World biodiversity has declined by almost one third in the past 35 years due mainly to habitat loss and the wildlife trade, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Friday

It warned that climate change would add increasingly to the wildlife woes over the next three decades.

“Biodiversity underpins the health of the planet and has a direct impact on all our lives so it is alarming that despite of an increased awareness of environmental issues we continue to see a downtrend trend,” said WWF campaign head Colin Butfield.

“However, there are small signs for hope and if government grasps what is left of this rapidly closing window of opportunity, we can begin to reverse this trend.”

WWF’s Living Planet Index tracks some 4,000 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians globally. It shows that between 1970 and 2007 land-based species fell by 25 percent, marine by 28 percent and freshwater by 29 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000. Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide emissions have been growing steadily for 200 years, since fossil fuel burning began on a large scale at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But the growth in emissions is now accelerating despite unambiguous evidence that carbon dioxide is warming the planet and disrupting ecosystems around the globe.

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A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists.

The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai.

It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. Read the rest of this entry »

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Climate change might be causing reef fish to get lost, unable to return to breeding grounds from the open ocean, which could have profound implications for the survival of reef ecosystems, Australian scientists say.

Climate change-induced environmental stress, including warmer and more acidic seawater, could be hindering the development of the ear bones in young reef fish, which rely on sound for navigation, the marine experts said on Friday.

The scientists from the James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that fish with asymmetrical ear bones struggle to return to their home reef. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether they hibernate, have thick fur coats or take shelter, animals are masters of surviving the cold weather. Here are a number of interesting animals and the fascinating things they do to survive harsh conditions.

1. Japan’s macaques monkeys keep warm by taking hot baths in volcanic springs.

2. Polar bears (or "solar bears") soak up the sun with their black skin, which is covered by a coat of  clear hair that conducts the sun’s heat. Not to mention they also have a handy 4 inches of fat to insulate them.

3. Animals will also flock to warmth created by humans, such as pigeons in Chicago that huddle around the Eternal Flame and manatees that seek out warm water discharge from power plants.

4. Aside from having blubber, penguins avoid losing energy and heat when they exhale by using special nasal passages to reclaim the warm air.

5. Some honey bees huddle together to make a winter cluster in order to keep warm.

6. Bees aren’t the only ones that huddle together, even bats and ladybugs will huddle for warmth in a safe place.

7. Various plants depend on snow to trap heat and insulate them from cold winds.

8. Seals have a special set of blood vessels that function to conserve heat.

9. Occasionally some fish will use a natural anti-freeze to keep from freezing in low temperatures.

10. When water is scarce, wild bactrian camels will eat snow.

source: blogs.nwf.org

Scientific name: Actitis macularia

Family: Scolopacidae, Sandpipers

Description: 7 1/2″ (19 cm). A starling-sized shorebird that bobs its tail almost constantly. Breeding adults are brown above, with bold white wing stripe, white below with bold black spots on breast and belly. Fall birds lack black spots below, have brownish smudge at sides of breast.

Habitat: Ponds, streams, and other waterways, both inland and along the shore.

Nesting: 4 buff eggs, spotted with brown, in a nest lined with grass or moss in a slight depression on the ground.

Voice: A clear peet-weet; also a soft trill.

Depleted by over-harvesting and pollution, the world’s major fishing grounds are now severely threatened by climate change as well, according to a UN report released Friday.

Warmer water and acidification caused by the seas’ absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide are disrupting fragile natural cycles and threaten a dramatic collapse of fish stocks, the report said.

‘What we do over the next decades has the potential to affect ocean chemistry for tens of thousands of years, and marine life for millions of years,’ said one of the authors, marine scientist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University.
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NEW DELHI — The Indian government plans to spend more than $13 million establishing a special ranger force to protect the country’s endangered tigers, following pressure from international conservationists to save the wild cats.

The funding proposed Friday by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram follows the announcement just weeks ago of a $153 million program to create new tiger reserves, underscoring renewed efforts by India’s government to protect the big cats.

New estimates suggest India’s wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the government-run Tiger Project said last month. Read the rest of this entry »

Climate change is a significant and emerging threat to public health, and changes the way we must look at protecting vulnerable populations.

The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed that there is overwhelming evidence that humans are affecting the global climate, and highlighted a wide range of implications for human health. Climate variability and change cause death and disease through natural disasters, such as heatwaves, floods and droughts. In addition, many important diseases are highly sensitive to changing temperatures and precipitation. These include common vector- borne diseases such as malaria and dengue; as well as other major killers such as malnutrition and diarrhoea. Climate change already contributes to the global burden of disease, and this contribution is expected to grow in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

Sirajul Hossain

A leading daily newspaper published news about the death of two Bengal tigers (panthera tigris tigris) in Sunderban mangrove during research by anesthesia and radio-collaring (Prothom Alo, January 31, 2008). According to the news the first tigress was captured around end April 2005 and died six months later having the collar on. The second tigress captured in March 2006 and second time tranquilized in December 2006 to remove the collar. The BBC film crew captured this second tranquilizing sequence of near dead tigress and added it to the film “Ganges” and now showing worldwide the last scenes of that pathetic tigress. The tigress assumed dead immediately afterwards.

The research project was initiated about four years back by Bangladesh Forest Department. James. L. D. Smith, Professor, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology of The University of Minnesota appointed as a consultant and Adam Barlow, a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Biology Program is engaged in the field research. The project effectively started its field activities in February 2005. They claimed that the idea for creating such a project was first developed during a field survey in 2001 conducted by Md. Osman Gani, Ishtiaq U. Ahmad, James L. D. Smith and K. Ullas Karanth1. Read the rest of this entry »