The Albuquerque BioPark will host a lecture,
“Preserving Jaguars in their Northernmost Homeland,”
on Tuesday, September 25, from 5:30-7:00pm in the
Aquarium/Botanic Garden Education Building. This presentation,
given by Dr. Peter Warshall of the Northern Jaguar Project, will
focus on the ecology of the Northern Jaguar Reserve in Sonora,
Mexico.  This preserve is home to the population of jaguars
which have been recorded entering southern New Mexico and
Arizona.

There is no charge for this event.  Light refreshments
will be served. 

Nestled in one of North America’s most ecologically
unique areas, the Northern Jaguar Reserve is home to ocelots,
neotropical river otters, military macaws, bald eagles, and the
northernmost breeding population of jaguars on the planet. 
Once completed, this 70-square-mile sanctuary will incorporate
the area with the highest numbers of jaguar sightings in
northeastern Sonora.  Come learn about the migratory bird
life, endangered fish species, and unique plant complexes of
this ecological treasure – and how you can get directly
involved.

For more information, call BioPark Education at
764-6245.  For general BioPark inquiries, please call 311
(NM Relay or 711). [mjh: from nmwild.org]

188 More Species Listed as Near Extinction – washingtonpost.com

188 More Species Listed as Near Extinction

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 13, 2007; Page A10

Habitat loss, climate change and infectious diseases are pushing a growing number of species toward extinction, according to a report yesterday by the World Conservation Union.

The organization’s 2007 “Red List,” the most sweeping annual scientific assessment of the world’s animals and plants, now lists 16,306 species as threatened with extinction, up from 16,118 last year. The addition of nearly 200 imperiled species to the list reflects the reality that the more scientists learn about the status of the world’s millions of species, the more they find that appear to be in trouble, experts said….

Great apes are under increasing pressure from both hunting and disease,
the report said, their numbers decimated by the bush-meat trade and by
the Ebola virus. The Western gorilla population has declined more than
60 percent over the past 25 years and is now considered critically
endangered; during the past 15 years, roughly one-third of gorillas
that died in protected areas fell prey to the lethal virus.

Between 2003 and 2005, 55 percent of the Western gorillas in the Congo Republic’s Odzala National Park died of the virus.

Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions – washingtonpost.com

Around the world, scientists have found that climate change is
altering natural ecosystems, making profound changes in the ways that
animals live, migrate, eat and grow. Some species have benefited from
the shift. Others have been left disastrously out of sync with their
food supply. Two are known to have simply disappeared.

If warming continues as predicted, scientists say, 20 percent or more
of the planet’s plant and animal species could be at increased risk of
extinction. But, as the shrinking habitat at Blackwater shows, the bad
news isn’t all in the out years: Some changes have already begun. “This
is actually something we see from pole to pole, and from sea level to
the highest mountains in the world,” said Lara Hansen, chief climate
change scientist at the World Wildlife Fund,
a private research and advocacy group. “It is not something we’re going
to see in the future. It’s something we see right now.”

The temperature increase behind these changes sounds slight. The world
has been getting warmer by 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit every decade, a U.N. panel found this year, in part because of carbon dioxide and other human-generated gases that trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere.

By nature’s clock, the warming has come in an instant. The mechanisms
that helped animals adapt during previous warming spells — evolution
or long-range migration — often aren’t able to keep up. Scientists say
that effects are beginning to show from the Arctic to the Appalachian Mountains. One study, which examined 1,598 plant and animal species, found that nearly 60 percent appeared to have changed in some way.

“Even when animals don’t go extinct, we’re affecting them. They’re
going to be different than they were before,” said David Skelly, a Yale University
professor who has tracked frogs’ ability to react to increasing warmth.
“The fact that we’re doing a giant evolutionary experiment should not
be comforting,” he said.

Warming May Be Hurting Gray Whales’ Recovery By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

As many as 118,000 gray whales roamed the Pacific before humans decimated the population through hunting, and human-induced climate change may now be depriving those that remain of the food they need, according to a study released yesterday.

The research, based on a detailed analysis of DNA taken from gray whales living in the eastern Pacific, highlights how human behavior has transformed the oceans, the scientists said.

Today there are only about 22,000 Pacific gray whales, including about 100 in the western Pacific. …

Federal officials took eastern Pacific gray whales off the endangered species list in the mid-1990s, but a rise in sea temperatures appears to have limited the whales’ available food. A recent spike in deaths among gray whales may suggest “this decline was due to shifting climatic conditions on Arctic feeding grounds,” the researchers wrote in the paper, being published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“There definitely are large-scale ecosystem effects going on,” said Stanford doctoral student S. Elizabeth Alter, the lead author, in an interview yesterday. …

The decline in gray whales has affected the ocean in a variety of ways, according to the researchers. Because the animals feed on the ocean bottom by sucking in and expelling sediment that contains shrimplike creatures called amphipods, the scientists wrote, historic populations may have redistributed enough sediment to feed a million seabirds.

Aboriginal tribes are currently allowed to kill as many as 125 eastern Pacific gray whales a year under International Whaling Commission rules, though this practice has sparked controversy. In light of the new data suggesting that the whales’ numbers were more depleted than was previously known, international officials need to reconsider the amount of gray whale hunting they currently allow, the researchers said. …

[I]f humans are affecting the ocean’s “capacity to support life, it’s got to make you worry, it’s got to make your wonder.”
– – – – –

Hunter not ashamed of killing whale without a permit By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times staff reporter

Around 9:30, the crew saw another whale. This one, about 40 feet long, surfaced and came to the two boats.

“It chose us,” Johnson said.

Into the animal’s flesh, crew members plunged at least five stainless-steel whaling harpoons and four seal harpoons “so we wouldn’t lose it,” Johnson said. They then shot the whale with a gun powerful enough to fire a slug four miles.

The former captain of the whaling crew that in 1999 took the Makah tribe’s first whale in 70 years, Johnson confirmed that the hunt that shocked his own tribe and anti-whaling activists Saturday was carried out without the permission of his Tribal Council or Whaling Commission. …

“I’m not ashamed. I’m feeling kind of proud. … There is only a few guys in Neah Bay that can get a whale and bring everyone home safely. You think one of the only whaling captains in 77 years could give it up? I should have done it years ago. I come from a whaling family … It’s in the blood.”

The tribe needs to whale to keep its culture alive, Johnson said. “The time is now, when the people are still interested. And the whales are robust.“

Polar bear population seen declining, By JOHN HEILPRIN – Associated Press Writer

Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be killed off by 2050 – and the entire population gone from Alaska – because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world’s 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will disappear along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia and lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed. A polar bear’s life usually lasts about 30 years.

“Projected changes in future sea ice conditions, if realized, will result in loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century,” the report says. …

Polar bears have walked the planet for at least 40,000 years.

http://www.centredaily.com/news/politics/story/200554.html

NOAA Scientists Say Arctic Ice Is Melting Faster Than Expected, By Doug Struck, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals, according to government researchers.

The Arctic sea ice will retreat hundreds of miles farther from the coast of Alaska in the summer, the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded. That will open up vast waters for fishermen and give easier access to new areas for oil and gas exploration. It is also likely to mean an upheaval in species, bringing new predators to warmer waters and endangering those that depend on ice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602499.html?wpisrc=newsletter

[via nmwild.org]
A New Way to Help Mexican Wolves

One of the ongoing battles for Mexican
Wolves is convincing the politicians and agencies that people
want to see wolves, and convincing reluctant locals that wolf
tourism really can help the economy.
Now, there’s an
easy way to bring home this message.  The New
Mexico Department of Game and Fish is offering an opportunity to
go out with their wolf biologist, Ellen Heilhecker, as
she monitors Mexican wolves in the Gila National
Forest.   They will use a lottery system to decide who
gets to go – and that’s the
opportunity!  We want them to be amazed when 1000
people sign up for the chance. 

Please help us reach this goal – even if you
don’t plan to go looking for lobos.  And if you do
win, the cost is $74. Just applying will cost you $6, but
believe me that 2-lattes-worth will send a great message about
wolves.  And if you do win, you will get to learn how
NMDG&F uses radio telemetry equipment, GPS units, and
digital trail cameras in keeping track of approximately 15
collared lobos currently in the wild in the state.

Please go to  www.wildlife.state.nm.us
and click on the “Wildlife Adventures” sheep photo at the top of
the page. The sign-up process is complicated, and it appears you
take pot luck on dates, but this is a really cool deal. The
three dates for the adventures are 9/23, 10/13, and 10/20. 
Good Luck!

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