Blogs / 80beats

In a new study that’s already generating controversy, researchers tracked more than 1,000 young Pacific salmon on their first journey to the sea, and found that those battling dams on the Columbia River fared no worse than the young fish with an easier path to the sea on Canada’s free-flowing Fraser River. The findings seem to contradict many previous studies about dams: Conservationists have blamed these obstacles for a large share of the shrinking salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, and engineers have spent billions trying to make the dams less damaging to salmon [Science News].

The study used implanted transmitters to follow the juvenile salmon, called smolts, on their trips downriver, and found that only about 25 percent of smolts in both the Columbia and the Fraser survived the voyage and made it to the ocean. But environmentalists and several salmon biologists pounced on the study, suggesting that industry funding might have biased the results. These critics question the value of comparing the two rivers and say that the study doesn’t even address what many think is the dams’ biggest effect: stressed smolts dying after they reach the ocean [Nature News].

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A legal battle is raging on over whether gray wolves should be removed from the endangered species list in both the Northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region, with the federal government and environmentalists fighting over whether the wolf populations have recovered. But the situation has been made more complicated by a biological battle over whether the present-day wolves are the same animals, genetically speaking, as the wolves who lived in North American forests hundreds of years ago.

The court cases began when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted protections from wolves in the Great Lakes states in 2007, and from wolves in the Rockies earlier this year. Environmental groups contested both decisions. The Great Lakes decision was overturned in September when a judge said the wildlife agency hadn’t followed the law; the Northern Rockies ruling covering the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana was also overturned. After wolves were allowed to be shot on sight across most of Wyoming — and all three states began planning public hunts — U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in July issued an injunction to block the killings. On Tuesday, Molloy went a step further, restoring the animal’s endangered status [AP]. However, wildlife officials say they’ll try to delist the wolves again in 2009.

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Global warming isn’t just a threat to polar bears in the rapidly warming Arctic, a new study says: Species in the tropics are beginning to feel the effects as well, and it will only get worse. Researchers surveyed more than 1,900 species of plants, insects, and fungi in a Costa Rica rainforest and came to the troubling conclusion that if world temperatures continue to rise as predicted over the next 50 years, half of those species will have to move to completely new territory to find an appropriate habitat.

The situation is complicated for tropical species, says lead researcher Robert Colwell; shifting north or south doesn’t bring significantly lower temperatures, so species will have to take up residence at higher altitudes to survive. In the absence of mountainsides to serve as a cool refuge, those plants and insects that cannot face higher temperatures may disappear as it would require migrations of hundreds or even thousands of miles to find a suitable cooler climate—crossing habitats utterly changed by human impacts. “For lowland tropical species whose geographical range lies far from mountains, for example in the middle of the Amazon,” Colwell says, “the prospect for extinction cannot be dismissed” [Scientific American].

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An international group of researchers has issued a dire warning about the state of the world’s wild animals. A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists one in four land mammals as endangered, as well as one in three marine mammals. Life on Earth is disappearing fast with man inflicting most of the damage…. On land more species face oblivion because of loss of habitat, hunting and climate change while in the oceans pollution and the side effects of fishing are taking a huge toll [Telegraph].

The new assessment — which took 1,700 experts in 130 countries a total of five years to complete — paints “a bleak picture,” leaders of the project wrote in a paper being published in the journal Science. The overview … covers all 5,487 wild species identified since 1500. It is the most thorough tally of land and marine mammals since 1996 [Washington Post].

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The debate over bushmeat, meat from wild animals like gorillas, elephants, and antelope in Central Africa, just got more complicated. While some environmentalists have argued that a strict hunting ban is the only way to save endangered animals, a new report from the non-profit Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) argues that a blanket hunting ban would help neither the animals nor the people who depend on them for food.

However, bushmeat hunting also can’t continue at its current rate, the report states. “If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years” [Telegraph], says report author Robert Nasi. The best solution is to legalize some hunting while enacting tough regulations and enforcement, says CIFOR director Frances Seymour: “Criminalising the whole issue of bushmeat simply drives it underground. We need to decriminalise parts of this hunting and trade and give local communities the rights and incentives to manage these resources sustainably for their own benefit” [BBC News].

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The Environmental Protection Agency has vetoed a massive flood control project that was in the works for seven decades. The move – which puts the kibosh on the proposed Yazoo Pumps Project to reduce flooding between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers – is only the 12th time the Environmental Protection Agency has used its authority to scrap a project under the Clean Water Act [Scientific American].

The EPA’s decision is being hailed as an environmental victory, as the plan called for massive pumps that would have drained water out of at least 67,000 acres of wetlands, irrevocably altering the ecosystem. The landscape of swamps, bayous, and cypress trees is vital to an extensive range of wildlife, including fish, migrating birds, and the endangered Louisiana black bear; the wetlands are valued not only by conservationists, but also by hunters and commercial fishermen.

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Climatologists predict that the African continent will grow drier and drier as global warming brings more droughts. But whether elephants herds can survive might depend on their oldest members.

In a study published in Biology Letters, Charles Foley of the Wildlife Conservation Society studied how three family groups of elephants responded to a severe African drought in 1993. In a nine-month period 16 out of 81 elephant calves in three study groups died, a mortality rate of 20 per cent. The normal mortality rate of calves during non-drought years is only two per cent [Telegraph].

Two groups left the area during the drought, migrating to places with more water, and lost only five calves between them, compared to 11 for the group that stayed. Foley found that the groups that left contained older females than the remaining group, which was perhaps the key to their success: [T]he older females may have been able to draw on memories of an earlier severe drought from 1958 to 1961, and how the elephants survived it [The Press Association]. The third group, meanwhile, lost many of its females during plagues of poaching in the 1970s and 1980s. As such, its leader was only 33, too young to remember the the late 1950s drought.

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An ambitious study of all the primates on planet Earth has found that almost half of all species are threatened by extinction because of habitat loss and poaching. The latest Red List of Threatened Species, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), says that almost 50 per cent of the world’s 634 types of primate may disappear forever [Telegraph].

The findings highlight the multiplying threats facing primates throughout Africa, Asia, and South America, says IUCN official Russell Mittermeier: “Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact. In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction” [Bloomberg]. The study results were announced at the current International Primatological Society meeting.

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A federal judge declared that California’s water management system is jeopardizing the existence of the state’s salmon and steelhead, which have to navigate the complicated network on their journeys out to the ocean and back to their riverine spawning grounds. The judge’s ruling established that the canals and pumps that deliver water to 23 million Californians are causing “irreparable harm” to two salmon species, as well as the threatened Central Valley steelhead [AP].

The judge stopped short of ordering immediate remedies like storing more water behind Shasta Dam, which could be released later to help migrating fish. But the judge’s conclusions mean regulators will be forced to impose more protective conditions when they issue a new permit in March, lawyers said. “It’s a clear signal that business as usual in the Delta is not going to be acceptable,” said Kate Poole, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council [Contra Costa Times].

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Researchers have already noted that global warming is causing some species to shift their habitats, like mountain animals that are moving to higher latitudes to find the cooler temperatures that they’re adapted for. But now some conservationists say it’s time to consider relocating species that are threatened with extinction due to their rapidly changing habitats. It’s a process called “assisted colonization.”

Some researchers say that as the extinction rate zooms upwards, humans will have no choice but to step in to save some animals. “It’s a showdown. The impacts of climate change on animals have become apparent. And it’s time to decide whether we’re going to do something,” said ecologist Jessica Hellmann…. “Reducing CO2 is vital, but we might have to step in and intervene” [Wired News].

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Australia’s Tasmanian devils are breeding at younger ages in response to a strange form of infectious cancer that is spreading rapidly through devil populations. The feisty marsupials are now reproducing before the lethal cancer strikes them down—a response that may be the species’ only chance to avoid extinction.

Researcher Shelly Lachish explains: “In a normal, healthy devil population the females would rarely breed before the age of two, but now 60 per cent of one-year-olds in diseased populations have produced young…. They are teenagers in human terms. It’s a remarkable change given early breeding was once very, very rare” [Sydney Morning Herald]. While some researchers believe this to be an example of rapid evolution, skeptics say the case is not yet closed.

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China has asked the United Nation’s permission to import elephant ivory, and the U.N.’s Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is likely to approve the request at its meeting this week. But alarmed conservationists worry that allowing legally imported elephant tusks to circulate in China’s markets would provide cover for illegal ivory bought from poachers in Africa. They say if China becomes an approved ivory trading partner, African elephants “will be shot into extinction” [Telegraph].

The U.N. banned all international trade in elephant ivory in 1989, but later relented and allowed four African countries to occasionally sell ivory from elephants that died natural deaths or that were shot as rogues. CITES allowed a sale in 1999, but opened it only to “approved buyers” who could prove that they policed the black market in ivory. Now, however, a second auction of 108 tonnes from the same four countries is being planned, and the Chinese, who were excluded from the first sale, are seeking “approved buyer” status, claiming they are much more active now in combating illegal trading activities [The Independent].

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Researchers are sounding the alarm about the world’s coral reefs, declaring that one-third of reef-building species are now threatened with extinction. If the news sounds familiar, it’s because researchers published a separate report about the dire condition of reef ecosystems in U.S. waters earlier this week.

The new study widens the focus to look at all coral reefs throughout the world’s oceans, and also issues a terrifying diagnosis: Unless action is taken, it is conceivable that the “rainforests of the ocean” could be wiped out this century.… “Whether corals actually go extinct this century will depend on the continued severity of climate change, extent of other environmental disturbances, and the ability of corals to adapt” [Telegraph], researchers write in the journal Science [subscription required].

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Put this one in the bad news file: A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that half of the coral reef ecosystems in U.S. waters are ailing, and that their condition has declined precipitously in the three years since the last report. Since 2005 the Caribbean has lost 50 percent of its corals primarily because of rising ocean temperatures, which are linked to global warming, the report says.

Besides being a marvel of the natural world, the coral reefs serve as breeding grounds for many of the world’s seafood species and act as indicators of overall ocean health…. [NOAA official Timothy] Keeney said 25 percent of all marine species need coral reefs to live and grow, while 40 percent of the fish caught commercially use reefs to breed. “If we lose the reefs, you lose a very significant and important habitat,” Keeney said [AP].

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It’s not all about the cute fuzzy critters — we’ve got to save the toothy, menacing, bloodthirsty endangered species, too. That’s the message from a new study, which examined shark populations in the Mediterranean and found a lot to be alarmed about. Numbers of some species have fallen 97 percent over the last two hundred years due largely to overfishing, and researchers say that because sharks have been “much maligned,” no one seems to care.

[Lead author Francesco] Ferretti, a researcher at the Biology Department of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, said that Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws had given a misleading impression of sharks. “Spielberg has a lot to answer for,” he said. “In reality you have about as much chance of being eaten by a shark as you have of winning the lottery twice” [Times Online].

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