The ban, reported by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, could take as many as three years to take effect, and it remains unclear how widely it will be adhered to across a sprawling nation where orders issued by Beijing are often shrugged off by officials in faraway regions and provinces.

Still, the decision to stop serving shark fin soup at official functions was welcomed by environmental campaigners. Experts have long cautioned that soaring demand for the soup over the past two decades has imperiled shark populations around the globe.

“This is a very positive step forward,” said Andy Cornish, director of conservation at W.W.F. in Hong Kong. “It is the first time that the Chinese central government has expressed a decision to phase out shark fin from banquets funded by taxpayers’ money.” He said the move would send an important signal to consumers in China, the largest market for the fins.

Stan Shea, a project coordinator in Hong Kong at Bloom Association, a marine conservation organization, likewise welcomed the policy change, saying it represented a “big step” to help shark populations.

The soup, brewed from dried shark fins, is largely tasteless and slithery but has considerable cachet as a status symbol. Many in China consider it a must-serve at lavish, multicourse banquets to celebrate weddings, anniversaries and corporate and state events.

Retailers in Hong Kong, the main hub for the international trade in the fins, charge more than 2,000 Hong Kong dollars, or $260, per catty, a traditional weight measure commonly used in markets here. Equal to just over one pound, one catty makes about 10 portions of soup, which works out to $26 a portion.

Rapid economic growth across Asia in recent years has catapulted millions into the ranks of those who can now afford the dish.

In an effort to conserve shark populations, several nations have banned the fishing of sharks. Several American states, including California, have banned the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. And in Hong Kong, several high-end restaurants and hotels have recently taken shark fin off the menu in response to shifting public awareness in the city. The Hong Kong government has so far resisted calls from shark conservationists to curtail the trade or consumption of shark fins.

“The Hong Kong government has repeatedly dodged the question of implementing a banqueting ban on shark fin soup, saying that it sees no need for such guidelines,” said Mr. Cornish of W.W.F. “We strongly hope that the new administration in Hong Kong government will shortly follow suit.”

The Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department’s media office, in an e-mail on Tuesday, reiterated its long-held stance that the government carries out the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known by its acronym, Cites.

Environmentalists, however, argue that Cites should list as threatened a far larger number of shark species than it does.

Hong Kong government guidelines stipulate that official banquets not be “extravagant,” and this means menus do not “generally include shark fin,” the media department added. It did not say whether Hong Kong would echo Beijing’s decision to ban the dish from official banquets. Source: New York Times

To tackle this problem, it is essential to improve the water collection capacity of soil. This is achieved with the help of so-called contour trenches. These are trenches that follow the contours of the landscape and capture the rainwater flowing downwards above ground. Using these trenches, destructive above-ground water flows no longer erode the soil, wash away the fertile top soil and any vegetation still present.

Added to this, instead of this rainwater continuing to flow away in a downward direction, above ground, these trenches mean that water flows underground, resulting in the creation of an underground water supply. This underground water supply is used not only as drinking water by humans and animals, but also stimulates the growth of natural vegetation and of the agricultural crops planted.

Besides laying contour trenches, a number of other elements are introduced – stone walls and tree coppicing, for example – which optimises the effective water-holding capacity of the flow area, erosion is stopped and regulated evaporation is responsible for the achievement of a better local and regional climate.

This multifunctional approach to water and climate management was developed by Peter Westerveld . Since the 1990s, he has successfully been putting this technique into practice in collaboration with local communities in East Africa. In semi-arid areas, the improvement of storing water supplies underground, so free of any evaporation loss, results in the continuous availability of both drinking water and vegetation that is always green. In this way, agricultural production can be increased as part of a sustainable approach.

Peter Westerveld was born and raised in Tanzania on a sisal farm. Growing up, he learned that the more deforestation that occurred, the more successful one was in agriculture.

At the tender age of ten, however, when Westerveld began making forays into the rainforest, he was struck by the sheer number of plants, insects, fish and wildlife, and recognized that there was something wrong if the Africans were all suffering as a result of the Europeans’ success in sisa

The Convenient Solution – Naga Foundation

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Life on Earth is divided into two main groups, the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes. Prokaryotes are simple life forms, with no membranes or cell nuclei; this group includes bacteria and archaea. Eukaryotes, which include humans, animals, plants, fungi and algae, have cell membranes and nuclei. This new organism is a eukaryote.

More specifically, it’s an algae-eating protozoan, a type of creature that have been known to science since the Civil War but which have lacked genetic studies because they’re difficult to culture. Researchers in Norway were able to harvest them from a lake bed and breed them in the lab. This one is called Collodictyon.

This strange protozoan has four flagella. The rest of the entire tree of life is divided by organisms that have either one or two flagella. UiO/MERG

Researchers led by Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, head of the Microbial Evolution Research Group (MERG) at the University of Oslo, were examining the species’ genes and morphological makeup and found it is not like anything else. It evolved a billion years ago, give or take a couple hundred million years. It could have been living the same way since then, providing scientists a glimpse of what the earliest life forms looked like.

The organism is weird in several key ways. It has four flagella, for instance, which makes it different from bacteria and eukaryotes. Mammals, fungi and amoebae only have one flagellum — that’s the propeller-like feature that helps cells move (think of the “tail” of a sperm cell). Algae, plants and single-celled parasites called excavates are thought to have had two flagella. Collodictyon is somewhere between an excavate and an amoeba.

Also, the organism has the same internal structure as a parasite, but it uses amoeba-like protuberances to catch its food, which are blue-green algae. So again, it combines features from two branches of the eukaryotes, further evidence that it’s a primordial creature, the researchers say.

Even at its highest levels, the tree of life is mutable — the domain archaea was only recognized in 1990. So it wouldn’t be out of the question for this organism to spark an entirely new kingdom. The research on Collodictyon is published in the journal Molecular Biology Evolution.

Source: Science Daily [April 30, 2012]

“We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change,” says ecologist Mark Urban, the study’s lead author. “But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other and they eat each other. The majority of our predictions don’t include these important interactions.”

Plenty of experimental studies have shown that species are already moving in response to climate change, says Urban, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut. For example, as temperatures rise over time, animals and plants that can’t take the heat are moving to higher altitudes where temperatures are cooler.

But not all species can disperse fast enough to get to these more suitable places before they die off, Urban says. And if they do make it to these better habitats, they may be outcompeted by the species that are already there – or the ones that got there first.

With coauthors Josh Tewksbury and Kimberly Sheldon of the University of Washington, Urban created a mathematical model that takes into account the varying rates of migration and the different intensities of competition seen in ecological communities. The goal was to predict just how successful species within these communities would be at shifting to completely new habitats.

Their results showed that animals and plants that can adjust to climate change will have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.

Animals with small geographic ranges, specific habitat needs and difficulty dispersing are likely to go extinct under climate change, their model shows. Further, these animals are more likely to be overrun by other species that can tolerate a wider range of habitats.

“When a species has a small range, it’s more likely to be outcompeted by others,” Urban says. “It’s not about how fast you can move, but how fast you move relative to your competitors.”

Urban likens this scenario to a train traveling up a mountain on a track. If each boxcar – representing a species – travels at the same speed, they will likely all reach the top eventually. But in reality, each car can move at a different speed, creating a collision course.

“There’s always a car in front of you and a car behind,” explains Urban. “When you introduce the ability to move at different speeds, they’re constantly bumping into one another, even running each other over. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

Importantly, the authors speculate that current predictions of biodiversity loss under climate change – many of which are used by conservations organizations and governments – could be vastly underestimating species extinctions.

Tropical communities, for example, which often have many species living in small areas, could be among the hardest hit by climate change. Urban says that this is a first step toward making climate change predictions of biodiversity more sophisticated.

“This a first step – to include in our models things that we know are true, like competition and dispersal,” says Urban. “Knowing these things, can we predict which species might be most at risk?”

Author: Christine Buckley | Source: University of Connecticut [January 03, 2012]