Saving Marine Mammals!

Hey! This week has an interesting article, so let's get started.

Our first article is from a site called Newswise, with resources from the University of Vermont. Our story starts in 1972, a year in which Richard Nixon started the Space Shuttle program, the Winter Olympics were held in Japan, The Godfather was released, and the famous Watergate scandal unfolded. That same year, a US senate committee reported that whales were at the edge of extinction from commercial hunting, tuna fishing was accidentally killing thousands of dolphins and that seal and walrus populations were dwindling.


It made Leroy so sad...


To protect marine mammals, a new act was proposed: the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It outlawed capturing (i.e. hunting, capturing, killing) and the harassment of marine mammals. It also put a moratorium on importing or exporting them from the United States.

Now, skip forward four decades. Recently, a group of scientists from the University of Vermont, lead by Caitlin Campbell from UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and Andrew Read, professor of marine biology at Duke University, set out to see if the MMPA has worked. So far, it seems it has.

Andrew Read says: "At a very fundamental level, the MMPA has accomplished what its framers set out to do, to protect individual marine mammals from harm as a result of human activities."

While species such as the right whale, which was almost brought to extinction when whale oil was in great need, still haven't recovered, the team has seen populations of sea lions and seals back at their carrying capacity. Joe Roman, a student at UVM says "U.S. waters are pretty compromised with lots of ship traffic and ship strikes, big fisheries, pollution, boat noise, and yet it's safer to be a marine mammal in U.S. waters than elsewhere." He says it's due to our protections against accidental and commercial killings, and the law's aim to keep marine mammals where they are in the ecosystem.

For most of the species, they found there just wasn't enough data to come to a conclusion about whether or not their populations had grown or shrank over the past 40 years. For 71% of their data, they couldn't decide if the populations were going up or down. But for the other 29%, they found that 19% were increasing, 5% were stable, 5% were decreasing. And knowing that, Leroy can finally sleep at night.

Pseudo-Woodpeckers and More Frozen Embryos!

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading my blog. The two articles this week are awesome, so let's get started!

The first article is about this either really cute or really ugly lemur (I honestly can't decide) called the Aye-aye.


Aww, look at it's big cute eyes! If only it didn't have 
bat ears and always look slightly deranged...

The Aye-aye is only found on the island of Madagascar, and lives in really spread out populations, so people can't really get a lot of information about it. What we do know is that it has constantly growing incisors that it uses to gnaw the bark off dead trees. Then, it uses its freakishly long and flexible middle finger to reach in and pull out and eat insect larvae, basically making it a pseudo-woodpecker-lemur.


Omnomnom!

Sadly though, the Aye-aye has recently been reclassified as endangered.


Baby Aye-aye says "Oh no! We're all gonna go extinct?!"

Gratefully, a team of scientists lead by George H. Perry, assistant professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State University, have become interested in saving the Aye-aye.

Baby Aye-aye now says "Yay!"

Perry says "Aye-aye population densities are very low, and individual aye-ayes have huge home-range requirements. As forest patches become smaller, there is a particular risk that there won't be sufficient numbers of individual aye-ayes in a given area to maintain a population over multiple generations. We were looking to make use of new genomic-sequencing technologies to characterize patterns of genetic diversity among some of the surviving aye-aye populations, with an eye towards the prioritization of conservation efforts."

So, Perry's goal was to collect DNA samples from Aye-ayes across the island, particularly the northern, eastern, and western sectors, and get complete genomes to show how much genetic diversity there is among the Aye-aye population. While the eastern and western populations were somewhat different, there was a large difference between the northern and eastern populations, suggesting that inbreeding has not happened between Aye-ayes of those two areas for an extended period of time. 

Their next step was to compare the twelve complete Aye-aye genomes to twelve complete human genomes to see how much inbreeding has happened in the Aye-aye population. Why compare it to humans? Well, it's because humans don't inbreed, meaning that our DNA is much more varied. The closer the variation in the Aye-aye genomes are to the human variation, the better.

To see the full results from the tests, read the full article here: http://news.psu.edu/story/270152/2013/03/25/research/endangered-lemurs-complete-genomes-are-sequenced-and-analyzed

Remember last month when I talked about the first puppy born from a frozen and transferred embryo, Klondike? Well, the methods used for his birth are being put to use in critically endangered species. 

Enter the Iberian Lynx.


"Oh, don't worry, I always look this majestic."

The Iberian Lynx lives in two population centers: one on the coast of Spain, the other in the mainland.



The Iberian lynx used to live throughout the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), but within the past 150 years, the species has become critically endangered.


"What? Endangered?!"

Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research recently obtained Iberian Lynx embryos and froze them. The frozen embryos can be transplanted into European Lynxes, a species with much less at risk.


And then they give birth to these!

To see full coverage of the topic, read the full article here: http://www.fv-berlin.de/news/embryonen-des-pardelluchses-im-tiefkuehler?set_language=de

So, thanks again for reading! I hope you share this kind of stuff with your friends, or maybe even donate to a couple of causes. See you in two weeks!

Baby Siamese Crocodiles and Migrating Whitetip Sharks

So, this is the second post in a biweekly series I'm doing. I have two articles I'd like to share this week.

The first is from the Wildlife Conservation Society, or the WCS. This article reports the release of nineteen baby Siamese crocodiles into the wild. The release is to be performed by the WCS and some of their partners in the village of Than Soum in Lao PDR on March 6. The release is part of the Crocodile Recovery and Livelihood Improvement Project, a community-based program that hopes to save the local Siamese crocodile population and the wetlands that they live in.


Siamese crocodiles

The Siamese crocodile has an estimated population of only 250 in the wild, due to over hunting and the destruction of their habitat. Their range extends throughout Southeast Asia and the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Java.


Siamese crocodile range

The full article on the Wildlife Conservation Society's page is here: http://www.wcs.org/press/press-releases/siamese-croc-release.aspx

Next, we have an article from Stony Brook University about Oceanic whitetip sharks. There's been new research about their migration patterns, showing that when they migrate, they often cross international boundaries.


Oceanic whitetip shark

Scientists from Stony Brook, the Cape Eleuthera Institute, and Microwave Telematry, Inc attached tags to one male shark and ten female sharks offshore from Cat Island in the Bahamas. Three of the sharks stayed within the Bahamas Exclusive Economic Zone for the whole period of time they were tracked. Five more strayed from the site they were tagged, and one went all the way to Bermuda. The common thing between them: they all returned to the Bahamas. This is the first evidence that migrating Oceanic whitetip sharks do return-migration. While the sharks didn't come within risk of fishing in the Bahamas, they could have gotten tangled in fishing gear from other countries set up to catch other species. To protect the sharks, countries n the region that fish will have to work together to create a safe habitat for them. A link to the full article is here: http://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/New_Research_on_Migratory_Behavior_of_Endangered_Oceanic_Whitetip_Sharks_Can_Help_Shape_Conservation_Strategies.shtml

Well, that's it for this week. I hope you check again next time I post. Thanks for reading!

Frozen Puppy Embryos and a New National Park in the Republic of the Congo

Hey everyone!

So this is my first biweekly (is that what it's called when you post something every other week?) post. I have two articles  to show you. Here's number one!

Okay, so the first article is from Cornell University and it's about a half beagle, half retriever puppy named Klondike.


Klondike with owner Julie Jordan

While there doesn't seem to be anything special about him, Klondike is the first puppy to be born from a frozen embryo. His mother was artificially fertilized and Klondike, at that point just an embryo, was transplanted into Klondike's surrogate mother. While neither beagles or retrievers are anywhere near endangered, cryopreservation, or freezing fertilized eggs, can be used for the benefit of endangered canine species such as the Red Wolf.


"Oh yes, look at all this... snow..."

The Red Wolf is critically endangered. It used to live throughout the North American southeast, from the Gulf and Atlantic Coast north to central Pennsylvania and west out to Texas. Today, its range is limited to a very small portion of coastal North Carolina, shown here:


The Red Wolf's range is shaded in red.

Dogs can only get pregnant once or twice a year. Frozen embryos can be transferred to surrogate mothers and help with re-population. Link to the full article is here: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Feb13/Klondike.html

The other article comes from the Wildlife Conservation Society, and it talks about a new national park in the Republic of Congo, called Ntokou-Pikounta, that preserves a population of around 15,000 western lowland gorillas.


"You lookin' at me?"

The western lowland gorilla is critically endangered, and lives in the Congo River Basin, which contains parts of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. Link to the full article is here: http://www.wcs.org/press/press-releases/ntokou-pikounda-national-park.aspx

I Wrote Something!

So for my Language Arts class we were given an assignment to write a poem about the environment, as part of a unit all four of my core classes are doing together about world population and sustainability. I decided, that even though it's not really about endangered species, I'd share the poem I wrote here. Hopefully it isn't that bad. Tell me if you like it (or put any helpful criticism) in the comments!

Make a Change

Do it for the gleaming sea fish,
for the glimmering stars that could grant a wish.
Do it for the towering redwood trees,
for the determined, honey-making bees.

Do it for the regal panda bear,
for the sleek and speedy hare.
Do it for the rolling green hills,
for the frozen Arctic sea that chills.

Do it for the majestic bald eagle,
for the beaches with cawing seagulls.
Do it for the shimmering prairie grasses,
for the monarch butterflies migrating in masses.

Do it for the butting mountain goats,
for the swimming otters that float.
Do it for the rocky land and the wide seas,
for the whole wide world’s needs.

Matthew Skelly
February 12, 2013

Hello Internet World!

Hey, my name's Matthew Skelly. I'm an 8th grader at Crossett Brook Middle School in Waterbury, VT. The purpose of this blog is to inform people in a slightly humorous way about endangered wildlife.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

"Oh, great, another creepy-looking environmentalist who smells like who knows what that's gonna shove stuff about how horrible we humans are and how we're killing all the animals and plants down my throat."

My first goal with this blog is to do everything but that. I'm not going to force you to donate $15,000 every week to the Fund for Hopeless Cute Little Animals That If You Don't Donate To You'll Feel Horrible About It (which, by the way, is not a real organization), and, I'm guessing, that will make you feel better about reading this blog. I plan on posting maybe once every other week with an article about how people are helping to save the environment, rather than how people are helping to destroy it. I'll encourage you to help too, but I won't make you.

So, hopefully you decide to keep reading this blog as I post things, and possibly even give a little in the process. Thanks much.