Best of our wild blogs: 23 May 2011


Latest Green Jobs in Singapore [16 - 22 May 2011]
from Green Business Times

Sea shore fun for kids during the June holidays!
from wild shores of singapore

Registration for ICCS 2011 is now open!
from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Blog Log 22 May 2011, Pen Shells & Gobies
from Pulau Hantu and and Psychedelic Nature

Quiet at Beting Bemban Besar
from wild shores of singapore and Singapore Nature

From Dairy Farm Park To The Summit
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Sighting of the exotic Cut-throat Finch
from Bird Ecology Study Group

My adventures in Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
from Nikita Hengbok

Singed Cone
from Monday Morgue


Read more!

Brunei working with Singapore to update plant database

The Brunei Times/Asia News Network Asia One 23 May 11;

BRUNEI's Forestry Department is "looking forward" to pairing with Singaporean authorities in updating the Sultanate's database of plant species, an official told The Brunei Times yesterday.

However, the head of Brunei's national herbarium, where preserved plant specimens are stored for data and research purposes, did not specify any dates but said that the bilateral collaboration has already been agreed upon.

Deputy Forestry Director Mahmud Hj Yussof confirmed that the tie-up was with the Singapore Botanic Gardens but also did not disclose a timeline.

Brunei last inventoried its flora database, under the "Chief List of Flowering Plant and Gynosperm", in 1996 with the help of the United Kingdom's Royal Botanic Gardens.

It was estimated that Brunei was home to around 5,000 plant species. To date, 3,955 species have been documented (including 3,567 "higher plant" species), said the head of the national herbarium, who asked not to be named.

The herbarium, internationally recognised by the acronym BRUN, sited at the Brunei Forestry Centre in Sg Liang, currently houses a total of about 30,000 specimens.

Brunei has already started using an Oxford University-developed online platform for the herbarium, known as the Botanical Research and Herbarium Management System (BRAHMS). This was still "in the early stage of development" with the Singapore Herbarium (SING) of the city-state's Botanic Gardens, a press release from the Forestry Department said yesterday.

SING has been using Brahms since 2000 to "computerise" its plant collection data, it said on its website. In comparison, the herbarium has 650,000 specimens, including material from Brunei and the rest of the Malesian region, (Peninsular Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Guinea) and adjacent areas (East Asia, mainland SE Asia, and the Southwest Pacific), "with the most extensive collections from Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia dating from the 1880s". "Out of these, about 6,800 are type specimens," SING said.

A member of the BRAHMS advisory group was invited to speak at the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources (MIPR) yesterday on plant data collection methods and the online system.

Addressing the MIPR Permanent Secretary, Dato Paduka Dr Hj Mohd Amin Liew Abdullah, diplomats, government officials, private sector representatives and scholars, was Dr William Hawthorne of Oxford's Department of Plant Sciences who presented a talk on "Hotspot Measurement and Biodiversity Management in Brunei, Heart of Borneo (HoB)".

He spoke of the advantages of a technique known as Rapid Botanic Survey (RBS), where individuals including students can be trained to take up to 1,500 specimens and label images per day.

The process involves the scientists collecting leaves and other parts of a plant, and using newspapers to press-dry the specimens before they are housed in the herbarium.

Emphasis will be given on "bioquality", which measures the concentration of species based on rarity. These will then be categorised using a system of colour-coded stars, that can later map out flora "hotspots" within the country and thus, determine Brunei's "temperature" compared to the region.

The stars' colours can be used to depict whether a species was "widespread" Southeast Asia or was endemic to Brunei, based on the survey project's criteria.

"With this type of database (technique), we will soon be able to see how various bits of Brunei compare to bits (of hotspots) of the world," Hawthorne said.

-The Brunei Times/Asia News Network


Read more!

Malaysia: Bridge of hope for orang utan

Ruben Sario The Star 23 May 11;

KOTA KINABALU: The state Wildlife Depart­ment and several NGOs have combined forces to repair a rope bridge across the Sungai Takala to enable the orang utan to move about in Sabah’s east coast lower Kinabatangan region.

The rope bridge straddling Sungai Takala, a tributary of Sungai Kinabatangan near Danau Girang and Batu Puting, had been damaged during recent floods.

The repairs were undertaken by the department, the Danau Girang Field Centre, the NGO HUTAN, MESCOT-Community Ecotourism Team, Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd and Japanese NGO Borneo Conservation Trust.

“The aim of this project is to create artificial bridges along the Kinabatangan river to allow the orang utan to migrate to find food and potential mates,” said department director Dr Laurentius Ambu.

He said the project was made all the more special by the fact that the Japanese NGO felt the project was very important despite the difficulties it faced following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

“Veterinarians, scientists and staff from Japa­nese zoos joined the team,” Dr Ambu said.

Danau Girang Field Centre director Dr Benoit Gossens said orang utan in the Kinabatangan region were fast becoming isolated as their ability to move around was restricted by rivers and man-made drains.

“These primates would naturally make their way upstream along tributaries to where the rivers narrowed and the trees above connected, allowing them to cross and move around freely,” he said

“Now there are oil palm plantations with drains that prevent this from happening and the apes are trapped in small patches of forest, unable to find food and mates,” he said.

Rope Rigging operations director Simon Amos said this was the company’s fourth expe­dition but the first to repair a rope bridge.

“We are delighted to provide technical assistance and our skills in rigging and tree climbing that contribute to the conservation of the orang utan and other primates in the Lower Kinabatangan flood plain,” Amos said.

Rope bridges a lifeline for Sabah's orang utans
New Straits Times 23 May 11;

KINABATANGAN: Four years on and the introduction of bridges made from ropes appears to have been put to good use by orang utans in the wild.

Recently, a team of volunteers and experts from various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) led by the state Wildlife Department conducted its first "maintenance operations" to rebuild one of several artificial bridges here.

The rope bridge in the Sungai Takala area had collapsed due to severe floods in the Danau Girang and Batu Putih areas, prompting the department together with a few NGOs -- Hutan, Danau Girang Field Centre, Mescot (Community Ecotourism Team), Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd and Borneo Conservation Trust Japan -- to rebuild the bridge.


"This is the fourth expedition and the first time that a bridge has required rebuilding," said Ropeskills Rigging operations director Simon Amos, who added that they also received assistance from the Batu Putih community.

"We are delighted to provide technical assistance.

"Our skills in rigging and tree climbing have contributed to the conservation of the orang utans and other primates in the Kinabatangan floodplain."


Danau Girang Field Centre director Dr Benoit Goosens said the orang utans, which were solitary animals, got trapped in forests that were fragmented because of oil palm plantations, preventing them from finding more food and partners to mate.

"The orang utans here become isolated as their ability to move around is restricted by rivers and man-made drains.

"They will naturally make their way upstream, along tributaries, to where the rivers have narrowed and the trees are connected. This will allow them to move around freely."


State Wildlife director Dr Laurentius Ambu said the rope bridge project, introduced in 2007, aimed to connect fragmented forests to allow orang utans to migrate to find food and potential mates.

"This project is made all the more special by the fact that the Japanese NGO (Borneo Conservation Trust) still feels that the project is important to be pursued despite the hardship it is facing in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami.

"Veterinarians, scientists and workers from Japanese zoos had also participated (in the recent operations)," Ambu said.


Read more!

Thailand: Mangroves to the rescue

Island in Krabi becomes part of an innovative project aimed at alleviating climate change
Bangkok Post 23 May 11;

Krabi has long been a popular tourist destination, but now the southern province is becoming known for something more creative _ using its low-profile islands in a carbon capture and storage project.

Located just a few kilometres from Krabi town, Koh Klang, with fewer than 5,000 people, was recently selected by the Thailand Business Council for Sustainable Development (TBCSD) to be turned into a "carbon capture and storage island", part of moves to turn Thailand into a low-carbon economy.

Through partnerships between business organisations, local communities and the Thailand Environment Institute (TEI), the "Blue Carbon Storage" project involves planting and rehabilitating 3,000 rai of mangrove area or "walking forests" for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Prof Dr Sanit Aksornkoae, a director and acting president of the TEI, said it would take three years to develop the entire programme including six months to measure existing carbon dioxide levels and estimate how much can be reduced on the island.

"Blue carbon storage is similar to green carbon storage, which involves land forests, except higher amounts of CO2 are stored," he said.

Given Thailand's 2,700 km of coastline, some 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) could be stored annually in coastal forests compared with 40 million a year for green or land forests.

For example, seagrass can store 1,130 kilogrammes per rai per year, while seaweed is good for more than 2,000 kg per rai per year.

Thailand's more than 200 varieties of coral reefs can manage 1,800 kg of GHGs per year, with plankton storing about 1,500 kg.

By comparison, Prof Dr Sanit said land forests can generally capture 1,300 kg of GHGs per rai per year.

Thailand's mangrove area has declined from 2.3 million rai to 1.5 million in recent years, with more than 400 sq km eroded.

Most of this forest area stretches along the Gulf of Thailand, on which the country's coastline runs for 1,900 km compared with only 800 km for the Andaman coast.

"Ineffective and improper use of natural resources have resulted in continuous declines in mangrove forest area and aquatic animals," said Qwanruedee Chotichanathawewong, a TBCSD executive director and TEI vice-president.

"The loss of mangrove forest means Thailand is losing lots of carbon storage area, thereby contributing to accelerated climate change."

For an agricultural country such as Thailand, climate change can mean lower crop yields due to higher temperatures, increased drought and reduced biodiversity.

The TEI says Thailand emits 359 million tonnes of GHGs annually, mostly from the energy sector.

Other partners in the project include the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand and Siam City Cement Plc along with Islanda Eco Village Resort, the only participating resort on Koh Klang and which educates local people and tourists alike about the project.

Pimrapee Phanwichatikul, who opened Islanda almost three years ago, said the resort will eventually distribute mangrove seedlings to tourists so they can participate in planting the seedlings on the island.

"We need help from academics and researchers regarding care of the seedlings, while resort staff can coordinate with the villages," said Ms Pimrapee, who is also the vice-president for sales and marketing at the Maritime Park and Spa Resort in the province.

"Koh Klang villagers can earn extra income by planting and taking care of the seedlings."

She said that by limiting tourist numbers, Koh Klang can prevent the garbage problems experienced by other resort islands in the country.


Read more!

Philippine bird sanctuary under threat

Cecil Morella Yahoo News 23 May 11;

MANILA (AFP) – A plan to reclaim land on Manila Bay is ruffling feathers, with conservationists warning the project would destroy one of the Philippine capital's last nature reserves and bird sanctuaries.

Salt marshes, tidal areas and three mangrove-clad islands that make up the 175-hectare (432-acre) zone are a home or a resting spot for dozens of bird species, including the globally-threatened Philippine duck and Chinese egret.

In a sprawling megacity of more than 12 million people that has seen decades of chaotic development, the area known as Coastal Lagoons is vital because there are so few other bird habitats left, environmentalists say.

"It is the last coastal frontier in Metropolitan Manila, the last of its kind," said Rey Aguinaldo, a US-trained biologist who manages the Coastal Lagoons for the environment ministry.

Then-president Gloria Arroyo declared the Coastal Lagoons a critical habitat in 2007, banning activities impeding its ecologically vital role as a bird sanctuary.

But now the government is planning to reclaim another 635 hectares in front of the sanctuary to create a new business centre for southern Manila.

Opponents of the planned 14-billion-peso ($324-million) project fear that although most of the lagoons would initially remain intact, the sanctuary would be left largely cut off from the bay.

"The critical habitat would be penned in, and eventually the mangroves would die because saltwater would not be able to circulate," Aguinaldo said.

"The saltwater mud flats would also eventually dry up."

A highway linking the new business centre with the rest of Manila would also cut through the mangroves, while about 15 percent of one island would be removed for a drainage canal, according to the project's design.

"The road may block the tidal water flow... and thereby dry up the mangrove area and destroy most of the high-tide roosts for waterbirds," said Michael Lu, head of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines.

But the government's Philippine Reclamation Authority insists the development, which it will carry out with local authorities and a private investor, would maintain the integrity of the habitat.

"The expansion is seaward. No mangroves will be cut," said Josephine Castro, assistant manager for reclamation of the Philippine Reclamation Authority.

Castro also said the authority had revised the original project design so that only ecotourism activities, and no commercial development, would take place in the Coastal Lagoons.

In a twist to the debate, Castro pointed out that the lagoons themselves were on land that was reclaimed from the bay in the 1970s but never developed as originally planned.

"There was no bird sanctuary before. It was due to our activities there that gave rise to the bird sanctuary," Castro said.

Squatters initially colonised the land when it was left vacant, according to Castro.

But she said when it began to sink in the 1980s, the squatters were relocated and the government planted mangroves on the site to stop the water from reclaiming the land again.

Regardless of the site's origins, Lu, the bird club president, warned that the development project would be a final blow for Manila Bay's waterbird population.

"There are no other viable alternatives for the waterbirds anymore," he said.

"More than 95 percent of natural wetland habitats in the bay have been converted to fishponds."

Ornithologists had counted up to 28,000 birds in Manila Bay in a single day in the 1970s, before the fish pond industry exploded and land reclamation began, according to Lu.

That number that is today down to no more than 5,000, Lu said.

He said the 80-strong Manila colony of the Philippine duck would be extinguished if the project went ahead as planned.

Those 80 birds make up nearly two percent of the known population of the species, which is only found only in the Philippines, according to Lu.

He also said the loss of the sanctuary would put further pressure on the rapidly declining global population of Chinese egrets, which spend the northern winter at the lagoons.

The fate of the waterbirds in Manila Bay is a common story across Asia, where habitat has been destroyed at an unprecedented rate in recent decades amid rampant economic development.

Environment monitor Wetlands International reported last year that while strong conservation measures had slowed the decline of waterbird populations in the west, Asian numbers were shrinking quickly.

Habitat destruction was the main reason, with long-distance migrants being the most vulnerable, Wetlands International said.


Read more!

Seagrasses face extinction threat

Matt Walker BBC News 23 May 11;

Seagrasses around the world are disappearing, with some species now threatened with extinction.

The first global survey of individual seagrass species has found that 14% are at risk of going extinct.

More common species are also in decline, meaning both seagrass habitat and diversity is being lost.

Seagrasses provide food and habitat for a variety of ocean species including manatees, sea turtles and fish such as sea horses.

Seagrasses are flowering plants that grow on the ocean floor.

They form vast meadows that flower and seed underwater, having evolved from land-based plants that entered the water millions of years ago.

Seagrasses alone form important marine habitats.

They act as nurseries for young fish and shellfish, and are the primary food for large marine mammals such as manatees and dugongs, as well as reptiles such as some sea turtles.

They also contribute to the health of coral reefs and mangroves, salt marshes and oyster reefs.

It has been known for a while that seagrasses are declining in many parts of the world.

The reasons are many, seagrass expert Frederick Short told the BBC.

Professor Short, of the University of Hampshire in Durham, US is the director of SeagrassNet, an international seagrass monitoring program with 114 sites around the world.

For example, seagrasses are gone from the most developed coastlines due to pollution, said Professor Short.

Seagrasses are in decline in the developing world due to sedimentation, caused by runoff from impacted watersheds and deforestation, and being overloaded with nutrients flowing into the sea from sewage and agricultural runoff.

Seagrasses are also being directly damaged by the dredging of seafloors.

"But there has never been a review of individual species status," said Professor Short.

So he and an international team of experts convened three workshops to gather all the knowledge about individual seagrasses, and used it to evaluate how at risk each species is. The workshops were hosted by Conservation International, the Global Marine Species Assessment programme and SeagrassNet.

The results are published in the journal Biological Conservation.

"I was surprised by the level of threat to many species of seagrass and to discover that seagrass biodiversity is under greater threat than I believed," he said.

Of the 72 species, his team found that 15 seagrasses should be considered Endangered, Vulnerable or Near Threatened, under criteria laid down by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Of those, ten face a significant risk of extinction.

Phyllospadix japonicus is an important habitat-forming grass along the rocky shorelines of China, North and South Korea and Japan. But it has gone from swathes of China's coastline, due to seaweed aquaculture.

Zostera chilensis is known from only two locations on the coast of Chile, and seems to have already disappeared from one.

Of the 57 remaining species, 48 are considered of Least Concern, while sufficient data doesn't exist to make a judgement on the others.

"Many widespread, common seagrass species which are not presently threatened are nonetheless in decline, so we have both an overall loss of habitat and a loss of biodiversity," said Professor Short.

"Seagrasses are both direct food for important species and as they break down within the coastal ecosystem, they are part of a vast food web that provides food to many organisms within the coastal ocean, including many commercially and recreationally important species.

"Unfortunately, being submerged in the ocean they are rarely directly seen except by swimmers or snorkelers."

New Study Provides Global Analysis of Seagrass Extinction Risk
ScienceDaily 25 May 11;

A team of 21 researchers from 11 nations, including professor Robert "JJ" Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has completed the first-ever study of the risk of extinction for individual seagrass species around the world.

The 4-year study, requested by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), shows that 10 of the 72 known seagrass species (14%) are at an elevated risk of extinction, while 3 species qualify as endangered.

The authors caution that loss of seagrass species and seagrass biodiversity will seriously impact marine ecosystems and the human populations that depend on the resources and ecosystem services that seagrasses provide. A 1997 study placed the value of those services at US$34,000 per hectare per year. Seagrasses offer critical habitat for aquatic life, clear the water by reducing wave action, absorb excess nutrients, and reduce shoreline erosion.

The study, in the online issue of Biological Conservation, determines the likelihood of extinction for each of the world's 72 species of seagrass using the categories and criteria of the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species.

The IUCN Red List is the most widely accepted method for assessing a species' probability of extinction and its conservation status on a global scale. Red List categories run from "least concern" to "near threatened," "vulnerable," "endangered," "critically endangered," "extinct in the wild," and "extinct."

Placement in a category reflects a species' abundance, reproductive rate, geographic range, and other such factors. A "data deficient" category holds species for which there is inadequate information to assess extinction risk based on distribution, population status, or both. The researchers placed 9 seagrass species (12.5%) in that category.

The researchers listed 48 species (67%) in the "Least Concern" category, including eelgrass (Zostera marina), the most common seagrass in lower Chesapeake Bay. Orth notes, however, that most of these species -- including eelgrass -- are declining in their area of coverage. (Data from VIMS' annual aerial survey shows that eelgrass is absent from one-half of its former range and continues to decline in the areas where it remains).

Orth says that eelgrass was listed as a species of least concern -- despite severe declines in Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, and other parts of its range -- because it is still widespread elsewhere and thrives in less developed and clear-water areas. He cites his team's successful efforts to replant eelgrass in the seaside bays of Virginia's Eastern Shore as evidence of the species' ability to rebound quickly given clear and cool water.

VIMS scientists have been restoring eelgrass to Virginia's seaside bays since 1997. Their efforts have resulted in the largest and most successful seagrass restoration project in the world, with 38 million eelgrass seeds broadcast onto 309 acres during the last decade. As of 2010, these restored sites have spread naturally to more than 4,200 acres.

Journal Reference:

Frederick T. Short, Beth Polidoro, Suzanne R. Livingstone, Kent E. Carpenter, Salomão Bandeira, Japar Sidik Bujang, Hilconida P. Calumpong, Tim J.B. Carruthers, Robert G. Coles, William C. Dennison, Paul L.A. Erftemeijer, Miguel D. Fortes, Aaren S. Freeman, T.G. Jagtap, Abu Hena M. Kamal, Gary A. Kendrick, W. Judson Kenworthy, Yayu A. La Nafie, Ichwan M. Nasution, Robert J. Orth, Anchana Prathep, Jonnell C. Sanciangco, Brigitta van Tussenbroek, Sheila G. Vergara, Michelle Waycott, Joseph C. Zieman. Extinction risk assessment of the world’s seagrass species. Biological Conservation, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2011.04.010

New study provides global analysis of seagrass extinction risk
Virginia Institute of Marine Science EurekAlert 25 May 11;

A team of 21 researchers from 11 nations, including professor Robert "JJ" Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has completed the first-ever study of the risk of extinction for individual seagrass species around the world.

The 4-year study, requested by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), shows that 10 of the 72 known seagrass species (14%) are at an elevated risk of extinction, while 3 species qualify as endangered.

The authors caution that loss of seagrass species and seagrass biodiversity will seriously impact marine ecosystems and the human populations that depend on the resources and ecosystem services that seagrasses provide. A 1997 study placed the value of those services at US$34,000 per hectare per year. Seagrasses offer critical habitat for aquatic life, clear the water by reducing wave action, absorb excess nutrients, and reduce shoreline erosion.

The study, in the online issue of Biological Conservation, determines the likelihood of extinction for each of the world's 72 species of seagrass using the categories and criteria of the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species.

The IUCN Red List is the most widely accepted method for assessing a species' probability of extinction and its conservation status on a global scale. Red List categories run from "least concern" to "near threatened," "vulnerable," "endangered," "critically endangered," "extinct in the wild," and "extinct."

Placement in a category reflects a species' abundance, reproductive rate, geographic range, and other such factors. A "data deficient" category holds species for which there is inadequate information to assess extinction risk based on distribution, population status, or both. The researchers placed 9 seagrass species (12.5%) in that category.

The researchers listed 48 species (67%) in the "Least Concern" category, including eelgrass (Zostera marina), the most common seagrass in lower Chesapeake Bay. Orth notes, however, that most of these species—including eelgrass—are declining in their area of coverage. (Data from VIMS' annual aerial survey shows that eelgrass is absent from one-half of its former range and continues to decline in the areas where it remains).

Orth says that eelgrass was listed as a species of least concern—despite severe declines in Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, and other parts of its range—because it is still widespread elsewhere and thrives in less developed and clear-water areas. He cites his team's successful efforts to replant eelgrass in the seaside bays of Virginia's Eastern Shore as evidence of the species' ability to rebound quickly given clear and cool water.

VIMS scientists have been restoring eelgrass to Virginia's seaside bays since 1997. Their efforts have resulted in the largest and most successful seagrass restoration project in the world, with 38 million eelgrass seeds broadcast onto 309 acres during the last decade. As of 2010, these restored sites have spread naturally to more than 4,200 acres.


Read more!

Falcons and snakes call Sydney home

Yahoo News 22 May 11;

SYDNEY (AFP) – An ecology survey of Sydney's inner city Monday found it is home to a variety of wildlife, including peregrine falcons and the dangerous red-bellied black snake.

The survey was conducted over three months by ecologists in parks, along foreshores and in other public spaces within the city.

"This is the first time we have ever carried out an ecology survey across the city so the results are extremely important," Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said.

"The unusual species we found are as important as the ones we didn't find."

The survey recorded a total of five frog, eight reptile, seven native mammal and about 40 bird species in the centre of the city, including common ringtail possums, tawny frogmouth birds and the threatened green and golden bell frog.

It also revealed a noticeable absence of small birds, which usually rely on dense shrub vegetation for survival.

A total of 360 native plant species were recorded.

The city will use the results to prepare an action plan to help prioritise the conservation of locally indigenous plant and animal species.


Read more!

Thai police arrest alleged top tiger trafficker

Yahoo News 22 May 11;

BANGKOK (AFP) – Thai police have arrested an alleged kingpin in what could be the country's largest tiger trafficking ring, a wildlife protection group said on Sunday.

Sudjai Chanthawong, a Thai national, was detained on Saturday in the northeastern town of Udon Thani by undercover officers of the nature crime division, according to the Freeland Foundation, which supported the operation.

The gang he is accused of protecting and financing was thought last year "to be responsible for moving up to 1,000 tigers and leopards across the border into Laos and Vietnam in the past decade," Freeland said in a statement.

Sudjai was arrested after police confirmed his bank account was used by the ring to accept payment from undercover officers for the sale of a live tiger last year -- a deal that led to the arrest last May of two other Thai men.

"Thai police are to be congratulated for following the money and finding one of the kingpins involved in cross border wildlife trafficking," said Freeland director Steve Galster.

Sudjai was brought to Bangkok for further questioning on Sunday, while the live tiger that he helped to sell last year, now known as Sylvia, was brought to a police news conference in the capital.

Sylvia, sold in the sting operation as a cub, now weighs almost 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and is kept in a special national park facility caring for seized wildlife in western Ratchaburi province, Freeland told AFP.

Thailand is one of just 13 countries hosting fragile tiger populations, which are on course for outright extinction by 2022, the conservation group WWF warned last year during the Year of the Tiger.

The group said decades of trafficking and habitat destruction had slashed tiger numbers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,200 today, with the Chinese the world's biggest consumers of tiger products despite global bans.

Thailand is home to some of the world's largest wildlife trafficking operations and Freeland is campaigning for the government to pass stronger laws against them.

Earlier this month, the Thai nature crime police arrested a man whose luggage contained a baby bear, a pair of panthers, two leopards and some monkeys -- all alive -- that he was trying to smuggle out of the country.

The United Arab Emirates national was detained at Bangkok's main airport, attempting to fly first-class to Dubai with the young creatures in his cases.


Read more!

Sea levels set to rise by up to a metre: Australian report

Yahoo News 23 May 11;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Sea levels are set to rise by up to a metre within a century due to global warming, a new Australian report said Monday as it warned this could make "once-a-century" coastal flooding much more common.

The government's first Climate Commission report said the evidence that the Earth's surface was warming rapidly was beyond doubt -- with the last decade the hottest on record.

Drawn from the most up-to-date climate science from around the world, the report said greenhouse gas emissions created by human industry was the likely culprit behind rising temperatures, warming oceans, and rising sea levels.

Commissioner Professor Will Steffen said while the report had been reviewed by climate scientists from the Australian science body the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and academics, some judgments, including on sea levels, were his own.

"I expect the magnitude of global average sea-level rise in 2100 compared to 1990 to be in the range of 0.5 to 1.0 metre," Steffen said in his preface to "The Critical Decade".

He said while this assessment was higher than that of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in 2007, which was under 0.8m, it was not inconsistent with the UN body which had said higher values were possible.

"We're five years down the track now, we know more about how those big ice sheets are behaving," Steffen told reporters in Canberra.

"In part we have some very good information about the Greenland icesheet. We know it's losing mass and we know it's losing mass at an increasing rate.

"So that's telling us that we need to extend that upper range a bit towards a metre. Now there are commentators who say it should be even higher than that."

The report said a sea-level rise of 0.5m would lead to surprisingly large impacts, with the risk of extreme events such as inundations in coastal areas around Australia's largest cities of Sydney and Melbourne hugely increased.

Steffen said in some instances, a one-in-a-hundred year event could happen every year.

The report found that Australia, prone to bushfires, drought and cyclones, had also likely felt the impact of rising temperatures in recent years.

In the last five decades the number of record hot days in Australia had more than doubled, increasing the risk of heatwaves and bush fire weather, it said.

Australia Climate Commission says warming risk is real
BBC News 23 May 11;

The Australian Climate Commission has warned that the world's sea levels could rise by one metre by the end of the century, much more than thought.

In its first report, the commission says the evidence that the planet is warming is stronger than ever.

It said that climate science is being attacked in the media by people with no credentials in the field.

The Australian government has welcomed the report as it seeks public support for its proposed carbon tax.

The BBC's correspondent in Sydney, Nick Bryant, says the commission's report delivers a strong rebuke to those who question that human emissions is causing global warming.

It warned that the window to take action to limit global warming is closing fast.
Climate politicised

The report claims that climate science was ''being attacked in the media by many with no credentials in the field" and also that attempts to "intimidate climate scientists have added to the confusion in the public".

One member of the commission criticised the "fruitless phoney debate", and said that Australia "no longer had the luxury anymore of climate denialism", as he called it.

Polls suggest that support for forceful action on climate change has declined in Australia since the Copenhagen summit in 2009.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that she and the government accepted the commission's peer-reviewed report.

"We don't have time ... for false claims in this debate," she said.

"The science is in, climate change is real. The science is clear - man-made carbon pollution is making a difference to our planet and our climate.

"We've got to get on with the job of cutting carbon pollution and having a rational debate about it."

Liberal MP Dennis Jensen, a climate change sceptic, told reporters in Canberra that all the evidence pointed to global temperatures stabilising.

He argues that a carbon tax would not achieve anything.

The Australian government had put plans for a flagship emissions trading scheme on hold until 2013 at the earliest after the Senate rejected it twice during the previous Kevin Rudd administration.

Australia is one of the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world.


Read more!