Needlenose

Our War on Planet Earth has another victim – the Chinese Paddlefish joins the Yangtze River dolphin in extinction.

I’ve been raging for some time about Japan not only flauting the IWC ban on commercial whaling but actively seeking to overturn the moratorium.  But the Iceland has not only left the IWC, but is now flagrantly and egregiously whaling like mad and exporting the product to Japan…and they are doing this at a loss!

Those Sea Shepherd dudes are really wasting their time hunting around the Antarctic for the Japanese fleet – they would have a much easier time going after Thor Codbiter in the Atlantic, and maybe get some public interest in the EU and the US around boycotting Icelandic goods.  Given Iceland’s current crappy economy, I seriously doubt it would take much of a boycott to get them to stop this one measly company’s depredations on fin and minke whales!

Checkout this disheartening news regarding the scale of the consumption of gorillas in the bushmeat trade. The article is based on a survey of a particular market and the local area from whence the gorillas are killed.  In that area things are pretty grim:

“According to interviews and field surveys, we think we may have about 200 gorillas left in the area,” says Mr Fidenci.

“But we estimate that 4% of the population is being killed each month, or 50% in a year. It is a lot.”

They figure beyond this one area, there are ~100K Western Lowland gorillas total in a wild, and they’ll be extinct within the decade given the bushmeat trade.

I don’t know if we’d have done a better job killing them off if we actually planned their extermination.

Sad news about the Great Barrier Reef:

“…the Great Barrier Reef could be “functionally extinct” within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.”

More depressing news regarding our campaign to eradicate other life forms;

“The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered critically endangered and possibly extinct.

At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction, including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.”

I no longer support the search for extraterrestrial life – if we found any, we’d just have to go out there and kill it.

In the very beginning of the Judeo-Christian bible, God allegedly grants humanity

“…dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

And so it came to pass.  And speaking of creeping things that doth creepeth, it seems the creeps have inherited the Earth, creeps that seem intent to stomp every creeping thing over which they have dominion into extinction (and don’t forget the permanent snuffing the fowl of the air).

You’re probably wondering why I’ve decided to bum you out tonight.  I’m blue because of these new bummer tidbits, the massive die-off and looming extinction of nine species of shark due to the charming practice of ‘finning’ the poor critters for shark-fin soup while tossing the still alive but mutilated shark back into the ocean to effectively die slowly from blood loss and asphyxiation.

I can’t tell you how depressed I get knowing that over the course of my lifetime I’ve watched the biggest species die-off since the disappearance of the dinosaurs.  Except for a few modest successes (think a few species of whales, wolves, American bison), people world-wide seem driven to destroy as many habitats and species as rapidly as possible, whether through global warming, deforestation, desertification, strip mining, urban sprawl, polluting and increasing the acidity of fresh and salt water, overfishing, poaching and just polluting the air and land in general.  Is the game to see how many of them we can take with us before our fossil fuel runs out and civilization collapses?

In the case of creatures like pelagic sharks or other deepsea fish, we’re looking at the classic tragedy of the commons writ large.  Unless some modern day, environmentally-motivated Captain Nemo decides to take matters into his own hands, it’s pretty much all she wrote for these poor creatures.  Wouldn’t hurt to have some more (and less gentle) Bruno Mansers on land as well.

There might be a bit more hope for the poor vaquita which recently lost funds for protection due to the economic downturn.  Rather than watch it follow the Yangtse River Dolphin, perhaps a campaign funded by private donations run by a group such as the WWF could make up the shortfall?

The only thing that depresses me more than the actual mass extinction event underway is how people seem to care so little about it.

Finally, somebody is stepping up to the looming tuna fishery collapse – several small Pacific island nations are putting restrictions on tuna catches in their territorial waters.  For me the news would be a lot more welcome, though, if they had done this in league with the world’s major tuna consumers in Asia and North America, as there are two major challenges facing these ‘lil nations.

First, this leaves far more ocean unprotected than protected, and from previous studies, tuna seem to get around.  Second, and just as critically, poaching is a huge problem, particularly when it comes to Asian fishing fleets.  Even the territory being restricted is pretty damn huge, and these cute ‘lil countries don’t have anywhere near the resources to patrol them.  And let’s say they do come face to face with a serious poacher – who is going to take the Kiribati Coast Guard seriously?

Unless we can get the big tuna eater leaders on-board with these restrictions, we should seriously consider Plan B, maybe even crewed by these rascals!

It looks like Silent Spring redoux – 1/3 of US bird species are rapidly heading  towards oblivion.  Sorry to have to post yet another bummer update to my earlier war on other species post.

‘Flat-Earth’ libertarians and reactionaries continue to remain in denial, but scientists are converging in agreement that human activity is the most significant factor in global warming over the last century. What is worse is that the ‘wailing Cassandras’ of the environmental movement were right – global warming will lead to a tremendous numbers of extinctions.

Of course there is a rhetorical silver lining for the SUV-huggers; the scientists also determined that the Kyoto protocol was by far too wimpy to have a serious impact on global warming, so in blowing off the treaty, President Asteroid-Impact hasn’t significantly influenced the final outcome.