Plants and Animals

There has been an interesting exchange between Ann in Sweden, David in Tokyo, and others following my blog post of 23rd April titled ‘Norway to Kill More Whales’.

The discussion has now moved from whales to elephants.

I lived in Kenya from 1989 through to late 1992 and visited Zimbabwe and South Africa. It was evident back then that there were too many elephants in southern Zimbabwe, while they were being shot out of Kenya.

I have previously mentioned the book by Raymond Bonner, ‘At the Hand of Man: Peril and hope for Africa’s Wildlife’ (Alfred Knopf, New York 1993, pp 322) which is about the early history of conservation groups in Africa and how their staff in Africa supported trade in ivory. But the fundraisers and executives at their headquarters in Europe and the USA wanted bans … lobbying for a ban on ivory generated membership and donations.

I’ve copied the following comment from David, because it does raise the very real issue of how ‘Africa’ can and should manage its elephants. Elephants can be so destructive and require so much space, and ‘Africa’ is being denied the opportunity to make money from ivory – which could give elephants a local value and in this way aid conservation of the species?

David wrote:

Ann,

Sorry, but your statements do confuse me. 🙂

Countries like Kenya are more than welcome to manage their elephants how they see fit.

However, they campaigned to have a ban on the ivory trade put in place because they had failed to manage their elephant populations, consequently suffering from poaching etc. The problem was, when the ban was imposed in 1989, it led to other nations being forced to abide by the ban even though their circumstances were different.

While Kenya had failed miserably to look after her elephants, nations in Southern Africa had been doing a fine job, and their elephants were in good shape. Here’s the thing – there is a demand for elephant products. Rather than ban this trade, why not permit it, make money from it, and with those funds manage and regulate the industry for the good of conservation?

Read about Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE approach to conservation here:

“While economic incentives are indispensable, the programme preaches and practises sustainable consumption as a vehicle for development. This is the language the Zimbabwean people and their ancestors have been practising since time immemorial.”

Unfortunately, NGO groups from the Western world seem to care more about African elephants than they do about African people.

Remembering that all parties agree that conserving elephants is a priority, which do you give more importance Ann? African elephants or African people?

As for relocation, nations in Southern Africa should be under no obligation to relocate their (valuable) elephants to Kenya, a nation which has failed abismally to look after theirs (unless Kenya wishes to pay?).

Even in Kenya, the elephant levels are growing these days – but for how long will the ecosystem be able to sustain continued growth?

Then what? Ship elephants to Sweden perhaps? 🙂

Westerners seem to love them so much, let’s see how they enjoy having them overrunning the local neighbourhood.

David

Thousands of elephants were culled in South Africa last year.

I have copied this comment by Bob McDonald from my blog post of 7th April titled ‘MInister Blocks Wind Farm for Orange Bellied Parrots’:

Wind power as generated by turbines with large blades has only recently been discovered to have a significant and avoidable impact on birds and bats. Better siting will provide most of the solution to this problem.

The difficulty is that it is very hard to count birds and bats killed by wind turbines. Predators remove kills quickly and given the size of the turbines and given the maximum blade tip speeds of around 300kph bats and birds killed can end up a considerable distance from the turbines.

Surprisingly birds like white throated needle tails, a large swallow-like bird that migrates annually to Australia feeding and sleeping on the wing, have been among the kills recorded. These birds are not only supreme ‘flyers’ but also use a form of echo location to catch their prey.

Similarly with bats it is surprising they get killed by turbines. In West Virginia the bat mortality generated by turbines only came to light when students camped below turbines and used dogs to find more than 300 dead and injured bats from a couple of dozen turbines over a few moths. This was in 2004.

These problems were not predicted, though it has been known for some time that birds have been struck by blades – but monitoring has been by turbines owners and those paid to host turbines – neither with the incentive report kills.

Companies that build wind turbines seek the most prominent locations to remind potential customers to ‘tick’ the green energy box on their power bill.

The Victorian State Government simply provided a wind atlas to these companies showing where the most reliable winds were as a guide to siting. The same reliable winds may also be used by migrating birds and bats.

Bird migration routes and travelling heights are also poorly understood. The most common known migrations are of species that arrive in flocks in the Australian Summer and depart in the autumn, also in flocks and most often at night.

The conditions at the time of departure and arrival determine what height and to an extent what route these flocks travel at.

To the bird in question, the Orange Bellied Parrot, it is the rarest of 17 species of national and international significance found likely to be killed by turbines if constructed at Bald Hills wetland.

No-one could be reasonably expected to predict the extent and nature of this problem. Now that it has been identified far more care must be taken with the siting of wind turbines and State Governments have a responsibility to decide where wind turbines should not be located.

Some basic rules for siting turbines could be –

1. Not within 30 kilometres of the coast, wetland or lakes. This safety margin is to allow for the full range of weather conditions that may bring migratory birds and bats within the range of spinning blades.

2. Not on ridges frequented by birds of prey from a given region, (not all ridge lines are used as ‘lofting areas’.)

3. That alternative energy consumers and property owners, who are paid for having turbines on their land, pay for and allow monitoring of existing turbines for birds and bat kills.

4. That turbines that are found to cause kills (by monitoring) are shutdown for the high risk periods and that alternative energy consumers cover these costs.

5. The available infra -red monitoring technology by used extensively for monitoring of sites for proposed wind farms before agreements with land owners to site turbines are reached and monitoring of existing turbine sites.

The very low numbers of Orange Bellied Parrots, less than 200, makes them vulnerable to even normal predation. The spend winter on the increasingly rare Victorian saltmarsh fringes scattered along the coast, as small and hard to identify. The estimate of the blades of the proposed Bald Hills windfarm being likely to kill one Orange Bellied Parrot per year are better understood as there is a good chance in 30 years that a flock of 30 will be killed.

There are a wide range of issues regarding wind turbines, but the impact on birds and bats is new and unpredicted as may be amplified by the area of turbulence around blade tips that could be equally fatal to small birds and bats aa blade strike.

Better siting will avoid most of the bird/bat interaction issues. Barrel shaped turbines currently be developed may solve this problem completely.

Bob McDonald, Naturalist

The World Conservation Union (The IUCN) has just released it ‘red list’ for 2006 with the headline:

“The number of known threatened species reaches 16,119. The ranks of those facing extinction are joined by familiar species like the polar bear, hippopotamus and desert gazelles; together with ocean sharks, freshwater fish and Mediterranean flowers. Positive action has helped the white-tailed eagle and offers a glimmer of hope to Indian vultures.”

Several species that where listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the IUCN’s 1996 assessement are now listed as extinct, click here.

According to BBC News Online:

“Polar bears are listed as Vulnerable to Extinction based on forecasts that their population will decline by 50% to 100% over the next 50 to 100 years.”

In fact the BBC appears to have used predicted summer sea ice decline as a proxi for polar bear decline. Following is the actual text from the IUCN:

“Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are set to become one of the most notable casualties of global warming. The impact of climate change is increasingly felt in polar regions, where summer sea ice is expected to decrease by 50-100% over the next 50-100 years. Dependent upon Arctic ice-floes for hunting seals and highly specialized for life in the Arctic marine environment, polar bears are predicted to suffer more than a 30% population decline in the next 45 years. Previously listed by IUCN as a conservation dependent species, the polar bear moves into the threatened categories and has been classified as Vulnerable.”

Now the IUCN may also be using predictions about summer sea ice as a proxi for predicting future polar bear numbers and then just discounting a bit!*

Last time I spent some time looking at polar bear numbers based on the available evidence (click here for the blog post), rather than predictions about how much the planet might warm, I established that:

“There are thought to be about 22,000 polar bears worldwide with about 60 percent in Canada. Most bear populations are thought to be stable or increasing in number. Historically hunting has impacted on population numbers and over-harvesting is still considered the main threat to polar bears.”

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*More information on polar bears and why the IUCN has listed them as vulnerable may be more easily available once the IUCN’s searchable data base is online, apparently from the 4th May which is tomorrow. It would be good then to also have a look at how the northern hairy nosed wombat is fairing. I reckon the single biggest threat to biodiversity in Australia is probably mismanagement of our rangelands with ‘overgrazing’ and ‘vegetation thickening’ the two biggest issues that need tackling. What about a guest post from a reader who owns some country in western Queensland or NSW?

It’s really a documentary about the lifecycle of Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. But I’m going to go along with the movie critiques and romantics who have described ‘March of the Penguins’, a Warner Independent and National Geographic film, as an “incredible story of courage, adventure, survival and love”.

I saw the movie at my local cinema on Friday night. It was extraordinary in terms of photography and I’ve decided Emperor penguins are extraordinary. The male penguins hang around together through the Antarctic winter with nothing to eat for two months, temperatures -60 degree C, including through 160 kph blizzards, each with an egg cradled between their feet.

When the eggs hatch, the chicks then hang about on Dad’s feet:

It’s official, Norway is planning to kill many more minke whales this season. The 2006 minke whale quote for Norway was officially set last December, the season started on the 1st April. The quota is much higher than for previous years. Here are some of the reasons as reported in the Orberlin Times:

“Norway‘s Foreign Ministry rejected the protest, saying the minke whales Norway harpoons for food in the North Atlantic are plentiful and well able to withstand the planned catch of 1,052 of the giant marine mammals in 2006…

“We are following procedures to ensure that whaling is within safe quotas,” he said, adding that Norway‘s catches were based upon guidelines laid down by the scientific committee of the IWC.

The 2006 hunt represents about one percent of a stock Norway estimates at 107,000 minke whales in its hunting areas in the North Atlantic. Minkes are relatively plentiful, unlike endangered blue whales.

Norway, in a move hailed by whalers but blasted by environmentalists, is also expanding hunts into international waters in the North Atlantic from its own zone for the first time since the 1980s.

It has long said whale stocks have grown uncontrollably since the 1986 moratorium and says the whales, which eat fish such as cod, are partly to blame for falling fish stocks.”

Peter Corkeron made the following comments about the Norwegian minke whale quote in a blog post at this site on 25th January:

“Minke quotas have trended upwards over time – the 2006 quota is 1052 animals. Some of this has come from carrying over untaken quotas from previous years – not a part of the Revised Management Plan/Revised Management Scheme as far as I’m aware. Some has come from changing the “tuning level” – a multiplier built into the CLA/RMP to allow for uncertainty, and changing circumstances. Other problems with quota setting include that predominantly female minkes are taken, and (as I understand it) the CLA assumes a balanced sex ratio in a hunt.

On the science side, one main data requirement is an estimate of abundance with associated estimate of error. The point estimates for northern minke abundance from Norwegian surveys increased, as you note. But the two survey series weren’t directly comparable as they covered somewhat different areas. The most recent survey series was not synoptic – the survey area was divided into 5, with one area surveyed in each of five years. These surveys are logistically difficult to run, and synoptic surveys are really hard to organize – I think the last was in 1995.

So a strong assumption (that is, an assumption that, if it’s wrong, the analysis wrong) is that whales don’t move between survey areas between years. This remains untested.

The actual surveys are vessel-based distance sampling surveys – I’m presuming that you know what distance sampling is (and if this goes to your blog, folks will read up on it).

I’ve never taken part in one of the minke surveys, but know how they work, as I’ve taken part in others elsewhere (US waters, Antarctic). Unlike virtually all other vessel-based surveys for cetaceans, the Norwegian team don’t use binoculars. They have their reasons for this, but it reduces their effective strip width, hence their survey coverage and so the precision of their abundance estimates.

There have been technical queries in past years regarding the Norwegian surveys – double counting (i.e. accidentally recording one whale as two) is an example I recall from the 90s. These have been published as papers in the IWC journal and details can be found there. You have to read through the dry, mathematical language to get at the points being made. There are others who know far more about the machinations within the IWC than I do as I’ve only been to one IWC Scientific Committee meeting.”

While I appreciate that Peter has highlighted potential problems with the Norwegian survey method, I don’t get an appreciation for the extent to which these issues would/should change the overall minke whale quota for 2006.

Rune Frovik disputed some of Peter’s claims in a subsequent blog post, including that:

“The sex ratio is taken into account. Corkeron correctly points out that CLA assumes a balanced sex ratio in the hunt. But the CLA also has a mechanism in case of unbalanced sex ratios. So if the more than 50 percent of the harvested animals are female, this leads to lower quotas. This has been practiced for the Norwegian quota. If the sex ratio was balanced, the current quota could have been higher.”

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Following comment from Peter Corkeron this blog post was changed and significantly expanded at 12noon on 25th April 2006.

Members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted in 1982 to ban commercial whaling beginning in the 1985-86 season. Since 1992, the IWC Scientific Committee has unsuccessfully requested that the Commission lift the moratorium and allow quotas for commercial whaling of some species.

Soon after the 1986 moratorium came into effect, Iceland and Japan began what is called ‘scientific whaling’ which is legal. Interestingly, Norway continues to hunt minke whales commercially and legally on the basis that it has lodged an objection to the ban.

The Dana Centre in London sponsored an on-line discussion on scientific whaling on April 6th which can be listened to by clicking here.

It is a long discussion, but worth the listen, particularly to hear Johan Sigurjonsson from Iceland talk about the politics and the science and how for him, there is nothing morally wrong with killing minke whales.

Isn’t the ban on commercial whaling a form of eco-imperialism with countries such as Australia, Britian and New Zealand imposing their will on Iceland and Japan?