Sanctuary |News
GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY CRISIS
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem (IPBES), has released a comprehensive report
on the debilitating global biodiversity crisis. This report was
approved at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary meeting
that was held between April 29 and May 4, 2019 in Paris. “The
overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a
wide range of diff erent fi elds of knowledge, presents an ominous
picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other
species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are
eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food
security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said Sir Robert
Watson, IPBES Chair. The report reveals that an astounding one
million animal and plant species face the risk of extinction, several
of which may go extinct within decades. It further enumerates
that in most major land-based habitats, the populations of
native species have declined by at least 20 per cent, since 1900.
More than 40 per cent of amphibian species, almost 33 per
cent of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine
mammals are at risk. The report blames changes in land and sea
use, overexploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and
invasive species as the main culprits.NO PENGUIN BREEDING COLONY IN
HALLEY BAY
Following the massive collapse of the Halley Bay ice shelf in
the Antarctic in 2016 that wiped out a large Emperor Penguin
breeding colony, further breeding seems to have come to
a standstill. The ice sheet collapse led to the drowning of
thousands of penguin chicks. Halley Bay is believed to have
been the second largest breeding colony site of the Emperor
Penguins with nearly 15,000-24,000 breeding pairs fl ocking
here every year. Scientists used high-resolution satellite
imaging software and studied the birds’ guano content to arrive
at this conclusion. Substantial swelling of the neighbouring
Dawson-Lambton colony suggests that some of the adult
emperor population might have relocated there. However, this
does not account for the lost population numbers. “We have
been tracking the population of this, and other colonies in
the region, for the last decade using high-resolution satellite
imagery. These images have clearly shown the catastrophic
breeding failure at this site over the last three years. Our
specialised satellite image analysis can detect individuals and
penguin huddles, so we can estimate the population based onWORLD
SCAN
the known density of the groups to give a reliable estimate of
colony size,” explained Dr. Peter Fretwell, lead author of the
study and BAS remote sensing specialist.MERCURY IN PEREGRINE FALCONS
Shocking results emerged from a study conducted by Joe
Barnes, a biologist from Nevada, U.S.A., on Peregrine Falcons in
Nevada, Washington, Maryland and the Gulf Coast of Texas for
toxic contamination. In about 700 individuals that he studied,
all tested positive for mercury contamination. "Every single one
of them was impacted, regardless of whether they live in the
wide-open desert or Lake Mead or Greenland or coastal British
Columbia," he reported in the Journal of Raptor Research. His
fi ndings suggest mercury levels ranging from 17 to 23 ppm
in the feathers of adult Peregrines. Surprisingly, even those
migrating from Greenland, Alaska and northern Canada, places
that are relatively less polluted, showed mercury levels of up
to 10 ppm on average, in the feathers. According to Barnes,
Peregrine Falcons are “one of the most impacted species when
it comes to contamination” as they prey on other birds such as
grebes, which frequent polluted waters and might have been
exposed to mercury. More studies are required to determine
and gauge the tolerance level of the species to mercury and
other pollutants.RAREST TURTLE ON THE BRINK
The last known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle,
the rarest turtle in the world, died at the Suzhou Zoo in
China in April 2019. Considered to be the most critically
endangered of all turtle species, only four individuals of the
Yangtze giant softshell turtle Rafetus swinhoei, were known
to exist – a breeding pair (including the female that died) and
two of unknown gender in the wild in Vietnam. A day earlier,
the zoo staff attempted to artifi cially inseminate the female
who was over 90 years old. An autopsy has been ordered
to determine the precise cause of death. Multiple attempts
at getting the pair at the zoo to breed over the years failed.
The male turtle is approximately 100 years old. R. swinhoei
is the largest freshwater turtle in the world and grows to
100 cm. in length and weighs up to 100 kg. Hunting and
habitat degradation due to pollution, shipping and ecological
damage caused the population to plummet dangerously. Its
habitat range included the Yangtze river and several other
freshwater bodies in China.A satellite image of the Halley Bay ice shelf, which collapsed in 2016. This
site, it is believed, comprised the second largest breeding colony of the
Emperor Penguin.O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W. /FLICKR/PUBLIC DOMAIN