Numbering Only 50 in 1996, Niger Subspecies of Giraffe Swells to 200 Today Thanks to Conservation Efforts
A crisp African dawn is breaking overhead, and Zibo Mounkaila is on the back of a pickup truck bounding across a sparse landscape of rocky orange soil.
The tallest animals on earth are here, the guide says, somewhere amid the scant green bush on one side, and the thatched dome villages on the other.
They’re here, but by all accounts, they shouldn’t be.
A hundred years ago, West Africa’s last giraffes numbered in the thousands and their habitat stretched from Senegal’s Atlantic Ocean coast to Chad, in the heart of the continent. By the dawn of the 21st century, their world had shrunk to a tiny zone southeast of the capital, Niamey, stretching barely 150 miles long.
The numbers of the Western subspecies dwindled so low that in 1996, they numbered a mere 50.
Instead of disappearing as many feared, though, the giraffes have bounced miraculously back from the brink of extinction, swelling to more than 200 today.
It’s an unlikely boon experts credit to a combination of concerned conservationists, a government keen for revenue, and a rare harmony with villagers who have accepted their presence - for now.
There are nine subspecies of giraffes in Africa, each distinguished by geographic location and the color, pattern and shape of their spotted coats.
The animals in Niger are known as Giraffa camelopardalis peralta, the most endangered subspecies in Africa. They have large orange-brown spots that fade into pale white legs.
Ten years ago, an estimated 140,000 giraffes inhabited Africa, according to Julian Fennessy, a Nairobi, Kenya-based conservation expert. Today, giraffes number less than 100,000, devastated by poaching, war, advancing deserts and exploding human populations that have destroyed and fragmented their habitats. Around half the giraffes live outside game parks in the wild, where they are more difficult to monitor and protect, Fennessy said.
Giraffe hunting is prohibited in many countries. And some, like Kenya, have taken giraffe meat off the menu of tourist restaurants that once served them up on huge skewers. Even so, Fennessy said the plight of giraffes has largely been overlooked in conservation circles.
“We’re trying to increase awareness, educate people, help governments put conservation practices in place,” said Fennessy, who founded the Giraffe Conservation Foundation to draw attention to the animals’ plight. “If we don’t, giraffe numbers are going to continue to drop.”
The Afghan statement comes as NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating an incident in Badghis province Friday in which more than 25 international and Afghan forces were wounded.
Five of the 25 wounded were US soldiers injured in what a Western military official, speaking anonymously, said was friendly fire. …
The incident is believed to have taken place during a clash involving ISAF and Afghan soldiers searching for two paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who went missing Wednesday during a routine supply mission.
Local police said a party looking for the two missing soldiers clashed with Taliban and that alliance aircraft were called in to provide support.
The defence ministry made no reference to a clash between the joint forces and Taliban militants.
Police said the casualties occurred when the air strike mistakenly targeted international troops.
At least eight Afghans working with US forces have been killed in a Nato air strike in north-western Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Kabul says: here.
Returning veterans often have a hard time adjusting to civilian life and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) Foundation is helping them find an outlet to tell their stories: here.
Britain: Attempts by the Establishment to use Remembrance Sunday to whip up patriotism for their conflicts were overshadowed by the latest death of a young British soldier in Afghanistan - and news that most British citizens now consider the war unwinnable: here.
(The name Kwak means in Dutch “black-crowned night heron“. Wild birds of this species breed in or near the zoos of Amsterdam and Rotterdam cities).
Robert Kwak’s subject was the situation of birds in urban environments in the Netherlands.
Some species, he said, were doing well, like ring-necked parakeet, goldfinch, and greenfinch.
However, breeding bird numbers of most species are going down in urban environments, compared to the countryside.
More and more buildings are built. Yet, species depending on buildings for their nests, like swift, starling, house sparrow, and black redstart, are not doing well. Because builders often do not take birds’ needs into account.
Also, dunnocks, which nest in bushes, are going down in cities. Because of predation by cats?
This is a video about crested larks near a petrol station in Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
A pioneer species like the crested lark, which likes open sandy spaces where building often starts, is in trouble as well.
So, the situation for most urban breeding birds is not so good. However, as far as wintering birds are concerned, they are doing better in cities and towns than in the countryside. This is especially true for waterbirds (water in cities often does not freeze as soon as in the countryside).
Australia’s average surface temperature has risen more than 1 Fahrenheit degree since 1900. During roughly the same period, the body size of Australian passerine (perching) birds has declined by as much as 3.6 percent. Zoologist Janet L. Gardner of the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues, who detected the shrinking trend in birds, suspect the two changes are no coincidence: here.
Riahi has reportedly not been released, nor granted access to her lawyer who is unaware of the charges
A Tunisian blogger and drama teacher, Fatma Riahi, known online as Arabicca, has been arrested by the country’s police, Al Jazeera has learned.
Riahi was summoned to appear before the Criminal Brigade of Gorjani in Tunis on Monday, where she was questioned about her online activities, sources said.
Riahi was then released in the evening, only to be summoned again the following day and escorted by police officers to her home in Monastir, 160km from the capital, Tunis, for a house-search, the sources said.
Police confiscated her computer as evidence, and gained access to her online social-network accounts.
Riahi has neither been released from custody in Gorjani police station, nor granted access to her lawyer, Laila Ben Debba, who has spoken to her only for a few minutes, Al Jazeera has learned.
…
If prosecuted, Riahi could face criminal defamation charges that potentially carry a prison term of to up to three years.
Political satire
Authorities are investigating whether Riahi is hiding behind the pen-name of Blog de Z, a controversial Tunisian cartoonist blogger whose political satire has enraged the government.
Blog de Z’s most recent post was published three days after Riahi was first taken into custody.
RSF said on Friday: “Since her arrest, Fatma’s rights have been violated. The Tunisian authorities are using the pretext of her arrest in an attempt to discover the identity of anonymous Tunisian bloggers.
“We demand the authorities drop the charges against Fatma Arabicca and release her immediately.”
Riaihi deleted her blog three days before her arrest and her Facebook account has been removed.
‘Free Arabicca’ campaign
Lina Ben Mhenni, a friend of Riahi, told the Los Angeles Times in an email on Friday: “We talked about the Criminal Brigade [summoning] her, her worries, but we were optimistic as we know that she didn’t do something wrong.”
Zouhair Yahyaoui, one of Tunisia’s most famous imprisoned former bloggers, was arrested in 2000 after inviting readers to vote on whether Tunisia was a “republic, a kingdom, a zoo or a prison”.
Yahyaoui died of a heart attack in 2003 after reportedly being severely tortured.
Journalist jailed
In another development, France voiced concern on Friday over the fate of a Tunisian journalist and vocal critic of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, who was arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a woman and faces trial.
Taoufik Ben Brik was detained on October 29 and is being held in a town outside Tunis pending trial later this month.
RSF said in a statement last week that the charges were bogus and that Ben Brik was too ill to stand trial.
France: A decades-long series of corruption scandals, bound up with oil and arms deals, constitute the essential legal background to the Clearstream Affair: here. And here.
Hundreds of Afghan citizens have taken to the streets after NATO airstrikes and rocket attacks killed 10 people, including at least three children.
In the village of Korkhashien in Helmand province, angry villagers said that an overnight rocket strike killed nine civilians, including at least three children, as they harvested corn in their fields.
A convoy of vans and station wagons carrying the corpses drove from the governor’s office to a central market, where villagers condemned Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Western occupation forces that are propping him up.
“Death to Karzai - death to the foreigners,” they yelled as passers-by looked through the car windows at the blanket-covered bodies.
NATO insisted that the target of the strike was a group of people believed to be planting a bomb and that it was investigating the allegations.
In Khost province, hundreds demonstrated on Thursday against an overnight airstrike that killed a resident of Baramkhil village.
Mandozayi district government head Walishah Hamat said that the dead man was innocent.
Meanwhile, the top UN official in Afghanistan Kai Eide urged Mr Karzai to crack down hard on corruption or risk losing the support of the West.
Mr Eide said: “There is a belief among some that the international commitment to Afghanistan will continue whatever happens. That is not correct - it is the public opinion in donor countries that decides the strength of that commitment.”
Britain: The mother of the most senior of five soldiers gunned down by a “rogue” Afghan policeman has called for British troops to be brought home: here.
In the history of the first modern mammals (i.e., marsupials and placentals), during the Cretaceous, Europe is almost a Terra incognita. No fossils are known between 125 and 84 million years (my), and very few up to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 my). In the Cenomanian (99 my) of Charente-Maritime, the discovery of the scientist team from the Muséum1 (CNRS) and the University of Rennes 12 thus provides important information on the early history of these mammals in Europe. The discovery consists of a few teeth, collected after screenwashing of 5 tons of sediment. They belong to a new tiny mammal, named Arcantiodelphys marchandi, which is one of the oldest and most primitive marsupial known in the world. It is also the oldest known representative of the modern therians in Europe.
This discovery is the result of a research program of the University of Rennes 1 on the vertebrates from the Cretaceous of Charentes, in collaboration with the MNHN.
Arcantiodelphys marchandi improves our knowledge of the earliest stages of the marsupial history, so far known mostly from North American fossils. Its main significance is that the beginning of the marsupial history also involved Europe. Furthermore, it confirms faunal links between North America and Europe during the mid-Cretaceous. It is from these primitive marsupials from the “Euramerican” Cretaceous that the modern marsupials colonized the southern landmasses, South America and mainly Australia where they are nowadays well diversified. Opossums and kangaroos are extant representatives of this very old northern origin of the marsupials.
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