Bison Could Once Again Thunder Across Great Plains

 

Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society

A bison and calf in Yellowstone National Park.

Bison could make a big comeback all across North America over the next 100 years, a conservation group said this week.

Bison once numbered in the tens of millions across the continent, but these icons of the American West were wiped out by commercial hunting and habitat loss.

By 1889, fewer than 1,100 individuals remained.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.

1n 1905, the American Bison Society formed at the current Bronx Zoo headquarters of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and began efforts to repopulate reserves on the Great Plains with animals from the zoo's herd and other sources.

Of the estimated 500,000 bison that exist today, only 20,000 are considered wild; the rest live on private ranches.

FOXNews.com - Scientists: Bison Could Once Again Thunder Across Great Plains - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Prized Tibetan antelope triple in remote reserve

 

BEIJING (Reuters) - The number of prized Tibetan antelope in a remote region of northwest China has tripled to 60,000 in 10 years thanks to a crackdown on illegal hunting, a government website said on Monday.

The Tibetan antelope, or chiru, has been listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union because of commercial poaching for their underwool called shahtoosh. The wool, known as "soft gold", has fuelled a growing illegal trade market in India, Nepal and several western cities since late 1980s.

Prized Tibetan antelope triple in remote reserve | World | Reuters

Parasitic worm a threat to Banff elk

CATHY ELLIS
BANFF

A blood-feasting stomach worm introduced to North America from Europe has been detected in the elk around this mountain resort community, raising concerns for the long-term health of the animals.

“It’s quite the mystery as to how wild animals in a relatively remote and isolated national park have become infected with this parasite,” said researcher Nathan deBruyn, who is doing a master of science degree at the University of Alberta.

Researchers say the worm’s emergence could have implications for birth rates and winter survival of the Banff elk. As well, they fear the stomach worm could spread to threatened caribou populations in mountain national parks and provincial lands.

DeBruyn, who uses samples from carcasses to obtain DNA markers for parasites, found all 12 elk tested were carrying a nematode called Spiculopteragia boehmi.

DeBruyn suspects the parasite in Banff is a result of recent elk relocations in the province, or from domestic livestock that also carry the worm.

The only other previous known occurrences in North America were in southern Texas, Ontario and Quebec.

In Banff, there are estimated to be fewer than 10 caribou in the park. Only five caribou have been observed this past year.

DeBruyn said this family of parasites has been shown to cause malnutrition, weight loss and anemia.

CATHY ELLIS
BANFF

A blood-feasting stomach worm introduced to North America from Europe has been detected in the elk around this mountain resort community, raising concerns for the long-term health of the animals.

“It’s quite the mystery as to how wild animals in a relatively remote and isolated national park have become infected with this parasite,” said researcher Nathan deBruyn, who is doing a master of science degree at the University of Alberta.

Researchers say the worm’s emergence could have implications for birth rates and winter survival of the Banff elk. As well, they fear the stomach worm could spread to threatened caribou populations in mountain national parks and provincial lands.

DeBruyn, who uses samples from carcasses to obtain DNA markers for parasites, found all 12 elk tested were carrying a nematode called Spiculopteragia boehmi.

DeBruyn suspects the parasite in Banff is a result of recent elk relocations in the province, or from domestic livestock that also carry the worm.

The only other previous known occurrences in North America were in southern Texas, Ontario and Quebec.

In Banff, there are estimated to be fewer than 10 caribou in the park. Only five caribou have been observed this past year.

DeBruyn said this family of parasites has been shown to cause malnutrition, weight loss and anemia.

Early Elephant 'Was Amphibious'

 

ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2008) — The scientists were investigating the lifestyle of two early elephants (proboscideans) Moeritherium and Barytherium that lived in the Eocene period, over 37 million years ago. By analysing isotopes in tooth enamel from Moeritherium they were able to deduce that it was very likely a semi-aquatic mammal, spending its days in water eating freshwater plants.‘

We know from molecular data that modern elephants share a common ancestry with the sirenians - aquatic sea cows and dugongs,’ said Alexander Liu of Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences, lead author of a report of the research published online in PNAS. ‘It suggests that elephants may have an ancestor which was amphibious in its mode of life and we wanted to know if Moeritherium or Barytherium was this semi-aquatic ancient relative. Unfortunately only fragments of the skeletons of these early elephants survive, so instead of looking at their bones we looked at the chemical composition of their teeth to determine what they ate and how they lived.’

Alex Liu, with colleagues Erik Seiffert from Stony Brook University (USA) and Elwyn Simons from the Duke Lemur Center (USA), analysed the oxygen and carbon isotope ratios contained within tooth enamel from both extinct proboscideans.

While carbon isotopes can give clues as to an animal’s diet, oxygen isotopes found in teeth come from local water sources - and variations in the ratios of these isotopes can indicate the type of environment the animal lived in. They compared the ratios of these isotopes to definitely terrestrial animals from the same period and these results – when combined with results from studies of embryology, molecular data, and sedimentology – lead them to believe that Moeritherium was semi-aquatic.

Alex Liu commented: ‘We now have substantial evidence to suggest that modern elephants do have ancient relatives which lived primarily in water. The next steps are to conduct similar analyses on other elephant ancestors to determine when the switch from water to land occurred, and to determine exactly when the now fully-aquatic sirenians split from their semi-aquatic proboscidean relatives.’

Adapted from materials provided by University Of Oxford.

Moeritherium - an early elephant which we now know

Early Elephant 'Was Amphibious'

AFP: Borneo pygmy elephants may be extinction survivors: WWF

 

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — Borneo's mysterious pygmy elephants may be the last survivors of Javan elephants thought to have become extinct centuries ago, the environmental group WWF said Thursday.

Researchers believe the pygmy elephants, which are much smaller and more docile than their cousins found elsewhere in Asia, were brought to Borneo by royalty long ago, and then abandoned in the jungle.

"It's exciting to consider that the forest-dwelling Borneo elephants may be the last vestiges of a subspecies that went extinct on its native Java Island, in Indonesia, centuries ago," said retired Malaysian forester Shim Phyau Soon.

"Elephants were shipped from place to place across Asia many hundreds of years ago, usually as gifts between rulers," said Shim, whose ideas on the origins of the elephants WWF said had inspired the latest research.

Scientists have long wondered about the origins of the pygmy elephant, and why they are found only in a section of Borneo. There are perhaps just 1,000 of them in the wild, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah.

AFP: Borneo pygmy elephants may be extinction survivors: WWF

China Eats Crow Over Faked Photo Of Rare Antelope - WSJ.com

HONG KONG -- It turns out that train tracks in Tibet aren't where the antelope play.

Earlier this week, Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, issued an unusual public apology for publishing a doctored photograph of Tibetan wildlife frolicking near a high-speed train.

The deception -- uncovered by Chinese Internet users who sniffed out a Photoshop scam in the award-winning picture -- has brought on a big debate about media ethics, China's troubled relationship with Tibet, and how pregnant antelope react to noise.

The antelope imbroglio began in the summer of 2006. The Chinese government was celebrating its latest engineering feat, and an enthusiastic wildlife photographer from the Daqing Evening News was camped out on the Tibetan plateau eating energy bars and waiting for antelope to pass.

 

China Eats Crow Over Faked Photo Of Rare Antelope - WSJ.com

Researchers test RMNP elk herd for disease and administer birth control

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK — A tranquilizer dart pierced the elk’s hide Friday. She started to get upset, her knees buckled, then she fell to the ground.

A team of four researchers rushed to her side, blindfolded her and talked to her in calming voices, then began to take samples: saliva, blood, urine and rectal tissue.

They injected a white substance called GonaCon — an experimental birth control drug being tested for the first time on wild elk.

ReporterHerald- Researchers test RMNP elk herd for disease and administer birth control

ENN: Switchgrass fuel yields bountiful energy: study

 

 

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Switchgrass, a crop touted by venture capitalists and environmentalists alike as a next-generation ethanol feedstock, yields about five times more energy than it takes to grow it, making the plant a far more efficient fuel source than corn, a new study said.

In addition, the life cycle of the switchgrass ethanol -- which includes growing the crop, making the fuel, and burning it in vehicles -- emits about 94 percent less of planet-warming carbon dioxide than the life cycle of gasoline, said the study, published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

ENN: Switchgrass fuel yields bountiful energy: study

Towering wooden moose, restaurant in belly, planned as tourist attraction

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - With little else to attract tourists, promoters of two Swedish counties are pinning their hopes on a truly gargantuan wooden moose.

When completed, the 45-metre tall, 47-metre-long moose will have a restaurant in its belly, as well as a concert hall, conference rooms and a shop, according to Thorbjorn Holmlund, project co-ordinator and local tourism promoter.

The monument to the moose will be so big that its massive wooden hooves will be firmly planted in two different counties, Vasterbotten and Norrbotten, about 870 kilometres north of Stockholm.

"The reason we decided to build a moose is because there is something magnificent about the animal. It's the king of the forest," said Holmlund.

The project is expected to be completed by summer of 2009.

The Canadian Press: Sweden: Towering wooden moose, restaurant in belly, planned as tourist attraction

Cultural Impact Assessments 28-9 Feb 08, Yellowknife, NWT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The NWT Region of the Western and Northern Canada Affiliate of the International Association for Impact Assessment is issuing a call for presentations, papers and posters for a conference on February 28th and 29th, 2008, in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. This conference will focus on Cultural Impact Assessment in the broad sense, including such possible themes as:

• Cultural impact assessment methods and case studies
  
• Bringing the cultural together with the ecological
  
• Models of inclusion of cultural knowledge in project design, implementation and reclamation
  
• Cultural landscape assessment
  
• Designing agreements to protect culture
  
• The role of Traditional Knowledge in Cultural Impact Assessment
  
• Getting past Go vs. No go in cultural impact assessment
  
• Designing cultural mitigation measures that stick
  
• Implementing cultural and socio-economic measures of agreements
  
• Cross-cultural awareness: implications for EIA processes
  
• Participatory and community-based methods for assessment
  

 

This conference will draw on the considerable expertise of those involved in the research or practice of EIA as it relates to this general subject.  Those interested in presenting a paper at the conference should submit a 300 word abstract to the IAIA Western and Northern Canada Affiliate no later than Dec. 16^th, 2007 Please send abstracts to Ginger Gibson: at vgibson@interchange.ubc.ca   Submissions will be reviewed and contributors notified by Friday Dec. 21^st, 2007

For more information on the conference, contact Ginger Gibson vgibson@interchange.ubc.ca

KEY WORDS: Values, cultural landscapes, wellness, beyond biophysical, stories on the land, assessment methods, community-based and participatory research