Urban hunters do most harm to ape populations

Nora Schultz, New Scientist 3 Apr 09;

Commercial hunters from towns are exacting a much bigger toll on great apes than subsistence hunters from small villages, according to an analysis of ape nest density near human settlements.

The finding that numbers of gorillas and chimpanzees appear to have dwindled twice as much near towns in Gabon than near villages supports a focus on conservation efforts that tackle commercial hunting over those that aim to convince villagers to give up subsistence hunting, says Hjalmar Kühl at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who conducted the study with colleagues.

The team counted sleeping nests left by gorillas and chimps in Gabon's mountainous Moukalaba Doudou National Park. They found that nest density decreased the closer they got to the towns that surround the park. The towns' populations range from 10,000 to 18,000 people.

Although some nests could be found close to the towns, their overall density was only half that seen in the centre of the park. In contrast, the team found no such gradient near smaller villages.

"This suggests that the impact local subsistence hunting has is much smaller than that from commercial hunters coming from the bigger towns," says Kühl.
'Already rare'

The existence of organised bushmeat transport and trade cartels had suggested that town-based hunting is indeed commercial and caters for more than just the local people's needs, with primate meat reaching plates as far as North America.

"But until now we didn't know how drastically it was affecting the apes," says Kühl.

The problem with estimating the impact of ape hunting just from watching local markets and hunters, he explains, is that this reveals little about how the population may be suffering as a whole. "We rarely find ape meat in the markets, but these animals are already so rare and reproduce so slowly that even comparatively low-level hunting might do a lot of damage," he says.

The absence of chimp and gorilla nests near the towns now confirms what might be expected: that ape populations have already suffered from commercial hunting. Because the researchers did not find a similar depletion of nests near smaller villages, they also conclude that any ape meat that makes it to the urban areas is not brought and sold there by the villagers, but results from organised hunting trips from the towns people themselves.
'Major challenge'

"This fits in with what we know from case studies about commercial hunting. It tends to be organised by relatively wealthy people who already have access to the necessary vehicles and funds," says Kühl. As a result, he argues, future conservation efforts should focus on restricting and monitoring transport into and out of the park. Initiatives to provide local villagers with alternatives to subsistence hunting should not be abandoned but "are less crucial", he says.

"There is still a lot of debate on how to stop the trade into urban centres," says Marcus Rowcliffe, an expert in the bushmeat trade at the Institute of Zoology in London, UK. "Effective control systems are going to depend on government capacities to enforce law and fight corruption," he says, "and that is going to be a major challenge."

Journal reference: Journal of Biological Conservation (DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.02.032)

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New Delhi ban on plastic bags falls flat

Threat of fine and jail doesn't deter residents, due to poor enforcement
P. Jayaram, Straits Times 4 Apr 09;

NEW DELHI: Nearly three months after India's national capital banned the use, sale and storage of plastic bags, the ubiquitous bags have refused to go away.

In vegetable markets, shops and even shopping malls, traders and customers continue to use plastic bags that experts say harm the environment and choke storm-water drains.

Not surprisingly, the Jan 16 announcement had been received with scepticism in a city whose residents are used to bans being flouted openly.

They say the ban on plastic bags will meet the same fate as so many other 'don'ts' issued by the authorities in the past: 'Don't litter the roads', 'Don't smoke in public', 'Don't use roadsides as toilets'. The list of punishable offences is long but is seldom enforced.

But environmentalists have not lost hope yet.

'The ban was long overdue. A blanket ban was necessary,' said Mr Kushal Yadav, coordinator and campaigner at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation.

'It is a good beginning, though 100 per cent compliance would take a long time,' he told The Straits Times.

He said when hill stations like Shimla and Nainital banned plastic bags two years ago, there was scepticism about whether it would be effective. 'Today, you cannot see a plastic bag in these places,' he said.

But he agreed the capital's record of enforcement of such bans has been poor.

The ban on plastic bags covers hotels, large hospitals, restaurants and eateries, liquor shops, markets, shopping centres and fruit and vegetable outlets.

Mr Ravi Kumar Aggarwal, president of the All-India Plastic Industries Association, told The Straits Times the ban is 'sheer madness' and 'foolhardy'.

He claimed plastic bags accounted for only 10 per cent of the solid waste in Delhi and there was no proof that they were responsible for choked drains.

The ban would result in the closure of more than 2,000 plastic bag manufacturing units in the capital and render 10,000 traders and 100,000 workers jobless.

Referring to the maximum penalty of 100,000 rupees (S$3,000) or a five-year prison term for violation of the ban, Mr Aggarwal said this would provide yet another avenue for corruption by law enforcers.

A government panel had, in a report to the Delhi High Court last year, said a complete ban on plastic bags in the city was 'impossible' and suggested setting up recycling units by the manufacturers, on the basis of the 'polluter pays principle', to tackle the problem.

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Slum cooker protects environment, helps poor

Barry Moody, Reuters 2 Apr 09;

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's huge and squalid slums don't have much of anything, except mountains of trash that fill rivers and muddy streets, breeding disease.

Now Kenyan designers have built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands.

After nine years of development, the prototype "Community Cooker" is close to being rolled out in overcrowded refugee camps as well as slums around the country where the filth encourages diseases including cholera.

Invented by Nairobi architect Jim Archer, the cooker combines simplicity with the capacity to confront several environmental challenges simultaneously. The design was highly commended at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona last year.

The prototype is working in Nairobi's Kibera slum, said to be the biggest in Africa, where around 800,000 people live.

Potatoes, rice and tea cook on some of the eight hotplates above a roaring, spitting furnace. A joint of meat roasts in an oven that can also be used for bread.

Behind the black-painted corrugated iron cooking area, rubbish collected by local youths dries on racks before being pushed into the furnace.

Technicians have spent three years modifying the firebox to produce enough heat to destroy toxins in the rubbish, particularly plastics, although they are striving to get the temperature higher still.

The stove is one of several projects giving hope amid endemic violence, crime and disease in the huge slums. In another part of Kibera, a group of 35 youths have developed a farm on a former rubbish dump, feeding themselves and selling cucumbers, pumpkins and tomatoes.

HEALTH HAZARDS

The health hazards posed by garbage assault the eye as soon as you enter Kibera.

The slum looks as if it is literally built on trash, with waste including excrement filling the rough mud streets and streams, so only fetid pools remain.

Small rubbish fires stutter on the roadsides, spreading acrid smoke near kiosks selling food.

Pigs and goats forage in the waste and children play by filthy streams and drink from water pipes covered in garbage.

Slums like Kibera, home to 60 percent of Nairobi's population, receive no garbage collection or other services from city authorities.

Many inhabitants struggle to afford the kerosene for their own stoves, so Archer's idea was to clear at least some of the waste, while providing hot water for bathing and communal cooking facilities.

While the prototype cooker, in Kibera's Laini Saba village, has been dogged by local squabbles, drought and design problems, it proved the idea worked. A tall chimney carries the once-choking fumes away and initial emissions tests have been favorable, Archer's firm says.

Now the Kenyan Red Cross is preparing to install similar cookers in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps near the Somali border, where cholera has already broken out this year, and at least one European aid organization is looking at wide deployment.

Juma Ochieng of the Red Cross told Reuters the Community Cooker had benefits for health, sanitation and conservation, and would create employment for young people working to build and maintain the stoves.

Residents of Kibera, scene of bloodshed in last year's Kenyan election crisis and home to many criminal gangs, agree.

"It employs the youth....They would be stealing if they were not here ...They would have been in trouble if we didn't have this cooker," said James Mokaya, 56, a member of the community that runs the prototype.

The Kibera stove cost more than $10,000 to build as a prototype but both Ndede and Mumo Musuva, an architect working for Archer's practice, estimate each would cost $5-6,000 once produced in larger numbers. This compares with $50 million for industrial incinerators in Europe.

SLOWING DEFORESTATION

The Red Cross's Ochieng says the cookers will also reduce the risk of deadly slum fires from kerosene stoves in densely populated slums.

"As the Red Cross we are looking at taking them countrywide very soon," he said. He thinks 8-10 will be built by the end of this year and at least a 100 over the next five years, depending on donor funding.

Henry Ndede, of the Kenya regional office for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which provided funds to set up the Kibera cooker, says more work needs to be done to improve materials used in it and raise the temperature still higher to ensure the destruction of carcinogens in plastic.

The stove reaches around 650 Celsius (1,200 Fahrenheit) at present. Ndede says 1,000 degrees is needed but is happy that the prototype has proven rubbish can be turned into energy.

"It is an ideal item for densely populated areas like slums and refugee camps," he said. "Every city in this country has a slum area with highly combustible material with high calorific value."

He said the cooker would also relieve serious pressure on forest areas. The Dadaab camp houses 250,000 people although it was built for 80,000. Surrounding woodland has been cut down to provide cooking fuel.

"In Dadaab you have to go more than 50 km (30 miles) to fetch firewood. It takes you two weeks on donkey-back," he said.

(Additional reporting by Ruth Njeng'ere; Editing by Sara Ledwith)

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The tide is high, but are we holding on?

Construction Week Online 4 Apr 09;

With sea levels predicted to rise by at least half a metre this century Bahrain Editor Benjamin Millington explores what it means for the longevity of the 21st century’s coastal developments.

If you type “rising sea levels” into the Google news search engine you’ll retrieve hundreds of articles from around the world each telling the same story – we are losing our coastline.

Waves are swallowing houses in Vietnam, villages are disappearing in Ghana, Australia is making plans to relocate coastal towns, sea water is lapping at windowsills in China and the Pacific Islands are losing their islands.

In light of this, the Arabian Gulf must be the only part of the world where the length of coastline and number of islands is actually increasing rather than decreasing.

The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain are all zealously reclaiming land from the sea to create island communities where residents enjoy the beach in their backyard.

Are these people climate change skeptics? Or are the islands built on sound scientific knowledge?

The key resource for information on rising sea levels is the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which collates published scientific literature and produces global climate change assessments every five to six years.

Their fourth and latest assessment in 2007 predicted sea levels would rise between 18cm and 59cm this century, a worrying set of figures for any coastal development.

But John Hunter, an Australian scientist and contributor to the IPCC assessments, said more recent predictions are even worse.

“Many people have since suggested much bigger rises, Hansen, an American scientist says the upper limit could be around 5m,” he said.

“Not many people really believe that, but another recent paper suggests with good reason that we are set for a rise between 80cm and 2m this century. “That’s what I would allow for based on the very latest research.”

Hunter said the research behind all of these predictions comes from the various scientists monitoring and computer modeling the two main factors contributing to rising sea levels.

The first is the melting of land-based ice which is mainly occurring in Greenland, Antarctica and mountain glaciers. The second is the increase in sea temperature which is causing the ocean to expand and thus sea levels to rise.

But predicting the impact of these events, which themselves are caused by a long list of complex factors, is far from precise and constantly changing. This in turn makes determining just how high above sea level it is safe to build a bit of a scientific stab in the dark.

“People may be conversant with sea level rise at the time of design and construction, but if it was 10 years ago they’d be relying on some very old IPCC research – that’s what you’ve got to be careful of,” said Hunter.

And if Hunter’s predictions of a rise between 80cm and 2m are correct, it means the largest and most well known developer of land reclamation projects, Nakheel, has based its famous Dubai projects on data that is already outdated.

Shaun Lenehan, head of environment for Dubai’s largest developer of land reclamation projects Nakheel, said its trilogy of Palm shaped island projects and the World have been built to take into account a sea level rise of 60cm this century, 20cm less than Hunter’s minimum prediction.

But this is not to say that Nakheel has been reckless in its approach to determining the height of its projects; 60cm is still at the upper end of the IPCC’s current assessment and relatively conservative in comparison to other developments.

Last October, the Bahrain government released a land reclamation and dredging manual which recommended all projects in the Kingdom only factor in a 40cm rise in sea level this century.

This, they claimed, is the optimum level to prevent “over-reclaiming” and unnecessarily building islands too high. But whether its 40cm or 60cm, as the body of scientific research grows, the potential is there for larger
predictions over the coming decades and ultimately the realisation of much bigger rises in sea levels. For coastal developments built in line with yesterdays predictions it means an increased vulnerability to storm surges and one in 100 year flooding events, which are also set to dramatically increase by 2100.

“If the sea levels only rise half a metre this century, this means that in most places, what we call a 100 year storm event will be happening about four times a year,” said Hunter. “That’s a huge change. If you’re designing things for a 1-in-100-year event you’re going to finish up at the end of the century with flooding every few months.”

“And this is actually only allowing for sea level rise. We’re not sure on how the frequency and strength of meteorological surges are going to change with climate change. If the storms get worse as well then you have to make a further allowance.”

The artificial advantage

While Nakheel and other reclamation developers will inevitably face ongoing maintenance to combat rising tides over this century, their artificial islands are unlikely to be the first coastal developments to suffer major flooding.

Lenehan explains that reclaimed islands at least have the advantage of determining the height of their development to take into account factors like sea level rises, one in 100 year storms, king tides and storm surges.

He said their projects are generally at least 3m above the water level and areas exposed to the wave climate and storm surges are built higher depending on their vulnerability.

This, he said, is a luxury many other coastal areas don’t have, including large parts of Dubai’s mainland.

“If you look at a topographic survey you can see that with a high tide at [Dubai] creek you might get 1½m freeboard between the top of the water and the land. On the palm we’ve got 3m freeboard,” Lenehan said.

“In fact if you stand on our project at Mina Rashid, you can actually see that it is higher than the adjacent mainland.

“So if by the end of the century sea level rise did come up to the max forecast, large areas of Deira, the Creek and Bur Dubai would be underwater and Mina Rashid would still be above.”

Similarly, low lying cities and countries around the world will be battling for survival well before Nakheel’s Palms.

In 1987 the then president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, was famously quoted on his nation’s future.

“As for my own country, the Maldives, a mean sea level rise of 2m would suffice to virtually submerge the entire country of 1190 small islands, most of which barely rise 2m above mean sea level,” he said.

“That would be the death of a nation. With a mere 1m rise also, a storm surge would be catastrophic, and possibly fatal to the nation.”

The time lag

For several decades now small island nations around the globe have been making impassioned pleas to the developed world to cut greenhouse gas emissions to curb the rising seas.

This year a group of small island leaders put a resolution before the United Nations calling on the Security Council to tackle the issue as a threat to international peace and security.

But the horse may have already bolted with regards to saving our lowest lying coastal areas.

“The sea has been rising at about 3mm per year over the last decade and scientists expect that to accelerate along with the temperature of the globe,” said Hunter.

“This is obviously subject to what we do in terms of mitigating greenhouse gases but certainly for the first few decades or at least first half of this century that hardly affects sea level rises.

“There’s a big time lag effect here and there’s not much we can do about it. Once we really curb greenhouse gas emissions then we’ll have to wait decades, maybe centuries for sea level rise to flatten off.”

It’s a sobering thought and one which leads to the question, even if land reclamation projects are safe from sea rise this century, what will happen next century? At the rate things are going it seems likely most coastal development’s will face a watery future at some point.

While none of us will be around to see it, it’s a depressing thought that unlike the Pyramids of Egypt or India’s Taj Mahal these iconic developments of the 21st century may not stand the test of time for future generations.

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Massive Antarctic ice shelf set to break loose

Yahoo News 3 Apr 09;

PARIS (AFP) – A Jamaica-sized ice shelf is close to wrenching itself away from Antarctica, following dramatic weakening of an ice "bridge" linking it to the continent, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported Friday.

The icy umbilical cord tying the Wilkins Ice Shelf to two islands on the Antarctic peninsula "looks set to collapse," ESA said.

The evidence comes from radar pictures taken on Thursday by its Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite, the Paris-based agency said in a press release.

Scientists have been keeping a worried eye on this ice shelf for years.

For many, it is a barometer of global warming, which has hit the Antarctic peninsula harder than almost any region on Earth.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles) before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

By May 2009, an ice bridge, about 2.7 kms (1.7 miles) wide on average and just 900 metres (yards) at its narrowest point, was all that connected it to Charcot and Latady islands.

Over the past year, the ice shelf has lost about 1,800 square kilometres (700 square miles), or about 14 percent of its size, in further breakup events, ESA said.

New pictures show "the beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge" itself, it added.

This week, rifts formed along the central axis of the bridge and a large chunk of ice broke away. The stress patterns are now expanding rapidly, pointing to a likely imminent collapse of the link.

Ice shelves are ledges of thick ice that float on the sea and are attached to the land. They are formed when ice is exuded from ice sheet on land.

In the past 20 years, Antarctica has lost seven shelves.

The process is marked by shrinkage and the breakaway of increasingly bigger chunks before the remainder of the shelf snaps away from the coast.

It then disintegrates into debris or into icebergs that eventually melt as they drift northwards.

Scientists are especially puzzled that the Wilkins has suffered big breakups during the southern hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.

One theory is that relatively warm currents from the Southern Ocean are scouring the underside of the shelf, thinning it rapidly from underneath.

In the past 50 years, the peninsula -- the tongue of Antarctica that juts up towards South America -- has experienced warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), which is many times higher than the global average.

In the early 1990s, many experts predicted that it would take 30 years for a shelf as vast as the Wilkins to be lost.

Antarctica is the world's biggest store of freshwater. Its ice, located on land in two vast slabs and on the peninsula, holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 57 metres (185 feet).

The Antarctic ice shelves do not add to sea levels when they melt. Like the Arctic ice cap, they float on the sea and thus displace their own volume.

Wordie Ice Shelf has disappeared: scientists
Reuters 3 Apr 09;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.

They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.

"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.

"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.

In another report published in the journal Geophysical Letters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that ice is melting much more rapidly than expected in the Arctic as well, based on new computer analyses and recent ice measurements.

The U.N. Climate Panel projects that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heat waves and more powerful storms.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can raise overall ocean levels and swamp low-lying areas.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Best of our wild blogs: 3 Apr 09

Film Friday: Screening of EARTHLINGS & Film Discussion
on Otterman speaks

Dredging at Changi Point from Apr to Jun 09
on the wild shores of singapore blog

The Okenia Nudibranch With 3 Gills Is ...
on the colourful clouds blog

Blue Films
Green Porno goes blue from wild shores of singapore blog

Great Hornbill sunbathing
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Courtship of the Purple-throated Sunbird
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

What a long, strange trip: lifecycle assessment
on SUNfiltered

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"Extinction Sucks"! new online full-length wildlife show

WWF says "Extinction Sucks"!
WWF 3 Apr 09;

Gland, Switzerland - Elephants, rhinos, dolphins and marine turtles are just some of the threatened species which come under the spotlight in a brand-new online TV series making its debut today (Friday April 3). Extinction Sucks is a first – a first for WWF, a first for online video and a first for endangered animals!

Extinction Sucks is a unique co-production between WWF and Babelgum to bring high-quality conservation programming to web audiences. It's thought to be the first time that an online video channel has commissioned original, full-length wildlife shows specifically for the internet. The series will be broadcast over the next six weeks on www.panda.org and www.babelgum.com.

The six half-hour episodes feature Australians Ashleigh Young and Aleisha Caruso as they raise funds for much-needed equipment to be used in wildlife conservation projects from Nepal to New Zealand and from Vietnam to India. The duo put on sports events, enter dance competitions and hold garage sales to raise the cash for camera traps, a quad bike and other essential supplies. They then visit the projects to hand over the gifts and find out more about the threatened species.

In the first episode of Extinction Sucks, Ash and Aleisha help WWF India's elephant conservation programme by raising the cash for night vision binoculars, to use in the fight against poaching and the illegal ivory trade. They also lend a hand directing traffic in the Mudumalai National Park in Southern India, where speeding motorists have claimed the lives of wild elephants. Ash and Aleisha are faced with the brutalities of poaching when they come across an elephant which has been shot for its tusks.

“We believe online audiences deserve the same quality and viewing experience as traditional television has offered,” said Babelgum's commissioning chief editor Claudio Scotto di Carlo. “We also believe passionately in the power of the internet to help protect threatened species. WWF are the world's leading conservation organisation so it made sense for us to partner with them to bring this exciting series to life.”

“Extinction Sucks breaks the mould of traditional wildlife programmes – both with its fast-paced, humorous style and by being online – and will appeal to a wide range of audiences. It's a wildlife series for the digital age,” said Scotto di Carlo.

Babelgum commissioned award-winning Amsterdam-based filmmakers Off The Fence to produce the series, in association with WWF. “It was a first for us,” said OTF boss Ellen Windemuth, “but it proves you can make funny, engaging wildlife programmes with a serious message for online viewing. Working with WWF meant we could get access to great stories, great characters and great locations.”

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Favourite nature walk now blocked

Straits Times Forum 3 Apr 09;

I RECENTLY visited the Upper Peirce Reservoir Park with the intention of taking one of my favourite morning walks across the dam and then along the embankment between the reservoir and the Singapore Island Country Club (SICC) golf course.

This is one of the few walks available in Singapore that provide extensive inland vistas. It enables access via the SICC road to the HSBC Treetop Walk and on to MacRitchie Park, creating some longer distance walking opportunities.

However, I found that access to the embankment has been blocked to protect walkers from being hit by golf balls.

It appears that those of us who can neither afford nor wish to play golf are being denied simple pleasures for the benefit of those who can afford and wish to do so.

Moreover, how many people have actually been hit by golf balls while walking along that embankment?

To over-protect people from minuscule risks does seem to be the height of "nanny-ism".

By all means erect a notice warning walkers of the risk, but then allow common sense and responsibility to rule.

Brian Dalby

Why close popular jogging route?
Straits Times Forum 6 Apr 09;

I BELONG to a group of joggers that is disappointed by the closure of a jogging route between MacRitchie and Upper Peirce reservoirs.

My friends and I are not the only ones to be disappointed, as the route is also very popular with many members of the public. The stretch is also part of the route for many running events held at the MacRitchie Reservoir by local clubs.

I have also enjoyed running in that area for the past 25 years.

We would appreciate it if the authorities could clarify the closure.

Steve Choo Weng Moon

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No ships laid up in Singapore: MPA

Robin Chan, Straits Times 3 Apr 09;

THERE are no ships laying idle in Singapore waters despite a global trade collapse that has left a record 485 'unemployed' vessels around the world.

The assurance came from the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) yesterday, in response to questions over whether local ports may be unsafe due to a large number of empty ships clogging the waterways.

Captain Lee Cheng Wee, MPA's Port Master, told The Straits Times in an e-mailed statement: 'While hundreds of ships are reported to be laid up across the globe, there are no vessels laid up in the Singapore port. Singapore does not encourage the laying up of vessels in our port waters.'

The number of idle ships around the world has risen spectacularly in the past few months, according to Paris-based consultancy AXS-Alphaliner, as global trade grinds to a halt amid the worst recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The shipping industry has also been hit by the credit squeeze as trade financing has all but dried up.

Ship owners have not been helped by the fresh supply of vessels coming on stream from orders made during the boom time. This has forced shipping rates to plummet to near zero.

In a bid to stay afloat, ship owners have resorted to laying up vessels to cut capacity and prop up freight rates.

The number of laid-up ships hit a then record 392 in February - almost 9 per cent of the total world fleet. By March 30, this had shot up to 485 - or 1.41 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of capacity - but there are signs that the rate of laying-up has slowed. Analysts say idle container ships are starting to be redeployed.

Shipping giant Maersk Line, which has laid up eight vessels since December but none here, confirmed to The Straits Times that 'across the industry in general, vessels are not laid up in Singapore'.

A company spokesman said: 'The choice of location to lay up vessels depends on many factors, including the lay-up duration, costs, water temperatures and weather conditions. Another key factor is the vessel's schedule, specifically where and when it was taken out of rotation, and where it will be reinstated afterwards.'

Capt Lee said that since late last year, some ships have been staying longer than the usual 10 days at port. About 70 vessels have stayed more than 10 days each month since the beginning of the year.

But this is 'less than 2 per cent of the total number of vessels using our anchorages', he said. 'Singapore has sufficient anchorage capacity to meet the needs of the shipping industry, and...concerns over congestion and navigational safety are unwarranted.'

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How much electricity was saved during Earth Hour last Saturday?

Today Online 3 Apr 09;

How much electricity was saved during Earth Hour last Saturday?

According to the Energy Market Authority (EMA), consumption dipped by 42 megawatts — equivalent to 420,000 hundred-watt light bulbs being switched off for the hour.

The reduction, however, makes up only 0.044 per cent of average daily electricity consumption of about 95,455 megawatts, said EMA.

This year, about 450 organisations and 10,000 people had pledged to switch off the lights from 8.30pmto 9.30pm.

Malaysia recorded a dip of 550MW during Earth Hour, which was organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

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Climate change to bring more whale beachings

Amy Coopes Yahoo News 2 Apr 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Experts studying the mass beaching of whales along Australia's coast have warned that such tragedies could become more frequent as global warming brings the mammals' food stocks closer to shore.

Almost 90 long-finned pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins died after washing up last week at Hamelin Bay, on the country's west coast.

It was the second mass stranding in March, and took the total number of cetaceans to beach in southern Australia in the past four months beyond 500, including a single stranding of almost 200 on King Island.

Researchers tracking the beaching of whales in the region since 1920 said strandings tended to occur in 12-year cycles which coincided with cooler, nutrient-rich ocean currents moving from the south and swelling fish stocks.

"These animals, most of the time they're trying to find food, that's what they do," said the project's Corey Bradshaw, from Adelaide University.

"If you bring them closer to an area that could be dangerous, simply because there's more food there than there normally is you'd expect to find these temporal peaks in strandings, and that's exactly what we've found," Bradshaw told AFP.

The current cycle last peaked in the 2004/2005 southern hemisphere summer, said Bradshaw, when there were 30 strandings in a period of weeks and a new animal washed up every four days.

The total number of stranding events that summer was almost equivalent to those recorded for the entire previous year, he said, adding that the numbers again appeared to be reaching a peak.

"With climate change it is more likely that these kinds of oscillations will be more variable so you get more extreme conditions," he said.

"Where you maybe get a really cold pulse once every ten years it might happen every five years, and we're already seeing that."

"We could see more and more frequent strandings simply as a function of higher frequency (of) extreme events," he added.

Little concrete was known about what caused whales to beach en masse, according to marine scientist Catherine Kemper, who said the theories were almost endless.

Only highly social species beached in groups, she said, and if one creature got into trouble or fled a predator such as a killer whale the rest would follow.

Geomagnetic interference from elements such as iron ore could also scramble a cetacean's sonar, and complex coastlines such as that of Tasmania could be difficult to navigate, said Kemper, of the South Australian museum.

"Toothed whales have echo location, and one of the theories is that something happens to their ability to navigate," she said.

The island of Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state, also had a narrow continental shelf, meaning there was deep water close to the coast.

"If a few of them come onshore the rest follow because of this incredible social bond," said Kemper.

Storm events could also impair navigation by stirring up sediment, said government scientist Nick Gales, who works for the Antarctic authority.

"This becomes incredibly confusing for animals that use sound in the water column to navigate in the shallower waters," he said.

"There is no real way of predicting these (incidents).

"The main advances in science have been in trying to deal with those animals once they are ashore, understanding a lot more about the animals from access to them and most recently in actually tracking animals that are able to be refloated and pushed out to sea."

Of the pod which came ashore at Hamelin Bay, 11 were released back into the ocean using cranes fitted with giant slings.

Once lifted to a truck, the 3.5-tonne mammals were transported 15 kilometres (nine miles) to a more sheltered harbour for release.

It was only the third time such an ambitious rescue of whales had been attempted in Western Australia state, and the first involving the long-finned pilot species.

Only three managed to return to deeper waters, with the remaining seven either euthanised or dying after re-beaching themselves, including a female and her calf.

Kemper said the success of rescue operations often depended on the fate of the "ringleaders".

"Either they die and (rescuers) get them out of the way, or they get them alive and back out to sea," she said.

"The chances of success for rescuing at least some are greater because, again, I guess it's like follow the leader."

Ultimately though, Bradshaw said mass beachings remained one of nature's great mysteries.

"There are reams of hypotheses, predilections and pet theories, most of them have absolutely no basis whatsoever," he said.

"Let's face it, this is biological life, we're all prone to making mistakes."

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Indonesian Government should intervene against wildlife poaching: NGO

The Jakarta Post 2 Apr 09;

An environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) has on Thursday called for the government to intervene in the prevention of further wildlife poaching in Sumatra following the death of two female elephants at an elephant conservation center in Bengkulu last week.

"Elephant and tiger poaching is increasing and the death of the female elephants wasn't the first. At least seven others were killed at the conservation park between 2004 and 2007," representative of wildlife protection NGO ProFauna Radius Nursidi said.

He added that the perpetrators were never caught nor processed.

Apart from endangered elephants, the second most poached wildlife animal is the Sumatran tiger.

A survey conducted by ProFauna in March this year revealed 12 tiger snares were found around a conservation park in Bengkulu.

One of these snare had successfully trapped a Bornean leopard in 2007.

The authorities were informed of the perpetrator but no legal recourse was taken.

“The police need to fully enforce the law on wildlife crime. Without law enforcement, elephant and tiger poaching in Bengkulu will persist”, Nursidi argued.

Under the law, poaching and trading protected species is against the law and offenders are liable to a maximum of five years in jail and a Rp 100 millions (10,000 USD) fine. (amr)

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