Some Americans just cannot do with big trucks and will drive them come hell or high gas prices. See my colleague Andrea Hopkins’ story on the issue here.

Below is a video of Dallas-area tile-layer Bennie Smith explaining why a big truck is such a vital tool of his trade.

<embed src=”http://www.motionbox.com/external/p layer/token%3Dfbb
e627cea58c16d%2Ctype%3Dadvanced%2Cid%3Dd 49eddb61f1ce75c” type=”a
pplication/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.adobe.com/
go/getflashplayer” width=”425″ height=”375″></embed>
http://www.motionbox.com/external/player  /token=fbbe627cea58c16d,type=advanced,i d=d49eddb61f1ce75c“

There are two turtle tales brewing on the coast of Texas at the moment and they’re both good.

First the numbers tale. 

The dedicated folks at the South Padre Island conservation facility Sea Turtle, Inc, report record numbers of nests by endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.

“We have had record numbers of ridley nests on the Texas coast this year. We have found over 170 so far in 2008 compared to the previous record of 128 for all of last year,” Sea Turtle, Inc, curator Jeff George told Reuters.

This is the fifth straight year that the numbers have increased.

The species still has a few weeks left to its nesting season in the area, so the recorded 2008 total could reach 200.

The other turtle tidbit? Biologists report that for the first time in at least 70 years they have identified a leatherback turtle nest on the Texas coast.

The 203 cm (over six-foot) wide track in the sand was the first clue to the identity of the leatherback which laid two eggs early in June on Big Shell Island on the Padre Island National Seashore.

The eggs are being kept in an incubation facility and should hopefully hatch sometime around early August.

The massive leatherbacks are the largest of all living turtles, making them a wildlife icon.

George said both tales are good signals which show that conservation efforts from less destructive fishing practices to beach preservation and public education are working.

“The hope is that there are more turtles in the Gulf of Mexico that will use Texas as their breeding ground,” said George.

(Photo credit: Tim Wimborne, Reuters, April 12, 2006)

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical denomination, has paid scant attention to the environment although there have been calls from within to take a more activist stance on issues like climate change.

This stems in part from divisions within the SBC — which are found among the broader evangelical movement – on what approaches to take on green matters.  

The 16-million member SBC is a bedrock of political and cultural conservatism and a key plank in the Republican Party’s evangelical base. So much of its leadership has traditionally seen red when green issues are raised.

But there have been signs of change though they hardly figured on the agenda at this annual meeting which wrapped up on Wednesday.

In March a statement signed by several prominent SBC members including outgoing President Frank Page called for a stronger stance on global warming, blamed by most scientists on greenhouse gas emissions.

That put them in line with more centrist evangelicals who see climate change as a compelling Christian issue because of its perceived impact on the poor. It is also seen as morally wrong to inflict damage on “God’s creation.” 

“Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. The time for timidity regarding God’s creation is no more,” the March statement said.

Newly elected SBC president Johnny Hunt said he felt that most Southern Baptists were still not completely swayed by the notion that human activities were causing climate change.

But he said he thought Southern Baptists needed to pay more attention to environmental issues.

“It should be more on the radar screen than it has been. It is God’s creation, we have no right to violate it … and we ought to be leading the way (on the environment),” he told me.

There had been hope in some SBC quarters that the March statement and other initiatives signalled that the denomination would pay more attention to global warming and related concerns.

But it is an issue that younger evangelicals are keen to embrace as they seek to broaden their movement’s biblical agenda beyond its recent focus on hot button culture issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

So it’s certainly not going away.  

(Photo credit: Reuters, Javier Barbancho, June 4, 2008, Spain)

A handful of activists from People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA) urged Southern Baptists meeting in Indianapolis on Tuesday to try the vegetarian option. "For Christ's Sake, Go Vegetarian," read one of their signs outside the convention center in downtown Indianapolis, where the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America's largest evangelical denomination, is holding its annual meeting.

"The Bible's greatest message is compassion," said PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne, who said she hoped to convince Southern Baptists to adopt a diet that was compassionate to animals by not eating them.

The SBC, like the broader U.S. evangelical movement, is divided about what action to take on "creation care" or environmental issues such as climate change.

But the culturally and politically conservative SBC, better known for its fondness of "guns and God," probably does not have a lot of vegetarians in its ranks.

An informal Reuters survey of a few attending the meeting turned up none.

One major nationwide survey in 2006 found that 50 percent of licensed U.S. hunters and anglers were evangelical Christians -- hardly rich fishing grounds for coverts to the PETA cause.

Thar she blows! An emotive and familiar but very important debate.

News that Iceland and Norway have resumed whale meat exports to Japan for the first time since the early 1990s despite a U.N. ban is the latest twist in a saga that stirs passions in the conservation and animal welfare communities like few others.

The bottom line: Norway, Iceland and Japan hunt and eat whales despite a 1986 International Whaling Commission moratorium on these practices and condemnation from many countries.

There have been predictable howls of protest from various green and animal welfare groups.

The United States has also voiced its displeasure and urged Iceland and Norway to cease exporting whale meat to Japan. 

Most countries are officially opposed to the practice of whaling. But critics like the United States also allow the trapping of wild fur-bearing mammals for the fashion trade; non-whaling Canada has an annual and controversial annual seal hunt.

South Africa is staunchly opposed to killing whales but some wildlife officials there would like to resume elephant culls to contain its swelling population of the massive pachyderms.

This list could be endless but the broader point is that we seem to pick and choose some animals for preferential treatment.

Some environmental groups say whale populations are too low and that a resumption of sanctioned hunts could lead to unsustainable pressures. The whaling trio respond that stocks of species such as the minke whale are abundant and the animals are far from endangered.

But at the end of the day opposition to whaling seems to be mostly ground in the suffering inflicted on an iconic “poster animal” which many humans admire for its size, intelligence and perceived ability to experience emotions.

In short, something with human-like qualities.  Wildlife biologists even have a term for the creatures who seem to get more attention: charismatic megafauna. Not something you want to see writhing at the end of a harpoon.

What do you think? Do you think whales and a few other creatures get special treatment that coyotes and crocodiles don’t get? And is their iconic status exploited by animal-welfare groups for fund raising purposes?

Or do we have a moral duty to protect intelligent mammals, who have traits which raise ethical questions about how we treat them? And are whale stocks still too low or uncertain to begin hunting them even if you have no problem with their commercial exploitation? 

News that conservation group WWF has captured rare footage of the critically endangered Javan rhino is bound to set a few hearts racing in the wildlife loving community.

You can view the footage of the mother and calf here.

With fewer than 60 believed to be left in the wild, the footage provides a fleeting glimpse into the secretive world of this one-horned creature on its dwindling home turf on the Indonesian island of Java, where most reside.

The Javan is the world’s rarest rhino species and is probably the rarest large mammal species in the world.

Rhinos everywhere — there are five extant species — are threatened though the news over the past few years has been mixed.

In Africa, the southern white or square-lipped rhino has made a remarkable recovery after it was pushed to the brink of extinction a century ago. It now numbers several thousand mostly in South Africa. 

But the nothern subspecies of the white rhino is almost extinct in the wild with just a few animals left in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The black rhinos of Africa have seen their numbers rebound in the south but may be extinct in west Africa.

Habitat destruction and hunting for their horns, which are valued for medical reasons in Asia and to make daggar handles in Yemen, have been the chief culprits leading to this sad state of affairs.

So the footage caught on WWF’s remote cameras of the Javan rhinos is cause for celebration.

The late great science fiction writer Douglas Adams once co-authored a delightful non-fiction book about some of the world’s rarest wildlife creatures called “Last Chance to See.”

So savour this footage of the Javan rhino and hope we have other chances to see them in the wild in the future.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center indicates that U.S. Republicans, never warm to the idea of human-induced climate change or rising global temperatures, are growing even cooler to the idea.  

Most scientists have linked climbing temperatures to so-called greenhouse gas emissions from carbon fuels such as oil and coal.

“The proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased modestly since January 2007, mostly because of a decline among Republicans,” Pew says.

It was refering to findings from its latest nationwide survey of 1,502 adults which was conducted April 23-27.

“Republicans are increasingly skeptical that there is solid evidence that the earth has been warming over the past few decades: just 49 percent of Republicans say there is evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been rising, down 13 points since January 2007,” it said.

It said that overall 71 percent of those surveyed thought there was solid evidence of a warming world compared to 77 percent in January of 2007.

It further found that about half of Americans or 47 percent believe global warming is the result of human activity but views on the subject reflect a sharp partisan divide. It said 27 percent of Republicans hold this view versus 58 percent of Democrats.

This partisan divide narrows among the non-skeptics in both parties.

“Despite the huge partisan differences over whether the earth is warming, majorities of those in both parties who say there is evidence of global warming believe that it is possible to reduce the effects of higher global temperatures,” Pew said.

“Overall, 74 percent of those who say there is solid evidence of global warming say it is possible to reduce its effects, up from 67 percent in June 2006. Among those who believe there is solid evidence that the earth is getting warmer, there is little difference in those who think that it is possible to reduce the effects among Republicans 69 percent, Democrats 74 percent, and independents 77 percent.”

Pew does not speculate about the causes of the overall shift in sentiment.  On the Republican side this may not be good news for the party’s presumptive presidential candidate John McCain who advocates a more activist policy on the issue than that pursued by President George W. Bush.

Perhaps  environmental awareness wanes when the economy hits a rough patch. Or perhaps the skeptics would argue that they have not seen any really convincing new evidence or studies over the past year on the subject.

Scientists have joined forces to save magical Madagascar by using a new method they hope to apply to other hot spots of biodiversity. For full details you can check my colleague Deborah Zabarenko’s story.

As someone who has had the great privilege of visiting this island continent twice I can only say: “Right on!”

Madagascar is a classic example of natural selection at work: most of its species have evolved in splendid isolation because the island broke free from the rest of Africa tens of millions of years ago. 

This is what evolution and natural selection are all about. It is no coincidence that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace separately stumbled upon this profound notion in the 19th century while observing life on islands — or, more specifically, the difference to be found in life on islands often only a few miles apart. 

Madagascar, because of its size and the length of time it has been a cast away, is a prime an example of natural selection run riot.

Its snakes have no venom because that is an evolutionary trait they picked up after Madagascar and the rest of Africa went their separate ways.

It has boa constrictors (which I have observed in its forests) which are found nowhere in Africa but are found in South America. Why? How? Because, or so goes one theory I have heard, Madagascar and South America BOTH broke free from Africa at one point. So it stands to reason that they might both keep something that died out in Africa and vice versa.

That is the dynamic of natural selection.

I could go on and on and on. Madagascar is most famous for its roughly 70 species on lemurs, dainty primates that come in all shapes and colors. The largest among them, the indri, has a haunting cry that belies its small stature and which sent tingles down my spine the first time I heard it.

Much of the indri population is now restricted to a fragment of isolated habitat in a protected reserve. An island on an island.

For a good popular introduction to the study of island life I would recommend David Quammen’s superb book “The Song of the Dodo.” It inspired me to go to Madagascar in the first place with my wife when I was a Johannesburg-based correspondent.

And if you really want to see natural selection at work on an island, go to Madagascar yourself. Eco-tourism can help preserve species by giving rural people an economic incentive not to hunt them or destroy their habitat.  And that can only help the scientists and their new efforts to save this cradle of weird and wonderful evolution.

An unfolding saga in South Africa highlights one of the many divisions that are emerging between those dedicated to animal welfare and those devoted to saving creatures in the wild.

South Africa’s National Council of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is once again in a flap over the methods used in a fascinating project that seeks to “rewild” rare Chinese tigers so their offspring can then be released into a natural setting.

It is a project that I followed closely when I was based in South Africa — I covered the arrival of the first cubs in Pretoria — and that I now track from afar in Dallas.

The project, run by the charity Save China’s Tigers and set on a 33,000-hectare ranch in South Africa’s Free State Province, basically tries to “teach” the big cats to hunt for themselves and other survival skills. It is the brainchild of an energetic Chinese woman named Li Quan.

The hope is that the adult tigers will impart their acquired skills to their offspring which can then be released into the wild in China. Estimates and data are scanty but there are only believed to be around 10 to 30 individuals left in the wild of the Chinese sub-species of the tiger family, also known as the South China tiger.

Two sets of cubs have been flown to South Africa and while one male named Hope has died one pair successfully bred last year, producing a male South China tiger cub. The reserve also has a five-year-old male for breeding purposes.

This is the backdrop to this tale which one would think would have the whole-hearted support of the animal-loving community. It doesn’t.

The problem in the eyes of some animal welfare groups is that the tigers are being trained to hunt through the use of live animals such blesbok, a kind of antelope, which are released into a 40-hectare camp.

South Africa’s SPCA claims in a statement on its website that “Life Feeding - It Happens Here” and has taken the issue to the courts.

“It is a spurious argument that carnivores need to be fed animals, live. Not in captivity they don’t!,” the SPCA, which regards the practice as cruel, says.

As cubs they were allowed to have a go at live chickens and I recall the SPCA raising a fuss about that as well. I recall thinking at the time what was more important, a few chickens or the fate of a wild species and an iconic one at that whose plight could help draw attention and save others?

In the case of blesbok one could argue that as a wild African antelope they can only expect to come to a sticky end anyway — that is the typical fate of herbivores in the real world. And how else are the tigers expected to learn how to hunt? Would it not be cruel to cast them into the wild with no survival skills or lock them up for life in a zoo?

And if this experiment works it could help save wild populations of other large predators — animals that are finding they are less and less welcome in an increasingly crowded world.

Or does the SPCA have a good point? Is it just plain cruel to feed live animals to predators in a simulated setting?

This story does point to one of the many forks in the road where animal welfare groups and some conservationists part company. Other “green divisions” include broader battles that are being waged over the sustainable use or commercial exploitation of wildlife and those who oppose it, often on cruelty grounds.

What do you think?

DALLAS - Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders on Monday shook up their flock by issuing their strongest statement to date on the potential perils of climate change and the need to take action on the issue.

The statement, which was signed by SBC President Frank Page, past presidents and other church leaders, was short on specifics but represents a significant departure from the group's past pronouncements on the issue, which have urged caution and not much else.

Monday's statement by some of the leaders of the 16 million-member SBC -- America's largest Protestant Church and one of its most conservative -- said such caution could be taken as "uncaring, reckless and ill-informed."

If the membership at large accepts the document, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee John McCain could stand to gain as he has broken ranks with much of his party by highlighting the issue of global warming and talking about "common sense" ways to limit carbon emissions, such as promoting advanced energy technologies.

Having the SBC on the side on climate change could give McCain some needed traction with conservative evangelicals who have not warmed to him because of his failure to adopt their strident positions on a range of social issues from gay marriage to stem-cell research.

The SBC statement also is another step in closing the divisions between the old culture warriors of the religious right and the so-called "evangelical center," which sees a broader Biblical agenda that includes issues such as combating poverty and environmental degradation.

The statement was not entirely unexpected since many conservative evangelicals are known for their passion for the outdoors. A comprehensive nationwide survey in 2006 of licensed hunters and anglers commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found that half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christian.

Hunters and anglers often are the first to note changes in the climate or environment.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
-Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (SBC President Dr. Frank Page, second from left, meets with President Bush in the White House's Oval Office in 2006 with Dr. Morris Chapman, left, president of the SBC Executive Committee, and Chapman's wife, Dayle, right.