mongabay.com

Twenty years of research has led Dr. Graham Jones of Australia’s Southern Cross University to discover a startling connection between coral reefs and coastal precipitation. According to Jones, a substance produced by thriving coral reefs seed clouds leading to precipitation in a long-standing natural process that is coming under threat due to climate change.

“Coral reefs produce a volatile substance called dimethylsulphide or DMS which oxidizes in the atmosphere to produce cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). These are tiny sulphur aerosol particles around which water vapor condenses to form clouds,” Jones explained to mongabay.com, adding that, “water vapor cannot form clouds without these tiny aerosol particles being present.”

:

Yet, in his studies, Jones has discovered that even a slight rise in ocean temperatures could affect this natural process, making climate change a significant threat to clouds (and precipitation) seeded by coral reefs.

:

Jones says that the Australian government has a number of policies in place to protect coral reefs, but “what we don’t have is funding of basic reef processes such as this one, which significantly can affect regional climate in the Great Barrier Reef.”

Research into how ecosystems, such as coral reefs and forests, may be involved in regional climate patterns has been gaining steam over the years. Two Russian scientists have published a number of studies on a controversial theory that forests actually ‘pump’ rain from the coast to continent’s interiors.

If such theories withstand the test of time, and science, they could have widespread implications for the conservation of both forests and coral reefs, adding a new and vital ecosystem-service provided by these two threatened environments: the ‘makers’ and ‘movers’ of precipitation.

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).

:

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.

:

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]

www.bytr.nl

In the Jan van Lieshoutstraat in Eindhoven (NL) – a mainly pedestrian street adjacent to a shopping mall – BYTR suggested that public space be cleared of lampposts and small planters, which were forming obstacles. The design – called the GREENSPOTLIGHT – combines these two elements, greenery and street lighting, into one integrated design: a special green public light where living plants form the shade. In the bottom of the shade, a ring of integrated planters are situated. The lights are hung from cables between the street walls. This low-key intervention raised the quality of the street from a back alley to a shopping street.

The project is part of a larger commission called ‘Greenspots Eindhoven’ in which Eindhoven municipal council has asked BYTR to look for opportunities to realise green projects in the city centre. While statistics show Eindhoven to be one of the greenest cities in the Netherlands, this is not particularly apparent walking through the city centre, which was principally built after the Second World War and comprises mainly large-scale concrete structures. In the coming years, the city will develop a series of projects in which greenery is the key element, thus trying to upgrade biodiversity in the city at the same time.

<Click on link for pictures>

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.

:

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”.

:

“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.

reefvideo.net

coralsforconservation.com

Coral Gardening from Jonathan Clay on Vimeo.

Many reef aquarium owners get their corals by trading them with nearby reefkeepers. Once corals get to a certain size it’s pretty easy to propagate (or frag) them by cutting off a branch here or a a few polyps there. It’s usually cheaper and easier than buying from a local dealer and the corals tend to do much better in the long run, because they haven’t gone through so much shipping stress. It’s also a good way to “insure” your corals because if anything ever happens to a coral you in your aquarium, you can just go back to your friend and ask him to cut you off a piece of the coral you gave him. The hobby has begun to depend on tank raised corals so much that many places that sell corals are beginning to change their stock to include more corals that are grown inside aquariums.

In this video by Jonathon Clay, locals and resort owners who live around large reefs are propagating corals in a similar fashion as reef hobbyists. A group called Corals for Conservation teaches people to preserve declining reefs and fish populations by coral gardening. The idea is that by preserving and regrowing reefs, fish will come back to the area and help replenish areas that have been over-fished.

The methods they use are very similar to that of the common aquarium keeper. The main difference is that it is on a larger scale and they use the ocean as their aquarium. It is a genius idea, promotes conservation, educates, creates jobs and supports the local community. Hopefully we will see more of these projects popping up throughout the world.

This is a sequence from the film “Fragile Paradise“, part of the BBC’s documentary series “South Pacific.“

www.ageofstupid.net

‘The Age of Stupid’ is the new cinema documentary from the Director of ‘McLibel’ and the Producer of the Oscar-winning ‘One Day in September’. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?

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

============================================

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.)

www.sfgov.org

Measure is Key to Reaching 75% Landfill Diversion

06/23/09 – Mayor Gavin Newsom today signed mandatory recycling legislation requiring residential and commercial building owners to sign up for recycling and composting services.

Mayor Newsom’s ordinance will require all residences and businesses in San Francisco to take advantage of the city’s recycling and composting collection programs. While several other cities require recycling service and participation, San Francisco is the first city to require the collection of food scraps and other compostables. Refuse collection has been mandatory since the 1930s.

“San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation, and we’ve already attained an impressive, and first in the nation, 72 percent recycling rate because of them,” said Mayor Newsom. “I am pleased with the leadership the Board of Supervisors has demonstrated on this important legislation. By collaborating with all of our stakeholders, businesses, colleagues, and citizens, we can build on our success and continue to lead the nation in recycling.”

A comprehensive study conducted by the Department of the Environment found that 36 percent of what San Francisco sends to landfills is compostable, primarily food scraps, and 31 percent is recyclable—which is mostly paper. There are facilities in the City and surrounding areas that reuse, recycle, compost or otherwise process and market most materials discarded in San Francisco, saving this material from landfill and creating green-collar jobs.

Newsom said a primary goal of the mandatory recycling ordinance, which was co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, is to get recycling and composting happening in buildings where it is not currently provided.

According to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, if all of the recyclable and compostable materials currently going to landfills were captured by the city’s programs, San Francisco’s recycling rate would soar from 72 percent to 90 percent.

No fines are specified in the ordinance, but there is a cap of $100 established for residences and businesses that generate less than one cubic yard of refuse per week, which is the equivalent of six 32-gallon carts. Fines higher than $100 may still apply to businesses and to landlords of large apartment buildings who refuse to offer recycling and composting opportunities to tenants when feasible.

Newsom said that cities with mandatory recycling and fines, such as Seattle, rarely assess such fines. He stressed that fines serve primarily to heighten public awareness and encourage compliance.

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.

================================================================================

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.