tagged w/ Wildlife Conservation Society
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'Naked' penguins have scientists perplexed
Photo: A worker puts a wetsuit on a featherless penguin to keep her warm, earlier this week, at the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.
April 8th, 2011
03:40 PM ET
A mysterious ailment is causing penguins to lose their feathers, according to researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The condition, called feather-loss disorder, has been seen in penguin chicks in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean the past few years and is featured in a recent edition of the journal "Waterbirds," the release said.
While scientists don't know what could cause a penguin to go "naked," possible culprits include genetics, nutrient imbalances, thyroid disorders or germs.
“We need to conduct further study to determine the cause of the disorder and if this is in fact spreading to other penguin species,” Dee Boersma, who has studied Magellanic penguins, said in the release.
Feather loss in pet birds has long been a common ailment seen by pet stores and private owners, but researchers studying the penguins in the Atlantic said this is something different.
“The recent emergence of feather-loss disorder in wild bird populations suggests that the disorder is something new,” Mariana Varese, acting director of the society’s Latin America and Caribbean program, is quoted as saying in the release. “More study of this malady can help identify the root cause, which in turn will help illuminate possible solutions,” she said.
While the illness does not appear to be fatal, the sick birds, unlike their feathered counterparts, linger in the sun instead of seeking refuge from the midday heat. That behavior has led to several deaths, according to the release.
Disease is not the only recent peril that Atlantic penguins have faced.
A few weeks ago, volunteers from Nightingale Island, a British territory that is part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, mobilized to save tens of thousands of Northern Rockhopper penguins threatened by an oil spill.
It has been a surreal year in animal deaths. In January, tens of thousands of birds and fish were found dead in countries around the world.
Recently dolphins, some with oil inside them, have turned up dead in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists don’t know why.
"Even though they have oil on them, it may not be the cause of death," Blair Mase, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine mammal investigations coordinator, told CNN. "We want to look at the gamut of all the possibilities."'Naked' penguins have scientists perplexed
Photo: A worker puts a... more
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Musk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale - The New York Times
Photo: A holdover from the Pleistocene era, the musk ox has managed to hang on while most of its brethren disappeared at the end of the last ice age.
December 13, 2010
Musk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale
By NATALIE ANGIER
Among the various large, charismatic and visibly winterized mammals that one might choose as a mascot for life in the Arctic belt, polar bears are, let’s face it, too hackneyed, reindeer too Rudolph, caribou too Sarah Palin’s target practice, and woolly mammoths too extinct.
There’s a better choice, though few may have heard of it. According to Arctic biologists, the quintessential example of megafaunal fortitude in the face of really bad weather is the musk ox, or Ovibos moschatus, a blocky, short-legged, highly social ungulate with distinctively curved horns and long hair that looks like shag carpeting circa 1975.
Ovibos’s common name is only partly justified. The males do emit a musky cologne during mating season, but the animal is not an ox. Nor, despite its back-of-the-nickel silhouette, is it a type of buffalo either. Its closest living relations are thought to be goats and sheep, but taxonomically and metaphorically, the musk ox is in an icy cubicle of its own. Once abundant throughout the northern latitudes worldwide, today they are found only in Arctic North America, Greenland and pockets of Siberia and Scandinavia. The musk ox is a holdover from the Pleistocene, the age of the giant mammals memorialized in natural history murals everywhere — the mammoths and mastodons, the saber-toothed cats, the giant ground sloths, the 400-pound beavers. Yet while a vast majority of the frost-fitted bigfoots disappeared at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, Ovibos hung on, as stubbornly as the ox it is not.
Scientists are now seeking to understand how, exactly, the animal has managed to persist through repeated climate shifts and habitat upheavals. Researchers see in the musk ox’s story clues to help guide efforts to conserve other large land mammals now at risk of extinction. They also hope to raise the profile of a species they consider magnificent, at once stalwart and supple, a page of living prehistory whose social and behavioral complexities they have just begun to decode.
“There’s evidence that they have an elephantlike social structure, and even some form of culture,” said Joel Berger, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor at the University of Montana. So why is everybody flying to Africa to see elephants when we’ve got this marvelous species living in our own backyard?
In a presentation last week at the Bronx Zoo, where the wildlife society is based, Dr. Berger described preliminary results from field studies of the musk ox that he has performed with Layne Adams of the U.S. Geological Survey and other collaborators. He talked about the challenges of catching animals to weigh and measure them, check their teeth, take their blood and furnish them with G.P.S. collars. One group of musk ox in Cape Krusenstern National Monument in Alaska had such bad, broken teeth you’d think they were subsisting on a diet of Pepsi and Snickers bars, said Dr. Berger, and the researchers worried that the population was unhealthy and on its way out.
Yet after suffering several seasons of declining numbers, the brown-toothers rebounded this year to match in fecundity and offspring survival a group living in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve that had exemplary teeth. The cause of their rotten dentition remains a mystery, but the Krusenstern clan clearly was not biting the dust.
For all their storied past as co-prancers with mastodons, musk oxen are not huge animals. Adult males stand about four feet high and weigh around 600 to 700 pounds, less than half the weight of the average draft horse. Yet they look hulky as a result of their spectacular double-layered fur coat. The long, shaggy outer layer they keep year round, not only to help shield them against the brutal cold of an Arctic winter, when temperatures can plunge 40 degrees or more below zero, but also to deter the insect pests of an Arctic summer.
“You’ll see caribou in summertime trotting across the countryside trying to get away from all the mosquitoes and biting flies,” said Jim Lawler, a biologist with the National Park Service’s Arctic Network in Fairbanks. “But the musk ox just stand there with clouds of mosquitoes hovering above them. It’s hard to penetrate that fur.” For added insulation, musk oxen grow a second fur layer each winter, an undercoat called qiviut that is said to be many times warmer than wool and softer than cashmere — and how obliging of the animals to shed that qiviut in spring for use in scarves.
With their stubby legs, musk oxen are not migratory like caribou or great dashers like reindeer. Their basic approach to winter management is: Don’t just do something — stand there. “You’ll see them in a big storm, drifted over, covered with snow,” said Dr. Lawler. “They’re almost part of the scenery.” They lapse into a state of what might be called hibernation al fresco, as their oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production drop and their metabolic rate slows by about a third. “They’re basically shutting down some of their machinery so they can survive on less food,” said Dr. Lawler, who has studied musk ox energetics.
Whatever their occasional resemblance to the scenery, musk oxen are by no means as dumb as a post. “They live in loosely knit family-bonded societies,” said Dr. Berger, and they keep track of who’s who. The group is, after all, essential to their survival. When confronted with predators like wolves, a herd of musk oxen will famously circle the wagons, the adults forming a wall of horns facing outward, the vulnerable young safely shielded behind them. They also seem to have a keen memory for where the best foraging grounds may be found in the spring, the optimal mix of grasses and willow twigs to maximize the performance of the microbes at work in their ruminant gut. Musk oxen turn out to be very efficient at extracting calories to put on the fat they need to survive the long winter fast.
Historical records and genetic evidence alike suggest that the musk ox is a Rasputin, “the comeback kid of the Quaternary,” said Ross MacPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. “They undergo periods where they really bolster their numbers for a few years, then they go down to an almost complete collapse, then later they come back like gangbusters.”
As a result of passing through repeated population bottlenecks, in which only a handful of individuals survived to spawn subsequent generations, today’s 100,000 musk oxen are thought to be notably homogenous, lacking in the sort of genetic diversity once thought critical to a species’ long-term prospects. “It would be hard to argue that musk ox are on their way out the door,” said Dr. MacPhee. “They are not weak sisters.”
Just ask that saber-toothed cat fossilized under the floor.
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/14/science/14ANGI1/14ANGI1-articleLarge.jpgMusk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale - The New York Times
Photo: A... more
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Scientists: Serengeti on road to ruin
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/21/serengeti.migration.threat.road/index.html?hpt=C1
Photo: Conservationists say a proposed new road through the Serengeti National Park will disrupt migratory patterns of wildebeests
Serengeti on road to ruin, scientists warn
By Matthew Knight for CNN
September 21, 2010 11:07 a.m. EDT
London, England (CNN) -- Plans to build a highway through Tanzania's Serengeti National Park will destroy one of the world's last great wildlife sanctuaries, a group of conservation experts has warned.
Writing in the journal Nature, 27 scientists have called for a re-think on a proposed 50 kilometer (31 mile) road which they say will cause "environmental disaster."
Under plans approved by the Tanzanian government earlier this year, the trade route would bisect a northern part of the park, forming part of the 170 kilometer-long Arusha-Musoma highway slated to run from the Tanzanian coast to Lake Victoria, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Construction is expected to begin in 2012.
In "Road will ruin Serengeti," lead author Andrew Dobson, professor at the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, says laying a track across the park would disrupt the annual migratory patterns of tens of thousands of zebras and gazelles, and 1.3 million wildebeest.
Using computer simulations the scientists estimate that if the wildebeests' access to the Mara river in Kenya is blocked their numbers "will fall to less than 300,000."
The ecosystem could flip into being a source of atmospheric CO2
--Scientists writing in 'Nature'
"This would lead to more grass fires, which would further diminish the quality of grazing by volatizing minerals, and the ecosystem could flip into being a source of atmospheric CO2," the scientists said.
In addition to simulations, the scientists also cite the experience of other park ecosystems where large mammal migration has been hindered by roads and fences.
In Canada's Banff National Park in Canada, "habitat fragmentation" has led to the "collapse of at least six of the last 24 terrestrial migratory species left in the world."
In Africa, the ecosystems of Etosha National Park in Namibia and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in Botswana have collapsed to "a less diverse and less productive state," the scientists said.
Scientists say a different route running south of the Serengeti should be considered to preserve the 1.2 million hectare UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This alternative route could utilize an existing network of gravel roads and would only be 50 kilometers longer than the proposed northern route, the scientists said.
While they acknowledge that Tanzania needs improved infrastructure to facilitate economic development, they argue that the road would damage wildlife tourism -- "a cornerstone" of the country's economy which was worth an estimated $824 million in 2005.
The Nature article adds weight to the growing pressure on the Tanzanian government to reconsider its position regarding the road.
Last month, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London voiced their concerns and campaigns against the highway are gaining support on social networking sites Facebook ("Stop the Serengeti Highway") and Twitter ("SaveSerengeti").
Earlier this year, Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete tried to placate opponents of the project by announcing that the section of new road running through the Serengeti would not be tarmacked.
"I am also a conservation ally and I assure you I'm not going to allow something that will ruin the ecosystem to be built," President Kikwete said in an address to the nation in July.Scientists: Serengeti on road to ruin... more
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Report by the Wildlife Conservation SocietyThe United States is the world’s biggest consumer of imported wildlife and wildlife products.
According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, more than ONE BILLION individual animals were imported into the country between 2000 and 2004. Many were sold as pets. In the same time period, more than 11 MILLION POUNDS of bushmeat and other animal products crossed into our borders.
Often, this trade in wildlife not only breaks the law, but delivers health risks to the nation’s residents, too.
In New York City, a major hub for the trade, the Wildlife Conservation Society is working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to uncover these potential threats. More than 70 percent of zoonoses (diseases that affect both animals and humans) stem from human contact with wildlife. Monkey pox, SARS, and HIV/AIDS (via human infection with simian immunodeficiency virus) have all impacted public health through the consumption or trade of wild animals.
“The movement and mixing of humans, wildlife, and domestic animals as part of the illegal global wildlife trade encourages transmission of disease and emergence of novel pathogens,” said Dr. William Karesh of WCS’s Global Health program. “Our pilot project, still in its early stages, will help identify whether pathogens are entering the U.S. via bushmeat and other illegal wildlife.”
Now, at main entry points for people and goods into NYC and the U.S., inspection officials and health experts have taken hundreds of samples of wildlife and wildlife products. Since the project’s launch in 2008, they have uncovered parts from at least 14 species—great apes, monkeys, rodents, and bats—tucked inside luggage and mail parcels.
http://www.wcs.org/new-and-noteworthy/smuggling-wildlife-and-disease.aspxReport by the Wildlife Conservation SocietyThe United States is the world’s... more
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The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.
Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as “emerging infectious diseases” or EIDs.
Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ‘emerging’.
Between 1972 and 1999, 35 new agents of disease were discovered and since then many more have re-emerged with renewed vengeance after long periods of inactivity, or are expanding into areas where they have not previously been reported, according to World Health Organization (WHO). These include tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera.
Public health professionals from across the globe met in Atlanta in March for the sixth International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, to discuss these and other emerging pathogens and current work on surveillance, epidemiology, research, bioterrorism and more.
Wildlife Conservation Society reports that as humans progress ever further into the forest, the risk of disease transmission between humans and wildlife becomes greater. Many diseases can move back and forth between species, mutating into more virulent, resistant forms.
Myths aside, it has been claimed that the HIV/ AIDS virus may be such a case, as it is thought that it entered human populations through the consumption of non-human primates. The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon.
Dr William Karesh, a WCS veterinary expert, believes the threat of potential pandemics such as Ebola, SARS, and avian influenza demands a more holistic approach to disease control, one that prevents diseases from crossing the divide between humans, their livestock, and wildlife.
But this may not be good news to a good number of Africans necessitated by poverty and high food prices to rely on bush meat, including gorilla and other great apes meat, and who may be courting, among others, various new encephalitis and hemorrhagic viruses, Lassa fever, and Ebola virus.
A recent WCS survey in a remote village on the border between Gabon and Congo revealed that about 18 tons of bush meat were sold and consumed in a particular period of time. As wildlife conservationists and medical experts bite their teeth, an average 17 species are killed per day, corresponding to a biomass of 65kg per day.
The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered... more
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