, but if anyone has had any success with it do let me know. Sounds like a good product - my experience with their sister products Replay Radio
and Replay Music
has been extremely positive for recording things off the web for personal use.
The EcoFile radio series is a landmark radio series that aired on the CKUA Radio Network in Alberta, Canada from 1996 - 2002.Episode 246 is entitled "Baiji Dolphins Disappearing in China", and originally aired in May 2001. The whole show is available as an MP3 download on the page above, and the Baiji Dolphin section begins about 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the show.
Mauritius' top meteorologist remembers all too vividly one of the big storms of his childhood, when he spent 18 hours crammed into the solidest room in the house with 20 or 30 other people; they could hear cries outside, but could do nothing to help.
[...]
Mauritius did get some warning of December's tsunami.
Mr Sok Appadu had a phone call from a woman whose brothers were in the Seychelles, telling him about giant waves.
At about the same time, international radio and television channels were starting to broadcast the news of damage in Sri Lanka.
At that point, he started alerting police and coastguards and put out a broadcast warning - fast, but not quite fast enough to help Mauritius' sister island Rodrigues, which was struck first.
But by the time the tsunami reached Mauritius itself an hour later, most of the eastern coastline had been evacuated and there was no loss of life.
'We shall be flying the [five] rhinos [to Kenya] as soon they can be safely captured,' said Kes Hillman Smith, the Nairobi-based coordinator of the Rhino Project at the International Rhino Foundation (IRF), also an adviser at the Garamba park.
'This is the safest means of securing the sub-species from extinction,' she said, adding that the DRC government approved the step last week after being informed of the rhinos' precarious continued existence.
Five of the few northern white rhinos left in the wild will be flown from Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent poachers wiping them out, conservationists said on Saturday.Full story continues
Fewer than 10 of the rhinos are believed to remain and with heavily armed poachers carrying out frequent raids in the wilds of northeastern Congo, moving the beasts to sanctuary in Kenya is deemed the only option to guarantee their survival.
'Although we've all been against the idea of the rhinos going elsewhere it is now necessary,' said Kes Hillman Smith, head of monitoring at Congo's Garamba National Park after the government approved the move this week.
Conservation efforts were having some success in rebuilding the population until recently, when nearby civil wars and an increase in poaching sent their numbers plummeting again.
Nine of the rhinos, including a pregnant female and a young calf, were found dead in 2004.
The decline means the rhino is thought to be the most endangered large mammal on earth.
There are 10 in zoos in the Czech Republic and the US, but only one calf has been born in captivity in the last decade.
Several years ago, I read a book called "Last Chance to See", written by Douglas Adams (famous for writing "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"). Among several other animals on the endangered species list, he also wrote about the Komodo Dragons the world's largest Lizards. Ever since that day I've wanted to visit Komodo.Back in October we had a similar personal account. That entry can be found here.
Douglas Adams has unfortunately passed away several months before I visited Komodo. I am thankful to him for writing this book, as Komodo was one of the most interesting places I have ever visited. By inspiring people like me to visit Komodo, the locals are finding out that the dragons are worth more alive than dead. This way he might have done a lot to help save the Komodo Dragons.
The goal of the project was to use state-of-the-art Geomatics technologies in support of the on-going research activities to preserve the Mountain Gorillas in the Virunga mountains, one of the least mapped and more inaccessible areas in the world.Their website is full of content, and can be found here.
This project was initially designed to create maps for the use of field crews, create vegetation maps, map gorilla movements using GPS receivers, and to integrate ongoing research activities using GIS. It has been ongoing since 1992, and has grown to include researchers and scientists from many institutions and organizations around the world.
Our goal is to use advanced remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technologies (often refered to together as 'Geomatics' technologies) to provide a digitized database of the mountain gorilla habitat. The database includes layers of information that contain vegetation patterns, gorilla ranging and human use of gorilla habitat, including changes over time, and the impact of human encroachment on the reserve.
“I actually much prefer doing this particular one [speech], which I only ever usually get to do at colleges because it’s funny, but big corporations don’t particularly like to hear about protecting endangered wildlife,” he said. “You lose a lot of money to endangered wildlife.”
Last Chance to See started as a magazine article for the World Wildlife Fund. The group sent Adams to Madagascar, where he met Carwardine. Adams wrote about aye-ayes, an endangered species of nocturnal lemurs that look like a cross between a bat, a monkey and a very surprised infant.
“At the time, it was thought that there was only about 15. They’ve found a few more so it’s not quite so endangered, just very, very, very endangered,” Adams said. “The whole thing was completely magical.”
Two preserved Maori heads are to be removed from storage in a Scottish museum and returned to New Zealand after a request for their repatriation was met today.and Perthshire.co.uk
The tattooed heads, toi moko, are currently stored in Perth Museum, along with an 18th Century kakapo feather cloak and about 65 other taonga (treasure), such as tools, carvings and jewellery.
At a meeting today, Perth and Kinross Council's lifelong learning committee agreed unanimously to honour the request from Te Papa.
The two preserved tattooed ‘toi moko’ heads date back to 1822 when they were acquired by Perth-born ship’s surgeon, David Ramsay, who then sent them to the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth three years’ later.
[...]
Michael Taylor, head of arts and heritage with Perth and Kinross Council, gave a presentation to committee members and told them that David Ramsay studied medicine at Edinburgh University and then set up home in Sydney, Australia.
He went on to explain the importance of the artifacts to the Maori people.
“The Maori regard the head as the most sacred part of the body. They remove it and it remains with the particular clan.
“The more tattoos, the higher status you had,” he said.
After more than six years of work in remote forests of Madagascar and DNA laboratory tests in Omaha, a researcher at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo can officially claim the discovery of two new species of lemurs.Here's another article posted at Environmental News.
The Mitsinjo Sportive Lemur, newly identified by Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, lives in the forests of western Madagascar.
Researcher Edward Louis will see his findings published in the December 2005 issue of the International Journal of Primatology.
The discovery of a new primate species is rare, said Jeff French, a primatologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Only a handful are reported each decade, he said, and that makes the zoo's findings especially significant.
In Mauritius, "the biggest waves struck the north and east of the island at around 1pm (11am South African time)," a meteorological spokesman told AFP, adding that no casualties had been reported there or on the smaller nearby island of Rodrigues to the east.
Mauritian authorities urged holidaymakers and picnickers to clear beaches and avoid putting to sea, noting that vessels had been damaged along most countries bordering the Indian Ocean.
A Venomous Life by Struan K. Sutherland
This is the autobiography of the expert that Douglas and Mark consult in Australia before they go to Komodo. When asked what to do if someone is bitten by a deadly snake in the book it says "he blinked at me as if I were stupid. 'Well what do you think you do? he said. 'You die of course. That's what deadly means.'"
It seems to have been written in somewhat of a hurry after Professor Sutherland was diagnosed with a degenerative illness, and for an authobiography, actually has very little about his family, apart from his ancestors. His three wives get very little mention, and in fact his third does not even get a name check. The focus of the book, after an entertaining look at his youth, education and naval service, is on his work at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL). Not for the squeamish it details a variety of venomous creature incidents, including a bite on an unfortunate fellow's "organ of generation", as well as various deaths that were the driving force behind his quest for antidotes. It also discusses the experiments that were required to develop the snake bite detector kit and the antivenoms, although Sutherland and his team spent considerable effort in devising techniques that reduced the need for animal experimentation, especially in assaying the toxicity levels of various venoms. It also details the run-ins with the CSL management when he considered them to be obstructing his work and putting lives in danger - including the infamous paper-clip incident - and the circumstances of his eventually departure.
In Last Chance to See, Mark and Douglas record that at the end of their meeting with the then Dr Sutherland he was talking about how he hated all poisonous animals. In the first edition the conversation concludes with him being asked if there was any venomous creature that he did like and he replies "There was, but she left me." This apparently caused the Doctor some embarrassment when it was published so in the paperback edition the question is changed to "Is there anything you do like?" and the response to; "Hydroponics". Hydroponics was not actually a topic his was paid to research, but just a hobby for Sutherland. However, he did write a book, Hydroponics for Everyone, to go with his textbooks Australian Animal Toxins and Venomous creatures of Australia, and his children's book Take Care!: Poisonous Australian Animals.
The book stops at an upbeat note on 15th June 1998 with the Australian Venom Research Unit that he helped create at the University of Melbourne after leaving CSL, up, running, funded and with his successor in place. Professor Sutherland died on 11 January 2002, and was posthumously made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2002 Australia Day Honours.
And, as you might expect, there'll be a video-game based on the movie. Here's the announcement from GameSpot.Activision has announced Madagascar for the PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and DS. Based on the forthcoming movie of the same name, Madagascar is an action title featuring animals that decide to escape the shackles of the Central Park Zoo in favor of the freedom of the African island of Madagascar.Versions of the game will be available on most platforms, including PC CD-Rom, Microsoft's XBox, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo GameCube.
In the game, gamers will get in touch with their animal instincts and control four characters from the film, each with its own unique characteristics and strengths. [...] Melman the giraffe's anxious personality is complemented by a helicopter spin and his coconut and lemur-launching neck fling.
A Scottish council is to decide today if two preserved Maori heads should be returned to New Zealand.Full story
The tattooed heads, toi moko, are stored in Perth Museum, along with an 18th century kakapo feather cloak and about 70 other taonga (treasure), such as tools, carvings and jewellery.
Councillors on Perth and Kinross Council's lifelong learning committee are meeting today to consider a formal request for the return of the heads to Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand.
As the fist signs of disaster in Asia were becoming clear, the US seismologists rapidly understood that the tsunami was heading towards the African coast. The American embassies in Mauritius and Madagascar were warned, which again passed the alert to national authorities around the region. Seychelles took an early lead, also confirming to Kenyan authorities that they indeed could expect a devastating wave.
No emergency plans however exist in these countries on how to handle a tsunami - the region almost never experiences such natural disasters. In Seychelles, the National Disaster Committee immediately set up a base at the Police Command Centre in Victoria to monitor what was happening. It instructed the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation to send out alerts to warn members of the public.
This video captures for the first time on film the secret lives of the kakapo and documents the enormous effort involved in saving a species from extinction. Watch as, for the first time in years, males make their booming love calls through the night and the kakapo colony produces twelve precious eggs. But will the chicks survive?
Satellites provide a bird's eye view of planet Earth, and the space-based vantage can be extremely useful to people interested in viewing out-of-the-way places. ... Now, NASA satellite imagery is giving scientists and conservationists some of the tools they need to get valuable information on land cover and land use changes in wild areas.Full story continues...
NASA satellite imagery helps scientists better understand land changes in the Virunga Conservation Area which covers the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda and the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.[...]
In a single week in June of 2004, farmers created pasture for their cattle by clearing 15 square kilometers (5.8 square miles), or 6 percent, of the 264-square kilometers (102 square miles) of mountain gorilla habitat in the southern 'Mikeno' sector of Virunga National Park. Because mountain gorilla numbers had increased by close to 56 individuals over the last 10 years, the recent loss of land was a considerable step backward.
THE world’s biological diversity continues to decline, with the latest World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species revealing that 15,589 species face extinction in the near future.Complete Article continues...
Released at the 3rd IUCN World Conservation Congress in Bangkok last month, the authoritative list is an update of the last major analysis in 2000, which showed that one in eight birds (12%) and one in four mammals (23%) were threatened with extinction.
The new report titled A Global Species Assessment showed that the pressure on birds and mammals has not eased and the infamous line-up has now been joined by one in three amphibians (32%) and almost half (42%) of turtles and tortoises.
THE author of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy once travelled to Melbourne to meet the world's expert on venomous creatures. In his 1999 book Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams reported on his encounter with anti-venom pioneer Struan Sutherland, then with the federal Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, now a private company specialising in flu vaccines.Complete article continues....
"Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all the snakes and insects and fish and things," Sutherland announced to his surprised guest. "Stupid things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. That's the answer. I've had enough of it," he added fiercely.
Nearly 15 years on, Adams and Sutherland have gone to their respective versions of the afterlife or lack thereof. Not so Australia's venomous biters of the bush. From brown snakes, taipans and death adders to tiny toxic insects, they're out there and they're dangerous.
Fortunately, Sutherland's work carries on. Under the banner of the Australian Venom Research Unit at Melbourne University - established by Sutherland in 1994 - self-described "toxinologist" Ken Winkel and his colleagues continue the study of "kill-you-deads" and their toxins, not to mention treatments and tactics for the unwary and the bitten.
In Madagascar, more than 1,000 people were made homeless while a village in northern Mauritius was submerged for almost three hours following the surges.This Tsunami Timeline from the Turkish Press contains this paragraph:
Towards 0900 GMT [Dec 26], strong waves reach Mauritius and the island of Rodrigues causing damage but no casualties.
Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a "sixth sense" for disasters, experts said on Thursday.I wonder at what point in human's evolution did we lose this sense that most other animals seem to have retained? Incidentally, both Mauritius and Madagascar were hit by the tsunamis, but one would suspect that the Rodrigues Fruitbat, Mauritius Kestrel, Pink Pigeon and Aye-Aye Lemurs will all be OK. From what I understand, Komodo Island was geographically protected and not affected by the waves, so the Komodo Dragons were safe.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24 000 [sic] people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening," HD Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department, said on Wednesday.