Sustainability: How Wolves Change Rivers - Video

Visit Sustainableman.org/ to explore the world of sustainability.

For more from George Monbiot, visit monbiot.com and for more on "rewilding" and/or check out George Monbiot's book Feral: rewilding the land, the sea and human life.

NOTE: The "deer" the narrator refers to are in fact "elk," one of the largest of the deer family. The scientific report that this video is based on refers to elk so we wanted to be accurate with the truth of the story.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir (English naturalist)

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable "trophic cascade" occurred.

What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains in this movie remix.

Narration from TED: "For more wonder, rewild the world" by George Monbiot.

Dependency drives Conservation of Earth's Coral Reefs

Credit: IUCN

More than 275 million people are dependent on coral reefs for food, coastal protection and livelihoods.

Shark Finning: Venezuala Takes Steps toward survival

Credit: Federico Cabello

Some much-needed good news for sharks has come from Venezuela this week: The South American country announced it is banning shark finning in its waters and has established a new shark sanctuary.

The country became the last in the Americas to outlaw the practice of cutting off the fins of live sharks and tossing the animals back into the ocean to slowly die.

Global Consciousness - Edgar Mitchell: Apollo 14 Astronaut - Cartoon

 

 

All credit for the cartoon goes to Zen Pencils

Paul Snelgrove at TED: A census of the ocean

Oceanographer Paul Snelgrove shares the results of a ten-year project with one goal: to take a census of all the life in the oceans. He shares amazing photos of some of the surprising finds of the Census of Marine Life.

Paul Snelgrove led the group that pulled together the findings of the Census of Marine Life -- synthesizing 10 years and 540 expeditions into a book of wonders. Full bio »

Scientists Propose Use of Cryopreservation To Save Snow Leopards From Extinction

Scientists from the Monash University are pursuing the possible use of cryopreservation of genetic material for future cloning and other assisted reproduction techniques, particularly the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Cryopreservation, a process where cells or whole tissues are preserved by cooling to low sub-zero temperatures, aims to enable stocks of cells to be stored to prevent the need to have all cell lines in culture at all times.

It is invaluable when dealing with cells of limited life span, thus, this breakthrough procedure could help in the survival of the endangered snow leopard, a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia, researchers said.

The study, which is part of the PhD project of Rajneesh Verma, supervised by Dr Paul Verma, both from the Monash Institute of Medical Research (MIMR), could allow scientists to create reproductive cells from adult snow leopard tissues, which will then be used in breeding this animal.

According to the researchers, the use of iPS have never before been generated from a member of the cat family. For the study, researchers used ear tissue samples taken from adult snow leopards at Mogo Zoo in NSW to generate the iPS cells.

"The power of stem cells is that they can differentiate into all the cell types in the body. This means, they have the potential to become gametes. In fact, mouse iPS cells have given rise to entire off-spring, so the possibilities are enormous," Dr Verma said.

"By generating these stem cells, we've taken the first step in creating reproductive cells from adult tissues of an endangered animal. In the future, we aim to harness the potential of the iPS cells and create off-spring. This would help save species from extinction," he added.

According to Dr. Verma, the breakthrough was significant due to the difficulty of obtaining reproductive cells, or gametes, even from animals in captivity. However, he plans to apply the same techniques to other members of cat family, including the Bengal tiger, the jaguar and the serval.

Associate Professor Peter Temple-Smith of Monash University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Professor Michael Holland of the University of Queensland also collaborated in this study which was published in Theriogenology.

Rare Image: The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey

Researchers working in Northern Myanmar have captured the first photographs of the recently discovered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

"These images are the first record of the animal in its natural habitat," said Ngwe Lwin, the Burmese national who first recognised the monkey as a possible new species.

"It is great to finally have photographs because they show us something about how and where it actually lives."

"The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey was described scientifically in 2010 from a dead specimen collected from a local hunter," said Frank Momberg of FFI, who organised the initial expeditions that led to the monkey's discovery. "As yet, no scientist has seen a live individual," he added.

Picture: FFI/BANCA/PRCF/REX FEATURES

The Dependent link between Fishermen, whales and sharks

A whale shark approaches a local fisherman to be hand-fed brine shrimp in shallow waters off Oslob, Philippines.

Local fisherman display their unusual hand-to-mouth relationship with giant 25ft long whale sharks.

Picture: Shawn Heinrichs / Barcroft Media

We would also like to say 'Hi' to Kay Engman, Art Associate for Science Journal for American Association for the Advancement of Science.

British Geologocal Society: Endangered Metal Risk List

To coincide with the British Science Festival, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has today released a new ‘Risk List’ which ranks the risk to global supply of chemical elements of economic value.


The list highlights vulnerable elements where global production is concentrated in a small number of countries, including metals which are critical to development of a low-carbon digital economy.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has compiled a "risk list" of elements assessing the precariousness of our supplies.

The study examines the scarcity of each element in Earth's crust, how many countries produce it and the political stability of those countries. It says supplies of antimony, tungsten, mercury and the platinum group of elements are most endangered.

The problem is even more acute than that of the "rare-earth" elements used to make many consumer electronics goods, which hit the headlines earlier this year when power hungry China, the world's biggest acquirer of stocks, sites and companies that mine rare earth elements, blocked exports to the International market to restrict competition and boost pricing.

The risk list helps to focus future research on diversifying supply from new resources, using greener production technologies and cost effective recycling.

The new digital and environmental technologies on which we will rely to deliver a prosperous, low carbon economy often contain metals which have previously been of little interest to man. These ‘critical metals’ – the celebrities of the periodic table – are completely intertwined with modern life, present in thousands of products and increasingly indispensable.

The Risk List 2011 will be released to coincide with the ‘Metals, Mines & Mobiles’ event at the British Science Festival on the 12th September 2011 at the University of Bradford.

The panel of experts at the event will examine the life cycle of technology metals and includes Professor Frances Wall (CSM), Andrew Bloodworth (BGS), Dr Alan McLelland (NAMTEC) and Dr Paul Mitchell (Director, GreenHorizons Environmental Consultants Ltd.)

Download the risk list by clicking on the picture or from www.mineralsuk.com

Giant Red Crabs invade the Antartic Abyss

Huge crabs more than a metre across have invaded the Antarctic abyss, wiped out the local wildlife and now threaten to ruin ecosystems that have evolved over 14 million years.

Three years ago, researchers predicted that as the deep waters of the Southern Ocean warmed, king crabs would invade Antarctica within 100 years.

But video taken by a remotely operated submersible shows that more than a million Neolithodes yaldwyni have already colonised Palmer Deep, a basin that forms a hollow in the Antarctic Peninsula continental shelf.

They are laying waste to the landscape. Video footage taken by the submersible shows how the crabs prod, probe, gash and puncture delicate sediments with the tips of their long legs.

"This is likely to alter sediment processes, such as the rate at which organic matter is buried, which will affect the diversity of animal communities living in the sediments," says Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, whose team discovered the scarlet invaders.

Hungry invaders

The crabs also appear to have a voracious appetite. Echinoderms – sea urchins, sea lilies, sea cucumbers, starfish and brittle stars – have vanished from occupied areas, and the number of species in colonised areas is just a quarter of that in areas that have escaped the invasion.

"[Echinoderms] constitute a significant proportion of the large animals on the seafloor in many Antarctic shelf habitats," says Smith.

The crabs come from further north and moved in as Antarctic waters have warmed, probably swept into Palmer Deep as larvae in warm ocean currents. 

They now occupy the deepest regions of Palmer Deep, between 1400 and 950 metres. In 1982, the minimum temperature there was 1.2 °C – too cold for king crabs – but by last year it had risen to a balmier 1.47 °C.

Melting ice sheets tend to make shallower waters in Antarctica cooler than deeper ones. There were no king crabs at depths of 850 metres or less, suggesting that these waters are still too cold for them. But with waters warming so rapidly, they could spread to regions as shallow as 400 metres within as little as 20 years, says Smith.

Protecting the Croatia Limestone Cave System and it's unique animal life

Species of animals, millions of years old, could be wiped out by pollution and development in Croatia according to a new breed of cave biologists.

Jana Bedek and her team of bio-speleologists have recently discovered that the underground networks of the Balkans, especially Croatia, have the richest cave fauna in the world.

"We are now in the place with the best range of cave animals in the world," she says.

"The other countries have their own rich fauna in rainforests, marine ecosystems etc, but here in this area we have cave fauna. Really important at world level."

But on a political and economic level, Croatia is emerging from decades of communism, and the devastating Balkan war, with a desire to develop.

Amazon River: X-rays expose new species of Stingrays

Biologists recently fished out two new species of freshwater stingray from a river in the Amazon rainforest near Iquitos, Peru.

The animals have been put into a new genus - the first time this has been done for stingrays since 1987.

At first glance the creatures look like nothing so much as freckled pancakes with feeble tails. But X-rays revealed an elaborate skeleton in which hundreds of slivers of cartilage fan out radially to support the fish's floppy disc-shaped body.

Biologist Nathan Lovejoy of the University of Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues dubbed the new stingrays Heliotrygon gomesi and Heliotrygon rosai. The creatures, which can grow up to half a metre long, have beady eyes, suggesting that they inhabit the murky depths.

Unusually, the stingrays lack barbed tails - they are stingless - possibly because they do not have to contend with any serious predators. Like other freshwater stingrays, the new species likely hide on the bottom of the river, waiting to pounce on any prey that swims to close and swallow their meal with vacuum-like jaws.

Scottish Shark Conservation and Tagging

The Scottish Shark Tagging Programme (SSTP) is a branch of the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network  www.ssacn.org whose objectives are to :

• to tag and record data on many of the shark, skate and ray species found within Scottish coastal waters
• Increase public awareness highlighting the need for shark protection
• Encourage use of “codes of best practice”
• to highlight sea anglers conservation efforts
• show government agencies that sea anglers are a vital part of data gathering
• and that properly managed sea angling stocks can provide huge socio economic benefits
• to directly contribute to shark fisheries management

Joining the SSTP is free – just use the  ‘Contact Us’ page to send us an email.

Answers to some of the more frequently asked questions follow :

Why Save Sharks ?
Most sharks serve as top predators at the pinnacle of the marine food pyramid, and so play a critical role in ocean ecosystems. Directly or indirectly they regulate the natural balance of these ecosystems – at all levels – and so are an integral part of them.

The effects of removing sharks from ocean ecosystems, although complex and rather unpredictable, are likely to be ecologically and economically damaging.

Who can tag ?

The SSTP will be free to enter, subject to available funding, and available to all disciplines of sea angler, be they shore, small boat, club or charter anglers. Though the programme will aim to provide the greatest coverage through charter boats and clubs, as this will give the best concentrated use of the limited number of tags available each year. We will encourage all anglers to abide by the “codes of best practise” and may insist new taggers attend a short course at a local centre or spend time with an approved tagger.

What else will the SSTP be doing?
SSACN and the SSTP will work in partnership with government agencies like the Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), Marine Directorate and Fisheries Research Scientists (FRS) and academic institutions such as Millport Marine laboratory and Glasgow University to help provide a focal point for shark research.

We are also seeking funding for satellite tags and for stock survey assessments.

Commercial fishermen are a huge source of knowledge and we will endeavour to liaise with fishers to ensure best practice on discarded fish and hopefully use their knowledge to ascertain bycatch analysis.

Notifying the SSTP and anglers of recaptures ?
Rather than sending recapture details by post anglers will be able to enter details of a caught fish online by PC and receive details of any previous activity and the original ‘tagger’ will be notified that his/her fish has been recaptured, along with any other data, like days at liberty, distance travelled, weight/length gain, etc;

Will the data I provide be safe?
The SSTP will accumulate the tagging information on a database and this data will NOT be distributed to any group or body with any commercial fishing interests.

The control of data will be closely guarded, and only available in its ‘raw and total’ format to a limited number of ‘approved’ scientists. Any information given out from the database will be on a “Need to know” basis. A lot of effort you might ask, but we wish to allay fears that the information may be used by commercial fishing interests to the further detriment of stock levels

Further studies will be carried out from time to time on the whole database by selected ‘marine biologists’, who will be working directly for the tagging programme, their reports will also be made available to the taggers.

Will the SSTP be starting from scratch?
The Glasgow museum and the UK Shark Tagging Programme have agreed to input their existing data concerning Scottish sharks into the new database.

Special Events
The SSTP will run a series of events throughout the year to increase the number of fish caught and tagged.
The events also have a good social side and many tales are told, over a beer or two, about the “ones that got away”

The Unseen Sea - Vimeo video from Simon Christen

Robo Bees: Conservation and monitoring

A photo issued by the Bio Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of a bee fitted with tiny radio ID tags to monitor their movements as part of research into whether pesticides could be giving the insects brain disorders

Manta ray 16ft wide

A diver swims in the shadow of a 16-feet wide manta ray.

Diver and professional photographer Franco Banfi snapped this in the water off the coast of the Socorro and San Benedicto Islands in the Pacific Ocean

Picture: FRANCO BANFI / SOLENT

Marine Reserves now! | Greenpeace International

Marine Reserves now! | Greenpeace International

UN peacekeepers stage great ape escape in Congo

UN peacekeepers stage great ape escape in Congo - New Scientist

Call it the great ape escape. UN peacekeepers have flown four young gorillas from a conflict zone where they were at risk of being poached.

The gorillas were taken to a rehabilitation centre 200 kilometres north of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will eventually be released into a nature reserve. "They are settling in very well, eating forest food and making nests," reports Katie Fawcett of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The UN will fly in six more rescued gorillas from Rwanda in June.

They are eastern lowland gorillas, which number fewer than 5000 in the wild. In 2002, biologists warned that only 10 per cent might survive by 2030, and in March UNEP, the UN Environment Programme, said that most eastern lowland gorillas could be gone by 2020.

The problem, it says, is the region's long-running armed conflict: soldiers and refugees kill wildlife and destroy forests for money and food. And it is getting worse. "Poaching has really shot up, by militias and also the army," says Samantha Newport of Virunga National Park, which rescued the young lowland gorillas, and also shelters a third of the world's 720 remaining mountain gorillas. "It is really a very, very bad time."

Last week, soldiers attacked park staff five times, killing a ranger. UNEP wants UN peacekeepers to police border crossings, and stop the exports of charcoal, timber and minerals that finance the conflict.

The Oldest trees on the Earth - At risk from Climate Change

The Oldest Trees on the Planet Wired Science - Click here for more images

Trees are some of the longest-lived organisms on the planet. At least 50 trees have been around for more than a millenium, but there may be countless other ancient trees that haven’t been discovered yet.

Trees can live such a long time for several reasons. One secret to their longevity is their compartmentalized vascular system, which allows parts of the tree to die while other portions thrive. Many create defensive compounds to fight off deadly bacteria or parasites.

And some of the oldest trees on earth, the great bristlecone pines, don’t seem to age like we do. At 3,000-plus years, these trees continue to grow just as vigorously as their 100-year-old counterparts. Unlike animals, these pines don’t rack up genetic mutations in their cells as the years go by.

Some trees defy time by sending out clones, or genetically identical shoots, so that one trunk’s demise doesn’t spell the end for the organism. The giant colonies can have thousands of individual trunks, but share the same network of roots.

This gallery contains images of some of the oldest, most venerable and impressive trees on earth.

Pando
While Pando isn’t technically the oldest individual tree, this clonal colony of Quaking Aspen in Utah is truly ancient. The 105-acre colony is made of genetically identical trees, called stems, connected by a single root system.

The “trembling giant” got its start at least 80,000 years ago, when all of our human ancestors were still living in Africa. But some estimate the woodland could be as old as 1 million years, which would mean Pando predates the earliest Homo sapiens by 800,000 years. At 6,615 tons, Pando is also the heaviest living organism on earth.

The photo above of the Pando colony was taken by Rachel Sussman, as part of The Oldest Living Things In The World project.

Image: “Clonal Quaking Aspens #0906-4318 (80,000 years old, Fish Lake, UT)” / Rachel Sussman

Read More http://www.wired.com/

Quick Facts you may not know about the Amazon

Here are some quick facts about the Amazon that you may not know and can amaze your friends with.

• 1.4 billion hectares of forest


• The world's largest river basin and the source of one-fifth of all free-flowing fresh water on Earth


• 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, in an area larger than western Europe - the rest of the Amazon spans across Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana


• One in ten known species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest
  Threats – Soy plantation expansion, cattle ranching, unsustainable logging, human settlement


• Amazon basin is home to 21 million people of which about 30% live in rural areas and 200,000 are indigenous


• The Amazon covers approximately 50% of Brazil and stores huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Burning of forest, however, has released so much of this greenhouse gas that Brazil is now placed 4th in the world for CO2 emissions

For more information on the de-forestation of the Amazon and surrounding rainforests, click on this link to take you to Flora and Fauna International website