Malaysia: Rescuers save 10 pygmy elephants

The Star 28 Feb 13;

KOTA KINABALU: Quick action by wildlife rescuers saved a herd of 10 Bornean pygmy elephants that had wandered off their range and ventured as close as 10km from the east coast town of Lahad Datu.

The rescue unit from the Sabah wildlife department captured and relocated the nine female adults and the lone male, a four-year-old calf, in an operation from Jan 18 to Jan 25.

Disclosing details of the eight-day roundup here yesterday, unit senior officer Jibius Dausip said the elephants had ventured more than 45km from the Tabin wildlife reserve.

“We received a call from Sri Tungku Simpang Ladang Permai, near Lahad Datu, that the elephants were roaming near his house,” he said.

Wildlife rangers rushed to the scene and captured the elephants using tranqualiser darts.

Department veterinarian Dr Diana Ramirez said the female elephants were transported to the Tabin reserve, with two of the largest animals fitted with satellite collars provided by the Danau Girang Field Centre.

The calf was transferred to the Low Kawi wildlife park, near here. “Its trunk was severely injured, probably from a snare trap. Without captive intervention it would have little chances of survival in the wild,” she said.

Department senior veterinarian Dr Senthivel Nathan said: “We are studying the possibility of releasing future translocated herds together.”

He said they were not able to translocate and release the current herd together due to logistical reasons. “That might also cost more.”

Danau Girang Field Centre director Dr Benoit Goosens said two elephants fitted with satellite collars by the centre showed they had not ventured into plantations around Tabin.

“If they return in the vicinity of Lahad Datu, we will advise plantation owners on how to fence their land to avoid any intrusion.”

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Thai premier accepts half-million signature petition from WWF to ban ivory trade

WWF 27 Feb 13;

Bangkok, Thailand – WWF today handed over a global petition calling for a ban on the trading of ivory in Thailand to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a move that aims to spur legal reforms in the country that will help prevent the slaughter of up to 30,000 wild African elephants a year.

“We already have the existing laws to protect wildlife, and elephants are culturally important to Thailand,” Prime Minister Shinawatra said at a special handover event on Wednesday. “We will take the issues raised by WWF into consideration.”

The Thai government on Wednesday also said that Prime Minister Shinawatra will preside over the opening day of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) taking place in Bangkok this week.

As the host of this critical wildlife trade negotiation, WWF calls on Prime Minister Shinawatra to take bold action to shut down Thailand’s ivory markets. Thailand is the world’s largest unregulated ivory market.
The petition - which had over 500,000 signatures from over 200 countries and territories on 27 February - is part of a WWF and TRAFFIC campaign calling for an announcement by the Thai Prime Minister to ban all ivory sales in Thailand.

“If host-nation Thailand fails to take bold action - and that means nothing less than a ban on all ivory trade - then Thailand's wild elephants could be next,” said Janpai Ongsiriwittaya, Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign leader in WWF-Thailand.

“Perhaps as few as only 2,500 wild elephants are left in Thailand. That's as many elephants as were wiped out each month in Africa in 2012 to fuel demand for ivory trinkets,” added Ongsiriwittaya.

The sale of ivory from wild elephants is currently illegal for CITES-host Thailand, but the sale of ivory from Thai domestic elephants is legal. Determining whether ivory products are derived from wild elephants or domestic animals is extremely difficult, and enforcement agencies are currently unable to detect illegal ivory entering the Thai trade.

Crucially, the nation’s status as an international transportation and shipping hub ensures that a steady stream of black market purchasers enter the country to buy ivory products. It also facilitates smuggling of raw ivory into Thailand, since illegal shipments are easily hidden in the many thousands of containers entering Thai ports everyday.

“While the Thai government has tried several times to reform the law in recent years, nothing has changed. The reality is that the existing legal framework does not prevent Thailand from being the laundering hub for illegal ivory,” said Ongsiriwittaya.

Hollywood actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio has also appealed to Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to ban ivory trade ahead of CITES.

"Illegal wildlife trade is the most urgent threat facing species like tigers, rhinos and elephants. These animals are being killed every day to feed an escalating demand for their body parts," DiCaprio said.

WWF and TRAFFIC recently called on governments CITES to consider formal trade restrictions against some of the worst offenders in the illegal ivory trade, including Thailand, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Local warming: U.S. cities in front line as sea levels rise

Deborah Zabarenko PlanetArk 27 Feb 13;

The signs of rising water are everywhere in this seaport city: yellow "Streets May Flood" notices are common at highway underpasses, in low-lying neighborhoods and along the sprawling waterfront.

Built at sea level on reclaimed wetland, Norfolk has faced floods throughout its 400-year history. But as the Atlantic Ocean warms and expands, and parts of the city subside, higher tides and fiercer storms seem to hit harder than they used to.

Dealing with this increased threat has put Norfolk at the forefront of American cities taking the lead on coping with intense weather, from floods to droughts to killer heat, without waiting for the federal government to take the lead.

In Norfolk, home to the largest U.S. Naval base and the second biggest commercial port on the U.S. Atlantic coast, floods are a perennial problem that has worsened in recent decades, Assistant City Manager Ron Williams Jr told Reuters.

The relative sea level around Norfolk has risen 14.5 inches (.37 meter) since 1930, when the low-lying downtown area routinely flooded. The floods are worse now, because the water doesn't have to rise as high to send the river above its banks and into the streets, Williams said.

At the same time, severe storms are more frequent.

"We've had more major storms in the past decade than we've had in the previous four decades," he said.

Extreme rainfall events have increased too.

Williams does not call what's happening in Norfolk a symptom of climate change.

"The debate about causality we're not going to get into," he said.

Still, many scientists see the frequent flooding as consistent with projected consequences of rising global temperatures, spurred by increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS PAY OFF

No matter what city leaders call it, some of their actions speak louder than words.

Williams said Norfolk, a city of 243,000, needs a total investment of $1 billion in the coming decades, including $600 million to replace current infrastructure, to keep the water in its place and help make homes and businesses more resilient.

Paying for it will be a burden, Williams said. The city is working with the state legislature and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and hoping federal block grants will help too.

One proposed project, a flood wall to protect the historic Ghent neighborhood and others, would cost an estimated $20 million to $40 million.

Williams said a similar barrier completed in 1970 banished perennial floods from what is now the high-rise downtown. That provided a great return on a $5 million investment, Williams said, with $500 million in assessed real estate value in the area that used to flood but now doesn't.

These measures have made Norfolk a leader for other coastal cities on how to adapt to climate change, said Cynthia Rosensweig, a NASA climate scientist who advises New York City on its response. Rosensweig, Williams and others note that building resilience into infrastructure before disasters hit is far less expensive than rebuilding afterwards.

Henry Conde, a retired U.S. Navy captain who lives in Ghent, said he and his neighbors feel the flood threat viscerally: "There's a low-grade fever, so to speak, or an awareness throughout the year. People are always on edge."

Armpit-high waders, stand-alone generators and sump pumps are standard equipment for when the floods come and the power goes out, Conde said in an interview at his 115-year-old home. Winter nor'easters can be just as bad as summer hurricanes and preparing for the worst beforehand instead of mopping up later is simply an economic reality, he said.

Superstorm Sandy's strike on New Jersey and New York in late October heightened awareness of the need to prepare for incoming water. Sea levels are rising along almost every part of the U.S. coastline, except in Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( here ).

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. cities see environmental shifts that can be linked to climate change, but they lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to planning how to adapt to these changes and assessing how vulnerable they are, according to a survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the non-profit International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives, or ICLEI.

U.S. cities have traditionally focused more on mitigating climate change than adapting to it, the opposite of most cities in the developing world, where vulnerability to climate-fueled natural disasters is already high, said ICLEI's U.S. program director Brian Holland.

More than 1,000 city leaders have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (here), in which they promise to try to beat global targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in their communities and urge Congress to pass carbon-cutting laws.

But labeling it global warming can be dicey, given that there is still controversy, particularly among politicians, over whether human activity is contributing markedly to increasing temperatures.

"Given the politicized view of climate change in this country, it seems that some cities are emphasizing risk management - that way they can get on with the important tasks of reducing risk and safeguarding local residents and municipal assets," said MIT's JoAnn Carmin, author of the 2012 survey of 468 cities worldwide, including 298 in the United States.

Still, city leaders can often reach consensus and act more easily than some members of Congress can, said Jim Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, and head of the Energy Independence Task Force for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. One reason for this is that lobbyists opposed to climate measures rarely target mayors or other community leaders, he added.

(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko.; Editing by Ros Krasny and Andre Grenon)

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Best of our wild blogs: 27 Feb 13

Life in Mucous
from Pulau Hantu and Seahorse Bonanza

Random Gallery - Banded Swallowtail
from Butterflies of Singapore

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Leatherback Sea Turtle Could Be Extinct Within 20 Years at Last Stronghold in the Pacific Ocean

Science Daily 26 Feb 13;

An international team led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has documented a 78 percent decline in the number of nests of the critically endangered leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) at the turtle's last stronghold in the Pacific Ocean.

The study, published online Feb. 26 in the Ecological Society of America's scientific online journal Ecosphere, reveals leatherback nests at Jamursba Medi Beach in Papua Barat, Indonesia -- which accounts for 75 percent of the total leatherback nesting in the western Pacific -- have fallen from a peak of 14,455 in 1984 to a low of 1,532 in 2011. Less than 500 leatherbacks now nest at this site annually.

Thane Wibbels, Ph.D., a professor of reproductive biology at UAB and member of a research team that includes scientists from State University of Papua (UNIPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, says the largest marine turtle in the world could soon vanish.

"If the decline continues, within 20 years it will be difficult if not impossible for the leatherback to avoid extinction," said Wibbels, who has studied marine turtles since 1980. "That means the number of turtles would be so low that the species could not make a comeback.

"The leatherback is one of the most intriguing animals in nature, and we are watching it head towards extinction in front of our eyes," added Wibbels.

Leatherback turtles can grow to six feet long and weigh as much as 2,000 pounds. They are able to dive to depths of nearly 4,000 feet and can make trans-Pacific migrations from Indonesia to the U.S. Pacific coast and back again.

While it is hard to imagine that a turtle so large and so durable can be on the verge of extinction, Ricardo Tapilatu, the research team's lead scientist who is a Ph.D. student and Fulbright Scholar in the UAB Department of Biology, points to the leatherback's trans-Pacific migration, where they face the prevalent danger of being caught and killed in fisheries.

"They can migrate more than 7,000 miles and travel through the territory of at least 20 countries, so this is a complex international problem," Tapilatu said. "It is extremely difficult to comprehensively enforce fishing regulations throughout the Pacific."

The team, along with paper co-author Peter Dutton, Ph.D., discovered thousands of nests laid during the boreal winter just a few kilometers away from the known nesting sites, but their excitement was short-lived.

"We were optimistic for this population when year round nesting was discovered in Wermon Beach, but we now have found out that nesting on that beach appears to be declining at a similar rate as Jamursba Medi," said Dutton, head of the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center's Marine Turtle Genetics Program.

The study has used year-round surveys of leatherback turtle nesting areas since 2005, and it is the most extensive research on the species to date. The team identified four major problems facing leatherback turtles: nesting beach predators, such as pigs and dogs that were introduced to the island and eat the turtle eggs; rising sand temperatures that can kill the eggs or prevent the production of male hatchlings; the danger of being caught by fisheries during migrations; and harvesting of adults and eggs for food by islanders.

Tapilatu, a native of western Papua, Indonesia, has studied leatherback turtles and worked on their conservation since 2004. His efforts have been recognized by NOAA, and he will head the leatherback conservation program in Indonesia once he earns his doctorate from UAB and returns to Papua.

He has worked to educate locals and limit the harvesting of adults and eggs. His primary focus today is protecting the nesting females, eggs and hatchlings. A leatherback lays up to 10 nests each season, more than any other turtle species. Tapilatu is designing ways to optimize egg survival and hatchling production by limiting their exposure to predators and heat through an extensive beach management program.

"If we relocate the nests from the warmest portion of the beach to our egg hatcheries, and build shades for nests in other warm areas, then we will increase hatching success to 80 percent or more," said Tapilatu.

"The international effort has attempted to develop a science-based nesting beach management plan by evaluating and addressing the factors that affect hatching success such as high sand temperatures, erosion, feral pig predation and relocating nests to maximize hatchling output," said Manjula Tiwari, a researcher at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.

Wibbels, who is also the Ph.D. advisor for Tapilatu, says that optimizing hatchling production is a key component to leatherback survival, especially considering the limited number of hatchlings who survive to adulthood.

"Only one hatchling out of 1,000 makes it to adulthood, so taking out an adult makes a significant difference on the population," Wibbels said. "It is essentially the same as killing 1,000 hatchlings."

The research team believes that beach management will help to decrease the annual decline in the number of leatherback nests, but protection of the leatherbacks in waters throughout the Pacific is a prerequisite for their survival and recovery. Despite their prediction for leatherback extinction, the scientists are hopeful this species could begin rebounding over the next 20 years if effective management strategies are implemented.

Journal Reference:

Ricardo F. Tapilatu, Peter H. Dutton, Manjula Tiwari, Thane Wibbels, Hadi V. Ferdinandus, William G. Iwanggin, Barakhiel H. Nugroho. Long-term decline of the western Pacific leatherback,Dermochelys coriacea: a globally important sea turtle population. Ecosphere, 2013; 4 (2): art25 DOI: 10.1890/ES12-00348.1

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African rhinos targeted by criminals, group says

Robert Evans PlanetArk 27 Feb 13;

Illegal killing of African rhinos is on the rise with at least 745 poached last year and over two a day being shot by poachers so far this year, the International Union for the conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported on Tuesday.

The Swiss-based inter-governmental body said the poaching rate - driven by the Asian demand for the animal's horn for use in Chinese traditional medicines - could threaten the rhino's long-term survival.

"Well-organized and well-funded crime syndicates are feeding the growing black market for rhino horn," said a statement from Mike Knight who chairs a team of experts within IUCN Special Survival Commission.

"High levels of consumption, and especially the escalating demand in Vietnam, threaten to soon reverse the considerable conservation gains achieved over the last two decades," Knight declared.

IUCN says the two principal rhino species, the Black and the White, total some 26,000 in Africa, just 5,055 Black rhinos and 20,405 White.

Poaching of the animals between 2011 and 2012 rose by 43 percent for a total of 745 animals, bringing a decline of 3 percent in the total population, the organization reported.

The statement said the crime syndicates involved in the lucrative but illegal trade used Mozambique, from where many poachers crossed into South Africa, as a major transit point to ship the horn, mainly to China and Vietnam.

South Africa's Kruger National Park near the Mozambique border is home to the world's largest rhino population. A total of 668 rhinos were illegally killed in South Africa last year, according to the IUCN.

(Reported by Robert Evans, editing by Paul)

African rhinos won’t hold out for much longer, IUCN experts warn
IUCN 26 Feb 13;

Gland, Switzerland, 26 February 2013 – Nearly 2,400 rhinos have been poached across Africa since 2006, slowing the population growth of both African rhino species to some of the lowest levels since 1995, according to the latest facts revealed by IUCN experts.

Rhino poaching increased by 43% between 2011 and 2012, representing a loss of almost 3% of the population in 2012, according to IUCN’s Species Survival Commission’s (SSC) African Rhino Specialist Group. Experts predict that if poaching continues to increase at this rate, rhino populations could start to decline in less than two years’ time.

“Well-organized and well-funded crime syndicates are continuing to feed the growing black market with rhino horn,” says Mike Knight, Chairman of the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group, a group of rhino experts within IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. “Over the past few years, consumer use of rhino horn has shifted from traditional Asian medicine practices to new uses, such as to convey status. High levels of consumption – especially the escalating demand in Viet Nam – threaten to soon reverse the considerable conservation gains achieved over the last two decades.”

There are currently 5,055 Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) and 20,405 White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) in Africa. Although these numbers have increased slightly over the last two years, there is no room for complacency. In 2012, at least 745 rhinos were poached throughout Africa – the highest number in two decades – with a record 668 rhinos killed in South Africa alone. In 2013, one rhino has been lost to poaching every 11 hours since the beginning of the year – a rate that is higher than the average for 2012.

Illegal trade in rhino horn is coordinated by well-organised criminal syndicates which transport the horns primarily to Viet Nam and China. Mozambique has also been identified as a key driver of poaching activities, with poachers making cross-border raids into the South African Kruger National Park, home to the world’s largest rhino population. Mozambique is also a major transit point for illegal horn to Asia.

IUCN experts call upon the international community – especially the key consumer and transit states such as Viet Nam, China and Mozambique – to urgently address the crisis by strengthening and enforcing regional and international trade laws, particularly in relation to rhino horn.

“The rhino community is encouraged by the signing of a recent Memorandum of Understanding between South Africa and Viet Nam to address the rhino poaching epidemic as well as other conservation issues,” says Simon Stuart, Chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. “However, it needs to be reinforced with tangible government action on both sides. International and regional collaboration needs to be strengthened, as does sharing of information, intelligence and expertise to address wildlife crime issues.”

Updated facts on the rhino crisis come on the eve of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that will take place from 3 to 14 March in Bangkok, Thailand. Illegal rhino horn trade will be one of the many issues discussed at the meeting.

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Feb 13

Chek Jawa intertidal walks 2013 open for booking from 1 Mar
from wild shores of singapore

singing free-range magpie robins @ chek jawa mangroves - Feb2013 from sgbeachbum

Don’t Miss! Sunday March 3 Tour
from a.t.Bukit Brown. Heritage. Habitat. History.

New PhotoBlog Post: Birding Photography Adventure @ Berlayer Creek from Photojournalist

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Making better use of land, moving ops abroad

$60m plan deviates from 'old' thinking of keeping jobs at home
Jonathan Kwok Straits Times 26 Feb 13;

THE Government has unveiled a $60 million grant to help firms make better use of Singapore's scarce land - even assisting some firms to move abroad if core functions stay here.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said the Land Productivity Grant will support companies wanting to intensify the use of land here.

He said the offer to help firms move abroad would save land and that business associations such as the Singapore Business Federation-led SME Committee had asked for the incentive.

Mr Tharman did not mention how much each firm can expect to get under the grant.

Experts said the relocation grant is a bold move and deviates from the Government's traditional thinking of keeping jobs within Singapore.

"It's an acceptance of the fact that in order to compete globally, some things cannot be done in Singapore any more," said Ms Tan Bin Eng, a partner at Ernst & Young.

"Some activities may need to be done offshore."

Ms Tan said that traditionally, the focus was on keeping jobs in Singapore but now the Government is effectively saying it is more important that small and medium-sized enterprises are productive and globally competitive.

"In order to do that, some jobs need to be offshore and they are willing to step in to help the SMEs in this respect," said Ms Tan.

"The Land Productivity Grant is good, in terms of a signal."

Mr Cheng Liang Chye, managing director of food ingredients firm SMC Food 21, said his firm already has plans to move more operations to Malaysia, and has already purchased land there.

"This will come as a bonus," he said.

More details need to be announced about the qualifying criteria for firms and the payout they can receive, but Mr Cheng said the money would be useful to help firms defray the costs of moving.

Firms will need to spend money on relocating equipment, while costs will be incurred when staff travel between Singapore and the other country, he noted.

Engineering firm HSL Constructor, which has overseas offices but is not looking to open more, also welcomed the scheme.

The firm, whose operations include marine civil engineering and ground engineering, acquired some land here from JTC Corp in 2011 and is now developing it to the maximum plot ratio.

"We look forward to how the Government can help us" with the cash for firms intensifying land use, said managing director Lim Choo Leng.

"We are using a big sum of money and investing heavily to intensify the land use. We have to maximise the land allocated to us as we are a land-scarce country."

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Fuel-efficient cars worth the higher price: Study

Pump savings of $540 over five years; rebates for such cars fuel good returns
Christopher Tan Straits Times 26 Feb 13;

FUEL-EFFICIENT cars are generally costlier than less economical models but the potential savings at the pumps make them worth the higher purchase price, an academic paper has concluded.

Buyers tend to fork out 0.6 per cent more for every 10 per cent improvement in efficiency, the study by two economists from the Ministry of Trade and Industry found.

But this is cancelled out by the savings over five years of driving with an annual average mileage of 19,100km, which works out to about $540 in real terms.

The paper, by senior economists Kenny Goh and Huang Jianyun of the ministry's economics division, also suggested that buyers would be given a strong incentive to switch to fuel-efficient models by the new Carbon Emissions-based Vehicle Scheme (CEVS). This programme, which kicked in last month, grants rebates of up to $20,000 for cars that emit no more than 160g/km of carbon dioxide.

Using a statistical model that filters out various other attributes that might influence a vehicle's price, the economists found that the CEVS boosts the returns on investing in a fuel-efficient car by almost 10 times.

The paper, entitled The Costs And Benefits Of Fuel-Efficient Cars: How High Are The Returns?, was released last Friday.

Its authors said the views expressed were their own and "do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Trade and Industry or the Government of Singapore".

Motor industry players have noticed that buyers are becoming more concerned about fuel efficiency. They say one reason is rising pump prices. The cheapest petrol is now $2.20 a litre before discount - 40 per cent higher than four years ago.

Motor Traders Association vice-president Glenn Tan said: "Now that a car costs so much, people have become more conscious of running costs. Every little bit contributes to total ownership cost."

The new fuel economy label displayed on all showroom cars - which became mandatory last month - has also helped raised consumer awareness. It not only states the fuel consumption of the vehicle but also rates its fuel efficiency against rivals.

Car dealers said while the CEVS has given buyers an incentive to opt for fuel-efficient cars, the rebate of up to $20,000 is actually smaller in real life. This is because the tax cut translates to a smaller scrap value when the vehicle is finally deregistered.

Mr Ron Lim, general manager of Nissan agent Tan Chong Motor, said the scheme had also contributed to "more and more cars" crowding the small-car certificate of entitlement category.

Smaller vehicles tend to pollute less and many stand to benefit from the scheme. "Ironically, this will only push up prices, and whatever tax rebate one gets is eventually thrown back into the system," said Mr Lim.

Only three electric cars on the road
Straits Times 26 Feb 13;

DESPITE the hype about electric cars, only three were on Singapore's roads as of last month, official registration data has revealed.

A quirky Corbin Sparrow three-wheeler, a Tesla sports car and a retrofitted BMW flew the flag for the zero-emission fleet - out of Singapore's total passenger car population of 618,000.

Battery-powered vehicles arrived in Singapore two years ago, but motor traders cite high costs and the unavailability of charging infrastructure as the main reasons for the near-zero take-up by consumers. To date, four manufacturers have brought in electric models for a test-bedding exercise led by the Energy Market Authority (EMA).

Test-bed cars are exempt from certificate of entitlement (COE) premiums and other car taxes, but can be registered only by companies, institutes and government agencies. The exercise will log data such as daily mileage, destinations and charging patterns.

Out of an intended test fleet of about 90 cars, the EMA said 71 have already been put on the road by various test-bed participants. They are 23 Mitsubishi i-MiEV subcompact hatchbacks, 25 Nissan Leaf compact hatchbacks, 10 Smart micro-minis and 13 Renault Fluence ZEs - none of which is included in the official registration data.

The authority said it has another 12 applications for the test- bed, which started in mid-2011 to gauge the viability of electric cars in the local environment.

Forty-seven charging stations have been set up here, with three capable of fast charges of under an hour. Normal charges can take eight hours.

The EMA said the average daily distance clocked by the test fleet was 41km - shorter than the average distance of 55km clocked by motorists in fuel-powered cars.

Trial participants have had a generally positive experience.

Company director Y.Y. Ke, 57, who has driven the i-MiEV for about 14 months, said: "People who have complained about range anxiety don't use the car enough and don't know its characteristics. My longest drive on a single charge was 120km and I still had about 10 per cent left in it."

Engineer Eu Pui San, 56, has clocked 19,000km on an i-MiEV and found it dependable.

"There are no mechanical or electrical issues, but you must plan your trips," he said.

Like others, Mr Eu said electric cars are still too expensive for most consumers.

For instance, the Renault Fluence ZE costs around $89,000 under the test-bed scheme, but almost $200,000 if registered as a normal car. The estimated price includes COE and carbon rebates. The i-MiEV and Nissan Leaf are expected to be around $200,000 if registered outside the test-bed.

Under the Carbon Emissions- based Vehicle Scheme, most electric cars qualify for the maximum $20,000 tax rebate. But Mr Eu, a senior vice-president of Senoko Energy, said this is insufficient to make electric vehicles affordable for ordinary consumers. "Perhaps the batteries - which account for more than half the cost of an electric car - can be excluded in our tax computation," he said.

Meanwhile, it is not clear if a plan to attract more new-technology vehicles to be test-bedded here has gained traction since it was announced in 2010.

The tax-free scheme set aside for more than 1,200 such vehicles - which was expected to cost the Government $75 million in revenue - is administered by the Economic Development Board. The EDB would not comment when asked how many cars have been granted test status under this scheme.

CHRISTOPHER TAN

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Malaysia: Clouded leopard's death to be investigated

New Straits Times 26 Feb 13;

KUCHING: Sarawak's Forestry Department has ordered "a full and urgent investigation" into the killing of a rare and highly endangered clouded leopard in Saratok last week.

The department, in expressing its regret over the shooting of the leopard, said initial reports indicated the leopard had inadvertently wandered into the compound of a government agency.

A member of the public, who was unaware of the animal's totally protected status, shot it dead.

"I am deeply saddened by this incident," said its director and and the state's Controller of Wildlife Datuk Ali Yusop in a statement.

He said the incident served to remind the department of the need to redouble its efforts to educate the public on the importance and necessity of protecting endangered flora and fauna.

"I wish to reiterate to the public not to approach, catch or harm any unknown and non-threatening wild animal they may come across."

Clouded leopards, the largest cats in Borneo, are also found in India, southern China, mainland Southeast Asia and Sumatra.

Despite their wide range, they are thinly dispersed and their total population worldwide is estimated to be fewer than 10,000.

They get their name from the distinctive "clouds" on its coat -- ellipses partially edged in black, with the insides a darker colour than the background.

The clouded leopard has remarkable tree climbing abilities for such a large predator, (1.5m from the nose to the tip of the tail), which allows it to hunt in the rainforest canopy as well as on the ground.

Its remarkably long canine teeth has earned it the title of the "modern day sabretooth tiger".

Its teeth, along with its pelt, have made the clouded leopard a target of illegal hunters. Its survival is also threatened by habitat loss.

In Sarawak, the clouded leopard is a totally protected animal under the Wildlife Protection Ordinance 1998.

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Australian endangered species: Sea snakes

Kate Sanders, University of Adelaide Science Alert 25 Feb 13;

Short-nosed (Aipsyurus apraefrontalis) and Leaf-scaled (A. foliosquama) sea snakes are restricted to coral reefs in Western Australia. Both species are known from Ashmore and Hibernia Reefs, while the Short-nosed has occasionally been found between Exmouth and Broome. As closest relatives, they are both around 80 centimetres long and are banded purplish-brown. They are distinguished by the size and shape of their heads – hence their common names.

Both species forage in crevices and burrows on shallow reef flats and edges and have powerful venom with which to subdue their prey. Little is known of their diets other than Leaf-scaled sea snakes feed on a variety of reef fishes such as wrasse and gudgeons, whereas the few diet records available for Short-nosed sea snakes suggest they might prey mostly on eels.

The Short-nosed and Leaf-scaled sea snakes are fully marine and rarely come ashore. They belong to the Hydrophiini – a group of more than 60 species that evolved from Australia’s venomous land snakes and are now found throughout the Indo-West Pacific.

Status

Short-nosed and Leaf-scaled sea snakes were prolifically abundant on Ashmore and Hibernia Reefs during the 1970s and 1990s. However, Mick Guinea and colleagues have documented dramatic declines in both species since 1998. No Short-nosed or Leaf-scaled sea snakes were recorded on either reef during intensive surveys between 2001 and 2012.

The status of Short-nosed sea snakes on the Western Australian coast is unknown, but the few scattered records between Exmouth and Broome suggest they were never widespread.

Both species are classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN and under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Threats

The reasons for the severe declines of Short-nosed and Leaf-scaled sea snakes remain a mystery. Nine other sea snake species have disappeared from Ashmore and Hibernia over the last 15 years, yet their habitats are intact, and snakes are not affected by over-fishing. This may suggest major environmental change, perhaps related to surface water temperatures, salinity and rainfall patterns, and sedimentation. In the same period seismic surveys for oil and gas have increased, using air gunning, although the impact on sea snakes is unknown.

Whatever factors are responsible, they have not only affected the snakes in shallow coral areas but also species that once occupied the reef edges, seagrass beds and deeper waters surrounding the reef.

Strategy

Continued surveys of the sea snakes are vital. These should focus on Ashmore and Hibernia reefs, but should also include coastal reefs where the Short-nosed has been recorded and might still exist. If the Leaf-scaled sea snake is not already extinct, there may yet be time to enact a recovery plan for both species.

We need a better understanding of environmental and direct human threats to sea snakes. First, environmental conditions on Ashmore and Hibernia reefs should be compared to reefs that still support healthy numbers of sea snakes. Studies of the impact of seismic air gunning on sea snakes are also urgently needed and will soon be underway.

Conclusion

Solving the mystery of the decline of Short-nosed, Leaf-scaled and other sea snakes in Ashmore and Hibernia will require a multidisciplinary effort. However, if sea snakes are indeed a miner’s canary of coral reef health, understanding their disappearance should be a top priority for marine conservation.

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Caribbean coral reefs have stopped growing

James Cook University Science Alert 25 Feb 13;

Many Caribbean coral reefs have either stopped growing or are on the threshold of starting to erode, which new evidence has revealed.

Associate Professor Scott Smithers, from James Cook University was a part of a seven-member team of international scientists that carried out work at reefs across the Caribbean over a two-year period.

Coral reefs build their structures by both producing and accumulating calcium carbonate, which is essential for the maintenance and continued growth of coral reefs.

The research team discovered that the amount of new carbonate being added by Caribbean coral reefs is now significantly below rates measured over recent geological timescales, and in some habitats is as much as 70 per cent lower.

Associate Professor Smithers said coral reefs formed some of the planet’s most biologically diverse ecosystems, and provided valuable contributions to humans and wildlife.

However, their ability to maintain their structures and continue to grow depended on the balance between the addition of new carbonate, which is mostly produced by corals themselves, set against the loss of carbonate through various erosional processes, he said.

Associate Professor Smithers said traditionally there had been a focus on how coral reef organisms coped under present environmental conditions, but little on how coral reefs as physical structures were faring.

“We decided to give it a go by quantifying the amount of skeleton laid down by reef organisms each year to build the reef framework and comparing that to the amount of physical and biological erosion,” he said.

“We found that many reefs in the Caribbean are now in a precarious balance with very slow growth rates or erosion common.”

Associate Professor Smithers said he was invited to collaborate on the project in his role as a geomorphologist.

“I look at how reef structures grow, and the landforms and features formed by reef growth processes,” he said.

“I was working with an international team made up of scientists with particular skills required to work out the reef growth - and destruction - budgets.”

Associate Professor Smithers said “budgets” was a term geomorphologists used when talking about sediment or calcium carbonate.

The sediment that is produced or deposited is compared to what is eroded or withdrawn, and there is a net amount. If it is positive, growth is occurring, if it is negative, the structure is breaking down.

The field sites were in located in the Bahamas, Bonaire, Belize and Grand Cayman Island.

“I was able to participate in the field work at the first three sites, but was teaching at the time of the Grand Cayman visit.

“All members of the team were involved in refining the methodology for calculating the budget, and then making the budget calculations based on field data.”

The study could have implications for the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs around the world, despite the fact that different reefs behaved in different ways, he said.

“We hope to perform the same calculations for a variety of sites within the Indo-Pacific in the next few years.

“The reason we focused on the Caribbean reefs first is because we wanted to get the methodology developed and refined - and that is easier to achieve on Caribbean reefs because they are taxonomically and structurally less complex than reefs in the Indo-Pacific.

“This relative simplicity made the measurements and calculations necessary to derive the budgets more easy than if we had begun by focussing on reefs outside the Caribbean.”

Associate Professor Smithers said while this project was his first opportunity to see a lot of reefs in the Caribbean, he was “shocked” by what he saw.

“Although there were some areas where the reefs seemed OK, they were generally very poor in terms of coral cover and fish compared to most reefs on the GBR,” he said.

“There are clearly parts of the GBR that are not in great shape, and there is evidence from some reefs that changes have occurred over historical timescales, but I doubt that many have reached the point we established for the Caribbean reefs where they are no longer actively building - but we need to confirm this by applying the technique here.”

The research was recently published in Nature Communications, an online multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, physical and chemical sciences.

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