Animals
S


Better Earth

Hunting Banned in Parts of Austria After Hailstones Kill 90 Percent of Wild Game


Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:48 UTC
Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis ball-sized hailstones killed up to 90 per cent of the wild game population.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : "Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so."

Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings.

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.

In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.
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Bug

Spain: Plague of Mosquitoes Descends on Torrevieja

M.P.
Typically Spanish
Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
Mosquito
© Wikipedia
More than 200 people have been treated for allergic reactions to the bites

A plague of mosquitoes affecting Torrevieja in recent days worsened over Friday and Saturday when more than 200 people were treated at La Loma health centre for allergic reactions to the insect bites. Diario Información reports that staff there were forced to send for supplies from other centres after running out of the medication they needed to treat their patients.

And La Verdad newspaper said local supermarkets and chemists have sold out of their stocks of insect repellents and insecticides.
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Fish

Man-made noise is blamed for driving whales to their deaths

Frank Pope
The Times
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:16 UTC
bottlenose whale
© unknownA northern bottlenose whale stranded in Scotland
Scientists say man-made noise equipment, including anti-seal sonar devices used in fish farms, is driving deep-water animals such as whales to shore, where they die.

A northern bottlenose whale was washed up dead on a beach in Prestatyn, North Wales, on Saturday morning, the tenth of the species to become trapped or stranded on British shores this year.

Scientists are blaming not just military sonar, but a large range of man-made noises that they fear are driving the normally deep-water animals to shore.

The week before, another of the 10m (33ft) whales became trapped in a small Scottish loch. Rescuers managed to push the distressed animal out of Loch Eil and halfway to safety but on Friday morning the whale was found dead.
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Butterfly

Panama Butterfly Migrations Linked To El Niño, Climate Change


ScienceDaily
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:20 UTC
Sulfur Butterfly
© Ricardo Tames VargasAphrissa statira, Sulfur Butterfly
A high-speed chase across the Panama Canal in a Boston Whaler may sound like the beginning of another James Bond film - but the protagonist of this story brandishes a butterfly net and studies the effects of climate change on insect migrations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

"Our long-term study shows that El Niño, a global climate pattern, drives Sulfur butterfly migrations," said Robert Srygley, former Smithsonian post doctoral fellow who is now a research ecologist at the US Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Climate change has been linked to changes in the migration of butterflies in North America and Europe but this is one of the first long-term studies of environmental factors driving long-distance migration of tropical butterflies.

For 16 years, Srygley and colleagues tracked the progress of lemony yellow Sulfur butterflies, Aphrissa statira, a species found from Mexico to Brazil, as they migrate across central Panama from Atlantic coastal rainforests to the drier forests of the Pacific coast.
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Fish

Endangered Alaska beluga whale group declining

Mary Pemberton
The Associated Press
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:10 UTC
beluga whale
© AP Photo/NOAAIn this Feb. 27, 2006 file photo released by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration shows NOAA fisheries biologists, left to right, Matt Eagleton, Dan Vos, Greg O'Corry-Crowe and Rod Hobbs, placing a satellite transmitter onto a female beluga whale in Cook Inlet near Anchorage, Alaska. A survey by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the number of beluga whales in Cook Inlet is again declining.
Anchorage Alaska - A government study found that a group of endangered beluga whales in Alaska is declining, raising concern that bolstered protection for the animals is not coming quickly enough.

The downward trend comes after two years where numbers for the Cook Inlet belugas appeared to have stabilized. But now numbers have slipped again to 321 animals, down from an estimated 375 animals in 2007 and 2008, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Cook Inlet whales, which swim mainly off Anchorage, are considered a genetically distinct population and don't mix with the other four beluga groups in Alaska.

The lower number in 2009 underscores the need for NOAA to act more aggressively to reverse the decline and save the whales from extinction, said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a group that has used legal pressure to try and get more protections for Cook Inlet belugas.
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Cow Skull

Excreted Tamiflu found in rivers

Janet Raloff
ScienceNews.org
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:44 UTC
ducks
© iStockphotoTamiflu, the primary flu-fighting drug, is getting into surface waters where ducks and other water birds may pick it up. If the birds host influenza viruses, which many normally do, those viruses may develop a resistance to the drug, scientists now worry.

The premier flu-fighting drug is contaminating rivers downstream of sewage-treatment facilities, researchers in Japan confirm. The source: urinary excretion by people taking oseltamivir phosphate, best known as Tamiflu.

Concerns are now building that birds, which are natural influenza carriers, are being exposed to waterborne residues of Tamiflu's active form and might develop and spread drug-resistant strains of seasonal and avian flu.

For their new study, Gopal Ghosh and his colleagues at Kyoto University sampled water discharged from three local sewage treatment plants and water at several points along two rivers into which the treated water flowed. Sampling started early in December 2008, as flu season got underway. The researchers sampled again at the height of the seasonal flu's onslaught in early February and again as infection rates waned.
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Fish

Whale forensics highlights threat to species

Peter Aldhous
New Scientist
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:01 UTC
Image
© UnknownMinke Whale
A high proportion of the whale meat on sale in Japan comes from a population of north Pacific minke whales that some fear is under serious threat.

The finding, from a forensic DNA study of meat bought on Japanese markets, suggests that either Japan's scientific whaling programme is taking more animals from this population than previously estimated, or accidental "by-catch" of the whales in fishing nets is larger than officially reported.

Vimoksalehi Lukoschek of the University of California, Irvine, and Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Newport, along with their colleagues, bought samples of whale meat in Japan and used DNA analysis to determine in each case not only the species of whale, but also which population it came from.

They found that a disturbingly high proportion came from a population of north Pacific minke whale that was selected for protection by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the 1980s, before the wider moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect.
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Binoculars

South Asia: Rare Vultures Seen in Indian Wild


BBC News
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
About 200 rare Bearded Vultures have been seen in a remote part of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, a forestry official has told the BBC.

Lammergeiers
© BBC NewsLammergeiers are long-winged vultures known for their unusual habit of dropping bones on to rocks to smash them open and get at the marrow.
The state's chief conservator of forests, Vinay Tandon, said that the sighting of the bearded vultures was "hugely significant".

Mr Tandon said that four out of the five major vulture species in India are critically endangered.

Experts estimate that there are only a few hundred vultures left in India.

"We had reports on Monday that what appears to be a very large colony of Bearded Vultures - or Lammergeiers - were spotted close to the border with China in what is known as the trans-Himalayan region," Mr Tandon told the BBC.

"As yet we are not able to confirm that the birds belong to this species. A team from the state's wildlife department will be making its way to the area as soon as possible.

"We are especially pleased to hear of such a large colony when in recent years the vulture population of India has been disappearing so rapidly."
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Binoculars

Fanged Frog, 162 Other New Species Found in Mekong

Michael Casey
The Assoicated Press
Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:50 UTC
Goniurosaurus catbaensis
© AP PhotoIn this photo taken Jan. 1, 2008, released by The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) a Cat Ba leopard gecko, known by its scientific name Goniurosaurus catbaensis, is seen in Cat Ba Island National Park in northern Vietnam.
A gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, an environmental group said Friday.

WWF International said that scientists in 2008 discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region. That works out to be about three species a week and is in addition to the 1,000 new species catalogued there from 1997 to 2007, the group said.

"After millennia in hiding these species are now finally in the spotlight, and there are clearly more waiting to be discovered," said Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Program.

Researchers working for WWF warned that the effects of climate change, including an upsurge in droughts and floods, threaten the diverse habitat that supports these species. That is on top of traditional threats such as poaching, pollution and habitat destruction.
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Binoculars

Mysterious Winged Cat Baffles Animal Experts

Kris Mullin
The London Paper
Tue, 26 May 2009 17:00 UTC
White moggy grows fluffy wings out of its back - but can it fly?

Winged Cat
© China Foto Press / BarcroftThe winged cat chows down in China
Animal experts have been pussy-footing over the explanation for a cat that has developed bat-like wings on either side of its back.

The long-haired white feline was born a normal kitten, but started to develop furry wing-like appendages on either side of its back when it was just a year old.

Scientists believe the growths may be the result of a genetic mutation caused by chemicals during its mother's pregnancy. Alternatively, the cat which was discovered in Chongqing, China, may be a freak that developed from two embryos.
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