Private Matters
US – Private property rights are often a stumbling block to wildlife habitat protection, but a fledgling “wildlife cooperatives” movement is showing how property owners can manage their lands with wildlife in mind. One such cooperative in Vermont (which counts economist John Kenneth Galbraith as one of its members) provides native black bears, songbirds and fishers (a type of weasel) with 7000 acres of protected habitat. Members schedule timber cutting and hayfield mowing to simulate sporadic natural disturbances such as storms and fire. Vermont is at the forefront of the wildlife cooperative movement, with 110,000 sustainably managed acres, and the idea is catching on across the US. As Vermont forester George Weir told Audubon magazine, “What we’re seeing here is the beginning of sustainable community forestry.” [Vermont Coverts, PO Box 83, Craftsbury Common VT 05827.]

Hot Bleaching
INDIAN OCEAN – High temperatures in the Indian Ocean during the first six months of 1998 caused serious coral reef bleaching. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, damaged reefs have been reported in the Seychelles, Kenya, Mauritius, Somalia, Madagascar, The Maldives, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Gulf of Thailand , Andaman Islands, Malaysia, Oman, India and Cambodia. Coral reefs have been compared to rainforests in the diversity of life dependent on them. While corals usually recover from bleaching, prolonged high ocean temperatures can cause permanent damage and threaten these fragile ecosystems which offer shelter to juvenile fish, lobsters, crabs and shellfish.

Sea Lice Quell Wild Fish
SCOTLAND – Commercial salmon farming has caused a catastrophic decline of wild sea trout (Salmo trutta) in northwest Scotland reports New Scientist. The number and average weight of caught sea trout have dropped dramatically over the last decade. Unlike Atlantic salmon, sea trout are coastal feeders and are thus exposed to a host of pollutants, from urban sewage to pesticides. Now, they are also exposed to sea lice, a deadly parasite spreading as farm-bred salmon are released into the wild. The lice infestation could prove the death knell for local populations of sea trout.

Rad River Valley
US – Highly radioactive waste is leaking from underground storage tanks at the US Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington state, contaminating the region’s groundwater, reports the US Government Accounting Office (GAO). Site planners assumed that the vadose zone (the layers of rock and soil above the water table) would contain the wastes. Instead, plutonium and other radioactive wastes now are seeping into the Hanford Reach, a stretch of the nearby Columbia River. The Reach is the only free-flowing, non-tidal stretch of the Columbia River in the US. The group American Rivers recently named the Hanford Reach the nation's most endangered river. A bill by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) to designate the Hanford Reach a National Wild and Scenic River has attracted wide support among US conservation, fishing and citizens groups. Ironically, due to security requirements imposed by the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the Hanford Reach remains the only largely undeveloped stretch of the Columbia.

Agrisickness
GENEVA – Farm-raised animals pose a growing threat to human health, says the World Health Organization. Factory farming confines large numbers of chickens, pigs and cattle in small quarters, providing an excellent breeding ground for epizootic diseases. Rather than institute healthier (and ostensibly less-profitable) management practices, agrofactory operators simply dose their charges with increasing amounts of antibiotics in their feed and water. Pathogens have subsequently evolved resistance to the antibiotics. This year, British health officials have been battling a widespread strain of salmonella that is resistant to five different antibiotics. The strain has been detected in the US, where doctors estimate that it already may have sickened thousands of Americans. (Salmonella’s symptoms are often misdiagnosed as flu or other illnesses.)

Animus Curiae
JAPAN – In the US, corporations have been granted rights previously enjoyed only by human beings. In Japan, however, non-human individuals now are being allowed to bring suits to court. In recent years, a number of animals plaintiffs have sued developers and officials for habitat destruction. In 1995, the endangered Amami rabbit (with the pro bono aid of some sympathetic lawyers) sued to block development of two golf courses. Lawyers representing a family of bean geese have sued to stop a freeway project near Tokyo that would destroy winter feeding grounds. In another case, a coalition of invertebrates has teamed up with some foxes to mount a legal challenge to the destruction of shared habitat.

Barndoors Closing - in on Extinction
CANADA – Forty years ago, an estimated 50,000 barndoor skates swam along Canada’s Atlantic coastline. Today, the barndoor skate is nearing extinction, signaling a decline in the health of the North Atlantic. The barndoor, a flat-fish reaching a meter in diameter, reproduces only after age ten and is often caught before it can breed. This late onset of reproductive maturity is shared by large sharks, rays, and the Atlantic swordfish (recently the object of a voluntary ban by many restaurants). Ransom Myers, who led a study on the barndoor skate at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University in Halifax,, blames overfishing for the skates’ decline and believes that a ban on trawling is the only way to save the species from extinction.

Keep Those Cats Inside
US – A four-year study by the University of Wisconsin concluded that free-roaming cats in rural parts of southern Wisconsin pose a significant threat to wild birds. Stanley Temple, the wildlife ecology professor who led the study, said that outdoor cats kill anywhere from 7.8 million to 219 million of the region’s birds each year. Though Temple is quick to point out that suburban development and pesticide spraying may threaten more wild birds, he fingers cats as “the principal mammalian predators on southern Wisconsin's rural landscapes.” Unlike wild roaming predators, cats hunt the same territory every day. “A well-fed cat, for instance, is going out every day to hunt the very rare meadowlark in his backyard until he gets it. Whereas the normal predator would move on to something else or it would starve,” Temple argues.

Got Dioxin?
JAPAN – According to the World Health Organization, dioxin levels in human breast milk are half what they were in 1974, but a recent study by Health and Welfare Ministry found that Japanese infants consuming breast milk “are taking in about six times the daily tolerable amount of dioxins.” Breastfeeding for six months can transfer 40 percent of a woman’s dioxin to her children. Hideaki Miyata, a professor of pharmacy at Setsunan University, advises mothers to “stop breast-feeding around three months after birth and switch to artificial milk [infant formula].” Miyata also advises women to dispose of their contaminated breast milk after they stop nursing their babies. Using mechanical suction to draw out contaminated milk may be the best way to lower a woman’s dioxin level.

Birds Spurn Non-Native Grasses
US – Many grassland bird populations have declined significantly in the last 30 years, and one cause may be farmers’ increased use of exotic grasses. At the August meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Virginia Tech professor Carola Haas and research associate Russell Titus explained how farmers have introduced non-native cool-season grasses to improve the nutritional quality of livestock pasture. But Haas and Titus found that native birds apparently refuse to build nests in new grasses that don't grow in bunches and leave room for the birds to move around on the ground. “A community of native plants support native insects. The exotic grasses may not support the insects that the birds like to eat,” Haas said. Even worse, she noted, cool-season grasses are mowed earlier, sometimes “before the first nests have fledged.”

¡Tortugas, Si. Turistas, No!
MEXICO – The town of Xcacel, 100 km (67 mi) south of Cancun, is considered one of the most important nesting beaches for the Caribbean’s endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles. Xcacel is also considered a prime tourist destination. In February, a mile-long stretch of Xcacel coast plus 390 acres were purchased by the Spanish consortium Sol Melia, which hopes to build a hotel directly in front of an important turtle nesting area.. Hotel development has destroyed critical nesting beaches around the world. Cancun’s Mayab Ecology Group (GEM) has tried without success to have Xcacel declared a protected reserve. “We’re asking for two kilometers of beach,” says GEM’s Araceli Dominguez, “Is that too much to ask?” The government has offered to let environmentalists buy back the land – for $11 million.

A Case of Bad Manures
US – Manure runoff from a pea field east of Austin, Minnesota is blamed for killing at least 100,000 fish – suckers, minnows and crayfish – along a six-mile stretch of a Root River tributary. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says a local hog farmer applied about 130,000 gallons of manure on approximately ten acres adjacent to the tributary, and an afternoon rainstorm apparently washed the manure into the creek.

Tokyo’s “Most Common” Plants at Risk
JAPAN – The Tokyo Environmental Protection Bureau’s first comprehensive survey of the capital city’s 7,687 species of wild plants and animals found that 2,223 of the species are about to vanish from Tokyo’s 23 wards. The Nihon tokage (Japan’s most common lizard), kikyo bellflowers (one of the “seven grasses of autumn”) and the omurasaki (Japan’s national butterfly) have either disappeared or are on the verge of extinction.

Ozone Hole Imperils Poppies
US – Nineteen of 34 plant species subjected to heightened levels of ultraviolet radiation in a laboratory experiment produced below-normal levels of pollen. Utah State University researcher Javad Torabinejad reports that UV-B sensitive pollen was found in sweet corn, rye, pears, pistachios, Montmorency cherries, California poppies and Ultra Pink petunias. Monocots (a plant group including grasses and lilies) proved more vulnerable to increased solar radiation. And what plants flourished beneath the ozone hole? Begonias and tobacco.

Is There a Tiger in Your Trunk?
VIETNAM – When Phong Dien forestry officials pulled over a taxi and asked the driver to open the trunk, the driver and three passengers fled into the night. Inside the trunk, the officers discovered a 44-pound tiger and a 143-pound bear, both wounded and stuffed into iron baskets. The bear died an hour later, but the tiger recovered and was released into the forest. Illegal poaching is commonplace in Vietnam, where rare animals are served in restaurants and used in traditional medicines.

Working for Peanuts Would Be An Improvement
INDIA – Economic doldrums and rising insurgencies are making life difficult for the working elephants of India’s Assam Forest. Budget cuts have reduced funds for Assam’s 39 working pachyderms by three-fourths. With the undernourished elephants spending more time desperately foraging for food, tourist rides have been suspended in Kaziranga National Park. In 1997, the Orang Wildlife Sanctuary’s 19 elephants received no food for six months. With the elephants unable to patrol, reports BBC Wildlife, “Orang suffered the worst rhino poaching in Assam.”

Fast (Disappearing) Food
JAPAN – Fuji TV’s popular cooking show, “World Gourmet Trip,” got into hot water when it flew its celebrity tasters to a Shanghai restaurant to dine on plates of stir-fried Bengal tiger served Cantonese-style. “The program shows absolutely no recognition of efforts to save the Bengal tiger from extinction,” fumes Worldwide Fund for Nature’s Sakiko Takada. The network, reeling from a barrage of viewer complaints, insisted that the tiger had died in a zoo a year earlier and had been frozen for culinary recycling.

Now Draw Your Own Conclusions
MEXICO – Farmers in Sonora’s Yaqui Valley spray their crops with pesticides as often as 90 times a year, and their children are suffering. University of Arizona anthropologist Elizabeth A. Guillette tested the children from the farms along with the children from the foothills, where pesticides are seldom used. An article in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives explains how the two groups of 4- and 5-year-olds were asked to catch balls, drop raisins into bottle caps, jump up and down for as long as they could and draw pictures of people (see graphic). Science News reports that the valley children “demonstrated significantly less stamina, gross and fine eye-hand coordination, 30-minute recall, and drawing ability.” The results horrified neurotoxicologist David O. Carpenter of the State University of New York at Albany. “I know of no other study that has looked at neurobehavioral impacts… in children exposed to pesticides,” Carpenter stated. “The implications here are quite horrendous.”

Under the Weather… Balloons
ANTARCTICA – Each year, US researchers launch 10,000 weather balloons from Antarctic bases. After a few hours, the balloons burst and fall into the oceans. In 1997, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Ecologist Gerald Eddlemon concluded that there was a 7 percent probability of a whale-balloon encounter – which would mean several hundred incidents a year. This is a matter of concern because dead whales have been found with plastic bags in their stomachs. Eddlemon’s computations may be conservative since, in the freezing waters of the South Polar Sea, polyethylene balloons can remain intact for decades.

Global Bio-Collapse Is Already Underway
“We’re all in a great big car driving at a brick wall at 100 mph and everybody is arguing over where they want to sit. My point is, it doesn’t matter who’s driving: Somebody has got to say, ‘For God’s sake, put the brakes on and turn the wheel.” – David Suzuki

Unprecedented biological collapse has begun worldwide warns a new report from the Worldwatch Institute, and climate change from carbon dioxide emissions is likely to accelerate the massive wave of extinctions already underway.

Life Support: Conserving Biological Diversity, by John C. Ryan notes the following chilling statistics: Three-fourths of the world’s bird species are declining in population or threatened with extinction; Amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and related species) are declining worldwide; In Indonesia, 1,500 local varieties of rice have disappeared in the past 15 years; In the US, about 3,000 plants,(nearly one in every eight native species) are considered in danger of extinction and more than 700 are likely to disappear in the next 10 years; American oysters (once so numerous in Chesapeake Bay that they could filter all its water every three days) have declined in population by 99 percent since 1870 (It now takes a year for oysters to filter the same amount of water); Italy, New Zealand, and California have all destroyed more than 90 percent of their wetlands.

But even the world’s current unprecedented rate of biological collapse will pale in comparison as the impacts of global warming are felt in the days ahead.

Without immediate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, rapidly rising temperatures will overwhelm the ability of many species and ecosystems to adapt. Widespread die-offs of forests, tundra, and coral reefs, disruption of animal migrations, and the loss of mangroves and other wetlands to rising seas are already being reported around the world. This global die-off is likely to accelerate if actions are not taken soon to slow global warming.

Biological diversity is no luxury: humankind is dependent on other species for its well-being. Human survival now requires that biodiversity become a central concern in our economic thinking. Survival requires that consumption-based growth and overpopulation be reigned in. A simple law of economics and ecology is now frighteningly apparent: the more resources one species consumes, the fewer are available for all the rest.