13 nations meet to try to save wild tigers
Barney Long, the head of the WWF U.S. Tiger Program said the scale of the summit is "almost solely down to Putin. It is he who is reaching out, turning this from technical meetings into a real political event."
"It's not often that heads of government do get involved to this degree," said Sabri Zain of TRAFFIC, an organization trying to halt illegal trafficking and poaching.
Putin will be joined in St. Petersburg, Russia, by the leaders of the last remaining countries where tigers exist in the wild, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam. That is less than 7 percent of their historic range.
Wild tiger populations
Bangladesh 440
Bhutan 75
Cambodia 20
China 45
India 1,411
Indonesia 325
Laos 17
Malaysia 500
Myanmar 85
Nepal 155
Russia 400
Thailand 200
Vietnam 10
Source: WWF estimates "Russia is well placed to host the summit. They are already a leader in terms of taking steps to try and save their own species. The Siberian tiger is one of few success stories," Zain said.
Russia's far east is now home to roughly 400 Siberian tigers, accounting for 9 percent of wild tigers in the world.
And conservation experts agree, the world needs to know that Russia's conservation formula -- strict legislation targeting poaching and illegal trade in tiger parts -- can find success elsewhere.
But Russia too must remain vigilant, experts say. It has recently come under fire for relaxing patrol efforts against poachers.
"We know how to save tigers. What we don't know how to do is keep the political will and financial support going. We can get a large scale reaction when a population is at the brink, but when recovery starts the pressure comes off," said the WWF's Long.
India, too, has had some success in recovering wild tiger populations. A recent TRAFFIC report credits India with the most seizures of illegal tiger parts in the past decade, representing up to 533 animals poached, but numbers are increasing.
"In Russia and also southwest India we have seen that with a clear focused effort there is solid evidence of tiger numbers going up," said Steven Sanderson, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/19/tiger.summit/index.html
An invitation to go and see the Scottish beaver re-introduction
Picture the scene: it's a cool autumn night in Knapdale Forest and the skies have just turned to a hazy dusk, marking the time for beavers to begin emerging from their lodges.
These are the first wild beavers to inhabit Scotland in over 400 years and field staff of the Scottish Beaver Trial are watching the beavers very closely. By tracking the beavers' activities in the wild, the trial aims to determine the impact bringing back beavers could have on Scotland's landscapes and whether a beaver population could once again thrive here. The results of this trial could, in fact, determine the future of beavers in Scotland.
So that's why I'm here, sitting in a canoe looking across a picturesque Scottish loch for signs of movement.
Suddenly, with a splash and a tail slap, a beaver announces its presence beside me. Quickly, I turn to find a kit, newly born this spring and one of the first to be born in Scotland as part of the trial. It zooms off, already a swimming pro and moving much faster than the parents it's now trying to find. I watch, from a distance, as the beaver family goes about its business, visiting their regular feeding stations where they fell small trees and feed on the bark
Beavers have now been resident in Knapdale Forest for 18 months, with two of our established beaver family groups breeding this summer. In total we have four pairs which have all now established territories and built lodges, and sometimes even dams. With positive signs that our beaver population is beginning to settle, we hope to see some of our younger beavers, which still currently live in their family groups, disperse next year to find new mates and form new families.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/natureuk/2010/11/an-invitation-to-go-and-see-th.shtm
Thousands of dead jellyfish on Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach shimmered more than usual this weekend.
Not from the natural beauty of sand, surf and sea, but from a great slick of dead jellyfish that mysteriously washed ashore near Pacheco Street.
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Jellyfish that washed up on the south side of Ocean Beach on Friday dry up in the sun. |
More than 10,000 of the gooey invertebrates, each about the size of a dinner plate, drifted onto the beach Friday evening. By Sunday, they had attracted hordes of the curious, the repulsed and the fascinated.
Kids stomped them. Dogs rolled in them. Surfers tossed them at each other. Some people tiptoed fearfully around them, while others pressed in with cameras for close-ups.
"I first saw it and thought, am I hallucinating?" said Nan Madden of San Francisco as she walked her yellow Labrador through the slimy swath Sunday morning. "I've never seen anything like it. I sent pictures to my grandkids."
It's not the first time that thousands of the brainless, heartless, headless critters have drifted onto Ocean Beach. In 2004, the shoreline was visited by thousands of a type of smaller jellyfish known as by-the-wind sailors.
- Brazilians catlike in risk of extinction
The two biggest catlike in Brazil are in risk of the extinction, the Jaguar and the Mountain Lion are the two biggest wild cats from the Brazilian fauna.
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Those cats can disappear because the destruction of the forests and the illegal hunting, to take his skin, and sells on the illegal market.The Jaguar appears in North America, in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, and all the South America. It’s the biggest wild cat in the American Continent, here in Brazil it lives in the wet forests next to the rivers. Have nocturnal habits, it is solitary, kills jumping on the back of his haste.
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And the Mountain Lion lives in North, Central and South America, living in forests and mountains. Have nocturnal habits, it is solitary, and eats small animas like birds.
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http://documentario-fortesmotivos.blogspot.com/
- The texts show a formal language, and shows reliable. I think that that this kind of text must be published to shows to the people what the man is doing with the nature, and try to change.
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