DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 7, 2016

What Good Are Zoos – Another Reason

Small victories, but they each make a difference.  Two great zoos working to save species from extinction and plan for their reintroduction into the wild.

A hopeful new study shows the Endangered Species Act has been extremely successful in stabilizing and increasing threatened or endangered bird populations, including two Pacific Island species that have been in the care of Chicago-area institutions since the mid-1980s.

The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity released its report titled "A Wild Success" in June. Among the findings: 85 percent of birds protected by the Endangered Species Act have recovered in the continental U.S. Populations in the Pacific Islands have also shown recovery, but to a lesser degree at 61 percent.

Roughly three decades ago, the Lincoln Park Zoo and Brookfield Zoo set up critical captive breeding populations of two bird species native to the Pacific Island of Guam – the Guam rail and Guam kingfisher. These birds “would have been lost to extinction if not for dedicated captive-propagation programs,” the report states.

The Lincoln Park Zoo currently has four Guam kingfishers and one Guam rail in captivity. There are 16 Guam kingfishers at the Brookfield Zoo.

Experimental programs to reintroduce these birds in the wild are under way, specifically on the islands of Rota and Cocos near Guam. However, the wild populations aren’t yet well established, which is why the birds are still classified as extinct in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Bionic Bugs – Tiny Terminators

This is just a bit creepy.  Explosive detecting bugs, OK.  But, what’s next – having your house bugged takes on more literal meaning.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis hope that in the future, cyborg locusts could play an important role in defense in national security.

Baranidharan Raman, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and his team are actually biologically engineering locusts to be able to detect the scent of explosives and let us know.

The project is being done under a 3-year grant funded by the Office of Naval Research.

Because locusts detect smells through their antennae, the researchers will implant electrodes into the locusts’ brains to read the electrical activity passing through their antennae. To transmit this electrical activity data, each insect will be equipped with a tiny backpack that acts as a transmitter.

Couldn’t Happen to a Better Person

Just because Donald Trump doesn’t believe in climate change doesn’t mean his estate isn’t going to be under water.

On a hot and lazy afternoon in Palm Beach, the only sign of movement is the water gently lapping at the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, the private club that is the prize of Donald Trump’s real estate acquisitions in Florida.

Trump currently dismisses climate change as a hoax invented by China, though he has quietly sought to shield real estate investments in Ireland from its effects.

But at the Republican presidential contender’s Palm Beach estate and the other properties that bear his name in south Florida, the water is already creeping up bridges and advancing on access roads, lawns and beaches because of sea-level rise, according to a risk analysis prepared for the Guardian.

In 30 years, the grounds of Mar-a-Lago could be under at least a foot of water for 210 days a year because of tidal flooding along the intracoastal water way, with the water rising past some of the cottages and bungalows, the analysis by Coastal Risk Consulting found.

Starvation Is An Option

Over fishing and climate change will have a tragic impact on nearly a billion people in the near future.

The world has to solve an impossible conundrum: the amount of fish coming out of the ocean peaked in 1996, yet the world’s population will grow to a peak of 10-billion by 2050. About half of that population will live near the Equator and will rely on fish. But, largely as a result of illegal fishing and overfishing, the food source will have plunged.

That means 845-million people will be denied this protein source and critical micronutrients, according to a report, Fall in Fish Catch Threatens Human Health, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Previous research into the fall in fish stocks has looked at what happens when people lose their primary source of proteins.

Climate change will exacerbate the problem, according to the Harvard research. Floods and droughts are happening more often in this region. This is destroying crops on land, leaving the ocean as the last source of staple food. In these cases, the team said: “Fishing for food has become an act of desperation.”

It’s been suggested that aquaculture can be the solution for declining fish stocks. On an industrial scale, it would allow natural fish stocks to recover. But, said the researchers, developing countries do not have the resources to do this. They also found that farmed seafood ends up being sold in Europe and North America.

EU For Ivory Trade

South Africa is leading the block that wants to allow the “controlled” trade in ivory.  Most African governments are opposed to even limited trade.  Now the EU has sided with the traders.  Bad news for elephants.

Wildlife officials in nearly 30 African states say they are appalled by an EU decision to oppose a comprehensive global ban on the ivory trade.

In a position paper released on 1 July, the European commission said that rather than an all-encompassing ban it would be better to encourage countries with growing elephant numbers to “sustainably manage” their populations.

An existing global embargo on ivory sales is due to end in 2017 and Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and Botswana are pushing for it to be replaced with a decision-making mechanism for future tusk trading, at the Convention on International Trade in International Species (Cites) conference in Johannesburg this September.