Indian Ocean tuna commission fails again on tuna, does better with sharks

WWF 5 Mar 10;

Busan, Korea: Closing to fishing an area already largely closed by pirates is a long way short of being meaningful fisheries management, WWF said at the conclusion of the annual meeting of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) in Busan, Korea today.

“The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission continues to lag well behind nearly every other comparable fisheries regulator in its failure to introduce catch limits for the commercial fish species under its control,” said Dr Amani Ngusaru, head of WWF’s Coastal East Africa Marine Programme.

“We have agreement on a catch limit for bigeye and yellowfin tuna, as recommended by the scientists and this is a big step forward for the IOTC. And we have a non-binding commitment that catch limits for the tuna resources of the Indian Ocean will be considered at the 2012 meeting, which could be a big step nowhere.”

“In the meantime, we have this laughable measure that an area off Somalia which is already largely off limits due to piracy will be closed to long-liners for a month and purse seiners for a month. Are we really serious about limiting fishing pressure on our already overfished stocks?”

But the IOTC did rather better on protecting sharks and seabirds.

“The vote to adopt a ban on commercial landing of endangered thresher sharks is not all we wanted in relation to sharks and to the trade in shark fins but it is a major advance for the commission,” Dr Ngusaru said.

“It also illustrates the truth of our assertion for all the world’s Regional Fisheries Management Organisations that they make better decisions when they vote on recommended fisheries management measures than when they race to the bottom trying to achieve a consensus.”

With studies showing that several endangered albatross and petrels were highly vulnerable to longline fishing in the Indian Ocean during their critical juvenile phase, the commission hardened seabird catch mitigation requirements for longline boats operating south of 25 degrees south.

Boats will now need to use two out of five recognised mitigation measures which include minimum light night operation, bird scaring lines, weighted branch lines and blue-dyed bait.

IOTC’s scientific community had warned contracting country parties that bigeye tuna catches should be limited to 110,000 tonnes and yellowfin tuna should be limited to 300,000 tonnes. But although the meeting accepted these recommendations, action to institute catch restrictions is to wait on a process of setting country allocations.

Another key measure not adopted was a Seychelles proposal for a ban on discards of Skipjack, Yellowfin and Big eye tuna from purse seine vessels. This would have reduced the carnage from the practice of trawlers “trading up” or discarding previous catches if better catches of higher value fish are found.

“Developing Indian ocean states were rightly upset about the failure to pass this significant bycatch measure as it is a food security issue for them,” said Dr Ngusaru. “If it is good enough for fisheries in the Atlantic Ocean, why isn’t it good enough for fisheries in the Indian Ocean.”

A key development of the meeting was the growing assertiveness of Indian Ocean developing states in taking responsibility for their fish stocks, both in improving management of their own fishing industries and in seeking better practice from foreign industrial fleets in their waters.

“This was illustrated in the Maldives signing up to the IOTC,” said Dr Ngusaru. “WWF is totally behind this new push for sustainable fishing in the Indian Ocean and will do all we can to support it as it benefits both the fisheries and coastal populations depending on them.”

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Sea lions caught in debris get help from Oregon State

Mark Floyd Oregon State University KVAL.com 4 Mar 10;

NEWPORT, Ore. – A team of scientists, veterinarians and volunteers will deploy a custom-built “capture cage” in Newport to temporarily sequester sea lions that have become entangled with rope, fishing line and other materials so they can be untangled.

The cage will be located on the bayfront at Dock 1, where coastal visitors frequently see the animals sunning themselves on the floating dock.

(photo courtesy of Jim Rice, OSU Marine Mammal Institute)

Jim Rice of Oregon State University, who coordinates the multi-agency Marine Mammal Stranding Network, said removing debris from the animals can be difficult and dangerous.

“Because entangled animals are generally active and defensive, options for removing debris are very limited,” said Rice, who is affiliated with OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute. “Sea lions will not tolerate close approach and unrestrained anesthesia is deemed too dangerous for the animals since a sea lion injected with drugs by a pole or dart would likely flee to the water only to subsequently drown.”

However, doing nothing may also doom the animals, Rice pointed out. Steller sea lions on the West Coast are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act and the waste debris from human activities increasingly is posing a risk to these animals and other marine species.

“When you visit the Newport bayfront, it isn’t unusual to observe California sea lions with various forms of entanglement – especially plastic “packing bands” wrapped tightly around the neck, cutting into the animal’s skin, blubber and muscle,” Rice said. “But despite these animals’ proximity to a public viewing pier, they are not nearly as accessible to would-be rescuers as they may appear.”

Thus Rice and colleagues will use a cage built by Mulder Sheet Metal, Inc., in Newport that was based on designs from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The cage is basically a modified floating dock enclosed on four sides by a galvanized steel structure, with sliding doors on two sides. It is designed primarily to serve as an additional “haul out” area for sea lions to use freely, with its doors locked in the open position so animals can comfortably come and go as they choose.

“Once they become comfortable with using the dock, we can close the cage doors when we spot an entangled animal and then address the entanglement,” Rice said.

Entangled sea lions will be anesthetized and then treated by veterinarians. Veterinary medical services will be provided by Steven Brown and Daniel Lewer of Animal Medical Care in Newport, with logistical support from the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Kim Raum-Suryan, a marine mammal specialist with OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, says entanglement of marine mammals is a global problem.

“In our studies in southeast Alaska, we estimated that as many as 60 individuals were visibly entangled at any given time and there were likely many more that were not observed,” Raum-Suryan said. “Most of the entanglements were from thick plastic packing bands used to wrap bait boxes, but fishing line, nets, large rubber bands and other materials can be equally dangerous.

“Thousands of marine animals are estimated to die each year as a result of entanglement, or ingestion of marine debris,” she added. “We’ve had the same issues with animals at Sea Lion Caves and off Cascade Head. I spotted four juvenile Stellers in one day that were entangled.”

Advocates are working with bait manufacturers and others on different, less dangerous wrapping materials. But common sense also can be applied, Raum-Suryan said.

“First, don’t litter,” she pointed out. “And if you find trash on the beach, consider picking it up and discarding it. But it’s also a good idea to cut any banding in half in case it mistakenly gets into the water.”

The entanglement relief project involves several partners, including Animal Medical Care, the Port of Newport, Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network, Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute, Oregon Coast Aquarium, and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Funding was provided by a grant from the Oregon Animal Health Foundation/Oregon Veterinary Medical Association, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Institute, OSU, and NOAA’s John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program, which provides support for the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network through OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute.

The Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network is a collaborative volunteer effort to respond to reports of sick or dead marine mammals – including whales, seals and sea lions – and report data about stranding incidents to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

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Cancer Kills Many Sea Lions, and Its Cause Remains a Mystery

Ingfei Chen, The New York Times 4 Mar 10;

For 14 years, since they first reported that a disturbing proportion of deaths among rescued California sea lions were caused by metastatic cancer, researchers have been trying to pinpoint the source of the illness.

In 1996, Dr. Frances Gulland, the director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, and colleagues at the University of California, Davis, found that a striking 18 percent of deaths in stranded adult sea lions were the result of tumors in the reproductive and urinary tracts.

“It’s such an aggressive cancer, and it’s so unusual to see such a high prevalence of cancer in a wild population,” Dr. Gulland said. “That suggests that there’s some carcinogen in the ocean that could be affecting these animals.”

The center has not observed the same syndrome in other seals.

Years of study have led researchers to think the answer lies not with any one culprit, but with several. Their research has added to a body of evidence concerning industrial contaminants in the ocean and their effects on the health of its inhabitants.

Sea lions have had to cope with a variety of challenges lately. There was the animals’ mass exit from Pier 39 in San Francisco late last year, which experts suspect was driven by a hunt for a better food supply. Also in 2009, the Sausalito mammal center had an unusually busy year. It took in a record 1,370 sick and injured California sea lions, and doctors found major problems in many, including malnutrition, parasitic diseases and bacterial kidney infections. Some had brain seizures from a toxic algae poisoning.

But the cancers are what Dr. Gulland found most worrisome.

One day last month, a volunteer rescue crew netted an ailing sea lion stranded on Stinson Beach and drove back to the hospital, which was newly rebuilt and reopened last summer. The thin, lethargic 200-pound young adult male had paralysis in its genital area and in its swollen hind flippers, clear signs of cancer.

“It’s pretty distressing to see,” Dr. Gulland said.

The veterinary team had to euthanize the animal. A post-mortem examination revealed not only cancer in the penis, but also tumors riddling the lymph nodes, lower spine, kidneys, liver and lungs. The disease typically starts around the penis in males and the cervix in females, then spreads. In an average year, the Marine Mammal Center sees 15 to 20 California sea lions with cancer.

The center always performs a post-mortem dissection. That work is “really what tells us about health trends in the ocean,” Dr. Gulland said.

The nonprofit center is one of the two biggest marine mammal rescue-and-rehabilitation facilities in the world — the other is in the Netherlands — dedicated to researching the health troubles of the animals it finds, said Dr. Sylvain De Guise, a veterinary scientist at the University of Connecticut.

Members of the medical staff in Sausalito, Dr. De Guise said, “have been pioneers at going beyond treating one individual at a time and releasing it, and have tried to understand the bigger picture, the causes and consequences.”

Ordinarily, veterinary experts do not see much cancer in wild animals, but there has been little monitoring for the disease. Recently, however, cancer has emerged as a key concern for some endangered species, including green sea turtles, Attwater’s prairie chickens and Tasmanian devils, said Denise McAloose, a veterinary pathologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City.

In addition, about 18 percent of dead, stranded beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River estuary in Canada were found to have intestinal tumors or other cancers, which have been linked to industrial pollutants.

No one knows how much of the general California sea lion population has tumors, or if the current rate is higher thanbefore. No diagnostic test for the disease exists, said Dr. Robert DeLong, a research biologist at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who has participated in the cancer studies.

In his field observations among a colony of 100,000 animals in the Channel Islands — the birthplace for most California sea lions that travel the state’s coast — Dr. DeLong said he saw two to five sea lions a year with huge advanced tumors.

When Dr. Gulland and Dr. Linda Lowenstine, a veterinary pathologist at the University of California, Davis, began investigating the cancer mystery, the obvious suspect was environmental contaminants. The Channel Islands lie off the Southern California Bight, where, from the late 1940s until the early 1970s, manufacturing companies discharged millions of pounds of DDTs and PCBs into the sea. Cleanup continues, but the chemicals linger.

But if those chemicals are solely to blame, the researchers asked, why was cancer originating mainly in the uro-genital tract, and not in the kidney or liver, as one would expect?

“That didn’t really fit,” Dr. Lowenstine said.

But, in examining sea lion tumor cells with an electron microscope, Dr. Lowenstine noticed what looked like viral particles. And indeed, in a major discovery in 2000, a different team of researchers in Washington, D.C., identified a herpesvirus in the sea lions, a close relative of the human herpesvirus that fosters Kaposi’s skin cancer lesions in AIDS patients. Recent studies by the California researchers have shown that the sea lion virus likes to live in the reproductive tract and, among adults, is twice as common in males — infecting 45 percent of them — as in females.

But environmental contaminants are not off the hook. Because it takes several “hits” of environmental or genetic damage to turn a healthy cell into cancerous one, the researchers speculated that the virus and chemicals could be interacting to trigger tumors.

Sea lions accumulate high concentrations of PCBs and DDTs in their blubber from eating contaminated fish; mothers also pass the compounds to babies. An analysis by the California researchers and experts at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle found that animals with higher blubber PCB concentrations were more likely to have died of cancer.

“PCBs are notorious for two different things,” Dr. Lowenstine said. They can suppress the immune system, which may increase a sea lion’s vulnerability to the herpesvirus infection, but they also have estrogen-like hormonal effects.

In research published last summer, Dr. Lowenstine and Dr. Gulland and their associates began exploring the possibility that the contaminants interact with hormone receptors in the reproductive tract of sea lions to help promote cancer.

Meanwhile, a third piece of the puzzle is genetics. Another study revealed that animals with cancer are more inbred than those without it, so bad genes are probably also at work.

But proving cause and effect in the cancer mystery is difficult, the investigators said, especially given that experiments cannot be done on sea lions, which are federally protected.

“We don’t have all the answers by any means,” Dr. Lowenstine said. But the scientists are now mapping out a large study of 300 sea lions to study which of the three prime suspects — virus, PCBs or genetics — is most strongly tied to cancer.

To the California investigators, sea lion cancer is further evidence that what people do on land directly influences what happens to marine mammals in the ocean. And what makes them sick might affect us, too.

“Sea lions do eat a lot of the same things we do,” Dr. Gulland said. “So we really should start paying attention to what we’re putting into the oceans.”

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World's Largest Dead Zone Suffocating Sea

James Owen, National Geographic News 5 Mar 10;

"Eagle!" The shout goes up as a great shadow sweeps over our boat. The white-tailed eagle makes its descent to one of the 24,000 islands that make up Sweden's pine-covered, rocky Stockholm Archipelago.

The tourists on board for this nature tour in August 2009 mostly miss the photo opp. But local wildlife expert Peter Westman, of the conservation group WWF Sweden, assures the group that there will be others.

Numbers of this once-threatened predator have soared from 1,000 to more than 23,000 in the Baltic Sea (map) since pollutants including DDT, an eggshell-thinning pesticide, and PCBs, chemical compounds used in electrical equipment, were banned in the 1970s, Westman said.

But there is a new danger to the eagle and many other marine species: An explosion of microscopic algae called phytoplankton has inundated the Baltic's sensitive waters, sucking up oxygen and choking aquatic life.

Though a natural phenomenon at a smaller scale, these blooms have recently mushroomed at an alarming rate, fed by nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen from agricultural fertilizers and sewage. When it rains, farm fertilizers are washed into the sea. Sewage-treatment facilities also discharge waste into the Baltic ecosystem.

As a result, the Baltic is now home to seven of the of the world's ten largest marine "dead zones"—areas where the sea's oxygen has been used up by seabed bacteria that decompose the raining mass of dead algae.

"We’ve had enormous algal blooms here the last few years which have affected the whole ecosystem," Westman said.

Overfishing Adding to Algal Blooms

Overfishing of Baltic cod has greatly intensified the problem, Westman said. Cod eat sprats, a small, herring-like species that eat microscopic marine creatures called zooplankton that in turn eat the algae.

(Related: "Overfishing is Emptying World's Rivers, Lakes, Experts Warn.")

So, fewer cod and an explosion of zooplankton-eating sprats means more algae and less oxygen.

This vicious cycle gets worse as the spreading dead zones engulf the cod’s deep-water breeding grounds, he added.

The algal blooms, which can be toxic to animals and human swimmers, leave behind an ugly layer of green scum that fouls tourist beaches and starves seaweeds of light.

"Other species have taken the place [of cod], which don’t provide as good habitats for fish," especially juveniles, Westman said. "In the past couple of years common fishes like pike and perch have had virtually no reproduction in the inner part of the archipelago."

This vicious circle gets worse as the spreading algal blooms engulf the cod’s breeding grounds.

Too Late to Save the Baltic Sea?

Back in Stockholm, it's World Water Week, the annual global meeting on water issues organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute. On a conference room wall is a satellite image of the Baltic Sea, its deep blue edges giving way to a swirling, milky center that shows the algal blooms.

World Water Week attendees are pushing a new action plan called the Baltic Sea Strategy. The European Union-led initiative will attempt to coordinate the efforts of the eight EU members within the nine Baltic states—not including Russia—to revitalize their shared sea.

While the speakers all agree "it’s time for action," they don’t sound optimistic.

"It might well be too late," said Søren Nors Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen.

The planet’s youngest sea at less than 10,000 years old, the Baltic is unique in that it formed after the last ice age. It's also one of the world’s largest bodies of brackish water.

"Experience tells us such a system is almost impossible to predict," Nielsen said.

The Baltic Sea's unusual mix of fresh water and marine species means it's also especially vulnerable to environmental changes. "Evolution didn’t have time to develop an ecosystem able to tolerate flux," Nielsen explained.

(Related: "Viking Shipwrecks Face Ruin as Odd 'Worms' Invade.")

"Sea of Laws"

Water-law attorney Megan Walline of the Stockholm International Water Institute, who spoke at the Baltic Sea presentation, said there's already "a sea of laws" for dealing with human activities that threaten the Baltic.

Too numerous to list, they include existing EU directives that cover nutrient pollution and illegal fishing. The laws are there, they just need to be implemented, she said.

For his part, WWF’s Westman hopes the new EU strategy will at least turn the Baltic into "a kind of test area for enforcing and implementing the directives." For instance, the plan calls for phasing out phosphates in laundry and kitchen detergents, and putting in place more sustainable fishing regulations.

Even so, "There are no quick fixes, unfortunately," Westman concludes, reaching for his binoculars.

Seems it’s back to the eagles for now.

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Conservationists unveil plans to restore bison to North American plains

Recovery 'roadmap' would see large herds roaming free over thousands of hectares but hinges on an overhaul of government regulations and a rethink of public attitudes to the animal

Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk 5 Mar 10;

Bison, the iconic animal of the American west, could once more roam wild across the great plains under a recovery roadmap prepared by international scientists.

A report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (pdf), prepared by dozens of scientists and bison experts from Mexico, America, and Canada, says there is a chance of a second recovery, nearly a century after the animals were rescued from the brink of extinction.

But success depends on allowing large herds to roam free over thousands or perhaps millions of hectares, an overhaul of government regulations, and a rethink of public attitudes to the animal.

Currently, there is only one population of plains bison, in Yellowstone national park.

"The next 10-20 years present opportunities for conserving American bison as a wild species and restoring it as an important ecological presence in many North American ecosystems," the study says. It says the animals are critical to the restoration of the prairie grasslands.

But Americans, especially ranchers in the west who view the animals as competition for grazing lands or a potential source of disease in their cattle, need to accept its presence on the plains.

"The greatest challenge is to overcome the common perception that the bison, which has had a profound influence on the human history of North America, socially, culturally and ecologically, no longer belongs on the landscape," the study says.

Tens of millions of bison once grazed the rolling hills and prairies of North America, from Alaska to northern Mexico. But by the beginning of the 20th century, the great herds had almost completely wiped out by hunters trying to satisfy the European fur trade.

Early efforts managed to save the bison from the brink of extinction, and about 31,000 now roam free. But conservationists say more needs to be done to protect the genetic diversity of such herds to assure their long-term survival.

Aside from harsh winters, bison in the wild face a range of diseases from anthrax to BSE, or mad cow disease.

The study says the new conservation strategy should aim to recreate the traditional range of the bison.

"While substantial progress in saving bison from extinction was made in the 20th century, much work remains to restore conservation herds throughout their vast geographical range," said Cormack Gates, a University of Calgary conservationist who co-edited the study.

Several states continue to view bison as livestock rather than wild animals and about 400,000 bison are being raised in commercial herds. Some 55,000 of those belong to Ted Turner, the media magnate and CNN founder, who has ranches in seven states.

"The key is recognition that the bison is a wildlife species and to be conserved as wildlife, it needs land and supportive government policies," Gates said.

But persuading the public the bison should be free and not food may not be easy. In 2002, Turner's ranches were so successful in raising bison that he opened up a chain of bison burger restaurants that now stretches from Montana to Florida.

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Earth Hour heads into record territory

Gland, Switzerland: A record Earth Hour is looming with more countries now signed up for the event than for last year’s globe circling lights out for climate action.

Just over two weeks out from the event, timed for 8.30 pm on March 27, organisers are now active in in 92 countries, compared to a final participation figure of 88 countries in 2009 which saw hundreds of millions participating.

With confirmation that the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo and Brandenburg Gate in Berlin will both turn off their lights for Earth Hour, all members of the G20 are now taking part in the event.

“Earth Hour demonstrates the determination of the world’s citizens for a better healthier world,” said Earth Hour Executive Director, Andy Ridley.

“It brings together cities, communities, businesses and individuals on the journey to positive action on climate change,”

As a co-founder of the event, Ridley has seen it boom from a one city, one country event in 2007 to the levels where nearly half the world’s nations, and many of its largest cities and iconic landmarks make a statement for a more secure and safer future.

Countries and regions involved for the first time include the world’s newest country Kosovo, the remote island nation of Madagascar, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Paraguay, Ecuador and the US Commonwealth of the Northern Marina Islands in the Pacific Ocean amongst others.

Honduras became the latest nation to have official Earth Hour recognition and Earth Hour global organisers confirm that there are currently more than 1,100 cities and towns signed up to switch their lights off at 8.30pm on 27 March - 100 more than at the same time last year.

“Typically we see a big jump in the number of cities and towns taking part in the last few days before the lights go out, but to see such strong support already is fantastic,” said Ridley.

“Earth Hour is an opportunity for the global community to speak in one voice on the issue of climate change, while at the same time coming together in celebration of the one thing every single person on the planet has in common – the planet,” he said.

“Whether it’s joining your community in a town square to watch the city lights go dark or hosting a lights out party in your own home, I encourage everybody across the world to be a part of this important and historic occasion. Turn off your lights, celebrate the planet, enjoy the moment and think about the future of our living planet.”

Related links
Earth Hour in Singapore on the wildsingapore happenings blog.

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Drought extinguishes Venezuela's lightning phenomenon

Lake Maracaibo left in darkness as drought caused by El Niño disrupts weather patterns that cause constant lightning storms
In pictures: Venezuela's vanishing lightning

Rory Carroll, guardian.co.uk 5 Mar 10;

Darkness rarely lasted long in the skies over Lake Maracaibo. An hour after dusk the show would begin: a lightning bolt, then another, and another, until the whole horizon flashed white.

Electrical storms, product of a unique meteorological phenomenon, have lit up nights in this corner of Venezuela for thousands of years. Francis Drake abandoned a sneak attack on the city of Maracaibo in 1595 when lightning betrayed his ships to the Spanish garrison.

Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

But now the lightning has vanished. A phenomenon that once unleashed up to 20,000 bolts a night stopped in late January. Not a single bolt has been seen since.

"This is unprecedented. In recorded history we have not had such a long stretch without lightning," said Erik Quiroga, an environmentalist and leading authority on the Relampago de Catatumbo, or Catatumbo Lightning.

The spectacle, one of the longest single displays of continuous lightning in the world, lasts up to nine hours a night. On average it is visible over 160 nights a year and from 400km away. Lightning bolts discharged from cloud to cloud strike 16 to 40 times a minute. They can reach an intensity of 400,000 amps but are so high thunder is inaudible. There are similar phenomena in Colombia, Indonesia and Uganda but they do not last the whole night.

Fishermen in the village of Congo Mirador, a collection of wooden huts on stilts at the phenomenon's epicentre, are puzzled and anxious by its absence. "It has always been with us," said Edin Hernandez, 62. "It guides us at night, like a lighthouse. We miss it."

The celestial spectacular appears to be a casualty of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has disrupted global weather patterns and caused a severe drought in Venezuela. Rain has all but disappeared, drying up rivers and disrupting the conditions that produce the lightning, whose causes remain unclear. One theory links it to decomposing organic materials which release methane. Another links it to Andean winds blowing across marshes, generating low pressure and building up an electrical charge in the atmosphere.

The last time the phenomenon vanished was in 1906 after a catastrophic 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia unleashed a tsunami. The lightning returned three weeks later.

Now it is five weeks and there is still no sign of the nocturnal flashes.

"I look for it every night but there is nothing," said Francisca Hernandez, 28, a schoolteacher in Congo Mirador who monitors Lake Maracaibo's sky for researchers based in Caracas.

Some scientists believe the electrical storms help replenish the ozone layer. Others doubt that, saying the ozone they produce reaches only the tropospheric atmosphere.

The drought has also extinguished many man-made lights across Venezuela as the country relies largely on hydropower. Last month, the president, Hugo Chávez, declared an electricity emergency and said severe rationing, which has blacked out towns and cities, could last months. One state electricity company told workers to pray for rain.

Losing the lightning is a symbolic blow. In addition to warding off Drake's naval assault – an event celebrated in Lope de Vega's 1598 epic poem – it is credited with helping independence fighters defeat a Spanish fleet in 1823. The state of Zulia, which encompasses Lake Maracaibo, has a lightning bolt across its centre and refers to the phenomenon in its anthem.

Quiroga worries that when rains return the lightning may not recover its former glory. It was dwindling in frequency and force even before the drought, probably because deforestation and agriculture had clogged the Catatumbo river and several lagoons with silt.

"This is a unique gift and we are at risk of losing it," said Quiroga, who has led scientific teams to its epicentre. He has lobbied Venezuelan authorities to protect the area and the United Nations to recognise it as a world heritage site. A Unesco spokeswoman said there were no plans to do so because electrical storms did not have a "site".

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Environmentalists see "Avatar" in oil sands

Jeffrey Jones, Reuters 4 Mar 10;

(Reuters) - Environmentalists aim to hitch their stars to James Cameron's "Avatar" by trying to draw parallels between the sci-fi blockbuster and Canada's oil sands industry ahead of Sunday's Academy Awards.

In a full-page ad in the show business trade publication "Variety," a coalition of green groups endorsed the film, which is nominated for nine Oscars, saying the predatory grab for resources it portrays on the fictional planet Pandora is similar to methods used in northern Alberta.

The oil industry panned the ad, calling it irresponsible.

"Canada's Avatar Sands," it read before a backdrop featuring a massive dump truck, which is used in oil sands extraction, and an open pit mine.

Like the film, it said, indigenous peoples are endangered by pollution and future oil spills, Shell, BP, Exxon and other "Sky People" are destroying ancient forests and huge trucks are used to mine an expensive energy source to feed America's "addiction."

"Part of it is to reach out to a new audience that have seen the movie," said Mike Hudema, a campaigner for Greenpeace, one of the groups behind the ad. "A lot of the themes that were dealt with in "Avatar" do parallel a lot with what we're seeing in the tar sands."

Environmentalists have escalated a campaign to spread their message that developing Canada's oil sands, the largest deposits of crude outside the Middle East, is damaging the land, air, water and local communities.

Meanwhile, the industry has intensified efforts to counter that, saying it is doing all it can to minimize environmental impacts, clean up operations and support aboriginal communities with consultation and employment opportunities. The two sides have become more polarized.

"The campaign is bizarre at minimum and at maximum it's irresponsible," said Janet Annesley, spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry's main lobby group.

"We've seen in the past that anti-oil activists like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but in this instance the cognitive dissonance is just too great to go unaddressed."

Canada is the largest foreign oil supplier to the United States, and about half the country's crude oil supplies are derived from the oil sands.

(Editing by Frank McGurty)

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Australian states at sea over coastal levels

Sid Maher, The Australian 6 Mar 10;

AUSTRALIA'S six state governments have four different figures for predicted sea-level rise caused by climate change, leaving developers and councils confused and sparking calls for a federal takeover of coastal climate change planning.

While Kevin Rudd pushes to cut red tape and boost housing construction, the property industry says the different state plans, which dictate where houses can be built or renovated near the coast, are creating a new layer of bureaucracy and risk holding back developments in some of the nation's fastest-growing areas.

Victoria's and Queensland's draft coastal plans have nominated 80cm as the expected sea-level rise by 2100 that developers must allow for, which is broadly in line with the predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

NSW cites CSIRO research that sea levels will be 10cm higher at 90cm.

In South Australia, preparations are being made for a 1m rise, and the West Australian government is working on 38cm, although that is under review.

Tasmania makes vulnerability assessments based on peak storm values but will have in-depth research on the rise of the sea level completed by the end of the year.

This all compares with a federal government report released last year on the climate change risks to Australia's coasts, which found that up to 247,600 existing residential buildings worth up to $63 billion would be at risk from sea inundation by 2100, under a sea-level rise of 1.1m.

The Australian Local Government Association has called a summit of council leaders next month to discuss the inconsistencies, in the wake of confusion over differing standards, public furore in Greens-dominated Byron Bay, simmering tensions in Wyong in NSW and a raft of planning disputes in Victoria, including the borough of Queenscliffe, where councils have faced public protests over a plan that could have limited development and renovations on hundreds of homes.

Peter Russell, who lived in one of the affected houses, said the original council decision would have left residents unable to renovate existing houses or build new homes, a move that could have been financially devastating.

"Big government can have all these plans about climate change, but now that it is down to our level, there needs to be some sensitivity and understanding of communities that have been in place for 100 years," Mr Russell said.

Borough of Queenscliffe Mayor Bob Merriman said the council had been acting in line with state government amendments to its town plan and directions on how to deal with rising sea levels. Mr Merriman said the Victorian government needed to provide a clear way forward.

ALGA president Geoff Lake said the different state plans were creating confusion and a lack of direction for councils and developers. There was no central direction and no adequate collaboration between the states.

"What we have is confusion for developers, confusion for communities and a lack of scientific rigour going into solving a problem that is a national problem rather than being confined to one or two states," Mr Lake said.

He said that although the issue was on the Council of Australian Governments agenda, a national authority was needed to provide greater direction to councils and to people who owned property on the coast, or who aspired to do so.

Property Council of Australia chief executive Peter Verwer backed calls for national co-ordination of sea-level-rise responses, describing the current system as "piecemeal" and nonsensical.

"We've got a non-evidence-based approach that assumes sea-level rises will be different above and below the Tweed," he said.

Residential Development Council executive director Caryn Kakas said part of the problem was that state governments were using different applications of the science of climate change, and this was causing development delays.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong this week announced $6.5 million for research into the potential risks from climate change, including vulnerable coastal communities.

A spokesperson for Senator Wong said responsibility for land-use planning and development approval rested with state and local governments.

The federal government's role was to lead national reform and provide information for decision-makers.

Opposition regional development spokesman Warren Truss said the inconsistent state climate change allowances reflected the imprecision of the science.

He said the inconsistencies showed that a national approach was needed.

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EU's 'carbon fat cats' get rich off trading scheme: study

Yahoo News 5 Mar 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Europe's system for industrial carbon quotas has enriched the continent's biggest polluters, with ten firms together reaping permits for 2008 alone worth 500 million euros, a new report revealed.

Dominated by steel and cement makers, the same "carbon fat cats" stand to collect surplus CO2 permits that -- at current market rates -- could be worth 3.2 billion euros (4.3 billion dollars) by 2012, it said.

This is roughly equivalent to the entire EU investment in renewable energy and clean technology under its economic recovery plan, according to Sandbag, a non-profit group in Britain that analyses carbon market policy.

"Emissions trading is meant to be the central policy for cutting CO2 levels," said Anna Pearson, Sandbag's top policy analyst.

"The fact that companies are able to make large sums of money for doing nothing highlights that the trading scheme must be reformed and EU climate change target strengthened."

Under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the European Union allocates carbon polluting allowances to member states to meet obligations laid out in the UN's Kyoto Protocol, for which the first commitment period runs through 2012.

The states then assign quotas to the industries that belch the most CO2 into the atmosphere.

Companies that emit less than their allowance can sell the difference on the market to companies that exceed their limits, thus providing -- in theory -- a financial carrot to everyone to become greener.

But the energy, steel and cement sectors that dominate the system, hit by the global crunch, are emitting less CO2 than forecast, which means surplus carbon permits are flooding the market.

Among the top ten beneficiaries, steelmaker ArcelorMittal collected more than 40 percent of the 2008 excess permits, reported Sandbag.

French cement giant Lafarge got about 12 percent, with Tata steel group subsidiary Corus and Swedish steel maker SSAB-Svenskt Stal each claiming about 10 percent.

Even if the permits are not directly resold for profit, the value will still remain on the companies' books, rising or falling with the market.

Most of the permits were generated simply because the companies were allocated more free permits than they wound up using, according to the report.

"Little or no actual 'effort' toward emissions reductions need have taken place, yet these companies will be able to literally bank the profits," it said.

The price of a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) or its equivalent has fallen sharply over the last 18 months.

After peaking at nearly 30 euros (38 dollars) in mid-2008, CO2 is currently trading at about 13 euros, according to BlueNext, one of several European carbon exchanges.

Viewed narrowly, the recession-driven drop in CO2 emissions helps the environment.

But low carbon prices give businesses little incentive to develop and install new technologies to slash future emissions.

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Activists cast doubt on Indonesia's vow to cut emissions

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 6 Mar 10;

Activists have cast doubt over the government's commitment to slash emissions to help combat climate change as required action plans have not yet been finished, five months after their announcement.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in September announced plans to voluntarily cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020 using the national budget with the formal letter submitted to the United Nation office in January.

Officials said the action plan document on emissions cuts was expected to be finished next month.

"It shows the government's lack of leadership in coordinating sectors to meet the targets," executive director of the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) Berry Forgan told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

"Ideally, details of action plans on how to slash the emissions should be finished before making any commitment to the international community."

The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) said that discussions were underway to officially define the nation's forests.

Director of forest and water resources conservation at Bappenas, Basah Hernowo, said that estimations of the emissions cuts budget had also not yet been calculated.

"We hope that President Yudhoyono can sign the document in April," Basah said.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires each country to submit detailed action plans on how they plan to meet their pledged targets.

The documents should explain in detail where emissions cuts projects would take place and which sector would responsible for it.

Basah said that the targets would be set in seven sectors, including deforestation, peat land, sustainable energy sources, energy efficiency, public transport and waste management.

Officials at the State Environment Ministry earlier said that Indonesia would allocate Rp 83 trillion (US$8.98 billion) to cut 767 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to meet the 26 percent pledge.

If developed nations provide Rp 168 trillion in assistance, Indonesia could slash its emissions by up to 41 percent.

Special assistant on climate change to President Yudhoyono, Agus Purnomo, earlier said the document was almost finished and was waiting for a presidential decree.

Berry has also questioned the government's commitment to protect the forest to reduce emissions with the signing of a new bill this week that puts protected and conservation forests at risk of being rebranded as commercial forests.

"We have warned the government to not focus only on image building in the international arena," he said.

Indonesia was one of the first developing countries to pledge to slash emissions when rich nations were reluctant to make similar commits.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, only rich countries were bound to reduce their emissions by 5 percent by 2012.

At the recent Copenhagen climate conference, rich nations rejected calls to set binding emissions reduction targets of between 25 and 40 percent.

Director of Climate change and energy at WWF Indonesia Fitrian Ardiansyah warned that Indonesia could be left behind by other developing countries in managing its climate budget if it has still not yet finished its action plan.

He said the President should clarify which office is responsible for organizing the emissions cuts targets.

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UK Met Office analysis reveals 'clear fingerprints' of man-made climate change

Climate scientists say the 100 studies of sea ice, rainfall and temperature should help the public to make up their own minds on global warming
Alok Jha, The Guardian 5 Mar 10;

It is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change, according to a major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies that track the observed changes in the Earth's climate system.

The research will strengthen the case for human-induced climate change against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth's climate can largely be explained by natural variability.

Climate scientists and the UN's climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have come under intense pressure in recent months after the IPCC was forced to admit it had made two errors in its fourth assessment report published in 2007. Emails hacked from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in November have also sparked a series of inquiries into allegations of a lack of transparency by researchers and manipulation of the peer review process.

Asked whether his study was specifically scheduled as a fightback, Peter Stott, who led the review, said that the paper was originally drafted a year ago. But he added: "I hope people will look at that evidence and make up their minds informed by the scientific evidence."

Scientists matched computer models of different possible causes of climate change - both human and natural - to measured changes in factors such as air and sea temperature, Arctic sea ice cover and global rainfall patterns. This technique, called "optimal detection", showed clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming, according to Stott. "This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors." The paper reviewed numerous studies that were published since the last IPCC report.

Optimal detection considers to what extent an observation can be explained by natural variability, such as changing output from the sun, volcanic eruptions or El Niño, and how much can be explained by the well-established increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

According to Nasa, the last decade was the warmest on record and 2009 the second warmest year. Temperatures have risen by 0.2C per decade, over the past 30 years and average global temperatures have increased by 0.8C since 1880.

The evidence that the climate system is changing goes beyond measured air temperatures, with much of the newest evidence coming from the oceans. "Over 80% of the heat that's trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean and we can see that happening," said Stott. "Another feature is that salinity is changing - as the atmosphere is warming up, there is more evaporation from the surface of the ocean [so making it more salty], which is most noticeable in the sub-tropical Atlantic."

This also links into changes in the global water cycle and rainfall patterns. As the atmosphere warms, it has been getting more humid, exactly as climate modellers had predicted. "This clear fingerprint has been seen in two independent datasets. One developed in the Met Office Hadley Centre, corroborated with data from satellites."

Arctic sea ice is also retreating - the summer minimum of sea ice is declining at a rate of 600,000 km² per decade, an area approximately the size of Madagascar. Again, decreasing sea ice is predicted by climate models.

Rainfall is also on the rise in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and large swaths of the southern hemisphere, while in the tropics and sub-tropics, there are decreases. "The already-wet regions are getting wetter and the dry regions are getting drier," said Stott. "We now have studies that can identify this fingerprint in the observational data."

The review, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, found that the natural causes of climate variation, including changing energy output from the sun and volcanic eruptions, could not explain the observed changes by themselves. "There hasn't been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years and solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen," said Stott.

If the observed climate change was entirely due to solar activity, the Earth's atmosphere would have warmed more evenly - both the troposphere and stratosphere would have been affected. Warming due to the Sun would also have meant temperatures should have increases more quickly early than late in the 20th century, which is the reverse of what was actually measured.

The review is published as scientists also report a rise in methane emissions from a section of the Arctic Ocean sea floor. That study, published today in the journal Science, shows that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, once considered an safe store of methane, is leaking large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming as this is a greenhouse gase around 30 times more potent than CO2.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans. Sub-sea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap," said Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks's International Arctic Research Centre. "The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to three to four times. The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict."


'Case stronger' on climate change
Pallab Ghosh, BBC News 5 Mar 10;

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.

In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.

Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

'Consistent picture'

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.

"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."

New evidence for man-made global warming
Man is responsible for global warming, according to a new report that hits back at the growing scepticism around climate change.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 5 Mar 10;

The Met Office-led report looked at the latest figures on global temperatures, melting sea ice and humidity. It also considered new evidence on the extent of warming in the Antarctic, rainfall patterns and salinity of the oceans.

It concluded that is was "human influence" that is changing the climate.

However, sceptics insisted the new report did little to back up the case for spending billions of pounds on tackling global warming.

The recent 'climategate' scandal around stolen emails from the University of East Anglia has cast doubt on the science around climate change. Sceptics claim that the emails show scientists were willing to manipulate the data to show that global warming is a man-made phenomenon.

The UN body in charge of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is also under fire after being forced to retract claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their seminal report that claimed global warming is almost certainly caused by man-made green house gases.

The latest report, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, found that since then even more evidence has emerged to back up the case.

The study, by six IPCC scientists from around the world, looked at 101 papers including evidence that was not in the earlier report. This included some of the first evidence of rising temperatures in Antarctic and new analysis of changing rainfall patterns across the world. There have also been fresh studies of humidity and salinity in the oceans, that increases with global warming because water is evaporating faster.

Dr Peter Stott, from the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, who co-led the study, said all the new evidence on melting sea ice in the Arctic and rising global temperatures point to man made global warming.

"It shows that evidence has strengthened over the last two or three years that human influence is changing the climate," he said.

Dr Stott hoped the study would add to the ongoing debate about whether mankind is to blame for global warming.

"I just hope people look at the evidence," he said. "This is really what it is up to scientists to do - to show the climate is changing in such a systematic way it is consistent with understanding and with the expected response to human activities. I just hope people will look at that evidence and make up their minds informed by the scientific evidence."

However well known sceptic Professor Bjorn Lomborg, said people remain confused about the impacts of climate change and what the world should do about it.

"If the study confirms what the UN has been telling us - that global warming is real and man made and really happening - that would be great. But the scepticism is much more on the actual impacts and what we are doing," he said. "Just like other serious problems we should not magnify global warming for affect."

Godfrey Bloom, the UKIP MEP and member of the European Parliament Environment Committee, questioned the study itself.

"I have seen no published evidence that goes beyond a rather unlikely hypothesis that man caused global warming and it is getting thinner by the day," he said. "So before we disturb the global economy we need to take a step back and re-evaluate."

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