Philippine Bleeding-heart doves flutter at the brink, but NGOs respond

The 7,100 islands of the Philippine Republic, scattered across the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea, teem with life. The entire nation is a recognized biodiversity hotspot — rated among the 17 most mega-biodiverse countries in the world — with rainforests, volcanic mountain ranges and tropical waters known for species found nowhere else on the planet.

The archipelago’s isolation for millions of years, and its wide variety of habitats has contributed to speciation across the island chain’s 300,000 square kilometers (115,831 square miles) of land area.

Species such as the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi), one of the largest in the world, the Sulu hornbill (Anthracoceros montani), of which fewer than 30 are thought to still exist, and the Philippine Mouse deer (Tragulus nigricans), which stands just seven inches tall, live in forests across the archipelago.

A staggering 40 percent of all bird species found in this island nation are endemic — 226 out of 569 species. Compare that to the level of avian endemism in the United States, which stands at just 7.5 percent, even though the US is more than thirty times the size of the Philippines.

BirdLife International has identified ten Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs) in the Philippines — EBAs being “the most important places for habitat-based conservation of birds” worldwide. Together those ten EBAs encompass almost the whole of the archipelago.

But these species-rich habitats, along with the unique animals that rely on them for survival, are at risk due to a legacy of extreme deforestation that is many decades old: only a fraction of primary Philippines forest is left.

Primary forest on the island of Mindanao. Only a fraction of primary forest remains in the Philippines, and reforestation initiatives using native tree species, known as “rainforestation”, are underway across the Philippines in an effort to restore deforested lands to their former levels of biodiversity. These projects will benefit numerous forest species, like the Bleeding-heart doves, that are found nowhere else in the world. Photo © Bram Demeulemeester

A rare bird gets rarer

Among the most endangered animals are the elusive, shy, ground-dwelling Bleeding-heart doves, named for the colorful red or orange plumage that looks like an open wound blossoming on their white breasts.

All five Bleeding-heart dove species are endemic to the Philippines. Three, found on just a handful of islands, are classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. They’ve also been singled out by the Zoological Society of London’s EDGE of Existence program which lists them in the top 100 “Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered” bird species.

Favoring closed canopy lowland forest, and foraging on the forest-floor, Bleeding-hearts are particularly hard hit when the little forest that remains to them is disturbed or cut down.

“Habitat loss from small scale logging, mining and human encroachment (agriculture and residential) are [the] main threats” to the species, revealed Juan Carlos Gonzalez, the Director and Curator for Birds at the Museum of Natural History, University of the Philippines at Los Baños. The birds are also hunted for consumption, trapped accidentally alongside other target species, and captured for sale in the pet trade. This is despite protection under Philippine law for all endangered species, with penalties ranging from fines to several years imprisonment.

For one species, the Sulu Bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba menagei) the chance for survival is slim. Fewer than 50 individuals are thought to remain on the island of Tawitawi. Even though there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of the species since 1891, reports from the 1990s offer some hope that a small population hangs on.

It’s not only the extreme rarity of G. menagei that makes a comprehensive population assessment difficult. Accessing its most likely habitat to do a thorough survey is hampered by the “risk of bandits and insurgency,” Gonzalez said. Read the full article on Mongabay.

Dams inevitably result in species decline on reservoir islands

Hydropower development is booming, with controversial projects unfolding across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.

Though often presented as a green renewable energy option, dams can cause a litany of negative impacts: disrupting the downstream flow of nutrients, interrupting aquatic migration routes and harming fisheries. They flood forests, destroy habitat and increase the release of greenhouse gases as vegetation decomposes. Dams also displace human communities — submerging homes and indigenous territories.

A new study adds another impact to the list, one that is widespread but has so far been overlooked by dam developers: “extinction debt” — the incremental but inexorable loss of species and diminishment of biodiversity over time on islands created by reservoirs.

Hydropower developers have long claimed reservoir islands as quality habitat and as viable conservation areas — both assertions are false, according to the new research.

A global evaluation of reservoir islands

The study, led by Isabel Jones at the UK’s Stirling University, collated biodiversity data from 100 studies of reservoir islands — with time since habitat isolation ranging from 1 to 92 years — at 15 dams in North, Central and South America, Europe, and Asia.

In more than 75 percent of cases studied, dams had an overall negative impact on reservoir island species, affecting factors such as species population density, ecological community composition, and species behavior.

Read the full article on Mongabay

Thousand Island Lake in China, the result of a dam built in the 1950s on the Xin’an River, was one of 15 dams worldwide included in a recent study that concluded that reservoir islands should not be counted as conservation areas by developers. Photo by Bryan Ong on Flickr, under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license

Amazon turtles imperilled by dams, mercury pollution and illegal trade

For as long as people have lived in the Amazon, turtles have likely been on the menu. But what was once low-impact subsistence hunting escalated dramatically after the arrival of Europeans. From the 1700s onward, demand for turtle eggs and meat skyrocketed. And the eggs weren’t just for eating: estimates suggest that more than 200 million eggs were harvested for both consumption and oil, fuelling lamps across Europe for two centuries.

This overexploitation led to such dramatic population declines that the Brazilian government eventually stepped in, launching the ambitious Amazon Turtle Program in 1979 — an on-going initiative that has so far protected 70 million turtle hatchlings across the Brazilian Amazon, with the intent of conserving vulnerable species.

But while that program continues to work toward a sustainable future for turtle populations —and for the people who still see chelonians as an important source of protein — three more recent threats loom over Amazonian turtle species: the illegal wildlife trade, widespread hydropower dam construction, and mercury contamination.

Read the full article on Mongabay

The Giant Amazon River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa) is the largest species of neotropical freshwater turtle, and is found throughout the Amazon basin. Overexploited for centuries, the species is making a comeback thanks to conservation initiatives. Photo courtesy of Camila Ferrara

Orangutan reintroductions could risk population survival, study warns

An estimated 1,500 orangutans now live in rescue and rehabilitation centers located across Sumatra and Borneo. As habitat loss due to deforestation and forest fires continues, these institutions are struggling to keep up with demand.

Release into the wild is the ultimate, urgent, goal for most of these animals, but a new study warns that there could be serious genetic implications for the offspring of reintroduced animals — and orangutan populations in general — if those rescued from one region are released into a different region.

The study, led by primatologist Graham Banes, examined the genetic consequences when orangutans from different, divergent, subspecies interbreed. Borneo’s three recognized subspecies — from three distinct regions — are thought to have diverged from each other 176,000 years ago, meaning that hybridization between them may result in negative genetic effects. If hybrid offspring reproduce, combinations of genes that were beneficial for one lineage can be disrupted, resulting in poor health and reduced reproductive success, the researcher said. These effects, known as “outbreeding depression,” could threaten the survival of individuals and populations in the long-term.

Read the full article on Mongabay.

A Bornean orangutan in a rehabilitation center in Sabah. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

Dams threaten future of Amazonian biodiversity major new study warns

Amazonia’s surge in hydropower development threatens numerous species with extinction, and puts unique habitats at risk, warns a recent study.

River dolphins, giant otters, turtles, fish, birds and monkeys will all have their habitats altered by hydroelectric dams, with some species likely to be completely wiped out, says an international team of biologists that looked at all impacts associated with 191 existing Amazon dams, as well as the 246 dams being planned or under construction.

What’s more, the researchers identified a network of negative interactions between dam construction, mining, climate change, human migration, and biodiversity and ecosystem services which illustrates how impacts can cascade in multiple, devastating ways.

In environmental terms, the most obvious and direct impact of dams reported by the study are on water flow and connectivity. Nutrients that flow downstream from the Andes are interrupted by dams; flood pulses that form a vital part of many species’ lifecycles are modified by the reservoirs and flow patterns that dams create and control; habitat complexity is lost; and species such as river dolphins become isolated in the stretches of river between hydropower developments, which leaves smaller sub-populations vulnerable to decline.

To read the full article, orginally published on Mongabay, click here.

River turtles in Colombia. Turtles, dolphins and otters are among the aquatic species threatened by dam construction, but risks extend to birds, bats and terrestrial animals too. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

 

Keeping Amazon fish connected is key to their conservation

Imagine a fish isolated in an Amazonian lake — part of the vast freshwater ecosystem of the Amazon basin, an ever-changing network of rivers, lakes and floodplains that extends to 1 million square kilometers (386,102 square miles).

Now imagine that isolated fish as water levels rise during the wet season, and floodplains vanish beneath up to 15 meters (49 feet) of water. The fish — once restricted by the lake’s edge — swims freely into the flooded forest and mingles with others of its kind from elsewhere.

For thousands of years, isolated fish populations across the Amazon have likewise played a game of musical chairs: intermixing between flooding water bodies, migrating short and vast distances between lakes and along river channels, and then as the waters receded, forming new lake and river populations.

This connectivity — with the genetic mixing it affords — is vital for healthy fish populations, but is extremely vulnerable to changes in the annual “flood pulse” that inundates forests.

Read the rest of the article on Mongabay.

A South American Leaf Fish (Monocirrhus polyacanthus). More than 2,000 fish species live in the Amazon, the highest fish biodiversity in the world. That diversity has been greatly enriched due to the periodic isolation and intermixing of freshwater species that occurs across the region. Photo © Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay

Climate change a significant, growing threat to health, says US report

Climate change health effects are wide ranging and include negative impacts on air quality, mental health, nutrition, and insect and microbe transmitted diseases.

• A Climate and Health Assessment presented at the White House by the US Global Change Research Program revealed wide-ranging climate change health impacts.
• Every American is vulnerable, but low income people, certain ethnicities, Indigenous people, the young, elderly, and pregnant women are disproportionately at risk.
• The report is meant to help policymakers generate and implement a proactive response to the many escalating and evolving health impacts due to climate change.

First published on Mongabay in April this year, you can read the full article here.

The Making of Amazon Gold

An in-depth look at the gold mining in Madre de Dios, from fieldwork dramas to an award-winning new film. A super interesting read.

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0219-watsa-amazon-gold.html

Surround Science

New film documents a shadow world: the illegal gold mines of the Peruvian Amazon.
When Sara duPont first visited the Peruvian Amazon rainforest in the summer of 1999, it was a different place than it is today. Oceans of green, tranquil forest, met the eye at every turn. At dawn, her brain struggled to comprehend the onslaught of morning calls and duets of the nearly 600 species of birds resounding under the canopy. 
Today, the director of the new award-winning film,  Amazon Gold , reports that “roads have been built and people have arrived. It has become a new wild west, a place without law. People driven by poverty and the desire for a better life have come, exploiting the sacred ground.”
Read more at  http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0219-watsa-amazon-gold.html#S3zkoaM4r7yb8Xlp.99

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Jaguars in Argentine Chaco on verge of local extinction

This article was written for the environmental news website mongabay.com, and the original can be found here.

The majestic jaguar (Panthera onca), the largest of the New World cats, is found as far north as the southern states of the US, and as far south as northern Argentina. In the past jaguars ranged 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) further south, but their range has shrunk as habitat loss and human disturbance have increased. Overall, jaguars are classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN, but the level of risk facing jaguars varies by region. Populations in Argentina, at the present-day southern range limit, have previously been identified as some of the most threatened of them all.

The Chaco is considered home to the largest Argentine population, but the inaccessibility of the region has meant that until recently very little was known about the exact status of the population here. To address this lack of knowledge, biologists have undertaken a major study of jaguar range and abundance, recently published in Fauna and Flora International’s journal, Oryx. The results of the study point to a striking conclusion: the jaguar population in the Argentine Chaco is in crisis, and at risk of imminent local extinction.

Biologist Veronica Quiroga with a jaguar pelt hunted in the Argentinean Chaco. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

A vast wilderness of dry forest, scrubland and plains, the Gran Chaco is the second largest forest region in the Americas. It encompasses parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, and is a hot, inhospitable and sparsely populated region. It was partly this isolation that drew biologist Verónica Quiroga, of the National Research Council of Argentina, lead author of the study, to the Argentine Chaco, where she has been working for over a decade.

“From the first time I went to the Chaco and watched the first mammal footprints marked in the dry powder, I knew that I wanted to work some time in that environment and with large mammals,” she told mongabay.com. Her studies of mammals in the Copo National Park sparked an interest in jaguars in particular. “The first alarming conclusions were that very little was known of the species in the Chaco region, that nobody was studying jaguars particularly there and that, apparently, populations were having an important numerical decrease throughout the region.”

Biologist Verónica Quiroga colecting scats of pumas in the Aborigen Reserve. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

Quiroga and her team have since carried out an intensive long-term survey of jaguars in the Argentine Chaco. They focused on locations thought to have the highest likelihood of jaguars, including Copo National Park and Aborigen Reserve, as well as sites that differ in their levels of legal protection, livestock burden and hunting pressure. A large network of camera traps collected more than 5,320 nights of footage, and over 120 local people were interviewed about their knowledge and experiences with jaguars. The team walked more than 900 kilometers (560 miles), searching for signs of jaguar presence. But despite this exhaustive effort, the results were bleak. No photographs of jaguars were captured by the camera traps, and very few tracks were found. In total, 35 records of jaguars were obtained, and only 13 of these were direct observations.

Jaguars inhabit three regions in Argentina, and the Chaco population is important to maintain population connectivity not only within Argentina, but also between populations in Bolivia and Paraguay.

“Until this study began, it was believed that the Chaco population of jaguars was the largest in Argentina, by the large surface area occupied and its connection with other populations, like the Paraguayan Chaco,” said Quiroga. “It was a big surprise to discover that not only the densities were very low, but this population is the most threatened of the three remaining in the country.”

A puma (Puma-concolor) marking its territory on the banks of the Bermejo River in La Fidelidad. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

The conversion of jaguar habitat to cattle ranching and the persecution of jaguars themselves are the main drivers of this population decline. The number of hunted jaguars reported in interviews can be used as an indicator of jaguar abundance, and the study found that this has dropped ten-fold over the last decade. Rather than indicating a change in hunting practice, or in the perception of jaguars as a threat to livestock and people, this reflects the rate at which local people now come into contact with jaguars. Although the overall range size has not decreased, the dramatic drop in abundance will spur conservation action.

“At this time it is necessary, with utmost urgency, to develop a campaign to improve awareness of the problems facing the species, its conservation value, and its importance in the ecosystem as top predator,” Quiroga explained.

“We also need a campaign to suggest changes in livestock management to prevent possible conflicts with the species. It is necessary to work with rural schools, with park rangers, with local communities and with other key actors of the rural Chaco region, to try to change the local perception about the species.”

An Aguará guazú (Chrysocyon-brachiurus) in dry chaco forest from La Fidelidad Argentina. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

The jaguar’s decline in the Chaco is indicative of wider population declines affecting other species, such as the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), the endemic Chacoan peccary (Chacoan wagneri), and puma (Puma concolor). Therefore, action taken to benefit the jaguar will also benefit many other species.

“The creation of new protected areas, as well as the correct implementation of those that already exist, such as conservation corridors where poaching is controlled, are urgent actions to be carried out by the local government,” Quiroga said.

Quiroga and her team are continuing their work to document and protect the mammals of the Argentine Chaco. A major focus for their future work is a region known as La Fidelidad, which has been proposed as a future national park.

Verónica Quiroga and Veterinarian Juan Arrabal checking trails in Copo National Park. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

“This area is located in the heart of the Argentine Chaco, it is 2,500 square kilometers of Chaco forest in excellent condition, without rural inhabitants and with a great potential for the recovery of the jaguar. This site is one of the last with these characteristics in the region, is in a strategic location with respect to other protected areas, and has a high availability of prey for the jaguar,” Quiroga explained.

“Our research efforts will be focused in the coming years at La Fidelidad and in other sites of the Chaco region where we believe that the jaguar still has a chance.”

Tapir (Tapirus-terrestris) in dry chaco forest from La Fidelidad Argentina. Photo courtesy of Verónica Quiroga.

Citations:

• Quiroga, V. A., Boaglio, G. I., Noss, A. J. and Di Bitetti, M. S. 2013. Critical population status of the jaguar Panthera onca in the Argentine Chaco: camera-trap surveys suggest recent collapse and imminent regional extinction. Oryx. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0030605312000944

It takes just one road to destroy a forest

A great little animation to illustrate the impact of roads in the wilderness. More info at roadfree.org