Biodiversity in Peril
Tue Aug 05, 2008 at 10:10:43 AM PDT
Death by 1000 cuts. I always mean to write about science and nature topics, but too often put it off. Today, I'm gonna throw a few stories together. The full court press is on for offshore oil drilling, as if there were no global warming. But on Canada's Baffin Island, the Auyuittuq Arctic Park is closed. In a bit of sardonic irony, its name translates to English as The Land that Never Melts:
Most visitors enter the park via the Akshayuk Pass, a traditional travel corridor used by the Inuit for thousands of years. Now the pass has been closed as the glacier moraine that blocks Crater Lake from spilling into the pass is severely eroded, Ms Scott says, and threatens to create a flash flood.
And, too, nearly half the world's primate species now face extinction.
T. Boone Pickens says we can't drill our way out of the current mess, except he does pin many/most of his hopes on natural gas (plus nukes), so he's still going for non-renewable resources to a large degree. At any rate, no one asks him about global warming/climate change, which seems to be drummed out of the discourse entirely in the latest full-court press for offshore drilling.
Anyhow, back to Canada's far north. A bunch of hikers had to be rescued by helicopter after record heat in June led to melting, erosion and loss of trails:
A combination of melting permafrost and erosion means part of the park will remain shut until geologists can examine the damage.
ENDANGERED PRIMATES
IUCN primate group reports that 48% of all primate species are endangered. Especially in Asia. The main problem is (no surprise) destruction of habitat. But increasingly, hunting of primates for food is to blame. This is the kind of thing that can help ugly new diseases emerge. The highest percentages of endangered primate species are as follows:
- Cambodia - 90%
- Vietnam - 86%
- Indonesia - 84%
- Laos - 83%
- China - 79%
NEW DISCOVERIES
Some cool new stuff has been discovered lately, which also tosses up the question: What are profligate humans destroying that we don't even know about yet?
Scientists from Penn State found a tiny endemic snake, smallest of the world's 3,100 known species, in a fragment of remnant forest in Barbados.
But with 95% of the island of Barbados now treeless, and the few fragments of forest seriously threatened, this new species of snake might become extinct only months after it was discovered.
Also, a new species of vampire catfish (video link) has been discovered in the South American rainforest in Guyana, along with several other previously unknown species. Part of a BBC documentary expedition in search of the rare, elusive South American Jaguar. The expedition recorded the world's largest snake, the anaconda. And more:
Dr McGavin's highlight, however, was holding the Goliath spider. "It was quite a thrill, luring this spider, the size of a soup plate, out of its hole and holding it. Although I can see that this wouldn't be everyone's idea of fun," he laughed.
THOREAU's WALDEN PLANTS
From Thoreau's Walden Pond:
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape.
The writer/philosopher who marched to a different drum took a detailed census of plant life around Walden Pond, and someone else did so again about 100 years ago. So this is an extraordinary historical archive to compare and contrast with today's vegetation. Reported in a recent issue of Science (subscription required for all but intro paragraph):
By building a flora family tree that incorporates the "Thoreau" species and mapping onto the tree each plant's response to the 2°C increase in the region's average temperature since the famed author was at Walden Pond, the researchers have discovered that climate change has placed whole groups of plants at risk and that the more charismatic wildflowers that prompt conservation efforts, such as orchids, are among the most vulnerable.
Turns out that certain groups of plants were more affected than others. In particular, those that flowered based more on temperature did better, overall, than those more hard-wired to day length (photoperiod):
Wildflowers with more northern ranges proved the least flexible. Thus irises, orchids, lilies, and bladderworts were among the plants that had declined the most--they tended to flower the same time of year, regardless of the weather. "That climate change is affecting whole sets of species differently is intrinsically interesting," says Horvitz.
Not mentioned in the article is the problems associated with migratory pollinators. Even if a plant adjusts its growth and flowering to temperature, it might not have the right pollinators there at the right time.
We definitely cannot drill our way out of this problem. Cutting back on fossil carbon is necessary. No weaseling around that one.
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