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Better Earth

Eels in crisis after 95% decline in last 25 years

Steven Morris
The Guardian
Sun, 03 May 2009 16:36 UTC
Image
© Graham Turner
According to the Environment Agency, the number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the past 25 years.
They ought to be wriggling through briny water and marshy flatlands in their hundreds of thousands right now.

But the mystery of the vanishing eels is troubling fisheries officials, conservationists and fishermen who for generations have hunted the curious animal.

A conference in Somerset on the plight of the eel, which was attended by experts from across Europe, has been hearing this week that the eel is in crisis.

The number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the last 25 years, the Environment Agency says. Officials report that the number of young eels arriving in Britain's estuaries, rivers and streams this spring is significantly down on last year. Andy Don, an Environment Agency fisheries officer who has studied the eel for 20 years, said: "There is no doubt that there is a crisis. People have been reporting catching a kilo of glass eels this year when they would expect to catch 40 kilos. We have got to do something."
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Cow Skull

16 Cattle Drop Dead Near Mysterious Fluid at Gas Drilling Site

Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica
Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:57 UTC
ProPublica has been reporting for months about how natural gas drilling is affecting the environment, but of all the causes for concern we've reported, here's a doozy.

Sixteen cattle dropped dead in a northwestern Louisiana field this week after apparently drinking from a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig, according to Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality and a report in the Shreveport Times. At least one worker told the newspaper that the fluids, which witnesses described as green and spewing into the air near the drilling derrick, were used for a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. But the company, Chesapeake Energy , has not identified exactly what chemicals are in those fluids and is insisting to state regulators that no spill occurred.
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Fish

Portuguese Men o'War invade Mediterranean for first time in a decade

Elizabeth Nash
The Independent
Fri, 01 May 2009 21:10 UTC
Image
© Alamy
Swarms of poisonous Portuguese Men o'War have been spotted off Spain
Anyone planning to take a Mediterranean holiday in defiance of the plunging pound may be stung by something more painful than the exchange rate: the killer Portuguese Man o' War, one of the world's most poisonous jellyfish. The graceful glutinous creature, whose trailing tentacles carry a potentially lethal poison, was spotted this week off Spain's favourite beaches for the first time in 10 years.

Swept by westerly winds through the Gibraltar Strait from its north Atlantic habitat, Physalia physalis is set to colonise the Med and cause more pain to beleaguered holidaymakers.

Clusters of up to 50 Men o' Wars, which are not strictly jellyfish but floating colonies of microscopic hydrozoans, are drifting off the Murcian resort of San Pedro del Pinatar on Spain's Costa Calida. Scientists say they could soon invade waters around the Balearic Islands and advance towards the Catalan coast.

With a sting 10 times stronger than an ordinary jellyfish, it presents a more dangerous threat than the annual jellyfish invasion of beaches in Spain, France, Italy and North Africa.
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Bell

US: Bats' homes off-limits because of disease

Spencer Hunt
The Columbus Dispatch
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:57 UTC
Affected states with white-nose syndrome
© Bat Conservation International/The Clumbus Dispatch
Thousands of caves and old mines in national forests, including the Wayne National Forest in Ohio, have been closed to people as the government tries to slow a mysterious disease that's wiping out bats.

Abandoned mines in the Wayne are well-known among biologists as winter havens for hibernating bats. Banning visitors could help keep white-nose syndrome from extending into Ohio, officials say. Discovered in New York in 2006, the disease has spread to eight other Eastern states, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The syndrome is named for a white fungus that grows on bats' faces, ears, wings and feet.

Nearly 500,000 bats have died.
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Hourglass

Orchard Losses 'Threaten Species'


BBC News
Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:06 UTC
Image

Use of few or no chemicals makes orchards good wildlife habitat
Traditional fruit orchards are vanishing from England's landscape - with serious consequences for wildlife, conservationists have warned.

The National Trust says 60% have disappeared since the 1950s, putting local varieties of apples, cherries, pears, plums and damsons under threat.

It is launching a £536,000 drive to reverse the decline of the orchards.

Their trees provide important habitats for species such as the noble chafer beetle and lesser spotted woodpecker.

The orchards - some with as few as five trees - also offer sources of pollen and nectar to bees, which are thought to be declining partly because of a lack of suitable food.

Pressure from commercial fruit growers has led many small-scale producers to develop their orchards or convert them to other uses.
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Bizarro Earth

One Person Killed, 100 Bitten by Bats in Peru's Amazon Region


Latin American Herald Tribune
Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:20 UTC
Lima - About 100 people have been bitten in recent days by bats in an unusual ongoing series of attacks in Peru's Amazon region of Bagua, where a 6-year-old boy has died, apparently after contracting rabies.

The daily Peru 21 on Thursday quoted regional health authorities, who said that they fear there is a rabies outbreak among the bats, which would explain the 300 bat-bite cases registered in the last 12 months.
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Fish

Predators starve as we plunder oceans

Geoffrey Lean
The Indepedent
Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:51 UTC
Marine giants go hungry as fleets scoop up their prey for our fish suppers.

Starving sea life - from whales to puffins, tuna to seals - is being found all over the world's oceans, as the food on which it depends is being fished out, startling new evidence shows. And much of the depletion, ironically, is caused by raising captive fish - for the table.
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Wolf

Wolf that traveled 1,000 miles to Colorado found dead

Jeffery Wolf
KUSA
Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:44 UTC
Denver - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colorado Division of Wildlife says a gray wolf that wandered into Colorado from Montana has died, but they are still trying to figure out what happened to it.

The female wolf was being tracked by a GPS collar as it traveled from Montana through three other states, a journey of nearly 1,000 miles, before it ended up in Colorado. She was only 18 months old when she separated from her pack just north of Yellowstone National Park in September.
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Bizarro Earth

Bees in peril

Allison J. Arteaga
Winter Park / Maitland Observer
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:45 UTC
Image
Jean Vasicek seems to know almost everything about bees.

She knows the terrifying sound that the beating of thousands of tiny wings can make, and she knows that her bees get cranky when the citrus trees aren't in bloom. And she knows that honey bees like hers are facing serious problems on a national scale.

Since acquiring her first hive from her brother about 10 years ago, Vasicek has accumulated more than 100 hives throughout the Orlando area, and has become the official beekeeper for Winter Park Honey.

But the situation has changed since she first started, and for Vasicek, it's been for the worse. "Back then you could take care of bees and hardly touch them," she said. "Now it has gotten very hard to keep bees alive."
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Better Earth

The snow monkeys of Hell's Valley

Lucy Dodwell
New Scientist
Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:03 UTC
Image
© Heather Angel
This photograph of Japanese macaques relaxing in a hot bath was taken on a winter morning by wildlife photographer and zoologist Heather Angel. The pool is in the Joshinetsu Kogen National Park, Nagano, Japan, in a place known as Hell's valley because of its steep cliffs, dense forests and the boiling water that spurts from the frozen ground. It was built 30 years ago when it was discovered that the monkeys, like us, like to bathe in hot water.

Japanese macaques - also known as snow monkeys - live further north than any other non-human primate. Snow covers the ground in Hell's Valley for four months of the year and temperatures often drop to -20 °C. Thermal pools - both natural and man-made - help the monkeys survive the harsh climate.

Snow monkeys are not only renowned for their love of hot baths, but for using tools and washing their food. In 1953, an 18-month-old female called Imo was spotted washing sweet potatoes to remove the mud before eating them. Ten years later the rest of the troop were also doing this, and had passed on the skill to the next generation. It was the first report of a learned tradition in a non-human species.
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