ROAD TO RUIN
Tanzania’s president Jakaya Kikwete continues to insist that his country will build a 34-mile highway across the Serengeti, against the advice of the World Bank, conservationists, scientists, and the tourism industry in his own country. Most biologists believe that the road will fragment and ultimately destroy the most critically-important, intact, and lucrative migratory wildlife corridor left on earth.
For more, visit Serengeti Watch or the Facebook page to Stop the Serengeti Highway.
BIG Rewilding News!
From Lewa Wildlife Conservancy comes news that a bold and enterprising pachyderm named Tony has made rewilding history in Kenya. On the night of January 1, 2011, Tony took charge, leading several young males through the new elephant underpass on the Cape-to-Cairo highway, opened only four days earlier. His act of bravery has effectively re-forged a long-blocked link between the Samburu elephant population (of around 7,500) and those living on Mt. Kenya (around 2,000).
The 15-foot-high tunnel, brainchild of the Kenya Wildlife Service, will be closely monitored in coming days, as Save the Elephants follows Tony and his friends, now sporting radio collars. Built with $1 million in donations, including a quarter of a million from Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson, the underpass may breathe new life into this crucial Mt. Kenya wildlife corridor.
Congratulations, Tony, and thanks to everyone in Kenya who made this happen!
Photo of young elephant at Lewa: Caroline Fraser
DON’T SQUASH ME!
Rewilding rules! The New York Times’ Matthew Wald reports on the winning design for a new wildlife crossing structure over I-70 at Colorado’s West Vail Pass, one that will allow lynx, bear, elk, cougar, and other species to ford that lethal highway. A video and report featuring the five finalists and the winner can be seen at ARC: International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition.
There’s also a great write-up and additional images at The Dirt, the blog of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Photo: ARC Project
Chief U.S. District Judge John M. Roll, 1947-2011
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which is based in Tucson, Arizona, sent out a moving tribute today to Judge John Roll, killed in Saturday’s shooting. Here are a few passages from the full statement, which can be seen at the Center’s website:
“The Center for Biological Diversity brought many environmental cases before Judge Roll. He was fair, thoughtful and interested. Sometimes humorous, sometimes tough, he had a knack for getting to the core of a case quickly and making attorneys focus on that core, whether they wanted to or not.
The Center didn’t win all our cases before him, but we always got a fair hearing. He epitomized the greatest value of the American legal system: the ability of a single, honest man or woman to ensure justice regardless of the weight of political and economic powers benefiting from injustice.
When jaguars once again roam the remote deserts and mountains of the Southwest, it will be because Judge Roll, in a landmark 2009 decision, had the foresight and assertiveness to overrule the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which had abandoned U.S. recovery efforts for North America’s largest cat. He struck down the agency’s refusal to prepare a federal recovery plan or designate and protect critical habitat areas north of the Mexican border. The agency is now in the process of developing a recovery plan and mapping out essential jaguar habitat in the United States.”
The End?
This is our last post in our year-long Endangered All-Stars series. (Of course, 365 should have come on December 31, but I goofed at the end of October and did only 30 for that month).
The problem continues, alas, so we’ll keep highlighting extinctions and threats to species as we go forward. But we’ll also be doing some reporting on other environmental issues. We hope to focus this year on New Mexico, iWild.org’s home, and bring you news of species close to our heart, including the not-as-beloved-as-it-deserves-to-be Gunnison’s Prairie Dog. Stay tuned.
BIG DIFFERENCES IN SMALL ELEPHANTS
Study of DNA has recently revealed that the forest elephant is a unique species that diverged from its bigger relative millions of years ago, around the same time that the Asian elephant and the woolly mammoth went their separate evolutionary ways. “The split between African savanna and forest elephants is almost as old as the split between humans and chimpanzees. This result amazed us all,” said Professor Michi Hofreiter, of the Department of Biology at York. Read more about this fascinating news at ScienceDaily.
This lovely, affecting, and heart-breaking short film, Lawrence Chen’s Little Things, won first prize in a TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) competition for films that communicate the value of nature.
At the TEEB website, Pavan Sukhdev describes the innovative work that TEEB is doing to incorporate the essential value and contributions of nature and biodiverstiy into our economic consciousness and practices:
We are fast coming to realise that we have been consuming natural resources at an alarming rate. The history of post-War economic growth has been one of unsustainable consumption: unsustainable for the planet’s ecosystems, for its species diversity and, indeed, for the human race. By some recent yardsticks of sustainability, our global ecological footprint has doubled over the last 40 years to the point that, if the whole human population consumed at this rate, we would need 4-5 planet Earths just to keep up, just to sustain us.
By and large, we in the developed world seem to have disconnected ourselves from Nature and are struggling to find the “value of Nature.” Take a look around: nature is the source of much value to us every day – this can be spiritually, culturally, health-wise or economically; and yet the benefits we receive from Nature mostly bypass markets, escape pricing and defy valuation. The lack of valuation has become an underlying cause for the observed degradation of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity.
With this in mind, our study on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity is compiling, building and making a compelling economics case for the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity. The study is drawing on expertise from around the world to evaluate the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the associated decline in ecosystem services worldwide, and to compare them with the costs of effective conservation and sustainable use. The intent of the study is to sharpen awareness of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services and facilitate the development of effective policy, as well as engaged business and citizen responses.We have the opportunity to reframe economics and policy for the 21st Century. I hope you will join us on this journey.
Pavan Sukhdev, Study Leader
How Many More Christmases?
Good news: Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Emperor Penguin, is still listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
Bad news: It probably won’t stay that way. A study last year from the National Academy of Sciences predicted that 95% of Emperors may be lost by 2100 due to climate change, leaving perhaps 600 breeding pairs in the wild. Adelie penguins are already showing the strain, with many populations in the Antarctic Peninsula—an area that has seen significant warming already—dwindling and disappearing. For more on Adelie research, see Fen Montaigne’s excellent Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica.
