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The 82nd Rainforest Thread ~

 
 
msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 09:33 pm
Thanks, Stradee.

Will do!
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danon5
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 10:04 pm
msolga,

Viel Danke mein Schatz - - - Very Happy

You're the best.
0 Replies
 
msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 10:15 pm
Why thank you, danon, though I seriously doubt it! :wink:

I'm finding investigating the Care2 site really interesting & am rather attracted to the "ocean" groups at the moment. (Thanks, Stradee!)
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Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 10:47 pm
yur welcome, msolga. Good job! Very Happy
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 05:53 am
Happy Christmas Eve day, everyone....and will go click to save a tree....somewhere.
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 06:32 am
http://www.voanews.com/english/images/NASA_mars_210.jpg


A group of U.S. astronomers say there is a chance an asteroid could hit the planet Mars by the end of next month.

Stargazers in Arizona discovered a 50-meter wide asteroid in November that was designated "2007 WD5." Astronomers at the U.S. space agency NASA's Near-Earth Object Office are tracking the object and say it may pass within 48,000 kilometers of Mars by January 30.

The astronomers say there is a one-in-75 chance the asteroid will strike the planet on that day. The asteroid is compared to a similar object that struck Siberia in 1908 with the energy of a three-megaton bomb and destroyed tens of millions of trees.

NASA officials say if the asteroid does hit Mars, it will do so near the location of its Opportunity rover, which has been exploring the Martian surface for three years.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 09:52 am
African giraffes highly endangered: study

by Bogonko BosireSat Dec 22, 9:23 PM ET

Man and mother nature are threatening at least six distinct species of African giraffe, which are highly endangered and could face extinction if not protected, a study warned Saturday.

Africa's 110,000-strong giraffe population, initially thought to be comprised of a single species found in all its savannas, has been severely fragmented by increasing aridity and a wide range of human pressures, Kenyan and US biologists said in a study.

"Severe poaching and armed conflict in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya reduced the number of reticulated giraffes from about 27,000 individuals in the 1990s to currently fewer than 3,000 individuals," over the past decade, said the study supported by the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

"Several of these previously unrecognized genetic units are highly endangered, such as the West African giraffe, numbering about only 100 individuals and restricted to a single area in Niger," it added.

At least 160 Nigerian giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis peralta) are found in West and Central Africa while a few hundred Rothschild giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) are found in protected areas in Kenya and Uganda.

The researchers said the extinction threat was real since giraffes are listed as lower risk in the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List, "under the assumption that giraffe species are considered a single species and therefore managed as such."

Published in the latest issue of the BMC Biology journal, the study of the animals' genetic makeup contradicted the single-species theory.

Failure by the wildlife community to recognise this "could lead to further endangerment or even extinction" of giraffes, it warned, calling for conserving and separately managing the different giraffe populations.

The giraffe study, which comes as the International Giraffe Working Group (IGWG) is reviewing the giraffe status, is only the latest alarm to be raised over Africa's dwindling wildlife population.

The IGWG is currently working with several wildlife authorities in Africa to carry out a census on giraffe, which grow up to 20 feet (six metres) in height and adults weight between 1,000 and 2000 kilogrammes (2,200-4,400 lbs).

The exercise is currently underway in southern Sudan, home to the recently discovered four distinct giraffe species that survived more than two decades of civil war.

They found two extremely distinct species -- reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulate) in northern Kenya and the Maasai giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) in southern Kenya -- living close to each other, yet they were genetically separated between 0.5 to 1.5 million years ago.

These geographical variations in trains, such as fur and spot pattern (pelage) evident in the mammal's range in sub-Saharan Africa, was caused by reproductive isolation (selective sex) among species and habitat differences like vegetation at a micro-level, they said.

The finding, they said, strongly supported their position that mammals had different species.

In September, wildlife experts warned that "dysfunctional" African parks were losing species, particularly large mammals, due to poor conservation and pressure on resources.

Human activities -- spurred by rapid population growth and a quest for higher standards of living -- have also undermined the efforts of African governments and conservationists to protect animals, they said.
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danon5
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 03:17 pm
Hi all - happy Sunday clicking...... Very Happy

sumac, one must always be on the watch for assteroids - Very Happy Very Happy
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 04:51 pm
Clicking in from Kingston, where it is bucketing bucketing rain.

Setanta and the dogs have just braved the weather. I'm a bit nervous - as they were just groomed and I'd hate for Bailey to lose all of that beautiful fluff in the rain. Oh well, they'll be happy for being out there and getting mucky.

Thunderstorms expected for tonight - and then snow again tomorrow.

~~~

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,839,135.2 square feet!

~~~

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

~~~

1 aktbird57 65.176 acres
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Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 09:25 pm
Dang! Cannot believe how busy work was today!

sue, thanks for the articles. Hope the astroid does smack Mars a good one. :wink: Shocked

Wildlife taking a hit - so damned sad. Sad

Christmas Eve tomorrow, and the weathers quite warm again. Blessed with a georgous moon though. Compensations Smile

Sounds like your're having a marvelous visit, ehBeth. Very Happy

Dan, you make me laugh, ya rascal! Very Happy Very Happy Shocked

Stradee has just enough time for clicking, then nynite.

Good evening all ~
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danon5
 
  1  
Reply Sun 23 Dec, 2007 10:01 pm
Thanks Stradee.

Shocked

Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 05:50 am
Seems I pushed the season some. Today I say happy Christmas Eve day. Have clicked and will strive to do something interesting today. Good music on the radio is a good beginning.
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 06:25 am
Climate Change Malpractice

The Bush administration won't lead. And now it won't get out of California's way, either.

Monday, December 24, 2007; A14

THE INK was barely dry on the energy bill signed by President Bush last week when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson used it as a wobbly crutch to deny California's request to institute tough tailpipe emissions regulations. "The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules, to reduce America's climate footprint from vehicles," he said. Bad call.

Carmakers understandably prefer the predictability of a national standard. But the alternative that the EPA rejected is no "patchwork." California and 16 other states, including Maryland, want to set a higher standard. Together they account for 45 percent of the sales of new vehicles in the United States, more than the entire Japanese car market. Detroit could meet the standard, which would require more rapid progress toward higher fuel economy than Congress has mandated. It just doesn't want to, and Mr. Bush is content to act as an enabler.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to sue to overturn the EPA decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Clean Air Act allows the Golden State to craft its own air-quality rules and allows other states to adopt them, as long as they are not arbitrary and capricious and are at least as tough as the federal standards. All that's needed for the regulations to take effect is an EPA waiver. But the EPA has discretion to deny a waiver if it finds that California doesn't face a "need to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions." So the administration may defend its decision on the grounds that the threat to California is no greater than to the rest of the country. Still, Post staff writer Juliet Eilperin reported, the EPA's lawyers and policy staff warned that if the waiver were denied, the agency would lose a Schwarzenegger lawsuit. We hope that they're right.

The larger point is the irrationality of blocking an initiative that would help slow climate change. Global warming is a compelling and extraordinary condition that demands both federal and state action. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that if action is not taken within the next decade the effects may be irreversible. The United States has been the largest emitter of greenhouse gases with a strong assist from California, which would be among the top 10 economies of the world were it a separate nation.

In its "U.S. Climate Action Report -- 2006," when the administration was doing its annual airbrushing of its own inaction, the State Department actually listed the California initiative as one of the "key activities conducted by the U.S." Talk about nerve. This is one more example of Mr. Bush's say-one-thing-do-another brand of environmentalism.
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 06:26 am
From today's Washington Post
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 06:33 am
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/12/21/PH2007122101046.jpg

Advocates Hope Science Can Save a Big Tuna

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 24, 2007; A06

For centuries, humans have mythologized the bluefin tuna, an elite, warmblooded fish that can traverse the Atlantic basin in less than a month and a half and grow to weigh three-quarters of a ton. Romans put bluefin on their coins; Salvador Dali painted them.

Now, researchers are using hard science to prevent the fish from going extinct.

Analyzing facets including chemical markers in the tuna's ear bones and satellite readings generated by tags attached to migrating fish, marine biologists are beginning to decipher how separate bluefin populations travel and spawn. And those distinctions, they say, may help determine whether fishery managers can preserve the Atlantic's remaining giant tuna.

"We know phenomenally more about bluefin now than we did 15 years ago. We know enough to save this species," said Michael Sutton, vice president and director of the Center for the Future of the Oceans at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. "We don't have the will."

As demand for the tasty fish has soared among sushi connoisseurs -- and as Americans and Europeans face off over who bears the most responsibility for plummeting Atlantic bluefin stocks -- scientists have helped answer one of the key questions now confronting fishery managers: Two separate populations of bluefin swim in the Atlantic basin. In other words, humans cannot afford to let either stock disappear completely, because they are genetically distinct.

For years, Europeans have been overfishing bluefin tuna that breed in the Mediterranean. In fact, for the past four years European Union officials have set catch quotas at nearly double the levels their scientists recommended, and fishermen have exceeded those already-elevated quotas by 50 percent each year. In the United States, the federal government has imposed greater restrictions, but fishermen can still bring home bluefin tuna they incidentally catch as the fish are spawning each spring in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We have some excellent science," said John Graves, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who studies bluefin by conducting DNA analysis. "The real challenge here is to get the science translated into management, and that's where we're hitting a roadblock."

The fact that bluefin from the Mediterranean and those from the Gulf of Mexico mix most of the year has led some fishermen to think the stock off America's East Coast has been faring better than it actually is, Graves said. Instead, he added, fishery managers need to realize that western Atlantic bluefin off the East Coast are in dire shape. There are two other species of bluefin, Pacific and southern, which face their own fishing pressures.

"What you have now are essentially two stocks, but the only time the stocks are separated is during spawning," Graves said, adding that the two Atlantic populations do not interbreed. "We need to protect the western stock, because that's a unique genetic entity."

For years, researchers knew little about how pelagic fish such as bluefin travel, feed and mate. But new developments have allowed scientists to better understand a species that can fetch more than $170,000 for a single fish.

"It's the Porsche of the ocean," said Sutton, whose aquarium keeps bluefins in its Outer Bay exhibit. "It's as fast as a sports car, it weighs as much as a sports car and it's as valuable as a sports car."

Satellite tags -- which can record the temperature of the ocean as well as the depth at which the fish swim and the level of light to which they are exposed -- have provided scientists with a precise record of how bluefin tuna travel. Stanford University marine biologist Barbara A. Block and her colleagues tagged two fish within a matter of minutes off western Ireland; within eight months, the fish were more than 3,000 miles apart. One had traveled to waters just northeast of Cuba; the other swam off the coast of Portugal.

Block's team has used a different kind of electronic tag, which they surgically implant in bluefin tuna, to record at regular intervals not only where the tuna go but how their bodies react to the surrounding environment. This year, a student of Block's, Steve Teo, published a paper chronicling that the tuna warm as they engage in courtship, and tend to stay in warmer waters such as the Gulf of Mexico during this period.

Jay R. Rooker, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University, has used a different technique to reach the same conclusions as Graves and Block. Rooker and his colleagues examine otoliths, or ear bones, of bluefin to determine where the fish originate and journey, because the chemical composition of these ear bones reflects the water in which the fish have been swimming. By reading the isotopes of carbon and oxygen contained in these ear bones, Rooker can isolate bluefin from the Mediterranean and the western Atlantic.

"If you look at them over many years, they do look different," Rooker said.

The discovery that the two stocks are genetically different has prompted the realization that the number of western-stock bluefin that U.S. fishermen are catching is inflated by migrants from the Mediterranean. These findings have prompted several scientists and conservationists to call on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to shut down longline fishing in the Gulf of Mexico between April and June while bluefin tuna are spawning there. Federal officials have resisted these calls and are fighting a lawsuit on the issue filed here in federal district court by Earthjustice on behalf of the advocacy group Blue Ocean Institute and its president, Carl Safina.

NMFS Director William T. Hogarth agrees that bluefin tuna are in trouble off the East Coast. "We're catching nothing," he said, noting that U.S. fishermen have collected less than 15 percent of their official catch quotas for the past five years.

But he has devoted most of his energy to pressing the Europeans to cut back on bluefin catches, something they have steadfastly refused to do. "It's totally out of control," Hogarth said, adding that when it comes to halting fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, "If the science tells us that is what it's going to take to recover bluefin tuna, then the federal government will consider it and probably do it."

Safina, speaking by telephone as he conducted research in Belize, said the science was already settled.

"To say there's not enough science to tell us whether we need to protect the last few fish that are trying to breed on our side of the ocean, that is just nonsensical," he said. "I believe that is illegal. The law requires better stewardship than [government officials] sitting on their hands and doing nothing."

Staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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sumac
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 06:34 am
He's not heavy, he's my brother.
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danon5
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 10:56 am
That's a big fish.
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 07:36 pm
We've just finished off our celebrations. There was more snow overnight so we had a lovely White Christmas - the dogs enjoyed three BIG romps and innumerable smaller ones. Bailey just kept digging into the big fluffy snow and making small dog tunnels for himself.

~~~

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,839,369.3 square feet!

~~~

Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings and all that good stuff that we haven't covered off yet :wink:

~~~

1 Aktbird57 .. 2027 65.182 acres


ahhhhhhhhhh good the leaderboard is back in order
0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 11:40 pm
Sounds marvelous, ehBeth!

Supposed to snow tomorrow, and Wednesday! Very Happy

Busy Christmas Eve ~ late clicks

sue, interesting articles.

Winter Solstice ~

http://www.whirlwindstudios.com/art/hawk.jpg
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Amigo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Dec, 2007 11:50 pm
Click Smile
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