Coral Restoration Foundation

CRF is a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to to develop coral nurseries and reef restoration programs for critically endangered Acroporid corals at the local, national and global level. Their mission is to develop affordable, effective strategies for protecting and restoring coral reefs and to train and empower others to implement those strategries in their coastal communities.

BBC

cloudedleopard.org

The Sundaland clouded leopard, a recently described new species of big cat, has been caught on camera.

The film, the first footage of the cat in the wild to be made public, has been released by scientists working in the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Malaysia.

The Sundaland clouded leopard, only discovered to be a distinct species three years ago, is one of the least known and elusive of all cat species.

Two more rare cats, the flat-headed cat and bay cat, were also photographed.

Details of the discoveries are published in the latest issue of Cat News, the newsletter of the Cat Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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a tourist is thought to have taken a 30 second video of a wild Sundaland clouded leopard in 2006, but that video has never been made public.

Until 2007, all clouded leopards living in Asia were thought to belong to a single species.

However, genetic studies revealed that there are actually two quite distinct clouded leopard species.

As well as the better known clouded leopard living on the Asian mainland (Neofelis nebulosa), scientists determined that a separate clouded leopard species lives on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

The two species are thought to have diverged over one million years ago.

This leopard is now known as the Sunda or Sundaland clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), though it was previously and erroneously called the Bornean clouded leopard.

Since 2008, it has been listed as vulnerable by the IUCN.

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During the surveys, the research team also discovered a juvenile samba deer (Cervus unicolor) which had been killed by a clouded leopard.

The scientists suspect a large male clouded leopard made the kill, and had removed part of the front right leg.

Despite being a commercial forest that is sustainably logged for wood, the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Sabah, which is an area of approximately 550km square kilometres, holds all five wild Bornean cat species.

[Photo: Alain Compost/WWF-Canon, cloudedleopard.org]

BBC

More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.

Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.

These included 21% of mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.

Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss.

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The Red List, regarded as the most authoritative assessment of the state of the planet’s species, draws on the work of thousands of scientists around the globe.

The latest update lists amphibians as the most seriously affected group of organisms on the planet, with 1,895 of the 6,285 known species listed as threatened.

Of these, it lists 39 species as either “extinct” or “extinct in the wild”. A further 484 are deemed “critically endangered”, 754 “endangered” and 657 “vulnerable”.

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“In our lifetime, we have gone from having to worry about a relatively small number of highly threatened species to the collapse of entire ecosystems,” observed Professor Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

“At what point will society truly respond to this growing crisis?”

The updated data from the 2009 Red List is being made publicly available on the IUCN website on Tuesday.

Stomp.com.sg

STOMPer Eric was having lunch at a seafood restaurant in Johor when he saw a whale shark being hauled into the jetty and hacked to pieces.

In an email to STOMP today (Aug 24), the STOMPer says:

“These pictures were taken yesterday at a jetty in southern johor.

“I was there having lunch with some friends at a seafood restaurant when a local walked in and told the boss that a big shark was caught.

“I did not give much thought to it until the workers who went there to see came back and told their fellow colleagues that the shark was as big as a pick-up.

“This caught my attention. We paid for our meal and went over to the jetty to have a look.

“When we reached the jetty, it was already quite crowded. I managed to squeeze in some photos as the poor shark was being sliced by a hack saw.

“I’m not too sure who caught it but heard it was brought in by three fishing boats from the South China Sea.

“As you can see, the shark was being chopped up, did not stay long to watch as we had to catch our ferry.

“Seeing the poor guy being chopped up, I was quite sad.

“What you see in picture is very different from the actual situation. There was the noise from the hack saw, blood flowing out etc.”
Click on link to see more pix

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National Geographic

environment.gov.au

Fast Facts

nationalgeographic

WWF

A rare pangolin fetus floats in soup in Indonesia in 2008. Some practitioners of Asian traditional medicine believe pangolin-fetus soup increases a man’s virility.

But because pangolin mothers typically produce just one pup per litter, the soup comes laced with a deadly irony. Whatever the soup purportedly does for individual humans, its popularity could be helping to squelch the reproductiveness of an entire species.

Because of growing demand for pangolin meat and scales, the toothless creature is now being hunted to the edge of extinction, according to a July 14 report by the international conservation group WWF and the wildlife-trade watchdog group TRAFFIC, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Native to the Indian subcontinent, Asia, and Africa, the pangolin, or scaly anteater, is especially coveted in China, where it has been overhunted, WWF says. China’s reduced supply fuels pangolin hunting in Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, says the report, which was funded in part by the National Geographic Society’s Conservation Trust. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Center for Biological Diversity

Pint-sized rabbit relatives, pikas live in high-elevation boulder fields surrounded by mountain meadows throughout the western United States. Specially adapted to cold alpine conditions, they cannot tolerate high temperatures. Rising temperatures and drier conditions in summer can expose the animals to heat stroke, reduce food in mountain meadows, and make conditions too hot for them to find food. In winter, because they remain active rather than hibernate, pikas rely on insulating snowpack and their dense coats to keep them warm – but the loss of winter snowpack due to climate change exposes them to deadly winter cold snaps.

Rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas pollution have already caused drastic losses of lower-elevation pika populations. More than a third of documented pika populations in the Great Basin mountains of Nevada and Oregon have gone extinct in the past century as temperatures warmed. In California, pikas have moved upslope in Yosemite National Park over the past century, and they have largely disappeared from the Bodie Hills in the Sierra Nevada mountains in recent decades. Scientists project that global warming will virtually eliminate suitable habitat for the pika in this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced.

It’s not too late to prevent the extinction of the pika, but we must act quickly to slow global warming. The Fish and Wildlife Service needs to hear from you. Please use the form below to support the listing of the American pika and urge the government to reduce greenhouse gas pollution to levels that will protect the pika and other wildlife species from extinction.

Click here for the form.

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WWF

The American pika, a small flower-gathering relative of the rabbit, may be one of the first mammals in North America known to fall victim to global warming if heat-trapping emissions are not reduced soon.
American pikas are typically found in rocky areas, called talus, within alpine regions of the western United States and southwestern Canada. Many hikers, while passing through pika habitat in these rocky areas, have heard these shy creatures call and whistle to each other.

Since food is difficult to obtain in winter in the alpine environment, pikas cut, sun-dry, and later store vegetation for winter use in characteristic ‘hay piles.’ They are often called ‘ecosystem engineers’ because of their extensive haying activities.

biologicaldiversity.org

The federal National Marine Fisheries Service today took the first steps towards protecting critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act for the Cook Inlet beluga whale in Alaska. In October 2008 the Fisheries Service listed the whale as endangered. The listing occurred following petitions and litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations.

However, rather than designate critical habitat for the beluga at the time of listing as required by the Endangered Species Act, the Fisheries Service stated that it would defer habitat protection for a year. The Fisheries Service finally began the overdue process of protecting Cook Inlet beluga critical habitat by publishing a notice in the Federal Register requesting public comment on what areas should be protected. The Fisheries Service has stated that the habitat rule will be finalized by October 22, 2009.

Studies have shown that species with critical habitat are twice as likely to be recovering as species without any habitat designated.

“If we quickly act to designate and protect the critical habitat of the Cook Inlet beluga, this highly imperiled whale has a real chance of recovery,” said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Unfortunately, the federal government has been lackadaisical about protecting the beluga, while the state of Alaska has been outright hostile to the species.”

In January, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that the State of Alaska would sue the federal government to overturn endangered species protections for the beluga. That lawsuit has yet to be filed.

The Cook Inlet beluga whale is a genetically distinct and geographically isolated population whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades. Recent surveys show the Cook Inlet beluga whale’s population now hovers around 375 animals, down from an estimated population of approximately 1,300 whales in the 1980s. The Cook Inlet beluga whale is one of five populations of beluga, or white whales, in Alaska.

The original decline of the Cook Inlet beluga was likely caused by overhunting, but the population has failed to rebound since hunting was curtailed in 1999, indicating that other factors are interfering with its recovery. Most likely the whale is being harmed by noise and pollution from industrial activities in Cook Inlet.

Cook Inlet is the most populated and fastest growing watershed in Alaska, and is subject to significant proposed offshore oil and gas development in beluga habitat. Additionally, the proposed Knik Arm Bridge, a billion-dollar boondoggle that would provide little benefit other than to shorten the governor’s commute from Wasilla to Anchorage, will directly affect some of the whale’s most important habitat. Port expansion and a proposed giant coal mine and coal export dock would also destroy key beluga habitat.

A recently completed Conservation Plan for the beluga specifically identified essential habitat areas for the beluga, as well as threats to that habitat, and will likely form the basis for the critical habitat designation.

“If we do what is necessary to protect the critical habitat of the Cook Inlet beluga whale, by extension we will also be protecting water quality, salmon fisheries, and the health of the entire Cook Inlet ecosystem,” added Cummings.

More information on the Cook Inlet beluga whale can be found at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/Cook_Inlet_beluga_whale/index.html

AP

A hatchling of a rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found in the wild on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, a wildlife official said Thursday.

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Tuatara are the last lizard-like descendants of a reptile species that walked the Earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.

There are estimated to be about 50,000 of them living in the wild on 32 small offshore islands cleared of predators, but this is the first time a hatchling has been seen on the mainland in about 200 years.

The New Zealand natives were nearly extinct on the country’s three main islands by the late 1700s due to the introduction of predators such as rats.

Empson said the hatchling is thought to be about one month old and likely came from an egg laid about 16 months ago. Two nests of eggs — the size of pingpong balls — were unearthed in the sanctuary last year and tuatara were expected to hatch around this time.

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The youngster faces a tough journey to maturity despite being in the 620-acre (250 hectare) sanctuary and protected by a predator-proof fence. It will have to run from the cannibalistic adult tuatara, and would make a tasty snack for the morepork (native owl), kingfisher and weka (New Zealand’s endemic flightless rail), Empson said.

“Like all the wildlife living here, he’ll just have to take his chances” Empson said.

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About 200 tuatara have been released since 2005 into the Karori Sanctuary, which was established to breed native birds, insects and other creatures.

Tuatara have unique characteristics, such as two rows of top teeth closing over one row at the bottom and a pronounced parietal eye — a light-sensitive pineal gland on the top of the skull that gives the appearance of a third eye.

AP

A rare Hawaii vine has been added to the endangered species list, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday. It’s the second species to be classified as endangered by the Obama administration. The first was the reticulated flatwoods salamander, an amphibian native to south Georgia, north Florida and coastal South Carolina. It was put on the list last month.

The Hawaii plant is found only in the wet forests on the island of Molokai, 2,300 to 4,200 feet above sea level. The green vine’s loosely spreading branches often tangle in a large mass.

The vine doesn’t have a common name, and is known only by its scientific name of Phyllostegia hispida.

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Only 10 individual plants of the vine had been spotted between 1910 and 1996, the agency said.

It was thought to be extinct in 1997. But two seedlings were found at the Nature Conservancy’s Kamakou Preserve in 2005.

Since 2007, 24 wild plants have been discovered. A total of 238 plants are known to currently exist.

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The Lyon Arboretum in Honolulu, Kalaupapa National Historical Park on Molokai, and other organization have been growing specimens that may be used to plant the vine in the wild, the agency said.

The state’s Department of Natural Resources has put up fences in some areas to protect them from pigs and other feral animals.

Hawaii has 329 federally protected endangered species, more than any other state.

Center for Biological Diversity

Governor Sarah Palin won’t give wildlife a break. Last week, she announced the state of Alaska will sue to strike down Endangered Species Act protection for the imperiled Cook Inlet beluga whale. This rare white whale’s population has already plummeted from thousands to just 375 in the last two decades. They will certainly go extinct if Palin has her way.

Our lawyers and scientists are already in court to block Palin’s anti-polar bear actions, and we’ll soon jump in to save the beluga from her reckless campaign to promote oil & gas interests. But we also need to build a groundswell of public support. Please help us now to protect beluga whales by sending a letter asking the Obama administration to oppose Palin’s lawsuit.

What’s At Stake

The Center for Biological Diversity has gone up against Governor Sarah Palin before and is gearing up to do it again. Last August, after we won federal protection for the polar bear, Palin filed suit to strike the protections down in order to make things easier for Big Oil in the Arctic.

Cook Inlet beluga whales face serious threats from oil and gas development, pollution, gillnets, global warming, underwater seismic blasting and sonar devices. They won’t survive if Palin strips away the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

Palin’s bloodthirsty attitude towards wildlife – from promoting the shooting of wolves from helicopters to gutting protection for polar bears – ignores government scientists and runs roughshod over our laws. Tell the Obama administration to oppose Palin’s lawsuit – we must protect endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales.

In the Bush years, the federal government often capitulated on industry-friendly lawsuits, using them as an excuse to revoke environmental protections. Palin is betting on that trend continuing, but we’re counting on you. We need to take advantage of this historic opportunity to raise a public outcry to the Obama administration to keep protections in place.

Please send a letter today urging the administration to reject Palin’s spurious claims and defend the imperiled Cook Inlet beluga whale against this assault.