Best of our wild blogs: 3 Jan 13

Stalking a Blue-tailed Dartfish
from Compressed air junkie

A Close Look at the Critters of Pulau Hantu
from Pulau Hantu

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Scientists find new uniquely Singaporean species in our waters

The New Paper AsiaOne 3 Jan 13;

THE waters off Pulau Ubin are teeming with life, and scientists are just beginning to catalogue uniquely Singaporean species.

More than 10,000 specimens were discovered during the Singapore Marine Biodiversity Workshop at Pulau Ubin between Oct 15 and Nov 2 last year.

The specimens were found in waters around Pulau Ubin, mostly from the East Johor Strait. Some were also found in waters in the West Johor Strait.

Of the new discoveries, Dr Tan Koh Siang of the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS) said: "We are certainly excited about the specimens we have collected since quite a few are either new records for Singapore, or are 're-discovered' after many decades. "Some may eventually prove to be new science. "

About 200 participants were involved in the recent expedition, which was led by the National Parks Board (NParks) and NUS. The participants included 20 scientists from 10 countries, local scientists, conservation officers and volunteers.

The expedition to collect these never-before seen creatures was part of the Comprehensive Marine Biodiversity Survey, which began in 2010 and is led by NParks.

The five-year study is supported by universities, non-governmental organisations and a small team of volunteers.

The average depth of the Johor Straits ranges from 5m to 20m, and the creatures discovered, which live in a variety of habitats, were collected from the intertidal shore or dredged from the seabed.

In response to The New Paper's queries about the 12 new discoveries featured here, Dr Tan said: "They remain undetermined and have no assigned scientific names at the moment."

SMALL CLAM

This small animal belongs to a unique group of bivalves that have extended their skin to cover the shell. The skin bears club-like protrusions that may have a deterrent function against predators.

BRITTLESTAR

Brittlestars are related to starfish, and grow between 1cm and 10cm long. They crawl beneath the surface of the seabed using flexible arms. They are scavengers that feed on organic particles and are common in Singapore waters.

SEA CUCUMBER

Sea cucumbers are marine animals with spines or spicules embedded in their skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. They are found on the sea floor worldwide.

STONEFISH

Stonefishes have venomous spines that can inflict a lot of pain though it is rarely fatal to humans. They are very common in Singapore waters, both in the Johor and Singapore Straits.

MARINE FLATWORM

The flatworms are bilaterians, which means they have bilateral symmetry. But unlike other bilaterians, they have no body cavity, and no specialised circulatory and respiratory organs. They can often be seen in tidal pools on mudflats, mangroves and coral reefs.

MANTIS SHRIMP

Mantis shrimps are marine crustaceans. Some species can exceed 30cm long. They are common animals around Pulau Ubin.

MARINE BRISTLE WORM

Bristle worms are mostly marine. They are segmented worms, generally less than 10cm long.

CRUSTACEAN

Crustaceans include familiar creatures like crabs, crayfish and shrimps. They are mostly free-living aquatic animals, but some are terrestrial, living in either marine or freshwater environments.

VOLUTE SNAIL

A family of predatory sea snails that are 9mm to more than 50cm long. Some species are harvested as food in Malaysia and Singapore. They feed on other molluscs like clams and snails.

SQUID

Squids have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle and arms. Many species are popular as food and the type found in Pulau Ubin waters is edible.

SEA ANEMONE ON CRAB

Sea anemones are a group of water-dwelling, predatory animals. In this case, it is likely that the sea anemone and the crab have a mutually-beneficial relationship.

SEA SPIDER

Sea spiders are not related to true spiders. They are found across the tropics to the poles. There are more than 1,300 known species, ranging in size from 1mm to over 90 cm in some deep water species.

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Patrolling a way to beat poachers

Nuradilla Noorazam New Straits Times 3 Jan 13;

LIFELINE: More people entering forests will boost efforts to conserve elephants

KUALA LUMPUR: REGULAR patrolling in high-risk areas will provide a much needed lifeline for elephant conservation efforts.

Management and Ecological of Malaysian Elephants conservationist Steven Lim Boon Hock said creating presence in high-risk areas would intimidate poachers.

"If more people enter the forest to hike, document and preserve its treasures, poachers will think twice about entering the area and setting up snares for fear of being caught," said Lim, who is stationed at the Royal Belum and Temenggor forests.

He said Malaysian elephants were under threat from relentless poaching and human-animal conflicts.

"Elephants are not just hunted for their ivory but also their meat and organs.

"People sell small ivory as trinkets and jewellery while the feet are made into stools.

"It is sad to see these animals dying in big numbers just because some people want to make money. It makes you wonder, what is the real value of life?"

Lim, 49, used to have a high-flying job in the corporate world, earning a five-figure salary.

But his love for nature and wildlife was too strong to be kept as a hobby during the holidays. A few years ago, he quit his job to be a full-time conservationist.

"Compared with our neighbours, the number of Malaysian elephants is rapidly decreasing. The World Wide Fund for Nature estimated in 2010 that there were only 1,700 wild elephants left in the country.

"In Sri Lanka, there are more than 7,000 wild elephants while India is home to 20,000 wild elephants."

Lim added that elephants used to be very important in the lives of people in then Malaya.

During the sultanate era, monarchs used elephants as part of their entourage.

"During wars, elephants were used as the first line of defence. However, as time passed, elephants started to lose their significance in local culture.

"Now, you hear stories of elephants being poisoned by farmers when the animals trampled on their plants. Elephants are also being killed and dismembered by individuals trying to make a quick buck."

International Southeast Asia senior programme officer Kanitha Krishnasamy said poor planning of land use, such as converting forest land for plantations, was also causing conflicts between wildlife and people.

"When these animals are found encroaching on villages or plantations, it will create conflict and harm."

For example, the Gerik-Jeli highway that passes through both Belum and Temengor forests is one of the reasons for such a conflict.

Conservationists said road users could easily spot wild elephants at night when they came out from the forest to forage for food by the roadside.

This, however, exposed them to danger. Tales of accidents involving elephants and sounds of gunshots near the highway at night are common to the locals.

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Politics Is Key to Avoiding Global Warming Catastrophe

Stephanie Pappas LiveScience.com Yahoo News 3 Jan 13;

Delaying global action on climate change by 20 more years will put the goal of keeping the world relatively cool out of reach forever, no matter how much money humanity later spends to try to solve the problem, a new study finds.

Since the 1990s, scientists and international negotiators have aimed to keep global temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but little progress has been made so far in concrete steps toward that goal. The most recent climate talks, in Qatar in December, ended with only modest steps that fail to address growing greenhouse gas emissions, climate scientists said.

It's these delays that ultimately make dealing with climate change more expensive and perhaps eventually impossible, according to a study published this week (Jan. 4) in the journal Nature. While it's true there are still uncertainties about how the climate will respond to specific strategies, these uncertainties are nothing compared with potential disaster caused by delay, said study researcher Joeri Rogelj of Switzerland's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.

"The uncertainties about how the climate system will respond have been previously used as an argument to postpone action until we have learned more," Rogelj told LiveScience. "We show that such a delay strategy is unsupported and that the most important factor for staying below 2 degrees C is the timing of when we start tackling this problem at a global scale."

2-degree world

Many researchers have attempted to weigh the costs and benefits of climate-change strategies ranging from a carbon tax on emissions to requirements for sequestering carbon underground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. What Rogelj and his colleagues did differently was to rank the importance of "the known unknowns." These are the uncertainties that keep scientists from predicting exactly how the future of climate will unravel. They include geophysical uncertainties — how the climate system of our planet will respond to specific strategies — as well as social uncertainties, such as future growth and energy demand. Technological uncertainties include what innovations will be available for lowering emissions. And finally, there are the political uncertainties: When will the world decide to act to prevent further warming? [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

For the first time, Rogelj and his colleagues quantified and ranked the importance of each of these uncertainties. They found that politics dominated.

Delay hurts

In other words, the timing of climate-change action plays a more important role in keeping the planet from possibly catastrophic warming than social, geophysical or technological hurdles. If humanity delays in taking action, even the best-case social, geophysical and tech scenarios will do little good.

"When delaying action by two more decades, chances to stay below 2 degrees C become very low and we find that they cannot be improved later on, no matter how much money we throw at the problem in the future," Rogelj said.

Without drastically reducing energy demands, two decades of delay will mean only a 20 percent chance of staying below 2 degrees C, Rogelj said. A move toward a highly energy-efficient society would increase those odds to 50 percent. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]

In fact, conservation and energy efficiency (social and technological uncertainties) play big roles in making mitigation strategies such as carbon taxes or carbon capture more effective, the researchers found. For example, if carbon emissions were immediately taxed at $40 a metric ton, there would be an 80 percent chance of staying below 2 degrees in an energy-efficient world. The same carbon price would give only a 66 percent chance of hitting that temperature goal in an intermediate-demand world. In a future with a high demand for energy (20 percent greater than the intermediate scenario), carbon would have to cost $150 per metric ton just to reach that same 66 percent likelihood.

A low-energy future has upsides beyond climate mitigation, Rogelj said.

"If one can continue to prosper in the future and deliver the same services with less overall energy, this will in the first place save you money, but also very significantly improve your national energy security situation," he said. "It seems to me that such benefits should be appealing to any decision-maker who cares about the long-term development and prosperity of his or her country."

Fixing climate

Even though the study examined more than 700 future climate scenarios, there are some limitations to its analysis. The research didn't take into account the cost of disasters such as coastal flooding if climate change is not mitigated. Nor did it consider "runaway climate change" scenarios. For example, if the melting of the permafrost releases trapped methane stores into the atmosphere, that gas could trap heat even more efficiently than carbon dioxide, sending temperatures soaring faster than expected.

The researchers' middle-of-the-road predictions for economic growth and population growth are also "somewhat optimistic," according to Steve Hatfield-Dodds of Australian National University, who was not involved in the study. That could mean that the estimated likelihoods of climate-mitigation success are also optimistic, Hatfield-Dodds wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Nature.

Nevertheless, "the findings should help to make risks and consequences more transparent, and thereby support better-informed economic and political decisions," Hatfield-Dodds wrote.

Cost of combating climate change surges as world delays - study
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 3 Jan 13;

An agreement by almost 200 nations to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 will be far more costly than taking action now to tackle climate change, according to research published on Wednesday.

Quick measures to cut emissions would give a far better chance of keeping global warming within an agreed U.N. limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avert more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

"If you delay action by 10, 20 years you significantly reduce the chances of meeting the 2 degree target," said Keywan Riahi, one of the authors of the report at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

"It was generally known that costs increase when you delay action. It was not clear how quickly they change," he told Reuters of the findings in the science journal Nature based on 500 computer-generated scenarios.

It said the timing of cuts in greenhouse gases was more important than other uncertainties - about things like how the climate system works, future energy demand, carbon prices or new energy technologies.

The study indicated that an immediate global price of $20 a ton on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, would give a roughly 60 percent chance of limiting warming to below 2C.

Wait until 2020 and the carbon price would have to be around $100 a ton to retain that 60 percent chance, Riahi told Reuters of the study made with other experts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

And a delay of action until 2030 might put the 2C limit - which some of the more pessimistic scientists say is already unattainable - completely out of reach, whatever the carbon price.

"The window for effective action on climate change is closing quickly," wrote Steve Hatfield-Dodds of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia in a separate commentary in Nature.

Governments agreed to the 2C limit in 2010, viewing it as a threshold to avert dangerous climate change. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degree C (1.4F) since wide use of fossil fuels began 200 years ago.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN

After the failure of a 2009 summit in Copenhagen to agree a worldwide accord, almost 200 nations have given themselves until 2015 to work out a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions that will enter into force in 2020.

Amid an economic slowdown, many countries at the last U.N. meeting on climate change in Qatar in December expressed reluctance to make quick shifts away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies such as wind or solar power.

Each U.S. citizen, for instance, emits about 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year. There is no global price on carbon, only regional markets - in a European Union trading system, for instance, where industrial emitters must pay off they exceed their CO2 quotas, 2013 prices are about 6.7 euros ($8.83) a ton.

The report also showed that greener policies, such as more efficient public transport or better-insulated buildings, would raise the chances of meeting the 2C goal.

And fighting climate change would be easier with certain new technologies, such as capturing and burying carbon emissions from power plants and factories. In some scenarios, the 2C goal could not be met unless carbon capture was adopted.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Best of our wild blogs: 2 Jan 13

changeable hawk eagle (pale morph) @ bukit brown - 01Jan2013
from sgbeachbum

Random Gallery - Black Veined Tiger
from Butterflies of Singapore

New fish record, rediscovered treasures and more!
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

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Big parties... and big army of cleaners too

Staff work through the night to clear countdown party venues of rubbish
Lim Yi Han Straits Times 2 Jan 13;

AS PARTYGOERS geared up to celebrate the new year, an army of cleaners were painstakingly picking up litter.

At the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown 2013, preparations, such as placing of bins, began as early as 3pm on Monday. The big cleanup continued through the night to 11am yesterday, said Mr Edy Tan, 38, operations manager of cleaning firm Chye Thiam Maintenance.

About 350 cleaners were deployed at the event, which was the island's biggest party with some 260,000 people turning up.

But there was less litter than the year before because the rain meant fewer people came, said Mr Tan. At the previous event, some 300,000 partygoers turned up.

"The emcees were also telling the crowd to take care of their own rubbish, so that helped," he added. More bins were put out this year - 257, up from 247 the last time around.

Still, clearing the mess was no easy job.

One 24-year-old cleaner, who wanted to be known only as Mr Wu, said in Mandarin: "There's a lot of rubbish, especially after the fireworks when many people start to leave."

Countdown parties tend to leave a bigger mess than other events, such as the National Day Parade and Formula One race, as they attract larger crowds.

At Marina Bay, more than 40 National Environment Agency officers were on the lookout for litterbugs and illegal hawkers.

They were among the 157 officers at 10 major countdown events across the island - 20 per cent more than last year. In total, 59 litterbugs were booked, mostly for throwing cigarette butts, down from 70 the year before.

Meanwhile, the Siloso Beach Party, with its 19,000 revellers, needed 50 cleaners to help keep the sand as spotless as possible. "Green ambassadors" also walked around collecting plastic cups from partygoers for recycling.

They were part of an initiative by four students from Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. Called "Project Bin&Go", it aims to promote stronger recycling habits among Singaporeans.

Team leader Nurkhairah Sumarto, 23, said they wanted to raise awareness of recycling among partygoers because "we have frequently heard of and witnessed for ourselves the large amount of trash generated from mega outdoor events and concerts".

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Malaysia: Corridor allows study of jumbos' migratory path

New Straits Times 2 Jan 13;

KOTA KINABALU: A wildlife corridor is being established between Segaliud Lokan-Deramakot and the Malua Forest Reserve to allow easier access and movement of elephants in the area.

A study had found that the Segaliud Forest Reserve, which is home to more than 300 pygmy elephants, had sufficient food sources for the pachyderms.

Experts, who discovered the unique movement patterns of these elephants, had called for the setting up of an ecological corridor between these forest reserves.

Borneo Conservation Trust's conservation and research programme head Raymond Alfred said a 10-month study concluded that the riverine forest was the key habitat for elephants in Sabah.

The study was conducted by a research team from KTS Plantation Sdn Bhd and Borneo Conservation Trust, which saw the two organisations looking into the movement patterns of elephants in Malua via satellite tracking.

"The study had found that the elephants move from northern Malua to the east of the Danum Valley at central Ulu Segama Malua.

"We had installed a radio-satellite collar on a female elephant named Segaliud. She represents between 290 and 310 elephants in the Segaliud Lokan Forest.

"The movement patterns of the elephants are unique, emphasising the importance of the riverine forest and a logging road as their main migratory path, from one forest compartment to another."

He said the corridor was developed by Kwantas Plantation Sdn Bhd and located at the northern part of the Malua Forest Reserve.

Alfred also said the Segaliud Lokan Forest Reserve had the highest orang utan density in Sabah.

Most of the primates were concentrated at the southeast of the forest reserve.

"The research team had found that the main tree species used by the orang utans (either for food sources or shelter) are pioneer species, or hardy species which are the first to colonise previously disrupted or damaged ecosystems.

"Thus, the restoration programme that is being carried out in this area will also improve the density and diversity of the tree species."

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Poachers make 2012 a deadly year for Africa's rhinos, elephants

Jon Herskovitz and Ed Stoddard PlanetArk 2 Jan 13;

Africa's biggest animals were poached in near record numbers in 2012, with surging demand for horn and ivory from Asia driving the slaughter of rhinos and elephants.

By mid-December, poachers had killed 633 rhinos in South Africa, according to environment ministry figures.

That marks a new annual peak in the country that is home to most of the continent's rhinos, and a sharp rise from the record 448 poached last year and the mere handful of deaths recorded a decade ago.

Elsewhere in Africa, the slaughter of elephants continued unabated, with mass killings reported in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to conservation group TRAFFIC, which monitors global trade in animals and plants, the amount of ivory seized will likely drop from 2011, when a record number of big hauls were made globally. But the trend remains grim.

"It looks like 2012 is another bumper year for trade in illegal ivory though it is unlikely to top 2011," said Tom Milliken, who manages TRAFFIC's Elephant Trade Information System.

In 2011, an estimated 40 metric tons of illegal ivory was seized worldwide, representing thousands of dead elephants. So far this year about 28 metric tons has reportedly been seized but the number is expected to climb as more data comes in.

"The last four years since 2009 are four of our five highest volume years in illegal ivory trade," said Milliken.

Demand for ivory as ornamental items is rising fast in Asia, in tandem with growing Chinese influence and investment in Africa, which has opened the door wider for illicit trade in elephants and other animals.

Rhino horn has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, where it was ground into powder to treat a range of maladies including rheumatism, gout and even possession by devils.

WAR AND ORGANISED CRIME

Ivory smuggling has also been linked to conflict, and last week the United Nations Security Council called for an investigation into the alleged involvement in the trade of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.

Led by warlord Joseph Kony, who is being hunted by an African Union and U.S.-backed military force, the LRA is accused of terrorizing the country's north for over 20 years through the abduction of children to use as fighters and sex slaves.

"The illegal killings of large number of elephants for their ivory are increasingly involving organized crime and in some cases well armed rebel militias," the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said in a statement this week.

"In Bouba N'Djida National Park, in northern Cameroon, up to 450 elephants were allegedly killed by groups from Chad and the Sudan early this year," said CITES, which is an international agreement that oversees trade in wildlife.

In the case of rhino horn, demand has also been growing in Vietnam, where a newly affluent class has been buying it to treat ailments ranging from hangovers to cancer.

The claims have no basis in science but demand has pushed the price of the horn up to $65,000 a kilogram on the streets of Hanoi, making it more expensive than gold.

Most of the rhino killings take place in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Gangs armed with firearms and night-vision goggles enter from neighboring Mozambique, from where observers say the horn is often smuggled out through the same routes used to bring illegal drugs from Southeast Asia into Africa.

"Kruger is a national park the size of Israel and it is incredibly difficult to police," said Julian Rademeyer, author of 'Killing for Profit', a book published this year that examines the international rhino horn trade.

"You have very advanced international syndicates run like business operations that are very good at getting horn out of here," he told Reuters. Rademeyer expects the number of rhino killings to rise even higher next year, pushing the population closer to a tipping point that leads to its decline.

South Africa has deployed its military to patrol Kruger while its tax agency SARS and police have stepped up the fight.

But it also lost ground in 2012 due to a two-month strike by National Park workers and corruption within the ranks of the park service that undermined its anti-poaching efforts.

South Africa hosts virtually the entire population of white rhino - 18,800 head or 93 percent - and about 40 percent of Africa's much rarer black rhino.

Africa's elephant population varies. Estimates for the numbers in Botswana are as high as 150,000 but in parts of central and west Africa the animal is highly endangered.

"Central Africa has been bleeding ivory but for the last few years there has also been an upsurge in poaching in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique," said Milliken.

Trade in rhino horn is strictly prohibited under CITES while that for ivory is mostly illegal.

(Editing by John Stonestreet)

Rhino Poaching at Record High in South Africa
LiveScience.com Yahoo News 11 Jan 13;

Rhinoceros poaching soared to a record high level in South Africa last year. The country's government said 668 rhinos were killed within its borders in 2012, up from 448 in 2011, according to the World Wildlife Fund, an international conservation group.

A whopping 425 of those deaths last year occurred in Kruger National Park, a top safari destination and home to South Africa's largest population of both black and white rhinos. That figure marks a sharp increase from the 252 rhinos killed in the park in 2011.

The poaching boom is largely due to heightened demand for rhino horns in Asia, where the grim prizes are believed to have medicinal properties and are seen as highly desirable status symbols, especially in Vietnam. TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental global network that monitors wildlife trade, recently issued a report describing how some affluent Vietnamese individuals often use the horn as a hangover cure and general health tonic, grinding it up and mixing it with water or alcohol.

"Viet Nam must curtail the nation’s rhino horn habit, which is fuelling a poaching crisis in South Africa," Sabri Zain, TRAFFIC's director of advocacy, said in a statement. "Rhinos are being illegally killed, their horns hacked off and the animals left to bleed to death, all for the frivolous use of their horns as a hangover cure."

Last year also saw some crackdowns. Arrests of suspected poachers and smugglers increased in 2012, with 267 people now facing rhino-related charges and one Thai man sentenced to a record 40 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle horns to Asia, WWF officials said. Last month, Vietnam and South Africa also signed an agreement aimed at strengthening law-enforcement efforts and sharing intelligence to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.

According to WWF, an additional five rhinos have been killed since the beginning of 2013, and two men were arrested in separate incidents in Vietnam and Thailand this month for smuggling rhino horns.

Rhinos in crisis – poaching and illegal trade reach highest levels in over 20 years
TRAFFIC 15 Jan 13;

Gland, Switzerland, 15th January 2013—Escalating levels of poaching and illegal trade in rhino horns are seriously undermining rhino conservation efforts, putting the survival of these species at risk—according to a report by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and TRAFFIC.

The report examines the conservation status and trade in African and Asian rhino species.

“The findings of the report are alarming,” says Tom Milliken, a rhino expert from TRAFFIC. “Today, rhino poaching and illegal horn trade are at their highest levels in over 20 years, threatening to reverse years of conservation effort, particularly in Africa. There is no doubt that rhino species are facing a serious crisis.”

According to the report, by the beginning of 2011 there were 20,165 White Rhinoceros Ceratotherium simum and 4,880 Black Rhinoceros Diceros bicornis in Africa. However, at least 1,997 rhinos were poached between 2006 and September 2012 and over 4,000 rhino horns have been illegally exported from Africa since 2009, with an estimated 92% of these coming from rhinos specifically killed to obtain their horn.

South Africa, home to 83% of Africa’s rhinos and 73% of all wild rhinos worldwide, is the principal source of rhino horns in illegal trade. A record 668 rhinos were poached there in 2012, according to official government figures released in January 2013.

Illegal trade in rhino horns involves highly organised, mobile and well-financed criminal groups, mainly composed of Asian nationals based in Africa. These networks have recruited pseudo-hunters including Vietnamese citizens, Thai prostitutes and proxy hunters from the Czech Republic and Poland to obtain rhino horns in South Africa on the pretence of trophy hunts for illegal commercial trade purposes.

Pseudo-hunting has significantly reduced as a result of a decision to prevent nationals of Viet Nam from obtaining hunting licenses and changes to South African law in April 2012. However, there remains a continued need to ensure that only bona fide hunters are granted permits, according to the report.

“Rhinos are killed for their horns, which are seen as highly desirable status symbols in parts of Asia, notably Viet Nam, but also increasingly in China,” says Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, Chair of IUCN Species Survival Commission’s (SSC) Asian Rhino Specialist Group. “Horns are also increasingly used for non-traditional purposes such as hangover cure and body detoxifyer, especially in Viet Nam.”

In Asia, although conservation action in Nepal and India has resulted in increased numbers of the Greater One-horned Rhinoceros Rhinoceros unicornis, the situation in Indonesia and Malaysia remains serious for the world’s two rarest rhino species—the Sumatran Rhinoceros Dicerorhinus sumatrensis and the Javan Rhinoceros Rhinoceros sondaicus. The Javan Rhinoceros, with only around 35 to 45 surviving individuals, is confined to a single park in Indonesia after the last animal of its Indochinese subspecies, Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus, was found dead, its horn removed, in Viet Nam in 2010. The report calls for enhanced protection and biological management of the remaining Sumatran and Javan Rhinoceros to prevent their extinction.

Thefts of rhino horns from museums and zoos have increased worldwide, creating the need for improved law enforcement, monitoring and enhanced information management with regards to rhino numbers, sales and translocations, the report finds.

“Trade in rhino horns is a global problem that needs to be addressed by the international community by putting pressure on those countries that are driving illegal trade in rhino horn and those with inadequate wildlife legislation, such as Mozambique,” says Richard Emslie, from IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group. “At the same time, increased poaching is negatively affecting rhino conservation incentives and budgets, threatening future rhino population growth.”

The report was compiled by the IUCN SSC African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. It was mandated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and aims to inform the rhino horn debate at the 16th meeting of the Confererence of the Parties to CITES, taking place in March 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Read the full report http://www.cites.org/eng/cop/16/doc/E-CoP16-54-02.pdf

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Best of our wild blogs: 1 Jan 13

Crabby rain at Pasir Ris Park Mangrove
from Peiyan.Photography

Macro Highlights of 2012
from Macro Photography in Singapore

Crows harassing Black Kites
from Bird Ecology Study Group

My work attachment at RMBR
from Peiyan.Photography

The year in rainforests
from Mongabay.com news by Rhett Butler

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PUB looks at Jurong Island water needs: tapping groundwater

It is studying ways to tap wastewater and groundwater for use there
Grace Chua Straits Times 1 Jan 13;

CAN Jurong Island's groundwater be tapped? Or can waste heat from industrial processes be used to clean its used water or drive desalination?

These are some of the questions the PUB is asking. The national water agency called a tender last month to work out how best to meet the industrial island's future water needs.

In 2010, the PUB found the island had fresh groundwater, after it dug a 5m-deep well and pumped a litre of freshwater per second from it for three months.

Last November, it closed a tender for a study to model the groundwater on Jurong Island to see if industries there can tap groundwater for process and other needs, and how much can be tapped sustainably.

As industry expands on the island, demand for water for cooling and industrial processes will also rise from the 35 million gallons per day now to double that over the next 10 years, said PUB senior planning officer Soh Yeow Chong.

Currently, Newater, potable water and industrial non-potable water are supplied from the mainland, while some firms pipe in seawater for cooling. As demand grows, more costly land and sub-sea pipes will be needed.

Meanwhile, wastewater is treated by PUB plants or private utilities. Most of it is discharged, while some is reused. But the PUB wants to know: Can more of the discharged water be reclaimed for use on the island? Can an easier- to-treat portion of used water be segregated from a harder-to- clean portion?

"We are trying to close the water loop on Jurong Island," Mr Soh said.

The 32 sq km Jurong Island is home to more than 94 petroleum, petrochemical and chemical companies, and more firms are expected to set up shop there on two newly reclaimed areas.

Besides boosting the local water supply, the PUB also wants to know if, say, waste heat from industry can be used to desalinate or treat water there.

And for the longer term, the PUB also wants consultants to help work out whether public, privatised or some hybrid form of water supply and treatment is best for Jurong Island.

A hybrid business model already exists: the design, build, own and operate scheme that has private firms building, running and supplying Newater to the PUB.

The tender for this water-resources study closes on Jan 10.

Meanwhile, groundwater - largely rainwater that has seeped into the ground - could be another source of water for Jurong Island's industries.

The island is composed of seven islands, made up of the sedimentary rock in the Jurong Formation, joined by reclamation.

Rainwater seeps into the ground and is less dense than seawater, so it forms a freshwater lens atop the saltier ocean and can thus be tapped.

It goes at least 5m down, but drawing too much groundwater too fast can lead to land subsidence. So the PUB wants to know how much can safely be tapped, and at what rate - depending on rainfall - groundwater supplies get recharged.

The groundwater study tender closed in November with four bids, ranging from $797,498 to $860,000, including those from consultants Camp Dresser and McKee, and the National University of Singapore.

The contract for the 18-month study is likely to be awarded next month, Mr Soh said.

Future studies could come up with rainwater recovery schemes and storage for Jurong Island, the tender said.

Other areas being studied

WATER supply is not the only thing being studied on Jurong Island.

In 2010, the "Jurong Island version 2.0" initiative was launched to prepare the petrochemical island for future growth, increase its competitiveness and overcome resource constraints.

Under that multi-agency scheme which involved industrial landlord JTC, the Economic Development Board (EDB) and other government agencies, various studies were carried out.

The areas studied included looking into a second link to mainland Singapore, making industries more energy-efficient, and using green materials such as palm oil, sugar cane and plant ethanol as alternatives to petroleum-derived feedstocks for producing chemicals.

Several suggestions from these studies could be adopted or have already been adopted on Jurong Island.

For one thing, when the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal opens this year, its "cold energy" could be tapped. Liquefied gas is shipped at very low temperatures and as it heats up, it can cool air and separate it into oxygen and nitrogen for use in other industrial processes.

And the McKinsey Green Campus, an actual chemical process plant on the island, serves as a model factory that teaches companies how to increase energy efficiency throughout their operations.

Meanwhile, the National Environment Agency (NEA) and consultants CH2M Hill did a study of the air quality on the island, measuring what the most common pollutants were at what levels, how Jurong Island stacks up against industrial parks overseas, and suggesting specific pollution abatement measures.

Findings from this study are not yet available.

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Indonesia: Riau`s forests shrinking

Antara 31 Dec 12;

Pekanbaru, Riau (ANTARA News) - A local non governmental organization said conversion has significantly cut the size of Riau`s tropical forests over the past several years.

In 2009-2012, at least 500,000 hectares of forests have been converted mainly into industrial timber estates (HTI), the Riau Forest Saviour Network (Jikalahari) said here Monday.

Jikalahari coordinator Muslim Rasyid mainly blamed industrial timer (HTI) companies for the rapid process of deforestation in Riau.

Muslim accused companies of committing extra-ordinary crime causing the loss of natural forests in the province.

Research by Jikalahari, showed that in the past 10 years there were cases of illegal logging and corruption in the forestry sector yet unsettled until today.

The condition was worse with the absence of regional regulation on layout and conflicting licenses in forest land management.

(H-ASG/F001)

Editor: Maryati

COPYRIGHT © 2012

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Malaysia: Environment tops Johor wish list

New Straits Times 1 Jan 13

JOHOR BARU: Representatives from various segments of society here expressed their wish for better things to come this new year.

Malaysia Nature Society Johor chairman Vincent Chow hoped more attention would be given to protect the environment.

He urged the state government to be serious in addressing river pollution as about 60 per cent of rivers in the state were polluted by household and factory effluents.

"It is my wish that the Department of Environment be more vigilant against people discarding waste into our waterways and carry out deterrent measures.

"We wish all heads of departments and politicians would attend courses on nature awareness and sustainability, so they can help the DOE in environmental issues."

Chow said without sufficient knowledge on the environment, decision-makers would not be aware of the seriousness of the matter, and this would jeopardise efforts to deal with the problem.

He also urged the state government to impose a ruling for all housing developers to set up a centralised sewerage system to ensure efficient management.

He said many of the sewerage systems in housing estates were decentralised and this did not augur well for the state capital.

For the benefit of wildlife, Chow hoped there would be a law to prevent plantation owners from encroaching on buffer zones at river banks, as this was vital for wildlife preservation.

"Buffer zones are important habitats for wildlife. Just let these areas be, and let wildlife have a place of their own to survive."

Malaysian Indian Business Association president P. Sivakumar's wish for 2013 was for a quantum increase in funding and less red tape in government agencies.

He wanted more fields and opportunities to be opened up for the Indian community to allow every race to have a share in the country's economic pie.

"We need more co-existence in social, economic, education and employment policies for all the three major races.

"I believe this will greatly foster unity among the races."

Sivakumar hoped the government would carry on with its good work, adding that the year was rather promising as the government had remedied certain long-standing issues such as funding for small-and medium-sized industries.

Semarang assemblyman and state Umno information chief Datuk Samsol Bari Jamali hoped 2013 would be a better year for Malaysians.

"I also wish everything that the government has planned for the country will be implemented successfully and all of the country's ambitions will come to fruition.

"Lastly, I hope every Malaysian will have success in whatever they do," said Samsol.

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