OCTOBER 28, 2010, 12:12 PM
A Hundred Ways to Be a Frog
By NIGEL PITMAN
Alvaro del Campo One of the more than 60 amphibian species recorded during the first eight days of the inventory.
Sunday, Oct. 24
Here’s what it’s like to follow behind the herpetologists as they work their way down the trail in the early evening. The sun set an hour ago and the air is starting to lose some of the afternoon’s heat, but your forehead and arms are still damp with a cool film of sweat. The full moon is rising through the trees ahead of you: a bright spot in the canopy that’s not strong enough yet to throw patches of moonlight on the forest floor. Everything in the understory is black, and everything in the midstory is black, and up in the canopy the leaves and branches are black against a night sky that is almost blue. In the upper strata of the forest legions of stridulating insects are making a scritch-scritching chorus; to the right a far-off frog croaks once and falls silent; from the left comes an anxious-sounding hooting; a bat flutters past almost noiselessly, raising a tiny breeze; and ahead on the trail comes the rustling sound of the herpetologists searching through dry leaf litter.
As they work, the beams of their headlamps go sweeping restlessly through the forest, back and forth, up and down, pausing a second and then moving on. Sometimes both of them look up at the same time, illuminating the forest from the ground to the canopy, and for a few seconds that stretch of forest stands in perfect cross section, backlit by their searchlights. Then their lights fall back down to a shrub, or go running up the trunk of a tree, or pause on a bromeliad, or return to the leaf litter, flitting this way and that to show you all the different places you might find a frog in this part of the world. Jonh’s light has a yellowish cast and is concentrated in a beam like the headlight of a train; Rudolf’s is whiter and more diffuse, like a bright lamp. Whenever you see the yellow light and the white light stop their sweeping, come together and focus on the same place, you know they’ve found something.
Nigel Pitman Herpetologists Jonh Mueses-Cisneros and Rudolf von May during a nighttime survey along the Rio Cotuhe.
Nigel Pitman and Douglas Stotz Previous Posts From Peru
The Inventory Begins, With Birds, Rain and More Rain
The Quirks of Expeditionary Civilization
The Diversity of Birds and Fishes
An Abundance of Species, and Water
Into a New Sea of Green
Of Birds and Insects (and a Coral Snake)
It happens about every 10 minutes tonight. It has been especially dry in much of the Amazon the last few months, and in recent days the herpetologists have been muttering about how scarce amphibians are and how much they’d like to see some rain. For the last few days it has been “wanting to rain,” as they say in Spanish, but not much has fallen and tonight the sky is clear and thunder-free. So they go on working through the leaf litter with their snake hooks, turning over rotting logs, searching around the bases of buttressed trees, and wading off the trail now and then to investigate some intriguing eye shine.
Jonh Jairo Mueses-Cisneros is a herpetologist at Corpamazonia, a branch of Colombia’s Environment Ministry that focuses on the Amazon region. (His first name, which is going to give some copy editor a scare, is spelled correctly — that’s how the notary chose to write it on his birth certificate.) Rudolf von May is a Peruvian herpetologist who recently finished a doctorate on Peruvian frogs at Florida International University. Jonh was part of the team that set a world record in amphibian diversity at Leticia, a Colombian town just across the border from us, while Rudolf has published a flurry of recent papers on herpetofauna ecology and conservation. Both of them are under 40, and both are part of a new generation of South American biologists that promises to turn local universities and museums into the powerhouses of biodiversity science that they’ve always been destined to become.
In spite of the dry conditions, Rudolf and Jonh are doing pretty well. That world record from Leticia — which appears to have been superseded more recently by a site to the west of us, in Yasuní, Ecuador — was 97 amphibian species in three months of sampling. At our two campsites, in just eight days of sampling, Rudolf and Jonh have recorded 61 species. In the five-hour walk tonight they’ll add two more. And they’ve got six more days ahead of them.
Whatever their number turns out to be in the end, it seems clear that there are something like a hundred ways to be a frog in these forests (or a toad). You can be a tiny little animal that creeps high into the canopy looking for a bromeliad where you can lay your eggs, or you can be a warty giant who oozes bright yellow toxins when you’re feeling stressed, or you can be a meaty, nervous-looking fellow who sits all night outside your burrow keeping an eye out for local hunters who regard you as a convenient alternative to chicken, because you have no feathers to pluck. Maybe you spend all night perched on a leaf in the understory, doing your best to look invisible to bats. Or maybe you find a little depression on the forest floor where you can sit and pretend you’re a leaf and gobble up any unsuspecting mice that happen along. And if none of those sound attractive, you can choose one of the 95 other lifestyles.
Tonight the herpetologists end up recording 13 amphibians, three by song alone, as well as three reptiles: two geckos and a harmless, wiry little snake that for reasons of its own is dressed in the tan and brown patterns of a pit viper. The most entertaining moment of the night is when Jonh reaches into a small bromeliad on a fallen tree and plucks out three blue and yellow poison dart frogs, one after another, like clowns from a car.
It’s morning now as I type this up, and the herpetologists are almost done photographing their specimens. The sky is gloomy and it’s beginning to thunder, and if it starts raining really hard they’re going to head out to hunt for caecilians.
@sumac,
I KNEW I should have become either a botanist or a biologist. I was just fascinated by the last reply. I use a jewelry loupe to study the cells in my skin!
October 28, 2010
Despite Canadian Challenge, Europe Imposes a Ban on Seal Products
By REUTERS
BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The European Union won approval on Thursday to close its borders to seal products after a court decided to impose a ban even though a legal challenge from Canadian seal hunters was still in progress.
The European Union’s General Court, one of the highest courts in the 27-state bloc, said there was no need to delay the ban for the duration of court proceedings. It added that it had not seen enough evidence that the ban would damage seal hunting communities.
Seal hunters and processing firms from Canada, Norway and Greenland secured a temporary delay in the ban this summer, saying it would slash incomes in traditional Inuit communities and lead to suicides and substance abuse.
The ruling contested that assertion, saying that “the applicants are simply making mere general and abstract assertions.” The court also said too little paperwork was presented to prove their current financial situation, future income losses or access to unemployment benefits.
In Ottawa, Gail Shea, the Canadian fisheries minister, said she was disappointed by the court decision.
“What we want to do is continue to express our support for the seal industry here in Canada, to the sealers on our coasts and in the North,” she told reporters.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare praised the decision and insisted the European Union ban would exempt Inuit-derived seal products.
The court ruling raises the stakes in a European Union trade dispute with Canada, even as the sides pursue free trade talks.
The ban was approved last year and originally was to take effect in August. That led the Canadian government to challenge the ban at the World Trade Organization. A separate suit by seal hunters was also filed at the European Union’s General Court this summer.
Canada says the ban, affecting about 4.2 million euros ($5.6 million) of business, is based on false information and violates the European Union’s trade obligations.
The indigenous Inuit people of Canada’s North say an exemption for seal products derived from traditional hunts is rhetoric that will not be honored.
Canada’s main seal hunt takes place in March and April on ice floes off the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Seal products include fur for clothing and oil that is used in vitamin supplements.
@teenyboone,
Hey and Hi Teenyboone -------Thanks for clicking.
sumac, I think you have outdone yourself with your articles. I have to go back and read them -- you do such a wonderful job picking such interesting things to read.
All Creaked and trying to keep on creaking.........
Thanks all.
@danon5,
Thanks, Danon. They are interesting reading. I can still do my multiple clicking. Just keep on clicking. The system never stops me.
Good morning wildclickers. Just clicked maybe 10 times on rainforest. Easy as pie.
October 30, 2010
Serengeti Road Plan Lined With Prospect and Fears
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK, Tanzania — Every spring, out here on this endless sheet of yellow grass, two million wildebeest, zebras, gazelles and other grazers march north in search of greener pastures, with lions and hyenas stalking them and vultures circling above.
It is called the Great Migration, and it is widely considered one of the most spectacular assemblies of animal life on the planet.
But how much longer it will stay that way is another matter. Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, plans to build a national highway straight through the Serengeti park, bisecting the migration route and possibly sending a thick stream of overloaded trucks and speeding buses through the traveling herds.
Scientists and conservation groups paint a grim picture of what could happen next: rare animals like rhinos getting knocked down as roadkill; fences going up; invasive seeds sticking to car tires and being spread throughout the park; the migration getting blocked and the entire ecosystem becoming irreversibly damaged.
“The Serengeti ecosystem is one of the wonders of the planet,” said Anne Pusey, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University. “It must be preserved.”
But it is election time in Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in the world, and Mr. Kikwete is embroiled in what political analysts say is the feistiest presidential race this country has seen. Few things symbolize progress better than a road; this road in particular, which will connect marginalized areas of northern Tanzania, has been one of Mr. Kikwete’s campaign promises.
“The decision’s been made,” said Salvator Rweyemamu, the president’s spokesman. “If this government comes back into power — and we will — the road will be built.”
He said Tanzania had done more to protect wildlife than most countries, and he added, with clear frustration at outsiders, that “you guys always talk about animals, but we need to think about people.”
Hundreds of thousands of people here depend on tourism for a living. And the Serengeti is like a giant A.T.M. for Tanzania, attracting more than 100,000 visitors each year, producing millions of dollars in park fees and helping drive Tanzania’s billion-dollar safari business, an economic pillar. “If anything bad happens to the Serengeti,” said Charles Ngereza, a Tanzanian tour operator, “we’re finished.”
Most Tanzanians scrape by on the equivalent of a few dollars a day, so economic development is a pressing issue in the election, scheduled for Sunday. But corruption is a growing — and related — concern.
Mr. Kikwete’s ruling party has been widely accused of siphoning millions of dollars out of the treasury by awarding contracts to ghost companies. Perhaps no one in the campaign has better channeled voters’ frustrations over being poor while the ruling class is getting rich than Willibrod Slaa, a former Roman Catholic priest and legislator who has crusaded against corruption for years and is now running for president, along with five other challengers.
Tanzania’s government is not accustomed to upstarts. The governing party, the Party of the Revolution, was formed in the 1970s as a continuation of the Socialist-leaning political party that brought Tanganyika independence in 1961, and it has dominated Tanzanian politics ever since.
But the government now seems to be worried. It recently threatened to close independent newspapers, and Mr. Kikwete refused to debate Mr. Slaa on television, sending his campaign manager instead. The government is also delaying opening universities until after the election, which means many students will not be able to vote and will be scattered across the country, not concentrated on campuses, should there be any trouble.
Mr. Kikwete’s green guards, the governing party’s youth wing, have attacked journalists and opposition supporters. Tanzania’s police, who rarely confront civil disobedience, have tear-gassed rowdy opposition rallies. This is one of the few African countries that has escaped civil war and ethnic violence, but some Tanzanians now wonder if their tradition of harmony will be tarnished.
“There’s no way this government can win this election in a clean shot,” said Azaveli Lwaitama, a political analyst at the University of Dar es Salaam, who predicted vote-rigging and possibly turmoil. “The masses are discontented. They’re seething for change.”
That may be true in the towns, but in rural areas, where most Tanzanians live, the president still has plenty of support. In Engare Sero, a village of 6,000 people, mostly Maasai herders, just about everyone interviewed said they would vote for him.
Engare Sero lies along the proposed 300-mile highway route, already marked by red paint on rocks. The only roads out here right now are spine-crunching gravel tracks. People here not only want the highway, said chief Loshipa Sadira, “but we’ve been praying for it for years.”
He rattled off the reasons: cheaper goods; getting to the hospital faster; being better connected to towns; and having a higher chance of someday getting electricity and cellphone service.
It is hard to argue with him. Mr. Loshipa and his family eke out a living herding cows in what is essentially a desert. There are fertile grasslands nearby. But they are mostly reserved for the animals. This policy goes back to colonial times, when Maasai were summarily evicted from their lands for the sake of conservation. It has left many Maasai destitute, with young men now converging in the towns to hustle tanzanite, a semiprecious local stone, or to seek poor-paying jobs as night guards.
None of the leading conservation groups pressing Mr. Kikwete to reconsider say they are trying to block the national highway altogether; they just oppose it running through the Serengeti, which is a Unesco World Heritage site. Grass-roots groups are mobilizing around the world, circulating petitions and setting up Web sites, like savetheserengeti.org.
Mr. Kikwete recently promised that the roughly 30-mile stretch through the park would not be tarmac but packed dirt, like the mainly tourist roads already in the park. But conservation groups say any major road would allow poachers to quickly get in, shoot the animals from the highway and get out.
Scientists say the ecological damage is very hard to predict but potentially enormous. During the annual migration, the wildebeest produce more than 800,000 pounds of dung — per day — which nourishes the grasslands. If the highway fragments that migration and makes the wildebeest turn back, “the whole ecosystem could crash,” said Bernard Kissui, a research scientist for the African Wildlife Foundation.
He spoke of a “cascading effect” on the lions, leopards, birds, plants, all interconnected in an ecological web that has been relatively undisturbed for eons.
The World Bank looked into financing such a highway around 20 years ago and rejected it, partly for environmental reasons. Western scientists have recently come up with an alternative route south of the park, which they say will link up more towns and spare the wildlife.
But the Tanzanian government is not biting. Tanzanian officials say that the original route through the park is better, that construction will start soon and that if no donors will pay the approximately half billion dollars for the road, they will build it themselves.
“We are Tanzanians,” Mr. Rweyemamu said. “We know where the people are. The research has been done.”
Wow, lots to read sue, thanks.
Surgery tomorrow...not serious ... zoned for a few days though...
Have a Happy Halloween y'll
@Stradee,
Good luck with the surgery, Stradee.
@Stradee,
Good clicking all you Monday people.
Stradee, hope all goes well.
@danon5,
Thanks for the good thoughts sue and dan
All went well...better than expected. Home with marvelous pain meds, and tomorrow will begin more antibiotics.
Feeling 100% already...
@Stradee,
Glad to hear that everything went well and that you have jump started your way back to feeling fine.
I did my multiple clicking today and didn't find any articles to post.
@sumac,
Glad to hear all went well, Stradee. Hope your recoop is a good and short one..
Which reminds me it's time again for my colonoscopy. Real pain in the butt.
Grin, It's really nothing.
@danon5,
Every 10 years, unless someone in the family had colon cancer, then every 5 years.
@sumac,
Thanks sumac. The Dr. always finds something in me - want to see the pics?? I always ask him to save some for me to show to dinner guests. hehehehe
Today is my day for a soft rain all day. Hurray! Did all the multiple clicking.
November 3, 2010
Let's Get Serious About Climate Talks
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
I spent the entire month of August in Moscow. Those who were in the Russian capital then will never forget the heavy smog from wildfires in nearby regions that choked the city for weeks. The city seemed immersed in an alternate reality. People, plants, animals — all bore the imprint of suffering, frustration and fear.
Until quite recently, many in Russia, including members of the ruling elite, spoke skeptically about global warming, with a disdain for scientific data. Today their numbers have shrunk.
Of course, this weather-related anomaly was just one among many this year. Mudslides in China, unprecedented droughts in Australia and India, floods in Pakistan and Central Europe; the list goes on. The year 2010 is well on its way to becoming the warmest on record. News of a huge chunk of ice, about twice the size of Paris, breaking away from a Greenland glacier in August came as a menacing symbol of global warming.
Yet, paradoxically, despite the increasingly clear and growing danger of climate change, the pace of negotiations and actions to counteract it has slowed. The public, meanwhile, is frustrated about the ability of governments to effectively address the problem. This could bring us perilously close to public disengagement and apathy.
What has happened? Why all this backsliding in the year that followed the much anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen?
The reasons lie in the failure of political leadership and lack of will among those who have bowed to vested interests, as well as in governments’ inability to strike compromises that meet the often diverging interests of economic and political players.
The Copenhagen conference did not live up to expectations. The considerable divide between developed and developing nations stood in the way of the main, ambitious goal of a global climate deal.
Instead of analyzing the reasons behind this disappointment in all their complexity, and encouraging a search for realistic, constructive solutions, the media rushed to label the conference an abject failure.
“Climategate,” a carefully engineered scandal that took quotations from climate scientists’ e-mails out of context, and a campaign to discredit the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also did much to mislead people.
The corporate lobbies that organize climate-change-denial campaigns are lavishly financed, outspending those supporting urgent action by 7 to 1. One result is the $550 billion a year in subsidies that the International Energy Agency estimates go to the fossil fuel sector of the energy industry. True, the Group of 20 economic powers recently announced a phasing out of such subsidies — but “in the medium term.”
Everyone seems to understand that the climate problem cannot be wished away. Negotiations on how to fight climate change continue. After the latest round of talks in China, the U.N. process will resume in Cancún, Mexico, in a few weeks. Participants, however, seem more anxious about “lowering expectations” than about achieving the first tangible results. Diplomats and experts are stuck on technical issues, and voices are already being heard in favor of settling for the lowest common denominator or even reformatting the process, with the hope that the business community might come up with purely technocratic solutions to climate change.
This is not the way to go forward. Although business — with its ability to adapt new technologies and make a profit by doing so — could of course play a major role in the transition to a low carbon economy, it would be naïve to expect it to be the primary driver of this process.
The business community will always look out for its own interests and short-term profits. As for the theory that “the free market” will solve every problem, few find that idea convincing after its proponents brought the world economy to the brink of disaster.
Equally unacceptable are suggestions that the fight against climate chaos should be left largely to the most “advanced” nations. This would not only infringe on the role of the U.N., but it risks widening the gap between developed and developing countries.
Clearly, as countries like China increase their economic power they must assume greater responsibility for the environment. We need to persuade them that it is in their own best interests to do so. Furthermore, we need a strong and meaningful effort to create incentives for them to adopt energy-efficient and alternative fuel technologies, as well as to stimulate those who are ready to transfer such technologies to emerging countries. Agreements on all these issues can only be hammered out within the framework of a multilateral process under U.N. auspices. Cancún offers another chance to re-energize the process.
So, despite the fact that 2010 has been a mostly disappointing year for those who advocate urgent action to save our planet, we cannot afford presumptions of failure or pessimism. There are enough people in civil society who have not succumbed to defeatism and are ready to act to make governments listen. The global self-preservation instinct must finally force world leaders to resume serious negotiations with ambitious goals.
Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991, is a founder and board member of Green Cross International.
@sumac,
Always good to see another tree asmiling........ I can see them all around the house.
Good clicking all.
