Friday 31 August 2018

Hundreds of fish die in lagoon in tony Malibu, California



August 28, 2018 by Ariel Tu
California officials were trying Monday to solve a stinky mystery: A die-off has left hundreds of fish floating in a recently restored lagoon on the tony Malibu coast.
Scientists believe the Malibu Lagoon die-off, which began last Wednesday, is likely caused by unusually warm water temperatures, said Craig Sap, superintendent of California State Parks' Angeles District.
"We had many days in a row of warmer-than-usual temperatures. We hadn't had much of a breeze down there to keep the temperatures down," Sap said.
Other possibilities include elevated nutrient levels, dropping levels of dissolved oxygen or having too many fish in the lagoon. Officials are taking water samples and fish for testing.
Malibu Lagoon underwent a controversial restoration project in 2013.
Major conservation groups, including Sierra Club and Audubon Society chapters, backed the restoration, but others sued to stop the project, contending it would destroy sensitive wildlife habitat. The battle lasted for years but the project finally broke ground in 2012.
The die-off has raised locals' concerns about what some call failures in the project.

Beluga whales and narwhals go through menopause


August 27, 2018, University of Exeter
Scientists have discovered that beluga whales and narwhals go through the menopause—taking the total number of species known to experience this to five.
Aside from humans, the species now known to experience menopauseare all toothed whales—belugas, narwhals, killer whales and short-finned pilot whales.
Almost all animals continue reproducing throughout their lives, and scientists have long been puzzled about why some have evolved to stop.
The new study, by the universities of Exeter and York and the Center for Whale Research, suggests menopause has evolved independently in three whale species (it may have evolved in a common ancestor of belugas and narwhals).
"For menopause to make sense in evolutionary terms, a species needs both a reason to stop reproducing and a reason to live on afterwards," said first author Dr. Sam Ellis, of the University of Exeter.
"In killer whales, the reason to stop comes because both male and female offspring stay with their mothers for life—so as a female ages, her group contains more and more of her children and grandchildren.
"This increasing relatedness means that, if she keeps having young, they compete with her own direct descendants for resources such as food.
"The reason to continue living is that older females are of great benefit to their offspring and grand-offspring. For example, their knowledge of where to find food helps groups survive."
The existence of menopause in killer whales is well documented due to more than four decades of detailed study.
Such information on the lives of belugas and narwhals is not available, but the study used data on dead whales from 16 species and found dormant ovaries in older beluga and narwhal females.


Can Namibia’s desert lions survive humanity?



The lions of the Namib Desert survive against incredible odds, but can they survive trophy hunting, human-wildlife conflict and climate change? 
Wed 22 Aug 2018 15.53 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 17.03 BST
Desert lions aren’t a distinct species or even a subspecies, but they are different. Drop a plains lion into the Namib Desert — where it may rain only 5 millimeters a year — and watch it perish.
According to Izak Smit, who runs the local NGO, Desert Lions Human Relations Aid (DeLHRA), the desert lions of Namibia are able to go long periods of time without water, getting most of their moisture from the blood of their kills. They are leaner and woolier (due to frigid nights). And they behave distinctly than other lions: prides are smaller, they have bigger home ranges and travel further and there is no infanticide — a common practice among plains lions.
“Cub mortality is mostly close to zero as the mothers are formidable providers and guardians,” Smit said. “The mere fact that they can sustain themselves in such a harsh environment [makes them distinct] from other lions.”

Meet the orangutans: a guide to three species and how they're in danger


Orangutans are beautiful animals, but there isn’t just one type of orangutan, there are three species – and the continued deforestation of their rainforest habitats in Indonesia has put them all in peril
Fri 17 Aug 2018 16.42 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 15.26 BST
Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)
Wild Bornean orangutans can live to about 45 and are the world’s largest tree-dwelling mammals, weighing around 87kg and standing some 1.3 metres tall. Their armspans can reach 2.1 metres, but their limbs are used for more than just physical power: they also perform clever feats of hunting, such as skewering fish with sticks.
Read on

Thursday 30 August 2018

Divers Find Enormous, Creepy Squid on New Zealand Beach



By Kimberly Hickok, Reference Editor | August 27, 2018 04:33pm ET
Divers visiting New Zealand's south coast of Wellington were looking for a nice spot to go spearfishing Saturday morning (Aug. 25) when they spotted one of the ocean's most impressive creatures of the deep: a dead, but fully intact, giant squid.
"After we went for a dive we went back to [the squid] and got a tape measure out, and it measured 4.2 meters [13 feet] long," one of the divers, Daniel Aplin, told the New Zealand Herald.
A representative from the New Zealand Department of Conservation told the Herald that the divers most likely found a giant squid (Architeuthis dux) and not a colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). [Photos of the Stunning Deep-Sea Squid Feeding]
Strange News Snapshot: Week of Aug. 19, 2018
A “sky glow” named ‘Steve’, an ant making a break for it with a diamond , and new signs of life in a field riddled with hundreds of dead headless reindeer.
Both species of squid are formidable sea creatures, with giant squid typically reaching 16 feet (5 m) long, according to the Smithsonian, and the colossal squid reaching over 30 feet (10 m) long, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Scientists know very little about these deep-sea-dwelling species, because the animals are so rarely seen. Most observations come from the occasional specimen washing ashore, as in this case, or getting accidently captured by fishers.

In the race of life, the tortoise beats the hare every time



Research shows that, when speed is averaged throughout a lifetime, the fastest animals and machines are actually the slowest
Date:  August 27, 2018
Source:  Duke University
Over the long-run, the race will indeed go to the slower, steadier animal.
"The fable of 'The Tortoise and the Hare' is a metaphor about life, not a story about a race," said Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University. "We see in animal life two starkly different lifestyles -- one with nearly steady feeding and daily sleep and another with short bursts of intermittent feeding interspersed with day-long siestas. Both of these patterns are the rhythms of living that Aesop taught."
In the iconic parable, Aesop tells of a race between a fast but often-distracted hare and a slow but relentless tortoise. Readers are supposed to be surprised when the tortoise manages to defeat the hare, coining the phrase "slow and steady wins the race." But according to Bejan's new analysis, they shouldn't be.
Published on August 27 in the journal Scientific Reports, Bejan analyzes the reported speeds of animals based on land, air and water. The results show that some of the world's fastest animals are actually some of the slowest when their movements are averaged throughout their lifetimes.
Bejan then goes on to demonstrate that this counterintuitive result is also true of the modern aviation industry. With data from hundreds of historical airplane models in hand, Bejan shows that the general trend in their design is for size and speed to increase hand-in-hand.

Ethiopia deploys hidden rabies vaccine in bid to protect endangered wolf



Oral vaccination campaign will use goat meat baits to pre-empt outbreaks of rabies among Ethiopian wolves
Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor
Wed 22 Aug 2018 16.02 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 17.03 BST

Rabies vaccines hidden inside goat meat baits have been deployed in the first campaign to protect the Ethiopian wolf, Africa’s most endangered carnivore.
There are less than 500 of the wolves in the high mountains of Ethiopia and they are very vulnerable to infectious diseases from domestic dogs. The oral vaccine approach will next be rolled out to cover all six surviving populations of the wolf.
“Thirty years ago I witnessed an outbreak of rabies which killed the majority of the wolves I had followed closely for my doctoral studies,” said Prof Claudio Sillero, director of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme(EWCP), a partnership between the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and the Born Free Foundation. “We now know that pre-emptive vaccination is necessary to save many wolves from a horrible death and to keep the small and isolated populations outside the vortex of extinction.”
Earlier trials showed the wolves preferred goat meat baits to rat meat or intestines and that delivery on horseback and at night into a pack’s territory meant fewer baits were eaten by other animals. Tests showed that almost 90% of the wolves eating the bait developed immunity.

Nearly 40,000 giraffe parts have been imported to the US in last 10 years



Researchers from the Humane Society found 52 US locations in which giraffe products continue to be sold
Thu 23 Aug 2018 16.36 BSTLast modified on Thu 23 Aug 2018 17.06 BST

The giraffe population has fallen by around 40% since 1990. There are now fewer than 100,000 giraffes alive in the world, and there are now fewer giraffes than elephants in Africa.
Yet in America, trade in giraffe parts is booming. A report by the Humane Society of the United States, released on Thursday, found that nearly 40,000 giraffe parts have been imported to the US over the past decade, the equivalent, they estimate, of nearly 4,000 individual giraffes.
Researchers found giraffe products on sale in nearly 52 US locations. The most common products were giraffe hide boots and speciality knives made from giraffe bone, but they also found giraffe rugs, furniture and giraffe skin Bible covers.
When researchers interviewed those selling giraffe products they found that many admitted they had purchased the products from trophy hunters.
Two sellers, BS Trading in Texas and Whitten Cases in Florida, made claims to investigators that aggressive herds of giraffes must be killed in order to save African villages. The Humane Society says this is false, and that recent expert evaluation of giraffe species has found no evidence of either aggressive giraffe behaviour or retaliatory killings of giraffes. Neither store responded immediately to the Guardian for comment.

Wednesday 29 August 2018

How similar are humans and orangutans?



From umbrella-making to learning how to self-medicate, we share plenty of skills with our fellow great apes
Fri 17 Aug 2018 17.31 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 15.25 BST
When scientists talk about animals using tools, they’re not normally talking about the implements you might use to knock up some shelves. But while animals generally confine themselves to bashing things with the odd rock, in extraordinary footage broadcast last year as part of the BBC’s Spy in the Wild series, a wild female orangutan is seen using a saw she has found outside a hut to cut through a log – even pausing to blow away sawdust before continuing.
This human-like use of tools shouldn’t be that surprising to us. Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutans are three of the eight living great ape species, alongside humans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Humans and orangutans share 97% of their DNA, with their last common ancestor having lived an estimated 12-16m years ago. Only gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees have more DNA in common with humans.

Would you welcome a wolf in your back yard?



The wolf is marching back into western Europe. Now it has reached the tiny Baltic islands of Aland. It is protected by EU law – but who’s protecting the locals? Patrick Barkham reports

Sun 26 Aug 2018 12.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Aug 2018 12.01 BST
Earlier this year, two unexpected guests crossed the sea to reach the largest of the Åland Islands, an archipelago of 6,700 mostly tiny isles between Sweden and Finland. The long, hard winter had frozen the Baltic more extensively than for many a year. A daring few among 30,000 Åland islanders drove their cars over the ice to Finland. In the other direction came two or possibly three wolves.
Europe’s most feared carnivore was first seen padding over the sea ice by a ferry passenger in February. When islanders conducted their elk census during the March snows, they found wolf tracks heading west across the main island of Åland, a uniquely autonomous region of Finland. By the start of April a wolf had been sighted. By the end of the month, two were filmed together. In June a sheep was killed with ruthless precision, its skin covered in tooth marks – the work of a wolf, said experts. A few days later, a camera trap set over a carcass captured footage of the chief suspect returning to feed.


Nefarious porpoise: frisky dolphin prompts Brittany bathing ban



Local mayor forbids people to go in the sea after creature tried to rub against swimmers

Mon 27 Aug 2018 17.27 BSTLast modified on Mon 27 Aug 2018 18.46 BST

A mayor on France’s Brittany coast took the rare step of banning swimming for several days after a solitary frisky dolphin tried to get too close to bathers.

Roger Lars decided last week that it was safest to ban swimming and diving on the coast near Landévennec, where the over-friendly dolphin had been spotted.

He banned anyone getting closer than 50 metres to the rutting three-metre dolphin, whom locals nicknamed Zafar.

The dolphin was not aggressive, but he had taken to trying to rub up against swimmers and boats, the local paper Le Télégramme reported.

Zafar had enthusiastically sidled up to several swimmers who he had then prevented from reaching the shore. One had to be rescued by boat.


Project to save rare species in unique Brecks landscape


PUBLISHED: 14:20 15 August 2018 | UPDATED: 14:20 15 August 2018

Straddling the Norfolk and Suffolk border, The Brecks is one of the most unusual lowland landscapes in the UK and one of its most important areas for wildlife.

The unique landscape that developed from an ancient landscape of sandy, chalky soils, shallow rivers, open heaths, sheep walks and medieval rabbit warrens covers 1,000 sq km and is home to more than 12,800 species.

Comprising conifer plantations and large fields edged with lines of crooked pines, rare species include birds such as the nightjar and woodlark as well as 65% of the UK’s stone curlews.

Now a new ambitious project that aims to help restore and protect its at-risk wildlife and habitats will be launched this weekend at Brandon Country Park.

Shifting Sands is one of 19 projects around the country under the umbrella of the collaborative Back from the Brink programme which aims to save some of the nation’s rarest wildlife.

It will work with volunteers and partner organisations in Norfolk and Suffolk to restore more than 15 areas of grass heath recreating the open, sparsely vegetated conditions required by many birds, reptiles, plants and insects that live or breed there.

Natural England’s project officer for Shifting Sands, Phoebe Miles, said: “The Brecks is a very special landscape that is home to over a quarter of the UK’s rare and declining species, but it needs our help. Over 75% of its grass heaths have been lost in the past century.”

The project will directly benefit 14 vulnerable and endangered species including woodlark, the wormwood moonshiner beetle, its food plant Breckland wormwood and prostrate perennial knawel - a small plant that exists nowhere else in the world.

Ms Miles said heaths for hundreds of years were home to rabbits that proved great habitat managers, but they are now in sharp decline.

“We aim to boost rabbit populations on these heaths so that rare plants and their associated insects can re-colonise the more open, rabbit-disturbed ground,” she said.

Read on http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/environment/project-launches-to-save-rare-species-in-unique-brecks-landscape-1-5652955

Monday 27 August 2018

How To Clean Sand: Volunteers Take On Microplastics At Oregon Coast – via Herp Digest



By Jack Fisher, News-Review.com 8/18/18


How do you clean all the sand on a beach? A group of volunteers didn’t do it grain by grain, but took on the task screen by screen.
With the guidance of Seaside-based conservation group Sea Turtles Forever, about 50 volunteers gathered to clean the sand near Haystack Rock using unique screen filtration systems.
Developed by Sea Turtles Forever founder Marc W. Ward, the systems look like a cross between a medical stretcher and a flour sifter. Dirty sand is piled on a sheet of fine mesh stretched between two long poles, and the mesh catches plastic and other foreign material while allowing the sand to fall through. According to Ward, a static charge in the mesh can catch plastic particles as small as 100 micrometers across.

The result? An area of silky, pure sand free of plastic litter — especially the tiny bits that pose a threat to wildlife.
Plastic materials that enter the marine environment slowly break down after prolonged outdoor exposure. These broken down fragments — called microplastics — form a soupy jumble of small plastic particles at sea, which make landfall after being caught in currents.

Plastics in the ocean and on the beach can be very destructive to the marine ecosystem. Animals can mistake small, often colorful microplastics for food. This can lead to the introduction of toxic chemicals to the animal and has been known to lead to digestive blockage in fish, seabirds and turtles. Microplastics have been found in shellfish, left behind after the filter feeders draw in and expel contaminated water.

Microplastics continue to present environmental hazards after they are washed onto shore.

Researchers at the Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre in the United Kingdom have identified the capacity for certain plastics to carry pollutants, including PCBs and DDT. These chemicals have been tied to neurological defects in children.

While some microplastics come from ships and the commercial fishing industry, a 2016 report from the Environmental Protection Agency states that marine plastic pollution comes primarily from sources on land — not just drink lids littered in beach towns, but shopping bags, straws and other discarded plastic waste that made it into the trash but escaped from garbage trucks or landfills.

Cannon Beach Mayor Sam Steidel, who attended at the cleanup, emphasized the need to reduce the use of throwaway plastic in the first place. “Cannon Beach is very environmentally conscious,” Steidel said. “To get the message out, people need to be aware of what we’re doing to our environment through the excessive use of plastic.”

After about four hours, Ward and his 50 volunteers had removed about 80 pounds of plastic from a 100-by-18 meter section of beach (picture a one-third strip of the length of a football field). With millions of tons of plastics reaching the world’s beaches each year, Ward acknowledged that the outlook is bleak.

“We’re in trouble,” Ward said, gesturing toward the sea. “Maybe not this year or next year, but 10 to 20 years down the line, we’re facing some catastrophic results here from this issue in the ocean.”

Even so, Ward says he’s not discouraged. His filtration systems are for sale and have been shipping all over the world. He’s organized cleanups in Long Beach, the Bay Area, Oregon and elsewhere, and regularly sees large volunteer turnouts.

“It’s really heartwarming to see so many people wanting to be part of the solution,” Ward said. “There has to be some response. We can’t just ignore it. We won’t ignore it.”




Plastics weakened this rare turtle, before 190kg turtle was found dead and tangled up in fishing nets – via Herp Digest



8/18/18
A rare leatherback turtle found dead off the Ċirkewwa coast died from pneumonia, though its health had been weakened by ingested plastics, the environment watchdog said on Friday.

Weighing 190 kilogrammes, this rare specimen, 1.85 metres long, was first spotted last Thursday at about midday floating between Ras il-Qala and Taħt it-Trunċiera off the coast of Qala.

Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle species and among the heaviest modern reptiles globally. They can weigh as much as 900 kilos and do not have a hard outer shell but a carapace that is elongated and covered by skin and oily flesh, which is what gave the turtle its name.

The dead turtle, found entangled in fishing nets, was recovered by the Armed Forces of Malta in a joint operation with the Environment and Resources Authority and the Civil Protection Department. It was then taken to the Ċirkewwa quay before further examination to find the cause of death.

The ERA said on Friday that a necropsy carried out by Anthony Gruppetta on behalf of Nature Trust Malta showed the turtle had died of pneumonia that developed into a generalised inflammation. It was also noted that the animal had been severely weakened by the ingestion of plastic, found in its intestines.

These turtles are the only ones which feed exclusively on jellyfish and similar creatures, hence they are very susceptible to plastics in the sea, which they mistake for food.
Along with all marine turtles, leatherbacks have enjoyed protection in Malta since 1992
The Dermochelys coriacae, known in Maltese as fekruna sewda, is not a common turtle species in the Mediterranean.

While a previous stranding occurred in July 2015, most confirmed sightings go back decades.

The environment watchdog noted that the most common species found in Maltese waters was the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta in Latin). As for leatherbacks, the indications are that this migratory species belongs to a subpopulation from the Atlantic Ocean, which occasionally enters the Mediterranean.

Along with all marine turtles, leatherbacks have enjoyed protection in Malta since 1992 through legislation which, at the time, reflected the obligations of the Barcelona Convention. Though their distribution was wide, the ERA said their population had seriously declined globally. The northwest Atlantic populations were usually the ones that swam into the Mediterranean, and their normal nesting areas were actually in the south-eastern US and the Caribbean Sea.

The leatherback turtle has no claws on its flippers, which are more elongated and paddle-like than those of other sea turtles.
It is also considered to be special be-cause it has the widest geographical range of any of the sea turtles. It tolerates very cold waters, unlike other reptiles, due to adaptations in its circulation, high oil content and enormous size.

Nigeria exports over 400 snakes to England every month – via Herp Digest



8/18/18 NEWS32

Authorities of the Snakebite Treatment and Research Centre, Kaltungo in Gombe state, have revealed that over 400 snakes of different varieties are being exported from the centre to Liverpool in England every month. 

Dr. Abubakar Ballah, Officer in charge of the centre, who made the disclosure to newsmen in Kaltungo on Thursday, said the snakes exported served as raw material for the production of anti-snake venom. 

“The manufacturers extract the venom from the snakes to produce the drugs,” he said. 

He said the raw material provided for the processing of the anti-snake venom made the drugs cheaper in Nigeria when compared with countries that did not supply raw material for its production. 

Ballah said countries that do not supply the raw material were buying a single vial of the drug at the cost of 1,900 USD, which is equivalent to N684, 000, while the same drug in Nigeria is N35, 000. 

According to him, the same drug in the United States for rattle snake that undergoes the same process of production costs between N7million and 8 million, which is very expensive. 

He said the Centre engaged people within Kaltungo and its environs to catch the snakes and package same, at the cost of between N500 and N1, 000 per snake, depending on the size of the reptile. 

The officer in charge said the snakes were usually taken to Abuja from Kaltungo, from where they are packaged and exported to England. 

“On arrival in England, they will undergo some screening to ensure they have not suffered because Animal Rights Organisations are on the watch; after following the process, drug production commences,” he said. 

Kaltungo town in Kaltungo Local Government Area of Gombe, popularly called the ‘Snake Haven’ lies within the Snake belt region of Northern Nigeria, and is known for its abundance of different species of snakes. 

The common species found in the area are Carpets Viper, Puff Adder and Cobra. (NAN)

Sunday 26 August 2018

Vanishing in the Wild, These Salamanders Found Refuge in a Convent - via Herp Digest



By Geoffrey Giller, New York Times, July 30, 2018

PÁTZCUARO, MEXICO — Atop the highest hill in this lakeside town sits the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Salud, built in the 1500s with whitewashed walls and red stone columns.  

On a street around the corner from the basilica, a wooden door framed in carved stone and marked with a cross fleury stands open from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m., and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. “We pray for you,” reads a sign on the door in Spanish.

Inside, the room is sparse and dark save for a wooden window and three locked doors. Behind them is a convent, home to two dozen nuns of the Dominican Order.

But the convent also hosts an even larger number of very unexpected residents: a thriving colony of endangered salamanders. Scientists call them Ambystoma dumerilii, but the nuns and everyone else in Pátzcuaro call them achoques.

Carefully tended by the nuns, about 300 achoques live in glass aquaria and white enamel bathtubs lining the walls of a long hallway and two adjoining rooms in the convent. The nuns support themselves partly by selling a cough syrup called jarabe made from the salamanders’ skin.

But the basilica’s achoques are increasingly valuable for another reason.

They are found nowhere but Lake Pátzcuaro, and outside the convent their numbers are falling fast. There are smaller captive colonies elsewhere in Pátzcuaro, but none as large as the one in the basilica. It may be critical to the salamanders’ prospects in the wild.

“That is why we consider that the nuns will be very vital in the future,” said Gerardo Garcia, a curator and expert on endangered species at the Chester Zoo in England.


The salamanders themselves are wondrous little monsters with granular skin the color of Dijon mustard. They resemble miniature versions of the flying dragon-dog Falkor in “The Neverending Story.”

As salamanders go, they’re huge — the largest ones approach a foot in length. But most striking are their gills: luxurious, ruddy filaments that frame their heads like manes and undulate gently in the water.

In the basilica, their main caretaker is Sister Ofelia Morales Francisco. On a recent visit, she greeted a visitor in a white habit, her black veil crisp and pinned in place, a blue-beaded rosary dangling by her side.

Asked a question, she sometimes answered only with a small smile. But around the achoques, she opens up, proud to show off her amphibious charges.


Their tanks are spotless, each with a bubbling aerator made from half of a plastic soda bottle filled with stones and coiled fabric. In a glass case above the tanks, a baby Jesus dressed as a doctor keeps watch.

The sisters used to make their syrup using salamanders collected from the lake. When they began to disappear, the nuns established the convent’s colony because they were worried about losing the jarabe business.

“What would we do — not make any syrup?” Sister Ofelia said in Spanish. But eventually she and the other nuns also came to recognize a conservation imperative in their work.


“It’s about protecting a species from nature,” she said. “If we don’t work to take care of it, to protect it, it will disappear from creation.”




A threatened environment

Like axolotls, their flamboyant, better-known cousins, achoques live their entire lives underwater. As adults, they keep the external gills that most salamanders have only as aquatic larvae.

As the number of people living around Lake Pátzcuaro, one of the largest in Mexico, has steadily increased over the centuries, the water quality has suffered.

Runoff exacerbated by deforestation carries silt and pollution into the lake. Untreated sewage is still dumped into water, and an invasive hyacinth spreads along its shores. Cow pastures extend right to the lake’s marshy edges.

To make matters worse, largemouth bass intentionally were introduced into Lake Pátzcuaro in the 1930s, and in 1974 the much more destructive carp were brought in. They eat the eggs and larvae of the achoques.

Between 1982 and 2010, the already shallow lake declined by about 13 feet, losing a quarter of its total volume because of declining rainfall and increasing runoff carried into the lake. Various efforts to rehabilitate Pátzcuaro have met only limited success.

Achoques aren’t the only Mexican salamanders in trouble. Of the 17 species in their genus found in Mexico, 12 are listed as endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Worldwide, salamanders face numerous threats, from habitat loss to the illegal pet trade. A new fungus has been killing salamanders in Europe.

At Lake Pátzcuaro, fishermen have been catching and eating achoques since before the Spanish arrived in Mexico. In the late 1970s and early 80s, achoques caught in the lake were piled high at the fish market in town, recalled Brad Shaffer, a professor of biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the salamanders.

But the numbers of achoques started to fluctuate wildly in the 80s and crashed in 1989. In 1985, a friar suggested that the nuns start their own colony because the lake was deteriorating, according to Sister Ofelia.

It wasn’t until 2000 that the nuns had their own thriving community of salamanders in the convent. The nuns have been cooking up jarabe, however, for nearly a century.

“People have faith in it because the nuns make it,” said Dolores Huacuz, an expert on the region’s amphibians and a retired university professor.
Local legend has it that the sisters got the secret recipe from a young Purépecha woman, one of the indigenous people who lived in this region before Spanish colonization.

Her jarabe cured one of the sisters, strengthening her lungs and abolishing her anemia. And the identity of that young woman, according to the story: the Virgin Mary herself, in disguise.

Whether or not the cough syrup recipe came to the nuns through divine intervention, there’s no doubt that the Purépecha people were eating achoques and using them for medicine long before the arrival of Europeans and Catholicism, according to Tzintia Velarde Mendoza, a project coordinator at Faunam, a wildlife conservation group, who has studied the cultural history of the achoques.

The name achoque is from a Purépecha word — achójki — possibly derived from the term for mud.

‘Very healthy’ stock

Dr. Garcia, of the Chester Zoo, has been working with a team based in Mexico to survey Lake Pátzcuaro to try and figure out how many salamanders are left in the wild, and where in the lake they live.

“Jumping into reintroduction programs looks very sexy in the media for one press release, but that’s really not the best way to do it,” Dr. Garcia said.

There are still wild achoques left in the lake, Dr. Garcia said, including a small population in the northern part of the lake. Fishermen have told Dr. Garcia’s team that they do occasionally spot the salamanders.


But as the population has thinned, so has its genetic diversity. That’s where the convent’s thriving colony may one day make an enormous difference — assuming it is genetically diverse itself.

“Three hundred individuals, if they’re relatively unrelated, is a very, very healthy, large stock to be working from,” said Dr. Shaffer.

At the moment, however, there are no plans to move achoques from the convent to the lake. Before that happens, the water quality issues must be addressed, Dr. Garcia said, and the genetic diversity of the nuns’ colony must be assessed. Work on both issues is ongoing, he said.

In the room where the nuns sell their cough syrup, a mural on the wall depicts the lake with salamanders swimming in clear waters. The glowing hands of a nun hold an achoque beside an image of the Virgin Mary.

“Being part of a religious order like ours is not an obstacle for scientific progress,” said Sister Ofelia.

“The order is devoted to the research of theological and scientific knowledge in benefit of humanity,” she added. Part of the order’s mission is “to work in favor of a more humane conscience full of love and justice for nature.”

Another mural bears the official name of the nuns’ Management Unit for the Conservation of Wildlife, registered with the Mexican government: Jimbani Erandi. In the language of the indigenous Purépecha people, it means “new dawn.”

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega contributed reporting. A fellowship from the International Reporting Project supported Mr. Giller’s reporting.

Friday 24 August 2018

For exotic pets, the most popular are also most likely to be released in the wild

Date:  August 22, 2018
Source:  Rutgers University

Among pet snakes and lizards, the biggest-selling species are also the most likely to be released by their owners -- and to potentially become invasive species, according to a Rutgers study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

The study by Rutgers University-New Brunswick ecologists provides new clarity on how and why the exotic pet trade has become the primary venue by which reptiles and amphibians arrive in non-native lands, the first step to becoming ecologically damaging invaders.

The researchers documented 1,722 reptile and amphibian species in the U.S. exotic pet trade from 1999 to 2016. They compared the list with previous research and data from a citizen science project that records sightings in the U.S. of non-native species. They found that the most popular pets -- those imported in high numbers and sold at low prices, usually when they're small and cute -- are the most likely to be dumped into the wild later on.



Martens recolonized Isle Royale in the '90s, showing island's dynamism


After decades of trapping, the last known American marten was spotted on Isle Royale in 1917. Fifty years later, in 1966, the National Park Service planned to reintroduce martens to the national park situated in Lake Superior, but nobody knows if the agency ever followed through. Then, in 1993, martens were confirmed on the island for the first time in 76 years.

Whether these small, forest-dwelling carnivores—valued historically for their fur—had been hiding there the whole time, found their way back, or were introduced in the 1960s without any records has remained a mystery for the last quarter century.

But in new research published today (Aug. 23, 2018) in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, collaborating with the National Park Service, traced the recolonization to martens likely arriving in the 1990s, shortly before they were spotted.

Genetic studies of martens from Isle Royale and nearby populations in America and Canada showed that the contemporary population came from nearby Ontario, Canada. The animals likely wandered over on an ice bridge in the winter, the researchers speculate.

The results provide much-needed context about the natural history of an island long considered an unspoiled wilderness, but one with a long history of ecological disruptions and recoveries. The island park may be best known for the ebb and flow of its wolf and moose populations, which have been tracked for 60 years.

With additional wolves set to be relocated to Isle Royale in the coming months, the new research provides ecologists and land managers with a fuller picture of how dynamic even seemingly isolated island ecosystems can be.

After all, say the researchers, if the house-cat-sized marten can find its way over, islands like Isle Royale may be less isolated and static than we think.

Jonathan Pauli, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison, has studied martens for years as part of efforts to understand how communities of wild animals respond to human disturbance. In 2015, his group provided evidence that martens had long escaped detection on islands in southeastern Alaska prior to deliberate reintroduction efforts in the 20th century. And in work published in 2016 with graduate student Phil Manlick, Pauli called into question the effectiveness of periodic augmentations of reintroduced marten populations in Wisconsin, where the once-extirpated carnivore remains an endangered species.



For the first time, biologists track cownose rays to Florida and back

August 23, 2018, Smithsonian

Every summer, cownose rays stream into Chesapeake Bay to mate and give birth to their pups. When autumn comes, they disappear—presumably to migrate south, but no one knew for certain where they spent the winter. Now, after a three-year tagging study published Aug. 23 and led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), scientists have solved the mystery. Cownose rays all along the Atlantic winter near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it is likely they return to the same spots each summer.

Cownose rays are large stingrays native to the Chesapeake, with dark brown or olive-gray backs and white bellies. They reproduce slowly. Most mothers give birth to only one pup a year, and they do not mature until age 7 or 8, making them vulnerable to intense fishing or sudden population declines. And yet cownose rays have been dogged by controversy. In the early 2000s, they were saddled with partial blame for oyster declines because their diet includes shellfish. (Later studies cleared their names. Oysters had been declining years before cownose rays became more abundant.) Later, in 2015, bowfishing tournaments for cownose rays began raising alarm among some Marylanders. In response, the Maryland government voted to become the first state to create a fishery-management plan to conserve the cownose ray.

"Because of the slow birth rate, we know that if we don't manage them, and instead harvest them in a way that heavily impacts the population and causes a population decline, it'll take a long time for them to recover," said Matt Ogburn, SERC marine biologist and lead author of the study. "If we lose something important, we could lose it for decades."

The new study, published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, marks the first time scientists have tracked cownose ray migrations along the Atlantic coast for a full year or more. Knowing where they go every year will help fill in some longstanding knowledge gaps about the rays, as Maryland officials decide how to manage them. It is part of the Smithsonian's new Movement of Life Initiative. Scientists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and Savannah State University also joined the effort.


Could a super snake emerge from Everglades pythons? New DNA study raises possibility


August 23, 2018 by Jenny Staletovich, Miami Herald

What started out as a straightforward genetic study of Florida's invasive python population has turned up a surprising plot twist: a small number of crossbred Burmese and Indian pythons with the potential to become a kind of Everglades super snake.

For the study, published this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution, U.S. Geological Survey researchers examined the tail tissue of 400 snakes captured in South Florida, from the Big Cypress Swamp to the Everglades. While the vast majority appeared to be closely related Burmese pythons—imagine a family reunion packed with first and second cousins—13 had genetic markers from Indian pythons, a subspecies that unlike the swamp-loving Burmese snake prefers high, dry ground.

The number is clearly small, but it raises the risk that over time some Everglades snakes could become better suited to a more varied landscape. Scientists call it hybrid vigor.

"If the Indian pythons have a wider range, perhaps these Everglades snakes now have that capability," said lead author and USGS geneticist Margaret Hunter. "It's quite interesting and quite surprising, but we don't know the extent it's in the population."

Because evolution seems to abhor certainty, there's also the possibility the opposite happens through another process, she said, euphemistically referred to as "outbreeding depression."

The study originally intended to look at the genetic makeup of South Florida snakes to better understand how they spread and how to help control them. Pythons started turning up in the 1980s, likely escapees from a South Dade breeding facility or released pets. By 2000, they were declared official residents in Everglades National Park and have since continued to expand north into the state's expansive water conservation areas and west into Big Cypress. In 2016, they were found breeding in the Keys for the first time.

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