DAILY QUICK READ - AUGUST 12, 2016

Squirrels Have Skills

No endangered species here, just a GoPro camera at risk.

This brazen little squirrel director steals a GoPro camera and makes a video shot entirely from its point of view, giving us a private tour of the trees from up above. After snatching the camera off the ground it takes off running and scales the tree, showing us a day in the life of the intrepid little explorer.

Really Old Fish

What will happen as global warming makes Greenland green again and its local waters warm?

The Greenland shark has long been belittled as sluggish, homely and dim-witted. But now the species can demand respect: scientists say it is the planet’s longest-lived vertebrate, or animal with a backbone.

Eight of 28 Greenland sharks profiled in a new study in today’s Science were 200 years or older, by scientists’ best estimates. One enormous female was aged at least 270 when she was caught - and she may well have been 390. That would make her possible birth date in the era of Rembrandt and Galileo.

We’re All Immigrants

Interesting that the common understand of how the first humans came to the New World has a new twist.

The first Americans – the earliest people to cross from Siberia to Alaska and begin the colonisation of two vast continents linked by a narrow isthmus – could not have simply followed the deer and the buffalo across dry land during the last ice age 13,500 years ago. They would have been in the right place, but at the wrong time, a new study shows.

What is now the Bering Strait would indeed then have been dry land. There was, as scientists have known for many years, an open 1500km corridor of grassland between two great ice sheets that would have made migration deep into North America possible.

But, according to a new study in Nature, this route wasn’t fully open for traffic until 12,600 years ago.

This means the very first pre-Columbian settlement of America, perhaps by people known to archaeologists as the Clovis culture, must have been either by sea, or by hugging the Pacific shoreline, long before the ice sheets retreated and the ocean closed in to flood the Bering Strait and separate the Old World from the New.

African Wild Dogs – Life is Tenuous

The challenge of saving predators when they come in contact with members of the local community usually don’t end this well.

It was Sunday, the 26th of June – the evening before AfriCat’s annual health check was about to start . . .

Team AfriCat and the participating vets were in preparation for an early start the following day, when we received a phone call after sunset from the Chairperson of Okamatapati Conservancy (a communal conservancy approx. 160 km east of Okonjima) - a communal farmer was in possession of nine orphaned Wild Dog pups.

The concerned farmer apparently suffered a loss of four-six cattle and in his misery, chased the adult pack off his property leaving nine abandoned pups behind. Instead of killing them (which is normally the case, by closing the den and burying the pus alive – or by throwing fuel down the hole and setting the den alight or by poisoning a carcass which usually kills the whole pack), the farmer contacted the Chairperson, who assured him that AfriCat would assist with the relocation of the pups.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 20, 2016

Cat, Rats, Climate Change

Hawaii’s wildlife has suffered from contact with the mainland.   Imported rats and cats have decimated bird species.   Climate change has allowed the spread of mosquito borne diseases.  No wonder Hawaii is a leader in bird species extinction.  The American Bird Conservancy is working to save as many as they can.

Warren Cooke

Mark Twain wrote in Letters to Hawaii that during his 1866 visit to the islands, "I saw cats—Tom cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bobtail cats…platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats…." It is also said that a single feathered cape for a Hawaiian king required 30,000 feathers of the ‘I‘iwi, a beautiful native Hawaiian honeycreeper reminiscent of the Scarlet Tanager.

These two reports are emblematic of the vast damage inflicted on native Hawaiian birds by human-introduced factors. Include predation by non-native rats and mongooses; uncontrolled grazing by feral pigs, sheep, deer, and goats; and throw in recent drought, and you begin to see why Hawai‘i's beautiful native birds are in very serious trouble.

Global climate change further compounds the problems by allowing mosquitoes that transmit avian malaria—devastating to the native honeycreepers because they have no resistance—further up the sides of Hawai‘i's volcanic mountains to the few remaining protected areas. There are some nice birds to be seen around Honolulu's parks, such as the Java Sparrow and the Japanese White-Eye, but they are mostly introduced exotics, not natives.

Replacing Energy Sources

Can, in fact should, renewables replace the world’s seemingly insatiable appetite for energy?  Maybe we need to look at the demand side of the equation as well. Our Renewable Future may be different that we expect.

…our ultimate conclusion was that, while renewable energy can indeed power industrial societies, there is probably no credible future scenario in which humanity will maintain current levels of energy use (on either a per capita or total basis). Therefore current levels of resource extraction, industrial production and consumption are unlikely to be sustained—much less can they perpetually grow. Further, getting to an optimal all-renewable energy future will require hard work, investment, adaptation and innovation on a nearly unprecedented scale. We will be changing more than our energy sources; we’ll be transforming both the ways we use energy and the amounts we use. Our ultimate success will depend on our ability to dramatically reduce energy demand in industrialized nations, shorten supply chains, electrify as much usage as possible and adapt to economic stasis at a lower overall level of energy and materials throughput. Absent widespread informed popular support, the political roadblocks to such a project will be overwhelming.

A Big F/U to the Environment

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has attacked solar energy.  I wonder why?  The chamber is nothing more than a lobby group for big energy companies, major polluters and corporations that hide their profits off-shore. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the latest conservative group to start spreading anti-solar messages. In an email sent to supporters on Wednesday, the chamber attacks net metering, a policy in place in many states that pays people with solar panels on their roofs for the electricity they feed into the grid. The group also posted a video on YouTube last week making its anti-net metering case. This is fairly new territory for the chamber, according to energy regulation experts.

Here’s a more fair way to paint the situation: Electric utilities are using outdated technologies that poison our air and destabilize our climate. Who is actually paying for those costs? You — and everyone else!

You can tell the Chamber how you feel about their siding with the pollution spewing dinosaurs.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce really needs to hear from the public, and to be publicly spanked for joining a freaking anti-solar crusade.

I'm sure they will welcome comments from American consumers (aka human beings) via email and social media.  Contact them here.

Giraffes in Jeopardy

We think of giraffes as ubiquitous in Africa, but in reality there are fewer giraffes than heavily poached species like elephants.  Sir David Attenborough takes a look at efforts underway to save this species.

Giraffes are facing a ‘silent extinction’ with just 90,000 animals still roaming the African plains, far fewer than the endangered African Elephant, a new documentary warns.

Just 15 years ago there were thought to be around 150,000 giraffes in the wild but since then numbers have slumped by 40 per cent because of habitat loss and poaching.

A new BBC documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, followed a conservation team as they relocated a group of 20 animals across the Nile in Uganda where it is hoped they will be safe from oil prospectors.

“These gentle giants have been overlooked,” said Sir David. “ It’s well known that African elephants are in trouble and there are perhaps just under half a million left.

“But what no one realised is there are far fewer giraffes. Giraffes have already become extinct in seven countries. They are killed for their meat and their habitats are being destroyed. Time is running out.”

Painted Dog Conservation 

Five African painted dogs have a new home in Missouri.  This small pack has moved into its own space at the Endangered Wolf Center.   The African painted dog population is under great pressure in the wild and the species only hope may be diversity preservation in zoos and centers like this one.  The center’s web cam is a good way to view this pack.

A pack of five African wild dogs — an endangered breed down to a few thousand in the wild — has a new home in suburban St. Louis.

The Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka has taken in the animals — an adult male, an adult female and their three pups. They arrived May 24 from a small zoo in West Virginia.

The center, whose mission is to preserve and protect wild canid species through managed breeding, reintroduction and education, is now among 30 facilities around the world that together house 97 African wild dogs for breeding and species survival. A spokeswoman says the center will use the two adults for further breeding.

Africa has between 6,000 and 7,000 African wild dogs, with about half living in Botswana, a southern African country. Others are in the wild are in Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Namibia and Kenya, the Endangered Wolf Center said.

The dogs' large ears help them dissipate heat, the center said. Each animal's coat is unique, so the dogs can recognize each other from distances as great as a football field. They can run up to nearly 40 mph and can run down prey including gazelles, antelope, impala, kudu and wildebeest.