This rare beaked whale stranded on 6/20/2008 and was cared for by the volunteers at the Marine Mammal Conservancy in Key Largo, Florida. Sadly the whale died on 6/23/2008.
Scientists to study elusive beaked whales in Biscay – “Diver 2008 project”
June 2008. A group of Europe’s leading marine conservation and research organisations have joined forces to carry out further crucial research into some of the rarest and most elusive marine animals on the planet - beaked whales. The research programme, called “Diver 2008″, will run for a month off the northern coast of Spain, within the Bay of Biscay - an area renowned for sightings of these mysterious marine mammals. The programme follows on from a successful first Diver project in 2006, which established an important research baseline.
Beaked whales are a group of 21 whale species, characterised by their distinctive beaks. They are primarily found in offshore deep water canyons and as such are rarely within easy reach of researchers and whale watching enthusiasts, making them little studied. However, the northern Spanish coast has a number of these deep water canyons within 20km of the coast and past survey work by the Diver 2008 researchers from commercial ferries, has highlighted the importance of these canyons for a number of beaked whale species, including Cuvier’s beaked whale, Sowerby’s beaked whale and Northern Bottlenose whale.
The Yemen Council of Ministers has recently approved the Golden-winged Grosbeak as Yemen’s national bird. This colourful bird, with a huge beak for eating fruits and seeds, occurs in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen.
Yemen has also chosen the Arabian Leopard Panthera pardus nimr as the national mammal, the Dragon Blood Tree Dracaena cinnabari as the national tree, and the Aloe Aloe irafensis as the national plant.
Dr Graham Harrington from Birds Australia says it is believed to be the biggest survey of grasswrens undertaken in the country.
“They will walk for two kilometres playing the calls on an MP3 player every 200 metres and watching like a hawk for the birds to show themselves,” he said.
“We’ll stir them up hopefully and get them to show themselves.
“The Carpentarian grasswren is extremely difficult to see, it’s a very secretive bird.”
The Exxon Valdez ruling: the Supreme Court once again defends big business
2 July 2008
On June 25, the next-to-last day of the current term, the United States Supreme Court slashed the punitive damages judgment for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The award was reduced from $2.5 billion to only $507.5 million—an amount equivalent to a few days’ profit for the giant oil company.
Exxon Mobil Corporation paid more than $1 billion to settle state and federal claims for environmental damages. The company went to trial in 1994, however, against a class action suit by over 32,000 individuals and small businesses devastated by the accident, predominantly commercial fishermen, native Alaskans and local landowners, who claimed that Exxon’s reckless conduct caused the accident.
Exxon conceded fault, and the compensatory damages for the class were set at $507.5 million. The trial then proceeded on the issue of punitive damages only.
The evidence showed that on March 23, 1989, the tanker left port carrying 53 million barrels of crude oil from the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Its captain, Joseph Hazlewood, had recently completed an alcohol rehabilitation program. His superiors knew about Hazlewood’s problem, learned that he had relapsed recently, and even drank with him.
Witnesses testified that before leaving port Hazlewood consumed five double-vodka drinks, an amount that would have rendered any non-alcoholic unconscious. When tested by the Coast Guard 11 hours after the accident Hazlewood still had a blood-alcohol level of .061, meaning that during the wreck his level was about three times the legal limit for driving a car.
As the ship approached a well-known reef, Hazlewood set the autopilot, increased speed and turned the ship over to a subordinate unlicensed to perform the maneuver necessary to avoid running aground. The Exxon Valdez hit the reef, spilling crude oil into Prince William Sound. Hazlewood then tried to “rock” the ship free, a procedure that spewed more oil and risked killing the crew.
The result was the largest oil spill in US history: 11 million gallons covering 11,000 square miles, including 1,300 miles of pristine shoreline. The spill devastated the local economy as well as the environment. Estimated losses in the sport fishing industry alone were almost $600 million over the two years following the accident. Within days an estimated 250,000 seabirds perished, along with thousands of otters and seals. Despite billions of dollars in cleanup, the environmental effects of the spill still linger. Much of the oil seeped below the surface of affected beaches, decaying at a rate of about three to four percent per year. Animals that dig in the sand for their food continue to be contaminated.
After hearing this evidence, the jury awarded the 32,000 plaintiffs a total of $5 billion in punitive damages. In 2007 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reduced the amount to $2.5 billion. The Supreme Court decision reduces the award to $507.5 million, effectively fashioning a rule under federal maritime law that limits punitive damages to the amount of compensatory damages awarded, a so-called one-to-one ratio.
The punitive award must be viewed in light of Exxon Mobil’s enormous profits. The jury’s original $5 billion award amounts to less than the company’s profits for 1990 alone.
This video from Britain is called Damselflies gathering after mating.
Today, the three juveniles in the white stork nest. Their parents are standing below the nest, on the meadow. One of them takes off for a half circle flight around the nest, finally landing there.
A song thrush behind a house opposite the nature reserve.
From treetop nests, sounds of young grey herons.
At the small pond, a male black-tailed skimmer dragonfly.
A species of chameleon that spends most of its short life as an egg has been discovered by conservationists in Madagascar. The unusual reptile, known as Labord’s chameleon, develops inside an egg for up to nine months, but after hatching lives only a few months longer, during which it rapidly matures, mates and dies.
Because the chameleons all hatch at the same time, the entire population is the same age, apart from a very brief period when adults are still alive after laying their eggs. The life cycle is more akin to that of insects than reptiles or any other four-legged vertebrate, researchers said.
In ancient Egypt, various animals played a role in people’s lives, including in religion.
Just after leaving for the museum, I see a non mummified, still very much alive animal: a holly blue butterfly.
The museum has not only the animal mummy special exhibition, but also animals depicted in paint, sculpture, amulets, etc. in its permanent collection. I decide to look at these today and to come back for the mummy exhibition on some later day.
The first room in the permanent Egyptian exhibition is about prehistoric and early dynastic times.
One of the objects there is a Neolithic pot, with ostriches painted on it. That is special, according to the museum, as ostriches disappeared from Egypt about 5,000 years ago.
Also from Old Kingdom times, a coiled snake, as a board for the mehen game.
After the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, the Asian Hyksos invaders ruled Egypt. From their epoch, fish-shaped and goose-shaped vases.
The Hyksos brought horses to Egypt for the first time. These were depicted in the tomb for General Horemheb. The Egyptian sculptors still were not really used to depicting these new animals then.
From the times of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, animal pictures from the tomb of Paatenemheb.
La Trobe University researcher Joe Benshemesh has been studying them for years.
“They’re whitish and they have an iridescent sort of sheen to their fur,” he said.
“Their body size is probably not much larger than that of a medium-size rat, they have a stubby little tail.
“Their foreclaws, rather than being little hands are like little shovels, and they have no eyes and they don’t have any flappy bits on their ears, they do have ears.
“So they are a pretty bizarre-looking creature.
“What we’re listening to is the sound of an Itjaritjari that is tunnelling underground and you can hear the shh, shh as it cuts the ground with its forelegs, with those little spades that it has for forelegs.”
The moles are not really moles, they are marsupials with backward-facing pouches and Mr Benshemesh says they are so unusual that the two species make up their own order of mammals.
“Well they are marsupials but they’re not moles,” he said.
KABUL - Afghanistan’s snow leopards have barely survived three decades of war. But now the few remaining mountain leopards left in Afghanistan face another threat — foreigners involved in rebuilding the war-torn country.
Despite a complete hunting ban across Afghanistan since 2002, snow leopard furs regularly end up for sale on international military bases and at tourist bazaars in the capital. Foreigners have ready cash to buy the pelts as souvenirs and impoverished Afghans break poaching laws to supply them.
Tucked between souvenir stores on Chicken Street, Kabul’s main tourist trap, several shops sell fur coats and pelts taken from many of Afghanistan’s threatened and endangered animals.
June 2008. A rare dragonfly has moved into the turning ponds at the Caen Hill locks on the Kennet and Avon canal in Devizes. It is the first time that the scarce chaser dragonfly (Libellula fulva) a British Red Data Book species, has been recorded at this spot.
According to Steve Covey, the County Recorder for dragonflies and damselflies, it is likely that climate change is behind its appearance, because as temperatures warm up dragonflies are using habitats they previously considered to be unsuitable.
“A well-used canal like the Kennet and Avon makes good hunting but poor breeding grounds for dragonflies because there is so much turbulence. But at Caen Hill I found young newly emerged scarce chasers, which indicates they are actually breeding there. The ponds provide a suitable habitat for them as they receive flowing water but are much quieter than the main stretch.” …
The Cotswold Water Park (CWP) in the north of the county is also creating its own Atlas and results from both will feed into a five-year programme run by the British Dragonfly Society to map dragonfly distribution around the UK. …
In 2006 both he and Steve recorded a new species for the CWP and for Wiltshire, the lesser emperor, which comes from the Continent, and in 2007 were able to confirm that it was actually breeding on one of the lakes. “We are finding that some species are responding to climate change by becoming less fussy about where they live,” says Gareth.
