Another day brings another fascinating report from BBC Earth, but this one has absolutely gut-wrenching news about the future of Siberian tigers:

Researchers have estimated that the effective population size of the Amur(Siberian) tiger has now dropped to just 35.

You may remember that we talked about effective population size in regards to genetic bottlenecks and the endangered cheetah a few months ago - the effective population size of a population is the theoretical number of individuals that it would take to represent all the genetic possibilities left in a species.

This is used as an indicator of the genetic diversity and health of a population, and is crucial in determining the vulnerability of a population, since groups of animals that have very similar genes are susceptible to catastrophic disease outbreaks and the damages of inbreeding.

In the case of the Amur tiger, this is readily apparent - while it would take just 35 tigers to represent the genes left in the population, there are approximately 500 tigers left in the wild, with nearly that many still living in zoos.

That’s shocking - even in other endangered species, the ratio is often about 1 to 10. The fact that the Siberian tiger’s genetic diversity has dropped below that is a sobering sign that these tigers are extremely vulnerable, and that their future is very bleak.

However, it gets even worse: the breeding population left in the wild seems to be naturally split into two distinct geographic regions, meaning that there is an even smaller number of genes being shared.

“In actuality, it seems that Amur tigers are residing in two, fairly independent populations on either side of the development corridor between Vladivostok and Ussurisk, further lowering the effective size for each from 26 to 28 for Sikhote-Alin and 2.8 to 11 for Southwest Primorye.”

If action is not taken, and quickly, it is hard to imagine that this population will be able to remain stable for very long, and is a tragic reminder of the lasting impacts of overhunting and environmental damage.

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Researchers have found a “mega-colony” of Argentine ants that spans thousands of miles across multiple continents.

So far, the little bastards have claimed western Japan, the Europeans side of the Mediterranean (yes, the whole thing) and 530 miles of prime California coastline!

“The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society” the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.

So…the gauntlet has been thrown down, and they’ve grabbed all the real estate.

The original article comes from the BBC, and is a must-read.

Photo by myrmician

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Jen Angel put an awesome article up on Alternet this December about 10 things that are scientifically-proven to make you happy. I don’t usually cover lifestyle stuff, but this is too good to pass up.

Her list includes: 

1. Savor Everyday Moments

2. Avoid Comparisons

3. Put Money Low on the List

4. Have Meaningful Goals

5. Take Initiative at Work

6. Make Friends, Treasure Family

7. Smile Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

8. Say Thank You Like You Mean It

9. Get Out and Exercise

10. Give It Away, Give It Away Now

 

You’ll have to go to the article to find out the scientific basis for each, but it’s a very cool look at the way our attitudes shape our lives and our health. 

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It’s that time of year when everyone starts making lists of their goals for 2009 - but what can we do better for the environment this year?

Start the Switch to Renewable Energy

Offshore drilling just can’t happen - it would be devastating to the continental shelf, endanger coastal environments with inevitable contamination, and worse still, it’d maintain our self-destructive dependence on fossil fuels. Foreign oil is a political and economic problem, but carbon emissions doom us all. 

Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Fast!

The ozone hole is expanding, global temperatures are rising, air quality is getting worse every year, and the oceans are acidifying faster than we ever imagined - need I say more? We’re fundamentally altering our environment with the fuels we burn to support modern life, and we’re literally choking ourselves to death - the planet will be fine, but we will be in big, big trouble. I don’t know about you, but   a planet of sweaty, sunburned asthmatics scooping jellyfish out of acid oceans doesn’t sound like much fun to me.

Staff the EPA with Scientists

This one seems like a no-brainer, but 8 years later we’ve realized that it’s not so obvious to everyone *cough*Bush*cough*. The decisions our government makes about environmental issues need to be decided by science, using the best research available at the time. There’s no doubt that there will be “inconvenient truths” - what we need to do for our  survival might not be best for business in the short-term, but we don’t really have a choice: modern business is fickle and focused on microscopic periods of time. We need a long-term perspective to plan for out future.

Fix the Endangered Species Act

We knew that Bush was going to gut endangered species protections  - you could see it coming a mile away. Still, if Obama doesn’t act fast to undo these changes, we might as well throw the Act out altogether. There’s no sense listing Endangered Species if we don’t have strong laws to protect them. Asking developers if their projects is safe is like asking criminals if they belong in jail: the truth is not in their self-interest. Objective observers and scientific review are the only way to get effective, trustworthy species management.

Restore the US Global Environmental Leadership

Maybe the ship has sailed on this, but I still think the United States can make a massive impact on global attitudes. Europe’s decades ahead on wind power, but they haven’t formed a unified front. Japan led the way on emissions reduction, but treat species’ protections like a joke. Australia is at the forefront of Endanagered Species management, but their minding industry is a blight. The United States, for better or worse, is still a global tastemaker - we fired up the environmental revolution in the 70’s, but also taught the world to covet materialism, corporate-business, and a carbon-powered car culture. Barack Obama has a stab to start a new trend towards clean energy and away from waste - if he can make it economical in the states, it will be fashionable everywhere. 

It seems like we could spend years undoing the damage Bush has done, and three of these goals could be seen as cleaning up his mess. However, we have to be reasonable, and we have to start somewhere. If we can, as a culture, start to make these changes, the world will look a lot better in 2009.

Post from: Science Says

The addition of the cheetah to the endangered species list last week was a sad blow to wildlife conservation groups that have fought hard to protect the species. However, in the past, the cheetah had been seen as a conservation success. What happened to drive the cheetah back to the brink?

The cheetahs didn’t need a push this time - the truth is, the species had never really recovered. Using outdated metrics, the cheetahs’ population had increased to the number that we believed was necessary for a chance at survival.

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done - the new cheetahs were descended from such a small population that there was little genetic diversity in this new population. To give you an idea how severely inbred the species has become, a skin graft from any cheetah can be put onto any other and will be accepted. Humans, on the other hand, have so much genetic diversity that there are probably members of your own family who would be too different for skin grafts to take.

When a population gets as small as the cheetah’s did in the past, there is no turning back. You can breed more animals, but the genes are lost forever. We can import genetically diverse members of another group, but since there are only ~15 cheetahs left in Asia, that’s not an option. Otherwise, it’s time to sit back and wait for mutation and evolution to take charge. This is a precarious position, though - the diversity of genes is what allows a species to adapt and to withstand external pressures, like famine, drought and disease - the lucky ones survive the hard times and the species gets stronger.

If genetic diversity gets as low as the cheetah’s, the whole species becomes vulnerable. Additionally, inbreeding will further damage the remaining animals and make survival ever harder for future generations, an effect known as inbreeding depression.

This indicates a weak and vulnerable population, as well as substantial inbreeding. Nothing terrible had to the cheetahs, this time - this was just a return to the effective population size. It was inevitable. 

photo by James Temple

Post from: Science Says

1. Polar Bears listed as an Endangered Species

I know, I know - animals becoming endangered isn’t usually a good thing, but in this case, the polar bears were already in trouble and the government was just refusing to acknowledge. It took a multi-year lawsuit by Greenpeace to force the federal government’s hand and the polar bear was finally listed for protection. 

2. High Gas Prices

Another thing that seems counterintuitive at first glance, rising gas prices are going to be great for the environment. While the crisis this fall hit everyone in the pocket, I hope that, long-term, this will be seen as a turning point for the energy industry. As long as gas prices were creeping slowly upwards, year after year, people were going to accept the change with a grumble instead of demanding change. The prices skyrocketing well over $4 dollars a gallon this year shocked the world, and helped elect Barack Obama, a candidate who has committed to an alternative energy revolution in America. If it happens, this will be a fantastic win for air-quality and pollution, and a major step towards combating global warming.

3. The Announcement & Rejection of Offshore Drilling

John McCain and George Bush made a tag-team attempt at repealing the American ban on offshore drilling this summer in a bid to capitalize on gas prices to help John McCain win the Presidential election. Immediately, cash-strapped Americans, oil companies, and politicians in coastal states who were envious of tax revenues in oil-rich states, jumped on the issue, practically salivating at the pools of money they imagined. 

Fortunately, over time this came to be seen as the shameless political ploy that it was, and the association with George W. Bush only hurt McCain in the long run. Following Obama’s promise of $150 billion dollars to jump-start the alternative energy industry, the plan seems to have fallen on its face.

We’re all lucky it came up with it did, and was dragged down by McCain and Bush’s disastrous fall. 

4. The Rise of the Electric Car

Even before gas went completely out of control, people were starting to think proactively about getting more alternative-energy cars on the road. The Tesla Roadster debuted this spring and blew conventional prejudices about electric cars out of the water, and it seemed like everyone began thinking about luxury electric in a new way. Throw in the gas crisis, and major automakers around the world began to throw their weight behind new kinds of cars as SUV and truck sales ground to a halt. This led to the announcement of the Chevy Volt, the first plug-in hybrid, and a rush of electric auto development. Australia and the city of San Francisco both announced plans to build comprehensive recharging networks, and the day of the internal-combustion engine seems to be coming to a close.

5. The Economic Crisis

This one might be controversial, but hear me out: as long as the old ways were working, at least well enough for some people to get rich, nothing was really going to change. GM thought about an electric car before: they gave up. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House 30 years ago: Reagan tore them down. We had a gas crisis in the 1970s: nothing really changed. 

While this recession is going to be hard, we also don’t have much left to lose. That’s going to make it easier to change. It undermines industry’s favorite excuse for staying the same, and puts Obama’s government in the position to say “Your way has failed” and force the country to make a change. 

It’s hard to imagine relying the same way on oil from the Middle East. It’s hard to imagine denying global warming any longer. It’s hard to imagine us going back to the same old way, now that we’ve seen just how bad it can get.

I’m thankful that we seem to be making these steps, even if it took a disastrous year to get there.

Super special bonus: NO MORE BUSH!

The Daily Green recently published list of the worst environmental Presidents in American history. Guess which guy was number one? There’s no way that things won’t get better next year. Bush loved oil companies, was willingly courted and corrupted by big-business, didn’t believe in global warming for most of his presidency, denied its human causes once he did, and was an outright enemy of environmental protections and the Endangered Species Act. Kicking him and his party out of office was easily the biggest step that we could have taken this year, and the door is open for great changes in 2009. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Hope you’re all enjoying your holiday.

Post from: Science Says

As promised, President Bush is trying to ram through a sweeping change to the Endangered Species Act by Friday that would remove scientific review and completely undermine the effectiveness of the act.

Scientific review, the effective core of the Act, would be removed:

The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.

Current regulations require wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species.

Self-regulation - isn’t that an oxymoron?

This isn’t just something that the greenies have saddled the poor government: peer-review is the basis of credibility in modern science, and an utterly essential part of the ESA.

This isn’t just because the “greenies don’t trust the government” - it’s because it’s widely accepted in the scientific community that Everyone Makes Mistakes. Even if the government could be trusted to look out for the best interest of the environment (and they can’t), it’s simply foolish to trust decisions this important to one person or one regulatory body, especially one that has a vested interest in promoting business.

That said, the concept of self-regulation is a fraud: the history of American business has proven that, in a free-market, corporations look out solely for their bottom-line.  Some have argued that they’re neglecting the long-term value of environmental responsibility, and while that’s true, the record of corporate negligence and waste, regulatory laziness or corruption, and subsequent activism and clean-up, speaks for itself.  The majority of businesses act in the best financial interest of their majority stakeholders most of the time - environmental values and responsibility don’t enter into the equation.

The inclusion of scientists into the process is the only thing that gives the Endangered Species Act the power to intervene in the decline of a species, in the face of the government, business and industry. If you looked over the history of the Act, I’m sure you’d find hundreds of instances where both business and the federal agencies didn’t like a particular finding, but the credibility of the scientific method and its inclusion in the process has usually won. The Bush Administration, Republicans and their big-business campaign donors hate that.

This basis in science is what gives the Endangered Species Act its authority and what has made it capable of saving species that stood in the way of business. Removing that provision neuters the act and corrupts the process. If this rule change is allowed to pass, the Endangered Species Act will be dead.

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CNN released a new video today documenting the plight of polar bears, this time in Alaska past the ege of the Arctic circle.

By this time of year, polar bears have been without food for 4 or 5 months, but can’t get out to hunt the fatty seals that sustain them through the cold winter months because the sea ice has been slow to arrive. The polar bears have been fasting for so long that they are currently losing roughly 2 pounds every day.

Researchers in the arctic blame this on global warming, which they profess to have seen just within their lifetimes. The large flows of sea ice arrive later every year, and last for shorter periods than even a decade or two before.

The researchers have no doubts that the polar bear deserved to be listed as threatened this year. For evidence, they cite the emergence of cannibalism, which we discussed here before at ScienceSays. They say this is not scavenging or opportunism, which had been seen on rare occasions in the past. Instead, researchers have observed “large adult males stalking and killing other bears, actual stalking, killing and consuming other animals” which had never seen before last year, and has continued during this hard summer season.

The scientists conduct regular monitoring of the bears’ weight as an indicator of their general health, and the average bodyweight has fallen nearly 25% in the last 20 years, particularly among females, for whom weight is a bigger concern (as a major factor in their fertility.)

Whatever your opinion on the causes of global warming, the scientists who’ve spent decades monitoring polar bears in the arctic can confirm that the ice is melting, and that the polar bears are at risk. Interspecific predation of this nature, also known as cannibalism, is a terrible sign of desperation in a mammal population, and it will be painful to watch the future of the polar bear unfold if drastic actions are not taken soon.

Post from: Science Says

Even as we begin to learn the full scope of Bush’s attacks on the environment, we find out that Dubya is looking to force through rule changes before he leaves office that would gut the Endangered Species Act and protections against pollution. Obama has said he would reverse many of these as soon as he takes office, but will it be in time?

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Navy’s interests override the health and welfare of whales and dolphins, even as more evidence comes to light about the damaging effect of human-created noise on marine mammals.

America, we’ve got a long way to go.

Post from: Science Says

Assuming you haven’t stumbled in off of an ice flow and logged on to this site before checking the election news, you are already aware that Barack Obama made history tonight as he was elected to be the 44th President of the United States. If not, sorry for the spoilers.

Much has been made about how Obama represents a new America, and that’s absolutely true - but the key word here is “represent.”

As we all watch in awe at the kind of man Obama has become and the kind of campaign he ran, don’t forget that it was we, the voters, who elected him.

Obama represents a new era in American life, with less racism, more forward-thinking, an embrace of new technology, and a promise to bring us all together into the future through innovation.

But Obama alone did not make those things happen - Obama presented them to the American people, but, as has happened so often in the past, that could never have succeeded if Americans weren’t ready to stand up and grab that ring.

As historic as Obama’s victory is, please don’t forget that it is also a symbol for a historic change in our people, a return to our political values, a monumental growth and change in our mindset, and hopefully a paradigm shift in the character of our nation.

We are already the new America, and now we’ve chosen a great President to lead us. But in all of the hype, don’t forget that the change came first in you, and that there are no limits to how far that can take us.

-Jeff

Post from: Science Says

For those of you who don’t know, I’m voting for Barack Obama, and I hope that you will too.

But this election is about more than his historic candidacy - this election is about what it means to be American.

Frankly, I’ve taken no glee in bashing the Republican Party this year - nothing about the last 8 years is that funny when you’re faced with the prospect of 4 more.

There’s nothing funny about the sheer corruption and pandering of the push for offshore drilling, claiming the project will help gas prices even though it wouldn’t yield oil for decades. (I say “wouldn’t” because I still hope that it won’t happen)

There’s nothing funny about gutting the Endangered Species Act, or Sarah Palin’s belief that protecting species just gets in the way of industry.

There’s also nothing funny about the erosion of our civil liberties or the dismal perception of America abroad or the hate-mongering and racism that has defined the Republicans’ increasingly desperate campaign, but those are all stories for another blog.

This election is not about one candidate, or one party, or even one election; after the disaster that is the Bush Presidency, the 2012 election is a referendum on our nation’s character.

Are our morals contingent on our fear? Is our military policy dictated by security or by economics? Is our economy based on an honest market, or has big business lobbying fully corrupted our Democracy? Will our dialogue tolerate bigotry and jingoism, or will we repudiate Nixon’s “Southern strategy” as the cynical, racist incitement that it is?

This election is bigger than Obama.

This election is bigger than the next 4 years.

This election is about who we want to be, and how we want to be seen.

Can you forgive yourself if you don’t have a say in that? VOTE! - if you don’t, ask yourself if you can live with the consequences.

See you Tuesday.

Post from: Science Says

There’s a lot of buzz about the election in Washington right now - as you might imagine - but the one sector that isn’t jumping out of their seats right now are the environmentalists.

Why?! We’re getting rid of Bush, who’s gutted the Endangered Species Act and done countless favors for Big Oil! It even looks like we’re electing a Democrat! 

It’s a classic case of “What Have You Done for Me Lately.”

You’ve heard about Joe Biden’s awesome environmental record, and you know that Barack Obama has a 96% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. So why wouldn’t environmentalists be cheering from the rooftops?

Because Obama won’t be able to do anything for us.

Sure, it’ll be a moral victory, having someone in the White House who believes in Global Warming, and who believes that we can slow it. It’ll be great to have a President who respects what we are trying to do. In fact, it’ll be fantastic to have a president who makes a real commitment to alternative energy and breaking our addiction to fossil fuels.

Still - the environment is not going to be an Obama priority.

To the extent that any Democrat is better than a Republican, sure - to that extent Obama will help, and we might see a slight increase in research funding, and we’ll see environmental law enforced and the attacks on the Endangered Species Act will cease, and Big Oil will have to get used to life without government handouts…

But we’re not going to get an environmental agenda.

Why? 

Obama (or McCain) will just have too much on his plate. 

The environment will come after the financial crisis. The environment will come after the war in Iraq. The environment will come after Afghanistan, and after finding Osama bin Laden (even if it means introducing ourselves to Pakistan.) The environment will come after the midterm elections, and the environment will come after the inevitable scandal that the Republicans will try to cook up to take Congress back. 

The environment’s getting the short shrift here.

I suppose we should be happy with alternative energy - and believe me, we are;

But we’re not counting on Obama either:

In a year when financial markets are on bungee cords and peoples’ budgets are on a shoestring, environmental groups will have to be more clever than ever to maintain the funding necessary for moving forward, and thank god for non-profit research foundations. We’ll keep working our tails off, with or without the President, and hope he has some more leeway in 2012. 

The Environmental Working Group’s President, Ken Cook, said in a letter in their annual report (warning: PDF) that he’s inspired to do the things that government can’t or won’t do, mostly because it pisses him off. Well - the environmental movement is going to have to stay pissed off a bit longer.

PS: We love you, Barry, really…you’re busy, we know

photo by transplanted mountaineer

Post from: Science Says

The latest big news coming out of Spain is that the World Conservation Union has voted to push for a ban on tuna fishing in the Mediterranean, a huge but necessary step to stop this whole ecosystem from being driven to extinction.

What’s really remarkable about this vote, though, is that Japan got on board and voted “yea” on the measure.

Japan has become the single greatest obstacle to global marine conservation in the last few decades, which has confounded scientists and regulators since Japanese culture and cuisine is so inextricably linked to the sea.

Japan catches more fish and eats more tuna than any other nation in the world, and their fleets span the globe to chase the dwindling stocks and bring back high-quality fish meat. The truth of the matter is that no ocean regulation can be truly successful without the support of the Japanese, since they command such a large market share, and they don’t seem interested. The Japanese no longer answer to the call of science, but to the unrelenting demand for tuna in their high-society.

The decreasing availability and impending crash of these species has not convinced the Japanese to decrease how much they catch, but instead has made them more resistant to international regulation. ICCAT, the international agency in charge of protecting tuna, has become so corrupted by Japanese influence that it’s jokingly called the “International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna,” Japan openly gloated about how they ruined the International Whaling Commission this summer.

This makes it all the more remarkable that Japan would vote to close the Mediterranean fishery, one of the most productive in the world in previous years, and hopefully marks a new step forward. The reality of the tuna situation is that many species are in serious danger of crashing and going extinct, and it’s no coincidence the same species the Japanese love to eat. The study released earlier this year showed conclusively that the Mediterranean could no longer be fished, and whether Japan found it in their hearts to care, or whether it was simply not profitable any longer to chase the last 5% of the fish, it’s a good sign that they got on board, and gives the regulation a fighting chance to succeed.

Post from: Science Says

Happy Blog Action Day, everyone-

Did you know that in the Bahamas it’s still legal to kill endangered sea turtles? It’s true:

Many of you will already know that today’s the day when bloggers as a whole try to organize to do something good for the world.

The US has done a lot to try to protect sea turtles, all of which are Endangered or Threatened, but the turtles that live in US waters migrate through the Bahamas every year, where it’s still legal and common to kill and eat sea turtles, even the endangered species.

Oceana, who are the biggest international ocean conservation group, are making a push right now to try to pressure the Bahamas’ marine wildlife agency to change this law and to stop the senseless killing of sea turtles.

All you have to do is follow this link to Oceana’s page and they have a handy form where you can add your name and a letter will be sent to Michael Braynen, the Director of the Bahamas’ Department of Marine Resources, and tell him that it’s time for the Bahamas to join the rest of the world and protect sea turtles.

Click here to help save the sea turtles >>

It’s super-quick (took me about 30 seconds to read and complete), but with Oceana’s big supporter base, it’s a very quick way that we can make a big difference.

Thanks everybody, and keep up the good work

Post from: Science Says

In today’s Journal of Fish Biology, scientists have confirmed that a “pup” born to one of the Virginia Aquarium’s Atlantic blacktip sharks was conceived by “parthenogenesis,” meaning literally “virgin creation.” The shark, which had not been kept with a male shark in over 8 years, would have created the baby shark by a process that is still not understood well in sharks, but has been documented throughout the animal kingdom and in lesser vertebrates.

This is only the second time parthenogenesis had been documented in sharks, following the virgin birth of a bonnethead shark a couple of years ago at the Omaha Zoo Aquarium.

However, some sources have been quick to warn that this is a rare event, triggered by isolation and desperation, and not an answer to sharks’ rapid disappearance from many of the world’s oceans.

Additionally, these sharks are literal copies of their mother, which is very interesting, but not a solution to conservation: populations that experience a great deal of parthenogenic birth would experience a severe loss of genetic diversity and become vulnerable to catastrophic diseases and other threats.

Source: LAT

Post from: Science Says

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) continued their annual conference today, and released a fascinating report that details the way global warming can push species towards extinction. This report shows that animals in certain types of habitat are dying around the world, proving that the cause is a global change. The fact that these species can now be linked to temperature-specific vulnerabilities proves that global warming is why these animals are suffering.

The researchers found 90 possible characteristics that would make an animal vulnerable to climate change, and thusly “thirty-five percent of the world’s birds, 52 percent of amphibians and 71 percent of warm-water reef-building corals are likely to be particularly susceptible to climate change.”

They also warned that the more specific a species’ lifestyle is,  the more danger it’s in - they specifically noted that burrowing frogs and other amphibians who rely on underground habitats are becoming endangered around the world. They elaborated that:

Specialized habitat requirements, such as species with water-dependant larvae, and those unable to disperse due to barriers such as large water bodies or human-transformed habitats are most at risk…

The report found that 566 of 799 warm-water reef-building coral species are likely to be susceptible to the impacts of climate change. 

I mentioned before the specific dangers that face alpine species who are used to very particular environments, but the fact that animals with similar habitats are dying off around the world proves that the threat has a climatological basis, and not series of coincidental, localized ones. 

This research is a massive step forward in our understanding about the nature of global warming, and could be a serious turning point in the way we regulate fossil fuels and greenhouse gases. This is, to my knowledge, the first time that that mechanisms by which global warming can threaten species have been laid out in such detail. That’s what it’s going to take to address the concerns of the doubters, and that’s what it’s going to take to be strategic about saving these threatened species and ecosystems.

Post from: Science Says

More than a thousand juvenile Patagonian penguins have washed up on the northern shores of Brazil this year for reasons scientists have yet to comprehend fully. Over the weekend, hundreds of the stranded birds were airlifted to the southernmost tip of the country and released into the South Atlantic Ocean, close to their native territory. How exactly do you get that many penguins on a plane?

You put them in crates, 23 birds to a box.

Click here to read Slate’s article

Update - CNN.com has added a nice article too

Post from: Science Says

What does an extinct species looks like?

Look no further: the Pere David’s Deer is officially extinct in the wild.

Additionally, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) announced at their annual meeting in Spain today that 1 in 4 mammals in the world is at-risk of extinction.

In CNN’s coverage of the conference, they quoted the IUCN’s director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre, as saying:

“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. We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives.”

The new “Red List,” the IUCN’s annual report that has become the definitive authority on endangered and threatened species, reported that “at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction. At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500.” The report also noted that 88 mammals are now listed as Critically Endangered, the highest category below Extinct and Extinct in the WIld.

Jan Schipper from Conservation International added to the IUCN’s own press release:

The reality is that the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent. This indicates that conservation action backed by research is a clear priority for the future, not only to improve the data so that we can evaluate threats to these poorly known species, but to investigate means to recover threatened species and populations.

There is a silver lining though: the report noted that conservation efforts can still bring these species back from the brink, supported by the successful reintroductions of both the Black-Footed Ferret in the western United States and the Mongolian Wild Horse over the last 20 years.

Post from: Science Says

The dolphin was apparently experiencing some sort of paralysis in its fins and became unable to swim correctly or to maintain its posture in the water.

What does it mean, though, about the dolphins’ intelligence that they have the awareness that something is wrong with their pod-mate and then a conception of how the dolphin’s body works to attempt to turn its blowhole towards the surface?

Science has long credited the dolphin with intelligence and curiosity, but this video seems to support them having degrees of intelligence that have previously been strictly observed in humans.

Post from: Science Says

Treehugger has posted a quirky but very informative animated video from a group called Watershed Watch on the dangers of sea lice in the farmed-salmon industry. If you’ve got any interest in eating fish, or in fish conservation, it’s a must-watch…plus, I think it’s pretty funny too.

The long and short of it is that, since keeping salmon in a pen isn’t natural, they’re highly susceptible to parasites, and to be honest a whole host of other parasites and diseases. There’s strong evidence that the presence of these farms in an area greatly increases the risk of wild fish being afflicted by the same things, and experiencing a reduction in population as a result.

When these fish farms are placed near sensitive salmon spawning streams, the damage is multiplied exponentially, since the young are much more susceptible to these maladies and much more likely to die from them.

With the recent collapse of the mid-Pacific salmon fishery off California and Oregon this year, farmed fish has shot to the forefront of the marine biology and aquaculture worlds as a hot topic for discussion, and a major cause of concern. As badly threatened as wild fish populations are, the idea of farming fish seemed like a potential savior. We’re finding out now that might not be the case, or at the very least, that it has a long way to go - ultimately, farming could do more harm than fishing was.

*UPDATE*

After reading Dr. Weaver’s insightful comment below, I feel compelled to clarify my statements. I don’t believe that fish farming caused the collapse this year in California and Oregon, since, as he pointed out, the only fish farms in those regions are test programs which have been sponsored by the state specifically to research the impact that farms would have on that coastline (to be fair, Dr. Weaver, there are a COUPLE farms, but too few to cause such a widespread systemic collapse)

Additionally, the website and video in question focus specifically on the British Columbia salmon fishery and Watershed Watch are a group  whose stated mission “is to catalyze efforts to protect and restore BC’s precious wild salmon.”

I posted the video and this piece with the intention of highlighting the debate going on about farmed fish vs. wild, which I intend to cover more deeply in the coming months. For what it’s worth, you should know that fisheries worldwide have been greatly depleted and exist at small fractions of their previous size (some estimates suggest 90% off important commercial fish are already gone, and more for sharks and other big fish). You should also know that there are documented problems with fish farming, particularly related to the excess feed and massive doses of antibiotics that are put in the fish pens and are theoretically contaminating the surrounding areas.

It’s a very polarizing issue in fisheries science, and there are often clear divisions between those who believe that wild populations are beyond recover, who think that farming is the only solution for feeding America’s growing appetite for fish, and those who believe the only responsible option is radical conservation of the remaining wild stocks, and who have often joked that farmed fish are not “real fish” for a variety of reasons.

I’ve invited Dr. Weaver to share his thoughts on the benefits of salmon farming, and I hope that he will choose to do so. In the meantime, I would love to know what more of you think - Do you eat farmed fish? Do you think it tastes the same? Do you believe that wild fish are beyond rescue?

Post from: Science Says