Best of our wild blogs: 4 Mar 10

Sambar deer in our forest
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

Dredging at Fairy Point until Aug 10
from wild shores of singapore

Back to Tanah Merah sandy shore
from wonderful creation

Red-legged Crake chick learns to forage
from Bird Ecology Study Group

The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology Vol. 58, No. 1 (28 Feb 2010)
from Raffles Museum News

The 'snail-shrimp' and other marvels in the latest Raffles Bulletin of Zoology from wild shores of singapore

RBZ paper alert - Giant Clams
from Psychedelic Nature

Myth or miracle? - Using 1-cent coins to destroy mosquito eggs
from Water Quality in Singapore

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Rare deer knocked down by car on SLE

Animal put down by zoo vets after collision at dawn yesterday
Alexis Cai Straits Times 4 Mar 10;

A RARE sambar deer, once thought to be extinct, became roadkill yesterday when it was hit by a car at dawn on the Seletar Expressway (SLE).

Malaysian tourist Chong Chiew Pin was driving a friend to the airport when he thought he saw something 'floating' just ahead of him in the dark. It was too late when he realised it was a deer that had come out of the undergrowth along Mandai Road.

The deer, about 1.2m tall, was not a runaway from the Night Safari nearby, which has a sambar deer enclosure.

No one knows how many sambar deer there are in the wild here, according to Mr Subaraj Rajathurai, chairman of the Vertebrate Study Group at the Nature Society (Singapore). He estimates there are fewer than 20 in Singapore. These shy creatures are one of two native species of deer, the other being the barking deer.

Sambar deer were thought to have been extinct by the 1940s, dying out from poaching, predators such as tigers, and their habitats being destroyed.

But last year, a pair of males were sighted at Bukit Brown cemetery, near the MacRitchie Nature Reserve. There were also sightings in Mandai Lake Road, near the Upper Seletar Reservoir.

Sambar deer are slightly bigger than most other deer, growing to a height of up to 2m. They are also found in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia.

Click on image for larger view.

Mr Chong, 49, said he was driving in the rightmost lane at about 5am when the deer came into his headlights. Instead of dashing to safety, the animal seemed to turn towards his purple Proton Perdana.

'We were shocked and my friend was yelling,' he said. 'I stepped on the brakes but it rammed into my car and its antlers poked a hole through my windscreen.'

The right side of the bumper was damaged and the right side mirror broke off. The impact also dislodged the 120kg deer's right antler and left it with a deep gash near its hip, above its right hind leg.

Bleeding from the nose, it lay where it was hit for more than four hours before zoo veterinarians put it to sleep. It was estimated to be three or four years old.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) executive officer Deirdre Moss said the SPCA could not reach the zoo at that hour, so it called the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres), which has more expertise in handling wild animals.

Dr Megan Williamson, an Australian vet with Acres, arrived at the scene at 7am. 'The deer was unable to stand up and looked quite distressed,' she said.

Acres did not have the resources to immobilise such a big animal and transport it to a treatment facility. Dr Williamson stayed with it until a team of six from the zoo arrived at about 9.20am. The zoo vets put it to sleep on the spot.

'To lose the deer is a real shame because of the small number of them in Singapore,' said Mr Subaraj.

Wild deer hits car on highway, put to sleep by Wildlife Reserves
Joanne Chan, Channel NewsAsia 3 Mar 10;

SINGAPORE: A wild deer was injured along an expressway after it dashed onto oncoming traffic and hit a car Wednesday morning.

Police said they received a call at about 5.30am, saying that an injured deer was lying along the Seletar Expressway, near Mandai Zoo.

Eyewitnesses told MediaCorp that the deer was so big that it blocked an entire lane, causing a traffic jam.

A caller to the MediaCorp Hotline, Teo Ah Chong, said he stopped his car when he saw the deer on the expressway.

Mr Teo said the deer appeared to be "panicking" and ran into his car.

The Wildlife Reserves Singapore was alerted and it picked up the animal.

It told MediaCorp that the deer was badly injured and had to be put to sleep.

It had a deep gash on its hip and was bleeding from the nose.

Its antlers were also broken.

The Wildlife Reserves Singapore said the deer was a wild animal, aged between three and four.

Deer killed in hit-and-run accident causes massive SLE jam
Stomp 3 Mar 10;

This morning's (Mar 3) massive traffic jam on Seletar Expressway was caused by an accident involving this dead sambar deer on lane 1.
However the vehicle that knocked down the animal had left the scene.
The Singapore Zoo has indicated that the deer is not one of theirs, as all their sambar deers are tagged with ear notches with the first week of birth.

STOMPer Keith_G wonders if it is an offence for a driver to leave the scene of an accident involving animals.

In the STOMPer's report:

"Traffic jam on SLE early this morning.

"This poor animal was lying dead on lane 1.

"I wonder if this is a hit-and-run? If yes, is there any offence?"

Latest update:

This is the Singapore Zoo's statement:

"On March 3, 7.30am, an injured sambar deer was found lying at the Woodlands Seletar Expressway (SLE) towards Central Expressway (CTE) near Gambas. The Wildlife Reserves Singapore team, which consisted of vets and keepers was deployed. At the scene, the deer was found lying on its left side, with a deep gash near its hip and a dislodged right antler. It was also bleeding from the nose.

"After a close examination by the vets, it was ascertained that the animal had been in the same position for four hours (since 5am) and its injuries were quite severe. A decision was made to euthanize the animal before bringing it back to the Zoo.

"Based on the body size and size of antler, the deer is estimated to be about three to four years old.

"The scientific name for sambar deer is Cervus unicolor. It is widely distributed in the forests and hill slopes of India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia. It also thrives well in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, where it was introduced.

"At Night Safari, all our sambar deer are tagged with ear notches within the first week of birth. The identified animal does not carry the same identification."

Wild deer wanders onto SLE
Today Online 4 Mar 10;

SINGAPORE - A wild deer was injured on an expressway near Mandai Zoo after it dashed onto oncoming traffic and ran into a car yesterday morning. The sambar deer had to be put down later due to its extensive injuries.

At about 5.30am yesterday, the police received a call about an injured deer lying along the Woodlands Seletar Expressway (SLE) towards Central Expressway.

Eyewitnesses told MediaCorp that the deer, believed to be about three or four years old, was so big that it blocked an entire lane, causing a traffic jam.

A caller to the MediaCorp Hotline, Mr Teo Ah Chong, said he stopped his car when he saw the animal on the expressway.

"I was driving along the SLE ... Near the Mandai Zoo, I filtered onto the left lane. That's when I saw the deer dash onto the expressway and it was running around in a panic. I stopped my car, but the deer crashed into my car and fell down," Mr Teo said.

Wildlife Reserves Singapore, which sent a team to the scene, said the animal had to be euthanised as the animal was badly injured. It suffered a deep gash to its hip, its antlers were broken and it was bleeding from the nose.

The dead deer was not from the zoo.

"At Night Safari, all our sambar deer are tagged with ear notches within the first week of birth. The identified animal does not carry the same identification," said Mr Kumar Pillai, assistant director of Zoology, Night Safari.

A National Parks spokeswoman told MediaCorp that "there is a small population of the sambar deer in the central catchment nature reserve".

"They are herbivorous and there is sufficient food for them in the forest. But they are relatively shy animals and are seldom seen in the open. There have been occasional sightings of them," she said.

Related link
Sambar deer in our forest on the Celebrating Singapore's Biodiversity blog.

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Vegetation fire at Tampines took at least 4 hours to put out

Channel NewsAsia 4 Mar 10;

SINGAPORE: The prolonged dry season sparked off a fire on Wednesday that took Civil Defence officers some four hours to bring under control.

The fire at an open field at Tampines Street 72 started around 5.30pm.

Some 30 firefighters and four water jets were deployed to fight the blaze.

SCDF said the present dry spell has seen outbreaks of grass, lallang and vegetation fires.

In the first two months this year, SCDF responded to 147 such fires.

However, it said the figure is relatively low compared to the 341 cases for the same period last year.

There were 182 such fires for January 2009 and 159 in February 2009.

For the whole of 2009, there were 523 vegetation, an increase of 97 cases from the 426 in 2008.

SCDF said the vegetation fires that took place this year were generally of small scale.

Should the dry conditions and high temperature continue, occurrences of such fires may increase.

In view of this, SCDF urge the public to help minimise such fires by observing the following:

a. Not to throw lighted materials such as cigarette butts and matches onto grass patches/fields and rubbish dumps;

b. Not to dispose of rubbish/discarded materials/items at grass areas/fields/gardens. Rubbish dumps provide sources of fuel to sustain fires;

c. Not to operate equipment that generate excessive sparks or heat in dry vegetation areas;

d. And home owners with grass compounds should keep grass trimmed and watered. Dead leaves should be properly disposed of.

- CNA/yb

Large fire at open field in Tampines
Straits Times 4 Mar 10;

BLACK smoke billowed outside residents' homes in Tampines Street 72 yesterday evening, after a large fire ignited in a field nearby.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it had received a call informing it of the fire at about 5.30pm and had dispatched five fire engines, two Red Rhinos and three support vehicles.

The fire, covering an area the size of about 1sqkm, was brought under control using four water jets. But winds exacerbated the situation. Last night, some 30 firefighters were still battling the blaze. No one has been hurt.

Over the last two months, the SCDF has responded to 147 bush fires - still relatively low compared to last year. In January last year, there were 182 bush fires while there were 159 the following month.

The National Environment Agency's Meteorological Services Division says Singapore received just 6.3mm of rain - the lowest for February since 1869, when rainfall records began here.

While usually a dry month, conditions last month were made worse by the El Nino weather phenomenon.

The weather pattern, which occurs every two to seven years, is caused by the abnormal warming of the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

The highest maximum temperature of 35.2 deg C was recorded on Feb 26, just below the record set on March 26, 1998, when the mercury hit a sizzling 36 deg C.

SUJIN THOMAS

Related link
Bushfire the size of a football field rages at Tampines from The Lazy Lizard's Tales.

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Singapore incentives could have been greener

Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 4 Mar 10;

GIVEN Singapore's support for an international agreement on climate change, MPs yesterday said more could have been done in the 2010 Budget to transform Singapore into a green economy.

Addressing Parliament on the second day of the Budget debate, Dr Lim Wee Kiak (Sembawang GRC) said this year's Budget 'did not seem to have much of a green focus' except for the extension of the vehicle rebate for imported used green vehicles.

Dr Lim added that since the Government has already identified green industries such as clean technology as a new source of growth for Singapore's companies, it could further assist firms with incentives and grants in this area.

He also called for the certificate of entitlement (COE) system, which controls the number of cars on the roads, to be tweaked to encourage the use of environmentally friendly cars.

'(By) creating a new green COE category and setting 5 per cent of COEs in this group, we will achieve (the result that) at least 5 per cent of our vehicles on our roads in 10 years' time will be green vehicles,' he said.

The public transport fleet can also be upgraded to use fuels such as compressed natural gas, which emits less carbon emissions, he added.

This can be achieved by giving more tax incentives and grants to public transport operators and taxi companies.

Greening Singapore's transport system was an idea also mooted by Dr Lam Pin Min (Ang Mo Kio GRC), who spoke on the issue on Tuesday.

He noted that it was heartening the Government was pushing ahead with spending towards a greener Singapore despite the lack of a global binding deal.

But he said 'more should be dedicated to fight climate change, invest in green technology, and incentivise companies and individuals to go green'.

For example, in the United States, families are given home tax credits of up to US$1,500 (S$2,200) for energy efficient improvement works - something the Government can also consider.

Dr Lam called for bold moves to invest in the alternative energy market - such as solar, wind and hydropower - to reduce Singapore's reliance on fossil fuels and to develop products and services that can be exported worldwide.

Mr Wilson Ang, founder of environmental social enterprise Eco Singapore, told The Straits Times the environmental movement was slightly disappointed at the relatively low profile of green issues in the Budget.

'We're glad the Government has taken note of how our economic progress has an environmental impact.

'But we hope to see stronger Government incentives to promote a green economy and a green-collar workforce,' he added.

'Green' COEs for green vehicles?
Leong Wee Keat Today Online 4 Mar 10;

A 5-per-cent allocation of "green" certificates of entitlement (COEs) for green vehicles - such as electric cars - could prompt more motorists to go green in the battle against climate change, suggested Member of Parliament (Sembawang GRC) Lim Wee Kiak during the Budget debate yesterday.

Noting "a lack of green focus" in this year's Budget - after last year's United Nations climate change summit - Dr Lim said such an allocation of COEs for green vehicles could allow them to make up 5 per cent of the total vehicle population in a decade.

Transportation accounts for 40 per cent of carbon emission, and the largest fleet of vehicles here constitute taxis, public buses and school buses.

Noting that India's New Delhi has stipulated all public buses and taxis run on compressed natural gas, Dr Lim suggested the Government give grants to public transport companies here to go green.

Dr Lim, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport, also felt more could be done to promote "shared transport", such as car-sharing schemes. "There is significant savings for our nation if more car drivers give up their cars and opt for shared transport and public transport," he said.

And to encourage this, Dr Lim urged the Government to lower the costs of shared transport and Electronic Road Pricing rates for taxis. This way, traffic congestion and demand for parking lots could also be reduced, he argued. Leong Wee Keat

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China's Yellow River agency wins LKY Water Prize

In 11 years, it has turned 'China's Sorrow' into river of life for 160 million people
Amresh Gunasingham Straits Times 4 Mar 10;

THE agency behind China's Yellow River has been awarded this year's Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize for its water-management policies.

In its 11-year history, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) put in place flood control measures along the 5,464km river, which used to burst its banks and cause devastation, earning it the name 'China's Sorrow'.

The YRCC has also contained pollution, dumping of sediment and soil erosion there.

Today, although the area the waterway drains makes up only 2 per cent of China's water catchment area, it provides 160 million people - 12 per cent of the country's population - with a cleaner, more reliable source of water.

It also irrigates 15 per cent of China's crops.

The YRCC beat 49 other water-related projects that were considered for the third Water Prize, an international award named after Singapore's first prime minister and current Minister Mentor, whose policies have been widely credited for giving Singapore its sustainable water supply.

The prize, worth $300,000, will be presented at the highlight of this year's Singapore International Water Week in June.

The inaugural Water Prize in 2008 went to Canadian chemical engineer Andrew Benedek, who created a way of purifying water cheaper and safer than by using chemicals. Last year's prize went to Dutch professor Gatze Lettinga for his invention of an energy-saving, waste-water treatment reactor.

The YRCC, which has an annual budget of several billion Chinese yuan, has built dams and dykes to quell the Yellow River's floods and reservoirs to store water for nearby communities.

Second in length to the Yangtze in China and the fifth-longest in the world, the river rises in the Tibetan mountains, flows through nine provinces and empties into the Bohai Sea in Shandong province.

It draws its name from the silt it carries and is the world's most heavily sedimented river. When the river slows down, especially as it nears the sea, this sediment is dropped, which makes the river shallower with time.

In response to this, the YRCC has widened the river bed to increase its capacity. It also flushes the river to reduce sedimentation. By 2050, these measures will have halved the sediment load to 800 million cubic metres.

The YRCC's work has also restored large tracts of wetlands and with that has come animal life: Almost 300 species of birds are now there, twice that in 1992.

National water agency PUB chairman Tan Gee Paw, who headed the nominating committee for the Water Prize, said the sheer reach of the YRCC's work meant its achievements stood out and were 'unrivalled in scale', and that it had brought widespread and sustainable social, economic and environmental benefits to more than 100 million people.

YRCC director Li Guoying, speaking to reporters in Singapore via a video link from Beijing, said the agency's work was not yet done. He said he expects the pressure from competing demands for the finite supply of water to go up in the next decade, even as pollution and floods continue to pose challenges.

To keep these at bay, more investments in infrastructure will be key, he added.

Yellow River Conservancy Commission is 1st Asian winner of Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize
Wang Eng Eng, Channel NewsAsia 3 Mar 10;

SINGAPORE: For the first time, a project from Asia has won the third Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize. The Yellow River Conservancy Commission beat 50 other nominees to the award.

They won for innovative river management initiatives and policies for China's second longest river.

Historically, frequent floods and droughts threatened the livelihoods of communities living along China's Yellow River.

In 1999, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission set out to change that.

Sun Feng, director, International Cooperation, Yellow River Conservancy Commission, said: "Entering the 1990s considering urbanism and industrialisation, agricultural uses and domestic demands increased water demand along the Yellow River. This means we have shortage of water and so we have to manage it well and balance all the interests along the Yellow River."

And they saw results in just ten years.

The river sees 1.6 billion tonnes of sediments annually causing the river-bed to rise and water to overflow.

Through regular flushing of sediments, the commission was able to reduce the risk of flooding for 90 million people living downstream.

It was also able to supply water to 100 million people in nine provinces for domestic, industrial and agricultural use, all by creating over 10 reservoirs along a 3,000 kilometre stretch.

The commission also managed to restore biodiversity in the Yellow River delta.
Despite the achievements, challenges remain.

Mr Sun Feng said: "For many years, we have been trying to reduce the sediment through structural measure by planting vegetation. We have already reduced 300 million tones sediment into the flow but still we have a lot of sediment. We need to do more efforts in soil conversation work."

The Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize will be given out at the Singapore International Water Week on June 29. - CNA/vm

Singapore honours China's Yellow River conservation agency
Yahoo News 3 Mar 10;

SINGAPORE (AFP) – Singapore said Wednesday it was awarding more than 200,000 US dollars to a Chinese conservation agency for its work to improve water supply and reduce flood risks on China's Yellow River.

The Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC), in charge of the river and its inland basins, was chosen as this year's winner for the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, named after Singapore's founding father and former prime minister.

Resource-starved Singapore, which recycles sewage into clean water for use in factories and homes, each year honours persons or groups for "outstanding contributions" in solving the world's water problems.

Last year's winner was Gatze Lettinga, an environmental engineer from Amsterdam who pioneered an environmentally friendly, low-cost way of treating waste water and refused to patent the process.

"The improved, reliable supply of water brought about by YRCC's efforts have benefitted... the quality of life for over one hundred million people both in the basin and in regions served by the river," the award organisers said.

"Large areas of wetlands and biodiversity in (the) Yellow River Delta have also been restored over the years, returning life and vitality to the river."

With the highest volume of sediment concentration among the world's major rivers, the Yellow River is highly prone to flooding.

But the commission was able to reduce flood risks by regulating water and sediment flow in an integrated management operation that required the use of technology and consultations with the affected communities.

The Singapore award comes with a cash prize of 300,000 Singapore dollars (214,000 US) and a gold medallion.

Lee, now a senior adviser in the cabinet with the title of minister mentor, will present the award during a water conference in Singapore in June. The YRCC beat 49 other nominees for the prize.

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Rat snakes on a slippery slope

Oriental Rat Snakes are threatened in Java because government-set quotas are not adherred to by traders
TRAFFIC 4 Mar 10;

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 4 March 2010—Government-set quotas in Indonesia are being widely-flouted, leading to over-harvesting and illegal trade in Oriental Rat Snakes from Java, the Indonesian island where the species is largely sourced a new TRAFFIC study has found.

In demand for its skin in the fashion industry and for the exotic meat and traditional medicine trades, the Oriental Rat Snake has been commercially harvested since the 1970s.

Concern over the effects of trade, particularly in Indonesia, surfaced as far back as the 1980s, leading to the introduction of several steps to control and manage collection.

But none of the management proposals put forward by the Indonesian government to regulate trade in the snakes is fully operational or effective, the Conservation Status and Impacts of Trade on the Oriental Rat Snake Ptyas mucosa in Java, Indonesia (PDF, 1.9 MB) report found.

Large numbers of the snakes are harvested and traded outside of existing regulations, and no marking of skins takes place, making it impossible to track them through the trade chain to point of export.

TRAFFIC interviewed 17 Oriental Rat Snake traders in Java. Just three of them were aware of a government-set quota on the number of specimens that can be traded legally each year. Several considered the species had become less common in recent years and that volumes in trade are only being maintained through increased collection effort; this is backed up by a trend for male snakes in trade becoming smaller.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, concern over large discrepancies—of up to 50-fold—between the number of rat snakes reported as exported by Indonesia and the number imported as from Indonesia, led to an international trade suspension in 1993.

This was lifted in 2005 and an annual harvest quota of 100,000 specimens established. Yet one of the biggest traders in Central Java told TRAFFIC researchers in 2007 that he alone could accumulate 50,000–100,000 specimens per year.

The 12-year trade suspension appears to have triggered the development of a large, and now well established illegal trade in meat and gall bladders.

During the ban, an estimated 30 to 60 tonnes of meat along with 50,000 to 100,000 skins and gall bladders were illegally exported each year, some supposedly from stockpiles.

Three ports in Java currently ship frozen rat snake meat to China and Taiwan; under Indonesian law, only the harvest of live specimens and skins of the Oriental Rat Snake is permitted.

In August 2007, Indonesian management authorities and TRAFFIC recommended studies be carried out to estimate rat snake population sizes accurately, with mapping of harvest areas and tougher action to curb illegal trade.

“Indonesian scientists need to demonstrate what levels of sustainable off-take are possible, and these need to be adhered to if we are not to see rat snake numbers go into freefall,” said Chris Shepherd, Programme Office with TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

TRAFFIC’s latest report recommends a review of the merits and feasibility of controlling snake products in demand and which products are allowed for export. It also suggests regulating the trade in by-products such as meat within the same management system as the skin trade to ensure sustainability, and increasing enforcement actions on illegal export to help conservation of snake populations.

“Despite their name, rat snakes, predominantly eat amphibians, but remove too many snakes and you could easily upset the balance of nature with unknown impacts on the wider environment,” warned Shepherd.

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Pangolin smuggling bid by fishermen foiled

Hamdan Raja Abdullah, The Star 3 Mar 10;

MUAR: Some fishermen here have been found to be involved in smuggling pangolins from Indonesia after the marine police checked a fishing vessel in Parit Jawa.

Muar marine police commanding officer Asst Supt Abdul Lajis Tahir said the vessel was spotted during a stake-out in the area at 8pm on Tuesday.

He said the team found eight sacks with live pangolins in the vessel and two sacks in a car boot parked near the vessel.

“Our team had received information about fishermen bringing in pangolins from Sumatra about four days earlier.

“The team then staked out at the coastal area near the Parit Jawa river estuary and spotted two men unloading sacks with live pangolins from the vessel into a car,” he said at the marine jetty here yesterday.

ASP Abdul Lajis said the two men, believed to be local fishermen, ran away after seeing the team approaching, leaving their car, a Proton Iswara.

He said the team rescued at least 15 live pangolins and seized the fishing vessel and the car.

He said the total value of the vessel and the car was estimated at about RM50,000 while the value of animals, which could fetch about RM250 per kg, could be more than RM15,000.

The animals have been sent to the Wildlife and National Parks Department for further action.

“We will trace the owner of the vessel and the car to identify the smugglers,” he added.

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India's overworked elephants

BBC News 4 Mar 10;

The southern state of Kerala is home to the largest captive elephant population in India. But many question the way the animals are treated. The BBC's Soutik Biswas reports.

"Where in the world is the elephant worst treated? The honest and straight answer is Kerala," says one of the state's best-known writers, Paul Zacharia.

Mr Zacharia is alluding to the plight of the state's 700 captive elephants, the largest "domesticated" elephant population in India.

These elephants are owned by some 250 people and a number of temples. They are mainly rented out during the more than 10,000 festivals every year for parades and processions.

The state's most venerated Hindu temple, Guruvayur, alone owns 66 captive elephants, aged from 14 to 70. They live on seven acres of land outside the temple, and are looked after by some 200 keepers or mahouts.

The elephants are also hired by political parties for campaign processions, and by companies for promoting their goods in trade fairs. At one temple festival, the animals are made to run a ritual one kilometre race every year.

Hardship

Renting out elephants is big business in a society where owning the animal is a feudal status symbol - last year, one elephant fetched the Guruvayur temple nearly $5,000 for a single day's appearance at a festival in Palakkad district.



The animals have to endure long and noisy parades where fire crackers are set off, they must stand close to flames, travel long distances in ramshackle open vehicles and walk on tarred roads in the scorching sun for hours.

They also have to endure drunk, often brutal mahouts. One survey found that half of the keepers had a drinking problem.

The upshot is a unusual and rising man-animal conflict in crowded cities and towns where the elephants go to work.

"Not a day passes without the news of an elephant meeting its death in an accident or getting grievously injured or killing the mahout in sheer desperation or running amok because it simply has had enough," says Mr Zacharia.

Elephants have gone on the run at temple festivals and killed devotees in recent years.

Wildlife authorities say 18 people, mainly mahouts, have been killed by captive elephants in the past five years - 12 of them in the past two years alone.

'Not enough rest'

Kerala's Elephant Lovers' Association, a group which has been campaigning to have "performances" by captive elephants banned, says officials are under-reporting the problem.

According to figures compiled by the group from media reports and wildlife authorities, captive elephants have killed 212 people - the majority of them mahouts - in the past 12 years in Kerala.

The group also reckons more than 1,000 elephants have died "due to torture" during the same period.

There is no way to confirm these high numbers - inquiries with the wildlife department met with no response. Experts believe the truth is somewhere in between.

But all of them - apart from the elephant owners - agree that Kerala's captive elephants are the most overworked in the country.

"Some of the elephants are paraded at three or four places during the day for 12 or more hours. A lot of these festivals happen at night. The animals don't get enough rest, and misbehave mainly because of overwork," says senior wildlife officer KP Ouseph.

Wildlife authorities have warned that "fatal mishaps in public places at an alarming [rate have] become a threat to public life".

Two years ago, the Kerala high court acknowledged the need to enforce rules and regulations in the context of the "increased number of incidents of violence by and to elephants" in the state.

They include avoiding bursting crackers close to the animals, transporting them in covered vehicles and keeping them at a distance from the crowds of devotees.

But most experts say that these regulations are flouted with impunity.

Elephant owners like P Sashikumar say that the allegations about the overwork and torture of elephants are "vastly exaggerated".

Mr Sashikumar, who is a member of a group of 230 owners which lobbies the government to make the trade in elephants easier, says they keep and rent out their animals not for money, "but for love".

"Who says renting out elephants is a profitable business? You hardly recover your costs of maintaining an animal.

"It's more of a matter of prestige for us and a family tradition," he says, while readying one of his elephants for a temple festival.

The caparisoned elephants may be the flavour of Kerala's festival season - it runs from December to April - but their treatment is leaving the wildlife authorities and lovers deeply worried.

"Kerala has a reputation of being an elephant-loving society. Its a big lie," says Mr Zacharia.

Read more!

Rumbles in the jungle: African forest elephant

Matt Walker, BBC News 3 Mar 10;

Deep in the forests of central Africa roams one of the world's largest, but most elusive land animals, the forest elephant.

Few are ever seen, and no-one knows how many exist: in fact, it was only a few years ago that scientists identified them as a unique species.

But researchers are now lifting the veil on the elephants' secretive lives, and they are doing so by listening to the rumbles in the jungle.

This month, scientists have published an acoustic survey of elephant numbers in the Kakum Conservation Area in Ghana.

It found around 300 elephants live in the conservation area's forests.

More important, the survey is the first to gauge elephant numbers in the wild by listening to them, instead of seeing them.

A BBC natural history documentary, Forest Elephants: Rumbles in the Jungle, to be broadcast on Thursday 4 March also reveals how these same researchers are joining with elephant expert Andrea Turkalo to listen to forest elephants roaming dense forest in the Central African Republic.

Together, under the auspices of the Elephant Listening Project, their work is allowing these endangered elephants to speak out, granting us the opportunity to understand their mysterious lives and what they need to survive.

Forest elephants ( Loxodonta cyclotis ) were thought to be a subspecies of the African elephant, but recent genetic research suggests they are a separate species.

They are smaller in stature than the African savannah, or bush, elephant ( Loxodonta africana ), standing 50cm less tall on average at a height of 2m for females and 2.4m for males.

They also sport round ears and straight, downward pointing tusks made from ivory of a more pink, highly prized hue.

That puts them at increased risk of poaching, especially across central Africa where wars have increased the availability of firearms.

But our understanding of these endangered beasts is limited in part because of the dense terrain in which they live, and also because they live in smaller groups than their larger cousin.

Elephant oasis

So scientists working for the Elephant Listening Project have developed an ingenious array of techniques to study the forest elephant.

For 20 years, Andrea Turkalo has enlisted the help of few Ba'Aka Pygmies living in the Central Africa republic to track the elephants to see where they go.

Much of her research focused on studying forest elephants as they gathered at the Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in the middle of the rainforest in the Central African Republic and an extremely important site for wildlife conservation.

This place attracts more forest animals - sitatunga, bongo, giant forest hogs, red river hogs and forest buffalo - than any other clearing in the region, and could hold the key to the future for forest elephants.

On any given day, up to 140 elephants lumber into the open.

The elephants come to these clearings, called "bais" by Central Africans, for nutrients they cannot get from the forest.

Vital salts lie in solution at the bottom of water-filled holes and the elephants are the most efficient 'miners', digging or pumping the mud to reach a water covered layer of dolerite.

Over the years, Andrea has identified over 4000 elephants, resulting in the first comprehensive data set detailing the life history and social behaviour of forest elephants.

But although bais are scattered throughout the Congo Basin, forest elephants spend less than 5% of their lives in these openings.

Most of the time they roam the rainforest in small groups.

Early warning system

So scientists from the Elephant Listening Project at Cornell University, Ithaca, US, have followed them into the forest, by deploying remote listening devices deep among the trees.

The success of this approach is now paying off: this month in the African Journal of Ecology, Drs Mya Thompson, Steven Schwager and Katharine Payne published details of the first acoustic survey of the elephants.

By using nine sensors listening to the sounds elephants make over 38 days, they estimate 294 to 350 forest elephants live in the Kakum Conservation Area of Ghana.

Crucially, that is a similar to the number of elephants estimated using dung surveys, genetic sampling and visual sightings.

But the benefit of counting elephants by the rumbles they make is that it can be done in impenetrable forest or across wetlands, where surveying by other means is near impossible.

"In addition, recordings from remote sensors capture the acoustic signals of many other species," write the scientists.

For example, the first acoustic survey of elephants also picked up the unique calls of at least two species of monkey, suggesting that the populations of other wildlife can be gauged at the same time.

It also recorded the noise of gunshots in the forest, as well as chainsaw and vehicle noise, potentially alerting wardens to the presence of poachers, loggers or traffic that might disturb the forest elephants.

'Forest Elephants; Rumbles in the Jungle' is broadcast at 2000GMT on Thursday 4 March on BBC Two, as part of the BBC Natural World documentary series.

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Philippine official hunted after ivory goes missing

Yahoo News 3 Mar 10;

MANILA (AFP) – A Philippine wildlife officer is on the run after being accused of stealing about 80,000 dollars worth of confiscated ivory that he was meant to be keeping watch over, a government bureau said Wednesday.

The Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau employee allegedly replaced the elephant tusks, which were impounded after being illegally shipped into the country, with plastic pipes covered with plaster in a bid to hide his theft.

His colleagues initially became suspicious of him after he started spending lavishly, the head of the bureau's wildlife division, Josie de Leon, told AFP.

"Somebody had observed that this guy had lots of money. So we... checked our treasures," de Leon said.

When his colleagues checked on the ivory that was meant to be in a government storeroom, they discovered 794 kilograms (1,747 pounds) of tusks with a street value of about 80,000 dollars were missing, de Leon said.

De Leon said the suspect in the robbery was the agency's protected areas superintendent, but she declined to give his name.

The suspect vanished on February 26, the day of the inspection, she said, adding that law-enforcement agencies had been asked to track him down.

The missing tusks were part of a batch confiscated at a Philippine port in June last year.

A Tanzanian delegation is due to arrive in Manila next week to check if the ivory originated from their country and to see if it should be brought back.

Wildlife experts say 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks -- out of a total estimated population of half a million.

Ivory tusks are usually carved into religious images, ornaments and mahjong tiles in Asia.

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Where have all the sea turtles gone?

Simit Bhagat, Times of India 4 Mar 10;

MUMBAI: Conservationists and wildlife experts are understandably worried about the massive decline in the mass nesting colonies of Olive Ridley turtles. In 2008–09, there were as many as 155 turtle nests on beaches across the state's coastline, from which 7,884 hatchlings were released back into the sea. The previous year, 161 turtle nesting spots were recorded. This time around, however, barely 55 nests have been found.

Vishwas Katdare, secretary of Sahyadri Nisarg Mitra, an NGO that is working on a turtle conservation project, said: "Between November and March, hundreds of turtles arrive on the coast for mass nesting. By March, many of the eggs hatch and we help release the hatchlings back into the sea. This year, however, there are only 55 nests on the entire coastline, which is a major drop in numbers as compared to previous years." The turtle conservation project is sponsored by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and covers nearly 30 coastal villages in the state.

Every year, naturalists and wildlife experts look forward to the arrival of hundreds of Olive Ridley turtles—a Schedule I species under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

The mass nesting takes place across beaches at Harihareshwar, Dabhol, Velas, Kelshi and Diveagar among others.

What's worrying experts is that there is little sign of the large herds of turtles along the state's 720-odd km coastline.

Though no scientific study is being carried out on the alarming drop, conservationists believe the cause could be Cyclone Phyan that hit the coast of Maharashtra last year. "The disturbance caused in the sea due to the cyclone could have affected their migration patterns," said Katdare. Other threats include poaching and high mortality rates due to coastal fisheries. "Such a drastic change in the breeding pattern of turtles has never been observed," Katdare added.

There are seven sea turtle species in the world, of which five are found in India. These include Green turtles (Chelonia mydas), Leather-Back turtles (Dermochelys coriacea), Loggerhead Sea turtles (Caretta caretta), Hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and Olive Ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea).

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UK eel population on a slippery slope

Sarah Mukherjee, BBC News 3 Mar 10;

The Severn is a wide expanse at this point on the river.

Silvery grey in the morning mist, the surrounding hills are tinted lavender by the morning sun.

There is a crowd here, waiting for the Severn Bore, a tidal wave that comes up the river and is at its strongest at this time of year.

Surfers are polishing their boards and canoeists launching themselves in to the middle of the water.

But it is not the wave we are here to talk about, but a curious creature that spends much of its life in these slow-moving waters.

I am standing on the banks of the river at Epney with Andrew Kerr, the chairman and prime force behind the Sustainable Eel Group.

Very little is known about the eel, and, as Andrew says: "The more we find out, the less we know."

It has never been seen breeding, although it is believed it mates in the Sargasso Sea, just north of Bermuda. No adult eel, however, has ever been found in the area.

This sea supports both the European and American eel - but nobody knows how each species ends up making its respective long journey across the oceans, drifting on the fast-moving currents.

For the European eel to get here takes about two years, and until recently, baby, or glass eels, would teem up the rivers of the UK.

"The scale of their abundance was overwhelming," says Mr Kerr.

"Entire communities would live on them; indeed at this point on the Severn they were even used to fertilise the fields."

But, just as the life of the eel is as opaque as the depths of the oceans in which they make their mammoth journeys, so is the rapid decline in numbers that fishermen and conservationists have reported on rivers and waterways and lakes across Europe.

'Dramatic decline'

"We're talking about relative decline here," says Mr Kerr.

"This is not a tiger, with only a thousand left. There will still be millions of glass eels in the Severn this year.



"But there is no doubt that the scale of decline has been dramatic - a 70% reduction overall."

A European recovery plan was put in place in 2009 by the European Commission.

It required all countries to create "eel plans" for their river basin districts which would allow recovery and its sustainable use for food, and ensure that enough adult eels would make the journey back to their spawning grounds.

It also was supposed to ensure that all EU countries reserved a certain number of eels for conservation and restocking work across the 27-nation bloc.

But it appears that some countries are taking this more seriously than others. The French, for example, have a quota of 15 tonnes of glass eels, about 50 million of them, that they can sell to the lucrative trade in China, where they are eaten.

But they were also supposed to reserve, in the course of the season, about 12 tonnes for restocking European rivers. This has not happened.

"This means that the restocking requirements from the northern and eastern European countries will not be met because the season is drawing to a close.

"It means that many countries' EU plans, which were dependent on restocking, cannot be achieved."

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the government agrees with conservation groups that there should be an export ban to countries outside the EU for whatever purpose.

But a spokesman said that the UK would not have to rely on French eels for restocking.

Andrew Kerr disagrees: "Two million eels have already been sent to Loch Neagh in Northern Ireland from France, purchased before the price rocketed as a result of the Chinese exports.

"For the first time ever, the Severn is unlikely to be able to meet the restocking requirements of the Loch Neagh fishing co-operative."

The surfers are waiting for the Bore, looking for all the world like basking seals in the middle of the river.

A sign close to us on the bank says this stretch is reserved for private elvering - or eel catching.

This river was once literally alive in springtime with eels; conservationists worry that this natural phenomenon may soon be a thing of the past.

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