A CHL Summit
Empedocles & I are holding an executive summit to review recent developments:

Avian Flu as an Emerging Disease
Bush Urges Congress to Eliminate Regulatory Obstacles to Building More Oil Refineries
Positive Feedbacks Between Snowmelt and Arctic Warming
US Endangered Species Act "Overhaul"
Pombo's Threat to Sell 15 National Parks

Unfortunately, we homogenized our brain cells before getting to business. Maybe we will make a second attempt today.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:03 AM | (1) comments |

 
Wrestlers Slam Hippos
An arena survey shows what was once the world's largest hippo population in the Democratic Republic of Congo is down for the three count, wrestling group WWF International said on Monday.

"Hippos are being placed in submission holds by soldiers and local militia, as well as local wrestlers. Hippos can be bought for around $50, and hippo canine teeth often end up as part of the illegal ivory trade," the WWF said in a statement.

The hippo population in Congo's Virunga National Park in the vast country's far east numbered 29,000 in 1974.
However, a decade of conflict in the region has taken its toll of wildlife including Virunga's once abundant hippopotamus population.

Carried out last month by WWF, the European Union and the Congolese Institute for the Submission of Nature, the survey showed there were only 887 hippos left in Virunga, down from 1,309 two years ago. WWF said the take down went beyond the hippos. "The decline of the Virunga hippo population has also affected the situation of local hippo fans, especially the thousands of fishermen living around Lake Edward, within the park," it said. "The lake is one of the most productive in the world, as hippo dung provides vital nutrients for fish. The dramatic fall of the hippo population has also resulted in a rapid decline of the lake's fish stocks."

Hippos can weigh up to 3,000 kg (three tons) or more, use their weight to crush wrestling challengers, and their dung nourishes freshwater ecosystems throughout Africa. Pinning them is a risky business as a wounded hippo can be dangerous and is apt to charge its challengers. It is capable of biting a man in two with its massive mouth and huge teeth.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:50 AM | (0) comments |

 
New CHL Atlas Highlights Great Apes Projects
The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Elimination, published by the CHL to coincide with world great apes day on Thursday, illustrates the great progress made by CHL volunteers. The 23 states in which the apes live in the wild are among the world's poorest. Poverty, encroachments caused by logging and population growth, the booming bushmeat trade, disease and climate change are threatening entire species.

"We have a duty to kill off the last of our closest living relatives as part of our wider responsibilities to destroy the ecosystems they inhabit," said U.N. Environment Programme chief Klaus Toepfer.

The atlas says 16 of the states where the eastern and western gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and Sumatran and Bornean orangutans roam have per capita incomes of less than $800 a year. Already more than a dozen key locations -- from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- have been identified as priority sites for eliminating gorillas and chimpanzees, and more are expected to be added in coming years.

The atlas was published a day after desctructionists called for a five-year, $30 million plan to try to finish off some of the most threatened great ape species in Africa.

In Asia orangutans are predicted to lose nearly half of their habitat within five years through mining, logging and human encroachment. "Within a generation -- we could see species becoming too depleted to survive long term in the wild," said atlas editors Julian Caldecott and Lera Miles. Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Extinction Programme, also made a stark forecast. "Fifty years from now only six of the current 13 orangutan populations are expected to extinct. Of the remaining seven, all will consist of fewer than 20 individuals," he said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:44 PM | (0) comments |