[lotuseclat79]

World's Smallest Bear Faces Extinction
Article here.

The world's smallest bear species faces extinction because of deforestation and poaching in its Southeast Asian home, a conservation group said Monday.


A 9-month-old baby Asian sun bear reaches out through his cage at his new home at the Wildlife Division of the Thai Forestry Department in Banglamung, 200 kilometers (130 miles) south of Bangkok in this Sept. 14, 1995 file photo. The world\'s smallest bear species faces extinction because of deforestation and poaching in its Southeast Asian home, a conservation group said Monday Nov. 12, 2007. The sun bear, whose habitat stretches from India to Indonesia, has been classified as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

-- Tom

[poochee]

Some good news
updated 2:23 p.m. EST, Fri November 23, 2007
Panda super couple thrills zoo

Story Highlights
San Diego Zoo pandas Bai Yun and Gao Gao have produced 3 cubs since 2003
They are one of the most reproductively successful panda couples ever in captivity
Their youngest offspring, a female, will be named Monday
Pandas are notoriously poor breeders -- one reason their species is endangered

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Giving each other space may not work in every relationship, but it's what keeps the magic alive for the very fertile giant panda pair at the San Diego Zoo.

Bai Yun and Gao Gao, have produced three cubs.

1 of 4 Since 2003, Bai Yun and her consort, Gao Gao, have produced three cubs, making them one of the most reproductively successful panda couples ever in captivity.

Their youngest offspring, a chubby female, will be named Monday when she reaches 100 days old, following Chinese tradition.

For all but two days of the year, Bai Yun (White Cloud) and Gao Gao (Big Big) lead separate lives, gnawing on bamboo and taking long naps in pens far apart, much as wild pandas -- naturally solitary creatures -- would hide from each other in mountain forests.

Excerpt from: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

[ekim68]

Rare South China tiger cub born in SAfrica

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A male South China tiger cub was born in the Free State province of South Africa on Friday, the first time the animal has been born outside China, the Save China's Tigers organization said on Sunday.

The cub was born healthy and larger than normal at 1.2 kilograms on a wildlife conservation reserve, the group said in a statement. The cub was being hand-reared and would be taught to hunt for itself.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...24062620071125

[poochee]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Rare South China tiger cub born in SAfrica

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A male South China tiger cub was born in the Free State province of South Africa on Friday, the first time the animal has been born outside China, the Save China's Tigers organization said on Sunday.

The cub was born healthy and larger than normal at 1.2 kilograms on a wildlife conservation reserve, the group said in a statement. The cub was being hand-reared and would be taught to hunt for itself.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...24062620071125

[ekim68]

More Than One-quarter Of US Bird Species Imperiled, Report States

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2007) — One hundred seventy-eight species in the continental U.S. and 39 in Hawaii have the dubious distinction of landing on the newest and most scientifically sound list of America's most imperiled birds. WatchList 2007, a joint effort of Audubon and American Bird Conservancy, reflects a comprehensive analysis of population size and trends, distribution, and threats for 700 bird species in the U.S. It reveals those in greatest need of immediate conservation help simply to survive amid a convergence of environmental challenges, including habitat loss, invasive species and global warming.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1129083858.htm

[ekim68]

Tigers' fate is still uncertain

NEW DELHI — One of the most riveting images in the office of award-winning photographer and lifelong tiger advocate Belinda Wright isn't of the charismatic feline itself, but of its aftermath. Tibetan men are draped in the gleaming pelts — worth nearly $10,000 each on the black market — of a creature wildlife experts worry may be on its last legs.

The good news, notes Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, is that sales and display of tiger skins among Tibetans have dropped in response to a public awareness campaign by the Dalai Lama, the World Wildlife Fund and others. At the same time, however, an illegal demand for tiger bones and other body parts used in traditional Chinese medicine has prompted an expansion of tiger farming in China, where there's commercial lobbying to lift a domestic trade ban on tiger parts.

And that, coupled with escalating pressure on forest habitat in the tiger's biggest stomping ground, India, means the doomsday clock for Panthera tigris is ticking perilously close to midnight.

According to a new Indian-government-sponsored survey, no more than 1,500 Bengal tigers are left in India, where Project Tiger was launched 35 years ago after the country's first tiger census showed the population had dipped to about 1,800. Worldwide, the total number of wild tigers (of six sub-species, the Bengal is the most numerous) has dwindled to fewer than 5,000, says the World Wildlife Fund's Sybille Klenzendorf.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/...ger-side_N.htm

[poochee]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Tigers' fate is still uncertain

NEW DELHI — One of the most riveting images in the office of award-winning photographer and lifelong tiger advocate Belinda Wright isn't of the charismatic feline itself, but of its aftermath. Tibetan men are draped in the gleaming pelts — worth nearly $10,000 each on the black market — of a creature wildlife experts worry may be on its last legs.

The good news, notes Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, is that sales and display of tiger skins among Tibetans have dropped in response to a public awareness campaign by the Dalai Lama, the World Wildlife Fund and others. At the same time, however, an illegal demand for tiger bones and other body parts used in traditional Chinese medicine has prompted an expansion of tiger farming in China, where there's commercial lobbying to lift a domestic trade ban on tiger parts.

And that, coupled with escalating pressure on forest habitat in the tiger's biggest stomping ground, India, means the doomsday clock for Panthera tigris is ticking perilously close to midnight.

According to a new Indian-government-sponsored survey, no more than 1,500 Bengal tigers are left in India, where Project Tiger was launched 35 years ago after the country's first tiger census showed the population had dipped to about 1,800. Worldwide, the total number of wild tigers (of six sub-species, the Bengal is the most numerous) has dwindled to fewer than 5,000, says the World Wildlife Fund's Sybille Klenzendorf.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/...ger-side_N.htm

[ekim68]

Parasite puts more pandas at risk

A new natural enemy is preying upon China's shrinking population of wild pandas, posing a "significant threat" to their survival, researchers say.

Stalked to near extinction by poachers and decimated by starvation, China's most beloved creatures are now also dying of a disease most likely caused by a roundworm called Baylisascaris schroederi, which can infect the brain and other vital organs.

"It's the most significant cause of death in the last decade, and it seems to be increasing," says study author Peter Daszak of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, a collaboration of the Wildlife Trust and several universities focused on the interactions of humans, wildlife and disease-causing organisms.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/e...parasite_N.htm

[poochee]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Parasite puts more pandas at risk

A new natural enemy is preying upon China's shrinking population of wild pandas, posing a "significant threat" to their survival, researchers say.

Stalked to near extinction by poachers and decimated by starvation, China's most beloved creatures are now also dying of a disease most likely caused by a roundworm called Baylisascaris schroederi, which can infect the brain and other vital organs.

"It's the most significant cause of death in the last decade, and it seems to be increasing," says study author Peter Daszak of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, a collaboration of the Wildlife Trust and several universities focused on the interactions of humans, wildlife and disease-causing organisms.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/e...parasite_N.htm

[poochee]

Can They Stay Out of Harm’s Way? I hope so!
By J. MADELEINE NASH
Published: January 1, 2008

The morning was just starting to heat up when a biologist, Ricardo Costa, set out to look for jaguars on Fazenda San Francisco, a 30,000-acre cattle ranch, rice farm and wildlife reserve in the region of southwest Brazil known as the Pantanal.

Soon, along a fringe of scrubby woodland, Mr. Costa spotted a young male jaguar lazing in sun-flecked shade. “It’s Orelha,” he whispered, pointing out the tear in the animal’s right orelha, or ear.

As Mr. Costa watched from the driver’s seat of a Toyota truck, the animal stretched and yawned, exposing teeth strong enough to crunch through the skull of almost anything. “Wonderful!” he said.

The jaguar, Panthera onca — the largest cat in the Americas and the third largest in the world — still prowls the rangelands of the Pantanal, a 74,000-square-mile mosaic of rivers, forests and seasonally flooded savannas that spill from Brazil into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay.

No one knows the precise rate at which the number of jaguars is declining or just how many jaguars there are. But the World Conservation Union pegs the total free-ranging population at fewer than 50,000 adults and classifies the animal as near threatened.

Jaguars may not yet be in such desperate shape as Asian tigers, whose noncaptive breeding population has plummeted below 2,500, or African lions, of which there are perhaps only 20,000 to 30,000 left in the wild. But if conflicts with people and their livestock are not soon resolved, conservationists warn, jaguars could quickly trace a similar trajectory.

Excerpts from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/sc...hp&oref=slogin

[lotuseclat79]

Disease threatens mass extinction of frogs
Article here.

Amphibians are important as an 'indicator species’ - similar to canaries in a coal mine - who serve as a warning when there is something wrong with the environment. Now 2008 has been designated Year of the Frog by conservationists to raise awareness of the plight of amphibians and to raise the funds needed for a concerted worldwide effort to save them.

-- Tom

[poochee]

Drought is a hard time for horses
Many are ending up in slaughterhouses or on back roads, left to die, because of overpopulation and expensive feed.
By Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 13, 2008

Joe Penn, a Kentucky horse and mule auctioneer, is not a sentimental man -- not once he enters the stockyard. He knows that the value of many horses is measured in pounds of flesh.

But this winter, the horses are thinner than usual, and Penn finds himself wondering what becomes of the creatures with bare ribs and flat rumps, the ones that now sell for as little as $10.

"I wonder," Penn said. "And then I tell myself I probably don't want to know."

Excerpt from: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...track=ntothtml

[ekim68]

Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow

KAYAR, Senegal — Ale Nodye, the son and grandson of fishermen in this northern Senegalese village, said that for the past six years he netted barely enough fish to buy fuel for his boat. So he jumped at the chance for a new beginning. He volunteered to captain a wooden canoe full of 87 Africans to the Canary Islands in the hopes of making their way illegally to Europe.

The 2006 voyage ended badly. He and his passengers were arrested and deported. His cousin died on a similar mission not long afterward.

Nonetheless, Mr. Nodye, 27, said he intended to try again.

“I could be a fisherman there,” he said. “Life is better there. There are no fish in the sea here anymore.”

Many scientists agree. A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/wo...=1&oref=slogin

[poochee]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow

KAYAR, Senegal — Ale Nodye, the son and grandson of fishermen in this northern Senegalese village, said that for the past six years he netted barely enough fish to buy fuel for his boat. So he jumped at the chance for a new beginning. He volunteered to captain a wooden canoe full of 87 Africans to the Canary Islands in the hopes of making their way illegally to Europe.

The 2006 voyage ended badly. He and his passengers were arrested and deported. His cousin died on a similar mission not long afterward.

Nonetheless, Mr. Nodye, 27, said he intended to try again.

“I could be a fisherman there,” he said. “Life is better there. There are no fish in the sea here anymore.”

Many scientists agree. A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/wo...=1&oref=slogin

That is sad.

[ekim68]

Originally Posted by poochee

That is sad.

It's really indicative of an over-crowded world...It is sad that it should get to this point...
It really is a small world..