National Geographic Society

"The baby, named Frank, joined his family in the Gorilla Tropics exhibit two months ago and is starting to show more of his natural instincts, including chest-beating," the zoo continued.

Frank is is expected to grow to more than 400 pounds. He and his family are on exhibit every other day at the Zoo. Updates about Frank can be found on his Facebook page.

San Diego Zoo is home to 13 western lowland gorillas.

San Diego Zoo photo by Ken Bohn

There's an urgency to find quality food and water that forces many large mammals to migrate. A new study finds that human activities increasingly threaten their ability to do so.

Photo of zebra migration by Stuart L. Pimm

By Stuart L. Pimm

for NatGeo News Watch

Midnight and there's no moon. The elephants moving near my tent have only starlight to guide them to the river nearby. There's an urgency to their thirst.

In August, on the Okavanga River in the southern African country Botswana, it's well into the dry season.

During the day, the elephants--some still small enough to fit under their mothers' bellies--have to trek 20 kilometers [12 miles] away from the river to find food. They've eaten everything that's closer. So back and forth they go each day and night, with ever-longer treks as the dry season progresses, drinking hurriedly before turning around.

In another few months, the rains will come. We know from our satellite collars that a handful of females carry around their necks, that the breeding herds will give up their nightly commute and head north, away from the river, as far as they can, knowing there will now be ephemeral pools from which to drink.

Summertime, at last, and the living will be easier--but still constrained. Fences along the borders with Namibia and Angola restrict how far they can move.

Newly published work, in the journal Endangered Species Research, shows that such frustrations harm many species of large mammal.

Grant Harris, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and an international group of collaborators have scoured the scientific literature to catalogue migrations of large mammals. "There are a lot of migrations, most are severely threatened, some are extinct, and we just don't know enough to save many of them," he told me.

NGS photo of elephant herd on the march in Chad, Africa, by Michael Nichols

For elephants and many other species of large mammal, movement is survival--they must eat and drink every day and food and water are usually in different places.

As the seasons change, so does where the best food is and, in dry-season Africa, water is very sparse and precious.

Elephants move one breeding herd at a time, each matriarch seeking her own solution for her grown daughters and their children. The migration from the Okavanga river in the dry season northwards with the summer rains is a diffuse one.

For other large mammals, seasonally changing food and water makes everyone move together. Such aggregations are among the most spectacular wildlife spectacles on Earth--and it's these that Harris and his team wanted to document.

"By far the most famous is that of wildebeest, zebra, and other species in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem of Tanzania and Kenya," Harris said. "About two million animals are involved and it's the worlds largest."

NGS photo of caribou migrating in Arctic Wildlife Refuge by George F. Mobley

Like most other conservation biologists, I've been vaguely aware that there are other less famous migrations, with other species, in other places--and ones that human actions threaten as do fences the elephants I've described. "There's a lot more of these migrations than I thought when I started this study," Harris confirmed.

Harris and his colleagues find that large mammal migrations fall into two broad classes. One, like the elephants, involves animals driven by the seasonally changing distribution of good quality food and access to water in the dry ecosystems in southern and eastern Africa.

Snow Forces Animals to Move

In the second class, snow forces animals to move off grazing lands to snow-free areas. Examples include the caribou (reindeer) migrations across the Arctic tundras of North America and Eurasia, and Mongolian gazelle, chiru and saiga antelopes in central Asia.

The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in East Africa not only holds the largest migration, but it's one that isn't fenced and its mammals are reasonably well-protected. Even so, hunters still kill about 40,000 wildebeest each year, illegally.

The massive migration "attracts a lot of tourists--and their money--and that helps protect it," Harris said. He explained that there were once similar migrations in and out of what are now Kruger National Park (in South Africa) and Etosha National Park (in Namibia). "The park protected the animals, but in doing so, this stopped the migration and the numbers of animals plummeted."

NGS photo of wildebeest migrating across the Serengeti Plain, Tanzania, by Joe Scherschel

Most of the other migrations in Africa are in trouble, too, either from hunting, or from fences that shut off migration routes or exclude animals from what is now agricultural land.

"The situation may be better for caribou and reindeer, but especially in Siberia, we have no idea how climate change might change things," Harris says.

So what did Harris learn from assembling the list of migrations, I asked. He replied: "I was shocked that apart from one or two well-known examples, these migrations have been overlooked by conservation science--and we're losing them from lack of attention.

"Let's understand the state of play, what we know and don't and what we need to know to preserve them. Only with foresight, can we keep these wonderful natural phenomena."

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Related blog entries:
Birding at the BioBlitz With Stuart Pimm

Great Sandy, Australia, photo © Fraser Coast South Burnett Tourism

The International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme, meeting this week in Korea, decided to add 22 new sites from 17 countries to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

The network now counts 553 sites in 107 countries.

Biosphere reserves are areas designated to serve as places to test different approaches to integrated management of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine resources and biodiversity, UNESCO said in a news statement. "Biosphere Reserves are thus sites for experimenting with and learning about sustainable development, particularly during the ongoing [United Nations] Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)."

Launched in the early 1970s, the Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) aims at improving people's relationship with their environment. MAB targets the ecological, social and economic dimensions of biodiversity loss and the reduction of this loss, UNESCO said.

The new sites are:

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

The future of a rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is under threat from one of the worst droughts in living memory, according to Save the Elephants, a conservation organization based in Kenya.

Water levels are extremely low in the African desert country's Gourma region due to uneven rainfall in 2008. The most important lake, Banzena, is the lowest it has been since 1983 when it dried completely.

Adult elephants go on their knees to stretch for water deep under the sand. Baby elephants who can't reach the water are dying of thirst.

"Urgent action is now needed to secure water for the elephants until the rains commence as predicted in early June," Save the Elephants said in a news statement. "Fortunately, two pumps already exist at Banzena for pumping water and can be used for helping the elephants.

"Save the Elephants, in partnership with the WILD Foundation and the Mali government, is appealing for funds for diesel necessary for their operation."

The situation is equally dire for the Touareg and Pheul herdsmen who rely on Lake Banzena for their cattle and many cows are now dying each day from lack of water and the soaring temperatures which reach 50 degrees Celsius in the shade, says Jake Wall, a Save the Elephants researcher who returned recently from a visit to the area.

"The stench of rotting corpses fills the air and what little water remains is putrid and undrinkable by all standards. The normal peaceful coexistence between the elephants and herdsmen is starting to break down and giving way to conflict over access to water."

Even if help comes, it is not certain whether the water quantity will be sufficient and close monitoring of the situation is needed, Save the Elephants said.

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

"The 350 to 450 elephants of Gourma, the northernmost herds still alive in Africa, are being forced to trek ever-longer distances within the Sahel on the fringes of the Sahara to find scarce water.

"Juveniles are likely to be among the worst affected, as--unlike the bigger bulls--their trunks are not long enough to reach deep into remaining wells.

"Six elephants have already been found dead. Four others, including three calves, were recently extracted from a shallow well into which they had fallen when searching for water. Only the largest survived."

Elephants On Their Knees

At a dry lake bed 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the east of Banzena, six bull elephants are surviving by getting on their knees and reaching with their trunks for water that is 10 feet (3 meters) beneath ground level and through a hole dug by the Touareg.

Younger elephants who are not as big or as skilled cannot possibly reach these to hard-to-get-at water points, Save the Elephants said in its statement. "The long distances, high temperatures and weakened condition will also take a heavy toll on the younger elephants."

The desert elephants of Mali live in the Gourma district southeast of Timbuktu. They have adapted to survive in the harsh conditions of the Sahel by migrating long distances in search of water and food but live on the margin of what is ecologically viable.

 View a larger file of this interactive map.

The ancient elephant migration routes in Mali, Africa, were tracked by satellite by Iain Douglas-Hamilton. Read the story that goes with this map.

Map by NGS

Save the Elephants and the WILD Foundation have been monitoring these last rare desert elephants in Mali in collaboration with the Malian Environment Ministry directorate for conservation--Direction Nationale de la Conservation de la Nature (DNCN).

"This unique herd of elephants is now in a desperate situation due to a drastic shortage of water, and we are launching an emergency appeal to save them," Save the Elephants said.

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

More than 1,200 species were identified in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore bioblitz this weekend.

The number is expected to rise significantly as scientists crunch data and examine specimens in laboratories in coming weeks.

Among the species found that were previously unreported for this national park were 20 types of rove beetles and a handful of tardigrades, said Tim Watkins, the bioblitz science coordinator.

In the shallows of Lake Michigan an invasive species of fish, the round goby, which is believed to have come from Russia in ship ballast water in the 1980s, was found to have displaced native benthic fishes--indicating a loss of species for the park.

A small number of hatchlings of spotted turtle was seen, Watkins said. The turtle is rare and, in the state of Indiana, is regarded by conservationists as a species of special concern.

"What's encouraging is that the find is an indication that there is a breeding population of this turtle in the park," Watkins said. "That's very good news for both the turtle and the park, and a tribute to the dedication of the scientists and citizens who took part in the bioblitz."

Watch this video to hear Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation biology at Duke University, North Carolina, explain why the Indiana Dunes bioblitz was so important.

video by David Braun

Database for Research

When the bioblitz data is completed and verified, the full list of species, and their locations will be secured in NPSpecies, a National Park Service database, where it will be a reference for future surveys and additional research.

Fieldscope, a National Geographic education initiative, and the Encyclopedia of Life, an Internet project to create a Web page for every species on the planet, will also record the data.

Organized jointly by the U.S. National Park Service and the National Geographic Society, the 24-hour event, that ended midday Saturday, was the third in a series of ten bioblitzes in urban parks.

The first two bioblitzes were held in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park in 2007 and in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in the Los Angeles area last year. The tenth and last bioblitz in this series is scheduled to be held in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service..

This year's bioblitz was held in the dunes on the southern shore of Lake Michigan within sight of Chicago. More than 150 scientists from across the U.S. participated, among them botanists, entomologists (insect experts), ornithologists (birds), herpetologists (reptiles and amphibians), ichthyologists (fish), mycologists (fungi), myrmecologists (ants), and various mammal specialists.

The experts, ably assisted by some 2,000 grade school students and other members of the public, fanned out across much of Indiana Dunes' 15,000 acres of forests, wetlands, prairie, streams, sand dunes and lake shore.

Heavy Rains, High Winds

By day and by night, and at times in heavy rain and high winds, the army of professional and citizen scientists looking for species waded into marshes, bog, and lake shallows, crawled over towering dunes, scratched in leaf litter, poked the soil, and peered up tall trees and under rocks and logs.

"A bioblitz is always an adventure, and this one was no different," said John Francis, National Geographic Vice President for Research, Conservation, and Exploration, who went out on as many as he could of the 176 scheduled scientist-led forays to look for species.

"We had drenching rain and rivers flowing through our base camp, but science was undaunted," Francis added. "The bioblitz helped put Indiana Dunes further on the map as a national park important for its extraordinary diversity of species.

"The big turnout of scientists, students, and families showed how excited people are about this place. This can only help build the community that supports this park, not only in the minds of the local population but also nationally."

Bioblitz 2010

Planning for the fourth bioblitz in the series, in Florida's Biscayne Bay next year, started earlier today, Francis said.

"The next bioblitz is likely to be even bigger and better than the first three because with each one we learn how to do them better, and more people are becoming aware of how important and fun they are. Bioblitz fever is alive and well."

Under consideration for the 2010 bioblitz is a Web component that will allow students across the country to not only follow the event in Florida but also to emulate it with mini bioblitzes in their own communities.

For more details and updates, please visit the official National Geographic BioBlitz Web site.

Read more stories about the Indiana Dunes bioblitz on NatGeo News Watch and BlogWILD.

Photo by David Braun

Photo by David Braun

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm (watch his video above) and blogger David Braun (right)  take a break during the bioblitz in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Friday night.

Photo by Mark Christmas

This is the official tally board of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore BioBlitz when the species count ended after 24 hours, at noon on Saturday, May 16. Species totals were expected to continue to come in throughout the weekend and coming weeks, raising the numbers seen here significantly.

Photo by David Braun

Milkweed, of any variety, is the only plant that the monarch butterfly caterpillar can feed on. This means that the familiar orange-and-black butterfly's entire lifecycle depends on milkweed---and this is why Reni Winter is on a mission to get milkweed planted in as many places as possible.

Known for its epic migration between its overwintering grounds in Mexico and much of the rest of North America, the monarch is a ubiquitous and beloved butterfly throughout most of the continent. But as its habitat is destroyed and milkweed is disappearing from the environment so is the monarch becoming threatened

Reni Winter (in the picture) was promoting her message about monarch butterflies and handing out free packets of milkflower seeds during the two days of the Indiana Dunes BioBlitz, when hundreds of scientists and thousands of volunteers gathered to identify as many species as they could find in 24 hours in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

The "owner and grower and steward" of Winterhaven Wildflowers & Native Plant Preserve, an Indiana native plant nursery and preserve on 13 acres of former tallgrass prairie in central Indiana, Winter is an active member  of the Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society.

Winterhaven is a certified wildlife habitat with the National Wildlife Federation backyard habitat program and also a Certified Monarch Waystation with Monarch Watch, Winter proudly says..

Watch Reni Winter on this video talk about her campaign and how you too can help monarch butterflies by growing milkweed :

Video and photo by David Braun

Additional information:

LiveMonarch.org

Monarch Watch

Internal Clock Leads Monarch Butterflies to Mexico (National Geographic News story)

I met Wagner a couple of times during the bioblitz and we talked about beetles, a subject he knows a lot about.

The two tiger beetles in this specimen bottle were found by a colleague of Wagner's under tree bark. They're a nice size, Wagner remarked, because many of the beetles he ordinarily works with are the size of pin heads.

Different types of tiger beetle larvae prefer different types of soil, Wagner explained. That's why different beetles are found in different habitats.

So what is the behavior that gives tiger beetles their common name? "They're tigerlike predators," Wagner said. "They lurk around and rush out to grab things that are passing, chewing them up like tigers," he said.

Who knew that these pretty irridescent beetles were such beasts!

Watch Wagner describe these tiger beetles in this video:

Video and photo  by David Braun

The Thai Navy seized two tiger carcasses and 45 pangolins, and arrested eight traffickers who had planned to smuggle the animals across the Mekong River into Laos, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, said today.

"Navy officers followed two cars carrying the traffickers in Ponpang village in the Rattana Wapi district of Nongkai Province on April 26, and made the arrests as they were attempting to transfer the slaughtered tigers and live pangolins to a boat," TRAFFIC said in a statement accompanying photos released to the media.

Eight people were arrested including a Vietnamese woman and her Thai husband. Several others in the boat fled upon sighting the navy officers.

Tigers Chopped in Half

The two tiger carcasses, chopped in half, and the 45 pangolins, two of which were dead, were found inside the two cars, the statement added.

The Navy and Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division have sent the tiger carcasses to Thailand's Department of National Parks for DNA testing.

"TRAFFIC lauds the Thai authorities for carrying out these DNA tests. Determining the origin of these tigers is crucial if authorities hope to end this tragic trade," said TRAFFIC Southeast Asia's Acting Director Chris R. Shepherd.

Photo courtesy Mekong Waterfront Guard & Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division (NRECD) Thailand.

This seizure is not the first case involving tigers being smuggled across this border, TRAFFIC added.

"In January 2008 the Thai Navy thwarted an attempt to smuggle six slaughtered tigers, five leopards and 275 live pangolins across the Thai-Laos border.

"In that incident, the tigers had also been found sliced in half, while the leopards had their organs removed."

This January, Thai police seized four tiger carcasses in the resort town of Hua Hin, TRAFFIC said.

"The dead tigers, weighing about 250 kilograms [550 pounds] had been decapitated and were found in a truck passing through Hua Hin in the Prachuap Kiri Khan province."

Police said the dead tigers were believed to have come from Malaysia and were being transported to China.

The following month, Thai authorities discovered the butchered carcasses of two tigers and a panther when they stopped a truck in the southern province of Pattani, TRAFFIC said.

TRAFFIC, a joint program of WWF and IUCN, has encouraged governments throughout Southeast Asia to work together to tackle the wildlife trade problem.

Trail of Butchered Tigers

"The trail of butchered tigers winds through many countries in Southeast Asia," Shepherd said. "Tracking down those who illegally kill and trade these tigers and putting them behind bars is a task countries cannot accomplish their own."

National Geographic News exposed the illegal wildlife trade in Myanmar in a grisly video report and photo gallery in February last year. The footage and photos were taken by wildlife photographer Karl Ammann, who has visited the region four times in the past 15 years, posing as a buyer.

In the town Möng La, on the border between Myanmar and China, which he visited in 2007, Ammann said, "There were cages stacked on top of each other with captured animals: bears, macaques, small primates, pangolins, rare birds, all kinds of reptiles, and tables filled with butchered animals with bullet holes through their heads and their throats cut. It's one of the worst scenes I've ever seen."

Watch Karl Ammann's video investigation, first webcast by National Geographic News in February last year:

Warning: Graphic Imagery

National Geographic video

 Related: Tiger and Wild Cat Parts on Open Sale in Myanmar

Photo of Julie Fortin and Gary Hevel by David Braun

Gary Hevel has an obsession with the bugs in his Maryland backyard. The harder he looks, the more species he finds.

So far he has collected more than 4,000 species of beetles, moths, butterflies, and more. And all these tiny animals abound on two acres in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

Hevel, who works for the department of entomology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has been something of a star at the National Geographic/National Park Service bioblitz, being held this year in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Students crowd his table in the scientists tent to admire hundreds of insects he has mounted for display.

Hevel talks about his collection in this video:

Video by David Braun

Today's bioblitz in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is an enormous event that required meticulous planning and logistics to coordinate thousands of people and as many different needs of specialized teams of scientists and volunteers. 

Commanding the NPS Incident Management Team overseeing the seamless coordination of the bioblitz is Bryce Canyon Park Superintendent Eddie Lopez.

Lopez heads a six-person team that has come from different parts of the National Park system to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to assist their colleagues who are directly responsible for management of the park. They monitor all aspects of the bioblitz from a special mobile command post.

Lopez talks about the work of the Incident Management Team in this video interview:

Video by David Braun

The birds are getting ready to go to bed and the bugs are trying to get into the tent.

It's getting dark enough to light the kerosene lamp. But although I don't have access to power, thanks to Verizon Wireless, who lent me a USB modem, I am able to connect my laptop to the Internet from anywhere in the park, including my tent.

This whole week I am in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a patchwork collection of enormous sand dunes, bogs, marshes, forests, and prairie along the southern shore of Lake Michigan in Indiana, not too far from Chicago, which I can see across the water.

Together these patches total something like 15,000 acres of preserve. More than two million people visit the park every year.

The occasion is the third in a series of ten annual bioblitzes organized by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. National Parks Service. The first two were in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C., and Santa Monica Mountains, Los Angeles.

The purpose of a biolblitz is to document every species in a park within 24 hours. Scientists work through the entire cycle to be sure they get both daytime and nightime species.

"Part scientific endeavor, part festival and part outdoor classroom, the BioBlitz will bring together leading scientists and naturalists from around the country with teams of public volunteers of all ages, including more than 2,000 students from the tri-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan)," is how the National Geographic Society news statement about the event puts it. "Together they will comb the park, observing and recording as many plant and animal species as possible in 24 hours. Inventory activities include exploring the dunes, catching insects, searching for hidden wildflowers in woodlands, seining fish and other aquatic organisms, and observing and catching bats with nets at night."

Photo of Indiana Dunes lagoon by David Braun

I spent the entire day wandering around the dunes, enjoying the solitude of an immensely beautiful and fragile place. Imagine giant sand dunes being pushed out of Lake Michigan and blown by winds over many years to form a unique and very rare ecosystem.

But the truly amazing thing about this park is that it is bisected by freeways and a railroad. There are factories, including steel mills, inside and alongside the areas protected for nature. The park is threaded through residential areas and small business corridors. As you drive through it you constantly see signs that you are leaving or entering a national park.

Even as I write this in the park campground, surrounded by nature, I hear droning aircraft overhead, the loud wooshing of the traffic on the freeways, and the incessant noises of heavy trains rolling by.

The cacophany of urban noise serves as a bass throb to the notes of the many birds. They and the other wildlife appear to be unaware of the human world.

Photo of Lake Michigan and sand dunes by David Braun

Only a few hours ago I sat quietly on the dunes and watched as swallows flitted in and out of the holes they made in the sand. You don't need a bioblitz to tell you that the place teems with life.

The special opportunity and challenge of a big urban national park like this one is how we can hold on to a national treasure in a setting of so much human activity. I hope I will find some answers this week.

Photo of Indiana Dunes by David Braun

Albatrosses, penguins, seals, and killer whales are among the charismatic species that will benefit from South Africa's declaration of a vast new marine protected area in the Southern Ocean.

At 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers), the Prince Edward Islands Marine Protected Area will be the fourth largest ocean preserve on the planet. Only the protected zones around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Great Barrier Reef, and Phoenix Islands are larger.

The Oklahoma-size territory that South Africa is adding to Earth's protected marine areas is a haven for millions of birds, mammals, and other marine animals being squeezed out of safe places to feed and breed as overfishing and climate change impact their traditional range in the Southern Ocean.

Antartic fur seal photo courtesy Fritz Pölking/WWF South Africa

The announcement by South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister, Christoffel Johannes van Schalkwyk, came after many years of close cooperation between the South African government and WWF, a multinational conservation organization with world headquarters in Switzerland.

"South Africa's declaration to establish one of the world's largest marine protected areas around its Prince Edward Islands is a marine conservation achievement of global importance that will help protect a suite of spectacular wildlife," WWF said.

Penguin colony photo courtesy Sam Petersen/WWF South Africa

The new conservation zone around the Prince Edward and Marion Islands is almost 800 miles (2,000 kilometers) south of South Africa in the Southern Ocean (see map below), and forms an important global biodiversity hotspot, which was subject to rampant poaching during the late 1990s, WWF said.

"This is a historic day in marine conservation in South Africa," said Deon Nel, head of the WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership, a collaboration between WWF and Sanlam, a leading financial services group in South Africa. "All of South Africa's current marine protected areas are located very close inshore. The commitment of the first large offshore marine protected area moves South Africa into a new era of marine conservation."

The Prince Edward Islands are among the world's most important and diverse regions, WWF added. "But the islands, home to albatrosses, penguins and killer whales, have been threatened by illegal and irresponsible fishing practices in the past. The illegal fishing vessels around the Prince Edward Islands were targeting Patagonian toothfish. And the albatross species were killed as bycatch in these operations," the conservation charity said in a news statement.

Grey-headed albatross photo courtesy Sam Petersen/WWF South Africa

Given the scarcity of land masses in the Southern Ocean, sub-Antarctic islands contain vast populations of seals and seabirds, which use these islands to breed and molt and are therefore critical to the conservation of such species, WWF added.

Prince Edward Islands support 450,000 king penguins and 750,000 macaroni penguins. An estimated 5 percent of the world's southern rockhopper penguins also live there, as does a small population of about 3,000 gentoos.

Other birds colonizing the islands include 7,300 wandering albatrosses (44 percent of the total world population), 21,800 grey-headed albatrosses (the albatrosses in the two pictures above), 15,000 Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses (22 percent of the world population), 4,400 dark-mantled albatrosses, and a small population of 700 light-mantled sooty albatrosses.

Photo of gentoo penguins courtesy Kevin Shafer/WWF South Africa

Among the marine mammals raising their young on the islands are 16,000 sub-Antarctic fur seals (a third of the world's population), 760 Antarctic fur seals, and 1,800 southern elephant seals.

Said WWF International's Jim Leape, "South Africa plays a key role with several other countries, including Australia, France and New Zealand, in protecting the amazing biodiversity and commercially important fisheries of the sub-Antarctic and, through this, helps to establish a fully representative, viable and effective marine protected area network for the Southern Ocean."

National Geographic News related stories:

Extinction Near for Albatross, Experts Warn

Antarctic Wildlife at Risk From Overfishing, Experts Say

King Penguins Declining Due to Global Warming

Southern elephant seals photo courtesy Michel Gunther/WWF South Africa

Dolphins can stay sharp and alert, monitoring their environment for days on end without getting the least bit tired because they send half their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious, researchers have learned.

Not only do dolphins have this clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation, Sam Ridgway from the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program explained in a news statement, but they seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds.

Ridgway and colleagues from San Diego and Tel Aviv wondered whether the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tired them and took a toll on the animals' other senses, according to the statement released by The Company of Biologists, a UK-based charity that promotes research in biology.

NGS picture of dolphins by Else Bostelmann

Ridgway and his team set about testing two dolphins' acoustic and visual vigilance over a five-day period to find out how well they functioned after days without a break. The team publish their results on May 1, 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

First Ridgway and his colleagues, Mandy Keogh, Mark Todd and Tricia Kamolnick, trained two dolphins to respond to a 1.5-second beep sounded randomly against a background of 0.5 second beeps every 30 seconds, the news release said.

Ridgway explained that the sounds were low enough for the dolphins to barely notice them as they swam through their enclosure, but the animals sprung into action every time they heard the 1.5-second tone, even after listening to the sounds for five days without a break. Their auditory vigilance remained as sharp as it had been five days earlier.

"Next Allen Goldblatt and Don Carder designed a visual stimulus to test the dolphins' vigilance while they continued listening to the repetitive beeps," the statement added.

"Knowing that the dolphins' binocular vision is limited because their eyes are situated on opposite sides of their heads, Kamolnick trained one of the dolphins, SAY, to recognise two shapes (either three horizontal red bars or one vertical green bar) with her right eye before training her to recognise the same shapes with the left eye, reasoning that if half of her brain was asleep during testing, the dolphin would only see the shapes through the eye connected to the conscious half of the brain.

"But the team were in for a surprise when they began training SAY's left eye. She already recognised the shapes, even though her left eye had not seen them previously."

Visual Information Is Transferred

The information must be transferred between the two brain hemispheres, Ridgway said. He suspects that the dolphin's inter-hemispheric commissures, which connects the two halves, may transfer the visual information.

"Having trained both dolphins to recognise the shapes, the hard part began: monitoring and rewarding the dolphins continually over a five-day period while the team tested the animals' responses to both the sound and visual stimuli," the news statement continued.

"Amazingly, even after five days of listening out for 1.5-second beeps amongst the 0.5-second beep background, the dolphins were still responding as accurately as they had done at the beginning of the experiment.

"The team also enticed the dolphins into a bay at night where they could be shown the horizontal and vertical bar shapes, and found that the dolphins were as sharp at the end of the 120-hour experiment as they had been at the beginning.

"And when the team checked the dolphins' blood for physical signs of sleep deprivation, they couldn't find any.

"After five days of unbroken vigilance the dolphins were in much better shape than the scientists."

Video by Mpingo Conservation Project

Two communities in Tanzania have obtained the first Forest Stewardship Council certification for community-managed natural forest in Africa.

Certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international, not-for-profit, membership-based organization that promotes responsible management of the world's forests, entitles the faremers to use a logo and product label (see details below) that helps consumers worldwide support sustainable harvesting.

"Some of the world's poorest people have achieved international recognition for responsible forest management, and a golden opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty, through selling responsibly harvested timber for musical instruments," UK-based conservation organization Fauna & Flora International said in a news statement.

"This landmark achievement will enable the communities to earn 250 times more from their woodlands--by managing them responsibly--than they have done previously...The FSC certificate will enable communities to earn upwards of U.S.$19 per log compared to 8 cents they received before the MCP began working with them."

Under the system of Participatory Forest Management, which is enshrined in Tanzanian law, communities can take over ownership and control of their local forests from the government, allowing them to profit from timber sales, as long as they manage the forests sustainably, FFI said. "However, with illegal logging widespread, there is a need to differentiate timber coming from community forests from other sources if communities are to receive a fair price; the new FSC certificate does that."

Historic First for Africans

"Previously we just used blackwood without thought, but we have learnt that it is a valuable resource. Now we see that we can utilise our stocks to benefit us all as villagers," said Mwinyimkuu Awadhi, Chairman of Kikole village.

Local farmer, Mwanaiba Ali Mbega, added: "When we started this project we began to see the benefits that could arise from managing our forests. Now we have reached the stage of certification we are confident we are going to bring long term benefits that we will be able to pass on to our grandchildren."

The first timber will be harvested by the villagers from this month. The wood must then be properly dried, a process which takes at least one year, and it is expected that the first FSC-certified blackwood instruments will be available sometime in 2011.

The Mpingo Conservation Project (MCP) aims to conserve endangered forest habitats in East Africa by promoting sustainable and socially equitable harvesting of valuable timber stocks, and with a particular focus on mpingo--the African Blackwood tree.

"African Blackwood...has long been over-harvested across the continent to obtain its dark, lustrous heartwood," FFI said. "The wood is greatly prized for its strong structural qualities by local wood carvers and international manufacturers of woodwind instruments.

"Although African Blackwood is still relatively abundant in South-East Tanzania, illegal logging is widespread and very poor, forest-dependent communities generally receive little benefit from logging on the land around their villages."

Between 7,500 and 20,000 African Blackwood trees are felled for musical instruments each year.

Additional information:

Forest Stewardship Council

Mpingo Conservation Project

Sound & Fair (sustainable blackwood campaign)

Look for these logos:

Graphic courtesy Forest Stewardship Council

Wildlife trade is so poorly regulated in the United States that it threatens ecosystems, native species, food supply chains and human health, several agencies and institutions have warned.

Imports of wildlife are fragmented and insufficiently coordinated, failing to accurately list more than four in five species entering the country, said a team of scientists from the Wildlife Trust, Brown University, Pacific Lutheran University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Global Invasive Species Programme.

Their findings are published in the current issue of the journal Science.

The pet trade includes sales of tokay geckos, pictured here.

Photo by Michael Yabsley, University of Georgia/Courtesy NSF

"As our world, in many senses, grows smaller and smaller with the ease of international travel, the network of connections has increased, facilitating the spread of diseases," said Rita Teutonico, senior advisor for integrative activities in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE).

SBE co-funded the research.

"These scientists report a pattern of trade in wildlife that includes a very large number of animals, coupled with a poor understanding of what species are traded," said James Collins, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences, in a news statement issued by the NSF. "The findings highlight the need for further research because of the unknown effects these animals and their pathogens can have on native organisms."

More than 1.5 Billion Animals Imported

A global trade in wildlife generates hundreds of billions of dollars each year, the news release added. The researchers report that during a six-year period from 2000 through 2006, the U.S. imported more than 1.5 billion live animals.

The animals collected were from wild populations in more than 190 countries around the world, and were intended for commercial sale in the U.S.--primarily in the pet trade, according to the news statement.

"This incredible number of imports is equivalent to every single person in the U.S. owning at least five pets," said biologist Katherine Smith of Brown University, co-leader of the study.

More than 86 percent of shipments contained animals that were not classified to the level of species, making it impossible to assess the full diversity of animals imported, or calculate the risk of non-native species introductions or disease transmission, the NSF said.

"Shipments are coming in labeled 'live vertebrate' or 'fish,'" Daszak said. "If we don't know what animals are in there, how do we know which are going to become invasive species or carry diseases that could affect livestock, wildlife--or ourselves?"

Monkeypox and Other Diseases Imported With Wildlife

The wildlife trade has previously led to disease introductions such as the 2003 monkeypox outbreak following the import of infected African rodents for the pet trade, NSF added.

"The threat to public health is real, as the majority of emerging diseases come from wildlife," said Smith. "Most of these imported animals originate in Southeast Asia--a hotspot for emerging diseases."

The research team calls for direct measures to decrease the risk of such "pathogen pollution" and proposes guidelines to protect human, animal, and ecosystem health:

• Stricter record keeping should be required to inform risk analysis on animal imports.
• Third-party surveillance and testing should be established for both known and unknown pathogens at the exportation points in foreign countries.
• Greater public education is needed to educate individuals, importers, veterinarians and pet industry advocates about the dangers of diseases that emerge from wildlife and that can make their way to domesticated animals and humans.

"We need to look at all the factors that impact ecosystems--the whole picture," Daszak said. "The global wildlife trade is promoting a process that will impact our health and the health of the planet."

National Geographic News related news stories:

Invasive Species in the United States (photos)

Huge, Freed Pet Pythons Invade Florida Everglades