Pigeons Being Captured In Abu Dhabi, Residents Say
In a quiet Abu Dhabi neighbourhood around Khalifa Street, pigeons are lured by feed scattered on the pavement. In the hot afternoon sun, the food is a welcome sight for them and they fly down in droves. But they are unaware of the four men lurking around, waiting to ensnare them in nets and take them away in cages.
These men allegedly lay a net for the birds, and wait for a number of them to collect in the area. They then capture these birds with the net, put them in cages after freeing them and drive away in a white van.
Madhu Malini, 30, a resident in the area, said she had seen this happening twice, and was concerned about what was happening to the birds.
“I love animals and I was upset at the birds being taken away in this manner. These men hurt the pigeons, especially as many of their bodies get ensnared in the net and their wings break. They should be stopped, especially if they are not licensed by the government,” Malini said. Read more
More Than Half Of The World’s Plants And Animals ‘Facing Extinction’
For decades, rare exotic species such as the tiger, panda and snow leopard have become symbols of the world’s disappearing wildlife.
But according to a new report, common animals are vanishing at an even more alarming rate.
Over the last 30 years, the total number of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and amphibians living in the world has plummeted by one third.
Thousands of species – from British honey bees and house sparrows, to Kenya zebra and giraffes – have seen their numbers fall more quickly than at any time in recorded history.
Over the same period the human population has doubled, conservationists say.
Experts last night warned that the world was going through the ‘sixth mass extinction’ in history – and claimed that the scale of the natural losses may soon begin to hit the world’s economies.
The shocking finding comes in the third United Nations Global Biodiversity Outlook report – a snapshot of how the world’s wildlife is changing.
The report warned that natural systems that support economies, lives, food supplies and jobs are at risk of ‘rapid degradation and collapse’ unless political leaders take swift action.
Some ecosystems such as coral reefs and forests could soon reach ‘tipping points’ where they quickly become less useful to mankind.
Ahmed Djoghlaf, Convention on Biological Diversity executive secretary, said: ‘The news is not good.
‘We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history – extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate.
‘Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.’
The report found that up to 55 per cent of animal and plant species are threatened with extinction.
They include iconic species such as rhinos, whales and gorillas, along with blue fin tuna, the pacific walrus and monarch butterfly. Some 23 per cent of plant species are also threatened, along with 12 per cent of all bird species.
But the report – based on 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 110 national reports submitted by governments – warned that the amount of wildlife was also falling.
The global abundance of vertebrates – the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish – fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN said.
In the tropics, the number of vertebrates fell by 60 per cent.
In Africa, populations of giraffe, zebra, warthog and impala – animals once commonly seen by tourists on safari – have fallen by around 70 per cent since the 1970s.
In Britain, the number of farmland birds such as skylarks and lapwings has halved since 1980, while sparrow and starling numbers have gone down two thirds.
Butterflies, honey bees, bumblebees and moths have all seen dramatic falls in numbers.
The UN warned that the main reasons behind the disappearance of species, including loss of habitats, including climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources, were not going away – and in some cases were getting worse.
The report also confirmed that the world’s leaders had failed to meet their target for curbing the rate of wildlife loss, agreed eight years ago.
The UN estimates that the world is losing habitats and wildlife worth £43 billion a year in food, jobs and natural resources. By David Derbyshire, The Daily Mail
Yellowstone Saves Some Of Its Richest Wildlife Watching For The Colder Months
Simond Raymond of Switzerland braved snow-packed and icy roads, but he considered his winter visit to Yellowstone National Park a success. He saw wolves every day.
“Sometimes the weather is very bad — but we saw the wolves,” he smiled.
Raymond fits into a category of Yellowstone visitor that did not exist 15 years ago: the wolf watcher.
After being wiped out in the park early in the 20th century, 31 gray wolves were re-introduced in 1995 and 1996. They flourished. Today, more than 350 of their descendants roam the park and surrounding area, preying on the abundant elk, deer and bison.
Summer visitors to Yellowstone expect to see wildlife, but most don’t realize that the winter season — which officially begins Dec. 18 — can be prime time for wildlife viewing. Deep snow in the high country drives elk, deer and bison down into the open valleys, where the weather is milder and they can more easily paw or push snow aside to get to the dried grass beneath.
And where the grazing animals gather, predators follow.
My wife and I live only three hours away from Yellowstone and we visit more often in the winter than the summer. We like to tell others about being serenaded by wolf and coyote howls echoing off the mountains, of watching a coyote stalk and pounce on a mouse by listening to it scurrying under the snow, of inadvertently skiing so close to a bison that we could see his bloodshot eyes.
But there’s more than wildlife in Yellowstone in winter. The frigid air enhances the steam spouting from its famous geysers, making them even more spectacular. Its plateaus and broad valleys are made for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing; some scenic drives in summer are designated cross-country ski trails in winter.
Most of Yellowstone is closed to auto traffic in winter, but the part that is open to cars offers some of the richest wildlife viewing opportunities in the park. It runs from Roosevelt Arch, the century-old ceremonial north entrance to Yellowstone at Gardiner, Mont., to the snowbound community of Cooke City, Mont., at the northeast entrance (the road beyond Cooke City is usually closed in winter).
En route, it passes through the Lamar Valley, which some have called America’s Serengeti. This is where most of the park’s wolf watchers hang out.
But even areas closed to auto traffic remain open to visitors, via snowmobile or snowcoach. Visitors can travel by snowcoach to Old Faithful and ski the circuit around the Upper Geyser Basin, the largest geyser concentration in the world. After skiing, visit the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, a modern hotel that invites visitors to curl up in comfy lounging chairs in front of lobby fireplaces.
Those staying in gateway communities can also take snowcoaches into the park on day trips. Cross-country skiers can access scheduled ski drops and pickups for specific trails from in-park hotels.
And for those staying near the north entrance, winter is the best time to try that special Yellowstone experience called hot-potting.
As you drive the five miles from Gardiner to Mammoth Hot Springs, you will cross the Gardner River. You may notice a big parking lot to your left — seemingly serving nothing. It’s not marked, but this is the best opportunity in Yellowstone to take a dip in a wild hot springs without having to hike for 20 miles. By William Kronholm,The Miami Herald
Tracking Down Elusive Whales
A 15-year genetic study of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales has opened a window into the little known mating habits of the giant cetaceans, revealing some whales travel between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to mate.
Analyzing DNA skin samples from 1,527 whales in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, an international group of scientists mapped how different whale populations interact, their mating habits and distribution across oceans.
“Many of the interactions among Southern Hemisphere populations are still poorly understood,” said Howard Rosenbaum, director of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants Program and lead author of the study.
“This research illustrates the vast potential of genetic analyses to uncover the mysteries of how humpbacks travel and form populations in the Southern Ocean basins,” Rosenbaum said in a statement announcing the study, published on PLoS ONE, an online scientific journal (http://www.plosone.org)
So little was known about Southern Ocean humpback whales that the researchers used whaling records dating back to 1761 for initial insights.
The whaling logbooks tried to determine whale population boundaries and breeding stock, but studying humpbacks in the wild, even in modern times, is difficult due to the wild oceans they inhabit and the vast distances they travel.
“We’re still trying to answer the same question with molecular technology in concert with whaling logbook records,” said Rosenbaum.
The slow-swimming humpback was hunted commercially until the International Whaling Commission protected the species in 1966. Humpback numbers are recovering, but their total population may still be only a small per cent of the original population.
The study found that the highest rate of gene flow between Southern Hemisphere humpbacks occurred with whales breeding on either side of Africa, with one or two whales swimming between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans each year to mate.
This was the first time a humpback had been recorded travelling between the two oceans, said the study.
Whale populations on either side of the South Atlantic did not seem to mate, but similarities in their “songs” revealed a degree of interaction between the two groups, most likely in the feeding grounds in Antarctic waters.
The small humpback population of less than 200 in the Indian Ocean, off the Arabian Peninsula, was distinct genetically and unlike other populations did not migrate and therefore was a “conservation priority,” said the study.
“Molecular technology gives us a window into the lives of whales that can help us understand the ecological forces shaping their movements and distribution,” said Rosenbaum.
“We can also use our findings to inform management decisions for a species that is only now beginning to recover from centuries of commercial whaling,” he said. Canada Dot Com
Two Decades Before Tigers Stop Roaring
Tigers could become extinct in the wild in two decades unless the world ramps up conservation efforts to halt the decline in their population, wildlife experts said Wednesday.
Barely 3,500 tigers are estimated to be roaming in the wild in 12 Asian countries and Russia compared with about 100,000 a century ago, experts and conservationists said.
“Despite our efforts in the last three decades, tigers still face threats of survival. The primary threat is from poaching and habitat loss,” Nepal’s prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told a conference of tiger experts from 20 countries.
Tigers are being illegally killed for their body parts and Asia is a hotspot for the illegal wildlife trade, which the international police organization Interpol estimates may be worth more than $20 billion a year.
Skins sell as rugs and cloaks on the black market, where a skin can fetch up to $20,000.
Habitat destruction and depletion of prey base are other perils facing the “Asian heritage”, conservationists said.
“A business as usual approach in tiger conservation will doom the tiger population in the next 15 to 20 years,” Mahendra Shrestha, program director of the Washington-based Save the Tiger Fund said on the sidelines of a conference on tiger conservation.
He said law enforcement, patrols to stop poaching and the preservation of remaining habitat would improve the situation.
“There is hope. We can do it. It is not rocket science. It does not require a lot of new activities,” Shrestha said. “But there has to be strong political will to conserve tigers and also strong global international support for the activities of the tiger range countries.”
Tigers still roam terrain in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.
John Seidensticker, chief scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Conservation Ecology Center, said tiger habitat had declined by 40 percent in the last decade due to destruction of forests.
“Our challenge is to make landscapes with tigers alive worth more than landscapes where tigers have been killed,” Seidensticker said. “I think we have a decade from where we will slip from being caretakers to undertakers.” China Daily