Study links biodiversity and language loss/ nature and culture

By Mark Kinver - BBC News

The decline of linguistic and cultural diversity is linked to the loss of biodiversity, a study has suggested.

The authors said that 70% of the world's languages were found within the planet's biodiversity hotspots.

Data showed that as these important environmental areas were degraded over time, cultures and languages in the area were also being lost.

The results of the study have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Biologists estimate annual loss of species at 1,000 times or more greater than historic rates, and linguists predict that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear by the end of the century," the researchers wrote...

"We used improved language data to really get a more solid sense of how languages and biodiversity co-occurred and an understanding of how geographically extensive the language was."

He said the study achieved this by also looking at smaller areas with high biodiversity, such as national parks or other protected habitats.

"When we did that, not only did we get a sense of co-occurrence at a regional scale, but we also got a sense that co-occurrence was found at a much finer scale," he said.

"We are not quite sure yet why this happens, but in a lot of cases it may well be that biodiversity evolved as part-and-parcel of cultural diversity, and vice versa."

In their paper, the researchers pointed out that, out of the 6,900 or more languages spoken on Earth, more than 4,800 occurred in regions containing high biodiversity....

"Oceans on brink of catastrophe"

From www.independent.co.uk/
"State of seas 'much worse than we thought', says global panel of scientists"

The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today. The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe "unprecedented in human history", according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The stark suggestion made by the panel is that the potential extinction of species, from large fish at one end of the scale to tiny corals at the other, is directly comparable to the five great mass extinctions in the geological record, during each of which much of the world's life died out. They range from the Ordovician-Silurian "event" of 450 million years ago, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of 65 million years ago, which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The worst of them, the event at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, is thought to have eliminated 70 per cent of species on land and 96 per cent of all species in the sea.

The panel of 27 scientists, who considered the latest research from all areas of marine science, concluded that a "combination of stressors is creating the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth's history". They also concluded:

* The speed and rate of degeneration of the oceans is far faster than anyone has predicted;

* Many of the negative impacts identified are greater than the worst predictions;

* The first steps to globally significant extinction may have already begun.

"The findings are shocking," said Dr Alex Rogers, professor of conservation biology at Oxford University and IPSO's scientific director. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.

"This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, in the lifetime of our children and generations beyond that." Reviewing recent research, the panel of experts "found firm evidence" that the effects of climate change, coupled with other human-induced impacts such as overfishing and nutrient run-off from farming, have already caused a dramatic decline in ocean health.

Not only are there severe declines in many fish species, to the point of commercial extinction in some cases, and an "unparalleled" rate of regional extinction of some habitat types, such as mangrove and seagrass meadows, but some whole marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, may be gone within a generation.

The report says: "Increasing hypoxia [low oxygen levels] and anoxia [absence of oxygen, known as ocean dead zones], combined with warming of the ocean and acidification, are the three factors which have been present in every mass extinction event in Earth's history.

"There is strong scientific evidence that these three factors are combining in the ocean again, exacerbated by multiple severe stressors. The scientific panel concluded that a new extinction event was inevitable if the current trajectory of damage continues."

The panel pointed to a number of indicators showing how serious the situation is. It said, for example, that a single mass coral bleaching event in 1998 killed 16 per cent of all the world's coral reefs, and pointed out that overfishing has reduced some commercial fish stocks and populations of "bycatch" (unintentionally caught) species by more than 90 per cent.

It disclosed that new scientific research suggests that pollutants, including flame-retardant chemicals and synthetic musks found in detergents, are being traced in the polar seas, and that these chemicals can be absorbed by tiny plastic particles in the ocean which are in turn ingested by marine creatures such as bottom-feeding fish.

Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms – which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.

The experts agreed that when these and other threats are added together, the ocean and the ecosystems within it are unable to recover, being constantly bombarded with multiple attacks....


The report's conclusions will be presented at the UN in New York this week, when delegates begin discussions on reforming governance of the oceans.

The five great extinctions

The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction (the End Cretaceous or K-T extinction) 65.5 Mya (million years ago)

Plankton, which lies at the bottom of the ocean food chain took a hard hit in an event that also saw the demise of the last of the non-avian dinosaurs. The giant mosasaurs and plesiosaurs also vacated the seas. An asteroid or volcano eruptions are thought to be to blame.

The Triassic–Jurassic extinction (End Triassic) – 205 Mya

Having a profound affect on sea and land, this period saw 20 per cent of all marine families disappear. In total, half the species known to be living on Earth at that time went extinct. Gradual climate change, fluctuating sea-levels and volcanic eruptions are among the reasons cited for the disappearing species.

The Permian–Triassic extinction (End Permian) 251 Mya

A period known as the "great dying" was the most severe of the earth's extinction events, when 96 per cent of marine species were lost, as well as almost three-quarters of terrestrial species. The planet took a long time to recover from what has also been called "the mother of all mass extinctions".

The late Devonian extinction 360–375 Mya

Three-quarters of all species on Earth died out in a period that may have spanned several million years. The shallow seas were the worst affected and reefs would not recover for another 100 million years. Changes in sea level and climate change were among the suspected causes.

The Ordovician–Silurian extinction (End Ordovician or O-S) – 440–450 Mya

The third largest extinction in Earth's history had two peak dying times. During the Ordovician, most life was in the sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites that were drastically reduced. In all, some 85 per cent of sea species were wiped out.

Waves of destruction

Case Study One in the panel's report assesses the "deadly trio" of factors – global warming, ocean acidification and anoxia (absence of oxygen). Most if not all of the five global mass extinctions in prehistory carry the fingerprints of these "carbon perturbations", the report says, and the "deadly trio" are present in the ocean today.

Case Study Two looks at coral reefs, and the fact that these "rainforests of the sea" (so-called for their species richness) are now facing multiple threats. The panel concluded that these threats acting together (pollution, acidification, warming, overfishing) will have a greater impact than if they were occurring on their own, and so estimates of how coral reefs will respond to global warming will have to be revised.

Case Study Three examines pollution, which is an old problem, but may be presenting new threats, as a wide range of novel chemicals is now being found in marine ecosystems, from pharmaceuticals to flame retardants, and some are known to be endocrine disrupters or can damage immune systems. Marine litter, especially, plastics, is a huge concern.

Case Study Four looks at over-fishing: it focuses on the Chinese bahaba, a giant fish which was first described by scientists only in the 1930s, but is now critically endangered: it has gone from discovery to near-disappearance in less than 70 years. A recent study showed that 63 per cent of the assessed fish stocks worldwide are over-exploited or depleted.

"World's biggest snake threatened by backpackers"

From the Telegraph.UK:

By Michael Howie, La Paz

But for the anacondas that live in the swamps surrounding the Yacuma River in northern Bolivia, this invasion of gap year travellers and other hardy tourists is proving disastrous.

Biologists say the entire population of anacondas in one of the jewels of the Amazon basin will be wiped out within three years because of the deadly effect on the snakes of the insect repellant used by most backpackers to help protect against malaria.

The number of tourists going on tours of the pampas that snake there way through jungle and grasslands 250 miles north of La Paz has exploded from a few hundred to nearly 12,000 a year in the past decade.

Travellers are enticed by the promise of getting up close and personal with the world's largest snake - sometimes picking them up and hlding them - as well as swimming with river dolphins, catching pirhanas, and spotting monkeys, sloths and an array of other flora and fauna.

But sightings of the snake are becoming increasingly elusive and as many as 30 of the awe-inspiring creatures, which can measure up to 30ft in length and are known to strangle and devour prey as diverse as caiman crocodiles and cows, are being found dead every year, according to local guides.

Roberto Justiniano, a tour guide and biologist working closely with other scientists to assess the impact of the unrestrained tourism boom, revealed that the growing quantity of toxins being washed into the waterways from travellers is proving too much for the anacondas.

"The high-strength insect repellant that tourists use to protect themselves from mosquitos is absolutely fatal to the anacondas.
"They are amphibians and breath through their skin. The insect repellant, along with some types of sun cream, is extremely toxic. It is getting washed into the pampas and left in the swamps where tourists are hunting for the snakes.

"We are finding between 25 and 30 dead anacondas which have been poisoned. It is terrible."

Amphibians, such as snakes and frogs, are highly susceptible to the chemicals contained in many types of insect repellant, in particular those that contain DEET. This is partly because they breathe and absorb water through their skin, providing an easier way for contaminants to enter the animal's body. Environmentalists recommend using safer insect repellants based on natural oils, but many tourists complains these are less effective.

Zoologists estimate that only around 200 anacondas remain in the Yacuma River swamps, a sharp fall from the population of nearly 1,000 a few years ago.

"A few years years ago you had a 90 per cent chance of seeing anacondas - maybe three or four together. Now you are very lucky if you see one."

He added: "A study has been carried out by other biologists which shows the ecosystem will collapse in three years if things continue as they are."

The fear is that insects, fish and smaller amphibians would be wiped out within the river basin, resulting in the collapse of the entire food chain.

"Snakes in mysterious global decline"

From the BBC:

Snakes may be declining across the world, according to a global study. Researchers examined records for 17 snake populations covering eight species over the last few decades, and found most had declined markedly.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, some populations shrank in number abruptly around 1998.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers describe the findings as "alarming" but say much more work is needed to understand the causes. "This is the first time that data has been analysed in this way, and what we've shown is that in different parts of the world we seem to have this steep decline in a short period," said project leader Chris Reading. Reading's team at the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology ran the study with institutions in Australia, France, Italy and Nigeria.

The main problem for anyone wanting to conduct a global survey such as this is simply lack of data. Monitoring snake populations means marking the individuals in some way - typically by snipping a pattern into their scales, or implanting a microchip. Field seasons can last for many months, and have to be repeated annually.

The researchers believe they amassed most, if not all, long-term datasets for this study - although "long-term" in this context means going back more than one decade, in some cases more than two. Nevertheless, within this relatively short timeframe, eight of the 17 populations were seen to fall markedly in size - some by more than 90% - with only one showing any sign of a rise. Species in decline include the asp and the smooth snake from Europe, the Gabon viper and rhinoceros viper of West Africa, and the royal python...

Populations shrank even in protected areas, suggesting that the progressive loss of habitat for wild animals being seen all over the world is not the only cause. Similar steep declines observed in frogs and newts in an earlier period were eventually found to be caused by the fungal disease chytridiomycosis. The year when many of the snake declines began - 1998 - raises the question of whether climatic factors might be involved, as very strong El Nino conditions contributed to making it the hottest year recorded in modern times.

"...I think that with so many populations in different places showing decline, it's more than co-incidence."

"Saving global fish stocks would cost 20 million jobs"

From the Guardian.UK:

UN Report says 13 million fishing boats must be retired to replenish stocks, with money redirected to retrain millions of workers.

More than 20 million people employed in the fishing industry may need to be taken out of service and retrained for other work over the next 40 years if the final collapse of fish stocks in oceans around the globe is to be avoided, the UN warned today.

The UN's environment branch, UNEP, gave a sneak preview of its green economy report that will be published in October. It said that if the world remained on its current path of over-fishing, by 2050 all fish stocks could have become uneconomic to exploit or actually extinct.

Pavan Sukhdev, who heads UNEP's green economy initiative, said: "That is not as absurd as it sounds, as already 30% of the ocean fisheries have collapsed and are producing less than 10% of their original ability."

At the heart of the UN's analysis is the $27bn of subsidies it estimates is being injected into fishing every year, mainly by developing countries. The UN says the subsidies are huge in terms of the scale of the industry – amounting to almost a third of the $85bn total value of fish caught.

Among those subsidies, the UN defines just $8bn-worth as "good" in the sense of encouraging sustainable fishing of healthy stocks. Most of the subsidies are "bad", meaning they lead to overcapacity and exploitation, and about $3bn of the subsidies are "ugly", actively leading to the depletion of fish populations.

Among the most egregious practices targeted by the report are inducements to increase the size of massive trawler fleets that are among the main culprits of overfishing, and fuel subsidies on fuel for fleets.

"We are paying ourselves to destroy the very resource on which the whole fishing industry is dependant. We are in the process of eroding the natural capital that underpins our economies," said Achim Steiner, UNEP's director.

At stake is not just the biodiversity of the oceans, but a substantial chunk of the global economy and the livelihoods that depend on it. The UN estimates there are about 35 million people directly employed in fishing, which translates to about 120 million including their households and 500 million – or about 8% of global population – taking into account indirect businesses such as packaging, freezing and transport.

It is also a huge health issue, as fish provides the main source of animal protein for 1 billion of the world's poorest people.

The paradox is that there is so much overfishing going on that the industry has become increasingly inefficient. The UN believes that by switching from large trawler fleets to more sustainable local or "artisanal" fishing, fish stocks will recover and the total size of catch will grow...

The green economy report is being prepared ahead of the Rio+20 summit, to be held in Brazil in 2012. The UN hopes that governments will come under mounting pressure over the next two years over the fish crisis.

UNEP refuses to name and shame the worst offenders in overfishing, though it says its final report will contain tables and statistics that will "enable any reader to figure out where the problem is". The Spanish and Japanese governments and the EU, which have been singled out by environmentalists for criticism, have been sent draft chapters of the report, alongside other leading fishing nations. "We are getting the message out that this will not remain unnoticed," Sukhdev said.

"Britain's rarest wild flower gets special police protection"

From telegraph.co.uk:

The Lady's Slipper orchid at Silverdale Golf Course in Carnfoth, Lancashire, is the last remaining flowering plant in the country.
Although experts have tried to re-introduce the purple and yellow bloom in other areas, none of them have flowered.

Lancashire Police is now mounting a three-pronged defence of the flower amid concerns thieves may strike in May or June when the plant flowers.

Officers have been ordered to 'ensure the safety' of the orchid by including it in their routine foot patrols, meaning they will pass it every hour or so.

Police will also tag the 100-year-old orchid with a coded security mark so that anyone who tries to sell a cutting to wildflower collectors can be caught.

The force is also considering spending thousands of pounds on CCTV cameras to keep a 24-hour watch on the orchid, which is protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

PC Tony Marsh, beat manager for the area, told Police Review: "We will be doing passing patrols, putting up deterrent notices, warning people about the offences and (asking them) to report any suspicious activity."

The orchid has been given a unique log number on the police computer system - which will alert the duty officer whenever a report concerning the flower is received.

Last June a thief took a cutting from the plant, leaving it with just six flowers, and in 2004 a collector tried to dig up the entire plant by its roots, but managed to get away with just a part of the plant.

PC Marsh added: "The biggest threat is collectors. When flowers were taken last year, we think purely just to press and put in a book, the value on the crime report was thousands of pounds."

PC Marsh has even circled the rare orchid with police crime scene tape in a bid to deter potential thieves.

PC Duncan Thomas, wildlife officer for Lancashire Constabulary, said the orchid - whose Latin name is Cypripedium calceolus - was "incredibly important".

He said: "The Lady Slipper orchid is an incredibly important plant, having survived for over a hundred years when all other plants were thought extinct. It is iconic to many people who enjoy wildlife in Britain.

"People travel from all ends of the country on what is almost a pilgrimage to view the plant in bloom and are often overcome with emotion at the sight.

"We have been monitoring this amazing plant for a number of years and you can't help being impressed by not only its rarity but the incredible display when flowering.

"How it will end"

"So what really will kill us? Greed, fear, short sightedness, and an inability to create a government that serves the public interest."

By Steve Kirsch

Modern humans have roamed the earth for the past 120,000 years. If we continue to act as we have in the past and as we are acting now, the scientific consensus is that there is now more than a 5% chance that human beings could be virtually extinct in as little as 90 years from now.

The reason you haven't heard about it though is because the press hasn't really connected the dots between 3 different highly respected scientific sources: IPCC consensus report, a paper that appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (that was cited by Time Magazine), and a book, "Six Degrees" by Mark Lynas, that was brought to my attention by Bob Corell, a leading climate scientist who appeared on 60 Minutes in 2006.

If you put the 3 sources together, you'll reach the same conclusion I did.

Here are the details...

Ostensibly, we will die due to the effects of global warming. By 2100, according to the IPCC consensus report (see Table SPM.3 on page 13 and footnote 5 on page 2 which explains the ranges in the table), there is a 5% chance that the average temperature of the planet will rise by more than 6.4ºC. That's in the report, clear as day, but nobody talks about it because only a few people understand exactly what that means to our planet. But one guy from the UK (who has hardly gotten any press in the US) Mark Lynas, has done the research on what this means. Lynas spent 3 years of his life poring over 10,000 scientific papers and found that, although it doesn't sound like a lot, a 6ºC temperature rise will pretty much wipe out just about every life form on the planet, us included. Although IPCC scientists had previously projected that there was only a 5% chance of more than a 6.4ºC warming by 2100, the assumptions on which those projections are based have already been exceeded, which is pointed out in this paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper points out that the assumptions in all 6 emission scenarios considered by the IPCC have already been exceeded. So that's why I am using the numbers from the A1FI scenario, which gave a 5% chance of exceeding 6.4ºC by 2100. If it doesn't happen by 2100, it will not be long after. I wrote a short web page "Why global warming should be every candidate's #1 priority" describing this in detail.

The bottom line is this: unless we change our ways, there is more than a 5% chance of a mass human extinction in less than 100 years. I'm just telling you what the overwhelming scientific consensus is. Whether or not you choose to believe it is, of course, up to you. If you do disagree, what is the scientific basis for your disagreement? Do you know something the scientists don't?

For some it will come much sooner. Australia will likely be mostly uninhabitable in 50 years from now (see Sydney 50 years to live Features The First Post).

So what really will kill us? Greed, fear, short sightedness, and an inability to create a government that serves the public interest.

Much as we may hate to admit it, our own government, which we empower to make decisions for us, is essentially no smarter than the frog in Gore's movie. Special interests, driven by short-term greed, control government decisions in America. Politicians, fearing they will be not be re-elected, pay attention to the people who are willing to spend big money to get their way. And despite all the awareness about global warming that has been generated to date, the public is still shortsighted and doesn't demand change. That lack of public outrage is why top staffers in the House complain that they can't pass even the simplest of measures to combat climate change, such as a bill to increase mileage standards for cars.

It's likely that we are not outraged because we will not feel the full impact of the ecological catastrophe we are creating today for another 30 to 50 years due to the thermal inertia of the ocean. The climate changes we are seeing today are just the tip of the iceberg; they are from our emissions from more than 30 years ago. Our emissions today are much higher than 30 years ago. But most people don't know that. They look out the window and things look fine. It seems just too impossible to believe that we could all be dead in less than 100 years. So we choose to ignore what the scientists tell us. The most unequivocal and important scientific consensus in our lifetime, and we choose to ignore it. How smart is that?

We are also too easily distracted by other seemingly more immediate issues such as terrorism, Iraq, healthcare and immigration to worry about things such as the survival of humanity. We think we can worry about that later. But we can't. By the time global warming has caused mass devastation, it will be way to late to do anything about it. The public can complain all they want...but it will be too late to make changes because the same "time delay" that has protected us for decades (the thermal inertia of the oceans) works the other way to make it impossible to reverse things quickly, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions completely. Our climate is like a battleship: it's direction can not change quickly. Today, we are like mariners in a fog heading straight for disaster. By the time we can clearly see the iceberg ahead, it will be too late to turn the battleship to avoid hitting it...

If we are going to save humanity from extinction, we had better be doing something about these 3 issues:

• global warming
• overpopulation
• the accelerating decline of every single major ecosystem

All of these trends are getting worse. None have been reversed at a global scale. We need action on all three. But right now, none of the candidates have the courage to even talk about serious solutions. In fact, on some issues, they won't even talk about the problem!

... Lester Brown does a great job of describing it in his wonderful book Plan B 2.0. Jared Diamond lays it all out in his book, Collapse. Diamond, Brown, George Monbiot, and others all point out that we have the technology to save ourselves, but simply lack the political will and leadership to do so...

What's ironic is that our fear of confronting and solving these problems makes no sense. If we do what must be done, there will be an incredible upside along the way - new jobs, and the inspiration that comes from working together on something that is greater than ourselves. There could be a final product of a healthier, happier humanity, with a planet shared by diverse and amazing creatures, if only people are willing to make the compromises needed to live sustainably....

"Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve"

This doesn't seem like it would be news....

From the Guardian:

For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve, one of the world's experts on biodiversity has warned.

Conservation experts have already signalled that the world is in the grip of the "sixth great extinction" of species, driven by the destruction of natural habitats, hunting, the spread of alien predators and disease, and climate change.

However until recently it has been hoped that the rate at which new species were evolving could keep pace with the loss of diversity of life.

Speaking in advance of two reports next week on the state of wildlife in Britain and Europe, Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – the body which officially declares species threatened and extinct – said that point had now "almost certainly" been crossed.

"Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there's no question that the current extinction rates are faster than that; I think it's inevitable," said Stuart.

The IUCN created shock waves with its major assessment of the world's biodiversity in 2004, which calculated that the rate of extinction had reached 100-1,000 times that suggested by the fossil records before humans.

No formal calculations have been published since, but conservationists agree the rate of loss has increased since then, and Stuart said it was possible that the dramatic predictions of experts like the renowned Harvard biologist E O Wilson, that the rate of loss could reach 10,000 times the background rate in two decades, could be correct.

"All the evidence is he's right," said Stuart. "Some people claim it already is that ... things can only have deteriorated because of the drivers of the losses, such as habitat loss and climate change, all getting worse. But we haven't measured extinction rates again since 2004 and because our current estimates contain a tenfold range there has to be a very big deterioration or improvement to pick up a change."

Extinction is part of the constant evolution of life, and only 2-4% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are thought to be alive today. However fossil records suggest that for most of the planet's 3.5bn year history the steady rate of loss of species is thought to be about one in every million species each year.

Only 869 extinctions have been formally recorded since 1500, however, because scientists have only "described" nearly 2m of an estimated 5-30m species around the world, and only assessed the conservation status of 3% of those, the global rate of extinction is extrapolated from the rate of loss among species which are known. In this way the IUCN calculated in 2004 that the rate of loss had risen to 100-1,000 per millions species annually – a situation comparable to the five previous "mass extinctions" – the last of which was when the dinosaurs were wiped out about 65m years ago.

Critics, including The Skeptical Environmentalist author, Bjørn Lomborg, have argued that because such figures rely on so many estimates of the number of underlying species and the past rate of extinctions based on fossil records of marine animals, the huge margins for error make these figures too unreliable to form the basis of expensive conservation actions.

However Stuart said that the IUCN figure was likely to be an underestimate of the problem, because scientists are very reluctant to declare species extinct even when they have sometimes not been seen for decades, and because few of the world's plants, fungi and invertebrates have yet been formally recorded and assessed.

The calculated increase in the extinction rate should also be compared to another study of thresholds of resilience for the natural world by Swedish scientists, who warned that anything over 10 times the background rate of extinction – 10 species in every million per year – was above the limit that could be tolerated if the world was to be safe for humans, said Stuart.

"No one's claiming it's as small as 10 times," he said. "There are uncertainties all the way down; the only thing we're certain about is the extent is way beyond what's natural and it's getting worse."

Many more species are "discovered" every year around the world, than are recorded extinct, but these "new" plants and animals are existing species found by humans for the first time, not newly evolved species...

Later this year the Convention on Biological Diversity is expected to formally declare that the pledge by world leaders in 2002 to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 has not been met, and to agree new, stronger targets...

Extinction Affecting "Whole Families"/ Clusters of Lifeforms

From the BBC:

Whole "chunks of life" are lost in extinction events, as related species vanish together, say scientists.

A study in the journal Science shows that extinctions tend to "cluster" on evolutionary lineages - wiping out species with a common ancestor.

The finding is based on an examination of past extinctions, but could help current conservation efforts.

Researchers say that this phenomenon can result in the loss of an entire branch of the "tree of life".

The message for modern conservation, say the authors, is that some groups are more vulnerable to extinction than others, and the focus should be on the lineages most at risk.

Lead researcher Kaustuv Roy, a biologist from the University of California, San Diego, focused on marine bivalves - including clams, oysters and mussels. The fossil record for these creatures dates back almost 200 million years.

By tracing this documented timeline of evolution and extinction, the team was able to see the effects of "background extinctions" as well as the mass extinctions, such as the one around 65 million years ago during which the dinosaurs finally died out.

Many species have become extinct during the relatively stable periods between those global calamities.

But even during such quiet periods, the team found that extinctions tended to cluster into evolutionary families - with closely-related species of clams vanishing together more often than would be predicted by chance.

Richard Grenyer, a biologist from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, told BBC News that by going "way back into the fossil record" this study provided important evidence of the patterns of extinction.

"Big groups of organisms tend to be similar to one another," he explained. "Look at the large cats for example."

But genetic similarities also mean, said Dr Grenyer, that "a bad effect that affects one of them, will likely affect all of them".
"It's like a casino of extinctions, with the odds rigged against certain groups."...

Chimpanzee population down 90% in Cote D’Ivoire

From Mongabay.com:

Chimp populations continue to decline in Africa. A new survey of our closest relatives in the Cote D’Ivoire found that the population fell from an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals to a paltry 800 to 1,200, a decline that took place in less than twenty years.

Perhaps most troubling about this new survey is Cote d’Ivoire was supposed to be a stronghold for chimpanzees in West Africa. The report warns it is likely that similar declines have occurred in other West African nations.

Researchers point to an increase of humans in Cote d’Ivoire as the primary reason. Since 1990 the nation has seen its human population grow by 50 percent. This has lead to increases in poaching and deforestation, activities which target both chimps and their habitat.

"The habitat is gone, and all the protected areas have been invaded by people. It's not just the chimps—[there's] no animals at all," lead author Genevieve Campbell told National Geographic.

In the 1960s it was estimated that chimpanzee population in Cote d’Ivoire was 100,000 individuals.

The Seafood Industry - Overfishing

From the Guardian.co.uk:

No tuna, no salmon. No oysters, no skate. No cod and chips
Imagine a world without seafood for supper. It's nearer than you think.

As I step off the train at Heysel, in the shadow of the notorious football stadium, the vast art deco structure of the Palais du Centenaire rises like a cathedral. With its four soaring buttresses topped by statues, the Palais forms the centrepiece of the Parc des Expositions in Brussels - a trade-fair complex built in the 1930s to commemorate a century of independence from the Netherlands. This is the temporary home of thousands of fish products from around the world as 23,000 delegates descend from 80 countries for the annual European Seafood Exposition - the world's largest seafood trade show and a grim reminder of man's dominion over the oceans.

"If I wanted people to understand the global fishing crisis, I would bring them here," says Sally Bailey, a marine programme officer with the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the more moderate NGOs combating the exploitation of the seas. Last year, one of the more militant groups - Greenpeace - managed to "close down" five exhibitors trading in critically endangered bluefin tuna, by deploying 80 activists to drape their stands in fishing nets, chain themselves to fixtures and put up banners that read: "Time and tuna are running out".

Their main target was the Mitsubishi Corporation, the Japanese car manufacturer that is also the world's largest tuna trader, controlling 60% of the market and accounting for 40% of all bluefin tuna imported into Japan from the Mediterranean. The other companies were Dongwon Industries (Korea), Moon Marine (Taiwan/ Singapore), Azzopardi Fisheries (Malta) and Ricardo Fuentes & Sons (Spain).

The day I am there, Greenpeace activists are stalking EU fisheries ministers and waiting for a chance to unfurl their banners - but the security guards thwart them. However, the gargantuan catch on display speaks for itself. At the stand run by the Sea Wealth Frozen Food Company of Thailand, the shelves are groaning with jauntily designed packets of frozen squid, surimi (minced fish) dumplings, spring rolls, samosas and deep-fried cones with shrimp tails poking out of them. In the next aisle, a frenetic chef is wok-frying prawns from Madagascar, dipping them in little square dishes of cumin, coriander, chilli powder, salt, cinnamon and garlic. At the Taiwan Pavilion, the cabinets are full of chilled and frozen tilapia, barramundi, sushi, eel and vacuum packs of tobiko - orange flying-fish roe, salty, crunchy as granola and served by a young woman in national dress who literally has not heard of sustainability. "All the boats are out there catching fish with roe," she tells me. "With so many after the same species, this is a very difficult business for us."

These halls take several hours to negotiate, and the stands seemingly go on forever - 1,650 businesses in all, together peddling most of the 147m tonnes of seafood produced globally every year. Of this, 100m tonnes is caught in the wild while the rest is farmed to satisfy an insatiable demand. Already, 1.2bn people depend on fish in their diet - and in Europe we each consume 20kg per year on average, compared to 5kg per person in India. However, as the emergent middle classes in Asia develop a taste, and a budget, for seafood - considered a luxury item until now - demand will rocket further.

What the organisers must know, but are keeping mum about, is that the oceans are in a parlous state. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 70% of the world's fisheries are now fully exploited (ie, fished to the point where they can only just replenish themselves), overexploited or depleted. The majority of fish populations have been reduced by 70-95%, depending on the species, compared to the level they would be at if there were no fishing at all. In other words, only five per cent of fish are left in some cases. In more practical terms, fishermen are catching one or two fish per 100 hooks, compared to 10 fish per 100 hooks where a stock is healthy and unexploited - a measure of sustainability once used by the Japanese fleet. In England and Wales, we are landing one fish for every 20 that we landed in 1889, when government records began, despite having larger vessels, more sophisticated technology and trawl nets so vast and all-consuming that they are capable of containing 12 Boeing 747 aircraft.

Where have all those other fish gone? In short, we have eaten them. "Tens of thousands of bluefin tuna used to be caught in the North Sea every year," says Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at the University of York. "Now, there are none. Once, there were millions of skate - huge common skate, white skate, long-nosed skate - being landed from seas around the UK. The common skate is virtually extinct, the angel shark has gone. We have lost our marine megafauna as a consequence of exploitation."

Then there are the devastating effects of bottom trawling around our coasts, which began with the advent of the steam trawler 130 years ago. "Sweeping backwards and forwards across the seabed, they removed a whole carpet of invertebrates," Professor Roberts says, "such as corals, sponges, sea fans and seaweeds. On one map, dating from 1883, there is a huge area of the North Sea roughly the size of Wales, marked 'Oyster beds'. The last oysters were fished there commercially in the 1930s; the last live oyster was taken in the 1970s. We have altered the marine environment in a spectacular way."

Worse still, after stripping our own seas bare, we have "exported fishing capacity to the waters of developing countries", Professor Roberts warns. Off Mauritania, Senegal and other West African countries, fleets from the rich industrial north are "fishing in a totally unsustainable way with minimal oversight by European countries". In return for plundering the oceans, which deprives local people of food, and artisanal fishermen of their livelihood, these vessels pay minimal fees that impoverished countries are happy to accept. "It is a mining operation," Professor Roberts says, "a rerun of the exploitation of terrestrial wealth that happened in colonial days. This is colonialism in a new guise, albeit with a respectable cloak in the form of access agreements."

Such is the human feeding frenzy, there may come a time when there are no fish left to catch. In 2006, a study in the US journal Science warned that every single species we exploit would have collapsed by 2048 if populations continued to decline as they had since the 1950s. By 2003, nearly a third of all species had collapsed, the study found - meaning their numbers were down 90% or more on historic maximum catch levels. Extrapolate that on a graph, and the downward curve reaches 100% just before 2050.

That prognosis - now disputed - was based on a four-year study of fish populations, catch records and ocean ecosystems. "We really see the end of the line now," said the author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the time. "It will be in our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood, if we do not change things." Many imagined a world where there would be no fish protein left to eat apart from jellyfish and marine algae....
_______________

The article goes on to describe that if politicians followed the recommendations of marine scientists instead of fish industry/business interests the situation would improve. Lately that hasn't been happening. There need to be more Marine Protected Areas...

"Creatures' rush to extinction..." (Australia)

From The Australian:

ONE hot, dark night midway through March, John Woinarski, principal scientist at the Northern Territory's Department of Natural Resources, Environment, the Arts and Sport, was out doing what he most loves: surveying the wild landscape of the Top End bush. But this task, in recent years, has become a burden. Woinarski, dropped by helicopter on to the high stone-country plateau of West Arnhem Land, already half-knew what he would find at one of his remotest monitoring sites, a stretch of 50sqm - rainforested, lush - beside a waterhole: nothing. Not one native mammal.

During recent decades, scientists have been recording a vast decline in the original mammal fauna of north Australia. In the past five years, for most species, that decline has become a death spiral. The picture is consistent across the north: in parks and in Aboriginal reserves, in pastoral country, in pristine rangelands, in coastal swamps. The pattern has been too plain to miss and many of the likelier causes have been identified, but the dizzying disappearance of animals from the landscape seems like something new. It is Australia's most profound ecological crisis; it is little known in the nation at large and still quite imperfectly understood.

Woinarski, a man of precise words and restrained manner who has spent much of his life studying northern landscapes and received the 2001 Eureka Prize for his work, describes the evidence.

His group's 220 long-term monitoring sites cover the Top End's most untouched regions, places where one would expect the native wildlife to be surviving fairly well. Between 1996 and 2001, he and his colleagues observed the falling away and traced the ongoing pattern, but in the following five years it was as though the native fauna population had plunged from a cliff's edge. The newest findings were "the game-stopper". They recorded an average 70 per cent drop in species numbers and an 82 per cent drop in the total of animals seen at each site. These declines were in all environment types and all family groups. Even in national parks, where protection regimes are in place, the figures were devastating. "The most recent results are extremely alarming; indeed, catastrophic," Woinarski says...

Just more than a year earlier, Woinarski and his core team had published a preliminary report card on the vanishing. Lost From Our Landscape, their 250-page overview, constitutes an unusual field guide, a book of what's not out in the environment any more. It is filled with the details of the NT's most threatened species, including 40-odd small mammals: bilbies, mice, wallabies, quolls, bettongs, rat-kangaroos in obscure and appealing variations. It weaves a familiar narrative.

The last great wave of Australian extinctions was experienced in the Centre, between the 1930s and '60s, when most of the 20 mammal species known to have been lost from this continent disappeared. That pattern is now repeating further north: animals that were once common are critically endangered...

Scientists know very well, from fossil evidence, that animals have been dying out in Australia for the past 60,000 years as a result of large-scale climate shifts, and also as a consequence of man's arrival, and the use of fire to control the landscape. But today's looming round of extinctions is a strong clue to the strain placed on the tropical and sub-tropical region in recent decades by modern development pressures and by the abandonment of traditional land use techniques.

Mines, ports, dams, cattle stations, all these have changed the workings of the landscape. But the remote bush is also being transformed. More subtle, pervasive, insidious long-term shifts are under way. Hence a paradox: it is in the untouched far country that the most startling declines in animal populations are being recorded. As Woinarski observes, central and north Australian mammals are susceptible precisely because they had evolved through millennia to fit the scarcities and slow pace of the continent. They tend not to reproduce fast or in great numbers. When there are changes in an ecosphere, as in the north in the past century, sharp consequences ripple through the natural kingdom...

"State of the Birds"

From the New York Times:

Ken Salazar, the secretary of the interior, released a new, nationwide survey last month that assesses the state of bird populations in America. The news is grievous. Over all, a third of the bird species in this country are endangered, threatened or in serious decline.

There is special concern for grassland birds — whose habitat has been vanishing steadily for decades — for birds in Hawaii, where a variety of species face a variety of threats, and for coastal species. The good news is that wherever nature is allowed to recover, especially in the case of wetland birds, it shows its usual resilience.

But there is no glossing over these staggering losses, and there is no dismissing what they mean. There is nothing accidental or inevitable about the vanishing of these birds. However unintentional, it is the direct result of human activity — of development, of global warming, of air and water pollution and of our failure to set aside the habitat these birds need to flourish. Every threatened species reveals some aspect of our lives that could be adjusted.

The survey also shows that where humans have made an effort — as with migratory waterfowl and with endangered species like the peregrine falcon — good things have happened, with some species recovering even as others declined. This in turn argues that the programs now in place to protect habitat should not only be spared the budgetary wrecking ball but also expanded — most conspicuously those managed by the Agriculture Department that seek to preserve wetlands and prairie grasslands as well as the Interior Department’s Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The remarkable recovery of ducks and geese and other wetland species — thanks to strong conservation efforts — should remind us of what is possible. The only other outcome is too grim to consider — a landscape steadily emptying of birds.

"A billion frogs on world's plates"

From the BBC:

Up to one billion frogs are taken from the wild for human consumption each year, according to a new study.

Researchers arrived at this conclusion by analysing UN trade data, although they acknowledge there is a lot of uncertainty in the figure.

France and the US are the two biggest importers, with significant consumption in several East Asian nations.

About one-third of all amphibians are listed as threatened species, with habitat loss the biggest factor.

But hunting is acknowledged as another important driver for some species, along with climate change, pollution and disease - notably the fungal condition chytridiomycosis which has brought rapid extinctions to some amphibians.

The new research, to be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Conservation Biology, suggests that the global trade in wild frogs has been underestimated in the past.

"Frogs legs are on the menu at school cafeterias in Europe, market stalls and dinner tables across Asia to high end restaurants throughout the world," said Corey Bradshaw from Adelaide University in Australia.

"Amphibians are already the most threatened animal group yet assessed because of disease, habitat loss and climate change - man's massive appetite for their legs is not helping."

Amphibians are farmed for food in some countries but these animals are not included in the new analysis.

"Our Standard of Living"

I post various things and I don't always comment on them. I think a lot of things speak for themselves.

But recently, a friend of mine defended the Utah wilderness destruction - since we need oil.

What bothers me is that our country is not doing more - that passive solar homes are not standard/normal - that cars do not all get 50+mpg - that people don't consume less in general, etc. That people in the US are willing to destroy some of our greatest places rather than change consumption habits. That people are willing to send their children to war rather than change and conserve.

Conserving, living smarter and more sustainably is something that various groups in the US have been working against for quite awhile. As if we can just keep tearing down mountains and drilling every square foot to maintain "our standard of living". What a bunch of nonsense.

You would think that "our standard of living" is like "God" or something that must be worshipped and maintained above all other interests.

What will happen with that sort of mentality is that "our standard of living" will be greatly diminshed sooner and more drastically than would have been necessary. And our world will be a far less habitable and wonderful place.

It will be place where much of the land and oceans will have been destroyed and polluted. Many of the wild animals will not be able to survive. The coral reefs will be gone. The Appalachians will be gone. Jellyfish will do alright, probably. Algae and a few other things. The coasts will be decimated. Most of the snow will be gone. Water will be scarce.

There will be wars and destruction. Perhaps there will be more diseases. But it's people who are living now who are making the choice for this to happen and to happen sooner - because of "our standard of living".

Can't save everything :(

"Long-held views on saving the planet's ecosystems considered anew"

The Defenders of Wildlife, like many environmental groups, is dedicated to the philosophy of biologist Aldo Leopold - that "saving all the parts" of the world's ecosystems is the foundation of conservation.

"To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering," Leopold wrote in his classic 1940s essay "Round River." Those words became part of the foundation of the modern environmental movement.

So when Defenders climate scientist Jean Brennan and others suggest that it may be time to change the Endangered Species Act to allow some species to go extinct, it underscores the crisis they say the West and the world face from climate change.

The nation's top scientists say climate warming is "unequivocal," and much of it is "very likely due" to human causes - and that has forced corporations, investors and government officials to reconsider long-held views.

Now the emerging and fast-moving realities of climate change are forcing wildlife advocates and environmentalist to rethink their philosophies as well.

Do the benefits of nuclear energy outweigh the risks? Will drawn-out court battles on governmental decisions cause more environmental harm than they do good? And the question that tears at the center of Leopold's doctrine: Can all species be saved? "If you think too much about it, it sends you into despair," said Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor at the University of Vermont.

But federal and state scientists and managers say they have no choice but to start, and they gathered in Boise last week at the first meeting of federal officials to look ahead at what policies and strategies need to be changed.

Twenty to 40 percent of all known species could go extinct, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and endangered species recovery expert Jeff Burgett said. And scientists say that even if greenhouse gases are dramatically reduced, it will take more than 100 years to dissipate the high levels of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

The dire news was a wake-up call for agency biologists, regional managers and others who hardly were allowed even to discuss climate change over the last eight years of the Bush administration.

Brennan, Parenteau and most wildlife advocates aren't ready to give up on most species. But they no longer are looking to return ecosystems to a former pristine state. Climate change will eliminate many ecosystems around the world and create new ones that no longer can sustain the creatures and plants there now, Brennan said.

Many ecosystems that will exist in 2100 exist nowhere on Earth today, she said.

"Our grandchildren are going to grow up in a world that's unrecognizable today," said Dale Goble, a University of Idaho law professor and co-author of the book "The Endangered Species Act at Thirty." The idea that we can address the threats that species face and bring them back to recovery is the core concept that underlies the Endangered Species Act, Goble said. But "recovery" - as the law requires - is not likely to be an option.

At least 80 percent of endangered species and even many game species that survive will need special, individual management into perpetuity, Goble said.

Species like pikas, a small mammal, and even mountain goats that live in high mountains will lose their habitat and are likely to go extinct.

The warmer weather already may be affecting diseases, which could be moving north into new habitat now warm enough for them to thrive in. A parasitic brain worm is killing moose in Minnesota. West Nile virus, carried by mosquitoes, has moved west and north to threaten sage grouse and even kill people.

"We have to get a whole lot lighter on our feet," Goble said. "We have to be able to act more quickly. Taking risks means you have to try something, and if it doesn't work, you have to try something else." Parenteau has been training environmental lawyers for years to slow things down so more deliberative decisions are made about development. But now, he advocates changes in the National Environmental Policy Act that would allow the nation to move faster on alternative energy development like wind plants, solar and other non-carbon sources.

He points to held-up wind projects and a recent moratorium on solar development in western desert areas.

"I am an environmentalist who has used NEPA to slow things down," Parenteau said. "I'm now saying NEPA should be used to speed things up."

In the latest lawsuit against the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, salmon advocates pointed out the lack of a definitive discussion on the effects of climate change on salmon.

Tim Personius, deputy regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages some of those dams, wonders whether the salmon advocates are looking at the big picture.

The salmon groups say the only way to recover Snake River salmon is to breach four dams on the river in Washington - but the electrical generation lost would have to be replaced with sources more damaging to the climate.

"That effectively would increase carbon emissions an average of 4 million tons per year," Personius said.

Parenteau believes the trade-off of removing the relatively low-power dams to restore salmon is worth the carbon impacts. But he acknowledged that considerations like the larger impacts on thousands of species - including the salmon - from climate change should be taken in to account in Endangered Species Act decisions...

"China’s Turtles, Emblems of a Crisis"

The turtle used to be a goddess in China...

From the New York Times . Part of a Series on China's pollution crisis.

Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a large female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious commodity in this city’s decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of raw meat. Her small pool has been encased with bulletproof glass. A surveillance camera monitors her movements. A guard is posted at night.

The agenda is simple: The turtle must not die.

Earlier this year, scientists concluded that she was the planet’s last known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle. She is about 80 years old and weighs almost 90 pounds.

As it happens, the planet also has only one undisputed, known male. He lives at a zoo in the city of Suzhou. He is 100 years old and weighs about 200 pounds. They are the last hope of saving a species believed to be the largest freshwater turtles in the world.

“It’s a very dire situation,” said Peter Pritchard, a prominent turtle expert in the United States who has helped in trying to save the species. “This one is so big and it has such an aura of mystery.”

For many Chinese, turtles symbolize health and longevity, but the saga of the last two Yangtze giant soft-shells is more symbolic of the threatened state of wildlife and biodiversity in China. Pollution, hunting and rampant development are destroying natural habitats, and also endangering plant and animal populations.

China contains some of the world’s richest troves of biodiversity, yet the latest major survey of plants and animals reveals a bleak picture that has grown bleaker during the past decade. Nearly 40 percent of all mammal species in China are now endangered, scientists say. For plants, the situation is worse; 70 percent of all nonflowering plant species and 86 percent of flowering species are considered threatened.

An overriding problem is the fierce competition for land and water. China’s goal of quadrupling its economy by 2020 means that industry, growing cities and farmers are jostling for a limited supply of usable land.

Cities or factories often claim farmland for expansion; farmers, in turn, reclaim marginal land that could be habitat. Already, China has lost half of its wetlands, according to one survey.

For the Chinese scientists and conservationists trying to reverse these trends, the challenge begins with trying to convince the government that protecting wildlife is an important priority. For centuries, Chinese leaders emphasized dominance over nature rather than coexistence with it. Animals and plants are still often regarded as commodities valued for use as medicine or food, rather than as essential pieces of a natural order.

“The whole idea of ecology and ecosystems is a new thing in the culture,” said Lu Zhi, a professor of conservation biology at Peking University...

“China is one of a small handful of countries, maybe a dozen, that has remarkably high numbers of species, and a remarkably high number of species that are not found anywhere else,” said Jeffrey A. McNeely, chief scientist for the World Conservation Union...

China has a large system of nature reserves, mostly in the country’s more remote western regions, though financing levels are far below those even in other developing countries. No Chinese protection program is considered more successful than the robust effort to save the panda. Roughly 2,000 pandas now live in panda reserves. Other captive breeding programs have helped pull the Chinese alligator and the Tibetan antelope away from the brink of extinction.

But these successes, which involve animals of symbolic national importance, are modest compared with the number of species that are neglected and edging closer to extinction. Last year, the Yangtze River dolphin, a freshwater mammal known as the baiji, was declared extinct.

“So many species are neglected,” said Dr. Lu, who also heads the China affiliate of Conservation International. “Look at the baiji. The extinction was announced and what has been done? Nothing. People felt pity.”

Then, alluding to the Yangtze giant soft-shell, also known as the Rafetus swinhoei, she added:

“This turtle will be next.”...

NOAA Confirms Caribbean Monk Seal Extinct

After a five year review, NOAA’s Fisheries Service has determined that the Caribbean monk seal, which has not been seen for more than 50 years, has gone extinct—the first type of seal to go extinct from human causes.

Monk seals became easy targets for hunters while resting, birthing, or nursing their pups on the beach. Overhunting by humans led to these seals’ demise, according to NOAA biologists.

The last confirmed sighting of the seal was in 1952 in the Caribbean Sea at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatán Peninsula. This was the only subtropical seal native to the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

"Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them in the wild," said Kyle Baker, biologist for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. "Unfortunately, this lead to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes."...

"On thin ice in the Arctic"

From inrich.com (Richmond, VA)

CHARLOTTESVILLE - The polar bear has become the furry face of climate change in the Arctic.

The bear is deserving, but other animals -- particularly the walrus and a living sausage called the ribbon seal -- are in even worse peril, a University of Virginia researcher says.

"Polar bears are very familiar to people," said G. Carleton Ray, "but actually they are not as endangered as these seals and walruses."

Ray, 79, has been studying animals in the Bering Sea region since the late 1950s. His wife and fellow marine ecologist, Jerry McCormick-Ray, 64, has been working there since the early 1980s. She concentrates on clams -- the favorite dish of the walrus -- and other small animals living on the sea floor.

Scientists say global warming is particularly apparent in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, where research indicates floes of sea ice are increasingly melting away.

Polar bears, walruses and ribbon seals use sea ice as platforms for reproducing and feeding. If the ice disappears, doesn't remain long enough or becomes too thin, the animals' numbers could drop drastically as the parents don't adequately reproduce and abandoned youngsters starve.

Polar bears could potentially persist in much lower numbers on land, Ray said.

"The point is, these guys are totally dependent on the sea ice," he said of the seals and walruses. "That's it."

The Rays' research included a five-week trip to the Bering Sea last spring, supported by the National Science Foundation, aboard the 420-foot Coast Guard icebreaker Healy.

In the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia just south of the Arctic Circle, sea ice normally disappears in summer. But research has shown a "distinct trend" in ice loss from March through June, Ray said.

That's when the seals and walruses are giving birth and nursing their young, Ray said.

On his computer in his U.Va. office, Ray showed satellite images of the disappearing ice.

"It is melting earlier by about three weeks, and it is forming later by about three weeks," compared with the 1980s, Ray said.

Because polar bears and even walruses can live on land somewhat, Ray doesn't believe they will become extinct. Ribbon seals, however, never go on land. Ray called their extinction a "distinct possibility" if warming trends continue....

Walruses root around on the sea floor for clams, worms and other food. That rooting appears to release nutrients that feed tiny plants, which in turn feed tiny animals such as shrimplike krill, which are eaten by whales, seals, fish, and diving seabirds called auklets.

That chain reaction may contribute to making the Bering Sea, which to an outsider appears barren and hostile to life, a lush realm that rivals tropical rainforests in biological richness.

"It's probably one of the most productive places on Earth," said McCormick-Ray, also a U.Va. researcher.

The melting of sea ice could aid shipping, fishing, tourism and oil exploration. That would be good for commerce but probably disastrous, in terms of oil spills and pollution, for that little-understood ecosystem, the Rays said...

"African giraffes endangered"

At least six distinct species of giraffe, the world's tallest land animal, may be in existence and some of them are critically endangered, scientists in the United States and Kenya have found.

It had previously been thought that there was only one species of giraffe ranging across Africa's golden savannahs.

"Some of these giraffe populations number only a few hundred individuals and need immediate protection," said the study's lead author, geneticist David Brown of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

"Lumping all giraffes into one species obscures the reality that some kinds of giraffe are on the very brink."

The most threatened potential species include the reticulated giraffe (currently Giraffa camelopardalis reticulate) in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Its population was estimated at around 27,000 until the 1990s, when poaching and conflicts slashed numbers to just 3,000 individuals.

In west and central Africa, there are thought to be only 160 Nigerian giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis peralta) left.

But all giraffes -- which can grow up to 19ft tall and weigh 4,400lbs (2,000kg) -- were under threat, Brown said in a statement late on Friday, citing an estimated 30 percent drop in numbers over the past decade.

Classifying what are currently called sub-species as fully-fledged species would force governments and experts to re-examine steps to conserve the most at risk animals, he said.