Tapirs losing out

BENDUL, the Malayan tapir, is a sorry sight. Unlike the other tapirs at the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre which have hefty, robust bodies, Bendul is almost all skin and bones. Her coat is dull and grey, not a healthy shine like that on the others. Her ribcage shows under her skin and her body is badly scarred.
She was named after the place where she was found loitering in late September, a village in Ulu Bendul some 16km from Seremban in Negri Sembilan, and arrived at the centre wounded and starving.
“After trapping her, we had planned to return her to the forest but when we saw that she had a bullet wound which was infested with maggots, we decided to bring her here,” says Mahathir Mohamad who heads the Sungai Dusun centre, located in the upper reaches of Selangor about 90 minutes’ drive from Kuala Lumpur.

Wild fodder: At the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre, the seven tapirs there are fed leaves collected from the jungle.

From the tell-tale size and shape of the wound, wildlife officers believe Bendul had been shot by wild boar hunters, probably mistakenly. “Villagers say they have seen the tapir with two young. We searched but could not find the juveniles. We believe they have also been shot,” says Mahathir.

At Sungai Dusun, a 4,330ha sprawl of protected peatswamp and lowland dipterocarp forest near the Selangor-Perak boundary which is both a rescue and captive breeding centre, Bendul is seen chomping on the leaves of the mengkirai, nangka and mahang trees which keepers have collected from the forest. Soon, she will be fed nutrition-laden pellets to fatten her up. At the centre, she joins six other tapirs – four of which are captive-breds and two, also rescued tapirs.

Mysterious orange goo washing ashore in Alaska

A mysterious orange goo that washed ashore in an Alaska village last week and sparked pollution concerns turns out to be a mass of crustacean eggs or embryos, government scientists said on Monday.

Tests of a sample sent by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation produced the results, officials at a laboratory belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Service Center said.

"We now think these are some sort of small crustacean egg or embryo, with the lipid oil droplet in the middle causing the orange color," Jeep Rice, a lead scientist at the Juneau laboratory, said in a news release.
"So this is natural. It is not chemical pollution; it is not a man-made substance," Rice said.

Last week's appearance of the orange substance in the Alaska village of Kivalina initially baffled villagers and experts.

Increase in GM Crops, Resistant Weeds Lead to Dramatic Rise in Pesticide Use

The widespread use of genetically modified (GM) crops engineered to tolerate herbicides has led to a sharp increase in the use of agricultural chemicals in the U.S. This practice is creating herbicide-resistant "super weeds" and an increase in chemical residues in U.S. food, according to a new report released today by The Organic Center, the Union for Concerned Scientists, and the Center for Food Safety.

According to the report, entitled "Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years," as more farmers have adopted variations of corn, soy beans, and cotton bred to tolerate weed killer in recent years, the use of herbicides has increased steadily, with herbicide use growing by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008, according to the report. Forty-six percent of that increase occurred during 2007 and 2008.

Pesticide Pathway

When soil moisture levels increase, pesticide losses to the atmosphere through volatilization also rise. In one long-term field study, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists found that herbicide volatilization consistently resulted in herbicide losses that exceed losses from field runoff. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) soil scientist Timothy Gish and ARS micrometeorologist John Prueger led the investigation, which looked at the field dynamics of atrazine and metolachlor, two herbicides commonly used in corn production. Both herbicides are known to contaminate surface and ground water, which was primarily thought to occur through surface runoff.

How To Save Electricity

Ways to Save Electricity

Find out how you can save electricity in your home - help the environment and save money.

Every year electricity gets more and more expensive. Read on to find out how you can save electricity and money with this handy selection of energy saving tips.

How to Help Save Our Earth

Earth is a really critical partial of the lives. Most of us wouldn’t consider of polluting the bodies, nonetheless we have been polluting the world by injustice and use too much of the full of health resources. As obliged people we should at slightest do what we can to assistance reduce, reuse, and recycle what we can as a initial step.

We have been not utterly to blame; we hereditary a soiled Earth, though we can do something to safeguard which the young kids can grow up in a cleaner, safer world than ourselves.

Don’t ever let someone get divided with observant “what can we do, we am customarily a single person”. Each and each chairman can do a lot, and we can change others to do something as well.

How to save water

Saving water is really important as it is a limited resource which is essential to our well being. It is important that we save water and here are a list of how you can do it from home!

1. Check faucets and pipes for leaks
A small drip from a worn faucet washer can waste 20 gallons of water per day. Larger leaks can waste hundreds of gallons.

2. Don't use the toilet as an ashtray or wastebasket
Every time you flush a cigarette butt, facial tissue or other small bit of trash, five to seven gallons of water is wasted.

What Will Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Mean for Barrier Islands?

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2011) — A new survey of barrier islands published earlier this spring offers the most thorough assessment to date of the thousands of small islands that hug the coasts of the world's landmasses. The study, led by Matthew Stutz of Meredith College, Raleigh, N.C., and Orrin Pilkey of Duke University, Durham, N.C., offers new insight into how the islands form and evolve over time -- and how they may fare as the climate changes and sea level rises.

The survey is based on a global collection of satellite images from Landsat 7 as well as information from topographic and navigational charts. The satellite images were captured in 2000, and processed by a private company as part of an effort funded by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Short Term Air Emissions and Their Effect on Global Warming

Fast action on certain pollutants such as black carbon, ground-level ozone and methane may help limit near term global temperature rise and significantly increase the chances of keeping temperature rise below 3.6 degrees F. Protecting the near-term climate is central to significantly cutting the risk of amplified global climate change linked with rapid and extensive loss of Arctic ice on both the land and at sea, said assessment authors.

The findings, released on June 15 in Bonn, Germany, during a meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been compiled by an international team of more than 50 researchers chaired by Drew Shindell of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Fastest Sea-Level Rise in 2,000 Years Linked to Increasing Global Temperatures

The rate of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years -- and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).


The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was conducted by Andrew Kemp, Yale University; Benjamin Horton, University of Pennsylvania; Jeffrey Donnelly, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University; Martin Vermeer, Aalto University School of Engineering, Finland; and Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.
Kemp and colleagues developed the first continuous sea-level reconstruction for the past 2,000 years, and compared variations in global temperature to changes in sea level over that time period.

The Weather

We all complain about the weather. It is a great topic of conversation. Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather is part of what life is about. However, everything has its price. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billion in the United States based on 2011 data. Rain, snow, and hot or cold temperatures can all have economic impacts. The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

Returning to the Caveman Diet

In today's age of highly processed food, packaged and shaped to look like animals, filled with ingredients we have never heard of, it is tempting to return to a diet from a much simpler time. A new fad that is catching on, known as the Paleolithic or "paleo" diet, aims to return people to a more "natural" way of eating. Before agriculture, people would eat lean meats, fruits, and vegetables, and they would avoid grains and processed foods. Is this what is really best for human consumption? According to a new book, the so-called caveman diet was abandoned for a reason, and the belief that it is superior is pure hokum.

Threatened Species: Dugong

Dugongs are marine mammals common in tropical coasts of East Africa, through south and southeast Asia all the way to Australia. Its body shape is similar to a pregnant lady which led to the idea of the presence of mermaids in the sea. But of course, that is not true. Dugong dugon belongs to the Sirenia order and it is the remaining species in the Dugongidae family. They are herbivorous animals, mainly focusing on specific seagrass species or marine algae if seagrass are scarce, so they are usually found grazing at the seagrass beds (Gales et al. 2003; Marsh et al. 1982). Having low birth rate and late sexual maturity, their population is vulnerable to disturbances (Hines et al. 2005). Large amount of energy is spent on raising their single offspring making them a good representative of consummate K-selectors (Pianka 1970). Little is known about this marine mammal because of their sensitive and shy character, most of the time avoiding places with human activities (Hutomo & Moosa 2005).

The Environmental Impacts of Aquaculture in Southeast Asia

Aquaculture is the farming of marine and fresh water fish, shellfish and aquatic plants which can be done in a marine or freshwater environment. It is an important sector as it reduces the pressure on the wildfish population due to overfishing (Naylor et al. 2000). Currently aquaculture supplies one-third of the world seafood supplies and is expected to increase due to the high demand of fish as a main protein source (Naylor et al. 2001). In Southeast Asia, the commonly used species for aquaculture are tilapia, shrimps (Penaeus monodon), crabs (Scylla serrata) and catfish to name a few (SEAFDEC 2009). Even though aquaculture is expected to provide a net increase of the global fish production, it has several negative impacts towards the environment. In this paper, major environmental impacts will be discussed such as discharge of effluent and chemicals from farms, introduction of exotic species, spread of disease, habitat loss and dependence of fish-based fish feed. Together with these, management of the impacts which are currently used will be discussed such as the integrated coastal zone management, management of farm effluent, disease control and the use of native species and low trophic level fish.

The New Generation of Environmentalist

I do not know if global warming is occuring but many scientist believe it is occuring. So far i have read quite some few scientific articles, and they usually connect their findings with global warming. This would include coral bleaching, introduction of new diseases, interruption of local ecosystems etc.

So maybe they believe it is happening because it is one of the possible explaination for their studies. I have friends who believe it is really happening and we must do something about it.