Environmental Film Festival in DC

180 Documentary, narrative, animated, archival, experimental, and children's films selected to provide fresh perspectives on environmental issues facing our planet. This year, the festival selections examine the critical relationship between health and the environment with 75 film makers, 115 special guests, and extraordinary cinematic work from 42 countries. Download the full schedule here. Don't you wish you could see them all?!

Atlantic Sturgeon Officially Endangered

Although fishing for the Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhychus) has been banned for a decade, the federal government formally acted on a petition from the National Resource Defense Council and declared the prehistoric-looking fish endangered last Tuesday, January 31, 2012.

The fish have been scooped up in commercial gill nets harvesting other species along the East coast and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service is hoping to decision will reduce that bycatch. Each year, a few dozen Atlantic sturgeon have shown up in Chesapeake Bay fishermen's nets. So if you catch one by mistake,just toss it right back in.

Read more here and here.

'If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.'

As you have all been reading/hearing, thousands of dead drum fish recently washed ashore of the Arkansas River between Ozark and Clarksville and then on New Year's Eve thousands of red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas.

I have several theories:

1.) One of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 forgot to push the button and is moving the island therefore causing a magnetic pole shift.
2.) ManBearPig is real.
3.) We've got a mutated species of petroleum-eating Chytridiomycota fungus on our hands that is capable of making the whole world's oil supply disappear and someone needs to find Tom Clancy.
4.) Some human beings are doing/dumping something they shouldn't in/around the Arkansas River.

Apocalyptic thinking aside, the fact that the deaths were limited to certain species in a certain region leads me to believe this could be something like the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, but with the most recent news of near 500 dead blackbirds and starlings in Louisiana in this short period of time and talk of deadly blood clots in the recovered carcases, I think I am one of many now concerned that there is a stronger and faster-spreading problem affront.

Please feel free to share any theories or articles of interest in the comment section. Here are a few readers have sent in:

For Arkansas Blackbirds, The New Year Never Came
Mass La. Bird Deaths Puzzle Investigators
Nearly 3,000 Dead Birds Fall From Arkansas Sky
Dead Fish Cover 20-Miles of Arkansas River

Sweet Sea Lions

It's video week on the blog, huh?! These Galapagos sea lions are currently on the list of threatened species. Traditionally, wildlife experts have observed them breeding and living on the islands near Equador but since ocean temperatures in Peruvian waters have increased 11 degrees over the past decade, the sea lions have begun setting up colonies outside of their native island chain. Hopefully their new home is also off the beaten path of traffickers and those awful people responsible for the January 2008 massacre. Read more here.

10th Annual Bald Eagle Festival at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge

Ten years ago, the folks over at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in association with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began celebrating the sanctuary’s birthday by hosting what has become their most popular event: The Annual Eagle Festival. This years’ festival will be taking place on Saturday, March 13th so bird-watchers, mark your calendars!

While the yearly celebration honoring the well known birds of prey is a fairly new occurrence, the refuge has been observing and protecting a variety of feathered friends, namely migratory water fowl and smaller birds, since 1933. In fact, Blackwater Wildlife Refuge was primarily established as a waterfowl sanctuary for birds migrating along the Atlantic Flyway and their initiatives to protect and enhance the eagles’ habitat is one of many focuses undertaken by the refuge as more and more native species become threatened or endangered.

“The Chesapeake Bay area has always been a big spot, a heavy concentration for eagles,” commented Tom Miller, a Ranger who works with Visitor Services at the sanctuary. “But they are slow reproducers. Only one of two babies a year. They need to put a lot of time and effort into their offspring. We haven’t had to do a whole lot of active management, [rather] just protecting areas and buying land and their numbers increased.”

Protecting their nests has certainly made a difference though. Staff, volunteers, supporters and visitors of the refuge have much to celebrate since the Department of the Interior officially removed the American Bald Eagle from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants in the summer of 2007. Of course in some parts of the country, the eagles are still not at the desired numbers, but on the grounds and wetlands of the refuge, the bald eagle is considered a recovering species alongside once endangered Delmarva fox squirrel and the delisted peregrine falcon.

The refuge is currently home to more than 250 bird species and encompasses more than 25,000 acres along Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Visitors are certain to see a variety of wildlife and likely to witness an eagle catching fish out of the water, stealing a fish from fellow dwellers the osprey, snatching smaller birds in flight, or even dining on a deer perishing on the side of the road. “Eagles,” as Tom Miller puts it, “Are opportunistic eaters.”

So what else can festival attendees expect to see at the 9th Annual Eagle Festival this March? Birds, birds and birds of prey!

Experts will give educational talks alongside a live eagle, falcon, or other feathered friends hourly. Visitors are encouraged to arrive in the morning for observational bird walks and stick around throughout the day to hear Native American musician Ron Warren playing traditional Native American flutes. Food, live bird exhibits, and wildlife exhibits will be available all day, from 8:00am – 4:00pm. Kids can plan on constructing their very own bird box and watching a puppet show. Details, directions, visitor information, and the full schedule for festival day can be found on the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge website.

And if you’re anxious to see one of the majestic birds in one of their authentic nests before the festival, check out the Live Eagle Cam or visit the refuge any day between dawn and dusk for a walk or bike ride along one of Blackwater’s four land trails, a drive along Wildlife Drive, or even a paddle on one of the three water trails.

Visitor Information:
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
2145 Key Wallace Drive
Cambridge, Maryland 21613
Telephone: (410)228-2677
http://www.friendsofblackwater.org/

Admission fees:
Private Vehicle: $3.00
Pedestrian/ Bicyclist: $1.00
Commercial Van/Bus up to 20 passengers: $15
Commercial Van/ Bus 21 passengers or more: $25

How are we going to help these homeless toads?!

Great article in the NY Times about the critically endangered and homeless Kihansi spray toads. The toads and the dam that diminished the waterfall in which they resided to 10 percent of its original size exemplify the larger conflicts between conservation and economic development. And although their story raises "questions about how much effort should go to save any one species," I'm completely convinced that a toad born fully formed yet smaller than a pinhead is worth fighting for - which is why I will absolutely be making my way to the Bronx Zoo sometime in February to love on these little fellas.

Penguin Party!

January 20th is National Penguin Awareness Day! In honor of our flightless, flippered friends, JustSaying invites you to waste a solid hour of company time looking at pictures and videos of these little fellas. Here are some fun facts and photos to get you started:

• Penguins can swim at up to 15 miles per hour!
  
• The distinctive markings of penguins is no accident. The white underside and a dark upper-side is camouflage against predators - from above or below sea level.
  
• Penguins are very social animals, breeding in groups or in large noisy colonies called rookeries. After mating on shore in the spring - almost always with the same partner- female penguins lay one or two eggs (although usually only one chick is reared). Please watch March of the Penguins for a deeper understanding of penguins love, life and rookeries.
  
• Penguins are found in the Southern Hemisphere. The greatest number is found on the coasts of Antarctica and on the subantarctic islands. Some penguin species live as far north as the Galapagos Islands on the Equator and the subtropical coasts of South America, South Africa and Australia.

• That's right: Penguins don't only live on icebergs. They can be found in warm areas (like Humboldt Current along the western coast of South America and Benguela and Agulhas Currents around South Africa) but only because there are cold water currents there.
  
• Speaking of climate conditions, penguins are extremely sensitive to climate change and their greatest threat is global warming.
  
• Today's penguins face a number of other threats including: destruction of nesting habitats, competition with fishermen for fish and shrimp, and introduced predators (such as rats, dogs and foxes) which eat penguin eggs and young.
  
• Emperor penguins, who live on floating ice packs in Antarctica, can grow to be up to four feet in height and 80 pounds in weight.They are also the deepest diving penguins, capable of diving to depths of 1,700 feet! 

If you enjoy these seabirds as much as I do and want to help, consider adopting one or two through the World Wildlife Fund. (Note: This is a symbolic adoption. You will not actually be recieving a little penguin pet in a WWF box. So just saying... don't waste the vacation day waiting for him/her.)

Supporting Endangered Amphibians and Reptiles is the New Green

What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys? A bucket of frogs, of course! When searching the WWF website for gifts suitable for my neice's first birthday, the colorful amphibians stood out because... well... there is a decent amount of buzz about the plight of polar bears but perhaps not enough about vertebrates.

Lucky for us, JustSaying isn't the only spot spreading the word. Treehugger just put up a great post about seven unique "creepy-crawly" creatures worth protecting: Leaf-nosed Lizards, Round Island Boas, Komodo Dragons, Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles, Yellow Blotched Map Turtles, San Francisco Garter Snakes, Bluetail Mole Skinks.

Warming Debate

I've avoided addressing this topic for a few days now but suppose it is time to at least acknowledge it. On the left, we have a lot of folks highly concerned about the human impact on our planet and desperate to prove that there is in fact a problem here - be it visible in climate change, species depletion, melting polar ice caps etc. On the right, we have a camp eager to point out the vast number of improvements made by the human species, the progress we've made in carbon emission regulation in the past few decades, the unsustainable habits of very wealthy Al Gore, etc. I say: thank heaven for both sides because they are passionate and keep the debate alive, progressive, current and fair.

This past weekend I had breakfast with my father - a scientist who is a registered republican (rare, I know) - and as much a I resisted, it seems he brought my chair from the far left of this debate to somewhere around the middle. He pointed out the historical flattening of populations, the crisp white snow on the ground that would look a lot more like a scene set in a Dicken's novel had America not progressed leaps and bounds in the cleanliness of our automobiles, the unmatched medical and scientific innovation of folks who aren't busy farming all day and of course the factory farmed eggs in my omelette.

I argued that climate change isn't linear and that coastal cities are doomed, that so much of our scientific innovation is treating western diseases brought about by a food system that needs an overhaul not a band aid, and that species are dissappearing from land and seas as fast as forests are being torn down for McNeighborhoods. For once though, I listened more than I talked and I learned more than I preached. And I learned that there are a few things we can all agree on and perhaps my energy is best focused there.

No one on either side wants to see species endangered and dissappearing. No one wants weather patterns disrupting entire cities and farm lands. What the hot-headed debaters fail to acknowledge is that we are all in this together and interested in the smartest, cheapest, most effective solutions and those ideas come from both ends of the political spectrum.

So although I truly believe that the human species has done plenty of harm to nature, I don't necessarily believe that nature is as passive and weak as I did before. Perhaps the changing climate is nature's way of fighting back and what we deem as detrimental may be part of a naturally developing solution. Of course that solution may be to wipe out the human species with droughts, extreme temperatures, hurricanes and floods but it may not. Maybe these are warnings, not warmings, and we're evolving side by side with the climate, coming up with greener solutions and even fudging some data to convince everyone that this is serious and we can't ignore it.

Don't get me wrong - I'm still going to preach the enviro-benefits of being a vegetarian, scold folks for drinking bottled water, emphasize the importance of recycling and respecting our mother earth, chain myself to trees and all that important stuff - but just saying... maybe I'll cool it a little with the global warming comments and let nature speak and fight for itself.

Silly snake. New amphibian species are for scientists.

How cute is this little Magombera chameleon?! (Image credit: Andrew Marshall/African Journal of Herpetology)

Conservation scientist, Dr. Andrew Marshal, was surveying endangered red colobus monkeys in the low-land forests of Tanzania when he came upon a twig snake that was eating one of these guys for lunch (I decided not to post that photo). The startled snake quite literally lost his lunch and just like that a new chameleon species was discovered.

The species is named after it's habitat, the Magombera Forest, which is under threat so Dr. Marshal hopes this will "create a banner for the desperate needs of the endangered ecosystem."

Read more here.

Destination: Miami (and wish I could bring Cliff Buchanan a gun!)

Carmen Gentile for the NY Times reported some very upsetting news regarding the sea turtles' increasingly threatened way of life down in the Miami Beach area. It's so disturbing that I don't even want to repeat the contents or take excerpts from the article. Thankfully this issue is getting national attention and there are folks down there doing everything they can to help. Read the article here and help the turtles here at seaturtle.org.

World Wildlife Web

Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago and Mercedes Pascual of the University of Michigan devised an algorithm, inspired by PageRank, for the relationships in a food web in hopes to determine which plant and animal species play paramount roles and would have the greatest impact if they were to become extinct. According to PLoS Computational Biology: "The algorithm uses the links between species in a food web, like the links between web pages, in order to determine the relative importance of species." I'm not particularly good at explaining or even completely understanding algorithms so here is what the NY Times' Henry Fountain reported:

One key to PageRank’s success is that its developers introduced a small probability that a Web user would jump from one page to any other. This in effect makes the Web circular, and makes the algorithm solvable. But in food webs, Dr. Allesina said, “you can’t go from the grass to the lion — the grass has to go through the gazelle first.

“We could not use the same trick to make food webs circular,” he went on.
So they used another trick, he said. Since all organisms die and decompose, they created a “detritus pool” that all species link to. The pool also links to primary producers in a food web, which make use of the decomposed matter.

Their algorithm differs also in that it determines the relative importance of species through reverse engineering — by seeing which species make the food web collapse fastest if they are removed. The researchers found that the algorithm produces results that were as accurate as much more complex (and computationally costly) software that builds webs from the ground up, simulating evolution.

The next step, Dr. Allesina said, is to refine the algorithm so that it will work with more complex webs. There are many other factors that affect extinctions, including pollution and habitat loss. The goal is to create an algorithm that can take these and other elements into account as well.

Another endangered amphibian

Now this awesome little fellow is on the verge of extinction too. Population has declined six-fold in the last ten years. In fact: Recent surveys suggest that only "between 700 and 1,200 Mexican Axolotl Salamanders survive in six reduced and scattered areas within the Xochimilco area of the Mexican Central Valley."

Commonly know as the "Peter Pan" of animals, the Mexican Axolotl is a favorite of scientists and pet-lovers because of their ability to regenerate body parts and their perma-larval, underwater lifestyle. But it appears that while a few human being nurture the little guys, the rest of us humans have passively harmed their habitat. Dr Luis Zambrano and colleagues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, based in Mexico City report in the journal Biological Conservation:

"... As [Mexico] City has increased in size, it has dramatically reduced the axolotl's natural habitat.

...The salamander now exists in just six isolated parts of the water system, often near to some of the few remaining natural springs supplying clear, fresh water.

...Most recent work shows that the reduction in water quality is one of the main factors driving the axolotl to extinction in the wild. Another is the presence of large numbers of introduced carp and tilapia fish, which both compete ecologically with axolotls for food and resource, and also eat axolotl eggs."

Read more here.

We're all in this together

A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society reveals the latest threat to some of our planet's endangered species: Cancer. Tazmanian devils, turtles, whales, sea lions, and dolphins are among those afflicted at rates comparable to those in humans. After reading this short article in treehugger, I am saddened by the hypothesis that carcinogens (undoubtedly man-made, IMO) are at the bottom of this.

Happy Earth Day, Folks!!

Now get out there and hug a tree! Or if you prefer to do something with a greater impact:

1.) Go vegetarian - even if only just for today.
2.) Become a member of the Arbor Day Foundation, receive ten trees, and plant 'em!
3.) Support emissions reduction initiatives with a donation to offset your carbon footprint.
4.) Help an endangered species. Two of my faves: AmphibianArk.org and WWF Adoption/Gift Center.
5.) And an oldie but goodie: If you see a piece of litter, pick it up.

...worth a thousand words

Earth Day Week - Thought for Today: Share

Bats are the new frogs

The Washington Post reports some devastating news regarding the presence of what has been dubbed "white nose syndrome," a mysterious and deadly fungus responsible for the deaths of approximately one million bats in the Northeast, in Virginia caves and points south. From the article:

Bats, like the disappearing honeybees and frogs, play a critical role in the delicate balance of nature. A single bat will eat 50 to 100 percent of its body weight in insects in a single night. Kunz conservatively calculates that the million bats that have died would have consumed about 694 tons of insects in one year: the equivalent weight of about 11 Abrams M1 tanks.

"You take these bats away, there are a lot of unknowns," Kunz said. "What are these insects going to do that aren't being eaten? They can cause serious damage to crops, gardens and forests, further upsetting both the natural and human-altered ecosystems."

In one study of eight Texas counties, Kunz said, researchers found that if bats disappeared, farmers would have to spend as much as $1.2 million more on pesticides each year. That means more-expensive food, more chemicals in the food supply and the environment, and who knows what other cascading effects on the animals that depend on bats as a source of food or their guano for nutrition. "Eventually, there's a threshold that's going to be reached," Kunz said. "That's not going to recover."

It has yet to be determined how the disease is spreading, whether the bats are infecting one another, recreational cavers are carrying the spores, or some combination of the two. Experts are also trying to determine how the fungus, which is essentially just a skin irritant, leads to death:

The best hypothesis is that the fungus is somehow disturbing the bats, causing them to wake more often than usual. Each time they wake, they use 60 days of the fat reserves they need to make it through the winter. They might be waking up so often that they use up their fat stores and starve to death. That's why infected bats are seen in the daylight, emaciated and searching for food they won't find in the middle of winter.

Taste for Turtles?

Ugh. According to this NY Times editorial, the consumption of turtle meat, which used to be a rare delicacy in some Asian diets, is on the rise - particularly in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. So much so that the wild turtle population in Southeast Asia has severely declined. Now the population of common soft-shell turtles from the American Southeast are in jeopardy! I promote the consumption of self-caught, wild meat over the supermarket variety hands down, but not if the animal is endangered or headed in that direction. I hope this population decline gets more media attention soon.

dwindling moose population

In the last 20 years, the moose population in the Upper Midwest United States has plummeted and scientists are pointing fingers at climate change, specifically the gradual rising of temperatures in the Northwest. The LA Times reports:

"Solitary and grumpy, moose have made it clear in their estimated 13,000 years in North America that they hate warm weather. The concern about the fate of the moose comes as the Bush administration, in its last weeks, is revising regulations in ways that prohibit federal agencies from evaluating the effects of increased global warming on endangered species. Officially, the moose is not endangered in the U.S. But it is in danger of disappearing from the Midwest, which is the far southern fringe of its range. There are about 7,700 moose in Minnesota, nearly all in the northeast part of the state. That's down about 50% from 20 years ago...

...Whereas deer, wolves and bears have adapted to warmer temperatures, wildlife biologists say, moose have suffered. Moose require shade, water and cool weather, each of which is dwindling in northwest Minnesota, where the moose population struggles among small patches of aspen woods and farmland. When temperatures rise, the moose have to work harder to obtain food and find places to stay cool... that affects their immune systems, prevents them from putting on more fat in the summer (which they need to get through the winter) and makes them vulnerable to parasites."

please help save the frogs

Because football has apparently taken over Thursday nights now, on top of Sunday and Monday nights, I was only able to catch the first quarter of The Animal Planet documentary, The Vanishing Frog. I learned enough in that short time, however, to understand the threats facing our planet's amphibian population. Here are some facts:

Since the 1980s, more than 120 species of frogs have gone extinct.

Right now, one-third to one-half of the world's amphibian species are threatened.

For example, a decade ago there were tens of thousands of Southern Mountain Yellow-Legged frogs in the lakes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Today, less than 200 remain.

Climate change, pollution, the introduction of non-native species, fires, and most recently a deadly chytrid aquatic fungus are the main suspects in the disappearance of the frogs and so many other amphibian species.

Chytrid fungus is currently unstoppable and untreatable in the wild. The World Conservation Union calls it the worst infectious disease ever recorded among vertebrates.

The top five critically endangered frogs are: the Southern Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog, the Panamanian Golden Frog, the Variable Harlequin Frog, the Lehmann's Poison Frog, and the Southern Corroboree Frog (pictured).

Only about 250 Southern Corroboree frogs remain in the wild, 25% of which are expected to vanish in the next three years, quite possibly because of the chytrid aquatic fungus.

I encourage you to check your local listings for The Vanishing Frog or watch the full documentary here on Animal Planet's website. And if you'd like to help, learn more by visiting savethefrog.com or click here to purchase a t-shirt or make a donation to Amphibian Arc that supports their global amphibian rescue efforts.