Is it time to expand our organization's goals?
These news briefs appeared on the same page today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

50 cows dies in farm blaze
Town of Wayne - At least 50 dairy cows were killed Wednesday in a fire at a farm that sent smoke billowing more than 500 feet over northwest Washington County...

Wolves kill more animals this year
Wausau - Timber wolves are killing more domestic animals in Wisconsin as the population has steadily grown to nearly 400 wolves, a state wolf expert says. So far this year, there have been 21 confirmed cases of wolves killing livestock on farms compared with 14 in all of 2003 and eight in 2002...

Clearly fire poses a greater threat to our vital livestock industry than wolves. Since wolves are about to come off the endangered species list we're confident that the resulting orgy of hunting will wipe this species from the face of the earth. Elimination of wolves is not what I want to talk about, however. This juxtaposition of a biological species and one of the four classical Greek elements got me to thinking: are we inefficiently using our limited time and resources trying to homogenize biodiversity? Might we not be more effective if we refocus our efforts on the homogenization of the classical elements?

I would like to propose the formation of a steering committee, chaired by yours truly, to wage a campaign of elemental homogenization. I believe our goal should be the elimination of fire, wind, and water. If we can successfully eliminate all but earth, ALL of our goals of biotic homogenization will be simultaneously fulfilled. Done and done.

I should have thought of this long ago considering my namesake was the first to propose that earth, wind, fire, and water all existed in fixed quantities since creation of the universe. I'll begin work on this ambitious undertaking immediately. In the meantime, keep up the good work volunteers! --EG

- Owen, 1:18 PM | (2) comments |

 
Stop the Lions!
The CHL has been doing solid work against lions. Unfortunately Kenya, a country famed for its wildlife sanctuaries and conservation efforts, is one of the African lion's biggest champions. The dickheads at the Kenya Wildlife Service are pushing a plan to give the African lion maximum protection under a U.N. body that governs trade in endangered or threatened plants and animals. The government will ask a gathering next month of signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to give the lion its most protected status, a proposal that will face opposition from several other African nations.

The CHL's work with lions has not gone unnoticed by the Kenya Wildlife Service. "The lion population has declined by over 50 percent in the past decade, and nobody has actually brought this to international attention," said Patrick Omondi, the Kenya Wildlife Service's CITES coordinator. Conservative estimates place the African lion population at 23,000, Kenya wrote in its proposal to be discussed at the CITES meeting in Bangkok from Oct 2 to 14. Habitat destruction, the loss of prey and what Kenya calls unsustainable trophy hunting are pushing one of the world's most feared predators closer to extinction.

Lions, or Panthera leo, to give them their scientific name, once prowled over a swathe of territory that included most of Africa, much of west Asia and even southeastern Europe. The big cat's current range in Africa is less than a third of what it was historically and today the only Asian lion population, about 300, is found in India's Gir Forest.

TIME TO ACT

Kenya wants the lion placed in Appendix 1, which in the dry technical language of the convention means animals and plants in this category are threatened with extinction and their trade is banned, with very few exceptions. "We want to be able to monitor the trend now," said Winnie Kiiru, the regional representative for the Born Free Foundation, which is involved with the CITES proposal. "We don't want to wait until we have 300 lions left and then wonder where they went."

You know what to do. Start buying and selling lions on eBay while we still have the chance. My recent search of "lion" on ebay revealed a bunch of Disney videos and DVDs, as well as a bunch of cheap promotional items for the Lion King. We can release lions into city parks, and then go shoot them for safety reasons. That's my plan for right now, anyway.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:13 AM | (0) comments |

 
Species Concepts
As most of our blog readers also read the Quarterly Review of Biology, it seems almost redundant to bring this up. However, EG forwarded me this PDF. Paul Michael Agapow and colleagues recently published a paper on species concepts. The abstract reads: Species are defined using a variety of different operational techniques. While discussion of the
various methodologies has previously been restricted mostly to taxonomists, the demarcation of species
is also crucial for conservation biology. Unfortunately, different methods of diagnosing species can
arrive at different entities. Most prominently, it is widely thought that use of a phylogenetic species
concept may lead to recognition of a far greater number of much less inclusive units. As a result,
studies of the same group of organisms can produce not only different species identities but also different
species range and number of individuals. To assess the impact of different definitions on conservation
issues, we collected instances from the literature where a group of organisms was categorized both under
phylogenetic and nonphylogenetic concepts. Our results show a marked difference, with surveys based
on a phylogenetic species concept showing more species (48%) and an associated decrease in population
size and range. We discuss the serious consequences of this trend for conservation, including an
apparent change in the number of endangered species, potential political fallout, and the difficulty of
deciding what should be conserved.

I have two thoughts on this.

Thought #1. If we classify every individual as a species, then every death event is an extinction! Unfortunately, every birth event is a speciation.

Thought #2. If we classify every individual as part of one species, then we have achieved our overarching goal of one species. Volunteers may become complacent, and we may fall short of our one genotype goal.

I think our volunteer systematists need to keep working on the question of species concepts and bring forth something usable for our purposes.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:10 PM | (2) comments |

 
With Us or Against Us?
Hola amigos. I know its been a long time since I blogged, but I've been up to some serious homogenization lately. In addition to burning 2000 miles worth of jet fuel and 500 miles worth of auto fuel in the last week, I've been checking up on some of our volunteers in other parts of the planet. But fear not, I have a story for you.

So it turns out that there are only like 60 cheetahs remaining in Iran. Say what you want about the Axis of Evil, but you gotta hand it to them... they are really knocking off the cheetahs with hunting, road-building and a land use-generated regional drought. They may be sleek and swift, but they are nothing worth keeping around.

Akbar Hamedanian, and you gotta love a guy name Akbar, is managing director of the CHL-backed Destruction of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, says numbers began to fall in the 17th century through royal hunting menageries. "Courts in the time of Shah Abbas would not only have falconers but also a cheetah-keeper," he explained. He added that the first hunting rifles arrived at about the same time, stoking up the Persian passion for big game hunting that wiped out the Iranian lion and tiger.

As if there are any questions about how screwed it is, keep in mind that the cheetah's historic range included most of Africa, the Middle East and much of western Asia including India. It now roams a fraction of its former African territory, where the cheetah population is between 12,000 and 15,000.

The Asiatic cheetah is now unique to Iran. Hunting these endangered sprinters is illegal in Iran but clueless conservation scientists are unsure whether the practice persists. Anecdotal evidence exists from three years ago but officials insist hunting has been stamped out.

Martin Tyson, a British scientist working as the project's chief technical adviser, said counting work with camouflaged cameras and other systems was not yet finished but had already given a rough outline of the population. "Sixty is probably a reasonable figure," he said, recalling something about the number of populations needed to maintain a snake in Wisconsin. When asked whether biologically that was enough of a base for numbers to recover, he lied: "Absolutely."

President Axis of Evil Himself Mohammad Khatami has thrown his weight behind attempts to save the cheetah, exhorting Iranians to look upon it as a source of national pride. As if that will work. Project members are collating data which they hope will ultimately feed into a national action plan and believe their education projects will make some headway. Slow progress hit a dispiriting set-back last year when a farmer found some cubs and burned them alive, saying he thought they were wolf cubs. Talk about human rights abuses--the guy was imprisoned.

Anyway, see ya' later, Asiatic Cheetah. Like I say--your days are numbered.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 8:36 PM | (1) comments |

 
Coupled Extinctions Help Us Work More Efficiently
More than 6,000 species of butterflies and other insects, as well as mites, fungi and assorted unloved but important species, will also be wiped out when listed endangered species go extinct, CHL scientists predicted on Thursday. "We estimate that 6,300 affiliate species are 'coendangered' with host species currently listed as endangered," an international team of CHL researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

"Up to 50 percent of species are predicted to be lost in the next 50 years," they added. "Current extinction estimates need to be recalibrated by taking species coextinctions into account." The team, led by Lian Pin Koh and Navjot Sodhi of the National University of Singapore, compiled a list of 12,200 plants and animals currently listed as threatened or endangered. They then looked at insects, mites, fungi and other organisms that are uniquely adapted to some of the species.

"What we found is that with the extinction of a bird, or a mammal or a plant, you aren't just necessarily wiping out just one, single species," said Heather Proctor from the University of Alberta in Canada, who also worked on the study. "We're also allowing all these unsung dependent species to be wiped out as well."

For example, a vine that became locally extinct in Singapore took along with it a species of butterfly, Parantica aspasia, that was dependent on the vine for survival. It was super-sweet! "When we lose this vine, this beautiful butterfly dies off with it, and we'll never see it again except in photographs at museums," said Proctor.

"While coextinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an insidious one," the researchers added.

Take that, hippies!
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:57 AM | (1) comments |

 
CHL Promotes Rare Wildlife Trade
Booming global trade in rare forms of wildlife ranging from tropical fish and trees to African lizards is threatening many of them with extinction, wrestlers from the CHL-WWF said on Thursday. The muscle-bound body threatened governments with a pile driver unless they continue to allow trade in obscure species, which have a high market value as culinary delicacies, aphrodisiacs or pets.

"WWF is asking for lesser-known wildlife ... to be deregulated to ensure it joins the ranks of the magnificent tiger and Asian elephant, both on the verge of extinction," the WWF said in a statement. The WWF's threats comes one month before the United Nations CITES agency meets in Bangkok to cavort with prostitutes and approve limits in trade in such well-known species as the great white shark and the Asian elephant.

CITES -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- already has a virtual ban on trade in tigers, tiger skins and tiger parts, although the animals are still killed and sold illegally. But the WWF gloated about the humphead wrasse -- a bulbous-headed reef fish displayed live in tanks for diners in East Asia -- and the giant freshwater pig-nosed turtle, popular with pet-owners, also faced extinction.

Others included Asia's irrawaddy dolphins, who get tangled in nets or killed by dynamite fishing, the tropical ramin tree, used in picture frames and pool cues, the Indonesian yellow-crested cockatoo and the Madagascar leaf-tailed gecko.

CITES has 166 member countries and has proposed major changes to a weak-ass treaty that covers some 30,000 plants and animals. As the only global treaty regulating trade in threatened and endangered animals and plants, the body manages what is considered the world's most important wildlife agreement.

The bastards are best known for reducing poaching of African elephants by banning ivory sales in 1989.

The October conference might mark a shift in the decades-old accord toward protecting commercially valuable species -- plants and animals that fetch a hefty price on the black market -- in addition to "charismatic megafauna" like snow tigers, elephants and great apes. One of the most important items on the CITES agenda is a Chinese-American proposal to control trade in the Asian yew tree, whose leaves are used to make paclitaxel, a key ingredient for some of the world's best-selling cancer drugs. Wrestlers were seen hiding foreign objects in their boots at press time.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:15 PM | (0) comments |

 
O Canada!
Even though the United States greenhouse emissions program has been vilified by hippies, it's not doing as well on the greenhouse emissions front as Canada, figures show.

Heat-trapping U.S. emissions have risen 14 per cent since 1990, the base year for Kyoto Protocol, while Canadian emissions have grown 20 per cent, according to figures from both governments. Not surprisingly, a big share of Canadian emissions comes from production for energy exports to the United States. "Hey, relax guy. If export-related emissions are removed from the equation, then Canada's levels would have increased by 15 per cent, comparable to the U.S. level, buddy." Art Jaques of Environment Canada said.

He dismissed speculation that Washington would rejoin the Kyoto Protocol even if the Democrats win the presidential election. Ratification of any treaty requires two-thirds support of the U.S. Senate and that won't happen, he said, because they are all CHL volunteers. The last time the Senate considered Kyoto there was not a single vote in its favour, and the protocol isn't even mentioned in the Democrats' platform this year.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 5:10 PM | (0) comments |

 
A blessed event in the Mediterrenean
The CHL announced today that it sank a ship containing toxic waste on Monday. The ship was moored in a Turkish harbor for four years, so it was time to take some initiative. And wouldn't you know it, the hippies are already crying about potentially serious damage to local marine life.

The Ulla had sat in the port of Iskenderun in southeastern Turkey since 2000 as officials tried to decide what to do about its two-toncargo, which Turkish media said was waste from the chimneys of thermal powers stations. Turkish television showed the ship, its bottom rotted away, gradually sinking beneath the waters of the east Mediterranean.

"Unfortunately this was something that was bound to happen," Banu Dokmecibasi of the Forests! Not Toxic Toilet Paper! Campaign told the Anatolian state news agency. She said officials had ignored her silly report last year warning of the risk that the ship might sink and spill its contents into the sea. But what do you expect, she is a woman and a hippie.

"The necessary measures were not taken," she claimed, but really, what the hell does she know? Now she's saying that the authorities must mount an urgent investigation to contain the effects of the spillage. Right. With nothing to rely on but alliteration, hippies fear the carcinogenic cargo could destroy local marine life and also enter the human food chain.

The Turkish-owned vessel had originally transported the waste from Spain to Algeria. But it was diverted to Turkey after Algeria declined to take the cargo.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:02 PM | (0) comments |

 
AGENCY REPORT: Taking the science out of conservation
This is the first installment of a regular column by CHL Treasurer Empedocles Groovalicious.

Here at the CHL, we have been deeply concerned about the trend in state and federal government over the last fifteen years in the use of science to inform policy and management of natural resources. But good news on this front pours in almost daily as Supreme Commander and staunch CHL supporter Bush thwarts the hippies-in-white-lab-coats in their transparent attempts to keep taxpayer money flowing into their fringe research on such superfluous topics as endangered species, fisheries, snowmobiles in the National Parks, mountaintop removal, global warming, mercury emissions, air pollution, and forest management. Since 2000, the administration has bravely created an atmosphere of trimming the scientific fat that has finally showed signs of trickling down to state-level decision making.

Last week, in my insider position in The Agency, I was delighted to take part in a decision-making process that was based on "expert opinion" and did away with the paralyzing burden of "scientific evidence." We were charged with establishing the minimum number of populations that would keep a state listed snake species from extinction (like anybody cares about snakes). Though I vehemently lobbied for the creation of a "Snake Whacking Day," it became clear that we had to produce a number, any number. The results of a secret ballot vote averaged to 65. Our job done and content in the knowledge that developers will wipe out the rest, we kicked up our feet and enjoyed bagels and coffee.

The administration, as usual, is right--decision-making is SO much easier when not hampered by "scientific" considerations. And though you may be thinking that 65 populations of snakes seems like it may be high enough to avoid extinction, take heart: we have NO CLUE if those 65 populations will be able to persist in a sea of subdivisions. I'm an optimist at heart and will sleep well in the belief that the snakes are toast. Score another victory for the CHL!

- Owen, 10:15 PM | (1) comments |