Dolphin kissing Dog

Happy barks are here again;)

The erstwhile state of the fauna kingdom akin to cuckoo’s nest can finally slay some cobwebs off the mantle as the twitterers welcome the sanguine news of Indian government’s epic declaration of coronating my whistling amigo from water- the good old deary Dolphin as its national aquatic animal. As a spokesperson of genus Canis and fauna the world over[Aren't I good at self promotion;)] I overwhelmingly applaud this sane move. I hope it helps in saving the pristine yet playful freshwater delight from disappearing from the country’s aqua-map. The dwindling number of Dolphins(less than 2000 as per last census) had earlier cautioned the World Conservation Union to declare it as an endangered species.

India has a national bird(Peacock) and national animal(Tiger) and now Dolphin gets the distinction of completing the triad of Earth,air and water.With this historic declaration,the Government hopes not only to ensure the survival of the species which are endemic to river Ganga but also seek cleansing of the river. The Environment and Forest minister Mr. Jairam Ramesh emphasized on the pivotal role played by my aquatic friend by drawing an analogy with the big feline,the symbol of ecosystem in forests. In his words, ‘Since the river dolphin is at the apex of the aquatic food chain, its presence in adequate numbers symbolizes greater bio diversity in the river system’.

Its hard for me to contain my euphoria over my ultrasonically blessed friend’s probable promising future! Here’s wishing Dear Dolphin all the best:)

PS: The photograph in the post has been taken from web and no matter how much I would have loved it,I ain’t that black dog.

Rob Stewart tells the amazing story of the making of the documentary firm Sharkwater.  Rob uncovers the connection between the illegal shark fin trade, the mafia and the Costa Rican government.  Hear the story of how they were chased down by guns boats during the making of the film by the Costa Rican government.  Get the inside scoop of the story behind this remarkable film directly from the Director/Producers mouth.

Also Visit the Sharkwater Website
More  Information Here About Declining Shark Populations in Costa Rica

July 22, 2007 marked the day four members of the Rugendo family were slaughtered to death, to be more specific they were brutally executed by armed assassins and given no chance to defend their lives.

A few days after the incident it emerged that another unknown female of the family was found dead in connection with the killings and that her missing infant is also believed to be dead.

This reads like an extract of a story that would usually appear in a local/national news paper, but instead this story made it into the evening edition of almost every news station in the world.

Why?

Because the victims are a rare species of gorillas that were placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1994.

Endangered species

The majestic silver-backs were held in the Virunga National Park in Congo, home to an estimated 380 of the remaining 700 gorillas in the world.

The killings of the gorillas are just the peak of a string of slayings that occurred during the past year, as seven gorillas had already been killed in the park, and are regarded by many conservations experts as the worst incident in the past 30 years.

Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the Primate Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Species Survival Commission told the Environment News Service online: “The loss of six of the group’s 12 members means it is likely to disintegrate as a social group.”

He continued: “If we can’t stop these attacks, our closest living relatives will disappear from the planet.”

The beringei beringei (mountain) gorilla cannot survive in captivity, yet there are no gorillas to be found in ‘strict’ wildness.

The world’s remaining mountain gorillas live within four national parks, split in two regions that are 45 kilometres apart.

One half of gorillas are situated and inhabit the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.

Did you know?

Humans and gorillas share 97-98% genetically identical and they are considered to be highly intelligent.

Gorillas spend most their day eating consuming mostly herbs, stems and roots but they hardly drink any water.

The gorillas use up to 25 different sounds, grunts and barks to communicate with each other.

(Facts taken from wikipedia)

Making a difference

Fauna and Flora International, the UNESCO and the IUCN are just a few major organisations that have wide spreading programmes across the globe to ensure the beringei beringei gorilla has a future.

If you want to adopt a mountain gorilla or just help keep them alive there are a lot of organisations like the ‘Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’ that would appreciate your effort, so please get active.

“In a normal, natural wetland, we would find anywhere between five and six species of frog. Here there are only two.” That’s what Edmonton biologist Brett Scheffers is observing, per this report in PHYSORG.COM.

Read, learn, enjoy this new AP story. And also here is link to the auction page.

Conservationists auction off frog naming rights/Associated Press

 A girl has to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince, but how to interpret the gesture when the prince makes a bid to name a frog in her honor?

That’s one possible scenario, thanks to a new online auction allowing a high bidder to win the right to name a frog species.

Amphibian Ark, an international collaboration of conservationists working to save frogs, is organizing the effort to auction the naming rights to five species of frogs on the Internet – one frog a month for five months.

Profits will fund efforts to protect frogs at a crucial time, said Kevin Zippel, Amphibian Ark’s program director. Amphibians have been on the planet for 360 million years, but based on recent science, “This is the greatest extinction rate they’ve ever faced,” he said.

The first frog that a member of the public can name – for the right price – is from Ecuador, a member of the Osornophryne genus.

The frog was discovered in 1997, and there are no living members of the species in captivity, but whoever wins the online auction will be able to determine its species name. The profits raised will go to fund work to save frogs in Ecuador. Details on the other four frogs, and where the money will go to protect frogs, have not yet been released.

The hope is that auctioning off the naming rights could raise between $100,000 to $200,000 for each of the five frogs.

The estimate is based on prices paid in the past in separate efforts for the rights to name animals, like the $650,000 an Internet casino paid in 2005 to name a monkey species for the benefit of a national park in Bolivia. Its moniker? GoldenPalace.com.

“The potential to raise money to save these species outweighed any criticism we might get that we’re selling out,” said Zippel, speaking by telephone from Auburn, N.Y., where he lives.

A description of the new species will be published in a professional journal, and its scientific name will need to conform to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Zippel offered an example: If Donald Trump were a winning bidder of a frog from Rana genus, it wouldn’t be named “Rana Donald Trump,” but “Rana donaldtrumpi.”

The Internet naming contest at http://www.amphibianark.org/ is just one of many ways Amphibian Ark is trying to raise awareness about the plight of the frog. The group has dubbed 2008 the “Year of the Frog,” with zoos and other organizations around the world holding events to educate about the threats frogs are facing.

From one-third to one-half of the planet’s amphibian species are in danger of extinction due to habitat loss, climate change, pollution, over collection and disease, including a fatal fungus.

Scientists say they have to figure out a way to rid the environment of chytrid fungus or help frogs develop a resistance. The frogs can be cured with a fungicide, but they’ll be affected again upon re-entry.

Amphibian Ark wants 500 frogs from 500 species to be held in biosecure facilities around the world. Jeffrey Bonner, president of the Saint Louis Zoo and Amphibian Ark’s immediate past chair, called the effort “protective custody for frogs.”

Profits from the auction of the first frog will be donated to the lab of Dr. Luis Coloma in Ecuador for frog conservation work.

Researchers don’t know if they’ll be able to save the frog whose naming rights are being auctioned. That’s because they don’t know how many are still in the wild.

But, Zippel said, the funds will go to study how many of those frogs remain in the field and to help efforts to conserve it and other frogs in Ecuador.

Bonner called the online auction “just lovely.” He said, “It’s such a wonderful idea. I hope it works.” If $500,000 were raised, “we could save a lot of animals,” he said.

Amphibian Ark is a partnership between the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the World Conservation Union.

“The reptiles were found Sunday at Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Park, a refuge for the iguanas and other wildlife on Grand Cayman Island.”

Six of the rare iguanas were found dead in the park, and it is thought that as few as ten could be in the wild, making the blue iguana a critically endangered species.

Article from National Geographic.

A solid review of the amphibian crisis in a Sunday’s issue of Dallas Morning News, with quote from Jeff Corwin. Excerpts:

 Amphibians, most of which breathe through their skin, are vulnerable to virtually all the modern environmental ills: pollution, deforestation, pesticides and a deadly fungus known as chytrid.

“It’s not just amphibians that are crashing,” said Paul Crump, a reptile and amphibian keeper at the Houston Zoo. “We’re all crashing. Birds. Fish. Mammals. But the amphibians are the first to go. They serve as a smack in the face for us.”

The Year of the Frog was designated by Amphibian Ark, a conservation group started by the World Conservation Union and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, to draw attention and money to the problems of amphibians.

Frogs and other amphibians are “jump” species, a link between water- and land-dwellers. They also hold a pivotal spot on the food chain, eating mosquitoes, other insects and rodents, while being eaten by snakes, birds and mammals.

More vulnerable to environmental changes than most other species, they serve as an early-warning system of sorts, dying off before other groups are affected.

by Nils Lindahl Elliot

On February 11, 2008, the news media reported that the actor Roy Scheider had died (1). Scheider was best known for his part as Chief Brody in Jaws (1975). It was Chief Brody that finally managed to dispatch the great white in Jaws, and then again, in Jaws 2 (1978).

Exactly one week after Scheider died, the news media reported that the scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini) had been added to the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) ‘red list’ of endangered species (2). In fact, the Shark Specialist Group within the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission recommended the reclassification of this and of other species almost a year ago (3). The news appears to have received more widespread publicity in the context of this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and perhaps, in the context of Scheider’s death.

Of course, it would be a mistake to blame Jaws for the plight of Sphyrna lewini and the rest of the species whose stocks are declining. If anyone is responsible for the plight of sharks—especially for the free-falling numbers of pelagic shark species—it is the industrial long-line fisheries. The mentioned fisheries use lines that can be 100 kilometers long, and which may have thousands of baited hooks. Research published recently by the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council suggests that sharks comprised more than 25% of the total catch of the Australian long-line tuna and billfish fishery, and that a similar proportion was caught by the Fiji long-line tuna fishery. Prior to a prohibition on the use of squid bait, sharks comprised 50% of the catch of the Hawaii-based long-line swordfish fishery. Following the mentioned prohibition, this proportion was reduced to a still scandalous 32% of the catch (4).

To my knowledge there are no Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd ships shadowing the fishing trawlers that are wreaking havoc on shark stocks. On the contrary, it seems that sharks are still feared and widely reviled. This raises the question: what it is about sharks that can generate this kind of feeling, or rather, the absence of the kind of empathy felt for, say, Humpback Whales? An easy first answer is that some shark species are capable of killing, and indeed do kill, humans. However, the statistics that I cited earlier suggest that, if anything, it is the human species that is killing sharks. To be sure, there are several other animals that are also capable of killing humans, but which are not the object of the kind of fear and loathing that has long been reserved for sharks. It thus seems fair to assume that attitudes towards sharks are not so much the result of the sharks’ natural capabilities, as they are of a modern cultural imagination — an imagination whose subjects are only too ready to label sharks as ‘man eaters’.

I assume that any such imagination is a modern one in the historical sense of the term, i.e. it has been in the making for hundreds of years. For this same reason, it will have been shaped by a complex ensemble of institutions, discourses and motivations. In this post I will nevertheless focus on just one very recent discourse: the representation of sharks in the nefarious, if highly entertaining genre of the blockbuster ‘animal attack’ film.

* * *

Jaws is widely described as the first of the Hollywood summer blockbuster films. The key word in this expression is not so much blockbuster, as summer. Until 1975, Hollywood tended to regard the North American summer as the cinematic equivalent of an overfished, or rather an unfishable pelagic region where no number of lines and hooks could catch sizable numbers of spectators. The summer was a time to go out to the beach or into the countryside, not a time to pay to enter a darkened film theatre. With the benefit of hindsight, it does not seem like a coincidence that the film that reeled spectators into the cinemas was about the very activity that many tens of millions were about to engage early in the summer of 1975.

The problem was, of course, that in the absence of a summer film-going tradition, something had to be done to get people into the cinemas to watch such a film. Universal Pictures’ solution was to throw dollars—some 700,000 of them—at the mass media. At the time, this was an enormous sum to pay for advertisement. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the gamble paid rich dividends, if not exactly in the way that Universal might have been planned. Discussion of the film, and Jaw’s subsequent permeation, to not say saturation of so-called ‘non-traditional advertisement spaces’ meant that the film acquired a life that was no longer its own. In the weeks, months and then years that followed the film’s release, a proliferation of ‘meta-representations’ (representations about the representation) seemed to energize what was already a deep cultural fascination with ‘man eaters’, and with sharks in particular.

Amongst other things, this dynamic worked to ensure that the image of sharks became identified with the image(s) of Jaws. It is possible to get a sense of the extent of the transformation when it is noted that, before the film and Benchley’s novel hit the jackpot, there was no relation of identity between the word ‘jaws’ and the kind of toothy maw that is now indelibly associated with the film, the novel, and Carcharodon carcharias itself. As Spielberg put it in The Making of Jaws, ‘I just remember seeing a very large, you know…you know, a block of pages, that said ‘Jaws’ on it, and I didn’t know what that meant…Jaws… was it about a dentist? It was kind of an unusual word…I had no idea that this was about to become one of the best-selling books in the nation’. To be sure, Spielberg’s comment reminds one that, before the film became a ‘blockbuster’, Benchley’s novel became a best-seller. In as much as the novel, and indeed the script that Benchley penned for Universal Pictures were modified extensively to suit the conventions of Hollywood films, the success of the narrative was by no means purely a function of what some might describe as ‘the power of (film) images’.

* * *

Jaws was followed not by one sequel but by three: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983), and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). It was also followed by a string of copycat films that gave a new lease on life to what I described earlier as the ‘animal attack’ film. The 1970s saw, amongst other films, Orca (1977), Piranha (1978), and The Swarm (1978). After something of a lull in the 1980s (Jaws 2, and Jaws: The Revenge, excepted), the genre re-emerged, with some modifications, in the form of films such as Arachnophobia (1990) and Anaconda (1997).

Film theorists, like experts in literary studies, have long noted that any genre classification is as good as the criteria used to arrive at the classification. My own criterion is that ‘animal attack’ films involve not just a ‘man eater’ (more on this below), but a tension between two categories: a factual or ‘real’ nature in the form of a species that does exist; but also a nature that exists in the form of a Natura horribilis, viz. a nature that does exist in the cultural imagination (5). This tension is what distinguishes the animal attack film from the monster films with which it is frequently conflated. But it is also what arguably makes animal attack films even more monstrous than monster films. While some monster films may have a certain verisimilitude within the bounds of their own narrative context, there is never really any doubt, unless one is a youngish child, that the monster is a matter of fiction. By contrast, a key part of the meaning, to not say effectiveness of many if not all animal attack films is that the animal, if not its actions, is ‘really real’. The boundary between the real animal and the unreal animal is thus likely to be blurred.

At least in the 1970s films, this dynamic was underscored by the fact that the animals made a sudden and devastating appearance in the context of an entirely plausible everyday life—or as I began to note earlier, an every(holi)day break. The filmmakers of Jaws worked particularly hard to produce an almost ethnographic sense of a carefree sun, sand, and surf resort. This aspect of Jaws and of several of the other films, as underscored by the all too real refusal of some of the protagonists to head warnings of impending doom, made the suspense of the films even more effective. In Jaws, for example, Chief Brody pleaded with the town’s mayor to close the beaches of Amity. However, his request was refused on the grounds that tourism, or rather the business of tourism, was more important. The film was, in this sense, both a very accurate portrayal of the kind of society that America had become, and an inversion of the true order of another dimension of environmental risk: in the case of sharks and many other species, it was not so much that business led to the death of people by ‘man eaters’, but rather, that it led to the death of sharks by ‘eating men’. As I have noted in Mediating Nature, the very expression ‘man eater’ is not just a gendered one, but a very paradoxically gendered one.

If the films frequently involved the upheaval of everyday life, they also worked to ‘personalize’ this upheaval by recourse to that standard Hollywood convention, the focalization on a handful of likable, or at least ‘identifiable’ protagonists. Put differently, while suspense required that Natura horribilis should appear to kill randomly, the plot focused—‘focalized’—not on nameless, ‘faceless’ individuals, but on characters whose lives or personalities tended to be described in ways that encouraged audiences to identify with them. This convention worked at once to enable, and to consolidate a dynamic that Edgar Morin has described as ‘identification-projection’. Referring to the work of Jean Epstein, Morin has suggested that a film is that moment in which two psyches come together: the spectator’s, and the one incorporated by the film. ‘The screen is that place where actor thought and spectator thought find each other and acquire the materiality of (being) an act’(6).

* * *

Summing up, we can say that the ‘blockbustering’ of a certain species; the subsequent proliferation of narrativized references across a number of apparently unrelated contexts; but also the features of the narrative that I have just described, may have worked at once to rekindle, and to promote a new fascination with sharks. In some cases, the fascination may have been displaced by fear, revulsion, or even a cultural hatred that was expressed in undersea bloodsports. Decades after the first Jaws was released, this is ostensibly part of what persuaded Peter Benchley to become a spokesman for the National Council of Environmental Defence. In 2000, Benchley suggested that ‘In the 25 years since “Jaws” was first released, sharks have experienced an unprecedented and uncontrolled attack’. If he were to write the novel again, the sharks would be the victims and not the villains. Benchley nonetheless noted that he had no qualms about the original novel, which he suggested was a reflection of the existing state of knowledge vis-à-vis sharks (7).

Whether this is a bit of convenient historical revisionism or not, it is tempting to assume that the proverbial corner has been turned in the context of mass mediated representations of sharks. In fact, a strong case can be made that the picture remains a rather more complex one. On the one hand, what I described in the last two posts as the ‘nature media’ continue to represent sharks in problematic ways. Even as the documentaries insist via their voice-over narrations that white sharks have been unfairly stereotyped as killing machines, the documentaries’ visual images do little or nothing to contradict this very message. On the other hand, the sub-genres of the shark attack film, and the shark attack scene continue to have a real bite with producers and audiences alike. We have only to consider the success of films like Deep Blue Sea (1999) or Open Water (2003), or indeed of the shark scenes in The Beach (2000) or Into the Blue (2005) to realise that even as sharks are being destroyed by the long-lines of industrial fisheries, they continue to act as the commercial hooks of many a Hollywood film.

References

(1) ‘Jaws star Roy Scheider dies at 75’ in BBC News online, February 11, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7238211.stm, accessed February 25, 2008.
(2) ‘Hammerhead in need of protection’ in BBC News online, February 18, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7251651.stm, accessed February 25, 2008.
(3) See their website at http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/organizations/ssg/ssg.htm. Accessed February 25, 2008.
(4) Gilman, E.; Clarke,S.; Brothers, N.; Alfaro-Shigueto, J.; Mandelman, J.; Mangel, J.; Petersen, S.; Piovano, S.: Thomson, N.; Dalzell, P.; Donoso, M., Goren, M.; and Werner, T. (2007) Shark Depredation and Unwanted Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries: Industry Practices and Attitudes and Shark Avoidance Strategies. Hawaii: Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council.
(5) Lindahl Elliot, N. (2006) Mediating Nature. London: Routledge International Library of Sociology.
(6) Epstein quoted by Morin, E. (1956) Le Cinéma ou l’Homme Imaginaire. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Translation my own.
(7) ‘ “Jaws” author says sharks victims, not villains’ in CNN online, at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/19/jaws.image.reut/, accessed February 25, 2008.

Copyright © 2008 Nils Lindahl Elliot All Rights Reserved

The Blue Flag is an eco-label awarded to thousands of beaches and marinas across Europe, South Africa, Morocco, New Zealand, Canada and the Caribbean.

The Blue Flag works towards sustainable development at beaches/marinas through strict criteria dealing with water quality, environmental education and information, environmental management, and safety and other services. The Programme includes environmental education and information for the public, decision makers and tourism operators. For boats there is a code of conduct.

The Blue Flag was first awarded in France in 1985 to French coastal municipalities for sewage treatment and bathing water quality. In 1987, which was the “European Year of the Environment”, the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe (FEEE) presented the concept of the Blue Flag to the European Commission. The Blue Flag Programme was accepted as one of the “European Year of the Environment” activities in the Community.

In 2001 FEE became a global organisation, changing name from FEEE to FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education). FEE is an independent non-profit organisation which owns and runs the Blue Flag Programme. FEE has been co-operating with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Tourism Organization (WTO) on extending the Programme to areas outside Europe.

Beach Criteria

Marina Criteria

Blue Flag for Boats

The individual Blue Flag can be awarded to interested boat owners/users wanting to contribute to the Blue Flag Programme. The boat owner signs a code of conduct declaring that he/she will act according to the environmental issues outlined in the code of conduct.

There are 13 issues in the environmental code of conduct covering protecting and respecting the environment, plants and animals, fishing practices and archaeological underwater findings, and encouraging other sailors to take care of the environment.

The flags show the year the award is valid for. At the end of the season the flags are sent to the nearest recycling centre, as the flags themselves comply with the textiles criteria of the EU Eco-label.

• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
• World Conservation Union (IUCN)
• United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (not to be confused with the World Trade Organization (WTO)!)
• International Lifesaving Federation (ILS)
• Coastal Union (EUCC)
• International Council of Marine Industry Associations (ICOMIA)
• European Union (the Directorate General for Environment), and
• Reef Check.

Blue Flag runs nationally in many countries. But whereas Brazil has only one national body overseeing the Programme, in the UK we seem to have a slightly different idea about nationhood, as different bodies run the Programme in different regions: for England and Northern Ireland there’s EnCams (Environmental Campaigns), for Scotland Keep Scotland Beautiful, and for Wales Keep Wales Tidy – and the Welsh body works with An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland) in the Republic of Ireland.

This entry is part of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.

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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
http://www.amcostarica.com

Sharks are disappearing from the world’s oceans. The numbers of many large shark species have declined by more than half due to increased demand for shark fins and meat, recreational shark fisheries, as well as tuna and swordfish fisheries, where millions of sharks are taken by accident each year.

Now, the global status of large sharks has been assessed by the World Conservation Union, which is widely recognized as the most comprehensive, scientific-based information source on the threat status of plants and animals.

“As a result of high and mostly unrestricted fishing pressure, many sharks are now considered to be at risk of extinction,” explained Julia Baum, a member of the union’s Shark Specialist Group

“Of particular concern is the scalloped hammerhead shark, an iconic coastal species, which will be listed on the 2008 IUCN Red List as globally endangered due to overfishing and high demand for its valuable fins in the shark fin trade,” added Ms. Baum, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Ms. Baum pointed out that fishing for sharks in international waters is unrestricted, and she supports a recently adopted United Nations resolution calling for immediate shark catch limits as well as a meaningful ban on shark finning, the practice of removing only a shark’s fins and dumping the still live but now helpless shark into the ocean to die.

Costa Rica is a major supplier to the international shark fin trade.

Research at Canada’s Dalhousie University over the past five years, conducted by Ms. Baum and the late Ransom Myers, demonstrated the magnitude of shark declines in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. All species the team looked at had declined by over 50 per cent since the early 1970s. For many large coastal shark species, the declines were much greater: tiger, scalloped hammerhead, bull and dusky shark populations have all plummeted by more than 95 per cent.

A commercial fish factory vessel was boarded this month by Costa Rican officials because they said it was involved in illegal fishing in the protected area of Isla del Coco. However, investigators had to let the 25-person crew go because there was uncertainty in the law regarding this kind of activity. The crew was seeking tuna but sharks, including hammerheads for which the waters around the island are famous are likely victims, too.

The issue still is being discussed in prosecutorial circles.

Shark Finning in Costa Rica (Warning: This video is disturbing)

 If you have been lucky enough to snorkel around a coral reef you will know what marvellous places they are. They are homes to about a quarter of all marine life and are an invaluable source of shelter for breeding and spawning fish and crustaceans. Reefs also serve a valuable carbon dioxide absorbing function both directly and indirectly by protecting shorelines thus enabling trees like mangroves to grow. They also absorb a lot of wave energy, particularly important when events like Tsunamis are involved. 

Last week the World Conservation Union (a body made up of 83 countries, 110 government agencies, 800 NGOs and more than ten thousand scientists) reported their findings, having studied coral reefs. 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded. The land and the seas were warmer than ever and there were more hurricanes in the Caribbean which were more violent than ever. 2005 was the year of Hurricane Katrina that devastated Louisiana and Hurricane Wilma that caused greater more violent damage to parts of Mexico. 

As well as having to cope with harsher more violent weather caused by human carbon dioxide emission, these fragile eco systems are being damaged by careless human activity. The slightly warmer seas cause bleaching of coral – the process under which they die and turn white. The World Conservation Union fears that we will lose many coral reefs in the next few years, not only by climate change but also by inappropriate tourism which generates pollution and over fishing in these places. Given time, the reefs may adapt to climate change, but if the pace of change is too fast we shall lose them all. 

Warmer seas kill coral and this is simply one example of how global warming is rapidly making the world a less pleasant and more extreme place in which to live. As humans our behaviour causes an impact on our climate, most scientists believe to be true to a 90% degree of probability.

The behaviour that causes this is the relentless uncontrolled burning of fossil fuel and other carbon dioxide creating activities, which are happening faster than the earth can neutralise.  We know how to deal with the problem, but it the solutions involve expense and very hard work. I wonder whether any politicians will have the courage to do what is necessary.  

Gangtok, Dec. 21: A survey of red pandas across seven sanctuaries of Sikkim began today as the government tries to get, for the first time, an official estimate of the population of the state animal and develop a long-term conservation plan.

The red panda is classified as an endangered species by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

The state forest wildlife and environment management department has joined hands with WWF, the global conservation organisation, for the red panda project, which will cover, among others, Khangchendzonga National Park and Barsey Wildlife Sanctuary.

Kitam Wildlife Sanctuary in South Sikkim has been left out of the exercise because there is little chance of finding red pandas in the dry forest comprising mainly sal trees.

Two teams from the forest department and the WWF today reached Fambonglo Wildlife Sanctuary in East Sikkim for the survey.

Assistant conservator of forests Mani Ram Subba will question people living on the periphery of the sanctuary about sightings of red panda, said divisional forest officer (wildlife) Karma Legshey.

Priyadarshani Shrestha, the senior programme officer of the Sikkim unit of WWF, said the survey aims to come up with an approximate number of red pandas in Sikkim. No such official survey has ever been conducted in the state.

The teams will also collect data on the state’s food resources for the red panda (it feeds mainly on bamboo) and possible locations were reserves can be set up for its conservation.