As seen in the video below, leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) are very powerful and very large aquatic marine predators. Attacks on humans are very rare, and in 2003, Kirsty Brown, a British marine biologist, became “the first person . . . to have been killed by a leopard seal” when she “was dragged underwater by the seal while snorkeling near Rothera research station on the Antarctic Peninsula.”

More at The Huffington Post

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The Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata) is one of the rarest birds in the world (pochards are a group of diving ducks). In fact, it was believed to be extinct at one time. However, by chance, an isolated but tiny population was discovered several years before when “the Peregrine Fund, who were scouting for a threatened bird of prey, the Madagascar Harrier, observed 20 adult pochards living on a single lake in northern Madagascar.” Subsequent expeditions failed to locate new populations of the Madagascar pochard. Consequently, the next step was to bring the rare pochard into some type of captive breeding program (especially since—probably due to predation—there’s a high mortality of ducklings in the wild).

As a Returned Peace Corps volunteer from Madagascar, with a passion for waterfowl, the announcement that an international team consisting of the “Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), The Peregrine Fund and the Government of Madagascar,” with the goal of establishing a conservation breeding program for the pochard, was great news to read.

To start the conservation breeding program, eggs were collected from the wild. Consequently, “eight ducklings are now reported to be doing very well, but work continues as the team attempts to secure two more clutches from the wild over the next few weeks.”

Personally, while in Madagascar, I did not spend too much time searching for the Madagascar pochard, because I had other duties. However, when visiting Lake Alaotra—Madagascar’s largest lake and the pochard’s former stronghold—or Torotorofotsy marsh near Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, I looked for the pochard. Obviously, I did not find it, but I did observe Meller’s ducks (Anas melleri) and red-billed teal (Anas erythrorhyncha).

I believe that unknown populations of the Madagascar pochard still exist in poorly explored areas of Madagascar. However, due to another political crisis, Madagascar’s national resources are being illegally pillaged. Consequently, aggressive conservation efforts are needed. However, now that the species is one step closer to being propagated in captivity, its survival is further guaranteed. More from guardian.co.uk:

Conservationists battling to save the world’s rarest duck have managed to almost double the bird’s population in Madagascar in just one month, it was revealed today.

Fewer than 20 Madagascar pochard were believed to be living on just one lake in the wild.

But a last-gasp conservation plan to save the birds has resulted in two broods totalling 17 ducklings being found and raised in captivity.

A third clutch of seven eggs were discovered earlier this week and are being incubated.

If they all hatch successfully the Madagascar pochard population will have more than doubled in the space of a few weeks.

The conservationists are looking after the ducklings in a hotel room due to the last-minute nature of their quest.

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“Despite almost every conceivable obstacle, in just a few short weeks we have almost doubled the world population — albeit that half of them are in a hotel bathroom! It will be a long road to full recovery for the Madagascar pochard, but we have achieved everything we could have hoped for in this first step.”

The critically endangered duck is so rare that it was declared extinct in the late 1990s until scientists found a few of the birds by chance during a trip to Madagascar in 2006.

To stop the beautiful cinnamon-coloured diving duck slipping permanently into extinction a team of bird specialists known as “team pochard” devised a conservation plan that was due to be implemented next year.

They were hoping to collect some of the pochards’ eggs, incubate them and raise the ducklings via a conservation breeding programme.

More information on the project to save the Madagascar pochard, video of the ducklings, & video of an adult Madagascar pochard in the wild

On the Net:

1. CRITICALLY ENGANGERED SPECIES: Expedition fails to find evidence of new populations of once thought extinct duck from Madagascar

Image Found Here
Image Found Here
Image Found Here

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Video by Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald Staff

According to the Miami Herald, “Villagers in the Dominican Republic claim children have been born without limbs and organs. And, they are blaming the abnormalities on rock ash dumped by a Virginia coal company.” More from MiamiHerald.com:

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.”

The ash, a concentrated form of naturally occurring contaminants, is what is left over from burning coal for power. It usually contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel. But as towns in Tennessee and Maryland clean up massive spills of the substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to rule on whether it should be classified as hazardous — which would be a tremendous blow to influential power companies that have long lobbied against such a classification.

What is fly ash?

Fly ash is a residue produced when coal is burned, and this residue can pose environmental and health risks. Courts have determined that fly ash can be considered a hazardous waste under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) if the fly ash contained one of the listed hazardous wastes under CERCLA (Reference: 118 A.L.R. Fed. 293 and United States v. Conservation Chem. Co., 1985). However, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), EPA considers fly ash a special waste, utility waste or fossil fuel combustion (FFC) waste, which “have been exempted from federal hazardous waste regulations under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).”

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According to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, “Some 90 to 95% of old growth [redwood] forest has been felled since, and the remainder is now almost entirely in parks and reserves.” More at NPR.

Image: Michael Nichols/National Geographic

On the Net:

1. Coast redwoods information and photos
2. Coast redwoods for sale
3. Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) bonsai trees for sale
4. Giant sequoias outside their natural range
5. Help preserve redwoods: Sempervirens Fund

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The smalleye stingray (Dasyatis microps), a giant of the sea, has been filmed for the first time. According to BBC, “The elusive creature, first discovered in 1908, has only ever been seen alive off Tofo in southern Mozambique.” This rarely observed stingray has been “collected from the estuary of the River Ganges . . . [and it's] caught very rarely by the demersal tangle net fisheries operating in shelf waters.” More images of the smalleye stingray can be found at Fishbase.org.

Via BBC

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Certainly, our society is propped up by oil, and since oil is a nonrenewable resource and inherently inefficient (not to mention our knack for increasing entropy), our political leaders must make prudent policy decisions that facilitate society’s transfer from depending largely on ever-decreasing or unavailable energy sources to relying on a more sustainable and diverse energy mix. Furthermore, centralizing growth, preserving the environment, modernizing how electricity is used and delivered, using less concrete by opening up more green spaces for trees and gardens, in addition to constructing or retrofitting buildings to be more efficient are all examples of prudent policies that will advance society. From Q-Notes:

[Mark] Kleinschmidt was endorsed by current Chapel Hill mayor Kevin Foy. His campaign platform called for better public transportation, community development, centralized urban growth rather than sprawl and environmental protection.

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who is a Republican U.S. Senate candidate from California, is an excellent example of a wannabe politician (her voting record is “spotty”) promoting obtuse, reckless, shortsighted, or unwise environmental policies (i.e., she’s a good fit for Republicans/Conservatives or whatever they call themselves nowadays). Basically, she wants to “unshackl[e] agribusiness from environmental protections,” and she blames California’s water crisis on the Endangered Species Act (emphasis added):

Common sense would tell us that it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to put the urgent needs of people ahead of a small fish. Apparently it does.

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The day began with a visit to a local farm and a thorough briefing by water and agriculture experts. They provided a realistic assessment of the ill-considered actions that have literally turned off the spigot and prevented farmers from getting the water necessary to put their land into production.

More profound was my visit later to the west Valley community of Huron where acre after acre of farmland sit fallow because of a lack of water.

It underscored the fundamental reason this issue is so critical: Fertile farmlands create jobs, but fallow lands leave a devastating impact on the workers and their families whose lives and livelihoods depend on these farms.

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Hundreds of thousands of acres in the San Joaquin Valley lie fallow this year. The University of California at Davis estimates that in 2009, the lack of water coming from both the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project could result in the loss of up to 95,000 jobs.

While the persistent drought has certainly contributed to these effects, what would have been a difficult problem has become a crisis due to the aggressive and ill-considered implementation of the Endangered Species Act.

This act has been an important tool in conservation efforts. However, it is also true that the act prohibits the consideration of economic and social impacts.

The recent decision to limit water flowing to the Valley was made by nameless, faceless bureaucrats. These federal officials are unaccountable to voters for their action and there is little recourse to reverse their decision — unless Congress acts.

Fiorina blames the Endangered Species Act for California’s water crisis, but California’s water crisis exists because of drought, reckless and improper development, continued human growth, in addition to building and farming in areas where water is naturally scarce. Furthermore, there is no balancing under the Endangered Species Act, since the critters should win. Consequently, Fiorina, like the majority of Republican/Conservative politicians fail to grasp or understand the big picture when it comes to environmental issues. More from Carly Fiorina:

Washington must show the discipline to cut spending and create policies that encourage and empower businesses to put people back to work.

For example, about 40,000 California farmers and farm workers in our Central Valley are out of work because we can’t find a balance between protecting our environment and protecting the economy. We can change this terrible situation by changing our representation in the U.S. Senate.

According to Fiorina, she has a poor voting record, “because she felt unconnected to politicians.” I’m sure.

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This little ferret alerts his owner when he’s about to have a silent seizure:

Do you believe that a ferret is an unusual service animal? What about a boa or a Macaque monkey? More from the Seattle Times Newspaper:

The public long has become accustomed to guide dogs for the blind, first used in 1929. But when the use of dogs for other types of help for the disabled — such as alerting deaf people to sounds, pulling wheelchairs and helping with mobility issues — became common after enactment of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, controversy over access came with it.

The controversy intensified as other species entered the service-animal ring, and as “emotional-support animals,” those designated to help someone suffering from some form of mental illness, have become common.

Courts and human-rights commissions from East Coast to West Coast have dealt with access complaints pertaining to a service iguana, ferrets, a duck, goats and miniature horses, to name a few. The species are so varied that the Department of Transportation (DOT) mentioned some by name: spiders, for example, in regulations banning them from flying in aircraft cabins.

That the DOT mentioned spiders by name “means somewhere along the line, somebody brought … a service spider on the aircraft,” wrote Candy Harrington, editor of Emerging Horizons, a magazine for disabled travelers, in her blog. “I have to say in all honesty, that if the person seated next to me whipped out a service spider, I would be teaching that arachnid to play dead … faster than the airlines can raise their excess-baggage charges.”

However, “I know a lot of people with service animals, and they really do provide a service. In most cases they allow folks to be more independent. But when you throw in the unusual or exotic service animals, that tends to discredit folks with standard service animals. They have a hard enough time gaining access to public accommodations, and it’s even harder when business owners read about the unusual service animals,” Harrington said. Ginger Luke owns the Rickshaw Restaurant in North Seattle and founded Ginger’s Pet Rescue, which places abandoned dogs, including some who become service animals. She’s skeptical about nontraditional service animals.

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The newest trailer for James Cameron’s epic—Avatar—was recently released on Yahoo! Movies. Avatar looks intriguing, because it’s packed with environmental and social themes amongst an elaborate and ornate alien wilderness. The basic plot surrounds humanity’s quest to commodify natural resources. However, humanity’s insatiable need for natural resources have led them to Pandora—a moon with a lush alien environment that also contains a highly valuable mineral. In order to gain access into Pandora’s environment (the air isn’t breathable to humans) and gain the trust of the Na’vi—an indigenous humanoid race—the humans employ avatars. These avatars look like the Na’vi, but humans are able to occupy their minds, therefore, humans can walk Pandora within a Na’vi shell. Of course, once inside the Na’vi’s environment, humans begin to question their motives or pursuits to exploit the Na’vi’s home world for minerals. The movie is due in theaters on December 18, 2009. More from Variety:

“Avatar” tells the story of an extreme rehabilitation program: In an attempt to walk again, a paraplegic former Marine named Jake travels to the jungles of the extraterrestrial realm called Pandora, home of the Na’vi, a technologically primitive but physically superior race.

To picture Pandora, Carter created what he calls a “lush homegrown forest that’s way overscale for anything we’ve ever experienced, but also has enough alien qualities that you realize what you’re seeing is not just a few flowers poked into the midst of an otherwise normal environment. The essence of it is very different.”

At night, the forests of Pandora light up like a psychedelic black-light poster. Cameron’s inspiration for that, Carter believes, came from his deep-sea diving experiences.

“The whole idea of (that) bioluminescent world at night is something he’d actually witnessed when he was down at the bottom of the ocean during his ‘Titanic’ time,” Carter says. “That bioluminescence is almost like a nervous system of the planet, and that’s what’s at stake in the movie, as you start to get past the initial foray into the Na’vi culture and seeing the drama start to emerge between the military-industrial complex that wants to exploit the world.”

In order to breathe on Pandora, humans have created human-alien hybrids (the eponymous avatars), and it’s through one of these creatures that Jake is able to walk again. But will he remain human or go native after he falls in love with one of the locals, a girl named Neytiri? Intergalactic peace depends on it.

Update (2 Nov. 09): James Cameron’s Vision Featurette:

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Summer Arctic ice could completely disappear within a few decades say researchers, and changes to Arctic environments are increasingly becoming more evident and severe. According to researchers, the Arctic is “a warmer place with less thick and more mobile sea ice, warmer and fresher ocean water, and increased stress on caribou, reindeer, polar bears and walrus in some regions.” This new research highlights the urgency for meaningful Copenhagen negotiations and outcomes in December amongst participants. To promote action on climate change, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging “member nations . . . to reach a compromise ahead of [the] climate change summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen and called on the United States to stay engaged.”

Furthermore, climate is so complex—what drives it and what impacts it—that certain phenomena can contribute to or mitigate warming in the long- and short-term. For example, after a particular tipping point is reached, positive feedback loops, which seem synonymous to the domino effect, can set off a series of events that can increase the coming climate crisis. More form Paul Krugman:

The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.

What’s driving this new pessimism? Partly it’s the fact that some predicted changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much faster than expected. Partly it’s growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even more warming, but new research shows far more carbon locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback effect.

The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras — gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.

Video:

More video via Grist: Arctic Sea Ice 101: Video illustrates typical positive feedback loop:

More on Arctic melting and the resulting positive feedback loop:

This increase in first year ice is happening as more and more multi-year ice is melting. In the winter, new (first -year) ice is forming, which of course is thinner than ice that has been forming over several years. The problem is that thinner ice is melting faster than thicker ice. So we are in a typical positive feedback loop: the more ice is melting, the thinner will be the remaining ice, the fastter that ice is melting…

You might wonder why all this is worrisome. Quite a few people think that it is a great thing that the Arctic sea-ice will be melting, because we can then have shorter shipping routes, and we can have access to unexploited oil reserves. Indeed, this will bring amazing riches to a few people – over the short-term.

However, over the long-term the melting of the Arctic could be disastrous, as it triggers a positive feedback loop that could greatly warm our planet. And here is why:

The Arctic sea-ice functions as a huge fridge to our earth, because the sun’s rays are being reflected from the ice to 80-90%. However, when the sun’s rays hit water, their energy is absorbed by about 80%, and the water heats up. The more ice is melting, the more water is forming, the more heat is absorbed; thus, more ice is melting, so that there is even more water surface which absorbs more heat…if this positive feedback loop causes the permafrost to melt faster, then another feedback loop will be added to the mix as greenhouse gases are released from the permafrost.

We need to avoid such positive feedback loops if we want to avoid creating an earth that will not represent the earth as we know it today. And we can only avoid those feedback loops if we act quickly and courageously to create an energy future that is void of any fossil fuels.

On the Net:

1. “Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling trends“
2. COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

Image Found Here

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Can you find the snake?

See more animal camouflage and plant camouflage.

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Photo source for attribution. The author or licensor of this image does not endorse my work or me and their image is protected under an attribution license.

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