Tsunami: Did wildlife know? Tribes in extinction danger

"Where Are All The Dead Animals? Sri Lanka Asks." Reuters, 30 Dec 2004. "Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards. "The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department."


"Tsunami Threatens Survival of Indian Tribes." Reuters, 30 Dec 2004. 'Officials estimate the tsunami triggered by Sunday's earthquake off Sumatra killed about 12,500 people in India. More than 7,000 people are estimated to have died in the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands alone.

The remote cluster of more than 550 islands, of which only about three dozen are inhabited, is home to six tribes of Mongoloid and African origin who have lived there for thousands of years. These Indian tribes could be on the verge of extinction. "Even a small loss in any of these groups, barring the more numerous Nicobarese, could seriously endanger their survival."


On a related point, see how we can help from Singapore.

Macaca munzala, a new species of Macaque after 101 years

"Scientists find new Indian monkey." By Alex Kirby, BBC News, 16 Dec 2004.

'A new species, the Arunachal macaque, Macaca munzala is described in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Primatology. It is a comparatively large brown primate with a relatively short tail.

Sighted in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, during expeditions last year and this year, it was photographed in India by an international team of researchers. The monkey is apparently well known to the residents of the Himalayan districts where the species occurs.

"Few would have thought that with over a billion people and retreating wild lands, a new large mammal species would ever be found in India, of all places - Dr M D Madhusudan, WCS."

The last species of macaque to be discovered in the wild was the Indonesian Pagai macaque, described in 1903.'

See BBC News and the NCF press release.


Photo from Nature Conservation Foundation website.

New Scientist revamped

New Scientist's website has just had a major upgrade. There is expanded coverage and more frequently updated news but the interface is messy now.

In the news: Corals, birds, tigers, orang-utans

"Coral reefs may grow with global warming."
By Kate Ravilious. New Scientist News, 8th December 2004.

"Rising levels of greenhouse gases may not be quite as bad for coral reefs
as was previously thought. A team of Australian scientists say that the
damage done by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the oceans will be
offset by warmer waters, which will make coral grow faster. But other
researchers counter that warming will do more harm than good." Link.


"Birds of a feather not related to each other."
By Anna Gosline. New Scientist News, 8th December 2004.

"If it walks like a flamingo and looks like a flamingo, it is not necessarily a flamingo - or even a close relative. A controversial genetic study suggests we have completely misunderstood how the majority of birds are related, and that some species that look almost identical are not related at all." Link.


Shu-Jin Luo et al., 2004. "Phylogeography and Genetic Ancestry of Tigers (Panthera tigris)." Plos Biology, 2 (12). Published December 7, 2004. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020442 Link.

Eight traditional subspecies of tiger (Panthera tigris), of which three recently became extinct, are commonly recognized on the basis of geographic isolation and morphological characteristics.

In this paper, the authors indicate that population genetic structure would suggest recognition of six taxonomic units or subspecies:
(1) Amur tiger P. t. altaica;
(2) northern Indochinese tiger P. t. corbetti;
(3) South China tiger P. t. amoyensis;
(4) Malayan tiger P. t. jacksoni, named for the tiger conservationist Peter
Jackson;
(5) Sumatran tiger P. t. sumatrae; and
(6) Bengal tiger P. t. tigris.


Ancrenaz at al., 2004. "Aerial Surveys Give New Estimates for Orangutans in Sabah, Malaysia." PLoS Biology 3(1). Published December 7, 2004. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030003

The number of orangutan nests detected during aerial surveys in Sabah were directly related to the estimated true animal density. The helicopter is an efficient tool to provide robust estimates of orangutan numbers.

There is an estimated population size of about 11,000 individuals in Sabah and more than 60% occur outside protected areas, in production forests that have been through several rounds of logging extraction and are still exploited for timber. The role of exploited forests clearly merits further investigation for orangutan conservation in Sabah.