Environment Forum

Why is this Great White Shark smiling?

For this Great White Shark, it’s even better now in the Bahamas.

The long-running tourist slogan has a new meaning for all 40 of the shark species around the Caribbean island chain after the Bahamian government banned all commercial shark fishing in the approximately  243,244 square miles  (630,000 square kilometers) of the country’s waters.

What’s good for sharks is good for the Bahamian economy. These big fish bring in about $78 million each year, or more than $800 million over the last 20 years, according to the Bahamas Diving Association — the Bahamas is one of the world’s premier shark-watching destinations for divers.

This latest conservation move adds to a 20-year-old ban on longline fishing gear in Bahamian waters. The prohibition on longline fishing — which often nets sharks along with tuna and other big fish that are the fishers’ main aim — is one reason that sharks are thriving around the Bahamas.

That is not the case elsewhere. Worldwide, shark populations have declined by as much as 70 to 80 percent, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts released last month. Some 30 percent of all shark species are threatened or near-threatened with extinction, and there isn’t enough data to make an accurate assessment of an additional 47 percent of shark species, the report said. Because these ancient fish — they were swimming when dinosaurs roamed the earth — grow slowly, mature late and produce few young over their long lifetimes, they are exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation. Great White sharks have been documented to live 14 years but probably live much longer. Female Great Whites produce two to four live young every year or two, compared with Bluefin Tuna females, who each produce 10 million eggs a year.

The decision by the Bahamas to make its waters a shark sanctuary is the latest of several moves that makes 2011 feel like the Year of the Shark. The island nation joins Palau, the Maldives and Honduras in prohibiting the commercial shark fishing. All told, this means 926,645 square miles (2.4 million square kilometers) of ocean are places where sharks can swim safely.

Keeping sharks safe can also help keep oceans in balance, according to the Pew report. As an apex predator at the top of the marine food web, a vital shark population can make the difference between healthy coral-dominated reefs and barren, algae-dominated ones.

from Tales from the Trail:

Panda diplomacy: the remix

The latest chapter in the long story of panda diplomacy was written at Washington's National Zoo, where the Chinese government agreed to lengthen the "loan" of popular panda pair Mei Xiang and Tian Tian for another five years. Actually, the loan is conditioned on whether they produce a new heir or heiress to the cuteness of panda-dom in the next two years;  one or both could be exchanged for more fecund substitutes.

They have a good track record: Washington native Tai Shan, born in 2005, headed back to China last year.

This was a big enough deal for President Barack Obama to mention it at an elaborate state dinner at the White House for Chinese President Hu Jintao.

“Today, we’ve shown that our governments can work together, as well, for our mutual benefit,” Obama told the glittering gathering. "And that includes this bit of news: Under a new agreement, our National Zoo will continue to dazzle children and visitors with the beloved giant pandas."

In the United States, panda diplomacy started soon after President Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China. But the idea that China might be able to export, or at least loan, this cuddly symbol to further diplomatic ends may date back to the Tang Dynasty, when 7th century Chinese Empress Wu Zetian sent a pair of pandas to Japan.

For some reason, Washington has gone disproportionately gaga over pandas. In 2004, the PandaMania exhibition put fancifully painted panda sculptures around town; there's still one near the hotel where the Chinese government set up its press operations for President Hu Jintao's visit. Asked why people in the United States are so smitten, Chinese conservation official Zhang Shanming told reporters it just might be that, when pandas sit on their hind quarters, eating, they look like human babies.

To be honest, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang didn't look so much like babies in that distinctive pose; they looked more like furry beanbags as the big deal was unveiled. But pandas are pandas and Washingtonians are likely to continue the love affair with them.

from The Great Debate:

Bottom-up biodiversity

By Karol Boudreaux The opinions expressed are her own.

At the recent UN biodiversity conference in Japan, participants were tasked with finding a new approach to preserve threatened ecosystems.

In the end, government and UN officials, NGO representatives and others reached an agreement that some are calling historic. The executive director of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said: "This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems." But how different is it?

The new "Aichi Target" (named after the prefecture in Japan where the meetings took place) creates a 10-year strategic plan to meet 20 goals for stemming species loss. It is set to take effect in 2020 but will need to be ratified by nearly 200 signatory nations, then implemented at the national and local levels by government officials, and then funded in order to work. This is yet another highly complex and inefficient process to address a very important problem. A more effective model would be to keep things simple.

Rather than trusting government officials to halt species loss, the goal should be to empower the citizens of these countries where such species are declining. There are programs that have been successful in protecting biodiversity while also aiding economic development. For instance, delegates should be pursuing the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) model -- a traditional approach to managing resources that exists across the globe. But, unfortunately, such approaches were not the focus of discussion at the conference.

CBNRM is a bottom-up approach that gives local communities, who are the ones to bear the costs of preserving and conserving resources, legal rights to manage those resources and benefit from their use. In economic terms, CBNRM gives local people incentives to preserve rather than poach or overuse the forests, wildlife or fisheries they control. Countries across Africa have implemented CBNRM programs but one in particular, has been a dramatic success.

from Tales from the Trail:

Steven Chu: Energy Secretary, Nobel Laureate, Zombie

You sort of have to like a U.S. cabinet secretary and Nobel Prize winner who knows how to have a little fun while getting out a message.

That would be Steven Chu, who posted a picture of himself as a green-faced, blood-dripping zombie on his Facebook page. Just in time for Washington's scrupulously-observed Halloween weekend, Chu used his own zombification as a platform to point out power-sucking appliances -- energy vampires, he called them.

"Garlic doesn't work against these vampires," Chu wrote. "But by taking some simple steps – like using power strips or setting your computer to go into sleep mode – you can protect yourself, and your wallet." Then he linked to the Energy Department's "energy star" page .

Perhaps it's a profile-raising approach?

Chu's got nearly 15,000 Facebook followers but he's near the bottom of a recent accounting in Politico about which cabinet secretaries can claim the highest media profile. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tops the list, based on how often her name showed up in major newspapers, network evening television news shows, the White House blog and its Flickr feed in the last year. Only Gary Locke, Hilda Solis, Shaun Donovan and Eric Shinseki ranked lower than Chu (you can see which departments they lead by clicking on the link in this paragraph).

But how did Chu come up with the zombie angle? Turns out that my alert colleague Tom Doggett, who reports on energy issues, saw the zombified version of Chu online last week and passed it along to Energy Department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. To soften the blow, Tom urged her to tell Chu not to take it personally: "I hear (Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar looks much worse." She wrote back: "Your email inspired a Facebook posting ... The Secretary loved the zombie website. Be sure to check out his Facebook page."

And even though Halloween has passed, you can still see what you'd look like undead by going here .

New monkey puzzles scientists: why does it sneeze in the rain?

A new species of monkey has been found in northern Myanmar, puzzling scientists because of a snub nose that means they are often heard “sneezing in the rain”.

Why would anyone want — let alone evolve – nostrils that fill up with water?

The find of the new type of snub-nosed monkey (story here) coincides with a U.N. meeting in Nagoya, Japan, this week to decide what to do about accelerating losses of species of animals and plants because of human threats, such as loss of habitats to farms or cities or the effects of climate change.

The monkey’s habitat is threatened by logging and a planned Chinese-built hydroelectric dam — conservationists hope it will put pressure on Beijing to protect the rare monkey from an influx of workers. Trees also bind soil together — logging can cause erosion that could silt up the reservoir behind the dam. That means a big economic incentive to protect the monkey’s habitat.

Researchers are mystified by the nostrils.

Local hunters report the monkeys can be located by their sneezing when it’s raining. The monkeys often resort to sitting out downpours in trees face down.

Thomas Geissmann, who is the lead author of the study, says no one knows why they have evolved such noses. Sneezing is an evolutionary dead end if it makes you likely to get caught and eaten.

Backyard tigers

Would you keep a tiger as a pet?

A puppy-sized tiger cub can be bought in the United States for as little as $200, and there are probably about 5,000 such backyard tigers across the country, about the same number of privately owned tigers in China, according to World Wildlife Fund.

That is far greater than the approximately 3,200 wild tigers worldwide, compared to the estimated 100,000 wild tigers a century ago. The growing number of these animals in captivity poses a threat to the species in the wild, WWF reports.

“People don’t realize when they buy a $200 tiger cub that it grows into a full-grown tiger, which means a huge enclosure and costs about $5000 a year just to feed,” says Leigh Henry, an animal conservation expert at WWF. “So you end up with a lot of unwanted animals that are very poorly regulated.”

These unwanted animals are a potent lure to poachers, who can use parts and products from these backyard tigers to sell on the lucrative black market. Because many of these beasts are untraceable — it can be tougher to adopt a dog from a U.S. animal shelter than to sell a privately owned tiger — many wind up in Asia, where tiger parts and products are used in traditional medicine.

The trade in these unwanted privately owned tigers can threaten wild tigers by feeding the market, Henry says.

Wild tigers are preferred for traditional medicine, but poached privately owned tigers are much cheaper. As long as any tigers are filtering into this market, wild ones are under pressure — and not just from poachers, according to Henry. Their natural habitat is being destroyed by logging and agriculture, and humans are moving into areas where tigers used to live.

Attack survivors at UN: Save the sharks!

Jaws needs help.

Nine shark-attack survivors from five countries headed for the United Nations in New York City to plead the case for shark preservation. U.N. member countries could take this issue up this week as part of an annual resolution on sustainable fisheries. They’ll also be reviewing the Millennium Development Goals — a long-range set of global targets that includes stemming the loss of biodiversity, including sharks.

“I’m very thankful to be alive,” said Krishna Thompson, a Wall Street banker who lost his left leg in a shark attack while visiting the Bahamas in 2001.  “I have learned to appreciate all of God’s living creatures. Sharks are an apex predator in the ocean. Whether they continue to live  affects how we as people live on this Earth. I feel that one of the reasons why I am alive today is to help the environment and help support shark conservation.”

Another survivor, Yann Perras of LeMans, France, had his leg severed while windsurfing off the coast of Venezuela in 2003. “Even if the movie ‘Jaws’ has scared entire generations, we have to remember that it is only fiction,” Perras said in a statement.

The nine who survived shark attacks gathered at the U.N. Environment Programme offices in an event organized by the Pew Environment Group, which among other projects aims to conserve shark species.

As many as 73 million sharks are killed each year to support the trade in shark fins, driven by demand for shark fin soup; 30 percent of shark species are either threatened or near-threatened with extinction and there is insufficient data to assess the population status of another 47 percent, the Pew Environment Group said.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom (A child looks at sharks at Siam Ocean World in Bangkok August 16, 2010.)

The wrong odor for a rich ecosystem

    It has an odd odor, oil mixed with dispersant. It’s reminiscent of the inside of an old mechanic shop or boat house, and out of place in the open water of Southern Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, which separates the Gulf of Mexico from the state’s fragile marshland.

One one point during a tour of the bay to see damage from the BP Plc oil spill, Capt. Sal Gagliano stopped his boat in a spot where reddish brown specs of the oil and dispersant mixture accumulated on the surface. It is slightly gooey to the touch.

The pollutants are why he was ferrying conservationists and reporters around and not taking customers out to fertile fishing spots. In other years this would be his busy season.

With the disaster in its eighth week, the fight against the oil will go on for months, if not years to come. The effects here, miles from the spill zone in the Gulf, are already evident.

In marshy areas, vegetation is blackened from oil, and looks burntjust above the water level even though booms have been laid to keep the crude out. On a late afternoon tour of the region hosted by the National Wildlife Federation, there were no birds in one swamp area. It was eerily quiet . This was seven miles from the marina.

The booms also surrounded small islands in Barataria Bay, ones that teemed with brown pelicans, spoonbills and egrets. Many showed obvious signs of oil contamination.

Rainy Taiwan faces awkward water shortage

 Chronically rainy Taiwan faces a rare water shortage as leaders ask that people on the dense, consumption-happy island of 23 million finally start changing habits as dry weather is forecast into early 2010. 

Taiwan, a west Pacific island covered with rainforests and topical fruit orchards, is used to rain in all seasons, bringing as much as 3,800 mm (150 inches) on average in the first 10 months of every year. But reservoirs have slipped in 2009 due to a chain of regional weather pattern flukes giving Taiwan too much dry high pressure while other parts of Asia get more storms than normal, the Central Weather Bureau  says.

Deadly typhoon Morakot  in August brought more than half the year’s rain to much of south Taiwan, washing away drought fears as well as a lot of other things. But the three-day storm dumped too much rain at once for much storage or use. Despite the typhoon, southern Taiwan’s anchor city Kaohsiung was 20 mm below average in the first 10 months of 2009, with the typhoon’s contribution about half the 1,747 mm total. Below-average rainfall resumed after the typhoon, the weather bureau said, and the same is forecast through February.

Some reservoirs in south and central Taiwan have hit water-rationing levels, a senior climate researcher told the United Daily News , adding that “southerners had better not go home for the Chinese New Year” in February.

Authorities in Taiwan won’t say when they might ration water or how long Taiwan can get by without more rain. For now they are trying to wash off the spectre of rations by asking ordinary people to make awkward, expensive lifestyle changes. One: Reuse water used for baths or laundry to wash floors. Two: Install low-flush toilets, low-flow faucets  and low-usage washing machines. The island’s Water Resources Agency aims to reduce today’s average per capita water use of 274 litres per day down to 250, said drought prevention director Wang Yi-feng. “We also hope they change and correct their use of water,” Wang said. “To reuse water can save a lot.”

Consumers are likely to consider low-flush, low-flow appliances only when buying new homes or remodeling them, being in a mood already to spend money on updates, said a volunteer surnamed Tsui with the Consumers’ Foundation, Chinese Taipei. “But if you’ve got older equipment, then maybe not. The cost would be unknown.”

((Photos: Low water levels in Taiwanese reservoirs – courtesy of Government water resources agency))

U.S. hunters, anglers weigh in on climate change

When people think of hunting and fishing politicians in America — at least prominent ones – two things spring to mind: 1. Republican and 2. Climate change skeptic. Former President George W. Bush, his vice president Dick Cheney and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin all fall into both categories.

But the hunting and fishing crowd — widely seen as reliably Republican because of that’s party’s successful portrayal of itself as the defender of God and guns — has also started to take note of climate change. After all, hunters and anglers are in the outdoors in pursuit of wildlife season after season, year after year.

But what may concern some Republican strategists is that many of them also accept the science of climate change, which overwhelmingly points to fossil fuel emissions as the main cause driving global warming.

This may help explain why Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina broke ranks with his party to outline a compromise to limit carbon emissions in a Sunday New York Times opinion piece he co-wrote with Democratic Senator John Kerry. Hunters and anglers in the U.S. South are widely seen as part of the Republican base and his call for action was saluted on Wednesday during a teleconference call hosted by the South Carolina Wildlife Federation (SCWF) and involved other outdoor groups.

“I have observed things in my life time that suggest that significant impacts have already been felt here in our state,” said Clinch Heyward, the 60-year-old chairman of the SCWF.

He noted that in a life time of duck hunting he had noticed a decline in the state’s duck population while Virginia, where one of his sons now lives, had more and more ducks.