abandoned fishing nets @ chek jawa
from sgbeachbum
Back to the sun
from The annotated budak and Soiled Associations and A Loaf for the Land.
Double delight: Launch of two new Singapore nature guidebooks
from wild shores of singapore
19-31 Jan: Singapore mosses and sponges on display at the Science Centre Singapore from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity
New Year, New Shore
from Nature's Wonders
Blue throat patches of the Chestnut-winged babbler
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Esther Ng, Today Online 20 Jan 10;
SINGAPORE - A rambutan, two soursop and three mango trees have been felled.
Still, residents of Blocks 109 and 116 in Marsiling Rise are relieved that the Sembawang Town Council (SBTC) did not chop down every tree there after placing notices of intent around the estate in November.
As reported by Today last month, a petition to save the trees was then started. It garnered 21 signatures and was sent to the town council.
The neem, drumstick, starfruit, jackfruit, jambu, chiku and another rambutan tree have been spared.
Still, retired doctor Praema Raghavan-Gilbert said: "The neem, the jambu and our bougainvillea have been drastically pruned." The mango tree, said the 60-year-old, had just borne its first fruits. Even the roots of "a beautiful flowering oleander" had been dug up.
One of the petition's signatories, she lives on the second floor of neighbouring Block 117.
Ground floor resident Roslee Hashim, 44, another signatory, said: "I bought this place because of the 'kampung' feel. I could sleep outside, keep an eye on my kids as they played because the trees gave me shade. Now, it's so hot."
But housewife Mardziyah Muhammad Noor, 50, was pleased with the area's new look.
A third-floor resident of Block 116, she said: "It's much brighter now and people can't hide in between the trees." Madam Mardziyah, who has three daughters, said a few households had been plagued by a Peeping Tom.
Others who had spoken out against the removal of the trees were not so much irked by some of them being removed but by the SBTC's top-down process.
"The town council could have consulted the residents' committee but we got to know about it when they placed up notices," said an RC member who declined to be named. "There was only one meeting with the town council and that was only after coverage from the media."
SBTC chairman and MP for Sembawang GRC Hawazi Daipi disagreed. "Our approach has always been to work with the residents' committee. We have always endeavoured to meet the aspirations of the residents as long as they fall within the by-laws of the town council," he said.
Common areas, however, must be kept common and not be converted into private areas, he added.
An SBTC spokesman told MediaCorp it planned to plant starfruit and chiku trees on the cleared plots and landscape the surrounding areas.
The town council is also "actively" looking into collating suggestions from residents on a soon-to-be set up website, Mr Hawazi said.
Law penalises those who keep wildlife as pets; AVA assesses them case by case
Ang Yiying, Straits Times 20 Jan 10;
PET shop retail supervisor Justin Low 'lost' a member of his family last month - to the zoo.
It was a young Asian small-clawed otter, a female he had hand-raised for seven months. MuMu, as it had been named, was loved - even by the family's Jack Russell terrier - but Mr Low, 27, knew it was time to let the otter go.
The zoo was better placed to give MuMu supervised care, a community of other otters and a big outdoor play area.
Releasing MuMu into the wild was not a good option, he realised, as it was hand-raised and probably incapable of surviving there.
For the zoo, getting an otter from a member of the public is unusual, as are the common palm civet and the Malayan pangolin. It receives fewer than 100 donations of wild animals from the public a year, most of them snakes, monitor lizards and green iguanas.
Under 10 per cent of animals turned in by people were kept as pets, said the zoo's assistant director of zoology Biswajit Guha; most were found and handed over soon after because the donors did not know what to do with them.
Many of those who take the trouble to find out how to care for these animals and then do so - like Mr Low - may not be aware that it is against the law to keep wildlife as pets.
But Mr Goh Shih Yong, spokesman for the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), said that if a person comes forward voluntarily to give up the animal, it may exercise compassion. The AVA will consider how the person came to possess the animal and handle the matter case by case.
Mr Guha, explaining the pitfalls in keeping such exotic animals as pets, said they are meant to live in the wild and to learn survival from their parents and the pack.
Also, when these animals hit sexual maturity, they may become aggressive. They may also bring diseases and parasites from the wild to a domestic setting.
Mr Low said he did not think about breaching the animal-protection laws by taking the otter into his four-room HDB flat in Kallang, where he lives with his parents and brother.
He said: 'At that time, I didn't think about it. I just wanted to save it.'
His friend had found it weak and hungry on a grass patch outside Changi Airport's Terminal 3 last April; Mr Low believed it to have been abandoned in a botched smuggling bid.
He took it home, fed it low-lactose milk and put it in a box lined with towels.
His online research into otter care began almost immediately. He moved it into a big cage supplied it with squeaky toys, and gave it the run of the house when the family was home.
He bottle-fed it milk meant for kittens every three to four hours, and gradually introduced tinned cat food, and then dry cat food.
He even provided the otter with a 'pool' - a plastic container into which he put live fish, to sharpen its taste for hunting.
He had planned at first to look after it - with the help of his family and girlfriend - only until it was strong enough to be handed over to the zoo, but the otter stayed for seven months.
'After a few days, it bonded with us,' he said, adding that he kept it longer to minimise the stress it would undergo from a move to yet another new environment.
It turns out he did right.
Ms Lesley Wright, the webmaster for the World Conservation Union Otter Specialist Group, an international group of conservationists he was in touch with, told The Straits Times that since he was already raising the animal and it had bonded with him, it was better that it stayed with him for a while until it was more independent and better able to make the transition to the zoo.
The zoo said the donated otter, now about nine months old, is doing well in quarantine, after which it will be paired up to start a family of its own.
Mr Low said that it was hard for him and his family to let go emotionally: 'It's pretty sad. MuMu was like our kid.'
Penalties for keeping wildlife as pets
Straits Times 20 Jan 10;
KEEPING a wild animal as a pet is illegal in the eyes of the law. Under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act, an individual found keeping illegally imported wildlife may be fined up to $50,000 per species, up to a total of $500,000, and/or jailed up to two years.
An individual who kills, takes or keeps any wild animal or bird other than pest birds such as crows, mynahs and pigeons may be fined up to $1,000; the wild animal or bird will also be forfeited.
Despite the penalties, 13 cases of wildlife being kept as pets in homes came up last year, up from eight in 2007 and six in 2008.
The penalties for smuggling wild animals into or out of the country are no less stiff.
The law gives the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) and enforcement agencies, such as the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, the power to run investigations into this form of smuggling.
Anyone found guilty of smuggling protected wildlife can be fined $50,000 per species, up to a maximum of $500,000, and/or jailed up to two years.
The number of wildlife smuggling cases doubled from six in 2007 to 13 last year, with the most commonly smuggled animals being Asian arowana fish, reptiles and ornamental birds.
The AVA said one or two smuggling cases have come to light at the airport each year in the last few years.
The individuals involved were fined between $100 and $5,500.
ANG YIYING
Mungutan Vanar, The Star 19 Jan 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is not keen to relocate any orangutans to peninsular Malaysia for eco-tourism purposes.
State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said that not only was it dangerous to remove the environment-sensitive primates from their natural habitat, but local people were also against such a move to send away the state’s icon.
He was commenting on a proposal by Deputy Tourism Minister Datuk James Dawos Mamit to obtain orangutans from Sabah and Sarawak to set up an eco-tourism attraction similar to the Sepilok orangutan sanctuary in Sandakan and the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Kuching.
Masidi said that orangutans were not like some other animals that could be relocated from their habitat easily, and such movement could prove traumatic for them.
He said relocating an orangutan involved a lot technicalities and planning, saying they cannot be just caught and flown out to another location.
“The orangutans should stay where they are. Those who want to see orangutans will have to come to Sabah to see them,” Masidi said on Tuesday.
Mamit had told reporters in Kuching on Sunday that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had requested some orangutans be sent to peninsular Malaysia to promote eco-tourism.
Masidi said that there has been no official request made to the state government for the orangutans.
“If there is, we are willing to talk and explain our views,” he said.
There are about 11,000 orangutans left in Sabah, and the Sabah Wildlife Department is working towards rehabilitating orangutans affected by forest clearings for agricultural purposes over the years.
Come to Sabah to see our orang utans, says Masidi
New Straits Times 20 Jan 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Orang utans should be left in their natural habitat and it is for this reason that the Sabah government has set aside over 300,000ha of forest for wildlife to live and multiply.
This was the response from state Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun to a statement by newly appointed federal deputy Tourism Minister Datuk Dr James Dawos Mamit who said some orang utans from Sabah and Sarawak may be sent to the peninsula for eco-tourism purposes.
"I have never heard of this proposal. If it's true, there are so many aspects of the proposal that need to be considered.
"Transporting or relocating orang utans is not as easy as sending over our cats or dogs," he said when contacted.
Mamit was reported in The Borneo Post as saying that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had requested that some orang utans be sent to the peninsula for eco-tourism purposes.
Mamit, who was positive about the idea saying that it could be done, indicated the matter would be discussed with officials from both Sabah and Sarawak. There are an estimated 11,000 orang utans in Sabah, with some undergoing rehabilitation at three different locations statewide.
Orang utans in the wild are only found on Borneo island and in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Masidi said the people of Sabah would not want the primates to be taken away to the peninsula as the species is an icon they are proud of.
"The orang utans should stay where they are.
"Those who want to see the orang utans will have to come to Sabah to see them."
Heru Asprihanto, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;
JAKARTA - A tiny Indonesian lizard has become big business for impoverished villagers in Indonesia, where growing Asian demand for reptile-based traditional medicines has driven a boom in gecko farming.
Geckos -- the pale, soft-skinned lizard with a distinctive call -- are abundant in Indonesia and are believed by Chinese and Korean traditional medicine devotees to help cure cancer as well as skin and respiratory diseases.
In rural Banjarsawah village, on the eastern half of Java island, struggling farmers have discovered geckos make a surprisingly lucrative commodity.
Tohasyim, 32, a farmhand who earns 10,000 rupiah (about $1) a day feeding other people's cattle, now makes 1 million rupiah or about $110 a month hunting geckos in a local forest.
"I start hunting the geckos in the evening after I finish my job, feeding other people's cattle. I normally start hunting the geckos at 6 in the evening until 5 in the morning," said Tohasyim, who, like many Indonesians, has only one name.
The industry began four years ago when one villager, Abdurrahman, began drying geckos at home and selling them to an exporter.
Now, more than 100 hunters scour the forest nightly catching the skittering lizards and delivering them to Abdurrahman, 40, who delivers them to the exporter.
Most villagers in Banjarsawah are now involved in dried gecko production. Hunters venture into the forest in groups of four or five, wearing battery-powered head lamps and catching the lizards with their gloved hands.
About a dozen workers, mostly housewives, spend days stretching, drying, and packing the lizards. They often work from 7 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon in the dark woven bamboo house of the industry's owner. When demand is high, they work even longer. These workers earn about 20,000 rupiah per day.
"My job is stretching the geckos. I get 525,000 rupiah per month. I think this is enough to cover our day-to-day needs," said Hobiah, a farmer's wife who is pregnant with her second child and has been working in the industry for almost six months.
The high season for gecko hunting is during Indonesia's rainy period, from December to February.
Abdurrahman, a father of two, said he cannot disclose how much he earns from his gecko business, but he says he's happy with what he makes.
"On average, every three days we can get 5,000 to 10,000 geckos collected by hunters and we produce a maximum of 1,600 dried geckos in a day," he said.
He sells the geckos in pairs. One pair in good condition costs 4,000 rupiah, while a damaged pair missing the tails fetches 2,000 rupiah.
But gecko hunting has got environmentalists alarmed. R. Tri Prayudhi, a campaigner at East Java-based conservationist group ProFauna said that while the animals were not endangered, they played an important role in the ecological system and should remain in the wild.
"The gecko is a wild animal and should not be traded. The problem is that there is no protection for these animals in Indonesia. We have a principle that a wild animal belongs in nature," Prayudhi said.
Michael Casey, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Jan 10;
BANGKOK – The first known breeding area of one of the world's rarest birds has been found in the remote and rugged Pamir Mountains in war-torn Afghanistan, a New York-based conservation group said Monday.
A researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society stumbled upon the small, olive-brown large-billed reed warbler in 2008 and taped its distinctive song — a recording experts now say is probably the first ever. He and colleagues later caught and released 20 of the birds, the largest number ever recorded, the group says.
At the time, however, Robert Timmins, who conducting a survey of aviary communities along the Wakhan and Pamir rivers, thought he was observing a more common warbler species.
But after a visit to a Natural History Museum in Tring in England to examine bird skins, Timmins realized he had something else on his hands.
Lars Svensson, a Swedish expert on the family of reed warblers and familiar with their songs, was the first to suggest that Timmins' tape was likely the first recording of the large-billed reed warbler.
"Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler," said Colin Poole, executive director of group's Asia Program. "This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan."
Researchers returned to the site of Timmins' first survey in 2009, armed with mist nets used to catch birds for examination. The research team broadcast the recording of the song, which brought in large-billed reed warblers from all directions, allowing the team to catch 20 of them for examination and to collect feathers for DNA.
Lab work comparing museum specimens with measurements, field images, and DNA confirmed the find: the first-known breeding population of large-billed reed warblers.
"This is great news from a little-known species from a remote part of the world and suggests that there may be more discoveries to be made here," said Mike Evans, an expert on birds in the region for BirdLife. He did not take part in the discovery.
Researchers are hoping the discovery sheds light on the bird, which U.K-based Birdlife International in 2007 called one of the world's rarest. The first specimen was discovered in India in 1867, with more than a century elapsing before a single bird was found in Thailand in 2006.
But the announcement of the discovery of a home to the large-billed reed warbler came the same day Taliban militants launched an assault the Afghan capital, underscoring the challenges of doing conservation work in the country.
The bird was discovered in the Pamir Mountains, a sparsely populated region near China that has been relatively peaceful. It is, however, difficult to access — part of the reason the breeding site is only now being discovered.
WCS is the only conservation group doing scientific studies in Afghanistan. It has been involved in helping set up the first national park, Band-e-Amir, in central Afghanistan as well as working with the government to create the first-ever list of protected species.
A preliminary paper on the finding appears in the most recent edition of BirdingASIA, the magazine of the Oriental Bird Club.
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;
OSLO - Long-term efforts to help Haiti recover from the earthquake will have to reverse environmental damage such as near-total deforestation that threatens food and water supplies for the Caribbean nation, experts say.
The focus is now on emergency aid -- Haitian officials estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the January 12 quake. But President Rene Preval urged donors on Monday also to remember the country's long-term needs.
Experts say deforestation in Haiti stretching back to the Duvalier dictatorships -- leaving the nation with less than 2 percent forest cover -- contributes to erosion that undermines food output by the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
"We need to work...to create mechanisms that reinforce better use of natural resources," said Asif Zaidi, Operations Manager of the post-conflict and disaster management branch of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
Before the quake, UNEP had decided on a two-year project from 2010 to bolster Haiti's environment, from forests to coral reefs, spokesman Nick Nuttall said.
Among quick measures for donors could be to provide propane to encourage a shift from charcoal-burning stoves. That could be backed in the longer-term by reforestation and investments in renewable energies such as solar or wind power, Zaidi said.
"If you have forest cover, when heavy rain takes place it doesn't erode the land. It doesn't result in flash floods," he said. Hurricanes are more damaging in Haiti than in neighboring Dominican Republic, largely because of Haiti's lack of forests.
LAND RIGHTS
Another big problem is that Haiti has failed to develop strong governance, such as clear laws on land rights, after misrule under dictatorship from 1957 to 1986 by Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc."
"It is crucial that the priority of boosting agricultural production in the country is not forgotten in the rubble and chaos," the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization said in a statement. Most Haitians live in rural areas.
British-based risk consultancy Maplecroft lists Haiti as number two of 166 nations by their vulnerability to climate change, behind only Somalia and ahead of Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.
"What stands out most for Haiti is resource security -- food security and water security," said Fiona Place, risk analyst at Maplecroft of the ranking that rates countries according to their vulnerability to natural hazards, from droughts to floods.
Years of weak government were also a shortcoming.
Donors have long sought to help Haiti. But a project to plant trees worldwide, for instance, has largely bypassed Haiti.
A U.N.-backed campaign registers 7.8 billion planted trees -- more than one for every person on the planet. But it lists just 140,000 in Haiti which has a population of 10 million.
And Haiti, like many poor nations, has missed out on projects for promoting carbon-cutting technologies in developing nations that have channeled big investments to China and India as part of the fight against global warming.
(Editing by Charles Dick)
All this badger cull will prove is that our relations with the natural world have scarcely altered since the dark ages
George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk 18 Jan 10;
There's a story that almost all of us believe: that beyond a certain state of development, we relearn a respect for nature. It is true that some of the excesses of the early modern age – attempts by gamekeepers to kill all competing species, mass slaughter by white hunters in the colonies, the grubbing up of hedgerows and ancient woodlands – have lessened, though we still eat endangered fish and buy timber from clear-cut rainforest. It is also true that we give more money to conservation projects and spend more time watching wildlife films than we have ever done before. But as soon as we perceive that our economic interests are threatened, our war against nature resumes.
2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. The Welsh assembly is celebrating the occasion by launching a project to exterminate the badger.
I won't pretend that this story ranks alongside the catastrophe in Haiti or the meltdown in Afghanistan, but it casts an interesting light on humanity's continuing impulse to conquer nature, and shows how, even when cloaked in the language of science, our relations with the natural world are still governed by irrationality and superstition.
Last week the Welsh rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, announced what her government calls "a proactive non-selective badger cull" in west Wales. What this means is the elimination of the species, beginning when the cubs emerge from their burrows in May. Badgers carry the bacterium which causes bovine tuberculosis. The purpose of the experiment is to discover whether the number of cows with the disease is reduced when the badger is exterminated. It it works, the method might be applied elsewhere. But even before the experiment begins, I can tell you that it's a waste of time and money.
In 2007, after nine years of research, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB sent its final report to the UK government. It discovered that "badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain". Rather than suppressing the disease, killing badgers appears to spread it.
The researchers had killed badgers across 30 areas, each of 100 square kilometres. They found that when the badgers were culled in response to local outbreaks of TB, the slaughter "increased, rather than reduced" the incidence of the disease in cattle: the level of infection rose by some 20%. When badgers were killed proactively (culled annually, regardless of whether cattle were infected), the incidence of TB inside the killing zone was reduced by 23% – but the incidence outside increased by 25%. The reason is that the killing changes the behaviour of the badgers: they travel more and mix more, either to escape the slaughter or to investigate the ecological space it opens up. The economic costs of proactive culling, the study found, were 40 times greater than the benefits.
But the old reflex dies hard. As the scientific group pointed out, "agricultural and veterinary leaders continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of badger population control". It noted "considerable reluctance to accept and embrace scientific findings". The Welsh government shares this reluctance. In announcing her extermination policy last week, Elin Jones claimed that the cull would be conducted according to "the requirements outlined by the Independent Scientific Group". But the ISG couldn't have made itself clearer: badger culling of any kind won't work. Instead, governments should do more to control the way that cattle are kept, tested and moved. This was a message that farmers and the Welsh government didn't want to hear.
The policy Elin Jones announced last week is even worse than this suggests. Her culling experiment is actually testing two variables: exterminating badgers and better management of cattle. Yet there are no experimental controls (study areas in which one or both methods are not being tried), so there is no means of telling which of the two measures is working, or whether changes in the incidence of the disease have anything to do with the experiment. There's a scientific term for a study that simultaneously tests two variables while using no controls: worthless. The Welsh experiment has nothing to do with science and everything to do with appeasing farmers.
The Farmers' Union of Wales has been furiously demanding that time and money should be wasted in this fashion. It has lobbied the assembly government for a scheme that will damage its members' interests and alienate the people who buy their milk and butter and cheese. It appears to be impervious to evidence or reason: last week it announced that "badger culling works. Any talk about farming practices being a significant factor are unfounded."
But even if extermination did work, the effect could be sustained only by killing any badgers that re-entered the area: in other words, rendering the species extinct there. Were the same approach to be rolled out across a wider area (the policy the experiment is designed to test), the badger would have to become extinct not only across that zone, but also in all neighbouring zones. Because badgers will move into areas from which the species has been erased, the only logical outcome of this approach is to exterminate the badger throughout the United Kingdom. As this is politically unacceptable, the Welsh experiment is pointless as well as worthless.
This exercise in wilful stupidity betrays an approach to the natural world that has scarcely altered since the dark ages. We still act as if we have been granted dominion over it. Those with an economic interest seem to regard any species that might compete or conflict with them as a threat not only to their income but also to their power. They still treat the natural world as fungible: nothing is too precious, too great a source of wonder and delight to liquidate. There appears to be no point of regret beyond which we won't venture, no lesson in ecological collapse that we are prepared to learn. The Christian worldview, which places humankind at the apex of creation, is hard to shake, even in the most secular nation on earth.
All industries strive not only towards monopoly but also towards monoculture: domination of the natural or cultural landscape. This is what George Orwell meant when he remarked that "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle". Industry, if left unchecked, tolerates no deviance. It seeks to shrink both the range of human experience and the wonders of the natural world until they fit into the container it has made for them.
We could lose badgers and – except for those of us who spend summer evenings watching them as they shuffle out of their setts – suffer few tangible losses. But the urge to destroy them springs from the same pathological instinct for power which would deprive us of almost everything.
Simon Hancock, BBC News 19 Jan 10;
A botanist from Kew Gardens is fighting to save one of the rarest plant species in the world, the Bastard Gumwood tree.
The last tree of this species is found on the tiny South Atlantic island of St Helena, and it is dying.
To keep the Bastard Gumwood in existence, it needs to be pollinated so it will produce a fertile seed from which to grow new seedlings. Obtaining a pure seed from the tree is no easy task.
The tree ( Commidendrum rotundifolium ) is enclosed in netting to prevent insects cross-pollinating with its near neighbour, the False Gumwood.
But even then because there are no other individuals in existence, the tree must self-pollinate, which it stubbornly resists.
And so it needs some help.
Every day, botanist Phil Lambdon visits the site along with local conservationists. The team delicately uses small paint brushes to collect pollen grains, which they spread from one flower to another.
But the odds are still against the Bastard Gumwood.
"The tree just doesn't want to pollinate itself," said Dr Lambdon, the botanist visiting from Kew Gardens who is in charge of the effort.
"Only around 1 in 10,000 pollen grains have the small genetic mutation which will allow self-pollination to take place.
"It's like a needle in a haystack. The work is painstaking and very slow."
The only way of knowing whether the seeds produced are fertile is to plant them.
"99.99% will be infertile and not grow, but it's the only way of finding out," said Dr Lambdon.
"It's not called the Bastard Gumwood because of this, incidentally," he added.
In fact there are a number of species beginning with the word on the island - the Bastard Cabbage tree, the Bastard Bell flower and the Small Bastard Cabbage tree.
They were named in by botanist John Burchell who was on St Helena between 1806 and1810.
Some think he may have been simply reporting the names given to the species by the locals.
Whatever the truth behind the tree's name, the island hopes these efforts will be more successful than with the St Helena Olive, which was also only found here, but which died out in 2003.
"Many of the tourists who come to the island want to see the island's unique wildlife. Another extinction would be very bad publicity," said St Helena National Trust Director Jamie Roberts.
Yahoo News 19 Jan 10;
BEIJING (AFP) – The World Wildlife Fund warned on Tuesday that the wild tiger faced extinction in China after having been decimated by poaching and the destruction of its natural habitat.
"If there are no urgent measures taken, there is a high risk that the wild tiger will go extinct," Zhu Chunquan, conservation director of biodiversity at WWF China, said ahead of the start of the Year of the Tiger on February 14.
Zhu said that China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) estimated there were only around 50 tigers left in the nation's wilderness.
"Globally, WWF estimates that if poaching and other threats continue, there are around 30 years left until tigers go extinct," he told AFP.
Loss and degradation of the tigers' habitat in China and poaching of the animals as well as their prey -- or source of food -- were behind the rapid disappearance of the animal, he added.
The SFA says around 20 Siberian tigers remain in China's northeast, 20 Bengal tigers in Tibet, and 10 Indochinese tigers in the southwest of the nation.
"As for the South China tiger, after the late 1970s, there has been no concrete evidence to show that there are any left," Zhu said.
In the 1950, about 4,000 of the South China variety roamed China, he said.
The WWF says on its website that the tiger is one of the top 10 species to watch in 2010, pointing out that there may be just 3,200 of the animals left globally in the wild.
China banned international trade in tiger bones and related products in 1993, Zhu said, but preventing all poaching and illegal trade remains a challenge.
Authorities in the Asian nation have in the past meted out heavy punishment to those found guilty of killing the endangered species.
In December, a man who shot dead an Indochinese tiger was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined 580,000 yuan (85,000 dollars).
Zhu urged the Chinese government to raise awareness of the issue, by pushing people not to hunt the tiger's typical prey, which include wild boar and deer.
He added that local communities should be encouraged to find alternatives to livelihoods such as timber harvesting, as these activities contributed to the degradation and loss of the tiger's habitat.
Mira Oberman Yahoo News 20 Jan 10;
CHICAGO (AFP) – Huge Asian carp, which act like "aquatic vacuum cleaners" and leap into the air when spooked by motorboats, may have invaded the US Great Lakes despite a massive effort to block them, officials said Tuesday.
Researchers analyzing water samples have discovered fragments of Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan, although there is still no evidence that that fast-breeding fish have breached electric barriers set up along Chicago-area waterways.
"Clearly this is not good news," said Major General John Peabody, commanding general of the US Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes and Ohio River division.
The Corps is one of a host of state and federal agencies working to stop the spread of the voracious carp which can grow up to seven feet long (2.1 meters) and weigh 150 pounds (68 kilos).
Federal officials have warned that Asian carp - which have no natural predators - could have a "devastating effect on the Great Lakes ecosystem and a significant economic impact" on the seven-billion-dollar sport and commercial fishing industry.
"From what we have seen in other parts of the country, Asian carp could out-compete our native, sport and commercial fish in southern Lake Michigan," Charlie Wooley, deputy regional director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), said in a statement.
"We call them an aquatic vacuum cleaner because they filter important food resources out of the water and turn it into carp biomass."
It's possible that the DNA discovered in two different samples could come from a decomposed carp which was carried through the electric barriers, officials said.
Or it could come from eggs that were transported on the belly of a bird. Another possibility is that flooding may have allowed the carp may to swim around the barriers.
"The short answer is we just don't know," said FWS spokeswoman Ashley Spratt.
"We have not actually seen live carp above the barrier," she told AFP. "The information we currently have does not suggest they're there in sustainable populations."
Teams will set out on boats as soon as weather allows to search the lake for signs of live carp, and the regional coordinating committee will accelerate its efforts to block their spread, she said.
Officials are considering a number of options including another mass kill through poisoning, sterilizing males to slow breeding, building new electrical barriers and researching other "biological controls."
The test results were released hours after the fight to block the carp was dealt a blow by the US Supreme Court, which refused to force the closure of the Chicago shipping canal system as an emergency measure to stop the invasion.
"The motion of Michigan for preliminary injunction is denied," the Supreme Court wrote in a single line ruling.
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox called upon President Barack Obama to use his executive powers to close the locks and said he hoped the Supreme Court would consider the issue more carefully in another pending case.
"I am extremely disappointed the Supreme Court did not push the pause button on this crisis until an effective plan is in place," Cox said in a statement.
"While the injunction would have been an extraordinary step by the court, Michigan and the other Great Lakes states are facing an extraordinary crisis that could forever alter the lakes, permanently killing thousands of jobs at a time when families can least afford it.
Asian carp were originally imported to the southern United States in the 1970s to help keep retention ponds clean at fish farms and waste water treatment plants.
Heavy flooding helped them escape into the Mississippi in the 1990's and they have since migrated into the Missouri and Illinois rivers.
Should they make it into Lake Michigan in large numbers it would be extremely difficult to stop their spread throughout the five interconnected Great Lakes and up into the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Michigan Locks Bid Denied In Great Lakes Carp Case
James Vicini and Andrew Stern, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by the state of Michigan for an injunction to force the closing of two Chicago-area waterway locks to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes.
The voracious Bighead and Silver carp are considered a dire threat to the lakes' $7 billion fisheries.
Michigan last month took the unusual step of asking the high court for an order that would close the two locks and would require authorities to take all other action necessary to keep the carp from entering the lakes.
Michigan asked that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state of Illinois and Chicago's sewer authority take more steps to block the carp during flooding and ultimately to separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed.
The invasive carp may have already reached Lake Michigan, with authorities saying on Tuesday that water samples recently taken in an Indiana harbor contained carp DNA.
However, sampling for environmental DNA is a new technique and authorities are seeking proof that actual Asian carp are swimming in the lake.
"We would like the confirmation of a physical specimen," said Major General John Peabody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Netting and electro-fishing are being conducted.
Closing a lock and dam and the other measures could help keep the carp from entering the lakes, but it also court hurt shippers, who transport 15 million tons of commodities through the connecting waterways each year.
Nearby Midwestern states such as Minnesota and Ohio supported Michigan's request while Illinois and the federal government opposed it.
U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the court that Michigan failed to show likely irreparable harm, that the state cannot prevail on the merits of its theory and Michigan cannot justify the mandatory relief it demands.
If the Army Corps makes a final decision to reject the steps Michigan wants, then the state can ask a federal judge to decide if the agency acted lawfully, Kagan said.
While the court denied the preliminary injunction, it took no action on Michigan's separate request to reopen cases dating back to the 1920s that control how much water Chicago can withdraw from Lake Michigan. Environmentalists said they remained optimistic the court would act on the other request.
A huge engineering project a century ago reversed the direction of the Chicago River and diverts lake water into a canal that connects Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River watershed. The goal was to stop sewage releases into the lake.
Kagan said Michigan was trying to use old cases about water flows and allotments to litigate an entirely different environmental protection issue involving the carp.
After the court denied the injunction, the governors of Michigan and Wisconsin sent a letter to the White House asking the administration to set up a meeting of governors from Great Lakes states to discuss the Asian carp threat.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)
Yahoo News 19 Jan 10;
TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese ruling party lawmakers have questioned a plan to sign a defence logistics accord with Australia as the two countries are at loggerheads over Japan's annual whale hunts, an official said Tuesday.
The move comes as anti-whaling activists of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been harassing a Japanese whaling fleet on its annual hunt for hundreds of the sea mammals in Antarctic waters.
Australia opposes the hunts, carried out despite a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling under a loophole that allows "lethal research" whaling, and has threatened international legal action against Japan.
Japan's government is considering submitting a bill to parliament on a defence pact that would allow the two countries' militaries to share food, fuel and other supplies and services in their operations overseas.
But some lawmakers of the ruling centre-left coalition called on the government to "cautiously" handle the accord when the vice defence minister, Kazuya Shimba, explained the bill to them, a defence ministry spokeswoman said.
The lawmakers argued that signing a so-called Acquisition and Cross-servicing Agreement should be reconsidered in light of the recent harassment of Japan's whaling fleet.
"According to our vice minister, one of the lawmakers said he wants the government to insist on Japan's current position," defending its right to hunt whales as part of its national heritage, the ministry spokeswoman said.
The vice minister had replied to the group of lawmakers that, although any two countries face their own particular bilateral issues, it was important "to maintain military relations of trust," she told AFP.
In the latest showdown between Japanese whalers and the activists, the environmentalists' high-tech superboat, the New Zealand-registered Ady Gil, sank in Antarctic seas in early January after a collision with the whaling fleet's security ship.
New Zealand and Australian authorities are investigating the incident, while Japan has lodged a strong protest with the Wellington government.
Both the whalers and the protesters blame each other for the crash.
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