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Australian wildlife rescuers and 100+ island volunteers race to save 200 stranded whales and dolphins off Tasmania
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Australian wildlife rescuers were using jetskis and small boats today to try to save nearly 200 pilot whales and a small pod of dolphins beached on an island between the mainland and Tasmania.
Rescuers said only 54 of the 194 whales stranded on King Island had survived, and seven dolphins were still alive. It is the fourth beaching incident near Tasmania in recent months.
Rescuers dug trenches in the sand to channel water close to the whales as volunteers doused them with water and draped wet fabric over their bodies to keep them cool. More than 100 volunteers used stretchers to carry dolphins into the shallows, and other officials used small boats and a jetski to pull whales out to sea.
Whale strandings happen periodically in Tasmania during their migration to and from Antarctic waters, but scientists do not know why it happens. It is unusual, however, for whales and dolphins to get stranded together. read more »
Wildlife Conservation Society and Goldman Sachs safeguard Chile's Karukinka Nature Reserve, home to 700 plant species and more
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It is not every day that a Wall Street bank finds itself in possession of a chunk of land 50 times the size of Manhattan, covered in pristine forest, windswept grassland and snow-capped mountains. But that's the position Goldman Sachs found itself in, in 2002 when it bought a package of distressed debt and assets from a US company called Trillium.
The resulting conservation project in the very south of Chile has been hailed by the bank and its partners, a US-based NGO, as an example of how the public and private sectors can work together to safeguard the world's last remaining wildernesses. Chilean environmentalists are more skeptical but, even so, have largely applauded the project.
The story of what is now known as the Karukinka nature reserve dates back to the 1990s when Trillium bought land on Tierra del Fuego - a cluster of inhospitable islands between Chile and Argentina - clinging to the southernmost tip of South America. The company planned to use the land for logging and wanted to cut down the lenga - a type of beech tree found only in this part of the world.
Rescue flight in blue sky. Guiding young whooping cranes to winter nesting grounds: birds follow ultralight plane
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It was the first Friday in December, 23 degrees at dawn and nearly windless. Everyone was looking up. Operation Migration’s four ultralight planes floated into view over some oak and maple trees, then passed over the small, white chapel. An ultralight is powered by a massive rear propeller. In the sky, it looks like a scaled-down Formula 1 car dangling under the wing of a hang glider. Because the little planes taxi on three wheels, pilots call them trikes.
At 200 feet, the first pilot, Chris Gullikson, was perfectly visible in his trike’s open cockpit. He was wearing his whooping-crane costume, a white hooded helmet and white gown that looked like a cross between a beekeeping suit and a Ku Klux Klan get-up. Gullikson and the other trike pilots were going to pick up the 14 juvenile whooping cranes that they were, little by little, leading south for the winter. Traditionally, and for many millenniums, cranes learned to migrate by following other cranes. But traditions have changed. Outside the church, a plucky, silver-haired woman named Liz Condie was explaining to the spectators why, exactly, her team has had to dress up and step in.
Nature's Wonder. Photos: puffin touchdown, panda examines B-day cake, polar bear cub peeks out from mother's arms
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(above) Norway - Bright beaks and feet signal the breeding season for Atlantic puffins on Hornoya Island. The birds’ colors dull for winter. Puffins in summer and winter coloration look so different they were once thought different species.
(left) Among cities, San Diego may be the most animal-centric. Animals at the zoo and SeaWorld have names, constituencies and birthday parties. So when Zhen Zhen, a giant panda at the San Diego Zoo, turned 1 year old on Sunday, she celebrated with a jumbo-sized birthday cake: a honey-glazed exterior, stuffed inside with fruit, vegetables and bamboo. Sister Su Lin turned three a few days earlier, with a similar fest. For pandaphiles, Zhen Zhen is now 45 pounds and is approaching the day of independence from her mother, Bai Yun. Su Lin is about two years away from potential motherhood.
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Photos courtesy of Jan Vermeer, Foto Nature, San Diego Zoological Society, ppalmward/wallpaperbase.com, and First People read more »
Getting worse: half of mammals in decline, 1 in 4 faces extinction; conservation can bring species back
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BARCELONA, Spain, October 6, 2008 (ENS) - The world's mammals are in the grip of an extinction crisis, with almost one in four at risk of vanishing forever, according to the latest scientific assessment revealed at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress, which opened Sunday in Barcelona.
The new study conducted for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for the first time assessed all of the 5,487 mammals on Earth and found that at least 1,141 of them are known to be threatened with extinction. At least 76 mammals have become extinct since the year 1500.
The real situation could be much worse as 836 mammals are listed as Data Deficient. With better information, scientists may classify even more species as being in danger of extinction. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN director general. read more »
Polar Bear Declared Endangered Species
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The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.
The decision was based on evidence that sea ice is vital for polar bear survival, that this sea ice habitat has been reduced, and that this process is likely to continue; if something is not done to change this situation, the polar bear will be extinct within 45 years, Kempthorne said. He pointed to computer models he and his colleagues studied that project a 30 percent decline in sea ice by 2050. read more »
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