Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Dispatches

2013; Wiley; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1890/1540-9295-11.1.4

1540-9309

ESA,

Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

More illegal ivory – an estimated 39 809 kg – was seized in 2011 than in any year since reporting to The Elephant Trade Information System began in 1989, according to a report by the non-governmental organization TRAFFIC International (The Elephant Trade Information System [ETIS] and the Illicit Trade in Ivory: A Report to the 16th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora]; http://cites.org/eng/cop/16/doc/ECoP16-53-02-02.pdf). The haul builds on 26 000 kg captured in 2010 and nearly 33 000 kg in 2009, already far bigger caches than those recorded for previous years. “The preponderance of increasingly large movements of illegal ivory is the hallmark of organized crime”, explains Tom Milliken (Harare, Zimbabwe), an author of the report. “Asian-run, African-based crime syndicates are driving the most serious threat to elephant conservation since 1989, when the CITES ivory trading ban was imposed.” Seized shipment of illegal African elephant (Loxodonta africana) tusks in Thailand. The report identifies China and Thailand as the major importers of illegal ivory, Kenya and Tanzania as countries through which it commonly leaves Africa, and Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong as major steps on the transit route. It also concludes that the Action Plan for the Control of Trade in African Elephant Ivory, adopted by the parties to CITES in 2005, has had little success in curtailing the trade. In a statement made to the press, John Scanlon, Secretary General of CITES (Geneva, Switzerland), insisted, “We need to enhance our collective efforts across range, transit, and consumer states to reverse the current disturbing trends in elephant poaching and ivory smuggling. While being essential, enforcement efforts to stop wildlife crime must not just result in seizures – they must result in prosecutions, convictions, and strong penalties to stop the flow of contraband. The whole enforcement chain must work together.” In December, part of that chain received a boost in Cameroon, where some 600 members of the elite Rapid Intervention Battalion were assigned to permanently protect the country's elephants. The move was in response to the killing of 300 elephants by heavily armed Sudanese poachers who traveled over 1000 km on horseback to raid the Bouba N'Djida National Park. Poachers killed half of central Africa's elephants between 1995 and 2007, and there are no signs that they are letting up. “Unfortunately, the many slaughters that occurred last year, plus the single six-ton haul of ivory in Port Klang, Malaysia, in December, do not bode well with regard to the figures for 2012”, laments Ronald Clarke (Rutgers University, Newark, NJ). Phosphorus (P) plays an essential role in the success of global agriculture, but too much of this nutrient can be harmful to the environment. In January, a new study revealed that negative impacts vary depending on environmental factors, particularly soil properties, in different geographical regions (BioScience 2013; doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.10). “Phosphorus is unique in its role in agriculture – it is finite unlike nitrogen, and irreplaceable unlike oil. Too much means polluted waterways, too little means not enough food”, says lead author Shelby Riskin (Brown University, Providence, RI). The researchers examined case studies of P fertilizer use in three of the world's most productive soybean-growing regions: Iowa (US), Mato Grosso (Brazil), and the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina). Riskin explains that nutrient-poor tropical soils demand greater P inputs, which strains the limited global supply of P. “In regions with more P-rich soils [like Iowa], intensive agriculture is increasingly maintained with near-neutral P balances. However, these systems are at higher risk of eutrophication [ie nutrient pollution] and, in fact, historical overuse of P may mean continued eutrophication risk, even as P inputs continue to decrease.” Recognizing these geographical differences will be critical over the coming decades. “Soils have long determined how much food we can grow, but in the face of modern agriculture they also play a huge role in determining the environmental consequences of agriculture”, continues Riskin. Future attempts to maximize global food production while minimizing environmental degradation will require implementation of responsible land-management practices and a better understanding of the soil ecology of different regions. The ultimate solution will have to be recycling P, even that which goes through our own bodies. “As we move in that direction, we can start limiting our overuse of P by matching crop demand, soil type, and management more precisely than we currently do”, says Riskin. “This is happening in some places, but not in others, [and] will become increasingly important for managing both local-scale environmental costs like eutrophication risk and global environmental costs such as the increasing demands on the global P supply.” Every year, high-altitude winds carry an estimated seven million tons of dust, pollutants, and other particles from Asia across the Pacific Ocean to North America. Microorganisms make up a substantial fraction of this mix, so trans-oceanic dust plumes can be an effective mechanism for their spread to distant environments. Efforts to collect these microbial hitchhikers via aircraft or weather balloons have encountered a number of difficulties. New research reveals that these dust-plume microorganisms are remarkably abundant, suggesting that the atmosphere may hold a diverse ecosystem awaiting further exploration. During the spring of 2011, astrobiologist David J Smith (University of Washington, Seattle) and colleagues captured samples from two large dust plumes that originated in Asia. Working at an observatory perched atop a ~2740-m peak in the Cascade Range of Oregon, Smith's team used a special pump, around the clock, to process huge quantities of air from the upper atmosphere. The group identified only 18 microbial species when evaluating the samples with traditional laboratory methods. However, high-volume air sampling enabled them to extract enough genetic material to apply molecular techniques, and this produced a breakthrough. “We detected thousands of unique microbial species from a wide range of environments, including marine archaea [primitive single-celled organisms] associated with deep-sea hydrothermal vents. But our DNA microarray could identify only already-known taxa, so the actual microbial abundance could be considerably higher”, Smith explains. Although the majority of the microbes were either dead on arrival (killed by atmospheric irradiation) or harmless to humans, many belonged to families that form endospores, which can allow microorganisms to lie dormant for extended periods and thus survive long-range aerial transport (Appl Environ Microb 2012; doi:10.1128/AEM.03029-12). The findings suggest that vast quantities of foreign microbes are delivered regularly to the North American atmosphere, with similar patterns likely occurring elsewhere in the world. “Year by year, humans inject more dust and microbes into the atmosphere through deforestation, agriculture, fires, sewage processing, and other activities. We're basically performing a planetary experiment with no idea of the consequences”, Smith warns. “Are these waves of microbes affecting the propagation of diseases? Given that microbes can promote cloud formation, are they contributing to weather changes? Now that we have demonstrated intercontinental transport across the biggest oceanic expanse on Earth, it's time for the scientific community to establish a global aerobiology monitoring network.” Marijuana farms are the latest threat to salmon along the north coast of California, according to a recent analysis by state biologists. The farms are generally concentrated on ridgetops, near headwater springs that flow into the spawning streams of threatened coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). “Late summer flows are already low, and weed growers divert so much water that what's left is a trickle at best”, explains Humboldt County-based Scott Bauer, who leads the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) north coast coho salmon recovery effort. Bauer's team used Google Earth photos to estimate the extent of the marijuana crop in a 9500-ha watershed. The study area had about 11 000 outdoor marijuana plants and 20 000 m2 of marijuana-growing greenhouses – enough to guzzle 450 000 L of water daily, roughly one-third of the headwater flow. Extrapolating that rate county-wide leaves little water for fish, salamanders, and other wildlife. Water diversions by marijuana growers imperil young salmon. Humboldt County's marijuana industry has boomed since 2010, when the California Supreme Court struck down the personal possession limit for medical use. The other catalyst is money. “The crop is worth billions, and people come from all over the country just to grow weed”, Bauer says. “We call it the Green Rush.” While marijuana growers divert much of the region's scanty headwater flow, Bauer thinks timing is a bigger problem than magnitude. “They all turn their pumps on in the morning”, he explains. A staggered pumping schedule would help, but there is no clear way to coordinate the growers – the farms are on privately owned land and many operate under seasonal leases that extend only through the summer growing season. Growers could also collect the region's heavy winter rainfall but, says Bauer, “no one wants to pay for storage tanks”. Another approach would be to enforce existing regulations, which require permits for water diversions in the county. But CDFW lacks the staff required for effective enforcement and, at least so far, no outside assistance has been offered. For now, the salmon's biggest hope may be the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington State, which should help to ease the California Green Rush. A new law signed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick on January 10 promises to make it much easier to remove a dam or repair a public seawall in that state, by creating a $17 million fund that would provide municipalities easy access to grants and revolving loan funds. Local environmental advocates and biologists argue that both such removal and repair projects are desperately needed and could ultimately benefit the state's watersheds. There are more than 2800 dams inland and over 225 km of seawall along the Massachusetts coast, many of which are in need of repair, according to reports published in 2009 and 2011. A number of those seawalls protect important natural resources and critical infrastructure, says Stephen Long, The Nature Conservancy's Director of Government Relations (Boston, MA). “We hope for an integrated approach that looks at both the hard and the ‘green’ solutions”, he adds, noting that the new funding sources can only be accessed by municipalities that want to repair existing public structures. Many of the 2800 dams in Massachusetts have been labeled unsafe. “We have very strong regulations here that would make it difficult to use the money to fortify things like beach-front mansions”, explains Scott Jackson, Extension Associate Professor for the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). “Anytime that we get a severe storm, we have a dam failure somewhere in the state”, he continues, adding that the funding can be used for both private and public dam removal projects on inland waterways. The difference is important, since some of the inland dams date to the early 1800s and their owners and descendants are no longer alive or even identifiable. Some of those dams were built to power grist mills or saw mills by farmers in need of alternate income, while others were erected by factory owners during the Industrial Revolution. Individual dams may be small but their cumulative impact on the environment is quite large, Jackson explains. According to Tim Purinton, Director of the Massachusetts Division of Ecosystem Restoration (Boston), there are also major water-quality issues that the new legislation might help the state address more effectively. He calls dam removal a “very surgical” first step in many restoration projects, and one way the state can address climate change in the future, since removals eliminate warmer water impoundment areas behind dams and create refuges for species that need cooler water during heat waves or drought. “We don't just do a removal so that a fish can get from point A to point B”, Purinton says. The organisms that make the hot springs of Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park that beautiful blue–green color may hold within them the future of renewable energy. Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, need primarily sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide for survival and growth. Scientists are now investigating ways to exploit these primitive photosynthetic organisms as a renewable energy source, one that could decrease human dependency on fossil fuels. Although cyanobacteria have been making their own energy through photosynthesis since the Precambrian, only in the past few decades have researchers recognized their potential for producing energy for human use. “Cyanobacteria can't make a useful product [for alternative energy purposes] by themselves but, with the appropriate pathways introduced, a useful chemical can be formed”, says Shota Atsumi, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California (Davis). He and his colleagues have synthetically engineered strands of cyanobacteria to make a renewable precursor to fuel, including a gasoline additive, and plastic that could eventually replace traditional, non-renewable sources (P Natl Acad Sci USA 2013; doi:10.1073/pnas.1213024110). While the Atsumi group's findings represent a big step forward, the challenge will now be to scale up production of the biofuel. But modifying the genetics of cyano-bacterial strains can cause unintended cellular changes, which reduce their survival rate and limit productivity. Anne Ruffing, a Truman Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM), is also studying ways in which genetically modified cyanobacteria can be used for biofuel production. “The most surprising thing that we found were unexpected effects on the cell, such as changes in the photosynthetic process”, she says. There is still hope for future success, though, as Atsumi and his team have found that their particular strain of cyanobacteria is already producing more biofuel than traditional sources, despite only being in the early stages of development. At the same time, Ruffing has been working on another strain of cyanobacteria that is proving to be more productive. Both researchers intend to continue their respective investigations because, as Ruffing points out, “energy is one of the main problems facing humanity today”. The European Union (EU) is providing €1.2 billion (US$1.6 billion) for the development of 23 large renewable-energy demonstration projects, in an unusual program financed by selling greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions allowances to polluting industries. The projects will be implemented in 16 EU countries, span a wide range of renewable-energy technologies, and are financed by an extension to the European emissions trading system, an existing “cap-and-trade” scheme in which GHG producers such as power stations buy allowances to emit CO2 and other gases. Funding has been provided by selling 200 million allowances, each for 1 metric ton's worth of CO2 emissions. At a press conference, EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard (Brussels, Belgium) described the financing program as a “Robin Hood” mechanism: “You could say that polluters pay now for low-carbon technology innovation”. The EU contributes a maximum of 50% toward each project's cost; the €1.2 billion in funding is expected to leverage a further €2 billion (US$2.7 billion) in private investment. Cumulatively, the projects are anticipated to generate about 10 terawatt-hours of energy annually, but EU officials say their most important goal is to demonstrate technologies that will subsequently help to “scale up” energy production from renewable sources. One of the schemes is a 10-turbine tidal stream array, to be installed in Scotland's Sound of Islay; the array is expected to generate about 26 gigawatt-hours each year –enough power for 5000 homes. It represents a key stage in scaling up tidal stream technology for commercial use, says Andrew Macdonald, project officer at the Islay Energy Trust (Port Charlotte, Islay, UK), a community organization involved in the project. “It's a stepping stone between single turbines and arrays with hundreds of turbines”, he continues, adding that the project is expected to provide information about how to systematically implement a multi-turbine array, as well as about inter-turbine interactions. Other projects funded under the program include a floating 26-megawatt wind farm off the coast of France and a Swedish biofuels project to convert wood into natural gas. Conspicuously absent from the EU announcement were carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, such as methods for scrubbing and storing CO2 from industrial emissions. CCS was intended to be a major focus of the program, but Hedegaard explains that no CCS projects made the cut for various reasons, including funding gaps. However, CCS projects may still qualify for a second round of funding, planned for later this year. Conservation strategies that combine strong anti-poaching measures, habitat protection, and the active involvement of local communities are boosting tiger populations in many parts of the world. In South India – a region that encompasses the states of Andrha Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu – such an approach has greatly increased Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) numbers; more than 600 individuals have been recorded using camera traps in Karnataka alone over the past 7 years. The tiger population has reached saturation levels in established national parks and has increased by 50% in more recently protected areas, according to Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) estimates. WCS is spearheading the effort in collaboration with Indian government agencies; both tigers and their prey populations are monitored, with data shared in real-time among all of the agencies involved. Tiger caught in a camera trap in Bandipur National Park, Karnataka, India. Tiger population densities in both Nagarahole and Bandipur national parks range between 8–13 individuals per 100 km2. “The success is mainly a result of high-quality research into key issues, site-specific conservation plans, and developing relationships with government agencies through local community and voluntary groups”, explains Kota Ullas Karanth (WCS–India, Bangalore). For instance, villagers who live in areas where tigers are found are voluntarily being relocated to minimize human–tiger conflicts. “The main challenge facing the conservation of large, charismatic, and far-ranging species – such as tigers and elephants in India – is the maintenance of sufficiently large and viable populations in integral landscapes”, explains Raman Sukumar (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore). This, adds Sukumar, calls for pragmatic, landscape-level conservation planning to ensure habitat connectivity within a complex land-use mosaic that often supports large human populations and substantial natural resources. People must therefore be included in the planning and implementation of any conservation efforts. According to Karanth, the model adopted by WCS does not view tigers or forests as a consumptive resource but rather as long-term ecological assets and objects of cultural pride. This strategy, he says, “can be replicated in South, West, and East India, as well as in countries like Thailand and Malaysia, but a different approach is needed for tribal-dominated central India and northeastern India, where tigers have almost vanished”. A ground-breaking experiment in northern Australia is revealing the devastating efficiency with which feral cats can wipe out whole native mammal populations. Two cats took little more than a week to gobble up every one of 23 native long-haired rats (Rattus villosissimus) released last year into an experimental 5-ha plot on an Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) property near Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory (NT). “The results are dramatic”, says Sarah Legge (AWC chief scientist, Derby, Western Australia). “Once the cats discover there are rats present, they are very dedicated hunters. Two cats cleaned up the rats in 10 days, and then kept coming back regularly to check if anything was there.” Rats released at the same time into neighboring plots with >1.5-m-high electrified fencing to exclude cats were untouched. Long-haired rat being released in cat predation trial. The trial was funded by the Australian Research Council and AWC, and involved universities, government agencies, and conservation organizations. It is part of a larger investigation into why half of northern Australia's native mammal species have experienced serious declines over the past 20 years. The rats themselves were translocated from the NT's Quoin Island because native mammals in the Arnhem region are now so scarce as to be undetectable. “About six species are contenders for extinction if the current trajectories continue”, warns Legge. “So the question is, what is causing this? We think the declines are driven by changes in fire patterns, introduced herbivores, and cats; it probably has something to do with the way those three things interact.” Research on AWC properties in northwest Western Australia has made important inroads on the fire and introduced herbivore question, with native mammals doubling in abundance and richness where these pressures were controlled. But hard evidence linking domestic cats to wildlife declines was elusive, leaving ecologists to debate the cats' true impact. “This experiment is very important because it shows we can stop arguing about the impact of cats. We know now that cats are potentially devastating; so the next step is, what can we do about them?” Studies into how feral cats use burned landscapes to their hunting advantage are underway, in the hope that land managers can control fires in ways that reduce the cats' impacts. Delay and uncertainty surrounding a reform of the European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) are causing controversy in Scotland. While Bertie Armstrong, leader of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, and several leading politicians supporting the fishing industry in Scotland are pleased with the most recent decisions specific to Scottish waters – which increased quotas of several species and dropped European Union (EU) plans to cut the number of days that Scottish fishermen can fish – Scottish conservationists are increasingly worried. “The deadline to extend the Technical Conservation Regulation, a key part of the CFP that regulates the way fish are caught – such as when and where deep-sea gill nets can be used – came and went on December 31. We are not completely sure what the implications will be, particularly for Special Areas of Conservation, such as reef designations in Scottish waters”, says Kara Brydson, Senior Marine Policy Office at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB; Edinburgh, Scotland). The concerns of conservation organizations like RSPB and WWF were further heightened by the announcement in late December that a flame shell (Limaria hians) reef, thought to be the largest ever found, had been discovered in the sea inlet between the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Skye. “Since then, there have been some signs of more interest in Brussels, and other EU non-governmental organizations are now getting involved, but it is difficult to get detailed information”, reports Brydson. Karen Green of Seafish (Edinburgh), an organization that supports the seafood industry, agrees that the picture is less than clear, but her understanding is that the current CFP regulations will remain in place, despite the missed deadline. “CFP reform has been the subject of intense discussion over the past 2 years; the noisy and successful campaign on discards, a positive and well-received aspect of the new CFP, may have helped to eclipse other issues”, she says. Talks continued until December 20th and more discussion of quotas and reforms have since resumed in Ireland, which holds the Presidency of the European Council until June 2013. Nevertheless, Green does not expect the new CFP legislation to become law until January 2014. “The new process of co-decision making between the European Commission, Parliament, and the Council is partly to blame for things moving slowly but the reforms should lead to decision making on a regional basis in the future, which may help prevent such protracted negotiations”, she concludes.