Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

November 4, 2010

For Some Bushmen, a Homeland Worth the Fight

By BARRY BEARAK

CENTRAL KALAHARI GAME RESERVE, Botswana — They were on the move beneath an unyielding sun, and for a while their approaching shapes seemed just another part of the desert, their tattered clothes bleached like the thorny scrub around them. These weary Bushmen — four men, three women and an infant — were nearing the end of a two-day journey, walking their way toward water.

The leader was Gana Taoxaga. He was a tenacious old man, one of the few who had withstood the government’s efforts to move his people from this Botswanan game reserve, their ancestral land. He carried a spear, and slung across his shoulder was a hunting satchel with a digging stick, an ax, a bow and several arrows tipped with a poison made from beetle larvae.

Mr. Taoxaga was thirsty, and it angered and baffled him that he had to walk so far. Closer by was a borehole, the wellspring to underground water. But the government had sealed it up, and he supposed this was just another way to drive the Bushmen from the sandy home they had occupied for millenniums.

“The government says we are bad for the animals, but I was born here and the animals were born here, and we have lived together very well,” he said.

However humble their lives, the Bushmen of Botswana’s central Kalahari are well known to the world, the subject of books, films and anthropological studies. They are frequently portrayed — or, as many say, romanticized — as classic hunter-gatherers, a living link to humankind’s collective beginnings.

But for decades, they have been entrenched in a tug of war over their fate that has often gone unnoticed, a saga now replete with edicts and court cases, with alcohol abuse and sundered families, with an aboriginal people despairing about the uncertainty of their future.

Since the 1980s, Botswana, a landlocked nation of two million people, has both coaxed and hounded the Bushmen to leave the game reserve, intending to restrict the area to what its name implies, a wildlife refuge empty of human residents. Withholding water is one tactic, and in July a High Court ruled that the government had every right to deny use of that modern oasis, the borehole. An appeal was filed in September.

These days, only a few hundred Bushmen live within the reserve, and a few, like Mr. Taoxaga, still survive largely through their inherited knowledge, the hunters pursuing antelope and spring hares, the gatherers collecting tubers and wild melons, tapping into the water concealed in buried plants.

But most of the Bushmen have moved to dreary resettlement areas on the outskirts, where they wait in line for water, wait on benches at the clinic, wait around for something to do, wait for the taverns to open so they can douse their troubles with sorghum beer. Once among the most self-sufficient people on earth, many of them now live on the dole, waiting for handouts.

“If there was only some magic to free me into the past, that’s where I would go,” said Pihelo Phetlhadipuo, an elderly Bushman living in a resettlement area called Kaudwane. “I once was a free man, and now I am not.”

Touched by Civilization

In Southern Africa, there are perhaps 100,000 indigenous people commonly referred to as Bushmen or San — terms typically used by outsiders and, though sometimes considered demeaning, often by the people themselves. About half are in Botswana, and the 3,000 or so who have historically lived in this grassy, undulating part of the desert are mostly of the Gwi and Gana subgroups, each speaking a language employing click sounds as extra consonants. With one another, they ordinarily identify themselves by subgroup; among outsiders, they also reluctantly use the Tswana word Basarwa.

They are hardly untouched by civilization. The “myth of the last Bushmen” has been untrue for a century or more, said Dr. Jeffress Ramsay, a historian and a government spokesman. “Outside myths don’t help those of us inside to solve problems,” and the Bushmen’s biggest difficulty, he said, is poverty.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve, bigger than Vermont and New Hampshire combined, was established by the British colonial administration in 1961. The intention was not only to protect wildlife, but the viability of the people living there. At the time, some wondered if this was in the Bushmen’s best interests: were they being preserved as primitives in something like a petting zoo for anthropologists?

George Silberbauer, the colonial officer then in charge, argued that many Bushmen already had extensive contact with people outside the reserve. Rather than being “museum curiosities,” he wrote, they would be able to come and go as they pleased, holding on to however much of the past they wanted.

Botswana became independent in 1966, and the government’s eventual view was that the Bushmen were an impoverished minority living in rugged terrain that made them hard to help. Already, many were moving to Xade, a settlement within the reserve where a borehole had been drilled years before.

The Bushmen were pragmatists. Liberated from the strenuous pursuit of water, people began keeping goats and chickens while also scratching away at the sandy soil to grow gardens. The government provided a mobile health clinic, occasional food rations, a school.

Later on, these activities were commonly mentioned as reasons for removing the Bushmen. They “were abandoning their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle,” and even hunting with guns and horses, the government argued in a written explanation of its rationale.

A Modernizing Nation

Besides, government officials said, Botswana wanted to be a modern nation. The discovery of gem-quality diamonds had made it one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. It was unfair to leave the Bushmen suffering in underdeveloped conditions, the officials said, to use preservation of their ancient culture as a pretext for ignoring their need.

People living in the reserve soon were referred to as Remote Area Dwellers, and by 2002, all but a few dozen Bushmen had left the ancestral land, many of them lured by a small compensation of cash and cattle, others insisting they were threatened into submission. People worried about being arrested; they complained of assaults by wildlife officers; they speculated that the government had loosed a pride of lions on their few donkeys and horses.

In deciding whether to go, fissures opened, family against family. Some were deemed betrayers. Kuela Kiema, one young leader, decided it was best to resettle, a decision he later regretted. “The spirits of our ancestors hover over our tribal territories, looking for their children,” he wrote in a lyrical memoir, adding, “Many followed me, and we lost our land.”

A group of Bushmen sued the government in 2002, asking that they be allowed to return to the game reserve. The case stumbled through the legal system for four years before yielding a result that fully satisfied no one: a High Court ruled that the Bushmen could go back to their homes while also concluding that Botswana was under no obligation to provide them services. Afterward, the government interpreted the decision to mean that only the 189 surviving plaintiffs in the lawsuit were entitled to live in the reserve without permission. It remained unclear what those Bushmen would be allowed to do. Could they hunt? Reopen the boreholes?

Many more Bushmen have said they want to move back. Dr. Ramsay, the government spokesman, said negotiations were going on that might allow them to do that but Botswana had strict conditions: it does not want the Bushmen hunting wildlife and raising animals. “It’s a game reserve, and that’s been the issue from the start,” he said.

By now, many of the Bushmen have been away from the reserve for a decade or more; they are a disparate group, unequally educated, unequally employed, with internal frictions.

For its part, the government is stinging from the reproach of interloping foreigners, especially Survival International, an advocacy group based in Britain, which claims the Bushmen were rousted to make way for diamond prospecting and tourism.

Diamond exploration has begun in the reserve, though no mine is presently functioning. There is one small, high-end tourist camp with a swimming pool and 10 en-suite canvas units. Its Web site mentions the frill of “an interpretive ‘Bushman walk’ ” where “guests gain life-changing insights into the unique culture of this fascinating people.”

Destitution and Dependency

In the resettlement areas, the “unique culture” of the Bushmen mingles with the familiar culture of the displaced. The destitute rarely hunt or gather, instead awaiting a monthly parcel of cornmeal, beans, sorghum, sugar, tea and cooking oil. People are angry that they are dependent; people are angry they cannot depend on getting more. “We have been dumped here, and when we try to go back, they stop us at the gate,” complained Moscow Galatshipe, a 43-year-old man in Kaudwane. “There are no jobs. We will all end up in prison for stealing goats.”

A place called New Xade is the biggest of the resettlement areas, with many of its dirt streets plotted on a grid and an occasional stop sign for the occasional car. Most of the houses are small one-room boxes of brick, but the Bushmen also have erected round huts with thatched roofs.

By midafternoon, the shebeens — tiny bars — open for business, and the surrounding ground is quickly littered with empty cartons of chibuku, a beer cheaper than brands sold in bottles. In conversations, few people blame diamonds or tourism for their troubles. Rather, they say their countrymen, the dominating Tswana, have always treated them as inferiors. “You can say it is something like racism,” said Galomphete Gakelekgolele, a college-educated 26-year-old and an example of a younger generation trying to find equilibrium between their heritage and ambitions.

He said he wanted a good job in a town. He also said he wanted to live inside the reserve, where “my forefathers are buried,” and where “if maybe I am sick, I can say a little prayer in their graveyard and then collect certain herbs, boil them and drink them, and my problems will be gone.”

Families have come apart, most often with grandparents or a father staying in the reserve and a mother and children living in a resettlement area, near a school and a reliable supply of water. Gana Taoxaga, the old man who was among the last holdouts, the one completing his two-day walk, has six children and seven grandchildren in Kaudwane. “I miss them and they miss me,” he said.

Mr. Taoxaga did not know his own age. His brown coat was missing half its fabric. His leather shoes had no laces. Beside him on the journey, a younger man, Matsipane Mosethlanyane, led some donkeys with empty water jugs strapped across their backs. He said he was proud to be a Bushman and, boasting of his resourcefulness, he described how he had sometimes squeezed the moisture from animal dung to slake his thirst. Animals eat the flowers off the small trees, he said. The moisture from the dung was nutritious.

“But I don’t want to drink the dirty water any more,” he said. “That’s why we are walking today. I am used now to the new water, the modern water.”

Insect Scourge: Two New Species Invade U.S. Every Year

Rebecca Kessler
LiveScience Contributor
LiveScience.com
Fri Nov 5, 11:55 am ET

Less than an inch long with white spots on its back and antennae longer than its body, the Asian longhorn beetle would seem benign scuttling along the forest floor. But the plant-eating insect leaves behind a trail of woody carnage.
Every year, exotic insects like the Asian longhorn beetle and the emerald ash borer, aka the Green Menace, kill millions of trees across the United States. And every year inspectors intercept a few new would-be invaders at the nation's ports of entry - but they can't stop every single one.
Now researchers are trying to get a step ahead of the insect influx by quantifying the rate of invasion and pinpointing Los Angeles and New York area ports as insect entry hot spots. [Image Gallery: Invasive Species]
National number
Each year, about two exotic, forest-dwelling insect species take hold in the United States, according to a new paper published online Oct. 1 and to set appear in a forthcoming print issue of the journal Biological Invasions by Frank Koch of North Carolina State University and four co-authors. To calculate that number, the team developed a computer model that incorporated historical data on foreign trade, insect invasions and interceptions at U.S. ports.
Not every one of those incoming insects is likely to wreak havoc on U.S. forests, but taking a cue from the ecological literature the team assumed that one in 10 are. "You would expect to see a significant forest insect species [become established here] approximately every five to six years," Koch said, and that's right in line with the historical record. "We've seen four major forest insect pests over the past 25 years."
That rate may not seem especially high, but even a single species can be devastating. Take the emerald ash borer, a jewel-toned beetle native to Asia and Russia that was first identified in Michigan and Ontario in 2002. It has since spread to at least 15 U.S. states, including its latest conquest this summer - Tennessee. Feeding larvae have girdled and killed tens of millions of ash trees, and damages could top $20 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Urban breakdown
To find out exactly where forest pests are likely to enter the United States, Koch's team examined data for more than 3,000 urban areas. Insects often arrive concealed in wood products or packing material, and the researchers accounted for the likelihood that various imported products harbor forest pests, their regions of origin, their points of entry into the country and their final destinations.
The team identified the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana region as the top point of entry, estimating that a new insect invader becomes established there every four or five years. New York-Newark was second, with a new invader settling in every eight or nine years, then Houston with one every 13 to 15 years. Most other urban areas had much lower rates.
Koch doesn't expect the flood of insects to slow down anytime soon, and hopes his results will help direct prevention resources where they can do the most good. West Coast ports have the biggest share of trade with Asia, which is predicted to boom, so Western authorities should be increasingly vigilant for insect hitchhikers. East Coast ports have more commerce with Europe, and the researchers expect new establishments there to remain roughly stable.
Another consideration is whether a major tool for preventing insects from entering the country is sufficiently effective. In 2006, the United States adopted international standards known as ISPM15 (International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures Guidelines for Regulating Wood Packaging Material in International Trade). The standards require all imported wood products and packing material to be fumigated or heat-treated.
"There have been studies that have shown that compliant wood still can have live insects," Koch said. "The evidence is not there yet to show that these standards have made a big dent."
Just when or where the next devastating invader may strike, no one knows, but "the one that gives people the most shivers," according to Koch, is the Asian gypsy moth.
Since 1991, several small populations have been spotted and quickly snuffed out in the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina. Unlike European gypsy moths, which have been munching away at East Coast forests for more than a century, female Asian gypsy moths can fly. If the species gains a foothold in the United States, managers fear the pests could spread quickly and far, leaving millions of acres of defoliated and dead trees behind.
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Evolution:

How the Leopard Got Its Spots

The evolution of color patterns in animal coats has long been of interest to evolutionary biologists. From stripes on tigers to leopard spots and even the lion's plain coat, members of the cat family (Felidae) display some of the most striking patterns and variation in the degree of patterning across species. Camouflaging may be especially important in felids due to their stalking predatory behavior; however, the degree to which this shapes patterning across the family is unresolved. Allen et al. now compare mathematical model–generated categories of pattern complexity and variation to the phylogenetic history of the family and find that coat patterning is a highly changeable trait, which is largely related to felids' ecology. For instance, spots occur in species that live in closed environments, such as forests, and particularly complex patterns are found in arboreal and nocturnal species. In contrast, most species that live in open habitats, such as savannahs and mountains, have plain coats. These findings imply that spots provide camouflage in the spotted light found in forest canopies, whereas nonpatterned animals do better in the flat light of an open habitat. Thus, strong selection for background matching has rapidly generated tremendous diversity in coat patterning among felids.
Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 10.1098/rspb.2010.1734 (2010).

Climate Science:

Pine Island Losses

H. Jesse Smith


CREDIT: JESSE ALLEN/NASA/U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet is responsible for much of the observed rise in global sea level. No part of the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass more quickly than the Pine Island Glacier, whose flow velocity has nearly doubled since the mid-1970s, although it has been unclear exactly how much mass it is losing and which factors are most responsible. Joughin et al. have developed a basin-scale glaciological model to examine the sensitivity of the Pine Island Glacier to various environmental forcings. They find that the factor most responsible for mass loss by the glacier is melting due to exposure of the ice shelf to warm ocean currents, which causes ice shelf thinning, retreat of the grounding line, and a resulting increase in the speed of ice stream flow to the sea. Their model indicates that mass loss there may continue throughout the 21st century at rates similar to, or even slightly greater than, that of the present. They suggest that the rise in sea level by the year 2100 due purely to mass loss by Pine Island Glacier will probably lie between 1.1 and 1.8 cm, perhaps inching up to 2.7 cm—a large increase but still substantially less than the theoretical maximum of between 11 and 39 cm.
Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L20502 (2010).

Good articles sumac - I did get to read them and hate the one re. the natives but love the one about the animals skin patterns.

All clicked.

Just did all my multiple clickimg.

ovember 5, 2010

Shell Presses for Drilling in Arctic

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HOUSTON — Eager to win approval for its stalled plan to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, Royal Dutch Shell is beginning a public lobbying campaign, including national advertising, on Monday. As part of the effort, the giant oil company is promising to make unprecedented preparations to prevent the kind of disaster that polluted the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.

Shell’s plan to drill in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas has been snarled in regulatory delays and lawsuits for four years. The company has already invested $3.5 billion in the projects, and it was close to overcoming the final regulatory hurdles to begin drilling when BP’s Macondo well blew out April 20, killing 11 rig workers and spilling millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

In response to the gulf accident, the Obama administration suspended most new offshore drilling, including in the environmentally sensitive waters of the Arctic.

But now that the moratorium on gulf drilling has been lifted, Shell is pressing the Interior Department to grant final approval for its Arctic projects by the end of this year so that the company has enough time to move the necessary equipment to drill next summer, when the waters offshore are free of ice.

“Every day we’re delayed, we’re delaying jobs and energy development,” Peter Slaiby, Shell’s vice president for Alaska, said in an interview.

“It’s a crushing irony that the Gulf of Mexico moratorium is lifted and we are not allowed to move forward.”

The gulf disaster raised public and government awareness of the risks of catastrophic spills from offshore wells. The waters off Alaska are considered particularly tricky because of the long periods of daytime darkness, periods of months when ice would block the movement of relief ships and the fragility of ocean habitats for whales, polar bears and other species.

“We are opposed to drilling until we get sufficient science that demonstrates that you can do it truly safely,” said Chuck Clusen, director of the National Parks and Alaska projects at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Shell said its emergency response plan was far more robust than the one BP had in the gulf.

“We’re not a tone-deaf company,” Mr. Slaiby said. “We’ve really got to be compelling in what we are doing.”

Shell’s new marketing campaign promotes an “unprecedented spill response approach” including a sub-sea containment system, an upgrade of the drilling rig’s blowout preventer and an enhanced response plan that include teams and equipment at the ready 24 hours a day.

The containment system would include a dome that could be placed over any leak, and a funnel to take any escaping oil to surface ships. A rig would be at the ready to drill a relief well if needed.

“We’ve opted out of the fire department type of approach,” Mr. Slaiby said. “Our assets can be on site and deployed within one hour.”

Shell has also scaled back its initial drilling plans to just one or two wells in the Beaufort Sea. It is postponing drilling in the more remote Chukchi Sea pending separate legal challenges.

The company has the support of Alaska’s state government, which is suing the federal government to overturn the drilling suspension.

Gov. Sean Parnell said the suspension was illegal because the Interior Department did not consult with state officials or consider the local economic consequences.

A federal district court judge in Alaska gave the Interior Department a deadline of Friday to respond to the Alaska suit, with a hearing planned for the end of the month.

The Justice Department responded Friday night with a filing that argued that the state did not have standing to sue in the matter, and that the Interior Department was in the process of considering the application.

“We are taking a cautious approach,” said Kendra Barkoff, an Interior Department spokeswoman.

“Alaska represents unique environmental challenges. We need additional information about spill risks and spill response capabilities.”

Shell’s campaign appears aimed at increasing pressure on the Obama administration to approve the plan. The company is placing ads for the rest of the month in national newspapers, liberal and conservative political magazines and media focused on Congress.

For Shell and others in the oil and gas industry, nothing less than the revival of Alaska’s oil history is at stake.

Alaska is the second-biggest oil-producing state after Texas, but it has suffered a steady production decline since 1988, when output peaked at 2.1 million barrels a day.

With its North Slope fields long past their prime, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off-limits to drilling and offshore wells largely untapped, the state today produces about 680,000 barrels a day and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is running at one-third of capacity.

To make matters worse, the United States Geological Survey last month cut previous estimates of oil reserves in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, an area preserved by the federal government in case of national emergency, by about 90 percent, to 896 million barrels, approximately what the country consumes in six weeks.

Industry officials say there are as many as 25 billion barrels of oil reserves in the Alaskan Arctic. At the moment, there has been no offshore drilling in Alaskan federal waters since 2003, although there is some production from older wells.

Companies wanting to drill face heavy drilling costs, local opposition and legal challenges from environmental groups that say a potential blowout could endanger critical feeding and spawning grounds for a variety of Arctic species and warn that rough Arctic seas would complicate any containment and cleanup operations.

Mr. Clusen of the resources council noted that a blowout at Shell’s project would cause a slick on barrier islands that are critical birthing areas for polar bears in the winter.

He urged that Shell be obliged to rewrite its exploration documents to include the new response plans and allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to formally review “whether that response is adequate or not.”

Shell hopes that Chukchi Sea leases it acquired for $2.1 billion in 2008 could eventually produce as much as 400,000 barrels of oil a day. The holdings in the Beaufort Sea are probably less bountiful, but could eventually produce as much as 100,000 barrels a day.

Shell executives insist that drilling in Arctic waters is safe. They say they will be drilling in 100 to 150 feet of water in the Beaufort Sea, compared with depths of 5,000 feet and more in the gulf, which means that the equipment will be subject to far less pressure.

November 5, 2010

Dead Coral Found Near Site of Oil Spill

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

A survey of the seafloor near BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico has turned up dead and dying coral reefs that were probably damaged by the oil spill, scientists said Friday.

The coral sites lie seven miles southwest of the well, at a depth of about 4,500 feet, in an area where large plumes of dispersed oil were discovered drifting through the deep ocean last spring in the weeks after the spill.

The large areas of darkened coral and other damaged marine organisms were almost certainly dying from exposure to toxic substances, scientists said.

The corals were discovered on Tuesday by scientists aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel using a submersible robot equipped with cameras and sampling tools.

The documented presence of oil plumes in the area, the proximity to BP’s well and the recent nature of the die-off make it highly likely that the spill was responsible, said Charles Fisher, a marine biologist from Pennsylvania State University who is the chief scientist on the gulf expedition, which was financed by the federal government.

“I think that we have a smoking gun,” Dr. Fisher said. “The circumstantial evidence is very strong that it’s linked to the spill.”

The discovery of the dead corals offers the strongest evidence so far that oil from the BP well may have harmed marine life in the deep ocean, a concern raised by many biologists soon after the April 20 blowout that caused the spill. At an estimated nearly five million barrels, it was the largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history.

A brownish substance covered many of the dead or dying reefs but was probably dead tissue and sediment, not oil, Dr. Fisher said.

Oil seeps naturally from the seafloor throughout the Gulf of Mexico, but that was unlikely to have caused such a severe coral die-off, he added.

“We have never seen anything like this at any of the deep coral sites that we’ve been to,” Dr. Fisher said. “And we’ve been to quite a lot of them.”

Further study is needed to conclusively link the coral die-off to the spill, scientists said, and the survey team took a number of samples from the site to test for the presence of hydrocarbons and dispersant.

Whether these samples will yield direct evidence leading back to the spill is unclear. “No one yet knows if the signature of whatever toxin killed these corals can be found in their skeletons after the tissue sloughs off,” Dr. Fisher said.

Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, called the findings significant. “Given the toxic nature of oil and the unprecedented amount of oil spilled, it would be surprising if we did not find damage,” she said in a statement. “This is precisely why we continue to actively monitor and evaluate the impact of the spill in the gulf.”

“We are determined to hold the responsible parties accountable for the damage done to the environment,” she added.

The ocean floor near the site of the well is still largely unexplored and is probably home to many other deep-water coral communities that scientists are eager to study.

The scientists will return to the same region on an expedition in December for more research, using a Navy vehicle that can accommodate two scientists and a pilot to depths of up to nearly 15,000 feet. Work on deep-water corals is typically conducted using advanced submersibles or remotely operated underwater vehicles.

Coral sites in shallower waters farther from the well have not suffered visible damage, scientists say, but they are still studying these reefs for signs of less acute long-term effects.

“There’s a lot of work to be done to see if there’s been some sublethal effect on these corals,” said Erik Cordes, a marine biologist from Temple University who has been studying reefs in the gulf in the aftermath of the spill.

I do remember reading that the coral reefs in that area have been dying for years. And, that there has been a very very large 'dead' area in the Gulf for years.

Well, there ya go.

Good Sunday morning wildclickers. Did my 10 clicking and ready to tackle the newspaper/

Good clicking sumac and ready to read your articles. You do pick the good ones.

thanks.

ovember 7, 2010

Two Mines

Over the years, the federal government has done far less than it should — and far less than the law requires — to guarantee the safety of Appalachia’s miners. So it was a welcome break with grim history when the Labor Department asked a federal judge last week to shut down a Kentucky mine owned by the Massey Energy Company. The mine has been cited for about 700 safety violations this year alone.

Massey is also the owner of the violation-plagued Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where a methane explosion killed 29 workers in April. The company is reportedly the object of two grand jury investigations in connection with that disaster.

What makes last week’s complaint particularly interesting is that it is the first time the federal government has moved to close a mine since it was given that authority under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act 33 years ago.

The complaint involved Massey’s Freedom Energy Mine No. 1, which employs 130 miners. It said that despite the 700 hundred violations, and repeated warnings, conditions had not improved, and that on any given day, the mine “has a high risk level for a fatal accident.”

This is the second encouraging step by the Obama administration in less than a month to bring the politically powerful coal mining industry to heel.

In mid-October, Shawn Garvin, a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, recommended that his boss, Lisa Jackson, veto the Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia — one of the biggest mountaintop mining projects ever proposed. Mr. Garvin said the rubble produced by the project would devastate local streams and the plant and animal life they support.

The Bush administration approved Spruce No. 1 in 2007. A veto (assuming Ms. Jackson follows Mr. Garvin’s advice, which she should) would be another regulatory first. The E.P.A. has never used its Clean Water Act authority to overturn a previously approved permit.

Much remains to be done to improve both the safety practices and the environmental performance of the mining industry. But the Obama administration appears to be making the right start.

Editorial in today's NYT.

Thanks sumac, I knew the Bushies lifted the EPA regs during the first three months of his first administration in 2001.

Good clicking all.

NOVEMBER 9, 2010, 7:43 AM

Bird Sleuths Stymied by Deformed Beaks

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
In the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, the United States Geological Survey is distributing flyers seeking to enlist bird watchers in the hunt for beak deformities that hint at the spread of a new disease or other as-yet unidentified environmental problem:


On Monday night, I posed a few questions to Colleen Handel and Caroline Van Hemert, two of the geological survey wildlife biologists investigating possible causes for the deformities, which have been measured in recent years in these regions at rates many times higher than normally measured in the wild. In the most heavily surveyed species, black-capped chickadees and northwestern crows, they have seen the highest rate of beak abnormalities ever recorded in wild bird populations.

Handel and Van Hemert are authors of two new papers describing what appears to be a building “epizootic,” the wildlife equivalent of an epidemic, for which no cause has yet been identified.

Here are my exchanges with the two biologists:

Q.
The deformities involve faulty production of keratin [which is in claws and nails, skin, antlers and hair in mammals]. Are there any signs of problems in other non-avian wildlife? Are you seeing any long-clawed field mice or the like?

A.
Van Hemert: There’s nothing really happening at a noticeable scale that we know of.

Q.
The news release mentioned some hints of a relationship to environmental contaminants?

A.
Van Hemert: There are no real red flags. Certain contaminants show slightly higher levels in the affected birds, but nothing at levels where we’d expect to see gross changes. And there are no point sources for these pollutants here.

Q.
In some ways, this brings to mind the Chytrid fungus in amphibians — particularly because it’s regional and involving multiple species. Is there any hint of a pathogen being involved?

A.
Handel: We have done some preliminary testing for fungal infections but have had inconsistent findings, suggesting they may be secondary in origin. As part of her Ph.D. research, Caroline Van Hemert is doing a more detailed study of the histopathology of this disorder…. At this point we do not know if this disorder is being caused by a pathogen or something else. It is truly puzzling! However, the abnormally high prevalence in multiple species is an ecological signal we cannot afford to ignore.

Van Hemert: In small-bodied birds, which can weigh just 10 grams, detection limits are a problem. As for fungal infections, we haven’t seen anything. Another problem is that diagnostics are limited to known diseases.

Q.
What are the next steps?

A.
Van Hemert: We’re hoping to do more epidemiological work trying to get at why they are showing the geographic patterns we see.

Poachers 'kill 1,000 tigers over past decade'

1 hr 7 mins ago

LONDON (AFP) – More than 1,000 tigers have been killed in the past decade to fuel the illegal trade in parts of the endangered big cats, a report by a wildlife monitoring group said on Tuesday.
India, China and Nepal ranked highest in the number of seizures of tiger parts but the trade has spiked recently in Southeast Asian nations, British-based Traffic International said.
Complete skins, skeletons, claws, skulls and penises were among the most common items seized, while officials had also found whole animals -- both live and dead, it added.
"With parts of potentially more than 100 wild tigers actually seized each year, one can only speculate what the true numbers of animals are being plundered," said Pauline Verheij, one of the authors of the report.
From January 2000 to April 2010 parts of between 1,069 and 1,220 Tigers were seized in 11 of the 13 countries where tigers live in the wild, the report said.
India, home to half the world's tigers, had by far the highest number of seizures of tiger parts. The 276 raids uncovered parts from 533 tigers.
China had the second highest with 40 raids, followed by Nepal on 39.
But the report said there was a growing number of parts seized in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Myanmar's borders with India and China were a major hotspot, as were the Malaysia-Thailand frontier and the Russia-China border.
Tiger parts are used in many cultures for decoration, traditional medicines and good luck charms.
Mike Baltzer, leader of the environmental group WWF, said the report "demonstrates that illegal tiger trade continues despite considerable and repeated efforts to curtail it by many governments and organisations."
The WWF warned last month that tigers could become extinct within 12 years, with the number of the big cats worldwide plunging 97 percent from its peak to around just 3,200 today.
Russia is scheduled to host a "summit" of the 13 so-called tiger-range countries in Saint Petersburg on November 21-24.

Interesting about the beaks. I understand that frogs are the first animals to be subjected to changes in environmental subulations.

The earth is being killed by human animals.

Happy Midtag everyone...........

Good clicking all.

The beak article was interesting, and I was flabbergasted that so many tigers are being killed for their parts and that this is endangering them.

Did my multiple clicking - no articles to print here today - and I am going out shortly. This may be one of the few remaining mild and sunny days, so I want to be there.

Plus, I have to cut off some broccoli that is ready to be eaten.

Hi y'll...and where are my a2k notifications??? Hamster ether???

Anyhooo, weathers warming here a bit...and like Sue, i'm outta the house today...tons of storm debri...baggin' and taggin'...free pickup Monday hurrah!

Frogs...poor critters' dna will never be the same.

sue, since the U.S decided to lock down any sort of demonstrations, and label animal advocates 'terrorists' it's become very difficult stopping the uncontrollable poaching happening in our national forests and everywhere else.

So there are gov 'agencies' that take care of complaints instead of people who have no special interest affiliation or political b.s. dealings.

The NIH still funds taxpayers money to the worst sort of animal abusers on the planet.