National Geographic Society

A Hawaiian company's plan to raise millions of pounds of sashimi-grade tuna in giant "environmentally friendly Oceanspheres" two miles off Hawaii's Big Island has been approved by state regulators, the company confirmed today.

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources voted last week 4-to-1 to give Hawaii Oceanic Technology permission to install three large underwater cages for the tuna, the Associated Press reported. "But the board is requiring the company to return for permission to build an additional nine cages once it has demonstrated the idea works," AP said.

In an artist's conception, Oceanspheres are suspended in the open sea. Each 162-foot-wide (49-meter-wide) aluminum-and-Kevlar cage would be completely untethered to the ocean floor and self-powered by a system that converts the ocean's thermal energy to electricity. The spheres lie about 65 feet below the ocean surface, and the company says they are designed so as not to be a hazard to whales, sharks, or other marine life.

Illustration of oceanspheres courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology

Twelve Oceanspheres will be deployed incrementally over four years, if permission to install all of them is given. Together they would have an annual production capacity of 6,000 tons of tuna, which the company plans to sell primarily to the U.S. mainland and Japanese markets, where prices are highest.

"The company has designed a system that will have no significant impact on the ocean and surrounding environment," Hawaii Oceanic Technology said in a recent news statement. "To do this, the company is building very large submergible fish farming platforms...that adapt technologies from the defense, oceanographic and the offshore oil drilling industries to raise large amounts of seafood in an environmentally responsible manner," said Chief Technology Director, Paul Troy.

Illustration of oceanspheres courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology

"We are reducing the carbon footprint associated with producing seafood by using renewable energy technology and state-of the-art telecommunications techniques to maintain our Oceanspheres in very deep water away from the shoreline in geostatic position," Troy said. 

When fully operational, the 12 Oceanspheres will operate in 247 ocean acres producing the 6,000 tons of Bigeye tuna per year. "More than 21,000 acres of land would be needed to produce the same amount of beef protein," Hawaii Oceanic Technology CEO Bill Spencer said. "By taking advantage of all three dimensions of the ocean, we can be more efficient while using just a tiny speck of ocean when compared to the area of the vast Pacific," he said.

"Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. that has an ocean lease regulatory framework that allows a company like ours to lease an ocean column for the purpose of fish farming," Spencer added. "Our goal is to demonstrate that you can move some types of fish farming out into deep water where larger farms can be constructed and environmental impact can be insignificant due to naturally occurring processes."

Illustration of oceanspheres courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology

Fingerlings will be grown in land-based tanks at the Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resource Center in Hilo and/ or a future Natural Energy Laboratory Hawaii Authority tuna hatchery in Kona from eggs collected from locally-caught broodstock.

About seven additional tuna would be caught each year in local waters to freshen the gene pool of the captured broodstock, the company said.

The 12-inch, 5-pound fingerlings will be transferred by vessel to the Oceanspheres, and grown to 100-pound harvest size using dry fish feed through automated feed dispensers.

The land base for operations and maintenance equipment, vessels, and staff will be Kawaihae Commercial Harbor. Tuna will be harvested at sea for transshipping through Kawaihae or Hilo Harbor to existing processing and packaging vendors for air-freight to US mainland, Japan, and Hawaii markets.

 

Fifty years ago representatives from twelve nations meeting in Washington signed the Antarctic Treaty "in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes."

Now, on that anniversary, on December 1, an Antarctic Treaty Summit is being convened in Washington.

Representatives of governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial entities, academic institutions, and indigenous people's organizations will review the treaty as a remarkable accomplishment of international cooperation.

And they will ponder how the Antarctic Treaty shows the way to international management of not only other international spaces, such as the deep seas and outer space, but also shared responsibilities for the atmosphere, fisheries, and similar transboundary resources.

The Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance will be convened in Washington, D.C. from November 30-December 3, 2009. The organizers invite broad participation in the Summit, "which is being convened with the sprit of balanced international, interdisciplinary and inclusive engagement."  Registration and other information can be found on the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site. 

Forever Declaration

"We will use the Antarctic Treaty Summit to proclaim a 'Forever Declaration,' which everyone in the world can sign, elaborating on the concept of 'forever' from the preamble to the Antarctic Treaty," says Paul Berkman, chair of the International Board for the Antarctic Treaty Summit.

"The Antarctic Treaty is as an example of how different nations can cooperate for peaceful purposes in ways that are equitable, balanced, continuous, and offer hope to the world."

The Forever Declaration will be introduced on December 1, the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, and will be open for signature by anyone via the Internet.

Image of Antarctica courtesy NASA

"It is something which the entire world can make a shared statement about cooperation, using regions for peaceful purposes only, based on the notion of common interests," Berkman says. "That is the hope and aspiration of the Forever Declaration."

Berkman has a remarkable story to tell about the Antarctic Treaty, from its origins in the Cold War and the superpower race to acquire nuclear weaponry and dominate outer space, to the way the treaty was able to harness science as a framework for diplomacy.

In this three-part series, Berkman tells the story:

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The lesson of fifty years of the Antarctic Treaty System is that the nations of the world can set aside their political and territorial aspirations to share in the management of a vast region of the planet, says Paul Berkman, chair of the International Board for the Antarctic Treaty Summit.

In this final part of a series on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, Berkman describes the hopes for building on an international agreement that has been a road map for nations to collaborate on the basis of "common interests" to manage the 75 percent of the planet that does not fall under national jurisdictions.

 The Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance will be convened in Washington, D.C. from November 30-December 3, 2009. The organizers invite broad participation in the Summit, "which is being convened with the sprit of balanced international, interdisciplinary and inclusive engagement."  Registration and other information can be found on the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site. 

By Paul Berkman,
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Recognition by the U.S. Congress

The United States House of Representatives adopted House Concurrent Resolution 51 (Recognizing the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Antarctic Treaty) on September 30, 2009. (See full text below.)

The resolution was sponsored by Congressman Pat Tiberi from Ohio along with 33 co-sponsors, including the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (Congressman Howard Berman from California) and Chair of the House Commitee on Science and Technology (Congressman Bart Gordon from Tennessee).

The Resolution was an interesting process from several different angles.

As a citizen of the United States, one individual among 300 million people, to be able to go and interact with the elected officials at the national level and to be able to suggest them a type of legislation and assist with the process of seeing this legislation emerge and finally get approved by one of the branches of the U.S. Congress, was in itself a humbling experience.

An individual in a great nation can contribute to the development and growth of that nation. There's a message of hope in that. Anyone, whoever they are, with the right motivation, insight and sincerity can create positive development and change in the world we live in.

"The idea is to look across the 50 years of international cooperation and identify those lessons that will have meaning and value to international governance into the future."

The full name of the Antarctic Treaty summit is The Antarctic Treaty: Science, Policy, Interactions, and International Governance. So it's not just a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. The idea is to look across the 50 years of international cooperation and identify those lessons that will have meaning and value to international governance into the future.

Certainly science and policy are two of the ingredients that allowed the Antarctic Treaty system to emerge. The notions of science, policy, interactions are the focus of the Antarctic Treaty Summit.

In developing this Concurrent Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives, the original resolution was sponsored by Congressman Tiberi, and it was done in a nonpartisan way. Eventually there were 33 co-sponsors of the resolution, which was assigned to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The very last sponsor was Congressman Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Two of the co-sponsors are the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It's a mirror of the science policy theme. This makes it a special piece of legislation.

The Resolution is now in the U.S. Senate, where it has been assigned to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

The Antarctic Treaty Summit "Forever Declaration"

The intention of the summit is not just to have a meeting, where people get together, discuss things, and leave, and it was relevant only to the people in the room.

The idea is to begin a snowball, a level of momentum in a dialogue where various parties, governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial entities, academic institutions, indigenous peoples organizations, are all talking together in neutral venues about strategies to manage regions that are beyond sovereign jurisdictions, as well as resources that are transboundary.

Fisheries migrate across boundaries, the atmosphere and oceans move across boundaries, so the issues that are relevant to international spaces are also relevant to things that move across boundaries.

The type of dialogue that is anticipated for the Antarctic Treaty Summit is a demonstration that it is possible to catalyze high-profile international, interdisciplinary and inclusive discussion.

The big difference between the Antarctic Treaty Summit and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which is an annual event, is that the consultative meeting is convened by governments, for governments, with government people, whereas the Antarctic Treaty Summit is open to anyone anywhere in the world.

The intention is to reach across all sectors of society internationally in an engaged and inclusive way, welcoming the insights and participation, the enthusiasm, even the questions from anyone, anywhere in the world. So the event itself is open and not restricted in any way.

The tangible outcome of the event, aside from books and things like that, will be discussions that carry over into future meetings.

But what's likely to be of most interest to the average person anywhere in the world is the "Forever Declaration."

The Forever Declaration embraces an interesting concept:

If you think of the eight centuries of perspective of the value of the Magna Carta, and imagine eight centuries into the future, for all intents and purposes that's forever. We know from the Magna Carta that we can see how a legal document can have meaning across centuries.

The idea of elaborating "Forever" from the Antarctic Treaty is not only for the relevance of the Antarctic but for the relevance of international spaces, for transboundary issues, for the elaboration of common interests, as an example of how different nations can cooperate for peaceful purposes in ways that are equitable, balanced, continuous, and offer hope to the world.

This declaration will be introduced on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, which is on December 1. The declaration will be open for signature by anyone anywhere in the world. And it will be available for signature via the Internet.

It is something in which the entire world can make a shared statement about cooperation, using regions for peaceful purposes only, about the notion of common interests. That is the hope and aspiration of the Forever Declaration.

Professor Paul Berkman is the head of the Arctic Ocean Geopolitics Programme at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK.

Special series on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty by Paul Berkman

Part One: Antarctic Treaty at 50, a beacon for joint management of Earth

Part Two: How Antarctica facilitated science as a tool of diplomacy

Part Three: Antarctic Treaty lessons have enduring value for humankind (this page)

For more information, please visit the Antarctic Treaty Summit Web site.

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A fly that buzzed around during the time of dinosaurs is being described as a new family, genus and species of fly never before observed.

This artist's rendering of a 100-million-year old insect shows the unusual horn on its head topped by three eyes.

Image by George Poinar/Courtesy OSU

"A single, incredibly well-preserved specimen of the tiny but scary-looking fly was preserved for eternity in Burmese amber, and it had a small horn emerging from the top of its head, topped by three eyes that would have given it the ability to see predators coming," Oregon State University said in a statement about the discovery.

"No other insect ever discovered has a horn like that, and there's no animal at all with a horn that has eyes on top," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor of zoology at OSU, who announced the new species in the journal Cretaceous Research.

"It was probably a docile little creature that fed on the pollen and nectar of tiny tropical flowers," Poinar said. "But it was really bizarre looking. One of the reviewers of the study called it a monster, and I have to admit it had a face only another fly could have loved. I was thinking of making some masks based on it for Halloween."

This ancient "unicorn" fly that lived 100 million years ago in Burma has a "horn" in the center of its forehead, capped with three small eyes.

Photo by George Poinar/Courtesy OSU

The fly lived in the jungles of Myanmar and was found trapped in amber that was from 97 to 110 million years old, OSU said. "The gooey, viscous tree sap that flowed down over the fly and later turned to stone preserved its features in lifelike detail, including its strange horn topped by three functional eyes."

Strange evolutionary adaptations

"If we had seen nothing but the wings of this insect, it would have looked similar to some other flies in the family Bibionomorpha," Poinar said. "But this was near the end of the Early Cretacous when a lot of strange evolutionary adaptations were going on. Its specialized horn and eyes must have given this insect an advantage on very tiny flowers, but didn't serve as well when larger flowers evolved. So it went extinct."

Poinar named the new fly Cascoplecia insolitis--from the Latin "cascus" for old and "insolates" for strange and unusual.

The fly also had other very unusual characteristics, the study found, such as an odd-shaped antenna, unusually long legs that would have helped it crawl over flowers and extremely small vestigial mandibles that would have limited it to nibbling on very tiny particles of food.

This image of an ancient fly in amber more closely shows the strange horn on its head, topped by three eyes.

Photo by George Poinar/Courtesy OSU

Pollen grains found on the legs of the fly suggest that it primarily must have fed on flowers.

"This fly lived during the time of the dinosaurs, but also in a period when Triassic and Jurassic species were becoming extinct, modern groups were appearing and angiosperms, or flowering plants, were diversifying. Some of the characteristics of the fly were common to other families found around that time, but others were extremely different--especially the horn with eyes on top," OSU said.

The specimen found in amber was well-preserved, lacking only the rear left portion of the abdomen and a portion of the left hind leg. It's rare to find specimens with essentially a complete body as well as wings, scientists noted in the report.

The fossil came from an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar, first excavated in 2001.

"This 'unicorn' fly was one of the oddities of the Cretaceous world and was obviously an evolutionary dead end."

Poinar is an expert on insects and other life forms that have been preserved in amber, and has used them as clues to create detailed portraits of ancient ecosystems.

"None of the specialized body characters of Cascoplecia occurs on previously reported Cretaceous bibionids," the report concluded. "This 'unicorn' fly was one of the oddities of the Cretaceous world and was obviously an evolutionary dead end."

Leading tiger experts, wildlife conservation charities, and representatives of governments of countries that have wild tiger ranges are meeting in Nepal this week to begin a global dialogue about the threats facing tigers as the world prepares to mark the Year of the Tiger in 2010, WWF says in a news statement.

Amur or Siberian tiger in a rehabilitation center for wild animals in the Russian Far East.

Photo © Vladimir Filonov / WWF-Canon

WWF and others are attending the Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop, the first in a series before and during the Year of the Tiger, that brings together decisionmakers from tiger range countries, members of the World Bank's Global Tiger Initiative, NGOs and the world's leading tiger experts, the Switzerland-based conservation group said.

"They will discuss the specific actions required to halt the extinction of the tiger in the wild."

"Tiger populations are still in steep decline and some estimates predict that tigers could be extinct in the wild by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022."

"Wild tiger populations are at a tipping point," WWF said. "While many important successes have been gained by the global conservation community, tiger populations are still in steep decline and some estimates predict that tigers could be extinct in the wild by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022."

Indian tiger female in the Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, India

Photo © Michel Terrettaz / WWF-Canon

The Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop is hosted by the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, Government of Nepal, and co-organized and co-sponsored by the CITES Secretariat, Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative, Save The Tiger Fund, and the World Bank.

Indian Tiger, sitting, showing his back, Bangkok Zoo Thailand

Photo © Martin Harvey / WWF-Canon

WWF hopes to secure major political commitments for tiger conservation, through the series of political negotiation meetings occurring throughout the Year of the Tiger and leading up to a final Heads of State Tiger Summit in September 2010.

The skins of Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) and other rare cats are openly displayed for sale in Cholon District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. October 2002.

Photo © Adam Oswell / WWF-Canon

Effective conservation of tigers can provide an umbrella for all biodiversity, according to the World Bank, which joined forces with conservation groups to launch the Tiger Conservation Initiative in 2008.

Tiger conservation is thus vital to the conservation of many other rare and threatened species, as well as to sustaining essential ecosystem-services that forests provide, such as watershed protection, soil conservation and carbon storage, the Bank says on its Web site.

Clearing of tropical rainforest for paper industry, palm oil and other plantations in, Sumatra, Indonesia

Photo © WWF-Germany/M. Radday

"Despite their ecological significance, tiger populations are in decline," the Bank adds.

"Tigers occupy only 7 percent of their historic range, and in the last decade their habitats have shrunk significantly. Within a century, wild tiger numbers have plunged from more than 100,000 to about 4,000 animals.

"Tigers have already disappeared from Central Asia, Java and Bali in Indonesia, and most of China.

"Habitat loss, combined with intense poaching of prey species and the illegal trade in tiger parts, has taken a severe toll, with entire populations eliminated from what were once considered secure reserves."

Indian tiger close-up, Bangkok Zoo, Thailand

Photo © Martin Harvey/WWF-Canon

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The global warming movement finally went global yesterday, said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, in reaction to the International Day of Climate Action, marked yesterday by more than 5,000 demonstrations in 181 countries.

A 350 is mowed into a meadow 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Copenhagen, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held this December. This picture was taken as part of the 350.org International Day of Climate Action on October 24, 2009.

Photo courtesy of Henrik Jørgensen, Chairman of The Strøgårdsvang Mowers Association

Founded by McKibben, an American environmentalist and author, 350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis. Its mission is "to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis--to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet."

Students in Cebu City, Philippines gather in a giant 350.

Photo by Vito Selma/courtesy of 350.org

350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments think is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, 350.0rg explained in a press release about yesterday's global demonstration.

"Scientists have concluded that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390ppm, and that unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt."

More than 1,200 people took part in an event at the Sydney Opera House to call for climate action as part of the 350.org Global Day of Climate Action on October 24. Hundreds took part in spelling out 350 on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

For yesterday's International Day of Climate Action, 350.org combining the Web and SMS networks, distributing Flip video cameras, and training young people in "climate workshops" on multiple continents.

"Event organizers filmed and photographed their actions and uploaded them immediately to the group's website and Flickr account, and organizers will displayed hundreds of them on the giant advertising screens of Times Square [in New York City] before hand-delivering shots to United Nations delegations on Monday," 350.org said.

Joseph Rotella and Aravinda Ananada hold a 350 sign at the melting glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

Photo courtesy of 350.0rg

Thousands of photos from 5,248 rallies and protests spread across 181 countries flooded into the Web servers of 350.org over the last 36 hours--marking, 350.org said, "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history."

"And there wasn't a rock star or movie actor in sight," McKibben said. "It was ordinary people rallying around a scientific data point to send the message that our leaders actually need to lead."

Fisheries Minister of the Maldives Ibrahim Didi signing the 350 declaration during the underwater cabinet meeting on October 17.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

"Parts per million CO2 sounds too obscure an idea to attract crowds on six continents, but there were thousands of people in the streets from Togo and Ethiopia and Paraguay to Seattle and London and Sydney," McKibben said.

The Wilderness Society made this statement in a logged portion of the forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia (Just outside of Melbourne).

Photo by Andrew North, Cloud 9 (Aerial Photography)/courtesy of 350.0rg

Highlights of the day, 350.org said, included a "planet-scale game of Scrabble," with citizens in Wellington, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia, forming giant human 3s, London, UK, and New Delhi, India, enormous human 5s, and Quito, Ecuador, and Copenhagen, Denmark, massive 0s.

"The point was you had to put them together across global borders if you wanted to solve the puzzle," said 350.org media coordinator Jamie Henn. "Just like the climate negotiations set for Copenhagen in December."

 

Women in Bangladesh

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Around the shore of the Dead Sea Israeli activists made a giant 3, Palestinians a huge 5, and Jordanians a 0. In South Africa, climbers with banners dangled beneath the cable cars on Table Mountain. In Canada, thousands thronged Parliament Hill in Ottawa, 350.org reported.

"People in almost all the nations of the earth are involved ," said 350.org honorary spokesman Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican archbishop and Nobel Laureate. "It's the same kind of coalition that helped make the word apartheid known around the world."

Buena Vista, Colorado

Photo courtesy of 350.org

The International Day of Climate Action is the second key moment in the Tck Tck Tck campaign on the road to the next UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen this December, 350.0rg said. "Tck Tck Tck is an unprecedented global alliance of civil society organizations, trade unions, faith groups, and millions of individuals all calling for a fair, ambitious, and binding climate change agreement.

"The Day of Action is a part of an effort to build the world's biggest mandate for bold climate action."

Children, young people and elders, all of them Totonacas, an ancient native tribe from the northern region of the State of Veracruz in Mexico, gathered to create a  350. "We all sang and danced to make it happen, to reach a better world for all," said the submitters of the image.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Istanbul, Turkey

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Members of Pasumai Thaayagam (Green Motherland) in Chennai, India form a human chain for a fair and just climate change treaty as part of the 350.org International Day of Climate Action, October 24.

Photo by R. Arul/courtesy of 350.org

Lantern walkers in Sydney, Australia

Photo by Peter Solness/courtesy of 350.org

 

Two male calves have been added to the giraffe herd at Walt Disney World Resort's Animal Kingdom in Florida.

Photo courtesy of Walt Disney World Resort

Weighing 153 pounds, Bolo (in the picture above) was born October 12 to second-time mother Big Girl, who first birthed a female calf in November 2005, Disney said on its Web site. "On October 5, the Disney's Animal Programs team helped to deliver 166-pound calf Bruehler from third-time mother Aibuni."

As newborns, both male calves stand nearly six feet tall and could grow to be as tall as 15 to18 feet as adults, Disney added.

Photo courtesy of Walt Disney World Resort

Like people, giraffes have seven neck vertebrae bones, although an adult giraffe's neck alone can measure up to 7 feet, and its tongue can be as long as 18 inches.

Bolo and Bruehler and their mothers appear to be doing well, according to Animal Kingdom veterinarians and animal care managers. "The young males, who began nursing successfully soon after birth, are already feisty and very active."

"The next important milestone is for the calves to continue the bonding process with their mothers who will teach them important lessons and guide them as they are introduced to the herd in the coming weeks," said Matt Hohne, Animal Operations Director at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

The latest calves are the 13th and 14th giraffes born at Disney's Animal Kingdom since opening in 1998. Giraffes at Walt Disney World Resort are bred through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Population Management Plan, which is a consortium of zoos and wildlife parks working together to conserve and breed animals.  

Photo courtesy of Walt Disney World Resort

The Akuntsu tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has lost its oldest member, Ururú, leaving the tribe with only five surviving members, Survival, a UK-based charity that supports tribal people worldwide, said this week.

"Ururú was the oldest member of this close-knit, tiny group and an integral part of it," Survival said in a statement.

In addition, the oldest-surviving Akuntsu, Ururú's brother Konibu, is seriously ill, Survival added.

Ururú, the oldest member of the Akuntsu tribe, has died.

© Marcelo dos Santos/courtesy of Survival

Altair Algayer, head of the FUNAI (Brazilian government Indian affairs department) team which protects the Akuntsu's land, said, "She was a fighter, strong, and resisted until the last moment."

"Ururú witnessed the genocide of her people and the destruction of their rainforest home, as cattle ranchers and their gunmen moved on to indigenous lands in Rondônia state," Survival's statement said. "Rondônia was opened up by government colonisation projects and the infamous BR 364 highway in the 1960s and 70s."

The last of a tribe: Ururú, who died on October 1, 2009, and the other surviving Akuntsu, from left to right, Nãnoi, Ururú, Pugapía. Pupák, Enotéi and Konibú.

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival 

"With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people."

"With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people," Survival said. While we shall perhaps never know the full horrors inflicted on the Akuntsu in the last half century, today's survivors say their family members were killed when ranchers bulldozed their houses and opened fire on them. The two surviving men, Konibú and Pupak, have marks on their bodies where bullets entered as they fled.

"FUNAI found the remains of houses which had been destroyed by ranchers who were clearing the forest for cattle pasture. The ranchers attempted to hide evidence of the crime, but wooden poles, arrows, axes and broken pottery were discovered."

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

When the Akuntsu were contacted by FUNAI in 1995 they numbered seven. The youngest, Konibú's daughter, died in January 2000.

Today they live in a territory officially recognized by the Brazilian government, where FUNAI protects their land from invasion by surrounding ranchers, Survival said.

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

21st Century genocide

Survival's director, Stephen Corry, said yesterday, 'With Ururú's death we are seeing the final stages of a 21st century genocide.

"Unlike mass killings in Nazi Germany or Rwanda, the genocides of indigenous people are played out in hidden corners of the world, and escape public scrutiny and condemnation. Although their numbers are small, the result is just as final.

"Only when this persecution is seen as akin to slavery or apartheid will tribal peoples begin to be safe."'

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

The story of the Akuntsu, their neighbours the Kanoê, and the elusive "Man of the Hole" is told in a new Brazilian film, Corumbiara. The Akuntsu also feature in Survival's short film, Uncontacted Tribes.

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© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

Most of the photos of the last of the Akuntsu on this page were made by Fiona Watson, a campaigner in Brazil for Survival. "Nothing prepared me for meeting the Akuntsu," she writes for the The Independent Web site. "It was at that first moment, when six solitary figures sitting in a forest clearing grasped our hands, that I fully understood the enormity of this encounter: I was witnessing the extinction of an entire people in my lifetime." Read more >> 

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By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media

Large algae blooms could have been a major contributing factor to the last five mass extinctions and smaller die-offs throughout history, researchers at Clemson University announced yesterday, challenging the theories that a major cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, alone caused the extinctions.

Today, a change in sediment or water temperature can cause large algae blooms, which can remove oxygen from the water and create toxins that suffocate fish and poison other organisms. The toxins created by some types of algae can creep into groundwater and poison plants, too, which causes problems up the food chain.

The researchers found evidence of spikes in fossilized algae, called stromatolites, about the same time the mass extinctions occurred, leading them to believe that algae had a role in disrupting the food chain by killing off fish or poisoning herbivorous creatures. The blooms could have been caused by fallout from volcanoes or asteroid collisions, or simply from climate change.

While it is a theory about the past, the theory could have an impact on the future as well.

"This hypothesis gives us cause for concern and underscores the importance of careful and strategic monitoring as we move into an era of global climate change," wrote James W. Castle and John H. Rodgers, the authors of the study that was presented at the 2009 meeting of the Geological Society of America.

There is evidence that toxic algae has been creeping northward due to climate change, says Castle, potentially causing problems for wildlife and humans as the planet gets warmer.

You can read more about developments in the asteroid extinction theory at National Geographic News.


 

 

 

By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media

A research team of Greek and English underwater archaeologists have discovered ceramics that date the world's oldest submerged town to be 1,200 years older than previously thought, the Greek government announced today.

Pavlopetri, off the south coast of Laconia in Greece, was discovered in 1967 but left alone until earlier this year, when scientists from the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the University of Nottingham began using modern technology to map the submerged town.

The 1967 efforts simply used snorkels and measuring tapes to map out the town, finding 15 buildings and 37 graves.  This year's efforts using digital underwater mapping technology discovered an additional 9,000 square meters (96,875 square feet) of the town.

"This site is unique in that we have almost the complete town plan, the main streets and domestic buildings, courtyards, rock-cut tombs and what appear to be religious buildings, clearly visible on the seabed," said Jon Henderson, an underwater archaeologist from the University of Nottingham, in a statement.

The previous research dated the town at the Mycenaean period, around 1600 to 1000 BC.  The ceramics found this year suggest the town was inhabited during the Bronze Age, at least as early as 2800 BC.

The results of the five-year project are scheduled to be released in 2014.

You can watch video podcasts of the project at the University of Nottingham's YouTube channel.

The city-size rock that impacted Earth sixty-five million years ago, in what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula at a site known as Chicxulub, may not have been the main cause of the great extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and as much as 80 percent of the rest of life on the planet.

Instead, a 25-mile-wide meteorite, as much as five times the size of the one that struck Chicxulub, could have slammed into Earth where India is today, vaporizing the planet's crust and leaving the largest multi-ringed crater the world has ever seen.

Impact illustration courtesy NASA

Texas Tech University scientists think they have pieced together the geological evidence for this impact, and they will present their theory to the annual general meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), in Portland, oregon, this coming weekend.

"A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago," GSA said in a statement about the research, released today.

"Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers took a close look at the massive Shiva basin, a submerged depression west of India that is intensely mined for its oil and gas resources. Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet," GSA said.

Chatterjee will present the research at the GSA meeting on Sunday.

Largest crater on the planet

"If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet," Chatterjee said. "A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter, creates its own tectonics."

By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs, was between 5 and 6 miles wide, GSA said.

"It's hard to imagine such a cataclysm. But if the team is right, the Shiva impact vaporized Earth's crust at the point of collision, leaving nothing but ultra-hot mantle material to well up in its place.

"It is likely that the impact enhanced the nearby Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions that covered much of western India. What's more, the impact broke the Seychelles islands off of the Indian tectonic plate, and sent them drifting toward Africa."

Dramatic geological evidence

The geological evidence is dramatic, GSA added.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the submerged Shiva crater, western shelf of India, from different cross-sectional and geophysical data. The overlying 4.3-mile-thick Cenozoic strata and water column were removed to show the structure of the crater.

Image courtesy of Geological Society Of America

"Shiva's outer rim forms a rough, faulted ring some 500 kilometers [310 miles] in diameter, encircling the central peak, known as the Bombay High, which would be 3 miles tall from the ocean floor (about the height of Mount McKinley).

"Most of the crater lies submerged on India's continental shelf, but where it does come ashore it is marked by tall cliffs, active faults and hot springs. The impact appears to have sheared or destroyed much of the 30-mile-thick granite layer in the western coast of India."

Illustration courtesy of NASA

Two large impacts such as Shiva and Chicxulub in quick succession, in concert with Deccan eruptions (a series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India that some scientists believe may have been the real culprit that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago), would have devastating effects globally, Chatterjee and colleagues say in the abstract to their presentation.

That, in turn, could have caused the "climatic and environmental catastrophes that wiped out dinosaurs and many other organisms" at the time of the mass extinction.

The team hopes to go India later this year to examine rocks drill from the center of the putative crater for clues that would prove the strange basin was formed by a gigantic impact.

"Rocks from the bottom of the crater will tell us the telltale sign of the impact event from shattered and melted target rocks. And we want to see if there are breccias, shocked quartz, and an iridium anomaly," Chatterjee said. "Asteroids are rich in iridium, and such anomalies are thought of as the fingerprint of an impact."

Related National Geographic News stories:

Yucatan Asteroid Didn't Kill Dinosaurs, Study Says
A controversial new study contends that a second, as yet unidentified asteroid impact must have caused the mass extinction popularly attributed to the Chicxulub asteroid.

"Dinosaur Killer" Asteroid Only One Part of New Quadruple-Whammy Theory
The dinosaurs were killed not by a lone asteroid strike but by the quadruple whammy of global climate change, massive volcanism, and not one but two gigantic collisions.

Asteroid Rained Glass Over Entire Earth, Scientists Say
Scientists studying the fallout from a huge asteroid that crashed into Earth 65 million years ago have gained better understanding of the event that most likely took out the dinosaurs and much other life on the planet.

Skin and tissue samples from more than 1,500 humpback whales have provided new insights into how different breeding populations of the whales interact with one another in the Southern Hemisphere.

"After 15 years of research in the waters of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and an international coalition of organizations have unveiled the largest genetic study of humpback whale populations ever conducted in the Southern Hemisphere," the Wildlife Conservation Society said yesterday.

Humpback whales in southern populations are poorly understand in terms of their population structure. The new research will help researchers understand these populations and how they are connected, which in turn will help inform management decisions.

Credit: M. Leslie

"By analyzing DNA samples from more than 1,500 whales, researchers can now peer into the population dynamics and relatedness of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales as never before, and help inform management decisions in the sometimes politically charged realm of whale conservation," the New York-based conservation charity added.

So little is known about southern ocean basin humpbacks that researchers initially used old whaling records for insights into whale population boundaries.

"Humpback whales are perhaps the most studied species of great whale in the Northern Hemisphere, but many of the interactions among Southern Hemisphere populations are still poorly understood," said Howard Rosenbaum, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program and lead author of the study. "This research illustrates the vast potential of genetic analyses to uncover the mysteries of how humpbacks travel and form populations in the southern ocean basins."

The scientists used biopsy darts to harmlessly collect bits of skin (and the genetic material needed for the study) from the whales. The small darts bounce off the backs of surfacing whales and then float, enabling the researchers to recover them.

Credit: T. Collins

Researchers collected skin samples from 1,527 whales from 14 sampling sites from the southwestern and southeastern Atlantic Ocean, and the southwestern and northern Indian Oceans.

The populations are known as Breeding Stocks A (Southwest Atlantic Ocean), B (Southeast Atlantic Ocean), C (Southwest Indian Ocean), and X (Northern Indian Ocean), based on information amassed and designated by the International Whaling Commission, including data from 19th and 20th Centuries commercial whaling.

"The scientists collected samples from living whales with biopsy darts fired from crossbows," WCS said. "The darts harmlessly bounce off the marine mammals as they surface to breathe. Samples came also from skin which is continually sloughed off by the animals and collected by the research teams."

The samples were analyzed by the AMNH Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, which focused on mitochondrial DNA, which is passed through maternal lines of a population, in order to measure interchange between groups.

The findings revealed:

• The highest rate of gene flow between populations is between whales that breed on either side of the African continent (Breeding Stocks B and C), with an estimated one or two reproductively active whales every year swimming from one ocean to join whales in another breeding ground. Authors of the current study previously identified the same individual whale in both Atlantic and Indian Ocean breeding grounds at different times, the first recorded instance of a humpback whale traveling between these two oceans.
• A lower rate of gene flow between humpbacks breeding on opposite sides of the Atlantic (one population along coastal Brazil and the other along the coast of Southern Africa). While no individual whales have been detected traveling across the Southern Atlantic to both breeding grounds, genetic similarities reveal a slight degree of populations interacting. "Interestingly, an examination of humpback whale songs between the two populations are similar, another hint at interchange between the two groups, most likely in the whales' feeding grounds in Antarctic waters," WCS said.
• Breeding Stock X, which inhabits the northern Indian Ocean off the Arabian Peninsula, numbers fewer than 200 whales and is the most distinct in terms of genetics and migratory behavior. Unlike the other humpback populations, it is non-migratory and only distantly related to the nearest group of humpbacks (which breed off Madagascar and the eastern coast of Southern Africa). As a small, insular group, the "X" population is unique and therefore a conservation priority.

"In addition to examining the population boundaries of humpbacks in the Southern Hemisphere, the study also gives scientists some insight into the mysterious and mercurial nature of marine ecosystems, with currents, water depth, and other unseen factors serving as shifting conduits and barriers between marine populations and ecosystems," WCS added.

Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and other organizations have conducted the largest genetic study ever on humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere. Here, crew members observe several humpbacks off the coast of Madagascar, one of 14 study sites in the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Credit: Julie Larsen Maher (c) WCS

"Understanding the needs of humpbacks and other whale species can be challenging in terms of direct observations of these animals in the wild," Rosenbaum said. "Molecular technology gives us a window into the lives of whales that can help us understand the ecological forces shaping their movements and distribution. We can also use our findings to inform management decisions for a species that is only now beginning to recover from centuries of commercial whaling."

The humpback whale is a baleen whale that grows up to approximately 50 feet in length. The species has distinctively long pectoral fins and a head with knobs on the top and lower jaw.

"The humpback is also known for its acrobatics (such as full body breaching) and haunting songs, typically sung by males and possibly a mating behavior," WCS said. "The slow-swimming species was hunted commercially until the International Whaling Commission protected the species globally in 1966. Current estimates for humpback whale numbers are widely debated. While they are recovering, total population sizes may only perhaps be a small percent of the original global population."

The research was published in PLoS One, an interactive open-access journal for scientific and medical research. Other contributors to the study include: Columbia University; University of Pretoria; Environment Study of Oman; Instituto Baleia Jubarta and PURCS (Brazil); University of Cape Town; Marine and Coastal Management (South Africa); Faculdade de Biociências; Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (Gabon); Association Megaptera (France); Université de La Rochelle (France).

Big cats are in trouble, from lions in Kenya to snow leopards in the Himalaya, the National Geographic Society said in a statement today. "The icons of the natural world--lions, cheetahs, leopards, jaguars and other top felines--are disappearing, victims of habitat loss and degradation as well as conflicts with humans.

NGS photo of African lion by Chris Johns

"Large cats are keystone species of their ecosystems; losing them means not only loss of a majestic predator but destruction of a natural balance that affects an entire environmental system, including people."

To address this critical situation the National Geographic Society has launched the Big Cats Initiative, a comprehensive program that supports on-the-ground conservation projects, education and economic incentive efforts and a global public-awareness campaign.

The program's first phase will target lions, whose populations are dying off rapidly across Africa, the news statement explained.

NGS photo of African lion by Chris Johns

"Lions once ranged across Africa and into Syria, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and northwest India; some 1.5 million lions roamed the earth two millennia ago. Since the 1940s, when lions numbered an estimated 450,000, lion populations have blinked out across the continent and now may total as few as 20,000 animals. Scientists connect the drastic decreases in lions in part to burgeoning human populations".

The first goal of the Big Cats Initiative is to halt lion population declines by the year 2015 and to restore populations to sustainable levels by 2020.

The first goal of the Big Cats Initiative is to halt lion population declines by the year 2015 and to restore populations to sustainable levels by 2020.

As a first step, National Geographic will map all available data on lion populations, demographics and habitat. Using that information, National Geographic will launch a grant program that will fund a variety of conservation projects across the lions' range. These include innovative projects focused on near-term results for saving lions, including anti-poaching programs and projects that test new techniques and technologies.

NGS photo of African lions by Michael Nichols

Proposals for education projects will be encouraged, especially those working directly with community stakeholders to help local populations understand the ecological and economic value of preserving lions and other big cats. Projects that establish economic incentives for local people to ensure long-term survival of lions will especially be a priority.

"Emergency grants, such as the one made in 2008 by National Geographic to the Maasailand Preservation Trust in support of its Predator Compensation Fund, will be considered," National Geographic said. "That fund compensates local Maasai herdsmen for livestock kills by lions in and around Kenya's Amboseli National Park, where the lion population has declined drastically in recent years. Reports from the field indicate that lion deaths have dropped considerably in some areas since the project began."

The Big Cats Initiative is made up of conservationists led by National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. "Having lived and worked in some of Africa's most remote areas for more than 25 years as authors and filmmakers, the Jouberts have embraced the cause of wildlife conservation, especially for big cats," National Geographic said.

The Jouberts are active conservationists in Botswana, members of the IUCN-affiliated Lion Working Group and founding members of the Chobe Wildlife Trust and of Conservation International in Botswana. The Jouberts also work in ecotourism and on building community partnerships.

"We no longer have the luxury of time when it comes to big cats," said Dereck Joubert. "They are in such a downward spiral that if we hesitate now, we will be responsible for extinctions across the globe. If there was ever a time to take action, it is now."

NGS photo by W. Robert Moore

Conservation scientist Luke Dollar, a National Geographic explorer, is coordinating the Big Cats Initiative. "The BCI is the most ambitious, audacious conservation initiative I have ever encountered, much less been a part of," Dollar said in an email. "The extraordinary thing is that the goal is not only a critical response to a global biodiversity emergency; by our current roadmap, it is logical, progressive, and achievable."

National Geographic will collaborate with local and international NGOs, corporations, local community groups and individuals to work with saving lions and ensuring the future of this multiyear initiative.

For more information and how to apply for grants visit the Big Cats Initiative Web site.

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Food production must be increased 70 percent to provide for the extra 2.4 billion people expected to come aboard planet Earth by 2050. We have the technology and the knowhow to do this without using a lot more arable land than we farm now--but only if we act in a targeted and strategic way.

That's the message that came out of Rome today at the start of this week's High-Level Expert Forum on How to Feed the World in 2050, convened by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

The combined effect of population growth, strong income growth and urbanization is expected to result in almost the doubling of world demand for food, feed and fiber, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said at the start of today's session.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf opening the "How to Feed the World in 2050" with a welcome address to delegates, 12-13 October 2009, FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy.

© FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

Opening the two-day forum, Diouf said that agriculture must become more productive if it is to feed a much larger world population while responding to the daunting environmental challenges ahead.

"Agriculture will have no choice but to be more productive."

"Agriculture will have no choice but to be more productive," Diouf said in remarks posted on the FAO Web site.

Increases would need to come mostly from yield growth and improved cropping intensity rather than from farming more land despite the fact that there are still ample land resources with potential for cultivation, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America, he said.

He also noted that "while organic agriculture contributes to hunger and poverty reduction and should be promoted, it cannot by itself feed the rapidly growing population."

World population is projected to rise to 9.1 billion in 2050 from a current 6.7 billion, requiring a 70-percent increase in farm production, says an FAO report "How to Feed the World 2050."

According to the report, "By 2050 the world's population will reach 9.1 billion, 34 percent higher than today. Nearly all of this population increase will occur in developing countries. Urbanization will continue at an accelerated pace, and about 70 percent of the world's population will be urban (compared to 49 percent today). Income levels will be many multiples of what they are now.

"In order to feed this larger, more urban and richer population, food production (net of food used for biofuels) must increase by 70 percent. Annual cereal production will need to rise to about 3 billion tonnes from 2.1 billion today and annual meat production will need to rise by over 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes."

Sprinklers irrigating crops in South Africa

NGS photo by Bobby Haas

The report argues that the required increase in food production can be achieved "if the necessary investment is undertaken and policies conducive to agricultural production are put in place. But increasing production is not sufficient to achieve food security. It must be complemented by policies to enhance access by fighting poverty, especially in rural areas, as well as effective safety net programs."

Climate change effects

In addition to a growing scarcity of natural resources such as land, water and biodiversity "global agriculture will have to cope with the effects of climate change, notably higher temperatures, greater rainfall variability and more frequent extreme weather events such as floods and droughts," Diouf warned today.

Climate change would reduce water availability and lead to an increase in plant and animal pests and diseases. "The combined effects of climate change could reduce potential output by up to 30 percent in Africa and up to 21 percent in Asia," he noted.

"The challenge is not only to increase global future production but to increase it where it is mostly needed and by those who need it most. There should be a special focus on smallholder farmers, women and rural households and their access to land, water and high quality seeds...and other modern inputs."

It is also important to bridge the technology gap between countries through knowledge transfer using North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation to achieve sustainable increases in agricultural production and productivity.

"A special challenge is posed by water as climate change will make rainfall increasingly unreliable."

A special challenge was posed by water as climate change would make rainfall increasingly unreliable, Diouf said. Investment in improved water control and water management should be considered a priority.

Competition from biofuel

Also being discussed at this week's forum is how food production would also face increasing competition from the biofuel market "which has the potential to change the fundamentals of agricultural market systems," according to Diouf.

Increased use of food crops for biofuel production could have serious implications for food security, according to the FAO report on how to feed the world. "A recent study estimates that continued rapid expansion of biofuel production up to 2050 would lead to the number of undernourished pre-school children in Africa and South Asia being 3 and 1.7 million higher than would have been otherwise the case. Therefore, policies promoting the use of foodbased biofuels need to be reconsidered with the aim of reducing the competition between food and fuel for scarce resources."

Pennsylvania farm photo by David Braun

At this week's Forum, about 300 experts from around the world will review and debate the investment needs, technologies and policy measures needed to secure the world's food supplies by 2050. "$44 billion a year of official development assistance will need to be invested in agriculture in developing countries--against the $7.9 billion that is being spent now," the FAO says. "Higher investments, including from national budgets, foreign direct investment and private sector resources, should be made for better access to modern inputs, more irrigation systems, machinery, storage, more roads and better rural infrastructures, as well as more skilled and better trained farmers."

Through its conclusions and recommendations the Forum will contribute to the debate and outcome of the World Summit on Food Security scheduled at FAO headquarters on November 16-18, to be attended by Heads of State and Government from FAO's 192 Member Nations.

"It is hoped the Summit will agree then on the complete and rapid eradication of hunger so that every human being on Earth can enjoy the most fundamental of all human rights--the "right to food" and thus to decent life," the FAO said.

Delegates at the FAO High-Level Expert Forum on "How to Feed the World in 2050", in Rome, today.

©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

The problems to be resolved

On its Web site How to Feed the World 2050, trhe FAO says these are the problems that must be resolved:

• Will we be able to produce enough food at affordable prices or will rising food prices drive more of the world's population into poverty and hunger?
• How much spare capacity in terms of land and water do we have to feed the world in 2050?
• What are the new technologies that can help us use scarce resources more efficiently, increase and stabilize crop and livestock yields?
• Are we investing enough in research and development for breakthroughs to be available in time?
• Will new technologies be available to the people who will need them most - the poor?
• How much do we need to invest in order to help agriculture adapt to climate change, and how much can agriculture contribute to mitigating extreme weather events?

 

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Millions of domestic cows may be saved from a killer parasite that plagues at least 11 African countries if a new scheme to make a vaccine commercially available gets off the ground.

Currently as many as a million head of cattle succumb each year to East Coast fever (theileriosis), a tick-transmitted disease that persists in much of the continent, says a news statement by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), one of the organizations behind the campaign to mass-produce and distribute the vaccine.

Calves are particularly susceptible to the disease.

Some 70 per cent of the human population of sub-Saharan Africa--around half a billion people--depend on livestock for their livelihoods, with farming and herding families relying on cattle for vital sources of food, income, traction, transportation and manure to fertilise croplands, according to the UK government agency.

"In herds kept by the pastoral Masai people, for example, the disease kills from 20 to over 50 per cent of all unvaccinated calves."

"In herds kept by the pastoral Masai people, for example, the disease kills from 20 to over 50 per cent of all unvaccinated calves," DFID said. "This makes it difficult and often impossible for the herders to plan for the future, to improve their livestock enterprises and thus to raise their standard of living."

NGS photo of cattle herd in Tanzania by Joe Scherschel

With money provided by DFID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charity GALVmed is mass-producing and distributing the vaccine to protect cattle against East Coast fever. Based in Scotland and with offices in Africa, GALVmed is a global alliance of public, private and government partners, aiming to protect livestock and save human life by making livestock vaccines, diagnostics and medicines accessible and affordable.

The new livestock vaccination program "will ensure that the vaccine is made available, accessible and affordable to livestock keepers who need it most and to scale up its production for the future," DFID said.

The immunization procedure--called "infection-and-treatment" because the animals are infected with whole parasites while being treated with antibiotics to stop development of disease--has proved highly effective, the DFID said.

The treatment procedure was developed over decades, but initial stocks of the vaccine produced in the 1990s recently ran low.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), at the request of the African Union/Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources and chief veterinary officers in affected countries, produced one million doses of vaccine to replenish supplies. But now there is a need to create and ensure and sustainable production and distribution program of the vaccine..

"For the longer term it is critical that sustainable commercial systems for vaccine production, distribution and delivery are established," DFID said.

"A smallholder dairy farmer can take years to recover economically from the death of a single milking cow."

Said the UK's International Development Minister Mike Foster, "Many Africans depend on the health of their cattle for milk, meat and as their only hard asset for trade and investment. A smallholder dairy farmer can take years to recover economically from the death of a single milking cow. That's why it's vital that every possible step is taken to ensure that these essential vaccine doses are sustainably produced, tested and made available to the people who need them.

"DFID is supporting GALVmed to explore ways of transferring the production and distribution of the vaccine into the private sector through local manufacturers and distributors. This is extremely important in making the vaccine affordable, accessible and--crucially--sustainable."

Accessible to poor people

Said GALVmed CEO Steve Sloan, "The survival of cattle for the millions who live on tiny margins has a direct effect on quality of life and the dignity of choice and self-determination. Collaborating with ILRI and partners in the developing world, including governments and veterinary distributors and those from the private sector, GALVmed is working to embed the vaccine through registration in East African countries and to scale up its production so that it remains accessible to poor people.

ILRI veterinary scientist Henry Kiara, who has conducted research on the live vaccine for 20 years, said that ILRI is "looking forward to commercialising the production, distribution and delivery of the vaccine to the smallholder and emerging dairy producers as well as livestock herders" in this region of Africa.

"Now that all the building blocks are in place, thanks to past investments by DFID and others", he says, "we are excited to be at a stage where this vaccine can take off."

East Coast Fever puts the lives of more than 25 million cattle at risk in the 11 countries where the disease is now endemic, and endangers a further 10 million animals in new regions such as southern Sudan, where the disease has been spreading at a rate of more than 30 kilometers [20 miles] a year. The vaccine could save the 11 affected countries at least £175 million [U.S.$280 million] a year, DFID said.

The disease persists in 11 countries in eastern, central and southern Africa--Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

NGS photo of Masai cattle herder by Bruce Dale

Delve into Darwin's evolutionary theories with a free webcast lecture "On Variation," by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Columbia University professor Jonathan Weiner.

Weiner will follow in Darwin's footsteps to reveal how the Father of Evolution deduced that many species are descended from common ancestors, and that the variation among them evidences their evolutionary journeys of natural selection.

By Brian Handwerk
Special contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Variety is the spice of life, an old saying goes, but Charles Darwin took the idea a step further. The legendary scientist was the first to explain how variation actually produced life as we know it, by playing a key role in evolution.

"Variation is a good place to start talking about the evolution of species because that's where Darwin himself starts," said Jonathan Weiner, a professor at Columbia University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Weiner will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in a lecture, "On Variation," delivered Wednesday, October 7 (8 p.m. ET) at Columbia University and live to web audiences around the world.

LISTEN TO THE LECTURE >> 

"Look around the family dinner table and see how much variation there is from face to face," Weiner explained in an interview. "There's that much variation, or more, in every species of plant and animal on the planet. That variability became the cornerstone for Darwin's great theory."

Weiner saw Darwinian variation firsthand while writing The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. He worked with acclaimed scientists Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant, who have observed evolution in some 20 generations of Galapagos Islands finches once studied by the Father of Evolution.

"There you see how a fraction of a millimeter really can make the difference between life and death for these finches," he explained. "If your beak is just a bit longer or a little wider it might allow you to crack that last tough seed that nobody else on the island is able to crack in a drought. You might survive and pass on those genes, and no one else in your generation might make it."

Pigeon Power

Scientists of the Victorian era believed that all species were individually created by God and not variable. To illustrate the variation that underpinned his theories of natural selection, Darwin first turned to a more familiar phenomenon--artificial selection.

He studied and wrote on the many varieties of domestic animals, specializing in the pigeon and its astonishing array of diverse breeds. The birds sported beaks of various shapes and sizes, feet that were or were not webbed, tails that fanned out and those that didn't, and even different calls, flight patterns, and growth rates.

Yet this entire flock of pigeon species descended from the wild rock pigeon Columba livia, which Darwin illustrated by creating the first evolutionary "tree" for a species.

If pigeon breeders could select for desirable trades in physiology or behavior, and produce birds that enjoyed these traits, why couldn't the same happen naturally, over much greater lengths of time, Darwin wondered.

NGS illustration of pigeons by Hashime Murayama 

"[Scientists] admit that many of our domestic races have descended from the same parents--may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other species?" he wrote in On the Origin of Species.

What Darwin Could Not Know

Darwinian natural selection occurs when individuals have variations in physical characteristics or behaviors that somehow impact survival and the ability to reproduce. These variations may play an evolutionary role if they are passed along to offspring.

Darwin's studies on variation were eloquently introduced in On the Origin of Species, and discussed in detail in a later volume The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868).

But the Father of Evolution's observations on variation and evolution were all the more amazing for what he wasn't able to know--the science of genetics at the core of modern evolutionary science was completely unknown to him.

"He could hypothesize about the mechanisms of heredity but he couldn't go very far in that direction," Weiner said. "The sources of variation are, most importantly, in our genes--and he couldn't go there."

"The variation that we see is where Darwin was a brilliant observer and theorist. The invisible variation that underlies it all at the level of DNA, that's some of the most exciting science on the planet right now."

"The variation that we see is where Darwin was a brilliant observer and theorist. The invisible variation that underlies it all at the level of DNA, that's some of the most exciting science on the planet right now."

Darwin Live on the Web

Darwin on Variation is the second of a free webcast lecture series in which some of the world's top scientific minds will tackle evolutionary topics.

Later speakers will include Sean Carroll (November 4) on "On the Origin of Species" itself, and E.O. Wilson on the future frontiers of evolutionary biology (November 24).

The first lecture, Everett Mendelsohn on The World Before Darwin, is archived here.

The series was organized by a group of volunteer Darwin devotees who also hope to rally 1,000,000 users to a Facebook group celebrating this year's 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species.

Darwin Facebook campaign:

Darwin Devotees Make "Father of Evolution" Facebook Superstar
Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life joined a Facebook group devoted to the celebration of this year's 200th anniversary of the birth of the "Father of Evolution," Charles Darwin. Now the organizers of the Facebook group are hoping hundreds of thousands more will sign up to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Darwin's famous book, On the Origin of Species.

The World Before Darwin
Travel back in time to visit "The World Before Darwin," courtesy of a free webcast lecture with Everett Mendelsohn, emeritus professor at Harvard University. Mendelsohn explored the milieu in which Darwin published On the Origin of Species 150 years ago, reveal its other evolutionary thinkers, and shed light on skeptics from the worlds of religion and science.

Darwin resources:

Darwin's First Clues (National Geographic Magazine)

Was Darwin Wrong? (National Geographic Magazine)

PHOTOS: 7 Major "Missing Links" Since Darwin (National Geographic News)

"Instant" Evolution Seen in Darwin's Finches, Study Says (National Geographic News)

Darwin's Secret Notebooks (National Geographic Channel)

PHOTOS: How Do Species Evolve? (National Geographic News)

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

Darwin Correspondence Project

Darwin Digital Library of Evolution

The Charles Darwin Trust

Female orangutans are forced to copulate against their will more frequently than has been observed in any other mammal. Scientists have generally believed that this is because females spurn mating with inferior "unflanged" males. Rejected males have no chance to mate unless they use coercion--or so it was thought.

But new studies, using the first hormonal data from wild orangutans, collected noninvasively from the urine of females, suggests that orangutan sex may be a lot more subtle than meets the eye.

Although coerced to mate by most males they encounter, the females may have evolved advantages in their mating interactions to influence who gets to father their offspring and to protect the resultant babies from being killed by the males who didn't.

"Rather than being helpless victims of forced sex, female orangutans employ subtle counterstrategies," says Cheryl Knott, a Boston University anthropologist and National Geographic emerging explorer, who led the research.

Photo by Tim Laman

In the orangutan world males with flanges--or cheek pads--are also the dominant males. They defend territories and emit loud "long calls" to attract receptive females. The cheeky ornaments are perhaps attractive to females because they show that the orangutan has 'made it' to flanged male status, which perhaps indicates better genetic quality, and thus make those that have them good candidates to sire healthy offspring.

"Using the first hormonal data from wild orangutans, we show that around ovulation females preferentially encounter and mate with prime males whose impressive size and ornamentation are probable indicators of genetic quality," Knott and others write in their research paper, which was published by the biological research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 

But when not ovulating, females mate willingly with unadorned males and those past their prime, the scientists discovered.

Knott and her team came to this conclusion after observing hundreds of encounters between male and female wild orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The 220,000-acre (90,000-hectare) sanctuary contains a resident population of 2,500 wild orangutans.

Photo of Cheryl Knott in the field by Tim Laman

Orangutan mating is often lengthy and can include elements of both coercion and cooperation, the researchers noted. Nonetheless, by devising a method to rate sexual behavior, the scientists were able to determine when the females were primarily resistant to the males and when they were primarily receptive.

Almost a thousand urine samples were collected on filter paper from 10 of the females involved in the encounters, enabling the researchers to determine their reproductive status.

By combining all the data, the researchers found that ovulating females mated almost exclusively with prime males, perhaps in part because they engineered encounters with prime males by responding to the long calls made by those males.

Photo by Tim Laman

Unflanged males do not make long calls, so rather than "sit and wait" for mates as the prime males do, they must search for potential partners. When they find them, the data show, they often have their way, but typically and unbeknown to them when the females are not fertile and have little or no chance of becoming impregnated.

"Females mated most frequently with unflanged males overall, but they did so exclusively when conception risk was low," the scientists concluded. "A single peri-ovulatory [period of fertility] mating with a past-prime male was highly resisted, while non-periovulatory matings met less resistance, and pregnant matings were not resisted at all," they observed

Strategy of paternity confusion

Lowered mate selectivity outside of the peri-ovulatory period is consistent with another form of risk avoidance, the researchers said--"the anti-infanticide strategy of paternity confusion."

"This strategy, wherein females mate with potentially infanticidal males in order to increase their perception of paternity probability, is common in...primates as well as some species of carnivores and rodents," the researchers noted.

Photo by Tim Laman

Although infanticide has not been observed in wild orangutans, the scientists say that willingness to create confusion about paternity by mating during pregnancy, and avoidance of long calls from strange males, all indicate female strategies to reduce infanticide.

So while to the observer female orangutans are often indiscriminately forced to mate by any males that encounter them, what this research suggests is that the females ultimately may have more control over who gets to pass his genes on to future generations. 

Said Knott, "Because orangutan don't have sexual swellings [a signal of fertility to potential mates in other female primates], we couldn't tell just by looking at them when they were ovulating. Now, with this new hormonal data, we see that females can use this lack of a visual signal to their advantage in their mating interactions."

The research paper Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion, was published by by Cheryl Denise Knott, Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Melissa Emery Thompson, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Rebecca M. Stumpf, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Matthew H. McIntyre, Department of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando.

The research was sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

The photos on this page are courtesy of Tim Laman. You might like to see more of his pictures of orangutans on the National Geographic Magazine Web site Orangutans in the Wild.

Watch this National Geographic video about Kalimantan's orangutans:

A huge number of new species of invertebrate animals have been found living in underground water, caves and micro-caverns amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.

Insects, crustaceans, spiders, worms and many others are among 850 species found by a national team of 18 researchers, according to the University of Adelaide.

The team--led by Andy Austin, from the University of Adelaide, Steve Cooper of the South Australian Museum, and and Bill Humphreys of the Western Australian Museum--has conducted a comprehensive four-year survey of underground water, caves and micro-caverns across arid and semi-arid Australia, the university said in a statement about the discovery.

"What we've found is that you don't have to go searching in the depths of the ocean to discover new species of invertebrate animals--you just have to look in your own 'backyard'," says Austin, who is a professor at the Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity at the University of Adelaide.

"Our research has revealed whole communities of invertebrate animals that were previously unknown just a few years ago. What we have discovered is a completely new component to Australia's biodiversity. It is a huge discovery and it is only about one fifth of the number of new species we believe exist underground in the Australian outback."

Phreatomerus latipes, a freshwater ispod from Mound Springs, South Australia--previously thought to be a single species but now known to be eight different species, seven of them new.

Only half of the species discovered have so far been named, according the University of Adelaide says. Generically, the animals found in underground water are known as "stygofauna" and those from caves and micro-caverns are known as "troglofauna", the university explained.

Austin says the team has a theory as to why so many new species have been hidden away underground and in caves.

"Essentially what we are seeing is the result of past climate change...Species took refuge in isolated favorable habitats, such as in underground waters and micro-caverns, where they survived and evolved in isolation."

"Essentially what we are seeing is the result of past climate change. Central and southern Australia was a much wetter place 15 million years ago when there was a flourishing diversity of invertebrate fauna living on the surface.

"But the continent became drier, a process that last until about 1-2 million years ago, resulting in our current arid environment. Species took refuge in isolated favorable habitats, such as in underground waters and micro-caverns, where they survived and evolved in isolation from each other.

Some of the 850 new species discovered in underground water, caves and micro-caverns across outback Australia.

Copyright © 2009 The University of Adelaide

"Discovery of this 'new' biodiversity, although exciting scientifically, also poses a number of challenges for conservation in that many of these species are found in areas that are potentially impacted by mining and pastoral activities," he says.

The research team reported its findings last week at a scientific conference on evolution and biodiversity in Darwin, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin.

The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

Our ancestors underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution over more than a million years before "Lucy", the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago," National Geographic Magazine science editor Jamie Shreeve reports today.

Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in the Afar Rift region of northeastern Ethiopia. This is now the earliest skeleton known from the human branch of the primate family tree, scientists say. "The human branch constitutes the zoological family 'Hominidae;' 'hominids' include Homo sapiens as well as all species closer to humans than to chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives," according to the journal Science.  The discoveries provide new insights into how hominids might have emerged from an ancestral ape, scientists say.

Illustration courtesy J. H. Matternes via Science/AAAS 

The finding, published in tomorrow's journal Science, is based on the discovery of the oldest fossil human skeleton, a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female of the species called Ardipithecus ramidus.

"The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like 'missing link,' midway resembling something between humans and today's apes, would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree," Shreeve writes.

"Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior, long used to infer the nature of ... the earliest human ancestors, is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings."

Read the story, see photos, learn more about the fossil from an interactive:

Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link" 

PHOTOS: Oldest "Human" Skeleton Refutes "Missing Link"

Interactive: Explore Ardipithecus ramidus

 

Walking for sex

Jamie Shreeve also launched his new blog today with a related piece on Ardi's sex life. (Ardi is the name scientists have given this fossil).

It is fascinating reading, "especially if you like learning why human females don't know when they are ovulating, and men lack the clacker-sized testicles and bristly penises tk sported by chimpanzees," Shreeve writes. Read the rest of this at:

Did early humans start walking for sex?

Science

is publishing 11 different papers about the Ardi research, involving more than 40 different authors.

In this 200th anniversary year of Darwin's birth, Science is pleased to publish the results of many years of scientific research that suggest an unexpected form for our last common ancestor with the chimpanzees," writes Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief of Science, in an editorial about the research.

"The history of science assures us that powerful new techniques will be developed in the coming years to accelerate such research, as they have been in the past," Alberts writes. "We can thus be certain that scientists will eventually obtain a rather detailed record showing how the anatomy of the human body evolved over many millions of years."

Science cover illustration copyright 2008 T.H. White