The Canadian Press: Scientists warn caribou collapse not unlike disappearance of cod stocks

 

Scientists warn caribou collapse not unlike disappearance of cod stocks

By Bob Weber (CP) – 6 hours ago

YELLOWKNIFE — Once, caribou wandered over the Arctic tundra in herds that took days to pass.

So great were their numbers - even 20 years ago - that they were able to shake off man's puny imprint on the great barren lands like so many flies on a rump.

"There was so much caribou all over that even our plane, our scheduled flights, couldn't land on the airstrip," recalled Alfonz Nitsiza of Wha Ti, a tiny aboriginal community northwest of Yellowknife.

"The caribou were on the airstrip. It was full of caribou, all our communities were."

Today, scientists fear caribou are the new cod.

"If we want a counterpart to start looking at what may be happening with the caribou, look at the northern cod," said Anne Gunn, a caribou biologist and former Northwest Territories researcher.

Once a gigantic bloom of life that sustained entire societies, the cod fishery was closed in 1992 after a near-total collapse of fish stocks. The subsequent bust of Newfoundland's outport culture was nearly as complete.

Recent surveys on two major caribou herds in Canada's North suggest the same thing may be happening there. And as scientists begin to unlock the secrets of that decline, aboriginals who still depend on the great herds to feed both body and soul are rethinking old assumptions.

"The elders are saying that there is a cycle, that caribou go away somewhere but they come back," Nitsiza said. "This time, the caribou may not come back."

Biologists say 15 of the world's 23 herds are shrinking. Only six herds, generally the small ones, are growing.

The Canadian Press: Scientists warn caribou collapse not unlike disappearance of cod stocks

World Environment News - Kilimanjaro's Ice May Disappear By 2033 - Planet Ark

 

Kilimanjaro's Ice May Disappear By 2033

Author: Katrina Manson

DAR ES SALAAM - The ice on Africa's highest mountain could vanish in 13 to 24 years, a fate also awaiting the continent's other glaciers, a study said Monday.

U.S.-based researchers Lonnie Thompson and colleagues said glaciers on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania's snow-capped volcano which attracts 40,000 visitors a year, could disappear.

"There is a strong likelihood that the ice fields will disappear within a decade or two if current conditions persist," said the study, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

The research blames warmer temperatures due to climate change and drier, less cloudy conditions than in the past.

"The climatological conditions currently driving the loss of Kilimanjaro's ice fields are clearly unique within an 11,700-year perspective," said the study, adding that the mountain lost 26 percent of its ice cover between 2000 and 2007.

At 5,896 meters high, Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the east African country's top tourism draws, offering tourists a taste of the tropical and the glacial within a five-day climb.

It brings in an estimated $50 million a year. Tourism is the leading foreign exchange earner in the poor country, earning $1.22 billion in 2008.

"The loss of the ice fields will have a negative impact on tourism in tropical east Africa," said Thompson in an email to Reuters.

Home to elephant, leopard and buffalo, as well as expansive views of the Rift Valley, the mountain known as "the roof of Africa" was first scaled by a European, Hans Meyer, 120 years ago. While its Kibo peak rises above the clouds, it can be reached with little more than a walking stick and some puff.

"The loss of the glaciers is an indicator of climate change under way in this region which impacts not only the glaciers on the summit but the weather patterns that bring rainfall to the lower slopes," said Thompson.

World Environment News - Kilimanjaro's Ice May Disappear By 2033 - Planet Ark

Edmonton Journal Digital

The fact that two coyotes attacked and killed 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell in Cape Breton Highlands National Park on Tuesday was strange for two reasons, say experts: Coyote attacks on humans are very rare — and two animals attacking together, even more so.

BRIAN GAVRILOFF, THE JOURNAL, FILE

A coyote likely larger than this western variety killed a woman in Nova Scotia.

“There are literally thousands of these animals between Windsor, (Ont.) and St. John (N.L.),”said Brad White, a coyote expert at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., “and I don’t know another incident like this. It’s a very exceptional thing.”

While coyotes have been known to kill pets and small livestock, the animals that attacked Mitchell were probably coyote-wolf hybrids, White said.

Wolves are more likely to hunt in packs and are less picky about what they prey on, White explained. But the intermingling in the early 1900s between the normally solitary coyote and the wolf might explain the attack on Mitchell. “A human could look like prey to them — but still, I’ve never heard of an eastern coyote attacking a human.”

Meanwhile, a biologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources said he’s seen no reason to suspect the animals were coyote-wolf crosses. Don Anderson noted there are no wolves in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. “We do have a larger coyote that’s bigger than the western version,” he said. “It does travel in groups, as opposed to the western, which tends to travel alone.

“I can’t say that there aren’t some out there that are hybrids with dogs, or wolves, for that matter, but I don’t think the whole population is based on that,” he said.

White said the odds are also against the two coyotes having rabies. “Two diseased animals attacking would be unlikely, because it’s unlikely the progression of something like rabies, which is a lethal disease, would be parallel in two animals,” he said. “Usually, they’d be in different stages.”

Edmonton Journal Digital

The Associated Press: Mighty caribou herds dwindle, warming blamed

The Associated Press: Mighty caribou herds dwindle, warming blamed 

By CHARLES J. HANLEY (AP) – Oct 4, 2009

ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon Territory — Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it's not just here.

Across the tundra 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the east, Canada's Beverly herd, numbering more than 200,000 a decade ago, can barely be found today.

Halfway around the world in Siberia, the biggest aggregation of these migratory animals, of the dun-colored herds whose sweep across the Arctic's white canvas is one of nature's matchless wonders, has shrunk by hundreds of thousands in a few short years.

From wildlife spectacle to wildlife mystery, the decline of the caribou — called reindeer in the Eurasian Arctic — has biologists searching for clues, and finding them.

They believe the insidious impact of climate change, its tipping of natural balances and disruption of feeding habits, is decimating a species that has long numbered in the millions and supported human life in Earth's most inhuman climate.

Many herds have lost more than half their number from the maximums of recent decades, a global survey finds. They "hover on the precipice of a major decline," it says.

The "People of the Caribou," the native Gwich'in of the Yukon and Alaska, were among the first to sense trouble, in the late 1990s, as their Porcupine herd dwindled. From 178,000 in 1989, the herd — named for the river crossing its range — is now estimated to number 100,000.

"They used to come through by the hundreds," James Firth, 56, of the Gwich'in Renewable Resources Board said as he guided two Associated Press journalists across the tundra.

The Associated Press: Mighty caribou herds dwindle, warming blamed

Do animals have personalities? - The Globe and Mail

 

Anne McIlroy

From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Oct. 09, 2009 4:41PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009 1:21AM EDT

You can tell a lot about the personality of a bighorn sheep by trying to wrestle one to the ground.

The aggressive animals, like the ram nicknamed Psycho, put up a fight every time. The docile ones never require a half-nelson: They freeze as soon as they are touched and calmly sit down.

Researchers who trap, weigh and measure the bighorn sheep every summer in the mountains near Nordegg, Alta., have been kicked and dragged by the more combative beasts. The scientists are taking part in a Ram Mountain trap-and-release study, started in 1972, that has provided crucial data about the growth and health of the bighorn sheep population. In recent years, the study has also offered Canadian biologists a remarkable opportunity to investigate personality differences in the 125-kilogram animals.

Not many researchers study personalities in wild animals, a field that until relatively recently was dismissed by critics as a foolish attempt to attribute human characteristics to other creatures. But since the early 1990s, biologists have demonstrated that hyenas, chimps, squirrels, birds, octopuses, fish and spiders have measurable personality differences. They can be shy or bold, aggressive or passive, loners or social.

A number of studies – including a recent paper on the Ram Mountain bighorn sheep – have demonstrated that these traits have a strong genetic component.

In their study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, researchers from the University of Sherbrooke and the University of Alberta report that more aggressive rams and ewes tended to have offspring that were also fighters. The more docile ones had lambs that were more likely to grow up to be easygoing.

Now, they are looking for genes linked to those traits. If they are successful, their work could explain behaviour in other species too.

“The question is: Are the same genes that are influencing behaviour in sheep in humans?” Jocelyn Poissant says. A doctoral student, he spent three summers wrestling sheep. This year, however, he stayed in the lab to analyze their DNA. It was easier on his knees.

Do animals have personalities? - The Globe and Mail

Western Producer - U of A gateway to vet college - 2009-10-08 edition

Western Producer - U of A gateway to vet college - 2009-10-08 edition 

U of A gateway to vet college
this document web posted: 2009-10-08

By Mary MacArthur
Camrose bureau

Students looking for a way to enroll in veterinary school may only have to look as far as the University of Alberta.

Fourteen of the 20 first year spaces reserved for Alberta residents at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon are filled with students from the U of A's Faculty of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences (ALES).

Western Producer - U of A gateway to vet college - 2009-10-08 edition

United Nations Foundation » Climate Board

Deforestation & drought in Kenya 

United Nations Foundation » Climate Board

Kenya seizes massive ivory haul

BBC NEWS | Africa | Kenya seizes massive ivory haul 

Kenyan authorities have seized almost 700kg of ivory worth millions of dollars in a night-time raid at the country's main airport.

The Kenya Wildlife Service says a similar amount was intercepted in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Both consignments - with a potential value of more than $1.5m (£938,000) - were reportedly headed for Thailand.

The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says poaching is on the increase mostly owing to high demand for ivory in Asia.

Our reporter says it is not yet clear whether the ivory, recovered at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport, had been trafficked from other parts of the continent or was from East Africa.

Twenty years ago the world's elephant population was plummeting and the trade in ivory was banned.

But over the past decade the ban has been periodically relaxed and occasional supervised ivory auctions have been allowed.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Kenya seizes massive ivory haul

AFP: Healthy deer can spread prion disease through faeces

 

Healthy deer can spread prion disease through faeces

(AFP) – 20 hours ago

PARIS — Brain-destroying prion disease can spread among deer through faeces shed by animals which have been infected by the deadly pathogen but are not sick, a study published on Wednesday suggests.

The paper implies that the mysterious disorders known as chronic wasting disease (CWD) and scrapie -- cousins of mad-cow disease -- could be transmitted in a hitherto-overlooked way, posing a headache for farmers.

The scientists are led by University of California neurologist Stanley Prusiner, who won the 1997 Nobel Medicine Prize for research into prions, the rogue proteins blamed for turning brains spongey.

Prion diseases are well-researched disorders in deer (CWD), cattle (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE), sheep and goats (scrapie), cats (feline spongiform encephalopathy, FSE) and in humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CJD).

Many aspects about them are unclear, though. In deer, CWD is known to be handed on from mother to offspring, but other paths of infection are deemed possible.

Publishing in the British journal Nature, Prusiner's team probe a theory that deer may pass on the prion in their faeces, thus creating a risk that other deer will pick up the pathogen in the soil when they graze.

AFP: Healthy deer can spread prion disease through faeces

Brookfield Zoo helps restore addax antelope herds -- chicagotribune.com

 

Brookfield Zoo helps restore addax antelope herds

Big plans rest on baby antelope at Brookfield Zoo

Chad, a 10-week-old addax, hangs out in his pen at Brookfield Zoo. Chad, sickly from birth, has been hand-raised by the zoo in an effort to keep him alive. (Chicago Tribune / August 27, 2009)

Weak and near death when he was born at Brookfield Zoo, a baby antelope named Chad now carries big hopes on his little shoulders that he will grow up to help save his species by siring lots of calves.
"He had a rough start when he was born," Joan Daniels, the zoo's associate mammal curator, said as she watched the now-robust 10-week-old bound across his grassy enclosure to a keeper holding out special formula in nippled bottles.
Daniels said keepers decided to take Chad from his mother soon after birth so they could hand-rear him.
"I am quite sure he would have died because normally they stand up within the first hour," she said. "That was the only reason we intervened."
Chad is an addax, an endangered type of antelope from the Sahara Desert, which is so dry that the species has learned to go years without drinking water, living off moisture in plants.
And they face extinction not because of lost habitat, like so many other species, but because of the arrival of ATVs and automatic weapons in the desert after World War II.
Saving Chad, Daniels said, is important because the genes he inherited from his father are rare among the 197 addax living in North American zoos. His offspring, therefore, would be important for increasing the genetic diversity of zoo addax.
Now only about 300 are left in the wild, 200 in one corner of Niger, the rest scattered in tiny, fast-disappearing herds.

Brookfield Zoo helps restore addax antelope herds -- chicagotribune.com