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New Monkey Discovered In Brazilian Amazon

July 14, 2009 By

new monkey_Stuart Grudgings – Researchers have discovered a new sub-species of monkey in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest, a U.S.-based wildlife conservation group said on Tuesday.

The newly found monkey was first spotted by scientists in 2007 in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and is related to the saddleback tamarin monkeys, known for their distinctively marked backs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.

The small monkey, which is mostly gray and brown and weighs 213 grams (0.47 pound), has been named the Mura’s saddleback tamarin after the Mura Indian tribe of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the new sub-species was found.

It is 240 millimeters (9.4 inches) tall with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.

“This newly described monkey shows that even today there are major wildlife discoveries to be made,” Fabio Rohe, the lead author of a study confirming the new discovery, said in a statement released by the WCS.

The study found that the monkey is threatened by development projects in the region, including a major highway through the forest that is being paved and which could fuel deforestation.

“This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world’s wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction,” Rohe said.

Filed Under: Environment Tagged With:

Brick Butterfly Sanctuary All About Charity & Nature

July 5, 2009 By

brick-butterfly-sanctuary_Matthew Mcgrath – A large monarch butterfly flits by as Ralph Petrellese breaks through the barrier of heavy, transparent plastic drapes that mark the entrance to his butterfly sanctuary.

His presence in the 900-square-foot Mantoloking Road greenhouse, home to about 100 butterflies, is somewhat incongruous. He’s a tall, solidly built man with a thick layer of stubble around his thick black mustache. He has spent nearly a year learning about the gentle insects and how to care for them.

“I saw an exhibit at Hersey Park last summer, which is when I got the idea,” Petrellese said. “They had a smaller greenhouse, and they charged a lot more money.”

The sanctuary is on the Brick Flower Shop’s side lot. Petrellese runs the florist with his wife, Nancy. The township couple has owned the floral shop for three years. The two previously had rented the lot and the greenhouse to landscapers. They owned a florist shop in Freehold for 15 years before they bought the store here. The sanctuary, however, is a separate nonprofit company.

For a $10 donation to Butterfly Charities, visitors can spend all the time they want in the sanctuary. Brides-to-be can purchase a dozen butterflies for $150 to be released as an alternative to rice or birdseed. Butterfly Charities will donate its profits to a different charity each month — June is breast cancer research, July will be Camp Quality.

The dark clouds blotting out the sun Wednesday kept the orange and black monarchs subdued, Petrellese said. They sat on the flowers “nectaring,” that is, drinking the nectar from the flowers. In the background, “Pachelbel’s Canon,” composed by Johan Sebastian Bach, played from a small digital music player on a continuous loop.

At a closer inspection, hundreds of caterpillars of all sizes pocked the leaves of the plants. Soon, many of them will wrap themselves in cocoons and emerge completely changed — monarchs, morning cloaks and painted ladies will glide through the greenhouse. The females in the bunch will lay 500 eggs each during their four-week adult life, which will guarantee the sanctuary a constant supply of butterflies.

“I helped one butterfly out of his cocoon,” Nancy Petrellese said. “It pumped up its wings, flew and landed on my hand as a thank-you, I guess. Then it flew off.”

Escapes do happen, which is why Petrellese stocks only insects that are native to New Jersey. But, the three butterflies that have escaped were caught within a half-hour and returned to the sanctuary.

“This is a Club Med for butterflies,” Petrellese said. “This is all they’ve known. There is lots of food, plenty of mates. It’s harder outside for them.”

Filed Under: Environment Tagged With:

‘High As A Kite’

June 26, 2009 By

wallabies_Wallabies snacking in opium poppy fields are getting “high as a kite” and hopping around creating crop circles. Tasmania is the world’s largest producer of legally-grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.

Tasmania attorney-general Lara Giddings told a budget hearing yesterday that she recently read about the wallabies in a brief on the state’s large poppy industry.

She said: “We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. “Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”

A manager for one of two Tasmanian companies licensed to take medicinal products from poppy straw said wildlife and livestock – including deer and sheep – that eat the poppies are known to “act weird”.

Tasmanian Alkaloids field operations manager Rick Rockliff said: “There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles.”

Tasmania supplies about 50% of the world’s raw material for morphine and related opiates. About 500 farmers grow the crop on 49,420 acres of land.

Filed Under: Environment Tagged With:

Who Should Answer For The Bill?

June 20, 2009 By

wildlife_Two Utah students feel goosed by a moose on the loose. Their cars were parked on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo when a young bull moose showed up June 4. State wildlife officials shot it with a tranquilizer gun, but before it fell, it busted through a barricade and collapsed on the cars.

One of the students, Cassi Elton, said she expected the state to pick up the $1,500 in damages. State officials say there’s no provision for reimbursing for that kind of damage.

An auto body shop in Orem has offered free repairs for the students. And the moose? He was released into the wild and hasn’t been seen since.

Filed Under: Environment, Government, News & Media Tagged With: ,

Asia’s Biggest Illegal Ivory Market

June 20, 2009 By

asia's_illegal_ivory_marketThailand still has Asia’s biggest illegal elephant ivory market despite promises to crack down, the wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic said on Friday. The report said Bangkok should close “elephant-sized loopholes” in its wildlife protection laws that enable sellers to pass off illegal ivory as coming from a legal source of domesticated animals. “The illegal trade in live elephants and ivory still flourishes in Thailand,” according to Traffic’s 73-page study.

It said the number of worked ivory pieces seen on sale during its latest survey had fallen substantially but was still high at 26,000 pieces compared to 88,000 noted in a previous report in 2001. But it said there were more retail outlets dealing in ivory products than counted in 2001. “Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, a major tourist destination, has emerged as the main hub for illegal ivory activities,” it said. “Thailand has consistently been identified as one of the world’s top five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade, but shows little sign of addressing outstanding issues,” said Tom Milliken of Traffic.

The latest data was based on surveys in 2006/07 and a follow-up in 2008. Traffic is run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the WWF conservation group. The IUCN groups governments, scientists and environmental organizations. Traffic urged Bangkok to tighten law enforcement. It also questioned exports, saying that nine elephants had been sent to Australia and five to Germany since a 2006 proclamation prohibited such sales.

And it said Thailand illegally imported elephants for tourism from Myanmar. Traffic urged Thailand to set up a computer database, using genetic material, to track ivory from domesticated elephants to try to shut illegal ivory out of the market. Under a 1939 law, possession and sale of ivory from domesticated Thai elephants is legal — the law treats them as working animals such as cows or water buffalo. But a 1992 law bans trade in wild Thai elephants and products, and elephants from abroad.

Filed Under: Environment, News & Media Tagged With: ,

Rare Elephants Poisoned In Indonesia

June 7, 2009 By

rare_elephants_poisonedThree rare Sumatran elephants were found dead in northwestern Indonesia near an oil palm plantation and are believed to have been poisoned by villagers, a conservationist said Thursday. The carcasses of the protected giant animals were in a forest 560 miles (900 kilometers) from the capital, Jakarta, said Eddy Santoso, head of the local Conservation and Natural Resources Agency. The forest land has been rented by the government to local farmers for commercial purposes.

The decaying carcass of a six-year-old female elephant was discovered Monday near two other dead females found last Thursday. Santoso said he suspects the elephants were poisoned by villagers running a plantation for oil palms, which are used to make palm oil, in an adjoining forest. Elephants, confronted by dwindling jungle, sometimes run amok in farmland or villages, trampling crops and killing humans. “Maybe the villagers were worried the wild elephants would attack their plantations,” he said. “They probably scattered poison there.”

Last month, conservationists came upon two giant males that had been poisoned with cyanide-laced pineapples in the same area, with their tusks removed. Police were investigating the latest case in coordination with the agency. Part of the forest in Riau province where some of just 3,000 remaining Sumatran elephants live were converted into oil palm plantations managed by the locals with the assistance of the state-owned plantation company Perkebunan Nusantara.

Indonesia’s endangered elephants, tigers, rhinos and orangutans are increasingly threatened by shrinking jungle habitat, which is cut and burned to make way for plantations or sold as lumber. Palm fruit is pressed to make palm oil, used in cosmetics, food and increasingly for clean-burning fuel. The profitable commodity is one of Indonesia’s leading export products and a billion-dollar industry.

Filed Under: Education, Environment Tagged With:

It’s Not Just Humans Who Have Morals

May 29, 2009 By

animals_Animals have a sense of morality and can tell right from wrong, according to new research. Species ranging from mice to wolves are governed by similar codes of conduct as humans, say ecologists. Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions But Professor Marc Bekoff, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that morals are ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of all mammals. They also provide the ‘social glue’ that allow often aggressive and competitive animals to live together in groups, he said.

For instance dominant wolves dominate fairness by ‘handicapping’ themselves by engaging in role reversal with lower ranking wolves, showing submission and allowing them to bite, provided it is not too hard. Chimpanzees also demonstrate a sense of justice by setting upon those in the group who deviate from the code. They also treat disabled members differently by rarely subjecting them to displays of aggression, research found. Dolphins and whales are known to be capable of empathy because they have the same spindle cells in their brains as humans.

Prof Berkoff, who presented his case in new book, Wild Justice, said: ‘There are cases of dolphins helping humans to escape from sharks, and elephants that have helped antelope escape from enclosures.’ Experiments with rats have shown that they will not take food if they know their actions will cause pain to another rat. Similarly, mice react more strongly to pain when they have seen another mouse in pain. ‘The belief that humans have morality and animals don’t is a long-standing assumption, but there is a growing amount of evidence that is showing us that this simply cannot be the case,’ Prof Bekoff told the Sunday Telegraph.

‘Just as in humans, the moral nuances of a particular culture or group will be different from another, but they are certainly there. ‘Moral codes are species specific, so they can be difficult to compare with each other or with humans.’ His conclusions will provide ammunition for animal welfare groups pushing to have creatures treated more humanely.But some experts are sceptical about the extent to which animals can experience complex emotions and social responsibility.

Professor Frans de Waal, a primate behaviourist at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, said: ‘I don’t believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species. ‘Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots, and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality.’

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