Dozens of endangered falcons gunned down in Cyprus

AFP 

NICOSIA (AFP) — Gunmen in Cyprus have killed 46 threatened red-footed migrating falcons simply for target practice, bird conservation officials on the Mediterranean island charged on Tuesday.

Birdlife Cyprus manager Martin Hellicar said farmers on Friday found the pellet-riddled birds lying in a tight cluster on a citrus farm west of the coastal resort of Limassol.

Another six birds were found shot but still clinging on to life.

Hellicar said exacerbating the killings was the fact that the red-footed falcon was recently upgraded from “vulnerable” to “globally near-threatened”.

“Globally near-threatened is as bad as it gets, which makes this one of the worst cases of illegal bird killings ever reported in Europe,” Hellicar told AFP.

He said the shooters appeared to be practiced marskmen as only 52 spent cartridges were found in the area. The recovered cartridges were of the skeet type used in clay pigeon shooting competitions.

Hellicar said the slaughter took place in the most important migration stop-over area on the island for thousands of birds that is also a notorious poachers’ paradise.

“Anti-poaching action has plainly failed to materialise, resulting in illegal shooters becoming increasingly bold,” said Hellicar.

Cyprus sits astride migration routes for many species of birds seeking African warmth during cold European winters.

Humanity could cause its own demise

Inside Vandy

Ever since Al Gore began raising awareness of global warming with his PowerPoint presentation and release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” numerous dramatic predictions about the effects of climate change have permeated the public consciousness. Hurricanes will ravage the Eastern Seaboard with increasing intensity and frequency. Rising sea levels will wash away Shanghai, forcing the evacuation of millions.

Unfortunately, the current discussion of global warming is rarely placed in the context of an even more arresting prediction: If current environmental trends continue, half of the species on Earth – perhaps including humans – will go extinct by century’s end.

OK, I know that sounds like scare mongering but stick with me for a moment.
The average lifespan of a species is about 100,000 years, so with an estimated 10 million species currently on Earth, we expect a certain number of species to wink out of existence each year. However, biologists widely believe the current extinction rate to be 100 times greater than the baseline rate, and eminent Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson estimates a factor of 1,000 to 10,000. You could hardly be blamed if you didn’t notice, but we appear to be living through the fastest of the six episodes of mass extinction that have taken place in the Earth’s history. (Yes, incredibly, extinctions are taking place faster now than they did after an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.)
Unlike the five previous mass extinctions, this one is man-made. And as you may have inferred, global warming contributes significantly to current extinction episode. Biodiversity – that is, the diversity of life in a particular region – is on the downswing across the world in part because of the industrialization and attendant rise in carbon dioxide emissions that have taken place in the last two centuries. The International Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on global warming, wrote in a 2002 report, “Many of the Earth’s species are already at risk of extinction due to pressures arising from natural processes and human activities. Climate change will add to these pressures especially for those with limited climactic ranges and/or restricted habitat requirements.”

As the Earth grows hotter, species will gravitate toward the poles in search of cooler climates. Those unable to drift away from the equator fast enough – and there will be many – will face extinction.

However, other types of human activity, such as habitat destruction (for example, cutting down rainforests to create farmland) and the introduction of non-native species into different ecosystems, are more responsible for the extinctions than global warming.

For example, one of the most ignored aspects of the controversy surrounding the construction of a fence along the United States-Mexico border is the environmental impact the fence would have. Ecosystems cannot be sustained if they are internally divided, and many species’ survival depends on maintaining their particular migration patterns. A border fence would fail the environment on both counts, possibly causing the extinction of endangered species such as the jaguarondi and the ocelot as they are cut off from the Rio Grande. Though it seems like a barren wasteland, the desert is actually a fragile and highly diverse ecosystem, and small changes could radically alter it over time.

The biodiversity crisis isn’t just some fringe theory. A 1998 nationwide survey by the American Museum of Natural History found 70 percent of biologists believe “we are in the midst of a mass extinction of living things, and that this loss of species will pose a major threat to human existence in the next century,” according to a museum press release. ­­

The reasons why the extinctions are a threat to humans should be self-evident, but experts believe averting the worst effects will require conservation projects on a scale far greater than anything ever undertaken. Simply creating and maintaining nature preserves circumscribed by developed land may not be good enough. Large ecosystems fragmented by man-made dividers like interstate highways will have to be reconnected to allow the free movement of life that is critical to preserving biodiversity.

All this suggests the question: Why is most of the public unaware of the “Sixth Extinction,” and why aren’t people panicking in the streets?
I don’t purport to know the answer, but I have a few suggestions.
Perhaps most importantly, the idea that mass extinctions are taking place is so wildly at odds with our daily encounters with nature that it would deserve to be dismissed without a shred of evidence but for the niggling fact that it’s true. Most of what’s going on takes place outside our immediate observation and is therefore easy to take lightly or ignore. We don’t see deer keeling over en masse and birds falling out of the sky – at least not yet. Biologists estimate they have discovered only about 10 percent of the Earth’s species, perhaps less, so most of the life on this planet is small and remains hidden to us.

A second explanation is that all other doomsayers throughout history predicting catastrophes that threaten the survival of humanity, from the Millerites to the Millenialists, have been proved wrong every single time; after all, we’re still here. In the late 18th century, Thomas Malthus contended that overpopulation would eventually lead to large scale famine, a hypothesis famously resuscitated by Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book “The Population Bomb,” which predicted Malthus’ nightmare would unavoidably come to pass within a generation. As it turns out, many European countries now face the opposite problem of too-low birth rates. Then just a few years ago there was the fear the Y2K bug would cause consumer electronics to go haywire and eat our mothers.

Any extraordinary claims about threats to our survival as a species should elicit a healthy amount of skepticism, and the biodiversity crisis is no different. Biologists acknowledge that research involving extinction rates is hampered by the difficulty of making direct observations of the majority of life on this planet, and their estimates carry a high degree of uncertainty.
However, arguments about the precise magnitude of the extinction rate should not distract from the central truth human activity has drastically altered the environment in a way that threatens to dramatically change the nature of life on this planet. And when a majority of biologists tell us that the biodiversity crisis will wipe out half the species on Earth within a couple of generations, it’s a sign that we should listen urgently.

Michael Maio
Senior, College of Arts and Science.

UAE’s rare tahr goats and mountain fauna face extinction

Unprecedented economic growth, massive population increase and rapid infrastructure expansion, are having some unfortunate environmental consequences for the UAE. Not only are areas where developments occur directly impacted, but so are distant places as well: the country’s mountain habitats for instance

Although many concerns have been expressed about coastal habitats degrading on account of the explosion of sea side properties it is, more often than not, forgotten that building materials for these constructions are being sourced from mountains.

Extensive mining to acquire these is destroying habitats that host some of the rarest species in the world. One of these is the Arabian tahr, a goat look-alike, which is endemic to the UAE’s (and Oman’s) arid highlands. What this means is that the species is found nowhere else on earth. If its habitat goes, so does tahr in the wild.

The urban spread

The UAE’s population has increased 16-fold in the last 30 years and so has the urban spread. Between 1970 and 1985, Dubai city itself expanded from 18 sq km to 110 sq km.

But the really dramatic rise has been since 2000. Today, the entire 60 km coastline of Dubai emirate from Jebel Ali to Sharjah is urbanised. Like all countries of the Arabian Peninsula, with the exception of Yemen, the UAE has a level of urbanisation exceeding 80 per cent. And this has seen the construction juggernaut roll across the land as also the coastal waters.

Spiralling demand for cement

The first cement factory in the UAE opened in Ras Al Khaimah emirate in 1975 with an annual capacity of 550,000 tons. By 2001 numbers had grown to 11 factories with a capacity exceeding eight million tons per year!

But it is coastal development of formidable proportions, initiated in Dubai during the last decade, that has created an ever-increasing demand for cement – local cement being preferred (to imported) on account of its freshness.

Other than gypsum and some additives, all ingredients for cement as well as the bulk of other construction materials such as rocks and aggregates, are sourced locally from the mountain habitats of Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah emirates.

In 2005, there were 64 crushers in Fujairah alone, representing half of the labour force and income of the emirate. The same year, construction of a new cement factory with a planned production capacity of one million tons started in Ras Al Khaimah.

Given the pace of development and demand for building materials, the market for cement is expected to rise by 10 – 15 per cent annually to total about 23 million tons per annum within the next five years.

The Arabian tahr and other mountain fauna

It is classified as ‘Critically Endangered’ by IUCN, the World Conservation Union. Main populations of Arabian tahr have been documented from just a few locations in its range. In the UAE, these locations are Wadi Wurayah (Fujairah emirate) and Jebel Hafeet (Abu Dhabi emirate). The other locations are in Oman – Wadi Sareen, Al Ghamah and Jebel Qahwan / Jebel Sabtah.

In 1978, the world population of Arabian tahr was estimated to be less than 2,000 – a figure that needs revaluation. While the Wadi Sareen in Oman supports a population of some 200-300 individuals restricted to a single protected area, the UAE population is estimated to be very low (less than 100 individuals) and fragile.

Low numbers, fragmented distribution and isolated populations make the tahr particularly vulnerable to threats such as habitat loss and illegal hunting.
Although officially protected, this status is not as effective as the erstwhile, traditional resource conservation method of hamiyaat.

Whereas the establishment of hamiyaat created livestock-free protected areas where fodder was cut by hand, its abandonment has led to grazing pressure and further loss of suitable habitat for Arabian tahr.

A recent survey by EWS-WWF has confirmed a decline in mountain fauna in Wadi Wurayah (Fujairah). Fewer sightings of not only tahr but also Arabian leopard, caracal and mountain gazelle have been recorded by local Bedouins over the last 15 years. The last documented proof of the presence of Arabian leopard, for instance, dates back to 1999.

Development on the Arabian Gulf coast is, therefore (by way of quarries for mineral extraction), inducing a supplementary stress on surviving arid mountain species already weakened by over-hunting of the past, poaching, over-grazing, water extraction for agriculture, habitat fragmentation and drought.

Chances of recovery

Hope still exists for the UAE’s fragile mountains and their wildlife. Last winter, the rainiest in a decade, saw the mountains lush with vegetation, a carpet of green stretching from Wadi Helio (in the south) to Dibba (in the north).

Further, following the recommendation of the late HH Sheikh Zayed in the 1980s for protection of the UAE’s sparse vegetation, mountains are no longer exploited by goat herders. Herds are now kept in fenced farms where they can be supplied with better quality food at lower costs. A law was also recently passed in Abu Dhabi emirate to protect grazing grounds.

Hunting of big mammals is officially banned in the UAE, and even though there is still evidence of poaching, the ban is being increasingly enforced by local and federal governments. Proof of the presence of Arabian leopard surviving in the Musandam was found last February, while tracks and sightings of mountain gazelle and Arabian tahr roaming the area from Wadi Helio to Dibba are regularly reported.

Besides, Wadi Wurayah may soon be officially declared as UAE’s first mountain protected area.

Wildlife, then, has a chance to recover from the errors of the past. But to save the last Arabian tahrs and leopards of the world, there needs to be a mountain habitats and wildlife conservation plan for the entire country through a network of protected areas, restoration and sustainable use. Mountain habitats and wildlife requirements must be included in decision-making processes for developmental projects.