida's Everglades put on world heritage endangered list

Yana Marull Yahoo News 30 Jul 10;

BRASILIA (AFP) – Florida's Everglades and Madagascar's tropical forest were added Friday to a list of imperiled world heritage sites by UNESCO officials who also registered lesser threats to Peru's Machu Picchu ruins and the Galapagos Islands.

The decision by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, meeting in Brazil's capital, brought to 35 the number of unique cultural or environmental sites considered to be in danger.

Other spots included on the list were Georgia's Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery, and the Buganda Kingdom Tombs in Uganda.

The committee determined that the Everglades National Park, a mangrove swamp sanctuary for birds and reptiles in southeast United States, "because of serious and continuing degradation of its aquatic ecosystem."

Water inflows have been greatly reduced and pollution levels have increased to a point that marine life is dying off, it said.

It was the second time the Everglades has been inscribed on the list. The first time was between 1993 and 2007 because of hurricane damage, deviation of its water supply for encroaching urban centers, and pollution from agricultural flow-off.

Madagascar's Rainforests of Atsinanana were put on the list due to excessive illegal logging and poaching of lemurs on the island following political upheaval sparked by a March 2009 coup.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the body that advises UNESCO on world heritage sites, said the forests were home to many unique species who were under threat.

On Thursday, the committee announced it was putting the cathedral and monastery in Georgia on the list because of unauthorized reconstruction work.

The Ugandan royal tombs were added because of a devastating fire this year.

While Peru's Machu Picchu was not added to the list of sites in danger, UNESCO noted recommendations that the 15th century Incan ruins be put under close watch because of severe flooding this year.

The Galapagos Islands, located off Ecuador's coast, were removed from the list under a Brazilian demand meant to reflect progress Quito had made to preserve the archipelago, made famous by Charles Darwin's 1835 study that supported his theory of evolution.

But the IUCN criticized the move, calling it "premature."

"Threats from tourism, invasive species and overfishing are still factors and the situation in the Galapagos remains critical," said Tim Badman, who heads the IUCN's World Heritage Program.

Among the notable sites maintained on the list is Jerusalem, which was included in 1982 because of excavations threatening some of its 220 historic monuments.

Sri Lankan, Hawaiian sites make world heritage list
Yahoo News 31 Jul 10;

BRASILIA (AFP) – A region of mountainous forests in Sri Lanka and an isolated archipelago off Hawaii have been added to UNESCO's World Heritage list, officials of the UN cultural and scientific body said Saturday.

The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization decided to add the two sites on Friday as it held a 10-day meeting to revise the list in Brasilia.

The additions brought to 892 the number of environmentally or culturally unique sites considered important to our planet and civilizations.

Sri Lanka's highland region, situated in the south central part of the island, was added because of its "extraordinary range of flora and fauna," which includes endangered species such as the langur and loris primates and the Sri Lankan leopard, a UNESCO statement said.

The United States' Papahanaumokuakea archipelago, located 250 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of the main group of Hawaiian islands, was included because of its "deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture... as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death."

During its meeting in the Brazilian capital, which wraps up Tuesday, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee also went over its list of endangered sites.

On Friday, it added Florida's Everglades and Madagascar's tropical forest to that roll, which is meant to ring alarm bells and encourage protective measures.

Earlier, it removed the Galapagos Islands from the same list, despite protests from its consulting body, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which said declaring the islands out of danger was "premature."

Sri Lanka, Hawaii sites get world heritage status
Reuters 31 Jul 10;

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's central highlands and a protected marine area in Hawaii, the only habitats of several endangered plant and animal species, have been added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites, the U.N. body said on Saturday.

Sri Lanka's central highlands were deemed of prime importance because of the pristine forests that are home to the Sri Lanka leopard and other rare animal and plant life.

The Hawaiian marine site, known as Papahanaumokuakea, is the habitat of the endangered Hawaiian Monk seal and rare birds. The site encompasses about 140,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean. Its isolated reef ecosystems are dominated by top predators like sharks.

"This feature has been lost from most other island environments due to human activity," said Tim Badman, a top adviser at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Badman's group is the advisory body to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee and makes recommendations to the committee based on its field research at the sites.

The UNESCO committee is meeting in Brazil's capital, Brasilia. On Friday it declared the Florida Everglades an endangered World Heritage site due to pollution and water shortages.

(Reporting by Peter Murphy, Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Death toll in Pakistani floods surges past 800

Nabeel Yusuf And Riaz Khan, Associated Press Yahoo News 31 Jul 10;

NOWSHERA, Pakistan – The death toll in the massive flooding in Pakistan surged past 800 as floodwaters receded Saturday in the hard-hit northwest, an official said. The damage to roads, bridges and communications networks hindered rescuers, while the threat of disease loomed as some evacuees arrived in camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.

Even for a country used to tragedy — especially deadly suicide attacks by Taliban militants — the scale of this past week's flooding has been shocking. Monsoon rains come every year, but rarely with such fury. The devastation came in the wake of the worst-ever plane crash in Pakistan, which killed 152 people in Islamabad on Wednesday.

In neighboring eastern Afghanistan, floods killed 64 people and injured 61 others in the past week, while destroying hundreds of homes and huge stretches of farmland, according to Matin Edrak, director of the Afghan government's disaster department.

As rivers swelled in Pakistan's northwest, people sought ever-shrinking high ground or grasped for trees and fences to avoid getting swept away. Buildings simply crumbled into the raging river in Kalam, a town in the northern part of the Swat Valley, Geo TV showed Saturday.

Reports coming in from districts around the northwest, where such flooding has not been seen since 1929, showed at least 800 people had died, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the region's information minister. The U.N. estimated that some 1 million people nationwide were affected by the disaster, though it didn't specify exactly what that meant.

Floodwaters were receding in the region, and many people remain missing, Hussain said.

Over 30,000 Pakistani army troops engaged in rescue and relief work had evacuated 19,000 trapped people by Saturday night, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

"The level of devastation is so widespread, so large," he said. "It is quite possible that in many areas there is damage, deaths, which may not have been reported."

In the Nowshera area, scores of men, women and children sat on roofs in hopes of air or boat rescues. Many had little more than the clothes on their backs.

"There are very bad conditions," said Amjad Ali, a rescue worker in the area. "They have no water, no food."

A doctor treating evacuees at a small relief camp in Nowshera said some had diarrhea and others had marks appearing on their skin, causing itching. Children and the elderly seemed to have the most problems, Mehmood Jaa said.

"Due to the floodwater, they now have pain in their bodies and they are suffering from fever and cough," Jaa told The Associated Press.

In the town Charsadda, Nabi Gul, who estimated he was around 70, looked at a pile of rubble where his house once stood.

"I built this house with my life's earnings and hard work, and the river has washed it away," he said in a trembling voice. "Now I wonder, will I be able to rebuild it? And in this time, when there are such great price hikes?"

Another resident of Charsadda complained of what he considered a lackluster government response.

"Nobody has offered us for help. We have got no help," said Awal Sher, 60. "Everything is destroyed. Inside, outside — everything is broken."

In eastern Afghanistan, Edrak said floods destroyed about 800 homes and hundreds of acres (hectares) of farm land, damaged hydropower dams and partially destroyed more than 500 other houses. Most of the flooding was in eight provinces, including Kabul, he said.

Rescuers were using army helicopters, heavy trucks and boats to try to reach flood-hit areas. Thousands of homes and roads were destroyed, and at least 45 bridges across the northwest were damaged, the U.N. said.

The American Embassy in Islamabad announced the United States would be providing 12 prefabricated steel bridges to temporarily replace some of the spans damaged by the water. It also is sending rescue boats, water filtration units and some 50,000 meals to be distributed to those in stricken areas, the embassy said in a statement.

Communications networks were sketchy, and the rescue effort was further hampered by the washed-out roads and bridges, said Lutfur Rehman, a government official in the northwest.

"Our priority is to transport flood-affected people to safer places. We are carrying out this rescue operation despite limited resources," he said.

Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said that no more rain was expected in the next few days for the northwest. But Punjab province in the east, Sindh province in the south, and Pakistan's side of the disputed Kashmir region all could expect a lashing over the next three or four days, he said.

Flooding has already affected some of those regions, with more than 20 people dying in Kashmir.

___

Khan reported from Peshawar. Deb Riechmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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Insects could be the key to meeting food needs of growing global population

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is taking seriously the farming of creepy-crawlies as nutritious food
Damian Carrington The Observer 1 Aug 10;

Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research: the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies.

The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the world's farmland and generates 20% of all the greenhouse gases driving global warming. As a result, the United Nations and senior figures want to reduce the amount of meat we eat and the search is on for alternatives.

A policy paper on the eating of insects is being formally considered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The FAO held a meeting on the theme in Thailand in 2008 and there are plans for a world congress in 2013.

Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in Belgium and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages.

"There is a meat crisis," he said. "The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth."

Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO, he can't be dismissed as a crank. "Most of the world already eats insects," he points out. "It is only in the western world that we don't. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable."

The advantages of this diet include insects' high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content. Van Huis's latest research, conducted with colleague Dennis Oonincx, shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts, crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.

Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently, Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell: "It is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor."

More than 1,000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80% of nations. They are most popular in the tropics, where they grow to large sizes and are easy to harvest.

The FAO's field officer Patrick Durst, based in Bangkok, Thailand, ran the 2008 conference.

Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April. This involves transferring the skills of the 15,000 household locust farmers in Thailand across the border. "There were some proponents of a bigger dairy industry in Laos to improve a calcium deficiency," says Durst, whose favourite is fried wasp - "very crispy and a nice light snack". "But this is crazy when most Asians are lactose intolerant." Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90% of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point, he says.Durst says the FAO's priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted but has been in decline due to western cultural influence.

He also thinks such a boost can provide livelihoods and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. "I can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation."

First, insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally. Then, they could be used as ingredients.

Van Huis adds: "We're looking at ways of grinding the meat into some sort of patty, which would be more recognisable to western palates."

One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook, whose business Osgrow is based in Bristol. However, no matter how they are marketed or presented, Cook is not convinced they will ever become more than a novelty. "They are in the fun element ... But I can't see it ever catching on in the UK in a big way."
LOCAL TREATS

Thailand Dishes include fried giant red ants, crickets and June beetles

Colombia "Fat-bottomed" ants are a popular snack, fried and salted

Papua New Guinea Sago grubs in banana leaves are a local delicacy

Ghana Winged termites are collected and fried, roasted, or made into bread

Japan Dishes include aquatic fly larvae in sugar and candied grasshoppers

Mexico The agave worm is eaten on tortillas, and grasshoppers are toasted

Cambodia Deep-fried tarantulas are popular with locals and tourists

South Africa Locusts lend interest to the staple dish of cornmeal porridge

Australia Witchetty grubs are a traditional part of the Aboriginal diet

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