DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 29-30, 2016

Sometimes Solutions Are That Simple

A quaking aspen made up of 47 thousand trees with a single root system.  It could be saved with a simple fence.  Estimates place Pando’s age at 2000 to one million years old.

Meet Pando, thought to be the world’s largest living thing by mass. It’s a forest, but all of its 47,000 trees come from a single root system spread over 43 hectares in Utah, making it genetically one individual.

But Pando is dying. Hungry deer and cattle have been eating its young stems, and many of the oldest trees are reaching the end of their natural lifespan.  It’s falling apart on our watch,” says Paul Rogers of Utah State University and the Western Aspen Alliance. “The old trees are dying, and the young ones are being eaten.”

At about 6000 tonnes, Pando, which is Latin for “I spread”, is some 35 times heavier than the heaviest living animal, the blue whale. The largest living thing by area is thought to be a fungus in Oregon, while the tallest record is held by a redwood tree in California.

Pando is also likely to be the world’s most ancient living organism, though estimates of its age vary widely, from 2000 years to 1 million years old.

But saving it may be as simple as putting up a good fence.

Talk About An Ant Invasion

As mankind works diligently to exterminate mammals, the insect world throws up new species on a routine basis.  So, at least we know who will inherit the planet when we exterminate ourselves.

Not this one.

The island of New Guinea is home to some of the rarest animals on the planet. Among them are over 800 species of ants with a diverse range of fascinating characteristics, each well-suited to their unique island habitat. Scientists estimate that around 60% of these ants are found only in New Guinea. In many cases, a single species originally colonised the island and then developed into multiple distinct forms.

This one.

Now two new species of ant have been discovered with the help of a major technique that uses 3D imaging technology to identify insects. The ants themselves have a particularly striking appearance thanks to their formidable spine-covered exoskeletons.

Perhaps just as notable as their appearances, though, are their names, Pheidole viserion and Pheidole drogon, inspired by the fire-breathing dragons from the fantasy series Game of Thrones. While not quite in the same size bracket as their mythical namesakes, the ants do have a strong resemblance to the dragons thanks to the distinct blade-like serrations adorning their backs.

Extinction Causes

Apparently the behavior of one group of species can result in driving the extinction of other species.  Does this sound familiar.

New fossils discovered in the southwest African country of Namibia reinforce a theory that Earth's first mass extinction was caused by the planet's earliest animals, known as metazoans. These animals, which comprise most common forms of life today including vertebrates and arthropods, arrived on the scene roughly 540 million years ago. The effects of the diversification and spread of animals across the globe is known as the Cambrian explosion, and scientists now think it may have also led to the extinction of Earth's first multicellular organisms, known as Ediacarans.

"These new species were 'ecological engineers' who changed the environment in ways that made it more and more difficult for the Ediacarans to survive," said Simon Darroch, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, in a statement. Ediacarans are thought to have evolved from the planet's single-celled organisms and populated Earth about 600 million years ago.

Megafauna Rules

Wipe out the “mega” and it is likely that the insects will end up as the dominant species.  Maybe not, but it could leave the planet to rats and mice.  Sounds like fun.

In a public declaration published in today's edition of the journal BioScience, a group of more than 40 conservation scientists and other experts are calling for a coordinated global plan to prevent the world's "megafauna" from sliding into oblivion.

Among the threats cited by the group as drivers of this mass extinction are illegal hunting, deforestation and habitat loss, the expansion of agriculture and livestock into wildlife areas, and the growth of human populations.

"The more I look at the trends facing the world's largest terrestrial mammals, the more concerned I am we could lose these animals just as science is discovering how important they are to ecosystems and to the services they provide for people," said Dr. William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University and lead author of the study.

Ripple worked with other authors on the study to examine population trends of many species, including many of the most well-known, charismatic species such as elephants, rhinos, gorillas, and big cats that are now threatened with extinction.

Tahoe is a Gem

If only we could see some evidence of climate change without traveling to the ends of the earth.

The biggest alpine lake in North America is warming faster than ever thanks in large part to a changing global climate.

That’s according to scientists who study Lake Tahoe to produce reports on everything from water temperature to clarity to invasive species.

The latest data in the State of the Lake report shows average water temperature in the lake increased nearly half a degree in one year, that’s 15 times the long term rate of warming. The average surface temperature reached 53.3 degrees. The overall average water temperature is a little over 43 degrees.

Geoffrey Schladow of the University of California-Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center said the changes at Lake Tahoe highlight the magnitude of human-caused global climate change.

“That is a huge amount of water,” Schladlow said of Lake Tahoe, which reaches more than 1,600 feet in depth. If the water were spread out over an area the size of California it would still be 15 inches deep, he said.

“It takes a lot of energy to raise that a half degree,” Schladow said.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 28, 2016

Fireflies For the People

A community in Mexico has figured out how to save its old-growth forest by utilizing the power of fireflies.  This is how we save the world.

Thousands of them light up a magical spectacle at dusk in the old-growth forests on reserves such as the Piedra Canteada park, about 45 miles (75km) east of Mexico’s sprawling capital city.

Piedra Canteada in Tlaxcala state isn’t a government-run park, but a rural cooperative that has managed to emerge from poverty and dependence on logging with the help of the fireflies.

For years, economic forces, including low prices for farm produce, forced rural communities like Piedra Canteada to cut down trees and sell the logs. Then, in 1990, community leader Genaro Rueda Lopez got the idea that the forest could bring tourism revenue from campers.

Business was slow for years. Then in 2011, community members realized the millions of fireflies that appear between June and August could draw tourists from larger cities where few people have seen them in significant numbers. Indeed, around the world, deforestation and urban growth are threatening the more than 2,000 species of fireflies with extinction.

Climate Change – the Hoax Continues

Bill Nye in a few minutes tells truth regarding the incredible lies and conspiracies from the right.

First, our favorite science guy, Bill Nye, is back with a new video aimed at debunking climate change conspiracy theories. Vocativ combs through online conspiracy forums to see what "climate change truthers" are saying, then Nye takes down the wacky theories one by one. We won't get into every one as they've been repeatedly debunked before, but Nye takes on the truthers with his usual flair (and bow tie).

"It's not that the world didn't used to be warmer in the ancient dinosaur days," Nye said, "It's the speed at which the world is getting warmer ... that's so troublesome."

Nye also reminds viewers of the original #ExxonKnew conspiracy, saying, "The fossil fuel industry works very hard to maintain their status quo."

Trump Will Destroy the Planet

Thank God there are still people who want to save it.

There is no more immediate and existential a threat to the planet than the climate crisis. Glaciers are cracking. Deserts are expanding. And, god knows, the weather is speaking loudly for itself here this week. Still, the Republicans adopt a platform that is the climatic equivalent of inviting the leadership of Daesh to the White House Easter Egg Roll, as MotherJones reported.

One day, when we're all fighting for elbow room on a rapidly disintegrating cinder, we can discuss this further. However, instead of thinking about that, and instead of praying to Gaia to turn He, Trump altogether into a ferret, how's about we meet three people who make sense, not merely on addressing this impending catastrophe, but also on how to organize politically to do something about it? On Tuesday, a climate and environmental caucus met for the first time to map out strategies they can use both within and without the political process.

Origins of Human Speech

What can an ape teach us?

An ape at the Indianapolis Zoo is giving scientists insight into how human speech may have evolved across time. Scientists from Durham University in the United Kingdom discovered that orangutans might be able to control their voices after an eight-year-old orangutan named Rocky mimicked the pitch and tone made by researchers.

Rocky, now 11 years old, was studied from April to May in 2012 when researchers played a “do-as-I-do” game with the ape. Essentially, a researcher would make a random sound that varied in pitch and tone and Rocky would mimic the noise. The team then compared the more than sounds made by the ape with a database housing thousands of hours of clips of over 120 orangutans in the wild and captive.

By cross-referencing Rocky’s "mimic" vowel-like noises with the database, the researchers were able to verify that none of the "mimic" noises were found naturally within the orangutan population. Thus, the team was able to confirm that Rocky is capable of learning new sounds and controlling his voice instead of merely creating a "normal orangutan call with a personal twist."

Love This!

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 27, 2016

Microbial Eve – LUCA

This is cool stuff and great detective work.  Still some controversy about good old LUCA, but this certainly moves the debate along.

In the last few years, DNA analysis has allowed researchers to redraw the tree of life in incredible detail, but there’s always been a question mark at the base of the tree. While it’s unlikely that researchers will ever find the exact species that started it all, they recently came up with a pretty good description of LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all of Earth's creatures, sometimes referred to as microbial Eve.

After all those billions of years of change, LUCA’s fingerprints are still visible in the genes of modern organisms. That’s why William Martin, an evolutionary biologist at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, set out to study LUCA's trail in the genes of bacteria and archaea, the two groups researchers believe became eukaryotes.

Inexpensive Sensor Technology

This type of sensor can perform remote data collection and transmission.  This means we can test water quality in real time.  The technology can be applied to air monitoring as well.  It’s not that complex a technology.

Currently, if the water quality of a lake, river, or body of wastewater needs to be tested, a sample is collected and taken back to a lab to test for things like nitrate levels, heavy metals or other pollutants. This process not only takes a lot of time, but is also very expensive when you're monitoring several bodies of water continuously. Researchers at University of Western Australia see a future where water quality data is instantly available and inexpensive, thanks to a new type of environmental sensor they've developed.

The team, led by Professor Giacinta Parish, is calling their new technology a new kind of sensor. It's made from gallium nitride, a material that can perform in extreme heat and at high power levels, unlike the materials silicon and gallium arsenide that are often used in sensor chips.

Neonicotinoids Impacting Bee Reproduction

The impact of insecticide on bee population decline has been contentious.  But, this is a real indictment of neonicotinoids.

A new study finds that a commonly used insecticide kills much of the sperm created by male drone honey bees, one reason why the bees are dwindling.

The class of insecticide called neonicotinoids didn't kill the drones. But bees that ate treated pollen produced 39 percent less live sperm than those that didn't, according to a controlled experiment by Swiss researchers published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

It essentially acted as an accidental contraceptive on the drones, whose main job is to mate with the queen — but not one that prevented complete reproduction, just making it tougher, said Lars Straub, lead author of the study and a doctoral student and researcher at the University of Bern. Drones, which are the product of unfertilized eggs, don't gather nectar or pollen and don't sting; they die after mating.

NY Times Is So Very Wrong

The supposed “paper of record” apparently loves nuclear power and can’t admit that renewables can take the load in the next 30 years.  Confusing for such a high quality newspaper.

The New York Times article "suffers from the inaccurate assumption that existing expensive nuclear that is shut down will be replaced by natural gas. This is impossible in California, for example, since gas is currently 60 percent of electricity supply but state law requires non-large-hydro clean renewables to be 50 percent by 2030. This means that, with the shuttering of Diablo Canyon nuclear facility be 2025, gas can by no greater than 35-44 percent of California supply since clean renewables will be at least 50 percent (and probably much more) and large hydro will be 6-15 percent. As such, gas must go down no matter what. In fact, 100 percent of all new electric power in Europe in 2015 was clean, renewable energy with no new net gas, and 70 percent of all new energy in the U.S. was clean and renewable, so the fact is nuclear is not being replaced by gas but by clean, renewable energy.

"The notion that non-renewable power sources are necessary is questionable at best. Some scientists believe that, over the next few decades, renewables could provide all our power. One is Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson. He has done modeling to show the U.S. could be entirely powered by renewables by 2050.

…the Times has been consistently pro-nuclear. Its slanted coverage has served as an industry bulwark for decades. A long-time atomic beat reporter, Matt Wald, went straight from the Times to a job with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the primary public relations front for the reactor industry. The Times has a long history as a cheerleader for nuclear power dating back to the atomic bomb era, when it consistently denied health problems from radioactive fallout. It also denied health problems resulting from radiation releases at Three Mile Island, and much more. Now it has taken a major role in defending the nuclear industry from the renewable energy revolution that is driving it to bankruptcy while bringing a tsunami of reactor shut downs. It's these shut downs that now seem to worry the paper.

Bear Cam - Brooks Falls, Alaska

View from the iconic site where Alaskan bears feast on migrating salmon.  It's live, so only interesting during day light (in Alaska) hours.

h/t Balloon Juice

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 26, 2016

Cats are Next

New Zealand has gone “all in” to eliminate invasive species in order to protect native species.  Many of the native species are flightless birds in an environment that 900 years ago had virtually no predatory species.  Once the rats, stoats and possums are gone, cats (a most invasive species) might be next.  I’m good with that.

It's a goal that was formally announced Monday by New Zealand's prime minister, John Key. "While once the greatest threat to our native wildlife was poaching and deforestation, it is now introduced predators," Key said in a statement.

He noted that rats, possums and stoats — which are not native to the islands of New Zealand — kill 25 million native birds each year, and also prey on lizards and other native species.

The invasive species cost the country about 3.3 billion New Zealand dollars (more than $2.3 billion) per year, according to the government's estimates. They can also carry disease.

Gareth Morgan, a businessman, activist and philanthropist who has strongly advocated for a predator-free New Zealand, also runs an initiative called "Cats To Go." It tries to persuade New Zealand's cat-lovers to keep their pets indoors or walk them on leashes — and, when they die, not to replace them. And all unowned or unclaimed cats in New Zealand should be euthanized, Morgan argues.

His position has sparked claws-out debate about the future of cats in New Zealand.

For now, the government is hinting toward a hard line on feral cats but not on house pets. Under the government's new program, Prime Minister Key told Radio New Zealand, feral cats on conservation lands would be targeted as predators, just like rats, stoats and possums.

But, what about dogs?  They’re an invasive species.  Wait, they part of the solution,not part of the problem.

Visit the docks in Auckland, New Zealand, on any day of the week and you might just see Piri puttering around, clad in a smart orange vest and going about her work with the utmost professionalism. Observe as she wanders to some bags and does a thorough search, before clambering aboard a barge to take a good sniff around.

Piri is a ratter, a specially trained dog who can sniff out rodents. Her job is to find rats and mice that might be hiding in luggage or in crevices aboard ships that are heading for islands around Auckland. These islands are home to some of New Zealand’s most threatened and beloved native species, like the country’s national animal, the very stout and very cute kiwi, and the world’s only nocturnal flightless parrot, the kakapo.

One of New Zealand’s greatest conservation accomplishments, these so-called “island sanctuaries” are entirely pest- and predator-free, allowing these endangered animals to thrive without threat.

Dogs, man's right hand.  Cats, get real.

It’s Not the Tour de France

It’s about making lives more productive and safer.  Oh, and it’s about climate change, believe it or not.

One thing so many drivers and politicians complain about when protesting new bike lanes is that they are sitting there empty while they are stewing away in their cars stuck in congested traffic. Or they complain that people on bikes are all white middle class dilettantes while real people need cars to get to real jobs.

But new research from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) concludes that decent protected bike infrastructure not only dramatically increases the number of people riding and reduces the number of people injured or killed, but that it is important for social and economic equity. According to the study, PDF:

Cycling is a fact of life in many low-income communities. Analysis of national Census data by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research shows that 49% of the people who bike to work earn less than $25,000 per year. In 2014, PeopleForBikes reported that the lowest-income households—Americans making less than $20,000 per year—are twice as likely as the rest of the population to rely on bikes for basic transportation needs like getting to work.

Extinction Tipping Point

We aren’t going to have 400,000 years to work things out.

Experts say the results of a study of ancient zooplankton fossils offer a warning about mass extinction events: There’s a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in populations begin.

The researchers studied nearly 22,000 fossils and found that ancient plankton communities began changing in important ways as much as 400,000 years before massive die-offs ensued during the first of Earth’s five great extinctions.

The research, published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on large zooplankton called graptolites. It suggests that the effects of environmental degradation can be subtle until they reach a point of no return.

Extinction Driven by Habitat Loss

We are the problem. 

When natural habitats are lost, species lose the physical space and resources they need to continue growing and expanding. Habitats are usually lost due to human activity, such as building roads or clear-cutting a forest. After such a disturbance, the habitat can no longer support the number of species that live there and species begin to disappear until the habitat reaches a new normal. The difference between the old and new amounts of biodiversity the habitat can support is called the "extinction debt."

Several factors influence the timeline in which the biodiversity loss process plays out, but Newmark says that all groups they studied, even those thought to be resistant to extinction such as plants, showed the same pattern. These similar patterns emerge if species loss is calculated in terms of average population size and time for a new generation to arise for these taxonomic groups.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 25, 2016

“Barbaric elephant slaughter creates horror scene”

From Namibia’s Informante site.

Residents at a well-known Namibian tourist lodge on the banks of the Okavango River had to watch helplessly as a horrific slaughter of elephants played out in front of their eyes just across the border in Angola.

At least five men armed with AK-47 automatic assault rifles attacked a group of about 40 elephants grazing peacefully in the long grass along the river.

According to Hennie Burger who saw the horrific attack on the elephants the attack on the animals happened less than 150 metres from where he was standing.

“The men suddenly appeared out of the bushes on the Angolan side of the river. They started firing at the animals with the assault rifles set to full automatic and what ensued could only be described as tragic carnage. At least three elephants were mortally wounded and the noise they made was horrifying.”

Of course is this any worse than the Trump families contempt for wild creatures?

Donald Jr with tail of elephant he destroyed.

…photos quickly resurfaced of Donald Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, posing with the dead bodies of several exotic animals, including an African elephant and leopard, they had previously hunted for sport.

Speaking of Trump

Here’s a person who has no interest in anything but his own self-interest.

Donald Trump has vowed to continue fighting the windfarm development off the coast from his Aberdeenshire golf course, branding the project an act of “public vandalism”.

The US presidential candidate returned to the fray after Swedish energy company Vattenfall confirmed on Thursday that it is going ahead with its £300m investment, despite last month’s EU referendum vote.

The offshore windfarm has been dogged by years of bitter legal wrangles between Trump and the Scottish government over its impact on his golf course, which the tycoon ultimately lost in the courts last year.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization insisted that several of planning conditions associated with the project had yet to be fully satisfied. They said that the New York-based billionaire would be lodging formal objections with Marine Scotland, as well as pursuing additional remedies before the European courts if necessary.

On Last Though on Donald Trump

He’s on the Russian payroll and wants to destroy the United States.  Or so it would seem.

Corruption Allows Poaching

Numerous African countries failing to enforce CITES provisions.  Corruption trumps (see what I did there) conservation.

Global wildlife conservationists are demanding parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of Wild and Fauna Flora (CITES) comply with wildlife laws.

Authors of a recent released report on the Elephant Wildlife Trade Information System, Traffic, a global network fighting ivory trade, told DW that governments were failing to submit annual reports about ivory stocks.

Tom Milliken, the Elephant and Rhino Program Leader for Traffic, said there had been an expansion of wildlife smuggling networks across Africa in which Chinese and Vietnamese nationals were working with corrupt local officials.

"They are involved in syndicates and moving ivory across Africa and then to Asia." he said.

He said that cooperation in law enforcement between the countries involved in smuggling the ivory and those where it originated could save elephants from extinction.

"If the governments of China and Vietnam were to station wildlife trade investigators who would work with Africans, we would be able to dismantle the transnational syndicates that are driving the trade." Milliken said.

What Good Are Zoos – Part Infinite

Scottish wildcats are probably hybrids, but they still carry the wildcat DNA.

Four astonishingly cute and vitally important kittens have been born at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park.

These aren’t just any kittens. They’re Scottish wildcats (Felis silvestris grampia), one of the rarest feline subspecies on the planet. These wildcats—also known as Highland tigers—nearly went extinct due to habitat loss, persecution by farmers and game-bird hunters, and hybridization with feral and domestic cats (F. catus). Today just a few hundred of these critically endangered tabbies live in the wild, many of which now carry hybrid genetics.

That’s where the Highland Wildlife Park comes in. As part of the Scottish Wildcat Action initiative, the park has spent the past few years helping to breed these rare animals in captivity. The new kittens—three from one litter, one from a second—represent the latest victory in that effort.

Science – Most of the World is for it

Good stuff when science and technology are turned loose.

The EuroScience Open Forum is a huge event held every two years that brings researchers, policymakers, and regular folks together to promote science and innovation. This year, Manchester will host a broad range of workshops, events, and contests.

And then in the United States.

Bill Nye “the Science Guy” worries kids are being brainwashed at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter. Nye recently paid a visit to Ken Ham’s life-size version of Noah’s Ark. He was not pleased.

After the visit Nye expressed his frustration with the Christian fundamentalist project based on discredited science and a literal interpretation of Genesis. Noting that the Ark was an eye-catching attraction that was “much more troubling or disturbing than I thought it would be,” Nye told NBC News:

It’s all very troubling. You have hundreds of school kids there who have already been indoctrinated and who have been brainwashed.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 23, 2016

More Hummingbirds

Diverse and fascinating examples of the miracle of evolution.  Talk about unique methods to fill the niches in ecosystems.

Hummingbirds do just have a way of obsessing you. They're so fascinating, they're so diverse, and there's still so much we don't know about them. The Sword-billed Hummingbird in the Andes—nobody's ever seen their nest. Even some of our more familiar species are still yielding secrets.

My favorite species is more or less the one that's in my binoculars at the moment. My favorite almost has to be the Black-chinned Hummingbird. It's a pretty ordinary hummingbird in most respects. But I spent so much time banding them, getting to know their personal history, they're almost like family.

They're among the brainiest of the birds. They have amazing memories. They can remember not only which plants have nectar but how often it's replenished and which flowers they've just visited. Absolutely they remember your backyard. And they may even remember you. If the feeder is empty, they come looking for you.

Get your Climate Denier Action Figures

Check the Years of Living Dangerously site here.

Understanding Ecosystems – Not So Much

The Chinese government’s wrong-headed attempt to exterminate the pika are leading to the devastation of crucial grasslands and causing potential disastrous ramifications to a watershed that supports 20% of the world’s population.

Justifying the government’s extermination campaign, some Chinese scientists have blamed the pika for grassland degradation and erosion.

But a growing body of Western conservationists say they have it all wrong.

Far from causing grassland degradation, pikas tend to colonize areas where the grassland is already damaged by overgrazing or has dried out as a result of climate change. Not surprisingly, they prefer areas where the grass is short, so they can spot predators from farther away.

Rather than causing soil erosion, pika burrows dramatically improve drainage on the plateau, according to a 2014 study by Smith and Maxwell Wilson in the journal Ambio, published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Without them, water runoff creates more erosion and heightens the potential of dangerous floods downstream.

Fire, Fire, Fire

Normally the high fire season in Southern California is usually in September and October.  So this weekend’s fires are just a preview of what years of climate change driven drought and the expansion of residential housing are going to be like later.

Flames lit up the evening sky as a wildfire marched across hillsides north of Los Angeles, blackening thousands of acres, fire officials said.

The fire also created a huge cloud of smoke that wafted across the metropolis. As of 9:45 p.m. PT, the fire had burned 3,327 acres, the Los Angeles County Fire Department reported.

A fast-moving brush fire in northern Los Angeles County grew to 11,000 acres Saturday, darkening skies with smoke that spread across the city and suburbs, reducing the sun to an orange disk at times.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District warned that at times air would reach unhealthy levels, as the region was gripped by high heat and very low humidity.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 22, 2016

Drone On

Drones provide a low cost opportunity to monitor wildlife.  In this case inventorying North Atlantic right whales is a perfect opportunity to use this cost effective, efficient technology.

Drones and wildlife don't always mix -- people using their off-the-shelf drones to capture images of animals can harass and cause stress to the wildlife -- but scientists and environmental groups have found numerous ways to use the technology for good. From watching out for poachers to conducting field studies, drones have become one of the best tools for monitoring wildlife.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has taken note, using the technology on various studies, and is now training their researchers to use a variety of drones out in the field. Two marine mammal researchers recently became certified NOAA unmanned aerial system (UAS) pilots and carried out a three-day study of critically-endangered North Atlantic right whales.

On a boat in Cape Cod Bay they launched a research hexacopter for several flights a day, each lasting 15 to 20 minutes. During the flights, the drones captured images to use for identification of individual whales and photogrammetry studies which allow them to take body measurements from the photos.

There are fewer than 500 North Atlantic right whales remaining because of threats like boat strikes, fishing gear entanglement, climate change, noise and more. The drone surveys will allow researchers to see where and when the whales are most impacted by these threats and hopefully lead to better protections for the animals.

Brexit Fallout

So not only is the UK bailing on the EU, but it looks like Ms. May is going to abandon the entire planet.  What a tool.

Theresa May has been elected as the UK’s prime minister in a rather undemocratic way: after the previous PM David Cameron resigned following the Brexit vote, the members of the ruling party (Conservative) elected a new leader, and the leader automatically became PM. Nevertheless, she is quite popular and is generally regarded as strong enough to manage the difficult times ahead. But at least on one point, she’s already failing dramatically, and that’s environmental. Less than a day after becoming the U.K.’s unelected leader, Prime Minister Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office, moving the responsibility over to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. That’s basically like telling a sheep to work in a wolf’s den.

“This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Oil and Natural Gas Extraction

So, there are many ways for the extraction industry to kill people.  Here is a new one.

The paper, published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine, focused on Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale, one of the country's most active and notorious fracking regions. In the years between 2005 and 2013, the area has seen 6,253 unconventional natural gas wells spudded (the start of drilling) on 2,710 pads. Another 4,728 wells were stimulated and 3,706 were in production.

For the study, lead author and PhD candidate Sara G. Rasmussen, MHS and her colleagues analyzed health records from 2005 through 2012 from the Geisinger Health System, a health care provider that covers 40 counties in north and central Pennsylvania. The researchers identified more than 35,000 asthma patients between the ages of five and 90 years, identifying 20,749 mild attacks, 1,870 moderate ones and 4,782 severe attacks. They then mapped where these patients lived relative to nearby well activity.

The data revealed that people who live nearby a large number or bigger active natural gas wells were 1.5 to 4 times more likely to suffer from asthma attacks compared to those who live farther away. The risk also showed up in all four phases of well development: pad preparation, drilling, stimulation—the actual fracturing—and production.

While the exact cause of the trend was not identified, the authors of the paper suggested that exposure to air pollution and psychosocial stress—increased truck traffic, loud noises and bright lights disrupting sleep—from drilling operation can exacerbate asthma.

Three Wise Men

So the environmental movement is going to fail and with it the fate of the world is sealed.  Good news.

Ronald Wright, Canadian author of the bestseller, A Short History of Progress, who studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, sees a pattern in our refusal to take our collective foot off the accelerator and slow the greedy advance of civilization.

Civilizations rise and fall, prosper then collapse when the very technologies that created prosperity and success in the first place become liabilities, said the scholar who described this in his Massey Lectures. He calls this downfall of societies the progress trap and refers to examples in Easter Island, ancient Rome, Sumer and more, where innovations created new problems of their own, conditions that were worse than those that existed before the innovation.

Canadian geneticist, science broadcaster and environmental activist David Suzuki couldn't agree more and said the problems we face regarding energy and environmental issues are not technological, political or economic. They are psychological, and the path forward lies in learning to see the world differently.

"The environmental movement has failed," he said, because although we now have laws that protect clean air, clean water, endangered species and millions of hectares of land—we have not changed the way people think. "The failure was, in winning these battles, we didn't change the way we see the world ... We didn't get across the idea that the reason we wanted to stop logging here, or this dam, or this offshore drilling is we're a part of the biosphere and we've got to begin to behave in a way that protects the most fundamental things in our lives—air, water, soil and other species. That's the lesson of environmentalism and we failed to inculcate that in society," he said.

Modern cultures are famously myopic when it comes to their world view, concurs Canadian anthropologist and ethno botanist Wade Davis, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence whose work has taken him from Peru to Polynesia, from the Amazon rainforest to the Mali desert. "That kind of cultural myopia has been the curse of humanity, and today it is evident in the way we think about the natural world," Davis said.

Most traditional cultures and indigenous people have a reciprocal relationship with the world. "They don't see it as just a stage upon which the human drama unfolds," he said. "They see it literally as a series of reciprocal exchanges in which the Earth has absolute obligations to humanity, and humanity has obligations to the Earth."

We in the western world were raised to believe the mountains are there to be mined, "which is completely different from a child of the Andes raised to believe that that mountain above his community was an Apu spirit, a deity, that would direct his destiny for the rest of his life." Here on the west coast of British Columbia, Davis said, we grow up believing forests exist to be cut. That makes us very different from a First Nations elder raised to believe those forests are the domain of spirits.

Shark Alley Empty Soon

This is more bad news.  Shark alley is awesome and so much effort has gone into the preservation of the great white.  Tragic.

Great white sharks in South Africa could be nearing extinction, according to a new study.

Research from Stellenbosch University in South Africa shows there are only some 353 to 522 individual sharks left in the country's waters.

"The numbers in South Africa are extremely low. If the situation stays the same, South Africa's great white sharks are heading for possible extinction," said Dr. Sara Andreotti of the Department of Botany and Zoology at SU and lead author of the study.

Andreotti says that the decline in the number of sharks is due to the impact of fishing -- especially the implementation of shark nets and baited hooks along the country's eastern seaboard.

But poaching, habitat encroachment, pollution and depletion of their food sources have also contributed to the decline of great whites.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 21, 2016

The War at Sea

Fleets of Asian fishing trawlers and processing ships are literally taking the food out of the mouths of poor Africans.  And, destroying the fragile sea life diversity that exists in the Indian Ocean off the southern African coast.

It is the greatest war on poaching in East and Southern Africa.

Rangers from Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, the Comoros, France and Madagascar patrol an area 50 times the size of Kruger National Park. There are no elephants or rhinos here, yet the annual loss of wildlife dwarfs the sale of ivory.

Illegal netting in the Mozambique Channel has reached crisis levels with trawlers, mostly from Asia, scooping up thousands of tonnes of fish, dolphins, turtles and prawns.

In 2013, a study showed that only one of the 130 boats working the sea between Maputo and Pemba belonged to Mozambique. The government says it loses more than $65-million a year to illegal fishing. But not all the catch goes to China or Vietnam; a European Union report suggests some of it is smuggled overland to South Africa. Deep-sea fish such as tuna and mackerel traverse long distances, so poaching off Mozambique can affect stocks as far away as Kenya.

“The crisis in our oceans is real,” said John Duncan, who heads the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-SA) marine programme in Cape Town.

“The haul from illegal fishing is estimated to be over $23-billion annually, which dwarfs the ivory and rhino horn trade, and the real danger is that we don’t see it.

Disgusting Pangolin Market

Recently a severely injured pangolin was brought into the Naankuse conservation site in Namibia.  Apparently, someone had taken an axe to the shy, gentle creature in order to either kill it or strip off its valuable scales.  Whoever did this was disgusting, but let’s assume it was someone who was looking to provide some meager income for his/her family.  The truly disgusting player in this drama is the Asian market that the Chinese and Vietnamese government refuse to control.  That is the cause of the eminent extinction of the pangolin.

Despite the arrests and long-term sentences passed on several Zimbabwean pangolin capturers, dealers and traffickers over the past year, conservationists believe the increased seizure of live pangolins, pangolin scales, skins and other products indicate an upsurge in poaching of the world’s most widely trafficked animal.

According to quarterly crime incidence statistics for the period January to April 2016 released by the Tikki Hywood Trust in May, pangolin poaching crimes are still rampant in Zimbabwe, “This year alone, Zimbabwe has handled 20 criminal cases involving pangolin poachers and 41 accused persons countrywide. Of those, 16 have already received the mandatory 9-year sentence and 4 have been acquitted. Two warrants of arrest issued (in the same period),” the trust said.

In a statement circulated on World Pangolin Day in February, the Tikki Hywood Trust expressed concern that despite tough laws against illegal exploitation, Zimbabwe’s pangolins are still being poached to satisfy the foreign market:

“The pangolin is on the Zimbabwean list of specially protected endangered species. There is very strict legislation around the trafficking of any animal on the list and poachers can expect a minimum of 9 years in jail. The pangolin is of important cultural significance in Zimbabwe. The fact that they are being poached at such a high rate of late is frightening. What is most disturbing is that our natural heritage is being killed to satisfy a foreign market,” the trust said.

Thanks to the Conservation Action Trust.

Send In the Clones

There is nothing more majestic and imposing that a giant sequoia.   The most impressive of these trees are 300 feet tall and some are 3,000 years old.  Designed to be impervious to fire, in fact fire is a vital component in their life cycle.  They could provide the world with a huge carbon sink.

At the foot of a giant sequoia in California’s Sierra Nevada, two arborists stepped into harnesses then inched up ropes more than 20 stories into the dizzying canopy of a tree that survived thousands of years, enduring drought, wildfire and disease.

There, the arborists clipped off tips of young branches to be hand-delivered across the country, cloned in a lab and eventually planted in a forest in some other part of the world.

The two are part of a cadre of modern day Johnny Appleseeds who believe California’s giant sequoias and coastal redwoods are blessed with some of the heartiest genetics of any trees on Earth — and that propagating them will help reverse climate change, at least in a small way.

“It’s a biological miracle,” said tree climber Jim Clark, firmly back on the ground and holding a green sprig to his lips as if to kiss it. “This piece of tissue … can be rooted, and we have a miniature 3,000-year-old tree.”

Sequoias growing in the Sierra are among the biggest and oldest trees on Earth, some nearly 300 feet tall and up to 3,000 years old.

Relying on common sense that he says is being borne out by science, Milarch, 66, believes their size and robustness make them ideal for absorbing greenhouse gases that drive climate change on the planet. He likens them to people who drink and smoke all their lives, yet thrive well into their 90s.

A 12 Step Program Maybe?

Two options here.  One, the slow loris is attracted to highly fermented nectar for its high caloric content.  Or, two, slow loris’ have an alcohol problem.

They were once considered merely lazy and adorable. But new research into the antics of the slow loris has revealed a wilder side to the docile creatures. Given the chance the innocent-eyed beasts will neck the most alcoholic drinks they can lay their paws on.

The ability of the slow loris to seek out the most potent brew in reach was discovered by researchers in the US who wanted to know whether the animals favoured highly-fermented nectar over the less alcoholic forms secreted by plants in their natural habitats. As sugary nectar ferments in the wild, its calorie content rises, making it a potentially more valuable source of energy.

In a series of tests with Dharma, an adult female slow loris, biologists at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire found that when presented with a choice of sugary solutions laced with different amounts of alcohol, the loris speedily settled on the most intoxicating.

But while the animal was quickly drawn to the nectar substitutes, which contained between 1% and 4% alcohol, the slow loris displayed what the researchers describe as “a relative aversion to tap water”, which was used as a control.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 20, 2016

Speed Freaks – Hummingbirds

At 60 miles per hour, how do hummingbirds navigate through tight spaces with seeming ease?  Despite their obvious skills, ten percent of these incredible bird species are endangered.

Hummingbirds dart around in colorful blurs, twisting and turning their flight and stopping on a dime, all at top speeds. Anna's hummingbird, native to the West Coast of North America, can even clock in at speeds of over 60 miles an hour.

The tiny birds actually use sophisticated visual clues to determine just how far away objects are, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But the hummingbirds didn't use the cues researchers expected.

Here's how it likely works when a hummingbird flies along in a wild environment: A tree just a foot away would expand more quickly in the bird's field of vision than one 15 feet away. So the birds seem to notice how different objects expand in their field of vision to determine which course corrections to make to avoid collisions.

"When objects grow in size, it can indicate how much time there is until they collide even without knowing the actual size of the object," Dr. Dakin said in a press release. "Perhaps this strategy allows birds to more precisely avoid collisions over the very wide range of flight speeds they use."

People Are Stupid - Mountain Goat Dies

Really!  Is it possible that people can be so clueless?  Even in Alaska - epicenter of American cluelessness (see Palin, Sarah)

A mountain goat in Alaska jumped into the ocean to get away from crowds snapping its picture, and the animal drowned when it couldn’t get back to land because of the crush of people on shore, troopers said.

Alaska state troopers said it was imperative to give animals adequate space. That didn’t happen on Saturday in downtown Seward, and troopers said in an online post that it “resulted in a wild animal dying for no cause”.

Stuff Still Happening

Just because a major American political party refuses to believe in climate change doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  Each month in 2016 is the warmest recorded since formal record keeping began in 1880.

Global temperatures have been rising and sea ice has been melting at unprecedented rates since the start of 2016.

Scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York said that each month in the first half of this year set a record as the warmest month globally since temperature records began in 1880. The analysis is based on ground-based observations and satellite data for global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent. The period of January-June 2016 saw average temperatures 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher compared to the late 19th century.

And as temperatures continue to warm, global sea ice continues to melt. Five of the first six months in 2016 showed the smallest sea ice extent -- the area of the sea covered with ice -- since satellite tracking began in 1979. March was the only exception, recording the second smallest extent for that month.

Wolf Pack in Ontario

Wolves are under such incredible pressure in the wild.  Places like Haliburton are critical to keeping the species viable.

A wolf pack lives in a large forested enclosure near Haliburton, Ontario, where visitors can watch from the observatory and learn lots about these magnificent and reclusive animals.

If you drive three hours north of Toronto, then veer a bit to the east, you’ll come to the Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Reserve. This unique forest, privately owned by Peter Schliefenbaum, sprawls over 80,000 acres of rolling hills, stands of hardwood, and clean lakes. Lesser known than its famous neighbor, Algonquin Park, the Haliburton Forest has plenty of beautiful sights and fun activities worth checking out. Its attractions include camping, dog sledding, treetop canopy tours, astronomy, hiking and biking trails, public wolf howls, and wildlife viewing.

One of the Forest’s most unusual attractions is the Wolf Center. This is a 15-acre enclosure where a pack of wolves lives and roams. An interpretive center comprises part of the fence in one corner, with an observatory that’s equipped with one-way glass and a microphone to watch and listen to the wolf pack. The only problem is, you never know when the wolf pack will be hanging out in front of the observatory! With 15 acres of forest to explore, they could be anywhere. (There is a live wolf cam that allows you to check in from home to see what's going on.)

The only problem is, you never know when the wolf pack will be hanging out in front of the observatory! With 15 acres of forest to explore, they could be anywhere. (There is a live wolf cam that allows you to check in from home to see what's going on.)