8. Champions of a Sustainable World

2006

15 October 2006. Salmon Find an Ally in the Far East of Russia. New York Times. C.J. Chivers.
Excerpt: UTKHOLOK RIVER BIOLOGICAL STATION, Russia - All six native species of Pacific salmon remain abundant  on the Kamchatka peninsula in Eastern Russia. One river alone, the Kol, is reported to have  as many as five million returning salmon each year. Each year, Russian and American scientists say, a sixth to a quarter of the North Pacific's salmon originate in Kamchatka, a peninsula about the size of California. Estimates of the salmon fisheries' annual value  in this region reach $600 million, and the fish are a crucial source of employment for Russia and other nations.
Now, in a nation with a dreary environmental record that is engaged in a rush to extract its resources, the peninsula's governments are at work on proposals that would designate seven sprawling tracts of wilderness as salmon-protected areas, a network of refuges for highly valuable fish that would be the first of its kind. Kamchatka is selecting protection zones not to create wildlife reserves, Mr. Chistyakov said, but because fish runs are the best foundation for the peninsula's economy. Oil, gas and mining sectors will be developed, he said, but will provide a comparably brief revenue stream. Sustainable fishing, he said, can last generations.
Encompassing nine entire rivers and more than six million acres, the protected watersheds would exceed the scale of many renowned preserved areas in the United States. Together they would be more than four times the size of the Everglades, nearly triple that of Yellowstone National Park and slightly larger than the Adirondack Park, which is often referred to as the largest protected area in the lower United States.
These areas would be protected from most development. Their purpose would be to produce wild salmon - for food, profit, recreation and scientific study, and as a genetic reserve of one of the world's most commercially and culturally important fish. "What makes this special is that these rivers are being protected while they are still amazing fish producers," Mr. Klimenko said. "To preserve something that is not destroyed is much less expensive than restoring an ecosystem that is already broken."

6 June 2006. To Stem Widespread Extinction, Scientists Airlift Frogs in Carry-On Bags. Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times.
Excerpt: ATLANTA, June 5 - Of all the things airport security screeners have discovered as they rifle through travelers' luggage, the suitcases full of frogs were a first. In a race to save amphibians threatened by an encroaching, lethal fungus, two conservationists from Atlanta recently packed their carry-ons with frogs rescued from a Central American rain forest - squeezing some 150 to a suitcase - and requested permission from airlines to travel with them in the cabin of the plane. The frogs, snuggly swaddled in damp moss in vented plastic deli containers big enough for a small fruit salad, were perhaps the last of their kind, collected from a pristine national park that fills the bowl of El Valle, an inactive volcano in Panama.
In many parts of the world, habitat loss is thought to be the biggest driver of amphibian extinctions, but the frogs in El Valle are facing a more insidious threat.
A waterborne form of chytrid fungus is marching down the spine of the mountain range where they live. Scientists aren't exactly sure how the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, kills, but it seems to break down a protein in the skin called keratin that may be important for respiration. The skin of infected animals sloughs off in layers, and within two weeks, they die.
The chytrid fungus is thought to play a large role in the worldwide disappearance of amphibians, a trend terrifying to experts, who say it would be the first loss of an entire taxonomic class since the dinosaurs.
...Dr. Mendelson ... and Ron Gagliardo, the amphibian conservation coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical Garden... wanted ... to collect as many frogs of as many different species as they could and move them out of El Valle as soon as possible. ... estimated they had only weeks to carry out the mass frog evacuation.
... in an apparent validation of their tactics, Dr. Mendelson said the chytrid fungus had recently been found in El Valle, as predicted, and he estimated 90 percent of the frogs there would be gone within 90 days.
"You won't hear scientists say this too often," Dr. Mendelson said. "But I wish we were wrong."

10 May 2006. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. HONOLULU -- Twelve species of rare flies known for their elaborate courtship displays and found only in the Hawaiian Islands are now protected under the Endangered Species Act. Excerpt: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the protected status for the highly valued picture-wing flies Tuesday. The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the service in March 2005, accusing it of violating the Endangered Species Act. ...The flies of Hawaii have been studied by scientists for four decades, said Kenneth Kaneshiro, a professor of entomology and director of the Center for Conservation Research and Training at the University of Hawaii. ...Kaneshiro's own work focuses primarily on picture-wing flies. And a theory of evolution named after him postulates that it's not just natural selection but also mating behavior that plays a role in the birth of new species. Researchers have also found antibiotic resistant bacteria on some Hawaiian flies, including some of the newly protected species, that may help scientists find new ways to combat diseases such as bird flu and even cancer, he said.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Program
Center for Biological Diversity

18 April 2006. Endangered, Rescued, Now in Trouble Again. By JIM ROBBINS, NY Times. Excerpt: WALL, S.D. - Black-footed ferrets, the weasel with the burglar's mask that was brought back to life after reaching the brink of extinction, are facing a new challenge from the spread of plague in prairie dogs, their only prey. The disease has slowed the growth of the wild population, which is constantly replenished by the introduction of captive-bred ferrets. And plague is now approaching a colony of prairie dogs that supports half the wild ferret population. Wildlife biologists are waiting to see if the disease will reach the Conata Basin here, a treeless moonscape next to Badlands National Park with the largest population of the highly endangered black-footed ferrets anywhere in the country. "If we lose Conata, oh boy, the program is in trouble," said Michael Lockhart, coordinator of the black-footed ferret recovery program for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. There are now about 850 of the ferrets in the United States, about 350 in a captive breeding center at Fort Collins, Colo., and the rest at 10 sites around the West and one site in Mexico. About 250 of the wild ferrets live in the Conata Basin. The plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, is the same one that caused the Black Death in Europe. ...The black-footed ferret, the only ferret native to North America, was part of the Great Plains ecosystem that spread from Canada to Mexico, an expanse that was perforated with sprawling prairie dog towns. Because of predators, prairie dogs are vigilant and need clipped grasslands to feel secure, so they stayed near grazing buffalo herds. Ferrets, in turn, lived in the prairie dog towns, right in the midst of their food supply. One ferret eats about 140 prairie dogs each year. The prairie dogs are despised by many ranchers and farmers because they eat grass and often live near cattle herds, which substitute for buffalo. A ruthless private and federal campaign wiped out 99 percent of them by 1960. By the late 1970's, the black-footed ferret, deprived of its only prey, was thought to be extinct.... "Ferrets are the charismatic representative of a healthy prairie ecosystem," said Travis Livieri, director of Prairie Wildlife Research, a nonprofit research organization based here. "If we can restore ferrets to the prairies of the U.S.," Mr. Livieri said, "that means prairie dog numbers are healthy, which mean ferruginous hawks, swift foxes and burrowing owls."

2005

11 October 2005. Foal by Foal, the Wildest of Horses Is Coming Back. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD. NY Times. HUSTAI NATIONAL PARK, Mongolia - Excerpt: ...Mongolia is a land of the horse. The warriors of Genghis Khan and his successors in the 13th century conquered most of Asia on the backs of sturdy horses. Today, nomads still mind their flocks from the saddle, and they never look more at home than in a race across the empty distances of the Gobi Desert, a study in fluid motion and the centaurian harmony of man and horse as one. But even the Mongols never managed to domesticate the wildest of horses, a species known as Equus ferus przewalskii, or P-horse for short. It is one of just two extant species of horse. All the breeds of the familiar domestic horse, from Shetland pony to Clydesdale, belong to the other species, which submitted to the bit and bridle 6,000 years ago. Przewalski's horse (pronounced zheh-VAHL-skee and named for the 19th-century Russian explorer who first identified it) is about the size of a large pony, with a stocky body in shades of tan to tawny, short brown legs and a dark mane that stands straight up. They once roamed Central Asia, and particularly Mongolia, where they are called takhi. They banded in families, called harems, of mares, foals and bachelor males overseen by a dominant male. In the 1960's, the takhi disappeared from the wild in Mongolia and everywhere, victims of overhunting for horse meat and habitat competition from people and their livestock. A few hundred survived in captivity, mainly in Europe. From that number, wildlife biologists led by a Dutch preservation group organized a breeding program and, in 1992, started reintroducing the P-horse in Mongolia. Officials here estimate that at least 300 of the horses, immigrants and their offspring, now inhabit the somewhat protected lands of national parks.

March 2005. Not for the Squeamish. OnEarth Magazine. The humble earthworm may hold the key to removing one of our most deadly environmental toxins: PCBs. Charles Darwin admired the earthworm extravagantly. "It may be doubted," he wrote in 1881, "if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures." The earthworm is a natural organic chemist, cultivator, and fertilizer. But it may have yet another talent, one that Darwin would never have discovered: toxic cleanup specialist. It turns out that PCBs -- among the nastiest of modern pollutants -- may be no match for the humble earthworm.

2004

Summer 2004. Prescription Rice: The Brave New World of Pharma Foods, by Melissa Pamer. Terrain magazine, pp. 10-13. Excerpt: ... Farmers in California's flat, hazy rice fields have worked for years...to please the demanding Japanese palate and gain a toehold in its lucrative market. And it's beginning to work: roughly 40 percent of the rice grown in California goes to Japan. ... Just in the past few years California's rice has finally earned some respect in Japan and other finicky Asian markets, and last year's crop could achieve the best return for farmers in the state's history. But now California farmers worry that the purity of their rice, its hard-won status, and their own livelihood may become casualties of the global debate on genetic modification. At issue is a new kind of rice-a new kind of farm crop, in fact-that is genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. Using the same recombinant DNA techniques that have created GE foods, biotechnology companies are now making plants like rice, corn, and tobacco into "factories" for producing medically useful compounds....Over the past few months, a small Sacramento-based biotechnology company's aim to expand its experimental crop of pharmaceutical rice has caused a shake-up in the normally hermetic California rice industry. In October of last year, Ventria BioScience petitioned the California Rice Commission (CRC) for permission to grow 120 acres of two varieties of rice engineered to produce artificial versions of two human proteins-lysozyme and lactoferrin-which occur naturally in breast milk and tears. ...Ventria's petition set off a review process. ..."One little slip. One slip, that's all it's gonna take. If there's a mistake, the farmer is going to pay-big time," rice farmer Joe Carrancho told the CRC advisory board as it prepared to vote on Ventria's protocol in late March. In work boots and dusty blue overalls, Carrancho held up a chart showing 100 percent opposition to GMO wheat from Japanese consumers. "We are fearful," he said.

TOP