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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(7)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(14)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(13)
Recovery:(4)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ contamination  ~ global warming  ~ capitalist greed  ~ climate impacts  ~ carbon emissions  ~ stupid humans  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ toxic buildup  ~ rising sea level  ~ governmental corruption  



ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Species Collapse" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Species Collapse scenario and stories]
Sun, Jan 24, 2010
from Sydney Morning Herald, via DesdemonaDespair:
Koala forest to be logged for wood chips
LOGGING is set to start within weeks in a forest that supports the last known koala colony on the NSW far south coast. The NSW Government is yet to release data from a comprehensive survey of koala habitat and population in Mumbulla and Murrah state forests, near Tathra, even though some trees have been marked for removal.... One source described a map of the area that had been drawn and redrawn in search of a compromise between felling trees and maintaining enough forest to allow the koalas to survive.... The logging operation, due to begin in early March, would involve taking some high-quality timber and some timber for woodchips. Most of the timber from felled trees in the region goes to a mill in Eden, which exports woodchips to Japan. ...


With these chips, the koalas are forced to go "all in." Holding a pair of threes.

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Jan 23, 2010
from BBC (UK):
Governments 'must tackle' roots of nature crisis
Governments must tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss if they are to stem the rate at which ecosystems and species are disappearing. That was one of the conclusions of an inter-governmental workshop in London held in preparation for October's UN biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan. Delegates agreed that protecting nature would bring economic benefits to nations and their citizens.... "We have a chance of a much tougher target for 2020 than we had for 2010, which would be about having no net biodiversity loss," he said. "I think the key thing is whether we'll see over the next few years concerted action on the drivers of biodiversity loss -- if we don't see that in the next few years, then we certainly won't see good results by 2020." ...


I think we call those "Noneday drivers."

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Fri, Jan 22, 2010
from Chambersburg PublicOpinion:
Bats dying from white nose syndrome; means trouble for farmers
Biologist Jim Hart said a devastated bat population will cost farmers and impact water quality. Bats sometimes eat their own weight in insects in a single day. That's about 2,000 mosquito-sized bugs. "They are worth their weight in gold," said Hart, a mammalogist with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. "They take an enormous toll on agricultural pests. If they all disappear, that's going to be a pretty bad scenario." Birds won't immediately eat all of the extra bugs, according to Hart. Populations of farm pests will increase quickly and farmers will respond by applying more pesticides, some of which will find their way to streams.... Wildlife biologists estimate that the disorder has killed 750,000 bats in the Northeast since it was first discovered in 2006 in New York. An estimated one million bats overwinter in hundreds of hibernacula across Pennsylvania. Science is ill-prepared for the crisis. "In general, we don't know enough about normal bats to know what's different in sick bats," Reeder said.... "The loss of one species is a big deal," Hart said. "The loss of a whole suite of species is a catastrophe. It scares biologists." They joke about taking up a career that has a future, like computer science. ...


Time for me to get a BugDeth™ distributorship!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Jan 20, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Bee numbers in England fell by more than half over the last 20 years
The University of Reading research found there was a 54 per cent decline in managed honey bee populations in England between 1985 and 2005 compared to an average of 20 per cent across Europe. It comes as separate research in France suggested the reason bee numbers are falling is because of intensive agriculture that has led to a fall in the number of wild flowers and plants.... Dr Potts, who will be speaking on the subject in front of MPs this week, blamed the increased use of pesticides, bee disease such as the varroa mite and intensive agriculture. Meanwhile, in a separate study, the National Institute of Agronomic Research in Avignon proved for the first time that a more diverse diet of different kinds of pollen can boost bee immunity. This suggests that the monoculture used in today's intensive farming techniques may be contributing to the decline of the honey bee. ...


I know! Let's spray bee-vitamins to boost their bee-immune systems!

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Tue, Jan 19, 2010
from Detroit Free Press:
Court won't close shipping locks to stop Asian carp
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a one-sentence denial today of Michigan's request for a preliminary injunction to close Chicago-area locks to keep out Asian carp.... The court hasn't decided whether to take that case, which sought to reopen a 1922 case arguing against the diversion of the Chicago River to create a shipping canal linking the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes. Asian carp DNA has been found within a mile of Lake Michigan at a pumping station north of Chicago. The carp are considered dangerous because of their size and voracious eating habits. Gov. Jennifer Granholm called the court ruling "extremely disappointing."... "We cannot allow carp into the Great Lakes," Granholm said. "It will destroy our Great Lakes fisheries, our fisheries, the economy. It has to be stopped and it is urgent." ...


Too bad science is independent of justice, while implementation is dependent on law.

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Mon, Jan 18, 2010
from BBC (UK):
Biodiversity nears 'point of no return'
Much greater concerted effort is needed to stop the plunder of our ecosystems.... Overfishing has reduced blue fin tuna numbers to 18 percent of what they were in the mid-1970s. The burning of Indonesia's peat lands and forests for palm oil plantations generates 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, and demand is predicted to double by 2020 compared to 2000. More than seven million hectares are lost worldwide to deforestation every single year. The restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth. ...


Come on -- how many species do we really need, anyway?

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Mon, Jan 18, 2010
from UCSD, via EurekAlert:
Wilder weather exerts a stronger influence on biodiversity than steadily changing conditions
Climate scientists predict more frequent storms, droughts, floods and heat waves as the Earth warms. Although extreme weather would seem to challenge ecosystems, the effect of fluctuating conditions on biodiversity actually could go either way. Species able to tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures, for example, may be eliminated, but instability in the environment can also prevent dominant species from squeezing out competitors.... "It may depend on the predictability of the environment. If you have a lot of violent changes through time, species may not be able to program their life cycles to be active when conditions are right. They need the ability to read the cues, to hatch out at the right time," Shurin said. "If the environment is very unpredictable, that may be bad for diversity, because many species just won't be able to match their lifecycles to that." ...


Can't they just evolve for predictable unpredictability?

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