Best of our wild blogs: 16 May 11

22 May (Sun) is World Biodiversity Day
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

Latest Green Jobs in Singapore [9 - 15 May 2011]
from Green Business Times

Wild facts updates for May 11: some awesome fishes!
from wild shores of singapore

No lesser stars
from The annotated budak

Weaver birds - native and non-native
from Life's Indulgences

Smelly lotus pond in AMK park
from Urban Forest

Ground pecking Laced Woodpecker
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Mushroom Coral
from Monday Morgue

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Unep: loss of natural habitats threatens migratory birds

Antara 15 May 11;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The annual migration of an estimated 50 billion birds representing around 19 per cent of the world`s 10,000 bird species is one of nature`s great natural wonders.

Yet each year, more and more of the natural habitats migratory birds need to complete their journeys either diminish or disappear completely, according to The Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in a press statement received here on Sunday.

The theme for World Migratory Bird Day 2011, celebrated around the world on 14-15 May, is ` Land use changes from a bird`s-eye view ` and it highlights the negative effects human activities are having on migratory birds, their habitats and the planet`s natural environment.

The loss, fragmentation and degradation of natural bird habitats is occurring globally and is mainly caused by the pressures resulting from a growing human population, rapid urbanization and unsustainable human use of natural areas.

"Although migratory birds face many serious threats, the way humans use the land around them has by far the greatest negative effect. Unsustainable human land use, whether through deforestation, intensive agriculture, biofuel production, land reclamation, urbanization and mining directly removes or damages the habitats of migratory birds, affecting their populations on a global scale", said Bert Lenten, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and initiator of the World Migratory Bird Day campaign.

World Migratory Bird Day is being organized by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) - two intergovernmental wildlife treaties administered by UNEP.

BirdLife International, Wetlands International and the Secretariat of the Partnership for the East Asian - Australasian Flyway (EAAFP) are also main partners of the global campaign.

"As the two intergovernmental treaties dedicated to the conservation of migratory animals, including migratory birds at global and flyway scale, the Convention on Migratory Species and the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement have launched World Migratory Bird Day to make people aware of the threats migratory birds face along their migration routes", added Lenten.

Dr. Marco Lambertini, BirdLife International`s Chief Executive said: "Land-use change poses an immediate and increasing threat to the world`s migratory birds. Habitats vital to these species on their incredible journeys are being destroyed or degraded at an alarming rate and the bird?s-eye view is becoming bleaker. The BirdLife Partnership, with over 110 conservation organizations along the world`s flyways, is working across borders to help stem this tide and achieve the effective joined-up conservation needed to make a difference for these inspiring birds."

Initiated in 2006, World Migratory Bird Day is an annual campaign backed by the United Nations and is devoted to celebrating migratory birds and promoting their conservation worldwide.

Events for WMBD 2011 in over 50 countries included bird festivals, education programmes, presentations, film screenings and birdwatching trips, run by hundreds of volunteers, dedicated groups and organizations around the world. (F001)


(ANTARA)

Editor: Ella Syafputri

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Indonesia and seven other countries sign Nagoya Protocol

Antara 15 May 11;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia, along with Guatemala, India, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland and Tunisia signed the Nagoya Protocol at the UN Headquarters in New York on May 11, marking a milestone in the history of the use of biodiversity convention.

The signing ceremony took place during a ministerial segment of the 19th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-19) at the General Assembly Hall, the UN Headquarters, New York.

Thirteen countries - Colombia, Yemen, Algeria, Brazil, Mexico, Rwanda, Ecuador, Republic of Central Africa, Seychelles, Mali, Sudan, Panama and Peru - have already signed the protocol.

The protocol sets terms on how countries will permit access to genetic resources, share the benefits arising from their use, and cooperate with one another in allegations of misuse. The protocol will come into force 90 days after it has been ratified by at least 50 parties.

The protocol will serve as an important instrument to optimize the use of genetic resources and to put a halt to bio-piracy.

Indonesia is known as the world`s second mega biodiversity country.

On the occasion, Indonesian Environment Minister Gusti Mohammad Hatta speaking on behalf of ASEAN member states underscored the importance of the meeting to influence the outcome of UNCSD 2012 (Rio+20) in Brazil.

He also stressed the importance of applying the concept of green economy in support of sustainable development.

"With the Nagoya Protocol, biodiversity will serve as the backbone of sustainable development through the concept of green economy. Debates on the contradiction between the environment and economy will be over," he said.

After signing the protocol, Indonesia is expected to ratify it by enacting law in line with the effort to speed up the passage of genetic resource management bill into law.

The law is expected to strengthen the national legislation in the use of genetic resources for the benefit of the people particularly those having traditional wisdom and knowledge in managing genetic resources.
(T.D016/S012/H-NG)

Editor: Priyambodo RH

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Extreme makeover: are humans reshaping Earth?

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 15 May 11;

LONDON (AFP) – If alien geologists were to visit our planet 10 million years from now, would they discern a distinct human fingerprint in Earth's accumulating layers of rock and sediment?

Will homo sapiens, in other words, define a geological period in the way dinosaurs -- and their vanishing act -- helped mark the Jurassic and the Cretaceous?

A growing number of scientists, some gathered at a one-day symposium this week at the British Geological Society in London, say "yes".

One among them, chemistry Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, has even suggested a new name: the Anthropocene.

Whether this "age of man" will be short or long is unknown, says Crutzen, who shared his Nobel for unmasking the man-made chemicals eating away at the atmosphere's protective ozone layer.

For the first time in Earth's 4.7 billion year history, a single species has not only radically changed Earth's morphology, chemistry and biology, it is now aware of having done so.

"We broke it, we bought it, we own it," is how Erle Ellis, a professor of geography and ecology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, put it.

"We don't know what is going to happen in the Anthropocene -- it could be good, even better," he said. "But we need to think differently and globally, to take ownership of the planet."

Dinosaurs were most likely wiped out by a giant meteor that cooled Earth's temperatures below their threshold for survival.

An analogous fate could await humans if temperatures climb by five or six degrees Celsius, which climate scientists say could happen within a century.

But dinosaurs thrived for more than 150 million years before a cosmic pebble ended their extraordinary run, while modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years, a snap of the fingers by comparison.

Another key difference: dinosaurs didn't know what hit them, and played no role in their own demise.

Humans, by contrast, have been the main architects of the enormous changes that are threatening to throw what scientists now call the Earth System out of whack.

Since Crutzen coined the term a decade ago, the Anthropocene has been eagerly adopted by scientists across a broad spectrum of disciplines.

"It triggered the realisation that we were in an entirely new era of planet Earth," said Will Steffen, head of Australian National University's Climate Change Institute.

It also triggered fierce debate.

At one level, the issues are narrow to the point of pedantry -- rock experts quibbling over whether mankind's present and future geological imprint merits recognition by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.

At the same time, however, the concept forces us to ponder whether humanity's outsized impact on the planet could lead to undesired, possibly uncontrollable, outcomes, and what, if anything, humanity should do about it.

That leaves scientists who may be more comfortable classifying rocks than rocking the boat in a tricky position.

For now, the man in the hot seat is University of Leicester professor Jan Zalasiewicz, who heads the group of geologists tasked with recommending whether the Anthropocene should be added to the 150-odd eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages into which the last 3.6 billion years of Earth's history has been officially divided.

"Jan must recognise the implications for society if his own tribe decides, using classical criteria, that there is not yet enough evidence to formally recognise a new boundary in the geological record," said Bryan Lovell, president of the British Geological Society and a professor at Cambridge.

Evidence of abrupt change -- on a geological time scale -- wrought by human hands would seem to be overwhelming.

The burning of fossil fuels has altered the composition of the atmosphere, pushing the concentration of carbon dioxide to levels unseen at least for 800,000 years, perhaps for three million.

The resulting global warming has itself set in motion other planetary-scale changes: massive melting of the parts of Earth normally covered by ice and snow (aka the cryosphere), and the acidification of the oceans.

Past shifts in the biosphere -- the realm of the living -- show up in sediment and rock, especially mass extinctions that have seen up to 90 percent of all lifeforms disappear within the geological blink of an eye.

There have been five such wipeouts over the last half billion years, and most scientists agree that we have now entered the sixth, with species disappearing at 100 to 1,000 times the so-called "background" rate.

Another key index is the rise of invasive species travelling in a globalised world via ship ballasts, air travel and old-fashioned smuggling.

"The mass homogenisation event" -- finding the same species everywhere -- "will be quite a clear signal in the archaeological record a million years from now," said Zalasiewicz.

Even the planet's outer skin, or lithosphere, has been transformed.

"We are sculpting the surface of the Earth," said James Syvitski, a professor at the University of Colorado, pointing to two centuries of industrial-scale mining, damming, deforestation and agriculture.

Thousands of dams built since the mid-19th century have "completely altered the planet's terrestrial plumbing," he said.

To validate the Anthropocene, all these changes will be measured against the range of variation in our current geological period -- the Holocene epoch -- which began some 12,000 years ago as Earth emerged from the last ice age.

"Human influence on the global environment must push the Earth system well beyond the Holocene envelope of variability," said Steffen.

By one key measure, at least, we already have: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere -- measured in parts per million -- remained in a narrow range of 260 to 285 for nearly 12,000 years. Today is stands at 390 ppm, and is sure to rise considerably higher in coming decades.

If the hugely complex web of chemical and biological interactions that sustains most life does tip seriously out of kilter, the planet will find a new equilibrium, as it has in the past.

Earth, in other words, will do fine. Humans, on the other hand, may find the transition more than difficult.

"It is a planet that will be much warmer, much stormier, much less biodiverse," said Steffen. "We will need to be very resilient as a species."

In nailing down the Anthropocene, there is also a question of timing. Some scholars favour dating it to the start of agriculture, some 8,000 years ago.

Most, however, favour hammering the "golden spike" in the middle of the 19th century when the steam engine and then fossil fuels kicked off an exponential explosion in population and consumption that is still gathering pace.

Starting around 1950, the "Great Acceleration" has seen dozens of key indicators, plotted on a graph, take off like a rocket: population, damming of rivers, water and fertiliser use, paper consumption, tourism, and vehicles, to name a few.

These, in turn, have sparked correspondingly sharp rises in greenhouse gas concentrations, ozone depletion, great floods, depletion of fisheries, loss of forests, species loss.

The dramatic transformation we have seen so far has been driven mainly by the 20 percent of the world's population living in rich nations.

Crutzen said he hopes that putting a name -- the Anthropocene -- to these changes may help focus humanity's mind on the challenges ahead.

"It could well be a paradigm shift in scientific thinking," he said at the London meeting.

"But it will probably take another 20 years before it is formally accepted."

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