Natural Environment Blog

The Big Wild asks “How Wild is North America?”

Theodora at The Big Wild recently contacted me to let me know about an infographic posted on The Big Wild website.

The infographic (right), compares how “wild” Canada, the United States, and Mexico are based on facts like each country’s ecological footprint.

I was particularly interested to see that Canada’s “wildness” factor is 82%, compared to 36% and 18% for the United States and Mexico respectively.

I was also amazed to learn that Canada accounts for 24% of the world’s wild forests, 20% of the world’s fresh water, and 24% of global wetlands.

According to The Big Wild:

Real wilderness needs to be large enough to keep the natural balance – and that means thinking big.

That’s the vision behind The Big Wild. Conservation scientists believe we need to protect at least half of Canada’s wild spaces to ensure the integrity of our ecosystems.

About The Big Wild

The Big Wild is a partnership project between Canada’s Mountain Equipment Co-op and Canadian Parks and Wilderness. The Big Wild is a a conservation project dedicated to protecting at least half of Canada’s publicly-owned land and water.

The Nature Conservancy have announced the finalists of their 4th Annual Digital Photo Contest. In an email to members, the Nature Conservancy said:

Thank you to everyone who submitted an image for consideration. Your love of nature has inspired us and continues to remind us of the magnificent lands, waters and wondrous species we work to protect and preserve, every day.

The support of members like you has allowed us to protect and restore over 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of river and is the reason that we are the leading conservation organization working around the world today.

There are 15 finalists in total, and it’s now up to you to vote for your favorite. Voting is open until Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10am EST. The Grand Prize Winner will be announced on February 15, 2009.

The winning photo will be featured on The Nature Conservancy’s website, which is visited by more than 3 million people annually.

So, place your vote now.

You can also check out all submitted photos at the Nature Conservancy’s Flickr page.

Dolphins can be deafened by loud noises, which can lead to death.

A new study has found that loud sonar can cause deafness in dolphins.

The study found that loud, repeated blasts of sonar caused dolphins to temporarily lose their hearing for 20 to 40 minutes.

Published in the British journal Biology Letters on Wednesday, the findings could provide further evidence that human made noises can be attributed to dolphin and whale deaths. 

The study, led by Aran Mooney Marine Biologist at the University of Hawaii, exposed an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin to progressively louder pings of mid-frequency sonar. The dolphin was born in captivity and was trained. 

A suction cup was fitted to the dolphin’s head, with a sensor attached that monitored the animal’s brainwaves.

“What we found was if you play sound you can cause temporary hearing loss. The sounds have to be surprisingly loud and they have to be repeated over an extended period of time – two to three minutes.” Mooney said. “In that time you would expect them to swim away as fast as possible. They have to be within 40 metres of a ship, but when you have certain oceanographic conditions it’s hard for the animals to get out of the way.” 

Many people believe that human made noises, also referred to as acoustic smog, has been the cause of whale and dolphin beachings around the world.

Mooney acknowledges that, given the study was undertaken in a lab with a captive-born dolphin, it does not provide proof that military sonar is to blame for mass strandings. 

“We definitely showed that there are physiological and some behavioural effects [from repeated, loud sonar], but to extrapolate that into the wild, we don’t really know,” Mooney told AFP.

Satellite image of the ozone hole on 24th September, 2006.

You may have heard about the “ozone hole” that’s located somewhere above us, in the Earth’s atmosphere. You may also have heard that it’s not really a good thing for us here on Earth. If you’ve heard this, you heard right.

But what exactly is the ozone hole?

The ozone hole is an area of extremely depleted ozone in the ozone layer above the Antarctic. The ozone hole is not present all year round though. It only occurs during the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere spring - between August and October. 

The problem with the ozone hole is that, it allows harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun to reach Earth. These UV rays are usually filtered out by the ozone layer, but when the ozone has been depleted (as is the case with the ozone hole), the UV rays are no longer filtered out.

Why are UV Rays Harmful?

Although in small doses, UV light can be beneficial, overexposure can cause sunburn and some forms of skin cancer. Prolonged exposure to UV rays can also cause other problems for the skin, eyes and even the immune system.

UV rays don’t only affect humans. Studies have shown that hundreds of species of plants and animals display a negative reaction to increased UV rays. There are however, some species that react positively to an increased exposure to UV light.  

What Causes the Ozone Hole?

Here are the main factors that contribute to the ozone hole:

• Stratospheric sulfate aerosols - In other words, volcanic eruptions
• Stratospheric winds
• Greenhouse gases
• Sunspot cycle - an 11 year cycle that causes variation in the UV radiation produced by the sun
• Stratospheric chlorine - coming mainly from man-made halocarbons

While we generally have little control over natural occurrences, we do have control over the man-made ones. You may have heard that chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) are causing the ozone hole to grow bigger. CFCs are a group of chemical compounds that consist of alkalines such as methane or ethane. They also have one or more halogens linked, such as chlorine or fluorine.

CFCs find their way into the atmosphere from refrigeration and propellant devices and processes.

Basically, man-made products are contributing to the increasing size of the ozone hole.

What’s Being Done About It?

Many countries have banned the use of most CFC-emitting aerosol products, such as fly spray, deodorants, and hair spray. The bans generally require that those types of products are produced in a way that doesn’t result in CFCs being emitted.

Such a ban was introduced in the U.S. in 1978, and although most CFC-emitting products were banned long ago, there are still some that are being phased out. For example, albuterol metered dose inhalers (MDIs) will not be available in the U.S. after 31 December 2008.

There is also an international environmental treaty called the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. At present, 191 countries are involved in this agreement, which is designed to phase out substances that lead to ozone depletion. There is also a belief that, as long as the treaty is adhered to, the ozone layer will recover by 2050.

The tuatara's ancestors roamed the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago.

The tuatara is the only survivor of a group of reptiles that roamed the earth at the same time as dinosaurs - about 225 million years ago.

There are two species of tuatara, both of which are endemic to New Zealand. The scientific name for the two species are Cook Strait Tuatara (scientific name: Sphenodon punctatus) and Brothers Island Tuatara (scientific name: Sphenodon guntheri). 

Appearance

The tuatara is a greenish, brown reptile that grows to between 50 cm and 80 cm long.

It has distinctive soft spines along the top of its head and down its backbone. Although it looks much like a lizard, tuatara is actually the only surviving member of the order Sphenodontia. 

Tuatara don’t have external ears but they are able to hear. 

The tuatara is famous for its “third eye” or pineal or parietal eye located in the middle of its forehead. The eye has a small lens and retina, but it becomes covered by a thin layer of opaque scales about 4 to 6 months after birth.

The purpose of this parietal eye is unknown, but some scientists have suggested that it is used as a light sensor as opposed to forming visual objects. 

Habitat and Distribution

The tuatara is endemic to New Zealand.

Up until a thousand years ago, tuatara occurred in both the North and South Islands of New Zealand. Now, the tuatara can now only be found on islands in the North Island.

Tuatara tend to live in burrows in native forest, but can often be found occupying abandoned sheep pasture. They will often share burrows with seabirds such as petrels and shearwaters.

Growth

Tuatara has the slowest growth rate of any reptile. It can take as many as 30 to 35 years for a tuatara to reach full size. 

Tuatara usually lives to around 60 or 70, but they have been known to live to more than 100. In fact, one tuatara was seen mating last year at the ripe old age of 111.

Diet

Tuatara’s main diet consists of Insects, spiders, earthworms, snails and small lizards. Tuatara have also been known to kill and eat small seabirds and their eggs as well as young tuatara.

Behavior

Tuatara are mainly nocturnal and remain in their burrows during the day and prowl at night. They tend to have a lower body temperature than their environment, and they are active at lower body temperatures than most reptiles. They often come out during the day to bask in the sun.

Although they don’t actually go into hibernation, tuatara will often go six months without food during winter. 

Ancestory

The tuatara’s ancestory dates back to the dinosaur time. Ancestors of the tuatara and many other sphenodons were roaming the world 225 million years ago. This was about the time the first dinosaurs appeared. 

All other sphenodons disappeared around 65 million years ago and exist only as fossils. As a result, scientists often refer to the tuatara as a “living fossil”.

Tuatara Mating & Breeding

Tuatara reach sexual maturity at between 10 to 20 years of age. 

The female, on average, lays between 5 and 18 eggs only once every 4 years, which gives it the longest reproductive cycle of any reptile.

Mating season for tuatara is between January and March. Female tuatara then lay their eggs between October and December.

Hatchlings appear between 12 to 15 months after the eggs were laid. To break the egg, they use their egg tooth (a sharp pointed spike at the end of the snout).

Conservation Status

For millions of years, tuatara populations thrived in New Zealand. Then over the last thousand years or so, tuatara populations declined rapidly, almost to the point of extinction.

The main culprits were introduced rats, cats, dogs, and humans. Not to mention fires and land clearing.

The tuatara, was almost wiped out by the 1700s. In fact, in 1895, the tuatara was one of the first animals in the world to become fully protected by law.

Since then, significant tuatara populations have survived on 32 remote islands around New Zealand. Stephens Island/Takapourewa is home to about 50,000 tuatara, which represents about 90% of the tuatara population.

Since 1996, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has listed the Brothers Island Tuatara as Vulnerable and the Cook Strait Tuatara as Lower Risk/least concern, although IUCN has also stated that this needs updating.

The term ecosystem service refers to the many services that are supplied to us by natural ecosystems. 

More specifically, these services are ones that we value, and support our existence the way we know it.

Put another way:

Ecosystem services are the transformation of a set of natural assets (soil, plants and animals, air and water) into things that we value.

Another, well thought out, definition can be seen below.

Examples of Ecosystem Services

Here are some examples of ecosystem services (based on widely used definitions): 

• Purification of air and water
• Mitigation of droughts and floods
• Maintenance of soil fertility
• Maintenance of soil health
• Maintenance of healthy waterways
• Waste absorption and breakdown
• Pollination of crops and natural vegetation
• Dispersal of seeds
• Cycling and movement of nutrients
• Control of the vast majority of potential agricultural pests
• Maintenance of biodiversity
• Protection of coastal shores from erosion by waves
• Provision of shade and shelter
• Partial stabilization of climate
• Moderation of weather extremes and their impacts
• Provision of aesthetic beauty and intellectual stimulation that lift the human spirit

The Importance of Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are important services that we need if we are to continue life on Earth as we know it.

Unfortunately, to date, ecosystem services haven’t been properly recognized in economic markets, government policies and land management practices. Because of this, ecosystem services are highly vulnerable to degradation. 

If all the world’s ecosystems were to disappear, how would we recreate these services?

A Dollar Value for Ecosystem Services

One of the reasons ecosystems services have been undervalued is because of the difficulty in coming up with a dollar figure that accurately reflects the benefit of the services. Without being worth something in monetary terms, its highly unlikely that governments and other organizations are going to want to invest in ecosystem services.

There have been a number of attempts at valuating ecosystem services. Here are two examples:  

• Science magazine - a highly respected journal - estimated the value of replicating just the most readily quantifiable ecosystem services at $30-$40 trillion per year. This is about the equivalent of the total Gross Planetary Product.
• Canopy Capital - a company aiming to drive capital into rainforests - have said that it would take the equivalent of 50,000 times the daily energy output of the world’s largest hydropower station to evaporate the 20 billion tonnes of water coming off the Amazon each day. 

Measuring Ecosystem Services

One of the reasons it’s been so difficult in coming up with a dollar figure is because, there hasn’t been an effective way of measuring ecosystem services.

What exactly do you measure? And how do you measure it? If you were to walk down to the forest today, could you point at all the services and say how much of each service is there?

How do you judge nature’s value?

This issue is what Resources For the Future (RFF) has been working on for some years now. They sought to establish a definition that enabled more accountability of ecosystem services. Such a definition would help conservationists and governments define and manage ecosystem services. 

In 2006, following a workshop involving various environmental groups, RFF released a discussion paper which put forward the following definition for ecosystem services: 

Ecosystem services are components of nature, directly enjoyed, consumed, or used to yield human well-being

Using this definition, an ecosystem service would be restricted to the end product - rather than a process or function of the ecosystem. This is where it differs from other definitions, which tend to include processes and functions as a system.

For example, using the definition put forward by the RFF, water purification would not be an ecosystem service. Clean water would be.

As RFF put it, this definition aims at providing standardized environmental accounting units - it would provide a standardized way of counting nature’s benefits.

The Gumprechts Green Pitviper is among the 1068 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong Subregion between 1997 and 2007. Photo: Rene Ries.

More than 1,000 new species have been found in the Greater Mekong Subregion over the last 10 years, according to a report from WWF.

The report, entitled First Contact in the Greater Mekong,  says that 1068 species previously unknown to science were discovered in the region between 1997 and 2007.

WWF also say that potentially thousands of new species of invertebrate was also discovered during this period.

Highlights include the discovery of the world’s largest huntsman spider. WWF say the spider has a leg span of 30 centimeters across. That’s 12 inches - about the size of a dinner plate. 

The Gumbrechts Green Pitviper (Trimeresurus gumprechti), a bright green snake first described in 2002, was also a key discovery.

Another star discovery was the dragon millipede, which according to WWF, is “startingly hot pink” in color and produces cyanide.

The New Species

Among the new species discovered in the Greater Mekong were: 

• 519 plant species
• 279 fish species
• 88 frog species
• 88 spider species
• 46 lizard species
• 22 snake species
• 15 mammal species
• 4 bird species
• 4 turtle species
• 2 salamander species
• 1 toad species

Total Species Count in the Greater Mekong

According to WWF, there is more than 23,000 species of fauna and flora in the Greater Mekong.

These include:

• 20,000 species of plant
• 1,200 bird species
• 800 species of reptiles and amphibians
• 430 mammal species
• 1,300 fish species in the Mekong River basin

The Mekong River has more species per unit than the mighty Amazon. This photo was taken where the Mekong and the Nam Kahn rivers converge. Photo: Alcyon.

More Species Per Unit Than The Amazon

Although the mighty Amazon River contains more species than the Mekong River, the Mekong actually contains more species per unit than the Amazon.

This makes the Mekong, by length, the richest waterway for biodiversity on the planet.

Threats to The Greater Mekong

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) encompasses nations and territories located in Mekong River basin. These regions/territories are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Yunnan Province of China

Conservation International has ranked the Greater Mekong as one of the top five most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world.

Specific threats to the Greater Mekong include:

• forest conversion for agricultural plantations
• unsustainable logging and the illegal timber trade
• wildlife trade over fishing
• dam and road construction
• mining

WWF indicates that these threats are increasing due to accelerating economic development, population growth and increased consumption patterns of the region.

Full Report [pdf file, 7.26 MB]

This new species of deep sea coral grows to more than a meter high in depths of between 700 and 1,000 meters. Photo: NOAA, WHOI, the Alvin Group, and the 2004 GOA Expedition..

Marine biologists have discovered a new species of coral growing on the peaks of seamounts off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

The fan-like bamboo corals, discovered at depths of 700 to 1,000 meters (2,300 to 3,300 feet), were found to be growing to more than a meter tall. 

“They look really, really big when you’re underwater,” said marine biologist Peter Etnoyer of Texas A & M University.

According to Discovery News, the new species will be described and given a name in the upcoming December issue of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

Although the species is new to science, fragments of the bamboo coral have landed in the nets of fishing trawlers for years. 

The scientists observed the new coral species from Alvin - a deep-sea research vessel. From Alvin, they were able to observe long tentacles on its trunk billowing in the current. Etnoyer commented that this impressive sight is something that can only be seen and appreciated by looking at a living specimen.

Bamboo corals, which are part of the Isidella  genus, provide deep sea creatures with food, shelter, and a breeding ground.

About Deep Sea Corals

As the name suggests, deep sea corals are corals that live in deep seas. 

Most deep sea coral are found between 200 and 1500 metres deep but some species have been found more than 3000 metres deep. At these depths, it is usually pitch black and the water is very cold (usually between 4°c and 12°c degrees).  

Deep sea corals are found in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Unlike tropical corals that can grow up to 100–200 millimetres per year, deep sea corals grow very slowly. Some deep sea corals are known to grow at a rate of 4–25 millimetres per year.

About two thirds of all coral species are deep sea corals.

Deep sea corals were first discovered in the 18th century but, until recently, very little has been known about them. Recent advances in technology is starting to change that though, particularly with deep water trawling, advanced imaging systems, submersibles (such as Alvin), and advanced acoustic seafloor mapping systems.

The 'alien-like' Magnapinna squid, captured on remote video camera by the Shell Oil Company.

An “alien-like” squid has been caught on camera, 2.5 kilometers underwater, in the Gulf of Mexico by the Shell Oil Company.

The video footage, recorded from a camera on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), shows a rare Magnapinna squid with it’s long, shoulder-like arms dangling down below it. 

The footage, which had been circulating through the oil industry via email since November 2007 when it was taken, hadn’t been made public until National Geographic got hold of it earlier this week.

The squid has been dubbed the “Perdido squid” due to the fact that it was filmed at the Peridido drilling site. 

Species Unknown

Although it clearly belongs to the Magnapinna genus, it’s unclear which species the Peridido squid actually is. Both the M. M. atlantica and M. pacifica are known to inhabit the Gulf of Mexico so it is likely to be one of those.

This is the first time a Magnapinna squid has been sighted at an oil drilling site. 

Not much is known about the various Magnapinna species, as no intact adult specimen has ever been captured. 

Scientists speculate that their long arms are possibly used for feeding purposes. One theory is that the squid drags its arms along the seafloor to capture prey.  Another theory is that the squid simply waits for prey to get stuck on it’s long, dangly arms.

Due to the expense and difficulty in shooting underwater footage at these depths, some scientists have been entering formal partnerships with oil companies to share camera time on corporate ROVs.

Here’s the actual video footage taken from the ROV: