DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 24, 2016

Great Barrier Reef Conflict

Science and politics get confused in dealing with bleaching of the reef.  Difficulty defining the problem and determining a solution.

The El Nino-inspired doldrums that bleached a great swath of the northern Great Barrier Reef this summer have unlocked billions of dollars in funding to protect our great marine assets.

But the bleaching also unleashed long-simmering tensions over the quality of reef research, the way findings are explained to the community and policymakers — and the damage doomsday findings may do to tourism on the reef.

The stakes are huge and, as emotions swell with the bleaching, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority finds itself increasingly at odds with how the mes­sage was spun and “widespread misinterpretation of how much of the reef has died”.

What the latest coral bleaching makes clear is that the politics of the reef cannot be separated from the politics of climate change. The dominant view among coral scientists is that rising temperatures will make bleaching events more frequent, diminishing the reef’s ability to recover.

Bears Like Garbage Dumps – Who Knew?

Bears change their behavior based on the availability of food. 

University of Utah biologists working in Turkey discovered two surprising facts about a group of 16 brown bears: First, six of the bears seasonally migrated between feeding and breeding sites, the first known brown bears to do so. Second, and more sobering, the other 10 bears stayed in one spot all year long: the city dump.

The behavioral split between the two bear groups shows how dramatically the availability of food, particularly human-related food sources, can change bears' lifestyles. Understanding the difference in behaviors is key to designing conservation strategies among increasing human-caused fragmentation of the bears' habitats.

Today's visitors to U.S. national parks, especially Yellowstone and Yosemite, are confronted with the consequences of past visitors allowing bears to get too close to human establishments. Feeding the bears used to be a commonplace highlight of a Yellowstone visit. Up until World War II, the park even erected bleachers near park dumpsters so visitors could watch the bears come eat every night. Now, visitors are instructed to not even leave empty coolers in cars, because bears have learned to associate the boxy plastic coolers with a quick snack -- and may tear the door off to get to it.

Florida decides not to hunt down bears this year.   Asks residents to bear proof garbage cans instead.  

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted 4 to 3 Wednesday against a staff recommendation to hold a bear hunt in October 2016, after a controversial 2015 hunt killed 304 bears in two days.

Bear hunting had been illegal in the state since 1994, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in October, but a growing population caused the commission (the FWC) to schedule a seven-day hunt to kill as many as 320 bears. The temporary measure came after several attacks on Floridians' pets in recent years. Bears also commonly raid trash cans for food, and the FWC said the hunt was part of a bear management plan.

Recently, the FWC's announcement that it was considering holding another hunt started a fierce debate between hunters and animal rights activists.

Four incidents of bears directly interacting with humans and many raided trash cans led the state to re-consider the hunt. However, Laura Bevan, the Humane Society of the United States' southern region director, told the Monitor in April that the hunt would not properly address that issue.

"Problem bears in human areas are already dealt with harshly by officials," Ms. Bevan said. "The October bear hunt targeted bears in the woods, not the problem bears."

Instead of the hunt, the use of bear-proof trash cans is widely seen as a possible solution. Tracy Coppola, director of the Humane Society of the United States' Wildlife Abuse Campaign, told the Monitor although the trash cans are more difficult to use by trash collectors, they are already the norm in many Western states.

Other counties are following Seminole County's example: Lake County, for example, has now passed an ordinance requiring residents to use a bear-resistent container or lock up their garbage. Davis said Volusia County was also considering following in Seminole's footsteps.

Environmental Activist Is A Deadly Job

Extraction industries are brutal in the pursuit of profits.  Greed inspired murder.

More than three people were killed each week on average in 2015 trying to protect the environment from industrial activities, according to a new report published Monday (June 20, 2016).

The 185 reported deaths worldwide last year represents a 59 percent increase from 2014. The deadliest countries for environmental activists were Brazil, the Philippines and Columbia, with 50, 33 and 26 deaths respectively.

Almost all of the deaths were the result of people trying to defend their land from extractors of commodities such as mining, timber and palm oil.

Billy Kyte, a campaigner with Global Witness - the organization that compiled the report - says the rise is due to increasing demand for raw materials worldwide. As commodity prices fall, companies are taking greater risks to secure larger profits, encroaching into ever more remote areas that were previously out of reach - with cooperation of governments.

Octopus Intelligence
 

A creature that can do amazing things and even figures out how to escape from the aquarium.

…the octopus always comes to mind as the poster child for underappreciated brilliance. (Well, slime mold too, but that's another story.) Octopuses may not have come up with E = mc2, but good lord are they incredible. Can we change our skin to look exactly like the background in a split second, virtually creating a mechanical invisibility cloak? Can we taste with our fingertips? Can our arms perform cognitive tasks when severed from our body, or even still attached? These are just some of the amazing things in the octopus toolset.