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Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 29-01-2004 21:10 Post subject: Whats poisoning the animals? |
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Frying pan fumes:
| Quote: | Frying pan fumes 'kill canaries'
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
Fumes given off by cancer-causing chemicals used to make non-stick frying pans are killing hundreds of pet birds every year, environmentalists say.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature says it is hearing reports that many US caged birds are being killed by the fumes.
It says the chemicals, perfluorinated compounds, are also contaminating both people and wildlife with grave effects.
The chemicals industry says it doubts that birds exposed to ordinary levels of the compounds could die from them.
Guilty till proved harmless
In a report, Causes For Concern: Chemicals and Wildlife, WWF says the compounds, also used in some textiles and food packaging, are among "the most prominent new toxic hazards".
It sounds highly unlikely to me that birds exposed to perfluorinated compounds in normal household conditions would be killed
Judith Hackitt, Chemical Industries Association
It says: "Scientists have found perfluorinated compounds, classified as cancer-causing chemicals by the US Environmental Protection Agency, in dolphins, whales and cormorants in the Mediterranean, seals and sea eagles in the Baltic, and polar bears."
Elizabeth Salter-Green, head of WWF's toxics programme, said: "Years ago, coal miners took canaries with them down the pits to detect lethal gases.
"Now, canaries are dying in our kitchens, but no action is being taken about the suspect chemicals.
"The global production of chemicals is increasing, and at the same time we have warning signals that a variety of troubling threats to wildlife and human health are becoming more prevalent.
"It is reckless to suggest there is no link between the two and give chemicals the benefit of the doubt."
WWF says while the harmful effects of chemicals like DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls have been documented, recent studies of other chemicals on sale today show the dangers to people and wildlife.
It says: "As well as perfluorinated compounds other harmful man-made chemicals still in use today include phthalates, phenolic compounds - such as bisphenol A - and brominated flame retardants (BFRs).
"Phthalates can be found in plastics (including PVC), phenolic compounds in food cans, plastic bottles and computer casings, and BFRs in fabrics and TVs.
Brussels' approach defended
"These toxic compounds, which contaminate a wide range of animals, can cause severe health disorders such as cancer, damage to the immune system, behavioural problems, hormone disruption, or even feminisation."
WWF says the European Union's planned legislation, Reach (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) does not go far enough.
It says Reach "falls short of ensuring that hazardous chemicals are replaced with safer alternatives".
Judith Hackitt, director-general of the UK's Chemical Industries Association, told BBC News Online: "It sounds highly unlikely to me that birds exposed to perfluorinated compounds in normal household conditions would be killed.
"With them and the other chemicals WWF is concerned about, the industry is spending a lot on investigating them.
"And with Reach, it's a big assumption to say replacement won't happen - I think it will."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3441255.stm
Published: 2004/01/29 14:42:36 GMT
© BBC MMIV |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 29-01-2004 21:12 Post subject: |
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Vets (unintentionally):
| Quote: | Vet drug 'killing Asian vultures'
Scientists believe they have identified the main cause behind the catastrophic decline seen in Asian vulture numbers.
In the past 10 years, population losses of more than 95% have been reported in three raptor species across many areas of the Indian sub-continent.
Lindsay Oaks' research team has now shown the birds are dying after eating the carcasses of livestock treated with the common veterinary drug diclofenac.
Dr Oaks, backed by The Peregrine Fund, reports her work in Nature magazine.
"This discovery is significant in that it is the first known case of a pharmaceutical causing major ecological damage over a huge geographic area and threatening three species with extinction," the US researcher from Washington State University said.
The three species are the Oriental white-backed vulture ( Gyps bengalensis ), the long-billed vulture ( Gyps indicus ) and the slender-billed vulture ( Gyps tenuirostris ).
All three are now classed as critically endangered.
Experimental work
The birds succumb to kidney failure and visceral gout. Early signs that the raptors are affected can be seen from the way they hang their heads down to their feet for long periods.
Such has been the alarming decline in bird numbers that international organisations have pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds into research to track down the cause of all the deaths.
Now, Dr Oaks and colleagues have found high residues diclofenac in dead vultures in the field.
They have also been able produce similar patterns of disease in experimental vulture colonies fed the drug either directly or via carcasses of buffalo or goat that had been treated with diclofenac.
Other possible causes of death, such as poisoning by mercury or arsenic or infection by viruses, have been investigated and ruled out.
Diclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that has been in human use for pain and inflammation for decades. The veterinary use of diclofenac on livestock in South Asia has grown in the past decade.
Pivotal role
The Nature report has led ornithological and other conservation groups to call for the immediate withdrawal of diclofenac from use.
"Vultures have an important ecological role in the Asian environment, where they have been relied upon for millennia to clean up and remove dead livestock and even human corpses," said Dr Munir Virani, a biologist for US-based Peregrine Fund, and who coordinated the massive field investigations across Nepal, India, and Pakistan.
"Their loss has important economic, cultural, and human health consequences."
One immediate impact has been the explosion in feral dog populations which have moved into areas no longer scavenged by vultures.
Britain has invested significant research time and money on the vulture problem through its Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species.
Dr Debbie Pain, a research scientist at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: "In the 1980s, [ Gyps bengalensis ] was thought to be the most abundant large bird of prey in the world, but in little over a decade, the population has crashed by more than 99%, with the loss of tens of millions of birds.
"The decline of Asian vultures is one of the steepest declines experienced by any bird species, and is certainly faster than that suffered by the dodo before its extinction. If nothing is done these vulture species will become extinct."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3437583.stm
Published: 2004/01/28 18:36:46 GMT
© BBC MMIV |
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| MrRING Android Futureman Joined: 07 Aug 2002 Total posts: 4195 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 03-02-2004 05:06 Post subject: Bird Murdering Buildings |
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Expert Says Glass Is Major Threat to Birds
By JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press Writer
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Daniel Klem Jr. cradles a small, dead bird with chestnut-mottled wings, another victim of what he says is a largely unrecognized environmental hazard that kills birds in flight.
The culprit is the plate glass used in windows, skyscrapers and other structures, which the birds strike because they cannot see it.
"Glass is ubiquitous and it's indiscriminate, killing the fit and the unfit," said Klem, a Muhlenberg College ornithologist who estimates that collisions with glass kill up to 1 billion birds a year in the United States alone.
"Buildings that we have created to be aesthetically pleasing are slaughtering birds."
Although cell phone towers, oil spills and power lines raise the ire of conservation groups, those hazards pale in comparison to glass, Klem said. He estimates that only habitat destruction kills more birds.
When glass is clear, birds see only what's on the other side; when it is reflective, birds see only reflected sky and trees. Either way, they have little chance of survival.
Despite three decades of work and research, Klem has had a hard time getting people in the conservation community and the building industry to hear his call.
Klem has monitored houses and commercial buildings and counted the number of dead birds, then compared the collision rates of plain glass to glass altered with visible patterns so it's not strictly clear or reflective.
He has monitored glass-skinned skyscrapers that he says kill 200 birds every day and suburban dwellings that he said are just as lethal when taken in total. And he says that glass-walled structures abound even in places that rejoice in wildlife — from Central and South American ecotourism sites to Pennsylvania wildlife refuges.
"If what I've found out over the last 30 years is true, then it's not going to get better, it's going to increase," he said. "Whether people ignore me or not, it doesn't change that."
His work is starting to get some recognition.
"This is a largely unseen but seriously unappreciated phenomenon and we're starting to take a serious look at it," said Frank Gill, chief scientist for the National Audubon Society.
Carr Everbach, a Swarthmore College engineer heading a "green team" working on a new science center at the school, likens plate glass to other scientific advancements later found to harm the environment, such as ozone-depleting CFCs and leaded gasoline.
"Anytime someone tells you there's something really big that you haven't heard of, you think they're crazy," he said.
The new science center will have glass etched with dots and other patterns, which the green team hopes birds will see and avoid. The building also will have clear glass and "thump sensors" to see if — and where — birds strike the structure.
A new observation tower at Niagara Falls State Park also was designed with birds in mind. Original plans called for reflective glass but after architects and park officials were told of Klem's work, glass with a stripe pattern was used, said Thomas B. Lyons, New York State Office of Parks' director of environmental management.
It's not clear whether these efforts will save birds. But Klem said he's heartened about the new interest in bird-friendly buildings.
"The heart of this is to get a piece of glass that will solve this problem. We can't say that we have that yet," he said. "But I'm more encouraged than ever that we can come up with a solution that will stop this senseless slaughter of wildlife."
[URL=Story here]http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=8&u=/ap/20040201/ap_on_sc/birds_clear_danger_1[/URL] |
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| Mama_Kitty Mummified
Bumpless and Sleepless Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Total posts: 747 Location: Mars Age: 33 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 03-02-2004 12:57 Post subject: Mysterious mass die-off of vultures solved |
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040129/12/ekouz.html
Mysterious mass die-off of vultures solved
By Debora MacKenzie
The catastrophic decline of griffon vultures in south Asia is being caused not by a mysterious disease, as had been thought, but a common painkiller given to sick cattle.
If the treated animal dies and is eaten by vultures, a single meal can be enough to kill the bird. The scientists who made the discovery now want the drug banned from veterinary use and are holding a meeting next week with officials from Nepal, India and Pakistan.
Griffon vultures are huge scavengers and used to be ubiquitous in south Asia. But their population has declined drastically since the mid-1990s, and one species is near extinction.
As a result, animal carcasses rot outside villages, attracting rabies-ridden packs of dogs. The Parsee religious community in India is also in crisis, as it disposes of its dead by feeding them to vultures.
Acid crystals
Lindsay Oaks, a veterinary microbiologist at Washington State University in Pullman, and colleagues looked for pathogens or toxins in freshly dead vultures from breeding colonies in Pakistan and Nepal by sending tissues back to US laboratories for analysis.
Efforts by Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and colleagues to establish the cause of the vultures' decline in India were hindered by that county's laws banning the export of genetic material.
Vultures that have died in the decline have kidney damage and uric acid crystals throughout their bodies, but Oaks's group could find no disease germs or environmental toxins. Vultures that died following pesticide poisoning or collisions had no uric acid.
"We started wondering if they could be exposed to any veterinary drugs in the dead livestock they eat," says Oaks. They discovered that diclofenac, which can cause kidney damage, is very heavily prescribed by local vets, and its use increased over the same time period as the vulture decline. The cheap drug is used to treat lameness and injury - common conditions before a buffalo or cow dies.
Tiny dose
Analysis of the kidneys of dead vultures with uric acid symptoms revealed diclofenac residues, while no residues were found in other birds.
The researchers also gave diclofenac, and meat from animals treated with diclofenac, to 20 non-releasable vultures rescued from nesting colonies. "We hated to do it," says Oaks. The diclofenac killed these vultures in very small doses, with the same symptoms as the dead, wild vultures. Furthermore, the higher the dose of the drug, the more likely the vultures were to die.
Vultures come from miles around to feed on a carcass, so each gets a small bit of many animals. Rhys Green of the UK's Royal Society of the Protection for Birds calculates that only one in 250 dead cattle needs to have been recently treated with diclofenac to cause a decline in vultures of 30 per cent per year - about what has been observed.
Cunningham is now trying to find out whether diclofenac is also responsible for the decline in India. "This may be a breakthrough", he told New Scientist . "We hope so, as this would greatly improve the chances for an eventual recovery of the species."
Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature02317) |
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| stonedog3 Irene, Alma, Mine! Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 03-02-2004 16:11 Post subject: |
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Is this in the area where people expose corpses in towers?
I can see the whole neat system breaking down if there aren't enough scavengers in the cycle 
Kath |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 05-02-2004 18:56 Post subject: |
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Keeping with the overall theme of the thread (the name got changed in the merge):
| Quote: | Did someone plot to kill the dogs of Withrow Park?
By ANTHONY REINHART
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Toronto — For a little dog named T-Bone, 10 seconds was all it took for a walk in the park to turn into a fruitless fight for life.In what is feared to be a case of intentional poisoning, the five-kilogram cavalier King Charles spaniel died yesterday morning. He and six other dogs fell ill on Sunday after visiting Withrow Park in Toronto's Riverdale neighbourhood, where dogs have long been a friction point between residents.
T-Bone's owner, Jeffrey Rubin, will leave the official explanations to police and city officials, who closed the park yesterday while they trace the source of the dogs' sickness. For now, Mr. Rubin is busy enough trying to explain the family pet's death to his children, Jack, 9, and Margot, 7.
"Next week was his second birthday, so my kids are absolutely devastated by this," he said.
T-Bone was one of seven dogs brought to the Veterinary Emergency Clinic on Yonge Street over the weekend after their owners had taken them to a leash-free zone in Withrow Park.
The zone, established in the early 1990s, has been a sore point for some neighbours, who lobbied unsuccessfully in 2001 to have it scrapped because of concern about dogs intimidating children.
Since then, members of a neighbourhood dog-owners association have been working to smooth relations.
They had conducted park cleanups and reminding fellow dog lovers to be mindful of small children, said Susan Ruskin, a group member out walking her dog near the park yesterday.
"It's been going on for years," Ms. Ruskin said, gripping the leash of her wrinkle-faced Sharpei named Simon, as police strung yellow tape around the park. "But things appear to have been settling down recently."
Ms. Ruskin said opponents of the leash-free zone are "so well known to us that I don't believe it would be one of them" who poisoned the dogs.
Casey Conklin, the de facto leader of the dog owners group, agreed. "They're not unreasonable crazy people," said Ms. Conklin, who sent e-mail alerts to more than 100 dog owners when she found out about the poisonings on Sunday. "This is a product of an unbalanced mind."
Whoever is responsible, the technique was effective, at least on a tiny dog such as T-Bone.
Mr. Rubin, an economist who writes a weekly column for The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, said his dog spent only about 10 seconds eating an unknown chunk of food he found under the snow in the park on Sunday afternoon.
Half an hour later, he went into convulsions.
At the emergency clinic, T-Bone's heart stopped three times between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, he said. The veterinarian managed to restore a heartbeat with chest compression the first two times, but was unsuccessful on the third try.
Workers pumped the dog's stomach and found white granules of what the vet suspected to be pesticide, Mr. Rubin said, adding that by the time he arrived at the clinic, three other dogs had already been brought in with similar, but milder, symptoms.
Further testing should shed more light on what killed T-Bone and sickened the others, but Mr. Rubin seems to have concluded that the sickest puppy in Riverdale walks on two legs.
"The chances of seven dogs coming down with pesticide poisoning in February is pretty remote," he said.
"This is clearly a deliberate attempt to kill dogs."
Nuala Byles was fighting hard to resist the same conclusion yesterday, as her three-year-old Hungarian Viszla, named Belle, recovered from her own brush with the mystery ailment.
Ms. Byles took Belle to the park's leash-free area at around 10 a.m. Sunday, and "about a half-hour into playing, she came to the top of the hill and just started vomiting," she said.
"I thought she had a stick caught in her throat."
When the dog became lethargic and began to drool and pant heavily, Ms. Byles rushed her to the clinic, but Belle, a far larger dog than T-Bone, had already begun to recover.
Ms. Byles decided to take her home, where her second dog, a Boston terrier named Romeo, had been battling diarrhea all weekend.
To her relief, both dogs appeared well on their way to recovery yesterday, but Ms. Byles remained concerned that "someone who's really twisted" is out there poisoning dogs, and that her close-knit community of neighbours will now eye each other with suspicion.
"I think there's kooks on both sides of the fence," she said, adding that she has steered clear of past squabbles between dog owners and neighbours. "If this was their way to get dogs on leashes, they've succeeded."
Paula Fletcher, city councillor for the Toronto-Danforth ward where the park is, said she has received no complaints about dogs since she was elected last November.
"Let's find out what's going on here before we jump to too many conclusions," Ms. Fletcher said, adding that city and Ministry of Environment officials are investigating for other sources of the poisoning, such as garbage or chemicals from the park's skating rink. Still, she acknowledged that police had sent out recorded alerts to residents, asking for help in solving this "crime."
Meanwhile, area dog owners are being advised to seek veterinary attention if their pets suffer diarrhea or vomiting, said Natasha Sapra, director of the veterinary clinic.
areinhart@globeandmail.ca |
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040203.wutreinhart03/BNStory/Front/
I don't know but I think I'd rather have dogs running around in a leash-free zone than some loon of a neighbour who is quite happy to poison dogs.
Emps |
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| TheQuixote Joined: 25 Sep 2003 Total posts: 4085 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 17:27 Post subject: |
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This can be merged too if there is a 'fall' thread already out there;)
| Quote: | China probes 'bird rain' deaths
China is investigating reports that hundreds of birds mysteriously fell from the sky earlier this week
Some 10,000 bramblings dropped dead in a "bird rain" in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the Yangzi Evening News and the Nanjing Daily newspapers reported.
The deaths occurred near Communist Party chief Hu Jintao's birthplace of Taizhou, prompting some superstitious locals to wonder if it was a bad omen at the start of the new Lunar Year.
But a local official said a more likely cause of death was poisoning.
"Dead birds have been retrieved from villagers," the spokesman for the Taizhou city government was quoted as saying.
"I hope nothing bad will happen to President Hu"
Beijing resident
"Farmers have been told not to sell or eat the birds," he said.
Another local official expressed doubts about the reported number of deaths or that the birds died from bird flu.
"Maybe they all ate some poisonous food. Let's wait and see the results of the tests," said the official, who gave his surname as Gao.
Bramblings are members of the finch family with an orange breast and shoulder patch, a white rump and a black tail. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3465565.stm |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-02-2004 13:58 Post subject: Disappearing Alaskan otters |
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| Quote: | Alaska Sea Otters' Disappearance a Mystery
Mon 9 February, 2004 02:09
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - When Russian explorers first saw sea otters bobbing in the waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands in the mid-18th century, they knew they had discovered a money maker.
The otters' fur "is so far superior in length, beauty, blackness and gloss of hair to the river otters' pelts that these can scarcely be compared to it," wrote German naturalist Georg Steller, who accompanied legendary mariner Vitus Bering on his Alaska expeditions.
Russian and American hunters later wiped out nearly all of Alaska's sea otters, whose luxurious fur became known as "soft gold." The otters were saved from extinction after a 1911 treaty banned the commercial hunt.
But sea otters are once again vanishing from Alaska's 1,000- mile Aleutian chain and other parts of southwestern Alaska. This time, there is no obvious explanation.
Alaska's sea otter population numbered 100,000 to 137,000 in the 1980s, with its core in the Aleutians and western Alaska. But numbers fell 70 percent from 1992 to 2000, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some Aleutian populations are down to just a few thousand, about five percent of 1980s levels, the agency said.
Their disappearance could cause wider ecological harm by upsetting the food chain in the icy coastal waters.
Otters eat sea urchins, which feed on kelp. Without the otters to control urchin populations, undersea kelp forests are being mowed down, scientists warn.
"Now across the Aleutian archipelago there are these vast areas that are just deforested kelp beds," said Jim Estes, a Santa Cruz, California-based U.S. Geological Survey ecologist and Alaska sea otter expert. That could hurt fish that dwell in kelp beds, Estes said.
NO OBVIOUS ANSWERS
Although there are no obvious answers, some theories have emerged to explain the sea otters' problems.
One theory blames climate change for disrupting marine prey-predator balances. Another cites the accumulation of contaminants, including those carried from southern latitudes by marine and atmospheric currents. And some say conflicts with commercial vessels may be contributing to the decline.
One controversial theory, advanced by Estes and others, is that widespread commercial whaling until the 1970s triggered cascading collapses of North Pacific marine mammals. Under this theory, killer whales are now hunting sea otters because their normal prey -- other whales, sea lions and harbour seals -- are scarce.
Many environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of not doing enough to protect the otters.
Two conservation groups sued the federal government in December to get the dwindling population listed as endangered.
The California-based plaintiffs, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network, submitted a petition in 2000 for an endangered listing.
"We've been trying to work with the Bush administration for three years, and they haven't done anything," said Brent Plater, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Alaska office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded by noting that in September 2002 it proposed an Endangered Species Act listing. That proposal is still being evaluated.
FISHERMEN NOT WORRIED
For commercial fishermen, the specter of new sea otter protections is not yet a concern because no one is directly blaming commercial harvests for the decline, industry representatives said. Fishing was curtailed to protect the western Alaska Steller sea lion, listed as endangered in 1997.
"The industry is not paying a whole lot of attention to the sea otter situation as it did to the sea lions. With the sea lions, there was an implication, rightly or not, that fishing was depriving them of prey," said Paul MacGregor, general counsel for the At Sea Processors Association, a Seattle-based industry group.
Estes said sea otters deserve the same protections as those afforded the sea lions. Sea lion numbers have dropped about 85 percent since 1960, but sea otters are "at least as badly off as they are," Estes said. "And the numbers are still going down. It's very discouraging." |
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=4310296§ion=news |
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| Mama_Kitty Mummified
Bumpless and Sleepless Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Total posts: 747 Location: Mars Age: 33 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 11-02-2004 10:00 Post subject: Who is killing the animals at Sao Paulo zoo? |
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040210/80/elpdb.html
Tuesday February 10, 07:41 PM
Who is killing the animals at Sao Paulo zoo?
By Paula Lace
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - The zoo in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo is facing a murder mystery worthy of an Agatha Christie novel.
Since late January, the zoo, one of the most modern in Latin America, has lost 10 animals, including an elephant -- fatally poisoned by what police are calling a "serial animal killer".
So far, laboratory tests have shown the animals were killed with sodium fluoroacetate, a banned rat poison.
According to the Sao Paulo State University, where autopsies were performed, the poison caused the animals to stop breathing and led to cardiac arrest. What troubles investigators is that tests on the animals' food and water could find no trace of the poison.
The first animal to die was Tony, a chimpanzee. Since then, two other monkeys, an elephant, three dromedaries and three tapirs, including a newborn, have joined the casualty list.
"We are deeply saddened by these events. Many of the workers have been with the zoo for several years and spend more time with the animals than with their own families," said Fatima Valente Roberti, a biologist at the zoo.
"We cannot fathom what could possibly lead a person to commit such aggression."
Fluoroacetate is colourless, odourless and extremely potent. One gram is enough to kill an elephant. It can be easily produced but is commercially available only in the United States and Australia.
Police have been closely watching zoo workers and visitors but all they can tell is that the killer was someone who had a good knowledge of chemistry and biology and who also knew well the zoo's daily routine.
Police have not ruled out any possibility, including visitors who come to the park at unusual hours. The Sao Paulo zoo has recently opened at night for the public to observe the animals' nocturnal habits.
Management has increased security measures, including hourly visits to each of the zoo's 3,200 animals.
The zoo's executive director, Paulo Magalhaes Bresan, said this was the first time in its 46-year history that animals had been killed by poisoning.
"We were not prepared for this kind of action. Our security personnel was very well trained to deal with visitors, or even possible animal escapes, but we never expected this to happen." |
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| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 11-02-2004 13:25 Post subject: |
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| IIRC Don't most serial killers start out 'practicing' on animals? |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-02-2004 03:03 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | 06 Feb 2004 10:03:51 GMT
China quietly probes bizarre death of bramblings
By Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have been quietly investigating the mysterious deaths of thousands of tiny birds said to have fallen from the sky over Communist Party chief Hu Jintao's birthplace, sources said on Friday.
The Yangzi Evening News and the Nanjing Daily said more than 10,000 bramblings dropped like "bird rain" from the sky in Taizhou, in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, on Tuesday, considered a bad omen at the beginning of the new lunar year.
The editors of the newspapers stood by their stories.
The Yangzi Evening News said on Friday authorities had ruled out bird flu, which is sweeping across Asia, as the cause of death and buried the dead birds.
A spokesman for the Taizhou city government said the cause of death of the bramblings was unknown but he suspected poisoning.
"Dead birds have been retrieved from villagers," he said. "Farmers have been told not to sell or eat the birds."
The Beijing Times ran a similar story on Thursday, calling it an "inconceivable scene". It quoted a veterinarian as saying migratory birds could die from eating or drinking poisoned food or water.
Villagers who ate or came into contact with the dead birds had been put under surveillance, the Yangzi Evening News said on its Web site wwww.yangtse.com.
Samples have been sent to a lab for tests.
Bramblings -- small birds that are members of the finch family with an orange breast and shoulder patch, a white rump and a black tail -- fly south from China's northeast every winter.
The Communist Party, which is obsessed with stability and frowns on superstition and rumour-mongering, is looking into the newspaper reports.
"Such reports are not conducive to stability," said a source familiar with the workings of the party's media overlord, the Publicity Department.
"Beijing is concerned," the source said, adding that the government had sent investigators to Taizhou.
Some Chinese are abuzz, seeing the incident as a portent of bad luck. Others were dismissive of birds falling from the sky.
"This is scary. Is it bird flu?" said Wang Weilan, a 22-year-old restaurant waitress in Beijing from the neighbouring province of Shanxi.
"I hope nothing bad will happen to President Hu."
For thousands of years, Chinese emperors, fearful of losing the mandate of heaven, paid close attention to rumours and reports of natural phenomena such as mysterious deaths of flocks and livestock or inauspicious star formations.
China's atheist Communist Party virtually wiped out superstition in the years after sweeping to power in 1949, but such beliefs have grown in the wake of economic reforms, amid a spiritual vacuum.
China is battling outbreaks of the deadly bird flu virus in 13 of its 31 provinces, regions and major cities. About 50,000 poultry have died from the disease and more than 1.2 million have been culled to prevent it from spreading.
The disease has ravaged Asia and killed at least 18 people. |
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK294813.htm |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-02-2004 19:02 Post subject: |
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This seems like an awfully unlikely explanation:
| Quote: | Seals and dolphins wash up on Mexican beach
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 Posted: 1235 GMT ( 8:35 PM HKT)
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- The corpses of 128 seals, nine dolphins and nine pelicans washed up on a beach in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico's government said on Monday.
The government environmental watchdog Profepa said the animals were found over the weekend in the San Jorge bay in the Sea of Cortez, about 60 miles (100 km) south of the U.S. border. It launched an investigation of the deaths.
"We are going to maintain a system of permanent vigilance where all of this happened to try to avoid more deaths," Profeca's head, Jose Luis Luege, said.
It was not clear why the animals died, although local press said environmental authorities were investigating a possible link to drug traffickers' use of a substance that creates a luminous effect when thrown in the ocean.
The substance is believed to be used to help locate drug shipments that are dumped at sea to be picked up later.
The area is home to some of the largest seal colonies in the Sea of Cortez, which separates the Baja California peninsula from the rest of Mexico. |
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/02/24/environment.mexico.reut/index.html
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-03-2004 00:07 Post subject: Thats a lot of bees |
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| Quote: | Pesticide accused of killing 90bn bees
Robin McKie and Paul Webster Paris
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer
Europe's chemical trade faces the prospect of many of its pesticides being banned in a row over the death of French bees.
Pesticides are used to impregnate seeds for plants such as maize and sunflowers. These chemicals are then slowly released, protecting plants from insect attacks. The pesticide - sold under a variety of names including Regent TS, Gaucho, Shuss, Jumper and Zoom - attacks insects by destroying their sense of direction and should disappear as the treated plants grow.
But almost immediately after the chemicals were introduced 10 years ago, beekeepers reported that their bees were becoming disoriented and dying, Within a few years honey production in south-west France fell by 60 per cent. According to the chairman of the national beekeepers' association, Jean-Marie Sirvins, a third of the country's 1.5 million registered hives disappeared. As a result, France has had to import up to 24,000 tons of honey annually.
The pesticide companies - which include major chemical firms such as BASF and Bayer - claimed the deaths were the result of a bee illness. Emmanuel Butstraen, head of the French branch of the German multinational BASF, said its product, Regent TS, had been cleared for use by other European countries. 'The product had no effect on the mortality of bees,' he said.
But keepers claim that up 90 billion bees have died and that cases of cancers in humans may be linked to pesticide use. An investigation has now been launched by a French court. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1158826,00.html |
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| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 02-03-2004 10:25 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | It says: "As well as perfluorinated compounds other harmful man-made chemicals still in use today include phthalates, phenolic compounds - such as bisphenol A - and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). |
IIRC when I was doing A level chemistry we were told about a factory somewhere in the UK that manufactured Naphthalene, where almost the entire workforce eventually came down with cancers (esp. bladder).
If that's what it did to the humans, god only knows what effect it was having on the local wildlife. |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-03-2004 09:35 Post subject: |
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brf: Interesting - I'll ask my brother as he is an environmental scientist and has studied all those kind of pollutin problems (esp. PCBs).
Anyway odd report:
| Quote: | Mystery over dead seabirds
March 2, 2004 11:12
Animal rescuers are horrified and mystified after the discovery of a dozen dead seabirds on a North Norfolk beach.
The fulmars were found in a group on the shore between Cromer and East Runton - with no obvious signs of why they died.
Volunteers at a local animal rescue centre are now appealing for help in finding out what happened and fear the young birds may have been the victims of human interference.
Beverley Cossé, chairwoman at the Seal and Bird Rescue Centre, said: "The only time you normally get a mass of dead birds is if they have been covered in oil. But these fulmars seem perfect, with no damage to their wings, necks or legs. It is a mystery."
RSPCA experts were due to collect specimen birds to carry out tests.
Fulmars are in the albatross family and spend most of their time at sea, except when they come ashore to cliff ledges for the breeding season.
Chris Durdin, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said it was possible the deaths were a natural tragedy. The birds could have starved at sea and been washed ashore.
Contact the centre at Ridlington on 01692 650338 with information. |
link
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