It ain't just the honeybees -- whose epidemic of
colony collapse
disorder is wiping out beekeepers, nor is it the near-extinction of
many wild pollinator populations. It's not just the disrupted
bat
hibernation in the Northeast, or the disruption in
songbirds
and farmland birds,
butterflies,
amphibians,
the fish
or the coral reefs of the ocean,
or just the collapse of freshwater mussels.
It's all of the above, and more. It's increasingly clear that
biodiversity is rapidly declining, worldwide. Species are going extinct
before they can be catalogued, and those whose numbers were
significant a decade ago have become rare.
If it was just the cute critters -- the koalas, the polar bears, the
tigers, the mountain gorillas -- it would still be sad. But it's the
species upon which other populations of species depend (which is nearly
every species), the workhorse species, the fundamental species, that
are also in decline. That's the scariest part, for the species homo
sapiens.
Without wild and domestic bees, for example, a large proportion of
food crops (apples, soybeans, almonds, peaches, cherries,
strawberries, and more) would not bear fruit. Without a robust bird
population, many beetle and locust populations might explode. Without
amphibians like frogs, mosquito and other insect populations may
swarm, imbalancing yet other ecosystem interrelationships.
And, without critters we hardly pay attention to -- say, a particular
kind of plankton -- then the tiny plankton-eaters, which feed the
small fish, which feed the bigger fish, which feed the sharks, all
crash. The web of life becomes tattered.
There is evidence that even the fairly slight effects of climate
warming that we've been experiencing the last decade may be turning dependencies out
of whack:
It is very difficult to disaggregate the Climate Change Scenario
from the Species Collapse Scenario, as seen above, but unlike the
Confluentialists at
The
Center for PostApocalypse Studies, we at the Institute strive to
focus on one catastrophe at a time, to better understand and analyze
them.
To that end, we are hypothesizing a decade in which a
number of key species go into
catastrophic decline, for reasons we will only dimly understand. In
some areas it will be dramatic, in other areas less so.
- Northerly climates, and more biodiverse
ecosystems, may fare better than U.S. midwestern industrial
agricultural lands.
- Food, especially certain basics (like
soybeans, even corn) may become significantly more expensive.
- Standard shipping methods will continue
to operate, even though it gets somewhat more expensive (based on
current trends, not even considering Peak Oil)
- Biotechnology and biological sciences go
into practical research mode, trying to compensate and ameliorate
- Various "plagues of insects" -- because
insects generally evolved to multiply so very fast -- will cause
localized devastation: grasshoppers in one state, beetles in another
-- and strenuous but functionally ineffective quarantines will be
implemented at great cost.
- Fish populations -- a source of the
majority of the raw protein available in the world -- will continue to
decline. The increasing prices will encourage even more invasive
fishing techniques (beyond even the miles-long
drift nets and
deep-sea trawling
currently hoovering up indiscriminately), including even more rogue, unregulated
pirate trawlers. This effectively destroys the
ocean's ability to recover in most traditional fisheries. See the collapse of the Northern Cod as an example.
- Financial devastation within many
important sectors,
and the increasing costs and unavailability of many foods, will create
economic turmoil.
- Al-Qaeda and the "war on terrorism" in
general are recognized as functionally meaningless, compared to the
real crisis
- Certain areas will experience wild
fluctuations in property values, with consequent community
devastation. A permanent infestation of unchecked species -- because
their primary predators have died off or gone north -- will leave towns and
regions essentially untenable. This will cause great economic
turmoil, and possibly millions of economic refugees even within
developed nations.
- Greenhouses, gardens, and humanly-tended
heritage crops becomes more important, as well as profitable.
Microagriculture becomes vital to community health, and even survival.
- Canning and storing food when it's
plentiful will become routine in homes.
- Internet and other forms of
telecommunication and entertainment continue to grow in importance, as
an affordable respite, and a way to follow this month's species event
like we once followed the weather.
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| Recent Species Collapse News |
Polar Bears Found Swimming Miles From Alaskan Coast
An aerial survey by government scientists in Alaska's Chukchi Sea has recently found at least nine polar bears swimming in open water -- with one at least 60 miles from shore -- raising concern among wildlife experts about their survival....
"As climate change continues to dramatically disrupt the Arctic, polar bears and their cubs are being forced to swim longer distances to find food and habitat."...
Satellite images indicate that ice was absent in most of the region where the bears were found on August 16, 2008, and some experts predict this year's sea ice loss could meet or exceed the record set last year.
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Drugs firms told to do more to prevent vulture extinctions
The Indian government has ordered a crackdown on companies selling the drug [Diclofenac] responsible for the near-extinction of vultures.... [A study] showed that the population of White-rumped Vultures Gyps bengalensis in India was dropping by more than 40 percent every year. The species's numbers have dropped by 99.9 percent since 1992 to about 11,000, from tens of millions. Populations of Indian Gyps indicus and Slender-billed Gyps tenuirostris vultures have fallen by almost 97 per cent in the same period, to 45,000 and just 1,000 respectively.... Now vets are dodging the ban by using the human form of diclofenac for livestock, despite an effective and safe alternative drug being available.
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Ecological Society of America Criticizes Bush Administration's Overhaul of the Endangered Species Act
"The concept of independent scientific review has been in practice since the 18th century and is crucial to ensuring that ideas and proposed work are scientifically sound," said Alison Power, president of the Society and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. "This overhaul of the Endangered Species Act would place the fate of rare species in the hands of government stakeholders who are not qualified to assess the environmental impacts of their activities."
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Bush administration cuts spotted owl habitat 23 percent
The Bush administration has decided that the Northern Spotted Owl can get by with less old growth forest habitat as it struggles to get off the threatened species list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it would cut by 23 percent the federal forest land designated as critical habitat for the owl in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. Designating critical habitat for protection is a requirement of the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, owl numbers are dropping by 4 percent a year.
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Prize-winning author warns humans could be headed for extinction
Margaret Atwood, the novelist, has warned that the planet is at a "crisis moment" and the human race could be headed towards extinction.... The Canadian said although the "cockroaches will always be fine", humans may not.... Atwood said she thinks the crisis involves climate change, deforestation, overfishing, declines in bird populations and production of energy.
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Fish or Foul
The world's oceans are being transformed, and not for the better.... Scientists now know that the eating habits of a single species, Homo sapiens, are driving these changes. By knocking out the chain’s upper levels (which include predatory fish like tuna, swordfish, and shark) through violent overfishing, and skimming off the middle and bottom for industrial use, we are changing, perhaps permanently, the structure of an environment that nourishes us.
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Why wind turbines can mean death for bats
Ninety percent of the bats they examined after death showed signs of internal hemorrhaging consistent with trauma from the sudden drop in air pressure (a condition known as barotrauma) at turbine blades. Only about half of the bats showed any evidence of direct contact with the blades.... All three species of migratory bats killed by wind turbines fly at night, eating thousands of insects—including many crop pests—per day as they go. Therefore, bat losses in one area could have very real effects on ecosystems miles away, along the bats' migration routes.
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Oyster Larvae Dying Off at Alarming Rates
The oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest could be facing serious trouble. In recent years, hatcheries have seen oyster larvae die off at unusually high rates. No one knows what's killing the young oysters, but scientists have two theories....
ONE THEORY IS THAT THE BACTERIA THRIVE IN THE SO–CALLED DEAD ZONE. THAT'S AN AREA OF LOW OXYGEN WATER THAT HAS RECENTLY APPEARED OFF THE OREGON COAST....
DAVIS SUSPECTS THE WATER IS MORE ACIDIC THAN NORMAL, BUT IT'S HARD TO SAY, SINCE SCIENTISTS HAVEN'T KEPT RECORDS OF PH LEVELS IN THE SOUND.
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Whaling under fire as Norway catches only half of its quota
Norway will not catch enough whales to meet its quota this year, in what environmentalists are claiming is proof that the nation should abandon the activity completely.
Since the whaling season started on April 1, fishermen have caught around half the number of animals allowed by the authorities – 533 common minke whales out of a quota of 1,052.... Norway hunts only one type of whale, the common minke whale, which is considered as "threatened with extinction" according to Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which bans its international trade.
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Shark numbers worry over fin export
The WWF says 230 tonnes of shark fin have been exported from Australia in the past 13 months....
Conservationists say they have major concerns about Australia's contribution to the shark fin industry.
WWF's Dr Gilly Llewellyn says the appetite for shark fin overseas which Australia appears to be feeding, is insatiable, and in the past 13 months 230 tonnes of shark fin have been exported from our shores, mainly to Asian markets.
"Using a really conservative estimate using the largest possible size of shark, using a low fin to weight ratio, that's still 10,000 sharks that would have needed to be killed for that amount of fin," she says.
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Lawsuit seeks EPA pesticide data
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to disclose records about a new class of pesticides that could be playing a role in the disappearance of millions of honeybees in the United States, a lawsuit filed Monday charges. The Natural Resources Defense Council wants to see the studies that the EPA required when it approved a pesticide made by Bayer CropScience five years ago.
The environmental group filed the suit as part of an effort to find out how diligently the EPA is protecting honeybees from dangerous pesticides..."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Dying Frogs Sign Of A Biodiversity Crisis
"Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley... researchers argue that substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet."
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Acid ocean imperils more than shells
"SYDNEY — Rising ocean acidity could reduce fertilization of marine invertebrates and might eventually wipe out colonies of sea urchins, lobsters, mussels and oysters, according to a study.
Scientists knew that ocean acidification was eating away at the shells of marine animals, but the new study has found that rising acidity hindered marine sperm from swimming to and fertilizing eggs in the ocean."
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State studies hunt of formerly endangered wolves
Wisconsin officials are laying the groundwork for the first public hunting of wolves in more than 50 years.... Last winter's population estimate was 537 to 564 wolves, more than the recovery goal of 350, according to Adrian Wydeven of the DNR. The population was about the same during the winter of 2007, he said.
By comparison, wolves totaled less than 250 in 2000.... A wolf season would require approval from the Natural Resources Board, which sets policy for the DNR, and from the Legislature. But the measure would likely prompt a lawsuit from wolf advocates.
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UK Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point
Britain's honeybees have suffered catastrophic losses this year, according to a survey of the nation's beekeepers, contributing to a shortage of honey and putting at risk the pollination of fruits and vegetables.
The survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) revealed that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive this winter and spring.
The losses are higher than the one in five colonies reported dead earlier this year by the government after 10 percent of hives had been inspected.
The BBKA president, Tim Lovett, said he was very concerned about the findings: "Average winter bee losses due to poor weather and disease vary from between 5 percent and 10 percent, so a 30 percent loss is deeply worrying. This spells serious trouble for pollination services and honey producers."
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Tuna company John West blamed for death of sharks in nets
Britain's best-selling brand of tinned tuna is responsible for killing thousands of rare sharks and turtles every year, a new report claims.... Tuna stocks have dwindled so much due to over-fishing in recent years that the industry is already on the brink of collapse.
A John West spokesman said last night: "We take our responsibility to the marine environment extremely seriously. Our selection procedure in appointing suppliers is very rigorous."
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Endangered Species Act Changes Give Agencies More Say
"The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades."
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New Report Details Historic Mass Extinction Of Amphibians; Humans Worsen Spread Of Deadly Emerging Infectious Disease
Amphibians, reigning survivors of past mass extinctions, are sending a clear, unequivocal signal that something is wrong, as their extinction rates rise to unprecedented levels, according to a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Humans are exacerbating two key natural threats -- climate change and a deadly disease that is jumping from one species to another.... "An ancient organism, which has survived past extinctions, is telling us that something is wrong right now" Vredenburg said. "We -- humans -- may be doing fine right now, but they are doing poorly. The question, really, is whether we'll listen before it's too late."
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Humans Implicated In Prehistoric Animal Extinctions With New Evidence
The new study provides the first evidence that Tasmania's giant kangaroos and marsupial 'rhinos' and 'leopards' were still roaming the island when humans first arrived [43,000 years ago]. The findings suggest that the mass extinction of Tasmania's large prehistoric animals was the result of human hunting, and not climate change as previously believed.
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It's time to declare mussel extinct, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says
The turgid-blossom pearly mussel -- a shiny yellow-green mollusk less than 1. 6 inches in length -- has been on the endangered species list since 1976....
"One of the things that we say as biologists is that these are kind of like canaries in a coal mine," Christian said. "They are an indicator that environmental conditions aren't good, and that may be an indicator of water quality."
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As Bat Population Falls, the Questions Multiply
No one knows the extent of the syndrome yet. "We've received an increasing number of calls from people in northwestern Connecticut saying bats have not returned to their summer homes," Ms. Dickson said.... A nursing little brown bat can consume about 1,200 insects a night, more than half its body weight.... Bats play a critical role in the welfare of the conservancy's exotic waterfowl species by reducing the number of insects carrying potentially harmful viruses.
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Globalization Is Destroying the World's Oceans
"...About one-fourth of all known fish populations are already overfished to the brink of extinction, including once-abundant species cod and tuna. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), another 50 percent are considered completely exploited. No one can, or is even willing, to predict the consequences for the complex ecosystem, and yet it is clear that the oceans are gradually being ravaged."
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Agency: Chemicals a danger to salmon
"Three insecticides in common use around Oregon homes and farms pose a serious threat to endangered salmon and have been found extensively in Oregon watersheds.
The insecticides chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon — as they have been commonly used — are likely to lead to the extinction of more than two dozen salmon or steelhead runs in California, Oregon and Washington, according to a draft biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that functions as a watchdog for ocean-going species."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Almost half of primate species face extinction
"The first comprehensive review in twelve years on the conservation status of primates is revealing that our closest relatives are in serious danger. The review, presented today at the 22nd International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, UK, shows that of the 634 known primate species and subspecies, nearly 50 percent are threatened with extinction in the next decade. That soars to more than 70 percent in Asia, with individual countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia seeing at least 80 percent of their primate species threatened. Cambodia was at the top of the list, with 90 percent of its primate species in imminent danger."
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Camels Plagued by Parasites
Nearly 84 percent of male camels in eastern Iran may be infected with helminths (parasitic worms) that can cripple reproduction and afflict other organs, the scientists report in the journal Parasitology Research.... "The high prevalence rate of this infection surprised me," says Ahmad Oryan, professor of veterinary pathology at Shiraz University in Iran, who led the research. "Due to the effects of this nematode [a type of roundworm] on breeding of the male camels, this infection, if not treated or controlled, could have adverse outcomes and will affect the calving rate of this animal."
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Porpoise deaths raising questions
"It's the tip of the iceberg," said Mary Jane Schramm, spokeswoman for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. "These are open ocean animals. For every one we find dead there are probably many others that are out there."... Harbor porpoises are not commonly tracked by the state and so little is known about where they feed or mate. Over time, state records show the mammals have a tendency to die during the summertime calving season, but researchers don't know why. "It could be that the acid bio-accumulated in the fetus," Schramm said. "If it's something that the mother ingested and passed through the placental barrier, it could be something that she passed on to her fetus."
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Ivory Poaching At Critical Levels: Elephants On Path To Extinction By 2020?
"African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a pace unseen since an international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989. But the public outcry that resulted in that ban is absent today, and a University of Washington conservation biologist contends it is because the public seems to be unaware of the giant mammals' plight."
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Group to sue over protection for polar bears
"A conservative legal-advocacy group said Wednesday it plans to sue the federal government over its recent decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species. The group, the Pacific Legal Foundation, contends the listing paves the way for lawsuits against any industry responsible for large-scale carbon emissions that could be connected to the steady warming of the bear's Arctic habitat."
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Cute, cuddly and endangered
And it's because of low survival rates and poaching that Siberian tigers are nearly extinct in the wild.
"All tigers, no matter what subspecies it is, will be extinct by 2015," said Cramer.
"The Siberian tiger is the most endangered of any of the large carnivores in the world," DeYoung said. "They claim over in Russia, there's only 200 left on the Russia-China border."
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Is It Too Late To Save The Great Migrations?
Martin Wikelski describe the threats facing "one of nature's most visible and widespread phenomena," a behavior found in animals as diverse as whales and warblers, dragonflies and salamanders. Many of the most spectacular migrations have disappeared or experienced steep declines due to human behavior, the authors lament.
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Wing damage: bats in peril
Researchers now think that a fuzzy white fungus found on thousands of dead and dying bats in New England and New York last winter might be the primary cause of the illness. Scientists have learned that the unidentified fungus seems to thrive in the cold temperatures found in caves and mines in winter -- when bats are hibernating and most vulnerable. As worrisome is that many bats continued to die this spring, dashing hopes that they would recuperate when they emerged from hibernation and resumed feeding. Hundreds of animals with scarred wings, both dead and alive, were discovered in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire through June.
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Coral Reefs Face Extinction
"You don't have to be a marine biologist to understand the importance of corals — just ask any diver. The tiny underwater creatures are the architects of the beautiful, electric-colored coral reefs that lie in shallow tropical waters around the world. Divers swarm to them not merely for their intrinsic beauty, but because the reefs play host to a wealth of biodiversity unlike anywhere else in the underwater world. Coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of total marine species. Take out the corals, and there are no reefs — remove the reefs, and entire ecosystems collapse."
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Hundreds of dead penguins wash ashore
Biologists are puzzled by the hundreds of young penguins that have been washing up along the Brazilian coastline since late June. The Magellanic Penguins have been found dead or barely alive, along beaches all over south-eastern Brazil. The mainly young birds will have come from colonies about 2,500 miles south in Argentina. Penguins regularly move north into the waters off southern Brazil in search of food.... "The penguin population is intimately linked to their supplies of food, so this suggests something is happening to the population of fish they eat."
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Colony Collapse Disorder Debunked: Pesticides Cause Bee Deaths
"The great mystery of bee deaths has been solved. Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a known insect neurotoxin. Clothianidin, a pesticide manufactured by Bayer, has been clearly linked to die offs in Germany and France.
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Mystery as dead birds fall from the sky over Western Australia
Post-mortem examinations have failed to determine the cause of the birds' deaths. Last December 5,000 birds died in the coastal town of Esperance, 500 km south of Perth, after being poisoned by lead carbonate blowing through the town as it was being exported through Esperance Port.... "The birds, when they are showing signs of having been poisoned become a bit wobbly on their feet, they sit down and within 10 to 15 minutes they're dead." ... He said it was particularly puzzling that the deaths were confined to seagulls. In Esperance, wattle birds, yellow throated miners and honey-eaters died.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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When Jellyfish Attack
Beaches from Marseille to Monaco have been plagued this summer by millions of the gelatinous invaders, whose burning stings have sent scores of holiday-makers fleeing the surf with yelps of pain since large numbers of jellyfish were first sighted along France's coast in June. And those menacing the shorelines are simply the outriders of giant shoals that marine biologists have identified hovering between Corsica and France's southern shores.... Overfishing and other destructive human activity have prompted the prolific multiplication of jellyfish by decimating their natural predators: tuna, sharks and turtles.
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Lionfish decimating tropical fish populations, threaten coral reefs
[T]his invasive species, which is native to the tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean and has few natural enemies to help control it in the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed that the first lionfish -- a beautiful fish with dramatic coloring and large, spiny fins -- were introduced into marine waters off Florida in the early 1990s from local aquariums or fish hobbyists. They have since spread across much of the Caribbean Sea and north along the United States coast as far as Rhode Island.... "These fish eat many other species and they seem to eat constantly."
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Should we move species to save them?
"With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it."
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Chesapeake watermen fear blue crab not coming back
"Chesapeake Bay crabber Paul Kellam has advice for the teenage boys who help tend his traps every summer: You better have a backup plan. It's an anxious summer for watermen harvesting the Chesapeake's best-loved seafood, the blue crab. The way some see it, the crabbing business here isn't just dying. It's already dead."
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Biologists driven batty
Tens of thousands of bats in New York and New England died of a mysterious disease over the winter and experts are now keeping a close eye on Pennsylvania's winged mammals.... "Bats have been here for 60 million years, so they obviously perform some important function in the ecosystem," [Dr. Kwiecinski ] said, as he sat in his office, surrounded by real bats, toy bats and pictures of bats. "Never seen anything like this in bats," he said.
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Return of the ivory trade
The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.
Alarmed conservationists are warning of a new wave of elephant killing across both Africa and Asia if China is allowed to become a legal importer, as looks likely at a meeting in Geneva next week. ... "This is going to mean a return to the bad old days where elephants are being shot into extinction," said Allan Thornton, of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the group which provided much of the evidence on which the original ivory ban was based in 1989.
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Warming Spells Trouble for Fish
"Global warming of the oceans will likely cause the extinction by 2050 of dozens of fish species that cannot migrate to colder waters, according to a study presented here yesterday at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium. "The loss of biodiversity will be considerable, and replacing them with new species would take millions of years," says co-author Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada."
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Corals join frogs and toads as world's most endangered
"Within one generation, diving on coral reefs could be a very rare holiday opportunity. The first comprehensive review of tropical coral species reveals that over one-quarter reef-building coral species already face extinction.
This means corals join frogs and toads as the most threatened group of animal species on the planet."
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U.S. proposes to put smelt on endangered list
"The delta smelt, a tiny but important fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, could officially become "endangered" under a proposal announced Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Smelt are an indicator of the delta's health, and nearly 750,000 acres of farmland and 25 million people from the Bay Area to Central and Southern California rely on water from the delta."
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'Invasive' humans threaten U.S. coral reefs
"Half of all U.S. coral reefs, the center of marine life in the Pacific and Caribbean oceans, are either in poor or fair condition, a federal agency warns today.
The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration places much of the blame on human activities and warns of further oceanwide decline.
Reefs closer to cities were found to suffer poorer health, damaged by trash, overfishing and pollution."
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Study shows rise in Cornwall's dolphin, whale and porpoise deaths
The research team analysed records of cetacean strandings from 1911 to 2006 from around Cornwall's north and south coasts and the Isles of Scilly. They found a marked increase from the early 1980s, with common dolphins and harbour porpoises being the worst-affected species. In total, fewer than 50 cetacean strandings a year occurred in Cornwall in the 1980s but numbers since 2000 have ranged from 100 to 250 per annum.... The researchers analysed records of 2,257 cetaceans, 862 of which were common dolphins. They found that, since 1990, at least 61 percent of incidents in Cornwall are the result of fishing activity, with animals being caught up in nets in a phenomenon known as 'bycatch'. The seas around Cornwall are known to be a major hotspot for large scale fisheries, with many vessels coming from other EU nations.
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Wildlife extinction rates 'seriously underestimated'
Endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity.
Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.... "Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven't even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered," said Melbourne.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Help find the lost ladybugs
Two years ago in Virginia, two children made a discovery near their home in Arlington that still has scientists talking. They found a ladybug.
But it wasn't just any ladybug. It was a nine-spotted ladybug, and its discovery was the first sighting of a nine-spotted ladybug in the eastern U.S. in more than 14 years.... [I]t was common until the mid-1980s.
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Gazelles: Changing with the winds
It was not that long ago that gazelles outnumbered people in the vast deserts of the Arabian peninsula. Now, with the rapid modernisation in the UAE having had a profound effect on local flora and fauna, the Arabian gazelle is estimated to have a global population of less than 20,000 and the sand gazelle has been placed on the list of endangered species.... One of only a handful of mammals whose biological adaptations allow them to survive in the harsh desert climate, gazelles have a similar method of water conservation to that of the camel and both species can live without surface water for significant amounts of time without suffering dehydration.
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Orangutans 'declining more sharply' than previously estimated
Endangered wild orangutan (Pongo spp.) populations are declining more sharply in Sumatra and Borneo than previously estimated, according to new findings published this month by Great Ape Trust of Iowa scientist Dr. Serge Wich and other orangutan conservation experts in Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation.
Conservation action essential to survival of orangutans, found only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, must be region-specific to address the different ecological threats to each species, said Wich and his co-authors, a pre-eminent group of scientists, conservationists, and representatives of governmental and non-governmental groups. The experts' revised estimates put the number of Sumatran orangutans (P. abelii) around 6,600 in 2004. This is lower than previous estimates of 7,501 as a result of new findings that indicate that a large area in Aceh that was previously thought to contain orangutans actually does not.
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After 200 million years, all-male future spells doom for tuatara reptiles
The only survivors in the wild of an order of reptiles that scampered with dinosaurs could be wiped out because climate change will turn them all into males.
The gender of tuataras, an ancient type of reptile with three eyes, is determined by the temperatures that the embryos are kept at when in the egg. Global warming means that the reptiles, regarded as living fossils, face the threat of dying out in the wild because of a terminal shortage of females.
Only males will be born in nests where the eggs have been kept at temperatures of 22.25C (72.05F) whereas females are guaranteed only at temperatures lower than 22.1C.
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