Gibbon Take
Thailand - The gibbons of Thailand are endangered by logging and by poachers who kill female gibbons and sell their babies for display in tourist cafes. The gibbons' teeth are pulled (without anesthetics) to prevent biting and they are drugged to keep them docile. With the support of the Thai government, Thailand's Gibbon Rehabilitation Project (GRP) confiscates captured gibbons and rehabilitates them for release into the wild. The GRP has successfully released seven of its 27 gibbons on two islands set aside by the government. Gibbons who have lost their teeth or have contagious diseases are sheltered in project compounds. The GRP has only one worn-out truck to carry its volunteers and supplies and one leaky boat to transport staff, food and supplies. To help, contact the Wilderness Conservancy [1224 Roberto Land, Los Angeles, CA 90077-2334, (310) 472-2593, fax (310) 476-7527, wildcon@instanet.com].

Tiger, Tiger Burning Out
Nairobi - The number of wild tigers has plummeted from over 100,000 in the 19th century to about 5,000 to 7,000 today: Some subspecies are thought already extinct. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is urging tiger range states to "do more to protect habitat and combat poachers, consumer states stamp out the market for tiger parts and derivatives, and rich countries help to fund tiger conservation efforts." Japan remains the only Asian country that still allows the sale of tiger parts.

From Fishnet to Cybernet
Baja California - In 1999, a female loggerhead turtle was caught is a fishing net in Mexico. Scientists named her "Yamilet" and released her after attaching a satellite transmitter. By January 2000, Yamilet had swum 3,000 miles, nearly halfway to Japan. Loggerheads are born in Japan and swim to Baja California to feed. At the age of 20 to 30, they return to Japan to lay eggs - a 15,000-mile round trip. You can follow Yamilet's journey on the web [www.baja-tortugas.org].

"Paper Parks"
Geneva - The World Conservation Union (IUCN) says that less than a quarter of the supposedly protected national parks and wildlife refuges in 10 key forested countries are well managed. Some are mere "paper parks" that are not managed at all. The World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund are pressing for the improved management of 125 million acres of "existing but highly threatened forest protected area." Indigenous people and conservation organizations are to be involved the process, which includes private-sector investments and new forestry codes. The governments of Brazil, Peru, and six Congo Basin nations have committed to act.

Poor Butterfly
UK - A comprehensive British butterfly atlas shows that the ranges and populations of the island's 56 resident species have changed markedly in the last 15 years. More than 20 species are in decline and one species, a large tortoiseshell named Nymphalis polychloros, is extinct. While some species are down by as much as 50 percent, some have lost half or more of their ranges others are spreading, possibly because of climate change. The declines are blamed on the loss of bogs, chalk grassland and heath habitats.

Peacocks Imperiled
India - The peacock, India's national bird, may be on the brink of extinction. Farmers use Chloropyriphos and Endosulfan to battle termites. After munching seeds treated with these insecticides, male peacocks have been seen falling from trees, unable to fly. In an attempt to prevent extinction, villagers are being urged to set out bowls of untreated Bajra seeds for the peacocks to feed on during planting season.

Scots Outfox Brits
UK - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's campaign promise to end foxhunting in Britain remains unfulfilled but a bill in the Scottish Parliament could help rein-in the unsavory sport. The Times of London reports that the Scottish bill "treats huntsmen like poachers" and mandates six-month jail terms and £5,000 fines. "Ignorance will not be accepted as a defense if members of an English hunt stray into Scottish territory," the Times notes. Meanwhile, Britain's tabloids are in a tizzy over sightings of "Felix," a wild fox who makes his den in St. James Park. Felix has been photographed taking nightly strolls past Blair's home at Number 10 Downing Street.

Towering Inferno
US - The metal struts and guy wires on communications towers have long posed a threat to birds. Songbirds and some waterfowl typically migrate at night, when the towers' flashing lights (and possibly the radio/TV signals themselves) can disorient the birds. In a single night, a flock of Lapland longspurs migrating over Kansas in bad weather crashed into a 420-foot-high TV tower, resulting in 5,000 to 10,000 deaths. A study of one 1,010-foot tower monitored between 1955-80 recorded the deaths of 42,386 birds of 190 different species [www.towerkill.com]. With cell phone towers springing up everywhere, ornithologists want safer structures to protect birds.

Buffalo Blood
India - Catchet Pharmaceuticals in Sadar manufactures an iron tonic called Ferico. The raw material comes from buffalo slaughtered for their blood. Each buffalo provides 17.6 pounds of blood, which yields about nine pounds of hemoglobin. The Indian Express reports that 500 buffalo must be killed to supply Chachet with each day's supply of hemoglobin. Before a government crackdown, some slaughterhouses were killing and bleeding as many as 1,200 buffalo in a four-hour shift. If India's Supreme Court bans the practice, tonic companies will be required to replace bovine blood with iron salts or ferric ammonium citrate.

Armpit Smugglers
Zambia - The lush vegetation nurtured by the constant mists of Victoria Falls is now imperiled by ambitious homeowners. According to Zambian environmental journalist Singy Hanyona, tourists, guides and visitors from Livingstone and Lusaka have been uprooting protected plants from the park around the falls, and smuggling them home. "They wrap the flowers and shrubs in their clothing materials and clutch them in their arm pits," says Hanyona, providing an arresting fashion image. A government home-ownership plan has let former tenants buy their houses and they have become more interested in landscaping their dirt-covered yards. Unfortunately, the hastily transplanted plants often fail to survive in their drier new habitat.

Well-Fernished Homes
Australia - British gardeners may be contributing to the destruction of a popular Australian tree fern. Dicksonia antarctica is being "salvaged" from ancient forests that are being clear-cut for paper and packaging. Between 1994 and 1998, 44,660 tree ferns were exported from the state of Victoria, mostly to the UK. The profits from the fern-trade make Australia's woodchipping industry economically viable. Says Tim Cadman of Australia's Native Forest Network, "Every time a British consumer buys an Australian tree fern, he or she is supporting the destruction of our old-growth forests and rainforests."

Foundation Dies to Save a Bird
Dominica - The US-based Rare Species Conservatory Foundation (RSCF) was faced with a dire situation: the sisserou, Dominica's national bird, faced certain extinction if its habitat could not be secured.

The sisserou, or Imperial Amazon, is the world's rarest Amazon parrot. Its sole remaining habitat lies on the slopes of Morne Diablotin, the highest volcanic peak in the Caribbean - on land owned by the Dominican Fruit Syndicate. Dominica's 74,000 citizens care deeply about their island's biological riches, but the sisserou is special. According to native folklore, when Dominica's Carib people die, they are reborn as parrots. "We are a tiny scientific organization that is not prone to land deals, " says RSCF director Paul Reillo. "But the sisserou is a flagship species representing one of the last great ecosystems in the Caribbean ... We had to go beyond science and education and actually do something."

What the RSCF's small band of volunteer biologists did was astounding. They raised $750,000 from private donors and contributed nearly all of RSCF's funds. They took on a $300,000 debt that included Reillo's personal life savings.

The RSCF now faces bankruptcy. But, in Dominica, the world's newest national park (dedicated on January 21) has given the sisserou a new lease on life. The chances are good that Morne Diablotin National Park may soon become a World Heritage Site. [Contact Paul Reillo, Ph.D., RSCF, Loxahatchee, FL, (561) 790-5864, paulreillo@rarespecies.org.]

Sea Turtles Bushwacked
US -Florida, Georgia and South Carolina all support biologists and programs working to protect endangered sea turtles off their coasts. Texas is another story. "High numbers of sea turtles have been washing up dead in Texas since [George W] Bush took office in 1994," Reports the Sea Turtle Restoration Project [PO Box 400, Forest Knolls, CA 94933, (415) 488-0370]. While Mexico protects the primary nesting beach of the Kemp's ridley turtles in Rancho Nuevo, Gov. Bush refuses to create a similar reserve on his side of the border. "Bush has consistently refused to take the advice of sea turtle experts and increase protections for the Kemp's Ridleys and other sea turtles," noted STRP's Teri Shore.

Mine-Dogs to the Rescue
Slovenia - Humans suffer horribly from land mines, one of the least civilized weapons ever devised. According to the Humane Society of the US (HSUS) more than 55,000 animals have been killed by mines in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia and Mozambique. (Mines also cause long-term damage to land and water by toxic contamination.) Motola, an elephant who had to undergo an amputation after stepping on a mine near the Thailand-Burma border, brought worldwide attention to such atrocities. In September 1999, the first Worldwide Mine Dog Workshop was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia to evaluate developments in the promising field of human-dog mine detection teams. The dogs detect mines by scent from a relatively safe distance, and human team members handle the actual removal. Dog-human teams can clear mines at least ten times faster than any other method.

Fish and Coral Chips
Philippines - Fragile coral reefs in the Philippines and other poor countries are slowly being destroyed as tons of coral and tropical fish are removed to supply the decorating needs of aquarium owners - mostly in the US. In the Philippines, a few powerful people control the live fish trade. According to a report from Concerned Divers for the Philippines "live tropical fish are being transported around the country using petroleum tank trucks as a disguise." The US Coral Reef Task Force notes that two-thirds of the world's 1.5 million aquarium owners reside in the US. Americans buy half of the aquarium trade's fish and as much as 80 percent of the coral. The US bans the harvesting of coral in its own waters but imports live fish, corals, anemones, crustaceans, and mollusks from other countries.

World Bank Fails Forests
US - An internal memo concludes that the World Bank's 1991 forest strategy failed to protect the world's tropical moist forests. Environmental Defense Fund Economist Korinna Horta [Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010] called the report "one of the most important documents on forest policy the Bank has issued in a decade." The bank's 1991 forest strategy declared that the world's poor were the major cause of deforestation and illegal logging. Reuters reports that the bank now agrees that industrial logging, political corruption, trade liberalization and the growing demands of the global economy are "the main factors destroying forests." Horta charged that the Bank "has lost an entire decade in which is could have been working to curb deforestation" and warned that most of the Bank's current loans continue to "promote the very economic policies that are accelerating deforestation." Peoples Forest Program Director Marcus Colchester [1c Fosseway Business Centre, Stratford Rd., Moreton-in-Marsh, GL56 9NQ, UK] argued that "the Bank must end its culture of emphasis on simply getting money out the door, and instead implement projects that truly address poverty and don't harm the environment."

Trade Taboos
Portugal - At its annual meeting in Lisbon last September, the Standing Committee of CITES slapped rare trade embargoes on wildlife from Guyana and Senegal. Guyana has no national regulations on animal trade at all and Senegal is an export point for many wild birds from all over Africa.

Earth on a Platter
China - The China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), the nation's lead conservation agency, has disclosed that several of 45 monkeys confiscated en route to restaurants had tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and dysentery. The CWCA is publicizing this information in hopes of deterring well-to-do Chinese diners from consuming wild animals for "perceived health benefits." With snake populations decimated to feed human palates, rats have enjoyed a population boom in several areas of China. In response, restaurants specializing in wild rodent recipes now are thriving. As wildlife writer Joe Eaton says, when life hands you rats, make ratatouille.

Hemp Farms Coming to the US
US - Thirty-two industrial nations grow hemp to service a growing billion-dollar global industry. Last December, the US took the first step to legalizing the commercial farming of industrial hemp when Hawai'i Governor Benjamin Cayetano dedicated a three-acre test plot 25 miles northwest of Honolulu. The Drug Enforcement Agency-approved plot was financed with a $200,000 grant from hemp shampoo maker Alterna Professional Hair Care Products. In 1999, North Dakota became the first state to legalize commercial hemp farming. Today, California and 21 other states have expressed legislative support for hemp farming. Governor Jesse Ventura is prepared to negotiate hemp-growing permits for Minnesota farmers. Meanwhile, in Hawai'i. Old habits die hard. The DEA has surrounded the test crop with chain link fence, razor wire and a 24-hour infrared security system.

CONSUMER TIP
WYOMING - During its 23rd annual Convention in January, the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep auctioned 25 special permits to hunt bighorn sheep, elk, deer, pronghorn, moose, mountain goat, and Dall sheep. FNAWS generated $1.3 million from the auction of special permits in 1999, providing US and Canadian wildlife programs needed funds for disease research, transplants, water catchments, and surveys. Animal lovers who want to put their money where their mouths are can get information about next year's auction from FNAWS headquarters [(307) 527-6261, fnaws@fnaws.org, www.fnaws.org]. Buying a permit wouldn't obligate you to use it, and would prevent anyone else from doing so. The use of the funds does benefit populations and therefore individual animals.

Grow Your Own
US - Neurobiologists at the US National Institute of Mental Health genetically engineered a hapless brood of mice to lack cannabinoid receptors in their brains, so they were immune to cannabinoid compounds - including the natural cannabinoids that every mammal studied so far produces. The mice were apparently healthy until they were six months old; then a third of them died suddenly "without any signs of sickness and without any obvious brain abnormalities," according to team leader Andreas Zimmer. He suspects that these compounds protect against central nervous system failure, as well as playing parts in controlling movement and pain perception.