Indonesia: Thousands displaced in Jakarta flood

2,430 Displaced in Jakarta Flooding
Lenny Tristia Tambun & Dessy Sagita Jakarta Globe 5 Apr 12;

More than 2,400 people are displaced and living in tents and makeshift refuge shelters across the city after several floods inundated parts of Jakarta this week, officials said on Wednesday.

The chief of the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency, Arfan Arkili, said rain in the upstream areas south of Jakarta on Tuesday evening caused fresh flooding on Wednesday, prompting the number of evacuees to grow from 850 on Tuesday to nearly three times that on Wednesday.

While the flooding that began on Monday evening and lasted through Wednesday morning displaced 2,430 people, Arfan added, it has actually affected more than 7,000.

“For the rest, there are many who choose to stay at their houses or evacuate to their neighbors’ or family members’ homes that are unaffected,” he said.

Hundreds of homes were flooded along major Jakarta waterways including the Ciliwung, Pesanggrahan, Angke and Krukut rivers, with some submerged under 1.5 meters of water.

There have not been any reported casualties from the floods, which have affected the capital for three days, but access to some areas were cut off, causing major traffic jams.

Arfan also reported that water flowing from upstream areas, along with heavy sedimentation near the Cengkareng drainage system and the West Flood Canal in West Jakarta, had caused a breach in part of a nearby dike.

The breach, he said, caused the busy Jalan Daan Mogot to be cut off by surging water.

“Traffic in the area crawled to a standstill,” he said. “It is completely inaccessible.”

Cars and motorcycles on roads leading to the area, including from the airport and the Tomang toll road, were stuck in traffic for hours before the water finally receded on Wednesday afternoon.

West Jakarta resident Afan Anugroho said he sat in traffic for more than three and a half hours to cover a distance that would normally have taken less than an hour.

In East Jakarta’s flood-prone Kampung Melayu, a total of six community units (RW) where some 1,000 people live were sitting in between 20 and 100 centimeters of water.

In South Jakarta’s Pesanggrahan and Kebayoran Baru subdistricts, at least 850 people were evacuated after their homes were inundated by 30 to 150 centimeters of water.

The city has not yet released an estimate of the financial losses incurred by the surging waters.

According to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), areas around Jakarta would see more medium- to high-intensity rain. The agency issued a warning for residents in flood-prone areas in Jakarta to remain vigilant and make contingency plans.

The Ministry of Health also warned residents about a possible outbreak of diseases associated with flooding.

“Diseases that normally occur during floods are diarrhea, dengue fever, canicola fever, acute breathing infections, warts and indigestion,” said the ministry’s director general on disease control and environmental health, Tjandra Yoga Aditama.

Tjandra said the chances of infectious diseases spreading during floods would increase drastically as sources of water became contaminated.

Surging water, he said, forces pests such as rats and cockroaches to come out of hiding and contaminate areas with germs and bacteria, while standing water in flooded areas can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“Avoid playing in water, particularly if you have an open wound,” he said. “Use protective gear like shoes if you have to go to flooded areas.

Tjandra said that if waters do not recede soon, the number of infections could rise.

“[The ministry] has prepared [medical] supplies and personnel as well as a rapid response team at every level,” he said.

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South Africa Bars Vietnam Hunters as Rhino Poaching Surges

Franz Wild Bloomberg 5 Apr 12;

South Africa has barred Vietnamese nationals who have applied to hunt rhinos in the country because it hasn’t been assured that they won’t illegally sell the animals’ horns, which are worth more than their weight in gold.

All 23 rhino hunting applications by Vietnamese residents this year were rejected, South Africa’s Minister of Environmental and Water Affairs, Edna Molewa, said in an interview yesterday. Hunters from the southeast Asian nation didn’t convince South Africa’s government that they would adhere to permit regulations, which stipulate that trophies can’t be sold, she said. The number of rhinos poached in South Africa is projected by the government to rise to a record this year.

“A majority of the people that are being arrested here, a lot of the permits that are being applied for here, come from Vietnam,” Molewa said at the Israel-sized Kruger National Park in South Africa’s northeast. There is “no clear record of proper processes that need to be followed.”

Nearly 60 percent of the rhino hunting requests since the beginning of 2010 have come from Vietnam, where rising prosperity has fostered demand for the horn, which some believe can cure ailments including cancer, according to the government. Made out of the same matter as hair, the horn fetches as much as $60,000 per kilogram.
Illegal Hunt

About 90 percent, or 20,000, of the world’s rhinos are in South Africa, which is tightening regulations on hunters, asking Vietnam and China to help them clamp down on the illegal trade in horns and creating a rhino DNA database which will help link horns sold to animals killed.

With 159 rhinos already poached this year, the number of the animals that are illegally hunted may increase to 619 from an all-time high of 448 in 2011, according to the ministry. At the current rate of slaughter, rhinos in the wild face extinction by 2025 in Africa, conservationists including the African Wildlife Foundation said in a statement released in Nairobi, Kenya on April 3. Ninety people have been arrested so far this year in connection with illegal rhino hunting.

South Africa has set up a task force uniting government, national parks, police, prosecutors and private operators, and the army to stem the tide.
Paramilitary Training

The Vietnamese government says it has agreed to do a count of rhino trophies brought home by its residents to check whether they still have their horns. It will also coordinate a tighter surveillance of the legal import of horns with South Africa, according to an as yet unsigned agreement between the two states.

The South African officials will interview hunters requesting a permit to ensure they have prior hunting expertise and they don’t intend to sell the trophy on, Molewa said. Trophy horns will be micro-chipped, she said.

Recent examples of fraud related to rhino hunting licenses include the arrest of a Thai man last month over allegations that he was part of a syndicate which was using Thai sex workers who had never hunted before as a front to obtain a license to hunt a rhino with the trophy then sold on commercially, Adrian Lackay, the spokesman for the South African Revenue Service, said in interview from his mobile phone today.

South Africa is giving 150 new rangers intensive paramilitary training to protect the rhinos against poachers in Kruger, where illegal hunters often gain access through holes in a fence that runs along the 400-kilometer (250-mile) border with Mozambique.
Waging War

Rather than build a new fence, which would be too expensive, South Africa and Mozambique will establish a 20 kilometer buffer zone to help police the border, Molewa said.

The rangers are equipped with rifles and night vision and are deployed by helicopter to track through the bush for as long as 10 days as they try to arrest poachers.

“I feel very optimistic where we are, that we are indeed waging this war with all that we have at our disposal,” Molewa said. “We have not lost this battle. We don’t see that we are already at a decline at this point in time. We shall not give in and we will not give in.”

South Africa is not ready to appeal to members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to legalize the international trade in rhino horn, which some private ranchers say will undermine poachers by allowing rhino owners to control the trade, Molewa said.

The government won’t be able to adequately increase its monitoring of hunts, enforce trophy micro chipping and complete its DNA database by October, by when it would need to make such a submission, she said.

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The Greatest Challenge of Our Species

Thomas Lovejoy The New York Times 5 Apr 12;

In a cavernous London conference center so devoid of life as to seem a film set for “The Matrix,” 3,000 scientists, officials and members of civil society organizations met in the last week of March to consider the state of the planet and what to do about it.

The Planet Under Pressure conference is intended to feed directly into the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development this coming June, 20 years after the Earth Summit in Rio convened the largest number ever of heads of state and produced, among other things, two international conventions, one for climate change and the other for biological diversity.

While it is not as if nothing has been achieved in the interim or that scientific understanding has stood still, it is obvious that new science is not needed to conclude that humanity has failed to act at the scale and with the urgency needed.

In the United States, in particular (but not exclusively), far too much attention has been given to the non-issue of whether climate change is real or not. In the meantime the heating of the atmosphere proceeds inexorably, the Arctic ice has thinned and retreated at its summer low to a point that it might be tied to the exceptionally warm spring in Europe and North America. Spring bloom has erupted early in North America and Europe. Most people just say how nice the weather is with no sense of the march of climate change.

Since the industrial revolution, developed nations have contributed significantly to the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases. That led to a two-tier arrangement in the Kyoto Protocol, originally adopted in 1997, basically giving time to developing countries to improve their economies before taking major action.

The response of the United States at the time was to abdicate its traditional leadership position with a Senate vote based on the myopic notion that there was no point in doing anything if China and India were to keep on building coal-fired power plants. In the meantime, China is making measurable progress in decarbonizing its economy and has become the largest producer of solar panels in the world.

But the issue before humanity is, in fact, bigger than fossil fuel combustion, and far bigger than climate change. The Stockholm Environment Institute summed it up nicely in an analysis that identified a planet departing from planetary boundaries in three ways: climate change, nitrogen use and loss of biodiversity.

The use and frequent overuse of nitrogen fertilizer primarily by industrialized agriculture has polluted streams and lakes, and, in turn, coastal waters around the world. The resulting dead zones in coastal waters and estuaries are devoid of oxygen and largely devoid of life. They have doubled in number every decade for four decades — an increase by a factor of 16. The amount of biologically active nitrogen in the world is twice the natural level.

The greatest violation by far of planetary boundaries is in biological diversity. This is because, by definition, all environmental problems affect living systems; biological diversity integrates them all. Running down our biological capital is pure folly.

The planet works as a biophysical system that moderates climate (global, continental and regional) and creates soil and its fertility. Ecosystems provide a variety of services, not the least of which is provision of clean and reliable water. Biological diversity is the essential living library for sustainability. Each species represents a unique set of solutions to a set of biological problems, any one of which can be of critical importance to the advance of medicine, to productive agriculture, to the biology that provides current support for humanity, and, most importantly, will provide solutions to the environmental challenge.

Looking ahead, we not only have to deal with these planetary scale problems but also find ways to feed and produce a decent quality of life for at least two more billion than the seven billion people already here. We need to do this without destroying more ecosystems and losing more biological diversity.

Human ingenuity should be up to the challenge. But it has to recognize the problem and address it with immediacy and at scale.

An important step, a “Future Earth” organization, was announced at the conference. It will bring all the relevant scientific disciplines together to work on this, the greatest challenge in the history of our species. This is essential because many physical scientists seem blind to the importance of biology in how the living planet works, and how it can provide critical solutions. Economics and social sciences are critical as well.

History will measure the impact of the Planet Under Pressure conference and the extent that Rio+20 rises to the challenge. The moment has come to realize that this planet which brought us into existence must be managed as the biophysical system that it is. It is time to get our hands on the steering wheel, not to save the planet but to keep it habitable.

Thomas Lovejoy is professor of science and public policy at George Mason University and biodiversity chairman at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.

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Natural Disasters Tied to Unnatural Causes

Jeanna Bryner LiveScience.com Yahoo News 5 Apr 12;

Air pollution does more than make the skies hazy, with a new study suggesting the industrial ick is linked to drought, flooding and even hurricanes.

The research, detailed this week in the journal Nature, suggests human activity can, and already has, driven large-scale regional climate changes.

The "dirty pollution," it seems, can cause changes in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which in turn drives the stormy activity, say the researchers from the Met Office, the U.K.'s National Weather Service. To a lesser extent, volcanic activity also drives this temperature variation and subsequent weather phenomena.

The researchers focused on the so-called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which are shifts in sea-surface temperatures that run in cycles, with warm and cold phases lasting 20 to 40 years; since the mid-1990s we've been in a warm phase, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A warm period in this cycle increases hurricane activity in the North Atlantic — warm water acts as fuel for the high-energy storms — and rainfall in parts of Africa, while reducing rainfall in South America. A cold phase has the opposite effects.

"Until now, no one has been able to demonstrate a physical link to what is causing these observed Atlantic Ocean fluctuations, so it was assumed they must be caused by natural variability," lead study author Ben Booth, a climate processes scientist at the MET Office, said in a statement. "Our research implies that far from being natural, these changes could have been largely driven by dirty pollution and volcanoes." [10 Climate Myths Busted]

Using a computer climate model, Booth and his colleagues looked at sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic between 1860 and 2005. The model, which simulates physical processes in Earth's atmosphere, reproduced these warm-cold variations in the North Atlantic. The simulations actually showed a clear link between the temperature changes in the Atlantic Ocean and the peaks and troughs in industrial pollution from surrounding countries.

Results showed that industrial aerosols and volcanic activity (to a lesser extent) could explain about 75 percent of these sea-surface temperature variations.

Here's how pollution may be linked with climate, the researchers suspect: Most clouds owe their existence to aerosols that act as tiny seeds (called cloud condensation nuclei) around which water vapor droplets can cling and condense. This mostly happens around natural aerosols, such as sea salts. However, particles in polluted air can also seed clouds. Polluted air holds much higher concentrations of water-soluble particles, and, as such, clouds formed from the polluted air tend to have more, and smaller, droplets compared with "natural" clouds, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

The small droplets make these clouds look brighter since sunlight has many more surfaces to reflect off. With increased light scattering, these brighter clouds actually keep sunlight from reaching Earth's surface and shade the planet. Result: cooling of the ocean beneath.

If the research bears out, it could redefine some "natural" disasters.

"If so, this means a number of natural disasters linked to these ocean fluctuations, such as persistent African drought during the 1970s and 80s, may not be so natural after all," Booth said.

The researchers do caution, however, that the results are based on one computer model and that further research is needed to firm up the link between industrial pollution and climate.

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Best of our wild blogs: 5 Apr 12

26-27 May (Sat-Sun): Festival of Biodiversity 2012
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

Conservation & governance from a naive perspective
from Nature rambles

“Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time? Across an ocean of grief” from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Job: Student field assistants wanted for plant traits in regenerating forests project
from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

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How green is this little red dot?

Not all black and white when it comes to how S'pore does in surveys
Jessica Cheam Straits Times 5 Apr 12;

SINGAPORE'S reputation as a 'clean and green' city has taken a few hard knocks recently.

First was a University of British Columbia study in February that ranked the Republic bottom of 150 countries in its Eco2 Index. That index looked at 'ecological deficits' - how much of the Earth's resources it uses compared with how much resources it can supply. Media reports described 'ecologically bankrupt' Singapore as the 'world's unhealthiest country'.

Then came an Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency report quoting conservation group WWF president Yolanda Kakabadse saying that Singapore topped the list for the largest carbon footprint in Asia-Pacific in 2010. She reportedly described Singapore as perhaps 'one of the best examples of what we should not do'.

These recent claims have ruffled a few feathers on this Little Red Dot, which prides itself on its clean and green reputation built over the decades.

The Government has strongly rebutted these rankings, saying they are biased against 'import-dependent, land-scarce, densely populated countries such as Singapore'. Some netizens, however, have gleefully used it to validate why they think everything is wrong in this country.

So what's the truth? Is Singapore ecologically bankrupt or a green haven?

To be sure, these recent rankings seem to be making a fair point: Singapore consumes far more than it can offer ecologically. But dig further, and other points emerge.

A close look at the methodologies of the two rankings above show that both based their findings on data compiled by the Global Footprint Network (GFN), an alliance of scientists which calculates how many 'planet earths' we need to sustain our current growth rates. The GFN uses a complicated method that measures a country's 'ecological footprint' by defining how much resources - expressed in land area - is needed by a country for its consumption and waste generated.

This explains why the Eco2 Index put Singapore right at the bottom. As a built-up city with virtually no agriculture industry or natural resources, it has no ecological assets to speak of.

But ranking Singapore with land-rich and agriculturally endowed countries such as Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay which emerged top of the Eco2 Index is not only pointless, it is unfair.

It essentially penalises Singapore for its nature as an urban city-state with little natural resources.

In order to get a high ecological rating, Singapore would have to live within its means ecologically: That is, consume no more than its land can produce. The fishing village that was Singapore before 1819 might then have scored high on the Eco2 Index. In that sense, the Eco2 Index penalises small countries which refuse to be constrained by their natural resource shortage, and manage to outgrow their limits.

Then there is the matter of carbon footprints. WWF's Living Planet Report 2010 ranks Singapore with the highest carbon footprint in the Asia-Pacific. But this conflicts with that of other rankings.

The International Energy Agency, for example, uses a method adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for all countries. This calculates a nation's emissions based on the country's production - any activity that takes place within the country's borders. Aviation and bunker fuel - which are tricky to attribute to any one country due to their transboundary nature - are excluded.

Using this method, Singapore was ranked below other Asia-Pacific countries like Brunei, Australia and South Korea in per capita emissions.

By contrast, the GFN method, which WWF's report is built on, uses a method that accords more weight to where an item is consumed than produced. So a car manufactured in Japan but sold and used in India will contribute to India's, rather than Japan's, consumption footprint.

This is an interesting, alternative way of looking at footprints - but there is no accurate or consistent way of calculating this globally at the moment. GFN's method takes into account differing ways of producing exports - for example, what type of energy is used - but does not apply the same to imports.

Emissions from aviation are also attributed to individual countries - which means an air hub like Singapore ends up with a high tally. Media reports like the one from AFP did not make all these different accounting methods clear.

In fact, there are other methods to rank green cities. Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) developed an Asian Green City Index which scored 22 cities across eight categories, including energy and carbon emissions, land use, transport and waste.

It used 29 quantitative and qualitative indicators from how a city performs in say, waste production, to assessment of its policies, such as on energy efficiency. Singapore was ranked Asia's greenest city on this index. It was also the most energy efficient - using three megajoules of energy to generate a US dollar of gross domestic product (GDP), compared with the index average of six megajoules.

Consultancy firm Solidiance around that time also issued a green ranking of Asia-Pacific cities that put Singapore fourth, with Tokyo, Seoul and Melbourne ahead - but it did not publish its quantitative and qualitative indicators so there is no way to tell how it derived its results.

So which ranking is right?

The fact of the matter is, the Singapore authorities and citizens shouldn't get too hot and bothered over any particular rating as each has its methodology.

We need to look at the methods used, and examine their robustness and logic, before making up our minds on how much credence to give them. Those reporting on such ratings should also do some homework and not dismiss an entire country based on one survey.

Singapore agencies should also accept unfavourable ratings in the right spirit. There is much room for improvement on Singapore's green credentials. For example, it is slow on adopting electric vehicles, it does have high levels of energy consumption and buildings still waste too much energy on air-conditioning.

As for the WWF reportedly citing Singapore as what societies 'should not do': It made that comment at the same time it moved its global headquarters for Earth Hour, a well-known global environmental campaign, to Singapore from Sydney.

Bottom line? When it comes to green surveys, it's not all black and white.

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Malaysia: Dismayed by wanton clearing of Johor mangroves

The Star 5 Apr 12;

THE Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) is dismayed by the destruction of the mangroves in the riparian zones within the Iskandar Waterfront Development, which include the Sungai Skudai and its tributary Sungai Danga.

MNS is not anti-development and we respect the need to clear certain areas needed for the construction of certain physical structures within the development zone.

We are only against the wanton destruction of all the trees, especially the mangroves within the riparian (buffer) zones.

Is the total removal of the mangroves indicated in the the EIA report?

If so, who is responsible for monitoring for compliance?

Why is there the absence of signages at the development sites, which would give the necessary information of the planned development of the area (name of developer, type of development, name of architect etc.)?

The latest clearing of the mangroves is beside Taman Permata.

The mangroves on the right bank of Sungai Danga are totally cleared to the water’s edge.

The physical topography of the area indicates the area is a flood plain, which should be maintained for flood mitigation purposes.

Other riparian zone mangroves should maintain at least 30m of mangroves from the highest water mark, which must be conserved for various usages – natural purification for water, flood mitigation, fish breeding grounds, habitat for small mammals etc.

IRDA has indicated that the development within the Iskandar Development Region would be “sustainable” but the wanton destruction of these precious mangrove areas indicates otherwise, and it is MNS’ hope that this practice would cease immediately.

Coastal fishermen in the area have been complaining of poor catch since the development has been going on in the Sungai Skudai/Sungai Danga estuaries for the last few years.

PROF DR MAKETAB MOHAMED,
President,
Malaysian Nature Society.

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Malaysia: Borneo Elephant Sanctuary hits snag

Kristy Inus New Straits Times 5 Apr 12;

SHORTAGE: There is only one expert in Sabah to train elephants

THE Borneo Elephant Wildlife Sanctuary, which was expected to be ready by the middle of the year for the Borneo Pygmy elephants and other wildlife driven from their habitat, has hit a snag.

There is a shortage of experts to train the elephants.

In fact, there is only one specialist in the state.

He is Sabah Wildlife Department's elephant trainer Jibius Dausip, who is now tasked with recruiting and training mahouts.

Jibius, 48, from Tambunan, who had more than 20 years experience taking care of elephants, said he had seen many of his peers give up their careers as mahouts because it took a lot of sacrifice and dedication.

A mahout needs years of training and is expected to spend long periods away from his family while staying in the remote wilds of Sabah, including at wildlife reserves such as Tabin in Lahad Datu.

While training was mainly done with the elephants rehabilitated at Lok Kawi Wildlife Park, Jibius said the job went beyond normal working hours as he resided in the Park, always on standby in case of emergencies.

"Elephants are huge but shy creatures and not everyone can handle them.

"That is why you need to create a special bond with each individual elephant.

"This, of course, requires spending a lot of time together.

"I guess I am still in this business because I love working with elephants," said Jibius, who was trained in Thailand and Europe before coming home to Sabah to help train the locals.

Sabah Wildlife Department senior veterinarian Dr Sen Nathan, who is also officer in charge of Lok Kawi Wildfire Park, said there were three full-fledged mahouts and five mahouts-in-training.

There are currently 16 elephants, including calves at the Park, with the youngest being a 6-month-old female calf named Ruandu, recently rescued from Tawau.

"The ideal situation is one mahout to one elephant as they have to develop a close relationship. But we cannot accommodate that under the current situation.

"We need more local talents once the BEWS initiative starts in July. We expect to have 15 working staff, including mahouts.

"The department did consider taking mahouts from Thailand or India but we prefer to take locals," Dr Sen said.

SWD director Dr Laurentius Ambu said earlier news reports had said that Malaysian Palm Oil Council would allocate an initial funding of RM5 million for BEWS while several non-governmental organisations from Japan had pledged RM1.5 million.

The Borneo Pygmy elephant situation in Sabah is critical as there are only about 2,000 animals left in the wild, and an estimated 60 to 100 elephants are waiting to be rescued from remote areas.

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Tuna fishing ban in Pacific partially lifted

After two-year ban to replenish depleted stocks, limited access granted to fish in Pacific, where 60% of world's tuna are sourced
Kay Luiz guardian.co.uk 4 Apr 12;

Pacific nations have reopened the Pacific high seas to commercial tuna fishing after a two-year ban imposed to preserve declining bigeye tuna stocks.

In a meeting in Guam last week, member countries of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) lifted the fishing ban on pockets 1 and 2 of the Pacific Ocean.

The WCPFC is a 25-member organisation including Australia, the EU, Japan, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines that oversees and regulates migratory fish stocks such as tuna and marlin in the Pacific. Its jurisdiction covers 20% of the planet's surface.

In January 2010, the WCPFC placed the ban on parts of the Pacific Ocean, where 60% of the world's tuna are sourced, to conserve the population of the bigeye tuna, which scientists classified as overfished. Other tuna species like skipjack, yellowfin, and albacore also found in the Pacific high seas but their numbers have not reached an alarming low.

Although it lifted the ban, the commission maintained that entry to the marine reserves would be limited, refusing proposals from the European Community and South Korea for a free-for-all access to one of the world's richest fishing grounds.

"The Pacific Commons is now open. But for all practical purposes, access will be limited," said Mark Dia of Greenpeace. "They knew that everybody would suffer if a free-for-all access is granted," he added.

The WCPFC approved the request of the Philippine government, the third top tuna harvester in the Pacific after Japan and South Korea, to fish in pocket 1 of the Pacific, which is bounded by the island nations of Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia.

In exchange for fishing access, the Philippine government must report its catch and limit the number of fishing vessels to 36, Dia said. Filipino vessels must also apply for international fishing permits before entering pocket 1.

The Philippines' fisheries director Asis Perez said the ban brought hard times to the local fishing sector. He also noted that the fishing ban was counterproductive for the Philippines as it forced fishing companies to harvest in its national waters, which is considered to be a spawning ground for various types of tuna, he said.

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Endangered Right Whale Protection Goes High-Tech

Ros Krasny PlanetArk 5 Apr 12;

Efforts to protect the North Atlantic right whale have gone high-tech with the creation of an iPad/iPhone application that can warn mariners when they approach an area where the highly endangered mammals are congregating.

The Whale Alert app, available for free download, uses global positioning system and other technology to send the latest data about right whale detections, overlaid on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) digital charts, to the user's device.

The project is a joint effort between NOAA and other government agencies, including the National Park Service and the Coast Guard, universities, and conservation groups.

The system hopes to limit the number of deadly collisions between whales and vessels, especially large vessels such as cruise ships and container ships. When whales are detected in an area, ships can alter course slightly or slow down.

Marine authorities estimate there are only 350 to 550 of the massive mammals left in the world.

"Right whales are an iconic species for those who live on the coast of Massachusetts and the Northeast U.S.," said Patrick Ramage, director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.

The U.S. commercial whaling industry was centered in New England for hundreds of years before it was wound down in the early 20th Century.

"In a region where for generations New Englanders have harnessed technology to find whales and kill them, now in the 21st century we are harnessing technology to find them and save them," Ramage said.

North Atlantic right whales live along the coast of North America from Newfoundland to Florida.

The creatures, which have a normal lifespan of 50 to 70 years and can weigh around 70 tons, are vulnerable to getting struck by ships because they live in near-shore waters, feed close to the surface, and are notoriously slow swimmers.

Collisions with vessels killed more than one third of the right whales which were reported dead between 1970 and 2007.

Given the fragility of the population, the loss of even one whale - especially a breeding-age female - can have a significant impact on the species.

In major shipping lanes to and from Boston, whale detection will be aided by real-time acoustic detection buoys that essentially listen for whale activity.

"The whales are calling each other. We are eavesdropping into the social network of right whales living off the coast of Massachusetts," said Christopher Clark, director of the bioacoustics research program at Cornell University.

The app was developed for Apple's iPads and iPhones by EarthNC, which specializes in spatial mapping systems for the leisure boating community, and Gaia GPS, which designs backcountry topographic maps.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Half of Giant Panda Habitat May Vanish in 70 Years, Scientists Say

Clara Moskowitz LiveScience.com Yahoo News 5 Apr 12;

For all their cuteness, giant pandas are in a tight spot. There are fewer than 1,600 pandas left in the wild, and a new study found that more than half of the bears' already diminished natural habitat will be unlivable in 70 years thanks to climate change.

To protect the adorable black-and-white creatures, zoologists are working furiously to understand and improve panda-breeding in captivity. Toward that end, another recent study investigated male pandas' reproductive cycle, and found that, contrary to females, males are ready and able to mate during more than six months of the year.

This is welcome news, given that female pandas have a sharply limited fertility window of only 24 to 72 hours a year.

"The more we know, the more we can understand them and the better we're able to put guidelines in place for their protection," said Copper Aitken-Palmer, head veterinarian at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va., and leader of the reproduction study. "We can potentially manage them better in captivity, and we're actually looking toward reintroduction programs to put captive pandas back into the wild."
When the time is right

Aitken-Palmer and her colleagues studied eight male pandas over the course of three years at the Chengdu Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China. They analyzed pandas' sperm density, hormone levels and testes size, as well as reproductive behaviors such as movement, scent-marking and vocalizations, to map out their reproductive viability over time.

The research showed that male pandas have a breeding season, but it is much longer than that of females.

"The coordinated increases in testes size, androgen production, sperm density, and sexual behaviors occur over a protracted interval, likely to prepare for, and then accommodate a brief, unpredictable female estrus," the scientists wrote in a paper reporting the results published today (April 4) in the journal Biology of Reproduction's Papers in Press.

Love is hard

Still, mating for pandas is notoriously difficult, especially in captivity.

For example, zoologists at Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo gave their female panda, Tian Tian, and their male, Yang Guang, some private time in an indoor enclosure with the cameras turned off on April 3 and 4, when Tian Tian's fertility window opened. Though the pair met repeatedly, zookeepers are losing hope of seeing a panda cub this year.

"Each time the pair met, we saw a huge amount of eagerness and attraction between Tian Tian and Yang Guang," Iain Valentine, director of research and conservation at the zoo, said in a statement. "There was lots of vocalization and encouragement from our female and physical contact between the two. He mounted her several times, however full mating did not occur. Although both have bred before and have borne cubs with other pandas, they are both still relatively inexperienced."

Yet scientists say we shouldn't blame pandas for their reproductive difficulties.

"All of this physiology and these adaptations worked great for the panda in the wild, historically," Aitken-Palmer told LiveScience. "In captivity, we changed all the rules and made it more challenging for them."

For example, while pandas are solitary in the wild, they are often put in enclosures with other pandas in captivity, which could complicate their natural behavior, she said.

Turning up the heat

Though pandas are the pride of many zoos around the world, their situation in the wild is growing dire. One of the greatest threats to the furry creatures is habitat loss from climate change and human encroachment, scientists say.

While the species used to roam over most of southeastern China, northern Myanmar, and northern Vietnam, now pandas are limited to six mountain ranges between the Sichuan plain and Tibetan plateau.

And that habitat is looking to grow much smaller, with pandas set to lose 60 percent of their current range due to climate change by 2080, researchersreported in a paper published in the International Journal of Ecology in March. That's a loss of more than 6,200 square miles (16,000 square kilometers).

As global temperatures become warmer, on average, the panda-suitable habitats will move to higher elevations and latitudes, according to climate models. In addition to pandas' limited geographic range, the species has other traits that suggest climate change could hit it hard.

"Giant pandas have a narrow range, do not disperse over large distances, produce one cub every two to three years, and depend on bamboo for 99 percent of their diet," the researchers, led by Melissa Songer of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, wrote in their paper. "These traits suggest they will be highly susceptible to climate change."

Holding out hope

While much of pandas' existing habitat may be lost, the bears might be able to move to new regions.

"New areas may become suitable outside the current geographic range but much of these areas [are] far from the current giant panda range and only 15 percent fall within the current protected area system," the scientists wrote. "Long-term survival of giant pandas will require the creation of new protected areas that are likely to support suitable habitat even if the climate changes."

And ultimately, there is reason for hope.

"The panda is so well-known, such a flagship species for conservation in general," Aitken-Palmer said. "I think if we can't have hope for the panda, who can we have hope for? I want to have hope, but conservation worldwide is in trouble. Only time will tell."

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Brazil wants Rio+20 meet to impose sustainable development

AFP Yahoo News 3 Apr 12;

Brazil wants the upcoming Rio summit on sustainable development to impose the concept as a development model for the world, one of the organizers said Tuesday.

"We are at a time when crises are multiplying, political crisis, environmental crisis," Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo told foreign correspondents here. "Rio+20 will provide an opportunity to review those crises triggered by the current development model."

The Rio+20 summit scheduled for June 20-22, the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972, is to take up a broad range of issues on the health of the world, including growth, food security, access to water, lifestyles, energy, biodiversity and climate.

Figueiredo said the gathering "will be a success if it adopts clear (sustainable development) goals" for the next 20 years which can balance economic growth, poverty eradication and protection of the environment.

Asked about the lack of sanctions in case of non-compliance with the goals set, he replied: "When one sets development targets for the millennium, one does not think in terms of sanctions."

"Rio+20 will establish bridges between the various perceptions and positions on the green economy," he noted. "Some countries fear that this green economy may be used as a trade barrier."

The first official draft of the June conference released in January recognizes the limitations of gross domestic product as a measure of wellbeing.

It stresses the need "to further develop and strengthen indicators complementing GDP that integrate economic, social and environmental dimensions in a balanced manner."

One of its key proposals involves defining "sustainable development goals" that commit countries to meeting targets in the areas of food security, access to water, green jobs and even "sustainable production and consumption models."

These goals would complement the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals set by 192 countries in 2000.

Figueiredo rejected as "unfounded" charges by 39 civil society groups that Brasilia under President Dilma Rousseff had "backtracked" with respect to protection of the environment.

"Brazil will arrive at the summit with outstanding results: It's a country which has made progress, which has fostered social inclusion and which has reduced like never before its deforestation rates," Figueiredo said.

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