Singapore steps up efforts to promote local farming

Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia 3 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE: As concerns about food safety increase, more is being done to promote local farming.

Singapore wants to bump up its local supply of greens from 7 to 10 per cent of overall supply and to do so in a land scarce country, the solution is science.

Seed plug technology, which involves growing seeds in a controlled environment with automated irrigation, is going to be more widely used.

Wong Hon Mun, deputy director, Food & Veterinary Admin, Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA), said: "As you are growing your vegetables, you are also growing your seeds, so by the time you harvest your vegetables, your seedlings are ready for transplanting."

This way, farms can grow 12 crops a year instead of the current nine. Presently, 19,000 tonnes of vegetables are produced in Singapore every year.

Singapore has 110.2 hectares of land in the Agrotechnology Parks for the cultivation of vegetable produce, of which some 87.6 hectares are used solely for soil cultivation of vegetables, while the rest are for hydroponics cultivation, production of bean sprouts and mushrooms.

Besides vegetables, Singapore also wants to be more self sufficient in its fish supply by aiming to almost quadruple the current amount in five years. The Marine Aquaculture Centre is looking at a process called selective breeding to increase the supply of fish here.

The 105 fish farms in Singapore are also working together to improve efficiency and increase supply. They have formed a cooperative which will sell their fish to local supermarket chain, NTUC FairPrice.

Malcolm Ong, managing director, Metropolitan Fishery Group, said: "We can get supplies in bulk and this could be translated to better prices for the consumer."

Shoppers will also get fresher fish, as the time needed from the net to the supermarket rack is less than 24 hours.

To support local farming, FairPrice is launching a Local Farmed Fish and Seafood Fair this week. Six varieties of locally farmed fish will be sold during this fair and they will be available at 45 FairPrice supermarkets across the island.

FairPrice introduced the locally farmed Grey Mullet and Milk Fish at some of its stores in May this year. Sales have increased by more than 20 per cent since then.

- CNA/938LIVE/so

Read more!

Singapore's largest NEWater plant begins commercial operations

Channel NewsAsia 3 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE : Singapore's largest NEWater plant at Changi has begun its first phase of commercial operations.

This came after the Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant (SCNP) had successfully met the stringent quality criteria set out by the national water agency, PUB.

The SCNP has an initial production capacity of 69,000 cubic metres of NEWater per day. When fully completed in mid-2010, the facility will be capable of producing a total of 228,000 cubic metres of NEWater per day.

"This will make it Singapore's largest NEWater plant and one of the largest water recycling plants in the world," said Sembcorp, which has a 25-year water supply contract with PUB.

Mr Tang Kin Fei, Sembcorp's group president & CEO, said: "We are pleased with our successful completion of final testing at the first phase of the plant, as
well as the smooth delivery of our first flow of NEWater."

"We are continuing to make good progress and are ahead of schedule on the execution of the second phase of the facility."

The Changi plant will supply roughly 15 per cent of Singapore's current water needs. With this, NEWater will meet 30 per cent of Singapore's current water needs by next year.

Introduced in 2003, NEWater is one of Singapore's four diversified sources of water supply. The other three are water from local catchments, imported water and desalinated water.

Sembcorp is the third private company to supply water to PUB under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach.

The first two are Singspring and Keppel Seghers NEWater Development Co which own and operate the Singspring Desalination Plant and Keppel Seghers Ulu Pandan NEWater Plant respectively.

- CNA/al

Read more!

Jambi regency a model in Indonesia's war on haze

Tilapia fish farms give residents alternative to slash-and-burn farming
Straits Times 3 Aug 09;

JAMBI (INDONESIA): Reeling in a tilapia from the murky pond in front of him, farmer H. Baso Intang proclaimed triumphantly: 'These fish provide 5 million rupiah (S$724) in extra income for each family here every year.'

The pond is in a sprawling facility in Indonesia's Muaro Jambi Regency, which is now dotted with 2,399 other ponds stocked with tilapia, a fish popular on dinner tables here. Each pond yields up to 2,500 fish a year.

The money made from selling the fish is a lifeline for families here, who have left behind their traditional livelihood of slash-and-burn farming for fish rearing.

The authorities hope that the blossoming industry in this sleepy regency with a population of 234,000 can be replicated across fire-prone Jambi province and the rest of the country.

Muaro Jambi, occupying a tenth of Jambi on Sumatra Island, is an epicentre of the annual fires set to the bush as part of seasonal land clearing.

This practice of razing the land, which also takes place in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, is what gives rise to the smoky haze that has often choked Indonesia and neighbouring countries over the past decade.

The region - primarily Indonesia - has lost US$9 billion (S$13 billion) in tourism revenue and flights delayed or cancelled because of poor visibility.

The people, especially those already with respiratory ailments, have suffered health problems too, pointed out Mr Burhanuddin Mahir, a local legislative head.

But Indonesia's defence has consistently been that it lacks the money and technical expertise to prevent or control the fires across its vast archipelago.

Jambi Governor Zulkifli Nurdin told The Straits Times that slash-and-burn farming is practised out of necessity. It is a cheaper way for poor farmers to clear the land for planting.

To make things worse, the country's peatland releases carbon dioxide as it dries out. When set alight in the dry season, thick smoky plumes result.

The chief of the Jambi Natural Resources Conservation Centre, Mr Didy Wurdjanto, said local officials have found it difficult to convince farmers to stop the burning, especially when they cannot afford to buy machines to clear the land.

Equipment such as excavators and tractors can cost up to 1 billion rupiah, and the typical small-scale farmer makes at most only 2 million rupiah a year, said Mr Afdhal Mahyuddin, a communications officer of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) in Riau, another fire-prone area in Sumatra.

In Jambi, the local government is attempting to bridge this gap.

Mr Intang, who is also a local fish fry distributor, said 60 per cent of the equipment costs needed to set up his fish farming facility came from the government.

Funding aside, the government also runs training workshops to wean farmers from slash-and-burn farming.

Governor Nurdin believes that on top of these initiatives, developing the province's other industries in palm oil and coal, and sourcing avenues for export, are also key to reducing the risk of fires.

Economic growth in Jambi hit 7.16 per cent last year, up from 4.2 per cent nine years ago, driven primarily by the burgeoning oil palm, rubber and fishery industries, he said.

In the regency of Muaro Jambi alone, 92,000ha of land now sits under oil palm plantations; 59,000ha has been given over to rubber plantations and 150,000ha to fishery industries.

The agricultural sector contributed more than 79 billion rupiah - a third of the regency's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007.

This is a positive step in addressing the poverty gap that stymies many farmers in Indonesia, said Dr Tobias Axelsson of the department of economic history at Lund University, Sweden.

'It goes back to the strategy of increasing the people's income...Getting them out of the poverty trap is important,' he said.

This involves forging new, alternative careers for them.

'If the government helps bring in new technology and knowledge, a new path is created the people can go down, increasing the chances for more sustainable and long-term impact,' Dr Axelsson said.

In tandem with the improved economy, the number of hot spots in Jambi has gone down by 23 per cent in the past two years, from a peak of 2,150 hot spots in 2006, Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) said.

This year, the situation is back under the microscope, as Indonesia wrestles against an extended dry spell typical of an El Nino weather pattern.

Dry spells raise the flag for forest fires.

Singapore is playing a role to keep the haze in check through a now two-year-old, $1 million collaboration with Jambi.

The plan comprises nine programmes designed to help the provincial government prevent or mitigate the fires. These include efforts to teach farmers zero-burning practices and to train local officials to interpret satellite pictures so that they can monitor hot spots.

Last week, Singapore Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim was in Jambi to hand over three air and weather monitoring stations funded by Singapore. These will enable speedier detection of fires and faster action to prevent haze.

Muaro Jambi is Indonesia's star haze-prevention project. When The Straits Times visited it at the height of the haze season last week, the air was clear and free of the tell-tale acrid smell of burning.

But challenges remain.

WWF's Mr Mahyuddin noted that while Indonesia has been effective in punishing small-scale landowners, companies with larger land concessions continue to get away with it.

Environmental groups say at least 70 per cent of Sumatra's forest fires come from land owned by plantation and paper-pulp companies.

But despite calls on Jakarta to impose stiffer penalties, few companies are prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

Environmentalists have also long alleged collusion and corruption between government officials and the companies.

Ultimately, what Singapore and its neighbours in the region hope is that Indonesia will take greater ownership of the issue, said Mr Joseph Hui, director-general of the environmental protection division at NEA, which has played a key role in coordinating efforts between Singapore and Jambi.

'At the end of it all, what we are doing in Jambi is a small part of the entire region.'

To see any impact on fighting the haze, Indonesia will have to take greater ownership and start similar initiatives elsewhere, he said.

'If everyone behaves responsibly, things will improve. It is more beneficial to them than anyone else because they are the people most affected,' he said.

Read more!

Private companies may be responsible for forest fires in Riau: Government

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 3 Aug 09;

The government has said that private companies might responsible for ongoing forest fires in Riau, which has forced the temporary closure of the regional airport on Monday because of thick haze caused visibility to drop.

The State Ministry for the Environment deployed a team to investigate the repeated forest fires to determine where and how the fires started.

“Seeing such huge forest fires, I am suspicious it is the work of companies operating in the province. Our team is still working in the field to investigate it,” Illyas Asaad, deputy environment minister for law enforcement, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Data from WWF Indonesia shows the number of hotspots in Riau province increased from 973 in January to 2,395 in July, the highest number in the nation.

A hotspot is defined as a fire covering at least a hectare.

The WWF said that the number dropped to 83 in April, before again increasing to 953 in May.

On August 1, the WWF detected a total of 97 hotspots in Riau. It said that about 52 percent of the hotspots were located on land belonging to the local people, 31 percent were in production forests while the remaining 17 percent were on private plantations.

Illyas said his office would announce the results of its investigation this week.

Read more!

Myanmar activist awarded Asia's Nobel prize

Reuters 3 Aug 09;

MANILA (Reuters) - An activist from Myanmar who was tortured by the military as a student and now runs an NGO probing infrastructure projects is among this year's winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, its committee said Monday.

Also cited for the award, Asia's equivalent of the Nobel, were two Chinese men, an Indian, a Filipino and a Thai woman.

Ka Hsaw Wa of Myanmar, co-founder of EarthRights International, was recognized for "dauntlessly pursuing non-violent yet effective channels of redress, exposure, and education for the defense of human rights, the environment and democracy," the committee said.

Yu Xiaogang of China was given the award for raising concerns about dams in his country and advocating social impact assessments in all such mega-infrastructure projects.

Ma Jun, also of China and a former journalist, was awarded for publicizing environmental issues in China, including naming over 10,000 companies violating emission standards.

Indian Deep Joshi, who has management and engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was cited for decades of development work in rural India, and founding a non-profit organization that recruits university graduates and grooms them to do grassroots projects in poor communities.

Antonio Oposa Jr., a Filipino environmental activist and lawyer, was awarded for helping protest abuse of marine eco-systems, including organizing sea patrols to raid boat operators engaged in illegal dynamite fishing.

Krisana Kraisintu of Thailand was recognized for her work in producing generic drugs for HIV/AIDS victims, many times cheaper than the multiple pills from pharmaceutical companies. She has worked both in Thailand and in sub-Saharan Africa.

(Reporting by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Rosemarie Francisco and Bill Tarrant)

Read more!

Nearly half of Sabah is protected forest

The Star 3 Aug 09;

KOTA KINABALU: Nearly half of Sabah’s 7.6 million hectare land area is now under permanent forest cover following amendments to a state law that has seen the creation of 12 new forest reserves.

Assistant Minister to the Chief Minister Datuk Nasrun Datu Mansor said at the state assembly that 3.6 million ha were now preserved as forests – ranging from the unique Karangas jungles in the south western Sipitang districts to mangroves at islands along the east coast.

“It is our intention to leave our forests untouched as much as possible for our future generations,” he said.

In this regard, he said, Sabah has exceeded the national forestry policy requiring the states to preserve 47% of their land under forest cover.

Tabling the amendments to the Forests (Constitution of Forest Reserves and Amendment) Enactment 1984, Nasrun said the acreage of Class 1 Forest Reserves had been increased by more than 22,000ha, nearly the size of Penang island.

He said the state now had more than 3.6 million ha of such forests compared to about 3.5 million ha previously.

Nasrun said the size of mangrove and virgin forests had also increased by 4,647ha and 486ha respectively following the amendments.

The state now had more than 320,000ha of mangrove forests while its virgin jungle reserves now stood at more than 92,000ha.

The size of forest reserves for recreational use had also increased by 344ha to more than 21,000ha.

Nasrun said Sabah was also reducing the size of commercial forest reserves by 17,594ha from 2.63 million ha so that the acreage for the Class 1 Forest Reserves could be increased.

12 forest reserves created
Daily Express 4 Aug 09;

Kota Kinabalu: In an unparalleled move undertaken by any State Government in favour of water catchment conservation in Malaysia, the State Legislative Assembly approved, Monday, the creation of 12 forest reserves through the passage of the Forests (Constitution of Forest Reserves and Amendment) Enactment 1984.

Tabling the Bill, Assistant Minister to the Chief Minister Datuk Nasrun Datu Mansor said with the development nearly half of Sabah's 7.6 million-hectare land area is now under permanent forest cover.

He said a total of 3.6 million hectares were now preserved as forests ranging from the unique karangas jungles in the south western Sipitang districts to mangroves at islands along the east coast.

In this regard, he said Sabah has exceeded the national forestry policy requiring the states to preserve 47 per cent of their land under forest cover.

Nasrun said the amount of Class 1 Protection Forest Reserves had been increased by more than 22,000 hectares, nearly the size of Penang island.

He said the State now had more than 3.6mil hectares of such forests compared to about 3.5mil hectares previously.

Nasrun said the amount of mangrove and virgin forest reserves had also increased by 4,647 hectares and 486 hectares respectively following the amendments.

The State now had more than 320,000 hectares of mangrove forests while its virgin jungle reserves now stood at more than 92,000 hectares.

The amount of amenity forest reserves for recreational use had also been increased by 344 hectares to more than 21,000 hectares.

Conversely, Nasrun said Sabah was reducing the amount of its commercial forest reserves by 17,594 hectares from 2.63mil hectares to make way for the increased Class 1 Protection Forest Reserves.

"It is our intention to leave as much of our forests untouched for future generations," he said, adding the amendment was also to re-classify two Second Class Forest Reserves (commercial) and First Class Forest Reserve (Protection).

The amendment was also to re-gazzette four existing forest reserves for coordination and updating of the Forest Enactment Schedule 1984.

The newly created I Class forest reserves are Gomantong-Geluang-Gesusu (590ha) in Kudat, Bukit Hampuan (1,253ha) in Ranau, Bukau Api-Api (2,095ha) in Beaufort and Ganui (330ha) that used to be in the Sabah Forest Industries' concession area.

Also 900ha of Sipitang Forest Reserve and 16,750ha of Sungai Pinangah and Gunung Rara Forest Reserves were re-classified as Protection Forest Reserve (Class 1) to be known as Sipitang Forest Reserve (Class I) and Imbak Canyon Forest Reserve (Class I), respectively.

These areas are found to be suitable for water catchment, maintaining climate stability, soil protection, research, education, flora and fauna conservation and eco-tourism.

Under the amendment, 56ha of the Deramakot forest was also constituted and classified as a Commercial Forest Reserve (Class II) to be known as Deramakot Forest Reserve (Extension).

The areas classified as Amenity Forest Reserves (Class IV) among others were Pulau Tabun (16 ha) and Pulau Saranga (18 ha) in Lahad Datu and the 8.53 ha land on which the State Forestry Department headquarters is located in Sandakan, Batu Punggul (150 ha) in Labang Valley, Sapulut, Nabawan.

About 791 ha of Pulau Malawali (100km east of Kudat) and 3,856.56 ha of Sungai Lasun and Pulau Evans forests in Lahad Datu are to be constituted and classified as Mangrove Forest Reserve (Class V).

12 Forest Reserves Will Be Created In Sabah
Bernama 3 Aug 09;

KOTA KINABALU, Aug 3 (Bernama) -- The Sabah state assembly on Monday passed the Forest Enactment (Forest Reserve Creation and Amendment) 1994 which will lead to the creation of 12 forest reserves.

The forest reserves to be created were Gomantong-Geluang-Gesusu, Bukit Hampuan, Api-Api, Ganui, Deramakot, Pulau Tabun and Pulau Saranga, Khazanah, Batu Punggul, Pulau Malawali, Sg Lasun and Pulau Evans, Kerangas and Sepilok.

Assistant Minister to the Chief Minister Datuk Nasrun Datu Mansur who tabled the bill said the 12 forest reserves would cover some 9,706.7 hectares.

He said the state government had also reclassified Sipitang Class II commercial forest reserve and Imbak Kanyon Class II forest reserve as Class 1 forest reserve (Protected.

It had also reclassified a commercial forest reserve and a forest reserve as Class I forest reserve (Protected).

Nasrun said the amendment also reclassified four forest reserves to streamline and update the Forest Enactment Schedule 1984.

They were Sapagaya Class I (Protected), Kebun Cina Class IV (Amenities), Rumbia Class IV (Amenities) and Kelawat Class I (Protected).

He said the creation of 12 forest reserves would expand Sabah's forest reserves from 3,594,366 hectares to 3,604,894 hectares or about 49 percent of the state.

-- BERNAMA

Read more!

Oysters Are on the Rebound in the Chesapeake Bay

Henry Fountain, The New York Times 3 Aug 09;

After decades of overharvesting of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and many fruitless efforts to replenish them, scientists have re-established a significant population of the shellfish along the Virginia shore.

Researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary say that large experimental reefs created five years ago are now home to more than 180 million native oysters. That is still a far cry from the late 1880s, when the bay held billions of the oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and watermen harvested about 25 million bushels annually. But more larvae have been settling on the new reefs every year, the researchers said.

The results, they added, suggest there is a potential for further restoration in the bay by creating additional reefs where harvesting is prohibited.

“What we need are thousands of acres of permanently restored sanctuary reefs to turn this situation we have with the oyster around,” said David M. Schulte, a doctoral student at the institute and an author of a paper published in Science last week that describes the work. The sanctuaries would aid the oyster harvest by helping to seed nearby areas, but the overall effort would benefit the bay in other ways, by helping to clean the water and providing more habitat for fish, crabs and other marine life.

Mr. Schulte said that when he began the experiment, he assumed there would be only a 10 percent survival rate among juvenile oysters on the reefs, which are near the mouth of the Great Wicomico River, just south of the Potomac. Throughout the bay, high mortality due to disease, as well as overfishing, had reduced the population to about 1 percent of 19th-century levels.

The current harvest is less than 200,000 bushels a year, and the situation has become so dire that there is an elaborate proposal to introduce the Asian oyster, C. ariakensis, as an alternative.

But Mr. Schulte said that in the first year of the study there was about a 30 percent survival rate on the reefs. “I was really surprised,” he said. “That’s really what helped this project become what it has.”

“We’re hoping that the population in the Great Wicomico is stable,” he added.

A Virginia fisheries official said he was optimistic that the restoration technique was working, but that the next several years would be critical.

“The looming question is whether what we’re seeing is just a short-term effect or long-term restoration,” said Jack Travelstead, chief of the fisheries management division of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. “Enormous numbers of oysters are thriving in that area, but oyster diseases are still present.”

He noted that in 1996 there was a very good spawn of oysters in the same river, but that as they grew most eventually died from disease. “We’re a little bit concerned that we might experience that here,” he said.

A key to the success of the new reefs, Mr. Schulte said, is their height and extent. The reefs, which were created by the United States Army Corps of Engineers by dumping oyster shells, are 10 to 18 inches high and cover more than 80 acres, with the largest about 20 acres.

In earlier restoration efforts, most of the reefs were lower, so the oysters had to cope with stirred-up sediment. Oysters are filter feeders, and filtering out sediment expends energy they could use for growth and makes them more susceptible to disease. Having the shellfish higher in the water column — they tend to grow on top of the reef, in thick layers — appears to keep them healthier.

Most of the earlier reefs were also smaller, usually about an acre in size. Mr. Travelstead said the new effort had shown that “it’s not just build it higher, but build it larger and inundate it with healthy broodstock that is showing some signs of disease resistance.”

“This is a first attempt at altering the scale,” he added. “But scale means money, and that’s pretty hard to find these days.”

Scott McGuire, a volunteer with the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland, a sport fishing group, said that his organization supported the creation of more sanctuaries like the ones in the study. “This type of research is what we’ve been asking for a long time,” he said. Oysters, he said, are a keystone species in the bay. “They filter the water and provide all kinds of ecological niches for other organisms. And they create lots of good fish habitat.”

Ken Smith, president of the Virginia Watermen’s Association, said he was not surprised by the results of the study. He said watermen had been putting oysters in cages and raising them off the bottom, “and we have gotten the same results that the scientists have gotten.”

Mr. Smith said his group, too, would support more sanctuaries if they would contribute to the health of the bay and indirectly to the watermen’s livelihood. Harvesting oysters used to be his primary source of income, he said, “but for 20 years, it’s been dead.”

Read more!

Bosnian activist fights to save wild horses

Amra Hadziosmanovic Yahoo News 2 Aug 09;

KRUG MOUNTAIN, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) – Dozens of wild horses graze peacefully atop a Bosnian plateau where the silence is broken only by neighing -- a breathtaking sight enthusiasts are fighting to preserve.

"Chocolate is one of the strongest stallions here. He wins every fight and has never lost any of his females or foals. But he's very distrustful of people. He never comes close to anyone," says Mario Jozic, who has taken up the cause of the animals.

The statuesque stallion lives up to his reputation, strutting across the open grassland authoritatively to a group of mares with head hanging low.

"This is how he commands his group. The other group came too close so he moved his mares away," explains Jozic, who is surrounded by around 90 horses which he tries to lure closer with bread.

Some horses from the herd of brown, chestnut, gray, black and white coats pull their heads up in curiosity before seeing a familiar face.

Among the long, ungroomed manes and ruffled tails, those with foals are the wariest, moving off cautiously before a few come close enough to accept the dry buns from Jozic's hand.

"This is Sponger," the activist says, referring to the horse first to stretch out his neck and take the treat.

Jozic, 44, is passionate about the horses which inhabit the 1,300-metre (4,000-foot) high plateau of Krug Mountain, some 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the southwestern Bosnian town of Livno.

"I have watched them for years and I can say that the worst disease that threatens them is man," Jozic says with resignation.

But thanks to concerns raised by horse-lovers like Jozic, public interest has grown and authorities in the Livno region pledged recently to help the animals which are estimated to number around 200.

Hundreds of people come here every year to watch and take photographs of the horses which have lived in the wild for more than 30 years.

The origins of the herd are believed to date back to the 1970s, when villagers who left the area to work in Europe's affluent West returned and freed their workhorses, replacing them with tractors and other machinery.

At the time, they numbered only a couple of dozen, but they have since bred naturally in the wild.

"It is a rare phenomenon," Velija Katica, a professor at Sarajevo University's veterinary faculty, tells AFP.

"It's really incredible that they have survived in such difficult conditions. With little food, no veterinary care in a mountain where winters are so severe, and above all that with inhumane treatment by people.

"By living in the wild they have gradually developed survival instincts that domestic horses do not have," Katica adds.

To reach the horses, Jozic drives from Livno over rough terrain dappled with limestone rocks and rare shrubs.

He says the animals are in their prime during the mating season and winter, when the area is exposed to icy winds.

"It's most fascinating to see them on a wild run during the winter while their bodies are steaming."

The main threat the Bosnian mustangs face is from people, who kill them mostly to use their meat as dog food.

"We used to find their corpses with both back legs hacked off," Jozic says, blaming dog breeders.

"It is horrible. Police do react when someone reports this crime but we cannot keep an eye on them all the time."

During winter, the horses are often victims of road accidents as they descend from the Krug plateau to lick salt from the asphalt when hungry.

To help the animals, Jozic convinced a forestry office to build feeders a safe distance from passing traffic.

"It's sad when you know how little money it requires to do things right," he says.

"It would be enough to engage two or three rangers to patrol the area a few times a day and discourage those mean people. These horses can survive on their own under the laws of nature."

Protecting the horses is not a priority in the country still recovering from its 1992-1995 war and hit hard by the global recession, but Livno authorities recently announced measures to aid them.

"We will engage someone to take care of them professionally. They should be protected," says Livno county official Nediljko Rimac.

A group of nature-lovers set up a web site www.divljikonji.org and organised an online petition that has been signed by almost 7,500 people from the whole Balkan region since last December.

Its aim is to pressure the authorities.

Livno's tourist authorities called on local officials to adopt necessary laws to protect the horses.

"The interest of tourists is huge, but nothing can be organised before local authorities define the horses' status," says Slava Kukic, head of the Livno tourist organisation.

Many villagers want the horses to disappear as they sometimes ruin their crops, while others claim ownership over dozens of them.

"It seems that they belong to everybody and at the same time they don't belong to anybody," says Kukic.

Read more!

Most Infectious Malaria Strain Came From Chimps?

Amitabh Avasthi, National Geographic News 3 Aug 09;

The most malignant known form of malaria may have jumped from chimpanzees to humans, according to a new study of one of the most deadly diseases in the world.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne illness, can be caused in humans by one of four strains of the Plasmodium parasite. More than a million people die from malaria each year.

P. falciparum is the most virulent of these strains and accounts for nearly 85 percent of all malaria infections. (See a malaria parasite picture.)

Three of the four human strains are known to have originally come from Old World monkeys. The exact origins of P. falciparum have been a mystery.

Researchers had thought that P. falciparum and P. reichenowi—the malaria strain found in chimpanzees—evolved independently from a common ancestor about five to seven million years ago.

But the new study has found that the human strain is actually a mutated form of the chimp strain.

"Current wisdom that P. falciparum has been in humans for millions and millions of years is wrong," said study co-author Nathan Wolfe, director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative based in San Francisco, California, and a National Geographic emerging explorer. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

"We now know that there was a point in time when this was primarily a disease in chimpanzees that jumped and took hold in humans."

Just One Jump

Wolfe and his colleagues analyzed tissues samples from 94 live wild and wild-born captive chimpanzees in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Eight of the animals were found to have malaria.

The team discovered that the human and chimpanzee strains have certain genetic similarities, but that the chimp strain is more genetically diverse.

Further analysis placed all 133 variants of P. falciparum found around the world under a single branch of the P. reichenowi family tree.

"This suggests that there has been only one transfer. P. falciparum is the result of a single cross-species transmission event," said Wolfe, whose work appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists aren't sure how the chimp strain mutated to become infectious to humans or when it might have made the jump, although the oldest known human cases of malaria date back thousands of years.

The team believes it's possible that, as early humans settled into an agrarian lifestyle in Africa, their likely encroachment into chimpanzee territory provided the parasite with new opportunities.

Parasite Evolution

Biologist Dan Hartl of Harvard University noted that, until now, only one sample of the chimpanzee parasite had ever been studied.

"Researchers had believed that P. falciparum probably originated from parasites in birds," said Hartl, who was not involved in the study.

"[Wolfe and colleagues'] paper proves that is not true, and that data from those early studies were misleading."

Late last year, a team led by Arnab Pain, a malaria researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K., announced they had sequenced the genome of P. knowlesi, a monkey malaria parasite that can also infect humans.

Pain agrees that Wolfe and his colleagues have conclusively proven that the chimpanzee malaria parasite was transferred only once to humans.

But researchers would need to know the entire genetic makeup of the chimp parasite to find out what changes it underwent, he added.

"How much the parasite changed, we don't know the full story yet."

Ongoing Leaps

According to study co-author Wolfe, the new work hints that even today similar disease-causing parasites may be ready to make the leap from monkeys and apes to humans.

"Our study suggests that there is a [version of P. reichenowi] out there that is very similar to P. falciparum—it has a tremendous amount of genetic diversity, and is present in animals that are close to humans in a very geographically distributed area," Wolfe said.

That means there's a chance that a new malaria parasite might make its way into people, he said.

The work also highlights how long a disease can last once a parasite has made that leap, Wolfe added.

"What this finding demonstrates is that the kinds of jumps we're having right now—HIV, SARS, etc.—could very well be the beginning of something that lasts for thousands of years."

Read more!

Scientists find new strain of HIV

BBC News 3 Aug 09;

Gorillas have been found, for the first time, to be a source of HIV.

Previous research had shown the HIV-1 strain, the main source of human infections, with 33m cases worldwide, originated from a virus in chimpanzees.

But researchers have now discovered an HIV infection in a Cameroonian woman which is clearly linked to a gorilla strain, Nature Medicine reports.

A researcher told the BBC that, though it was a new type of HIV, current drugs might still help combat its effects.

HIV originated from a similar virus in chimpanzees called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV).

Although HIV/Aids was first recognised by scientists in the 1980s, it is thought to have first entered the human population early in the 20th Century in the region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The virus probably originally jumped into humans after people came into contact with infected bush meat.

SIV viruses have been reported in other primates, including gorillas.

Unusual case

French doctors treating the 62-year-old Cameroonian woman who was living in Paris said they initially spotted some discrepancies in routine viral load tests.

Further analysis of the HIV strain she was infected with showed it was more closely related to SIV from gorillas than HIV from humans.

She is the only person known to be infected with the new strain, but the researchers expect to find other cases.

Before moving to Paris, she had lived in a semi-urban area of Cameroon and had no contact with gorillas or bush meat, suggesting she caught the virus from someone else who was carrying the gorilla strain.

Analysis of the virus in the laboratory has confirmed that it can replicate in human cells.

Co-author Dr David Robertson, from the University of Manchester, said it was the first definitive transfer of HIV seen from a source other than a chimpanzee, and highlighted the need to monitor for the emergence of new strains.

"This demonstrates that HIV evolution is an ongoing process.

"The virus can jump from species to species, from primate to primate, and that includes us; pathogens have been with us for millions of years and routinely switch host species."

The fact the patient had been diagnosed in France showed how human mobility can rapidly transfer a virus from one area of the world to another, he said.

New problems 'unlikely'

Speaking to the BBC's Wold Today programme, Dr Robertson said there was no reason to believe that existing drugs would not work on the new virus.

"If some day we do manage to develop a vaccine, there's no reason to believe it wouldn't work," he said.

"There's no reason to believe this virus will present any new problems, as it were, that we don't already face."

Professor Paul Sharp, from the University of Edinburgh, said the virus probably initially transferred from chimpanzees to gorillas.

He said the latest finding was interesting but perhaps not surprising.

"The medical implication is that, because this virus is not very closely related to the other three HIV-1 groups, it is not detected by conventional tests.

"So the virus could be cryptically spreading in the population."

However, he said that he would guess it would not spread widely and become a major problem.

"Although the patient with this virus was not ill, there is no reason to believe that it will not lead to Aids," he added.

Read more!

Climate change to encourage coffee pest: study

Reuters 3 Aug 09;

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rising temperatures in the tropics due to climate change are likely to encourage the proliferation of the coffee berry borer, one of the crop's most devastating pests, a study released on Monday showed.

But reverting to an old way of growing coffee bushes under tree shade could reduce the temperature, it said. Shade also harbors the borer's predators.

"By analyzing climatic data ... the icipe-led team of researchers observed that the insect is capable of easily adapting to a wide range of temperature variations often found in coffee growing areas," a statement by the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) said.

"Rising global temperatures will increase H. hampei (coffee berry borer) populations and in effect the damage it causes to coffee. Particularly devastating consequences are expected in coffee growing areas where the coffee trees produce fruits throughout the year, like Colombia," it said in a statement.

The research was carried out in Colombia, Kenya, Tanzania and Africa's largest coffee producer, Ethiopia.

The scientists also found that the geographical area susceptible to the black bug would increase to sub-tropical regions that were formerly unaffected.

However, the most suitable way for coffee production systems to cope with warmer temperatures would be to go back to the origins of the crop as an "understory" tree of the forests, the researchers said.

In Ethiopia -- considered to be the origin of the bean -- some coffee farmers still have their crop growing in forests.

In practical terms, large-scale producers may have to introduce taller shade trees in their estates, icipe said.

(Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura)

Read more!

Sick Fish May Get Sicker Due To Climate Change And Other Stresses

ScienceDaily 3 Aug 09;

Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems, according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on this subject August 3 at the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Blaine, Wash.

"A generation ago, we couldn't have imaged the explosive growth in disease issues facing many of our wild fish populations," said Dr. Jim Winton, a fish disease specialist at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center. "Most fish health research at that time was directed toward diseases of farmed fish."

In contrast, said Winton, recent studies in natural aquatic systems have revealed that, in addition to being a cause of natural death, infectious and parasitic fish diseases can produce significantly greater mortality in altered habitats leading to population fluctuations, extinction of endangered fish, reduced overall health and increased susceptibility to predation.

In addition, said Winton, populations of certain fish species have suffered catastrophic losses after non-native diseases were first introduced into a water body. Examples include whirling disease in the intermountain west and the recent introduction of viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the Great Lakes.

"The scientific community is increasingly concerned that global trade, extensive habitat alteration, accumulations of contaminants and other human-caused stresses stressors, including climate change, will affect the distribution or severity of fish diseases and contribute to increasing population-scale losses in these important natural resources," Winton said.

Disease is often ignored as a factor affecting wild populations of fish and wildlife because the effects are difficult to observe and quantify, noted Winton. But as cold-blooded animals, fish are highly dependent on environmental conditions, especially temperature, to help maintain critical physiological processes such as immune function that can affect whether a fish gets a disease or parasite, how it is affected by it, and how the disease progresses.

In particular, said Winton, some fish – such as salmon, trout and muskellunge - have a fairly narrow range of water temperatures they can live in. "If that temperature is exceeded over a period of time, not only may die-offs occur, but also, the increased stress and altered immune function will lead to greater levels of infectious or parasitic diseases which is why global warming is of particular concern.

Winton said that increased scientific recognition of fish diseases as a potential population-limiting factor in wild populations of fish is partly the result of the emergence of high-profile diseases such as whirling disease in wild-spawning rainbow trout in the Rocky Mountain West, viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the North Pacific Ocean and the Great Lakes, and a fungal-like disease, ichthyophoniasis, in adult Chinook salmon in the Yukon River.

The 58th annual meeting of the Wildlife Disease Association (WDA) will be August 2-7, 2009, in Blaine, Wash. The theme is Wildlife Health from Land to Sea: Impacts of a Changing World. USGS scientist Dr. Jim Winton, is presenting the paper, "The ecology of emerging diseases among populations of wild fish."

Adapted from materials provided by United States Geological Survey.

Read more!