Plants and Animals

SUPPOSE you took an endangered species and put in a plan to save it. But after five years, there is no sign of reversing the catastrophic decline in numbers.

Surely you would recognise the plan is not working and look for alternatives?

There has been a catastrophic decline in numbers of tigers in the wild, particularly in India. Only in China are numbers increasing and that is because they are being farmed. That’s right – reared in large cages.

But what did conservationists decide to do at the recent Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in The Hague? They decided to restrict the captive breeding programs in China without coming up with a solution to the problem of poaching in India.

China has perhaps 60 wild tigers left, Russia has maybe 400, and India has seen its population crash to about 2500.

Orthodox conservation plans based on protection have failed the tiger.

The answer may lie in tiger farming and removing the international ban on the sale of tiger parts. A coalition of groups led by the Indian economist Barun Mitra last week called on the international meeting in The Hague to lift the ban arguing, simply, that when trade is outlawed only outlaws trade.

Poaching is one of the biggest threats to the tiger’s survival. But poaching was once a problem for crocodile conservation too. Widespread crocodile farming and a CITES-sanctioned trade drove poachers out of the market. The same approach could be applied to tigers.

China has perhaps 5000 tigers in captive facilities (the US has closer to 10,000). Tigers aren’t all that complicated to breed. But tiger farming is unpalatable to many people – it seems unethical, cold blooded.

It isn’t clear what makes tigers special. Various wild animals are farmed or ranched, including crocodiles, emus, parrots and butterflies. And in terms of cruelty, having wild tigers killed by traps or inefficient poisons in India, far exceeds the fate of tigers in farms. It might be nicer to see tigers in the wild than on farms, but to make that happen we need to close down the black market.

The Chinese have got an excellent monitoring system for captive tigers. Every captive tiger has been micro-chipped and blood taken for DNA profiling. They can follow a chain-of-custody from farms to customers. The technology to prove tiger products are legally sourced is in place. Laundering poached tiger bone faces major hurdles.

Sanctions for trading or possessing tiger parts are harsh and can include the death penalty. Smugglers are being caught, but demand and the lure of the very high black market prices is keeping the trade alive.

The big market is tiger bone, used in traditional Chinese medicine for treating bone diseases. Tiger farms in China report visitors and their families begging for bones for treating serious arthritis. Whether we believe that tiger bone is effective or not is irrelevant – millions of Chinese consumers do, trusting in centuries-old medical tradition. Demand has not been curbed by Western NGO campaigns condemning the practice and the illegal supply of tiger bone has not been stopped by government bans. Wild tiger populations are paying the price.

Most black market tiger bone is actually fake. It is expensive for smugglers to procure tiger bone in India, smuggle it through Nepal, over the Himalayas, through Tibet and into China’s eastern regions. Shooting a local cow and passing its bones off as tiger is much easier. But this dependence on fakes does nothing to relieve the pressure on small wild tiger populations struggling to absorb losses from poaching. Last week the international community could have supported incentives for a range of commercial activities from eco-tourism, to breeding tigers and trade in body parts.

Barum Mitra believes the tiger can become economically viable and thereby survive in the wild – as well as continuing as a charismatic and culturally rich species.

An internationally sanctioned and regulated trade promised solutions to major threats facing tigers. It promises to create opportunities for habitat protection and the revival of the species.

Farming and trading have worked for other species. Last week in The Hague an opportunity for a new plan, a new approach to tiger conservation was lost. A growing tragedy for much of our wildlife is that we have become too timid to jettison ineffectual strategies when they don’t work.

Dr Brendan Moyle is a zoologist and senior lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand, and has a blog with great wildlife photographs:
http://my.opera.com/chthoniid/blog/

Republished today from the Courier Mail with permission from the author: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22153644-27197,00.html

“Humane Society International (HSI) has reviewed the Japanese reports from their most recent 2006/07 whale hunt in Antarctic waters and found that over half those killed were pregnant.

Of the 505 Antarctic minke whales killed in Antarctic waters last summer, 262 of them were pregnant females, while one of the three fin whales killed was also pregnant.

“These are gruesome statistics that the Japanese Government dresses up as science”, said HSI’s Nicola Beynon.

HSI reviewed the reports in preparation for our court case against the Japanese whalers, which resumes in the Federal Court of Australia this morning.

At today’s hearing we expect the Court to set a date for the full hearing. The full hearing will be to determine whether Japanese whalers are in breach of Australian law when they hunt whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary in Antarctica and whether the Court will issue an injunction for the hunt to be stopped. HSI will ask for the final hearing to be held as soon as possible before the hunt starts up again this summer. It has been 3 years since HSI launched the case and many hurdles have been overcome to get to this point.

“It horrifies Australians to know that pregnant humpback whales breeding in the warm waters off Australia this winter will be targeted by the Japanese hunters in Antarctic waters this Christmas”, Ms Beynon said.

Japan has issued its whaling company with permits to kill 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and 50 humpback whales in Antarctic waters this summer and, based on their past hunting grounds, we expect 90% of the hunt to be conducted within the Australian Whale Sanctuary, and a large proportion of the females to be pregnant.

HSI will ask the Federal Court to order a stop to the carnage in the Australian Whale Sanctuary once and for all.

End Media entitled ‘Japan killed 263 pregnant whales in Antarctic waters – HSI back in the Federal Court’
dated 24th July.

Japanese whalers respond:

“The Humane Society International (Australia) demonstrates its ignorance and lack of understanding of marine science with its latest claims, the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo said today.

“Humane Society is ignorant, displays a unique lack of understanding of whale management and, unfortunately, plays on an equally ignorant media to manipulate the Australian and New Zealand public,” the Director General of the ICR, Mr Minoru Morimoto, said today.

“It is widely well known that the Antarctic minke whale population has increased more than the pre-commercial whaling era and is currently in a very healthy condition, with over 90 percent of the mature female whales becoming pregnant year to year. This consistent reproduction provides strong reassurance the population will easily sustain an annual commercial quota.”

Of the 286 mature females, 262 or 91.6 percent were pregnant. The remaining 24 were non-pregnant mature minke whales.

The research employs a random sampling method and the sampling of pregnant whales is taken into account under the JARPA II research program, in line with the International Whaling Commission’s Revised Management Procedure, which is a risk-averse method for calculating sustainable catch quotas.

In 1990, the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee agreed an abundance estimate of 760,000 Antarctic minke whales. That figure is currently under review but even if the abundance estimate is lower, the stock condition is very healthy and the taking of 850 minke whales poses no risk.

The breakdown of Antarctic minke whales sampled in Japan’s latest research program is outlined below.
• Total: 503 (Male: 154; Female: 349)
• Immature, non-reproducing females: 63; mature females 286 (Pregnant mature females 262 or 91.6 percent; non-pregnant mature females, 24 or 8.4 percent.)

End media release from the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo entitled HUMANE SOCIETY DEMONSTRATES IGNORANCE dated 25th July 2007

Norwegian and Icelandic media have reported that Iceland is hoping to export whale meat to Japan in the 2008 whaling season.

We have also heard that the world famous whaler, Kristjan Loftsson, has also expressed hopes to export his Fin whales to Japan this year.

According to the Icelandic Minke Whalers Association, this 2007 season’s minke whales are for the domestic market. With between 10 to 15 minkes, out of 28, to be killed this summer before the hunting season closes September 1.

http://www.fiskaren.no/incoming/article138873.ece

Icelandic and Norwegian whalers have always been looking for the opportunities to sell their whale meat to Japan, as a means of keeping the whaling industry alive. However, the Japanese whalers are not too keen on competition from foreign whalers .

The Icelanders had investigated the Japanese market and there was room to export between 300 and 400 whales per year to Japan. The Icelandic Government will make a decision on this already this year.

The whalers seem optimistic but the Minister of Fisheries stated:

“The government had not made a decision on continued commercial whaling, but added there had not been a change in whaling policy with the new administration.

Gudfinnsson said a decision would be made after news had been received on whether the whale meat caught last season could be sold. The minister told Channel 2 that if there was no market for the meat, whaling would automatically discontinue. “

http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=283694

On a more macabre note from Norway. The newspaper Fiskaren writes that the rock star, Iggy Pop, has posted an e-mail to the festival committee in Tromsö, that he “wants to experience whales dead or alive” !

The festival committe has promised to offer him and his gang whale burgers!

And I thought that all rock stars were anti -whaling to keep up their image.

http://www.fiskaren.no/incoming/article139044.ece

Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden

It starts tomorrow in Sydney, 150 performers in eight cities on seven continents including Antarctica – concerts that will rock around the clock for a world which Al Gore alleges has a climate in crisis.

More information@ http://www.liveearth.org/

Hi Jennifer,

I have devoted the best part of the last 20 years to reading, commenting and preparing objections to the many voluminous science reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Besides the actual comments as an “Expert Reviewer” I have published numerous articles in a variety of Journals, many of them in New Zealand, and a book “The Greenhouse Delusion: a Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001′”, currently still available from the publishers at

http://www.multi-science.co.uk/greendelu.htm

I visit the local University library about once a month and monitor “Nature” “Science” Journal of Geophysical Research”, “Geophysical Research Letters”, Journal of Climate” and copy signficant articles. I receive several daily or weekly Email summaries of publications and I monitor all the most useful websites. I possess a large library of photocopies, pamphlets and books which is tending to get out of hand. I maintain contact with a large number of local and international correspondents. I have lectured frequently, both locally and internationally.

I have written many pages of comments on the various IPCC Reports and most of them have been ignored. I assumed that they would never see the light of day. Owing to a change of location of the head office of IPCC to the USA it has become subject to an Official Information Act, and largely owing to the efforts of Steve McIntyre of

http://www.climateaudit.org/

They have now published all the comments on the current 4th IPCC WGI (Science) Report at

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Comments/wg1-commentFrameset.html

They are rather tedious to wade through but they show at once that many of the scientists listed as supposed supporters of the report have serious doubts about it. A friend of mine, John McLean, has done a summary of the names of the reviewers and the number of comments they made.

I was rather surprised to find that I made far more comments than anybody else, 1,878 of them, 16% of the total. You will find that nearly all of them were rejected, allegedly, because “I gave no reason for them” The reasons were usually obvious, and when I elaborated them, they still claimed I had not given any.

It is difficult to understand any of the comments if you do not have the full report. The very few comments made by most of the reviewers suggest that there may be very few actual people who ever read the report itself all the way through except those who write it.

The “Summary for Policymakers” might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain’t so.

Cheers,
Vincent Gray
New Zealand

“The urge to save humanity is always a false
front for the urge to rule it”:
H. L. Mencken

A population of humpback whales migrates each year from the Southern Ocean to Great Barrier Reef Waters. It passes just to the east of where I live, in Brisbane, and most years* it includes the world’s only known white humpback – Migaloo.

Migaloo passed us by just last week and Dr Noad, who counts whales, reported that the population is the fastest growing whale population in the world. And he claims to have the the longest and most consistent series of whale surveys in the world.

Read the complete article here: http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=12363

———————————
* In 2003 Migaloo went up the west coast of Australia – perhaps by mistake.