Science and Nature
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Web running out of addresses
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(Times Online): The world is about to run out of the internet addresses that allow computers to identify each other and communicate, the man who invented the system has told The Times. Vint Cerf, the “father of the internet” and one of the world’s leading computer scientists, said that businesses and consumers needed to act now to switch to the next generation of net addresses.Go to article
New book sounds alarm for Cayman plants
(CNS): Forty-seven percent of the Cayman Islands’ native plants are now threatened with extinction, mainly because of the tide of deforestation that is accompanying the incredibly rapid growth of the human population, according to local environmental specialist Frederic J. Burton, whose new book, Threatened Plants of the Cayman Islands – the Red List, will be available in local bookstores in the Cayman Islands from 27 September.
The book highlights the group of plants that are totally unique to the Cayman Islands – plants like Old George, the Ghost Orchid, the Cayman Ironwood tree, and the Grand Cayman Sage. Many are literally on the brink of extinction, and one purpose of this book is to document which ones are endangered, and to what degree.
Burton explained that the conservation status of any plant (or any living thing) is normally defined by an international standard known as the Red List, which is what he uses in the book. Working from an estimate of the current population size, the generation time, land area occupied, rates of habitat loss and other threats, the Red List process yields a standard measure of the risk of extinction.
“Undertaking the formal Red List conservation assessments for each of the Cayman Islands’ 415 native plants was a daunting task but it wasn’t until I’d finished and started summarising the results that I realized what a shocking conclusion we had on our hands,” Burton said.
The main content of the book is written in non-technical language for all readers. This includes a description of the main natural vegetation communities on the three Cayman Islands, with photographs and maps, followed by the individual plant descriptions. This work doubles as a professional reference, giving the formal conservation status of the entire Cayman native flora in extensive tables at the back of the book, and a scientific paper detailing a new vegetation classification system for the islands on a CD attached inside the back cover.
Published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, in association with the Cayman Islands Department of Environment, the book contains 105 full-colour pages and is bound in reinforced softback. It will be on sale locally at a recommended retail price of CI$19.95. The author devotes a full page to each of the 28 plant species and varieties considered unique to the Cayman Islands, with colour photographs accompanying the description for each. A further 14 plants that the Cayman Islands shares with only one neighbouring island are also included.
“The Department of Environment is very pleased to have facilitated this publication,” said Director of Environment Gina Ebanks-Petrie. “We see it as an extremely important and timely addition to our efforts to highlight the urgent need for legislation to protect and conserve the diversity of our local flora.”
Dr Colin Clubbe of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew added, “By raising awareness of the status and the threats to Cayman’s flora, and formalising this using the internationally recognised Red List Categories and Criteria, the Cayman Islands is leading the way in the botanical conservation in the UK Overseas Territories. This will provide a model and inspiration for other Territories and we are delighted to have been able to publish this on behalf of the Cayman Island conservation community.”
Threatened Plants of the Cayman Islands – the Red List will be launched at Hobbies & Books / Books bythe Bay at Grand Harbour on Saturday, 27 September, at 6:00 pm. Everyone is welcome and there is no entry charge. The author will give an illustrated presentation about the work behind this publication and will be signing copies. Some of the uniquely Caymanian plants featured in the book will be on sale at the event, courtesy of Grand Cayman’s new Native Tree Nursery which will soon be opening in the QE II Botanic Park.
A second event will take place at Books & Books at Camana Bay, on Wednesday, 1 October, at 7:00 pm. The book will also be available at the Book Nook, the QE II Botanic Park, the National Trust offices on South Church Street, and other locations on all three islands.
DoE fights on for orchids
(CNS): According to the Department of Environment, it has not yet given up on the orchids which were seized in the Netherlands by Dutch customs earlier this year on their way to the Chelsea flower show in London. Despite recent rumours that the unique endemic blooms had found their way into the hands of private collectors, Mat Cottam from the DoE said that the orchids are still with the Dutch authorities and the DoE continues to negotiate for their release.
“Discussions are ongoing; however, the legal issues are complicated and will take some time to resolve,” said Cottam. “We are working together with Dutch authorities, DOT and DEFRA in the UK to seek a solution to the situation.” He explained that this was a genuine red tape mistake and not an attempt to illegally transport endangered species. “We remain hopeful that the Dutch authorities will eventually see this and at the very least let the orchids go to Kew Gardens in London. We have a very robust MOU with Kew who would become the custodians of the plants but they would still belong to the Cayman Islands.”
The Dutch authorities responded to CNS equiries this week and confirmed that the flowers were still in their hands. CITES representative Henk Vonk said that they were in one of Holland’s botanical gardens. "Specialist men are taking care for the flowers," he said. "They are in good condition and one is flowering."
The eight Ghost and Banana orchids which embarked on the journey to Chelsea fell victim to the bureaucracy when one of the documents required under the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was overlooked. Andrew Guthrie, Director of the Queen Elizabeth Botanic Gardens, was the driving force behind the Heritage Garden, which went on to win a silver medal and proved a major attraction at the show. He explained how the paperwork came to be missing.
“Unfortunately, no one involved was aware that the EU had recently imposed further restrictions on CITES level II plants, which required a CITES import permit from the destination country in addition to the CITES export permit,” he said. “This is strictly an EU rule, not an international CITES rule. The orchids had all the permits required from Cayman, but because we weren’t aware of this very recent requirement, they did not have a CITES import permit.”
He said that at some point the CITES management authority in the Netherlands would decide whether the plants are returned to the Cayman Islands or will remain in the Netherlands-designated CITES rescue site, but Guthrie agreed with Cottam that there was still a chance that the orchids would be allowed to go to Kew, where they were originally intended to go after the show, but the plants could not be sold.
Guthrie also noted that the concerns people had in Cayman that these flowers were exceptionally valuable and therefore vulnerable were misplaced. He explained that both of these endemic species of orchids have left the Cayman Islands in the past, and there are a number of commercial growers overseas who have had these plants, especially the Banana Orchid, for decades.
“The Banana Orchid is already in commercial production, people are selling it but no one is making a fortune off of them and no one ever will,” Guthrie noted. “In the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s certain orchid growers in Florida would come to the Cayman Islands, especially Cayman Brac, and collect massive quantities of these orchids to ship back and sell. They also paid people in the Brac very small sums of money for the orchids that they collected for them. So, worrying that these orchids might get out into commercial production is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.”
Guthrie noted too that the missing orchids had no detrimental impact on Cayman’s exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show, which went on to win a medal. “We wanted to be able to point out a couple of our endemic plants for interest but they were not necessary for the exhibit as a whole,” he added.
Guthrie said the rumours that the plants were being sold for vast sums of money may have started as a result of an idea that a marketing company in the UK came up with to auction the plants off for the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, before it had established that this is not allowed with CITES plants. Guthrie added that Cayman’s achievement at the show was significant and the fact that the Cayman Islands’ very first Chelsea exhibit won a silver medal was, in the horticultural world, equivalent to winning a silver medal at the Olympics and far more important than the seizure of the orchids.
Ancient reef reveals life
(ABC Science): The Discovery of an ancient reef in Australia may push back the evolution of the earliest animals by 80 million years. Researchers say they have uncovered complex organisms that in some ways resemble multicellular life in a large reef located in the Northern Flinders Ranges, 700 kilometres north of Adelaide in South Australia. Go to article
Koala faces extinction
(IAR): Australia’s iconic koala may be heading for extinction unless there are changes in how the populations are managed, an Australian zoologist has claimed. The koala, which was previously hunted to near extinction in the 1920s, is a marsupial found in the coastal regions of eastern and southern Australia and lives almost entirely on eucalypt leaves. Go to article.
Love dilemma for Caribbean people
(BBC): In May this year, the chief of an ancient Caribbean people came up with a drastic solution to protect their heritage – and their future. Chief Charles Williams of the Carib – or Kalinago – people of Dominica said they should not marry non-Kalinago people. "The impact of colonisation has been so strong on us that if we do not take steps to protect the race, it will be soon extinct," he said. Go to article
White roofs could save planet
(Greenbang): The idea of painting roofs white to reflect the sun’s rays and help cool houses naturally without energy-intensive air conditioning isn’t exactly new and has been floating around for a while. Now a new study claims to show that painting roofs white can help combat global warming. It claims that if the world’s 100 biggest cities installed white roofs and changed to ‘cool’ pavements with more reflective materials such as concrete it would be enough to offset 44GT (giga tonnes) of carbon dioxide emissions. Go to article
Bush animals face extinction
(Discovery): The hunting of wild animals poses a threat to species’ survival in many parts of the world, but an all-out ban on bushmeat hunting is not the right solution, according to a new report, because many people depend on such animals as their major source of protein. Without regulations for sustainable hunting, many Central African forest mammals could be extinct within 50 years, the report said. Go to article.
Caribbean reefs losing species
(CNS): While reefs all over the world are at risk, those in the Caribbean have been devastated, according to research by the European Commission Environmental Department. In particular local reefs are suffering from the decline in population of two key species — the staghorn and elkhorn corals, which were recently listed under the US Endangered Species Act.
The Caribbean, states the EC, has the largest number of corals that are listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered. According to the research, climate change and human impacts are placing one-third of reefs at serious risk of extinction. Another area at risk aside from the Caribbean is the Coral Triangle in the western Pacific. Humans can have negative impacts on coral reefs through a number of means, including increased coastal development, sedimentation due to poor land-use and watershed management, sewage discharge, pollution from agrochemicals, coral mining and over-fishing, the EC said in a release.
“Coral reefs harbour the highest concentration of marine biodiversity in the world, form the basis of ecosystems and food webs that sustain communities and provide coastal protection,” it said. “Climate change and human impacts are placing one-third of reefs at serious risk of extinction. These impacts reduce the resilience of corals to withstand global threats from a rise in sea surface temperatures and increased ocean acidification arising from climate change. Higher temperatures lead to heat stress, which causes the coral to expel the zooxanthellate algae that live in their tissues in a protective, symbiotic relationship.”
The EC said researchers say this increases the risk of mass coral bleaching and mortality from diseases, some of which can kill 500 year old colonies within months. Additionally, ocean acidification is reducing ocean carbonate ion concentrations, which in turn limits the ability of corals to build skeletons and reef structures. Categories and criteria from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List were used to identify corals that are ‘Vulnerable’, ‘Endangered’ or ‘Critically Endangered’.
“The results emphasise the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need for conservation measures. The majority of the species were found to be vulnerable. Of 704 species studied that could be assigned conservation status, 32.8 per cent were in categories with an elevated risk of extinction,” said the EC.
Researchers also found the proportion of corals threatened with extinction has increased dramatically over the last 2 decades and corals are at greater risk of extinction than any group of land-based animals apart from amphibians. Forty percent of coral species only inhabit shallow-waters and are therefore more vulnerable to human impacts and 303 species are highly susceptible to bleaching.
Melting Arctic ice alarming
(In the News): An "alarming" downward trend in summer sea ice in the Artic has led the WWF to predict there will be less ice this winter than during any other year. In response the conservation organisation is calling on the government to take note; reducing carbon emissions accordingly. Dr Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change advisor at WWF International’s arctic programme said WWF was expecting 2008 to be the lowest or the second-lowest year in terms of summer ice coverage. Go to article