Safarichatter.com

A note from Ric O’Barry from save the Dolphins campaign:

“I hope you’ll join me in this campaign to stop the killing of dolphins in Japan. Most people in Japan don’t have any idea that the dolphin slaughter is even happening. If we can spread the word around the world – and especially in Japan – we can expose the secret of Taiji and force the Japanese government to stop it. We can win this issue – but we need your help!

At the Cove in Taiji, the dolphin killing continues. Although the killing of bottlenose dolphins – the primary target species – has dramatically decreased compared to previous seasons, they, along with other dolphin species, including many pilot whales and Risso’s dolphins, continue to be captured for aquariums and slaughtered for meat by the Taiji fishermen. The fight for the protection of all marine mammals goes on. For updates on the situation, visit our site: http://www.savejapandolphins.org/
09/08/2010

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Quantifying Nature into Economic Values

If the World’s share prices were to suddenly drop, what do you think would be the response? Massive bail outs and immediate recovery tactics. Something we have all recently witnessed with the Global recession.

How many realize that economies are linked to heathly systems and biodiversity? I’m talking about the whole picture here – forests, oceans, fertile floodplains, water catchment basins, farming practices, and all the myriad fauna and flora that we so regularly make use of. When quanitfying these aspects of biodiversity into monetary value, one soon realizes how precarious the situation can be – when a system collapses, it has the potential to affect a lot of people…worldwide. Water and its quality will become important to many nations in the coming years – its current management is quite likely one of the most important issues we should be addressing…but who really considers this when flushing the toilet or running a bath? 10/05/2010

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Vaccinating Mosquito’s?

Recent work on altering a mosquito’s ability to spread malaria has come up with an ingenious new approach.

This new approach, the most radical yet, targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito. Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites.

Each year malaria claims between one and two million lives around the world, mostly of African children. 19/03/2010

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I am sometimes amazed at how humanity ignores the ingenuity of nature – how we as a species can learn to copy and better natures’ technologies for our greater benefit. Too often though we simply take from nature without first seeing whether it would be better to learn more about it, then sustainably harvest and manage such elements.

For example, the spider has a wondeful technology which scientists are looking to copy and enhance for our use. It’s silk web. Using a unique crystal, spiders are able to create an extremely versatile substance with strength and pliability (bendable/stretchable).

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, US, studied the fundamental properties of spider silk using computer models to simulate its structure. And found the silk is made from proteins including some that form thin flat crystals called beta-sheets. This nanotechnology allows the web to withstand greater pressures than something else of the same quality and thickness.  The researchers found that the size of the crystals was critical. When they measured about three nanometres (three millionths of a millimetre) across they made the silk ultra-strong and ductile. But if the crystals grew to five nanometres the material became weak and brittle.

They believe in future it may be possible to copy spider ingenuity to create new classes of materials that are both incredibly flexible and strong out of cheap, ordinary elements. 15/03/2010

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Is our need for fish and chips on a friday evening worth losing pristine coral reefs that support a myriad of lifeforms?

Deep sea “bottom trawling” is causing untold damage to fragile reef ecosystems around the world, a leading expert has warned. Work by scientists involved in the Census of Marine Life (CoML) – a major worldwide project cataloguing life in the oceans – is now bringing to light the true extent of the destruction wrought by bottom trawling.

The heavy fishing nets, dragged along the sea bed on large rubber rollers smash and flatten coral outcrops or seamounts that provide vital refuge for fish and other marine species, Dr Jason Hall-Spencer said, a marine biologist from the University of Plymouth.

He went on to say: “Less than one per cent of the estimated 50,000 sensitive seamount habitats have ever been surveyed and our research visits have revealed pristine coral reefs and many species that are brand new to science. “However, over the past five years, these surveys have also worryingly revealed that all over the world, deep-sea habitats are suffering severe impacts from bottom trawling down to depths of 1,000 metres and more.” 20/02/2010

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Are South African Rhino’s under international threat from poaching syndicates? And is SANParks giving an equal response to this situation?

South Africa has lost hundreds of animals, including 13 black rhinos, over the past five years due to poaching, media reports have said. Quoting official figures, Environment minister Buyelwa Sonjica said of the 253 animals killed between 2005 and 2009, 114 were killed in national parks.

Is National Parks really matching like for like in the war on poaching. How many patrols are there to keep an eye on these animals. It seems the response by SANParks is one of “sustainable use”. It’s a rather sweeping statement to cover up for a lack of management, and essentially a lack of what SANParks is supposed to uphold.

Poachers usually shoot rhinos for their distinctive horn which is hacked off and sold for medicinal or ornamental use at huge profits. SA police and parks authorities believe that the horns from the rhinos are sold to Asian markets for $1 820 to $2 530 per kilogramme.

Much of the capital generated within the SANParks structure comes from tourism. When tourism is impacted by reduced populations of animals and potential encounters with poachers, tourism will be directly impacted. The whole aim of conservation is the long-term protection of species and habitat. 17/02/2010

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Here’s some advice stemming from the unusual case of a man who had spider hairs stuck in his cornea. In February of 2009, a man turned up at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds after three weeks of stinging pain in one eye, which had become red, watery and light-sensitive.

Doctors prescribed antibiotics, assuming he was afflicted with a particularly stubborn case of conjunctivitis, but the treatment did not relieve the symptoms. Three weeks earlier he had been cleaning a stubborn stain on the glass tank of his pet, a Chilean Rose tarantula.
When they re-examined the patient with high-magnification lenses, doctors spotted ultra-thin, hair-like projections sticking into the cornea. They were so small that even microforceps could not remove them. As a defence mechanism against potential predators, a tarantula will rub its hind legs against its abdomen to dislodge special hairs from the back of its body. Multiple barbs allow the hairs to migrate through ocular tissue as well as other surfaces.
Treatment with topical steroids largely cleared his symptoms. 01/01/2010

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Britain’s love of bird tables may be interfering with evolution, according to a new study which suggests birdfeeders are changing the migratory habits and even the shape of some bird species.

One type of warbler known as the Blackcap is increasingly wintering in England instead of the Mediterranean after being drawn here by the abundance of food in gardens, the researchers claim.

The ‘English’ blackcaps have developed longer, narrower beaks better suited to the bread and nuts commonly served up on British bird tables than to the olives they would dine on in Spain.

The evolutionary change appears to have occurred over just a few decades, according to the study.

The breakaway group of birds, who still summer and breed in Germany, now account for more than 10 per cent of the whole Blackcap population.

Eventually the “innocent human activity” of feeding birds, a particularly popular British pasttime, could lead to a whole new species of bird, the scientists believe. 05/12/2009

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Not something you see everyday – let alone capture it on camera. But Michael Parrish of Chicago, USA managed to capture this stunning photo in a nature reserve of a very protective little Kingbird actually sitting on the Red-tailed hawk pecking it’s head to push the predator away from its nest and young. 31/10/2009

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Vegetarian Spiders?

What a wonderful world we live in …even the spiders are going vegetarian! Here you can see on the top of the acacia leaf a spider, (Bagheera kiplingi) caught between the urge to nibble the new leaf tips of an acacia tree in Central America, and the army of ants who vigorously defend their patch.

These particular ants have co-evolved to live in a mutually beneficial relationship with the acacia trees. The aggressive ants protect the trees from predators, swarming to attack any invaders; and in return for acting as protectors, the ants get to feast on the acacias’ Beltian bodies (a structure found on leaf tips rich in lipids and proteins).

It is thought the spider supplements its diet with these beltian bodies, when typical protein sources such as flies aren’t caught. 13/10/2009

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