Sundarban water warming faster than global average
December 3, 2009
DhakaMirror.com
In the Sundarbans, surface water temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade over the past three decades, eight times the rate of global warming, says a new study, reports Times of India on Tuesday.
That makes the Sundarbans one of the worst climate change hotspots on the globe.
The study, carried out over 27 years from 1980 by scientists from India and the US, found a change of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a clear challenge to the survival of flora and fauna in the world’s largest Read more
Woman hunter kills elephant with bow and arrow
May 17, 2009
Female hunter Teressa Groenewald-Hagerman has become the first woman in the world to shoot an elephant dead with a bow and arrow.
Groenewald-Hagerman, 39, she sneaked into the animals herd and killed the creature with one shot from just 12 yards.
The woman, from Kansas, was inspired to go on the safari after being challenged by a male friend who said women could never draw such a heavy bow.
She worked out for four Read more
Solar energy as cheap as conventional electricity in four years
May 17, 2009
Solar energy is getting hotter. Falling production costs for solar panels and increasing conventional electricity costs make competition easier, according to a British analysis.
This week, Solarcentury, the largest solar company in the UK, presented a new analysis showing that solar roofs on British homes could be generating electricity as cheap as conventional electricity by 2013 and progressively cheaper each year thereafter.
”Even with conservative Read more
Human Rights Violated by Climate Change
May 17, 2009
The UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution proposed by the Maldives to hold a panel discussion on the relationship between human rights and climate change.
The resolution states that “Global warming violates human rights of millions of people, especially in countries vulnerable to climate change such as the low-lying island state of the Maldives.”
“Climate change is one of the Read more
Mouse bites snake to death
February 2, 2009
By Matthew Moore
A mouse bit a venomous viper to death after it was thrown into the snake’s cage as a lunchtime snack.
The tiny rodent killed the snake after a fierce 30-minute battle, emerging with “barely a scratch on him”, according to on person who saw the fight.
Firefighters in Taiwan who were looking after the snake – which had been found in a local resident’s home – thought that the live mouse would Read more
Tracking reveals albatross habits
January 17, 2009
By Richard Black, BBC environment correspondent
Research by UK scientists may prove vital in protecting the albatross. British Antarctic Survey researchers followed more than 40 grey-headed albatrosses as they flew around the world, identifying where they fed.
All the birds which made a circumnavigation stopped for food in the same places.
Banning harmful fishing methods from those areas of the ocean could help halt the decline of what is one of the world’s most endangered Read more
Mystery of the British penguins that are marching towards oblivion
January 15, 2009
From The Times
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter
An endangered species of penguin is mysteriously disappearing from a remote British island in the South Atlantic at a rate of 100 birds every day. About two million northern rockhopper penguins have vanished from Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, part of the British overseas territory of St Helena, in half a century.
The once huge penguin populations on the islands have dwindled so dramatically that they are now threatened with extinction, and the British Government was accused yesterday of contributing to the decline.
A 90 per cent slump has been observed in both areas but on Tristan it took 130 years whereas it took just 45 years on Read more
Spider as big as a plate among scores of new species found in Greater Mekong
December 15, 2008
A spider as big as a dinner plate has been found living in one of the world’s last scientifically unexplored regions.
Eighty eight new species of frogs were discovered, including the blue spotted tree frog
The Greater Mekong, which is made up of 600,000 square kilometres of wetlands and rainforest along the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and China, is also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
A host of new species has been found in the area, which is so full of life that previously unknown animals and plants have been turning up at a rate of two a week for a decade.
At least 1,068 new species were identified in the Greater Mekong from 1997 to 2007 along with Read more
China’s pandas at forefront of green revolution
August 7, 2008
The panda is the icon of a green revolution in China. Robert Macfarlane reports
Where a landscape did not conform to his vision, he ordered it razed, bulldozed or dammed.
‘Man must conquer nature!’ was one of his domestic policy slogans: Ren ding sheng tian!
He composed lyrical poems about bridging and blocking the mighty Yangtze River. One of his favourite essays concerned an old man who successfully flattened two mountains, digging them out with a spade and two buckets.
Unsurprisingly, China’s environment came under massive stress during Mao’s rule (1949-1976). And since Mao, the country’s environmental difficulties have only increased.
China’s remarkable economic explosion of the past two decades has created an ecological implosion. In terms of air pollution, water shortage, biodiversity loss and habitat damage, the country is in deep trouble and its problems are visibly becoming the world’s problems.
And yet there is increasing evidence – heartening, hopeful evidence – that a green revolution is underway in China.
The icon of this revolution is, of course, the giant panda. With its chessboard colour scheme, the black spectacle-like fur patches around its eyes, and its cud-chewing gentleness, the panda is instantly recognisable and irresistibly charming.
This charm also has to do with the panda’s placidity: in a globalised world of haste and speed, how does something so unhurried survive, you wonder?
It almost didn’t. Only 80 years ago, the hunting of pandas was legal.
In 1929, two of US President Theodore Roosevelt’s sons travelled to southwest China, where they tracked and shot dead a male bear.
Subsequently, the panda’s population was devastated by poaching, intensive land reclamation and human development.
Remarkably, however, it has avoided extinction: around 1,600 animals still exist in the wild, all in the bioregion of the Upper Yangtze River watershed.
The panda’s survival is due to the collaboration of the World Wildlife Fund and the Chinese government. The WWF is the international NGO with the longest history of involvement in China. It began work there in 1980, and a year later started its panda conservation initiative, following research by the legendary field biologist George Schaller.
As early as 1961, WWF had taken the panda as its logo.
They have since classified it as a flagship species, and now describe it as the ‘emblem of hope both for a nation and for global biodiversity’, deliberately echoing the panda’s reputation within the Chinese Taoist tradition – according to which it possesses mystical powers that can ward off natural disasters.
Until recently, WWF panda protection was focused primarily on the Qinling and the Minshan mountains. Now, however, the organisation is trying to join up the remaining fragments of panda habitat, which are scattered across Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan. It remains to be seen what effects Sichuan’s terrible earthquake will have upon panda protection.
The panda initiative is only one of many WWF projects that are underway in China. While living in China last year, I travelled to the mountains of western Sichuan to spend a week walking the high forests and snow peaks in the company of a man called Jon Miceler.
Miceler, who has recently been appointed by WWF-US to manage its Eastern Himalayas programme, has spent 20 years travelling in the mountainous borderlands of Tibet, China, Burma and India. He speaks Chinese fluently and Tibetan serviceably, and is learned in Buddhism.
A freckled sun-polished face, rimless glasses and a mop of curly dark hair give him the look of an intellectual as co-designed by Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain.
Miceler is especially interested in the potentially positive relationship between tourism and the environment. He gives the example of the great wild areas of western China, like the Chang Tang Reserve, which supports bear, snow leopard, wild antelope and wild yak.
‘Many of these reserves are in areas where locals are tempted to poach or extract resources to supplement a meagre living,’ he says.
‘And many reserves themselves are so strapped for cash they cannot carry out their conservation mandate in an effective manner. But eco-tourism, if managed carefully, can help to alleviate both of these stresses.’
Miceler is bringing the same approach to the protected areas of the Upper Yangtze River watershed area, the bioregion of the panda, where he wants to increase the activities available to eco-tourists, enhance the interpretation skills of park staff, and involve tourists in surveys of flora and fauna.
Fascinatingly, Miceler is also launching what he calls the Sacred Landscapes Initiative. He wants to draw on the Taoist philosophies in China and Tibet that celebrate harmony with nature – and make those traditions appeal to Han-Chinese and Western tourist audiences.
‘Chinese and Tibetans, secular and non-secular, demonstrate a natural conservation ethic when around sacred mountains, lakes and monasteries,’ he says.
‘I want to explore ways of naturally extending these mind-states to more profane landscapes, in the hope of conserving the last wild Tibetan lands, and the exceptional species that survive there, such as the ghoral [a rare ungulate], the snow leopard and the Tibetan antelope.’
Unmistakably the most far-reaching of WWF’s initiatives in China is its environmental education project. For nearly a decade now, WWF has been working with China’s Ministry of Education to encourage the integration of environmental thought and skills into the national curriculum.
Given the number of children within China’s education system – more than 200m at any one time – and given the centralised control of the syllabus, the potential for beneficial influence here is vast. Vast and crucial, for the present school-age generation in China is the generation whose future actions will determine the future of the earth.
The present Chinese government has realised what Mao never did: that environmental harm might be a powerful limiting factor for China’s development ambitions.
The colourful and outspoken deputy environment minister, Pan Yue (who is also a poet) has publicly warned that China’s environment can no longer sustain its economic growth. And several remarkable small-scale eco-initiatives are underway across the country.
In the arid Gansu province of northwest China, for instance, rainwater-harvesting techniques have been pioneered to brilliant effect. Water collectors on roofs and in courtyards conduct rainwater to underground storage tanks, saving much water-carrying time in remote rural regions. Beijing too is looking at adapting the technology.
And northeast of Shanghai, on the marshy island of Chongming, the world’s first eco city is being built following zero-energy construction principles. Here, again, is an invigorating sense of what is possible in China.
‘All is not lost in China, environmentally speaking, despite its bad press,’ Jon Miceler said to me. ‘Far from it; there is a huge amount to be done – and to be won.’
Courtesy: Daily Telegraph
Planet of apes found in Congo
August 6, 2008
AP.
EDINBURGH, Scotland: More than 125,000 western lowland gorillas have been discovered deep in the forests of the Republic of Congo, at least doubling their estimated population, primatologists said on Tuesday.
For centuries the reclusive and endangered gorillas remained largely unrecorded, but a new census by the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, and the Republic of Congo counted the newly discovered populations in two areas of the northern part of the country covering 18,000 square miles (47,000 square kilometers).
Previous estimates put the number of western lowland gorillas at less than 100,000. But those measures dated back to the 1980s and the gorilla’s numbers were believed to have fallen by at least 50 per cent since then due to hunting and disease, researchers said. The newly discovered gorilla population now puts their estimated numbers at between 175,000 to 225,000.
“This is a very significant discovery because of the terrible decline in population of these magnificent creatures to Ebola and bush meat,” said Emma Stokes, one of the research team.
“It was an incredible moment when we realised the figures we were getting in. They had not been previously recorded because these are very remote areas that are quite inaccessible and logistically tough to survey.”
Western lowland gorillas are one of four gorilla subspecies, which also include mountain gorillas, eastern lowland gorillas, and Cross River gorillas. All are labeled either endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN.
The researchers worked out the population figures by identifying and counting the sleeping “nests” gorillas make. The creatures are too reclusive and shy to count individually.
Craig Stanford, professor of anthropology and biology at the University of Southern California, said he is aware of the new study. “If these new census results are confirmed, they are incredibly important and exciting, the kind of good news we rarely find in the conservation of highly endangered animals.” He added that independent confirmation will be valuable because nest counts vary depending on the specific census method used.
While calling the discovery important, Stokes said it does not mean gorilla numbers in the wild are now safe.
“Far from being safe, the gorillas are still under threat from Ebola and hunting for bush meat. We must not become complacent about this. Ebola can wipe out thousands in a short period of time,” she said.
The discovery was announced as primatologists in Edinburgh, Scotland warned that nearly half of the world’s 634 types of primates are in danger of becoming extinct due to human activity. That figure, carried in a comprehensive review of the planet’s apes, monkeys, and lemurs, included primate species and subspecies.
Scientists meeting at the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh said they hoped the report will help spur global action to defend mankind’s nearest relatives from deforestation and hunting.
Primatologists warned that species from the giant mountain gorillas of central Africa to the tiny mouse lemurs of Madagascar are on the “Red List” for threatened species maintained by the IUCN.
The review was funded by Conservation International, the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the IUCN. It is part of an examination of the state of the world’s mammals due to be released at the 4th IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in October.
“It is not too late for our close cousins the primates, and what we have now is a challenge to turn this around,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and the chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s primate specialist group.
“The review paints a bleak picture. Some primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction. But it is by no means a doomsday scenario. There is a lot of will here among these scientists in Edinburgh and in the countries where primates live.”
Reuters/WCS photo
Courtesy: Times of India