Tiny animal halts billion dollar mine

EXTINCTION THREAT

Tiny animal halts billion dollar mine

Michael Perry

Sydney: A blind spider-like animal has stopped development of a multi-billion-dollar iron ore mine in Australia. This is after an environmental body rejected the project fearing that the tiny cavedweller would become extinct.

Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) rejected the proposal by Robe River — a unit of mining giant Rio Tinto — to develop the iron ore mine near Pannawonica in the Pilbara region after the company unearthed troglobites there, which measure just 4 millimetres (0.16 in) in length.

A troglobite is an animal that lives only in the dark parts of caves. It has adapted to life in total darkness and may have no eyes or pigmentation, using feelers to explore its way through the dark.

Troglobites are unable to live outside their pitch-dark world due to risk of death from exposure to ultraviolet light. Even short term exposures to sunlight can be fatal.

“Extensive research and sampling conducted by the proponent has identified a number of new species of troglobitic fauna,” EPA chairman Wally Cox said. An EPA report into the project found 11 species of troglobites in the area and said mining would extinguish at least five of them. The EPA judged that a proposed mining exclusion zone at the site would be inadequate to protect the tiny animal or aboriginal heritage in the area. “There is also concern over the long term structural stability of the landform post-mining,” said the EPA report. Rio Tinto said it would appeal against the decision. “It is a significant project, so we will appeal,” a spokesman said, adding, “This decision is a part of being in the mining business. We support the EPA process in general.”

Robe River already mines iron ore in nearby areas in the Robe River Valley. It currently produces 32 million tonnes per annum of ore, but the existing deposit will be exhausted by 2010. The new iron ore mine, with an expected life of 10 years, is planned as a replacement mine and is predicted to produce 220 million tonnes.

REUTERS

Chernobyl-based birds avoid radioactive nests

Chernobyl-based birds avoid radioactive nests



00:01 28 March 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic






The nest boxes were all in the Red Forest, a few kilometres from Chernobyl’s reactor 4 which exploded in 1986 .





The nest boxes were mounted on trees, between 1.5 m and 2 m above the ground. Pied flycatchers (B) were more picky about avoiding nest boxes with higher levels of background radioactivity than great tits (A) .




Birds in Chernobyl choose to nest in sites with lower levels of background radioactivity, researchers discover, but how they can tell remains a mystery.



Anders Møller at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France, and Tim Mousseau at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, US, erected more than 200 nest boxes in the Red Forest, about 3 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor that exploded in 1986.



Using these artificial nests, they studied at the nesting habits of two species of birds – the great tit Parus major and the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca – between 2002 and 2003.



Moller and Mousseau wanted to see if either species would differentiate between nesting sites that had high and low levels of background radioactivity. The patchy distribution of background radioactivity in the area (due to the fact that radioactive material from the explosion did not settle uniformly) meant the nest boxes could be in very similar locations, with similar food supplies, but have widely varying levels of background radioactivity. Levels at some nest sites were as much as 2000 times natural levels elsewhere in the world.



Deformed sperm



The researchers found that both species had a definite preference for nest boxes with low radioactivity, with the pied flycatcher seemingly more sensitive than the great tit (see chart, bottom right).



Previous research done by Mousseau and colleagues (Trends in Ecology and Evolution, DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2006.01.008) showed that higher radioactivity results in lower levels of antioxidants and also deformed sperm in barn swallows around Chernobyl. It therefore makes sense for birds to avoid more radioactive sites.



"It is not entirely clear exactly how the birds are able to tell which boxes are most contaminated", says Mousseau, adding that determining this will be very difficult without experimental manipulations.



Wildlife boom



A spokesperson for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds told New Scientist that the study is interesting, but points out the unexpected benefits of the Chernobyl explosion. Reports show that the large human exclusion zone around the site has led to a boom in animal populations, including eagles, wolves and bears.



"Whatever effect the radioactivity is having, it seems to be less of a threat than human activities, such as agriculture," said the spokesperson.



"There have been few rigorous scientific analyses of background radiation and the natural abundance of species," responds Mousseau. "But every rock we turn over, every survey we do, we find some previously unreported effect of background radiation."



Immigrant influx



Mousseau believes that the reports of sustained animal populations around Chernobyl mask fluctuations within the populations.



He says studies he has carried out looking at where the barn swallow populations in Chernobyl come from suggest that "the populations are mostly sustained by immigrant birds", rather than birds returning to their nesting sites as they normally would.



So an overall picture showing constant population size could hide the fact that the local population is dwindling but being constantly replenished by neighbouring ones.



Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society: B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0005)

Source URL: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11473?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn11473

Rare species spotted in JNU's biodiversity park

New Delhi, March. 25 (PTI): The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) here has of late got a strange occupant that is catching the attention of zoologists.

A palm civet, an endangered species more commonly known as 'musang', was first spotted in the campus by Surya Prakash of the varsity's Life Sciences Department.

Prakash, who spotted the species last Friday, said it was interesting to find the animal in the national capital.

"I spotted the animal during the day, though it is a nocturnal creature, but what is more interesting is to find it in Delhi. It's an endangered species and Delhi is not listed in the places where it is found," he told PTI.

According to the Wildlife Institute of India, the palm civet is found in parts of Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Assam and Andhra Pradesh.

"The JNU campus is full of fruit trees and has human habitation. This is the natural habitat for the palm civet and that could be the precise reason why it was found here," Prakash said.

Of late, the university has found a place in the capital's listed birding destinations. Its lush green campus is home to 125 species of birds and 40 species of butterflies.

Some rare species of birds that can be spotted there are Yellow Wattled Lapwing, Sirkeer Malkoha, Golden Oriole, Black Francolin, Alexandrine Parakeet, Plum Headed Parakeet, Yellow Crowned Woodpecker and Flameback White Capped Bunting Horned Owl.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200703251121.htm

Butterflies' migration to halt Taiwan's traffic

By The Associated Press



TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan will cordon off part of a highway to create a safe passage for a massive seasonal butterfly migration in the coming days, an official said Saturday.
The milkweed butterflies — which are indigenous to the island off China and have distinct white dots on purple-brown wings — migrate in late March from southern Taiwan to the north, where they lay eggs and die.




Milkweed butterflies migrate in late March from southern Taiwan to the north, where they lay eggs and die. Taiwanese officials are going to great lengths to ensure safe passage this year.

The young butterflies then fly south every November to a warm mountain valley near the southern city of Kaohsiung to escape the winter cold.



Conservationists say Taiwan has about 2 million milkweed butterflies.



To protect the migrating butterflies, a 600-yard stretch of highway in southern Taiwan's Yunlin County will be sealed off in the coming days as the migration peaks, said Lee Tai-ming, head of the National Freeway Bureau.



Authorities will set up nets to make the butterflies fly higher and avoid passing cars, Lee said.
He said they will also install ultraviolet lights to guide the insects across an overpass.
Taiwan began the laborious task of tracking down the butterflies' 180-mile migration paths in recent years.



Taiwan originally had more types of milkweed butterflies, but the largest became extinct decades ago when they were routinely caught and made into specimens for sale.



Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Sounds like Sci-Fi.... No! Its Nature's Wonder

Sea squirt fragment regenerates entire body

01:00 06 March 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Rowan Hooper

Salamanders have a cool trick if they lose their tail: they simply grow a new one. Yet they are some way off the top of the league when it comes to such running repairs. Some creatures can regenerate an entire body from mere fragments of the old one.

It was thought that only simple beasts such as jellyfish and sponges have this talent. Now sea squirts (Botrylloides leachi), the closest invertebrate relative to vertebrates, have been found to do it, too.

Inhabiting shallow coastal waters, sea squirts form colonies of genetically identical individuals. Ram Reshef and Yuval Rinkevich of the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and colleagues took fragments of blood vessels from the animals and watched under a microscope.

Out of 95 fragments they examined, 80 underwent whole body regeneration (WBR). Cells first grouped into hollow spheres, then cell layers in-folded and organs developed until after two weeks an adult sea squirt had grown, capable of sexual reproduction.

“To think that even one attached blood vessel survives storm damage and regenerates the entire colony,” says Reshef. “What an advantage this provides!”

In other animals, the signals that trigger WBR are transmitted from a central point, but in sea squirts they arise from multiple locations. Reshef suggests the discovery may help illuminate regeneration abilities that have been lost or suppressed in vertebrates.

Journal reference: PLoS Biology (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050071)

Source URL:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11311?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn11311