mabelmoments:

A gecko licks the morning dew off its eyeballs. This gecko is found on coastal sand dunes in Namibia. The nocturnal reptiles collect water on their eyeballs in the early morning when a mist bank descends as cool coastal air hits warm desert air. Then they lick it off to have a drink. It took photographer Isak Pretorius three days in to get the licking picture, following gecko tracks across the dunes through the mist. Picture: Isak Pretorius / National News and Pictures

iWild is Back!

Apologies for the prolonged absence:  We were off chuntering about biodiversity in foreign lands and what not.  But now we’re back, and there’s lots to catch up on:

• Some good news from the Serengeti!  After a recent visit from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Tanzania announced that it would give up plans to build a road across the Serengeti.  But the group that sounded the alarm, Serengeti Watch, approaches the news with caution:  “Our interpretation - A battle has been won, but the struggle to save the Serengeti goes on. Roads will still be constructed up to the edges of the park. The pressures on the Serengeti, including a commercial corridor to Uganda, still exist. The highway across the Serengeti has been proposed three times now, and can be raised again.  But yes, let’s congratulate ourselves on the work we’ve done.“ 
  
• Terrifying news from the IUCN Red List:  More than 19,000 species are heading to extinction, according to the latest data.  That’s up from 11,000 a decade ago.  The Economist lays it out.
• Ocean ecosystems continue their precipitous slide, according to the latest report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, citing a “deadly trio of factors”:  warming, acidification, and anoxia (low oxygen levels).  Videos here.
• Al Gore takes the lazy-ass media and the Obama administration to the woodshed re inaction on climate change in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.  I’m getting emails every week now from Barack, asking me to donate $375 for a chance to have dinner with him and from Michelle, trying to sell me t-shirts.  Hey guys, I still love you, but I don’t want dinner, and I don’t want a t-shirt.  I’m with Al:  I want you to get on it.

More soon.

This Endangered Species Day

—give a dog a break.  If you live in New Mexico, speak to your congressman or senator and urge them to support the Mexican Gray Wolf reintroduction program.  If you live in the Rocky Mountain west, let your politicians know that the Endangered Species Act is important to you and that wolves belong in the wild.  Empty forests—forests without top predators—are dead forests, biologically, aesthetically, economically. 

And if you live in Idaho, give some serious thought to electing a new governor and new representatives in Washington.  You and your wolves deserve better.

Writer’s Voice with Francesca Rheannon

Francesca Rheannon of Writer’s Voice interviews Caroline Fraser:  Available streaming online or via free podcast.  We talk about rewilding, the de-listing of the gray wolf in the northern Rockies, and more.

Photo: Tracy Brooks

Biodiversity and Endangered Species:  Rethinking the Balance of Nature

Everyone interested in biodiversity issues is welcome at a symposium to be held at Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam College, 6 May 2011, 2-6pm.  Speakers will include Mike Rand, of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Mark Blaxter, Ben Collen, and Caroline Fraser.  Or follow on Twitter:  #scisoc.

SUPERHERO TORTOISES STEP IN TO SAVE ISLAND

The rewilding world is agog with news that giant Aldabra tortoises are performing miraculous acts of ecological restoration, bringing a near-extinct tree species back to life.  Introduced from the Seychelles Islands to the Ile aux Aigrettes (near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean), the bulky behemoths stepped into the role once filled by a extinct tortoise species, aiding the ebonies by dispersing their seeds and kindly passing them through their guts for added germinatory goodness. 

Christine Griffiths, an author of the Current Biology study, “Resurrecting Extinct Interactions with Extant Substitutes,” that documented the regeneration of ebony seedlings, argues that, “Reversible rewilding experiments such as ours are necessary to investigate whether extinct interactions can be restored.”  What’s next?  Mexican gray wolves?

Treehugger offers a great write-up, while Science Daily calls it ” the first empirical evidence that rewilding can work.”

Photo: timparkinson / cc

Happy Day, Earth

And sorry about the extinctions, top-less mountains, and 3-legged frogs.  Our bad.

Report from Santa Fe

Lorene Mills, host of “Report from Santa Fe,” a long-running public affairs show that airs throughout New Mexico, interviews Caroline Fraser, author of Rewilding the World.  The conversation ranges from rewilding efforts around the world to local conflicts over the Mexican gray wolf.  See it April 14-16 on these stations or visit the Report from Santa Fe website for archived video:

KNME-TV/Channel 5,
Sunday mornings, 7:30am &
Friday nights, 10:30pm
Santa Fe/Albuquerque, NM

KRWG/Channel 22,
Sunday mornings, 7:00am
Las Cruces, NM

KENW/Channel 3,
Saturday afternoon, 6pm
Portales, NM

Remembering Church Rock

From the New Mexico Environmental Law Center:

“’The largest release of radioactive waste occurred right down the road from me. To this day, this dangerous contamination has not been adequately addressed.’  Larry J. King, Churchrock resident, before the U.S. House of Representatives, October 23, 2007”

“CHURCH ROCK, NM —The Church Rock Spill occurred when an earthen tailings dam at the UNC Church Rock Uranium Mill failed on the morning of July 16, 1979. The mill’s radioactive fluids spilled into the Puerco River in New Mexico and traveled downstream to Chambers, Ariz. More radiation was released in the spill than in the Three Mile Island reactor accident, which occurred in March of that same year, and the spill ranks second only to the 1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown in the amount of radiation released. The spill, combined with more than 20 years of discharges of untreated and poorly treated uranium mine water, has contributed to long-term contamination of the Puerco River in New Mexico and Arizona.”—read more at the NM Environmental Law Center website.

Hear more about this story at a KSFR Radio podcast.

motherjones:

Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri weeps as Japanese officials finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people.

Japan’s Once-Powerful
Nuclear Industry is Under Siege

The disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant has highlighted the importance of nuclear energy to Japan and the power long wielded by the nuclear sector. But that influence now is sure to wane, to the relief of opponents who have fought for years to check nuclear’s rapid growth.

My report at Yale Environment 360 on Japanese activists’ long battle against one nuclear power plant, slated to be built on landfill in a national park.

“Protections for Wildlife are Pretty Weak”

That’s the word on the USDA Forest Service’s new draft planning rule on forests, dubbed a rule for the “21st Century” since the last one dates back to 1982 and the Reagan administration.  Open for public comment until May 16, the proposal has been praised for emphasizing ecological restoration and a landscape-scale approach to issues such as fire management.  Wally Covington, a forestry professor at Northern Arizona University and director of its Ecological Restoration Institute, told April Reese of Greenwire:  “At large landscape levels, you can really make a difference in unnatural fire and unnatural insect outbreaks.”

But Reese also reports that conservationists are dismayed that the rule fails to require “viable populations” of key species.  Jane Danowitz, public lands director for the Pew Environment Group, said:  “There are some good aspects to the rule, but when it comes to…key protections [for] wildlife and watersheds, they’re not strong and they tend to be left up to the discretion” of individual managers.

As with the Interior Department’s shortsighted decisions on wildlife protections, the proposed rule reflects federal agencies’ capture by industry and their inability to grapple with the fact that forest management and species management are inextricably linked.  Empty forests are dead forests.

Photo:  USFS