The end of the world at the ends of the earth

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– –
NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration in late
March and early April recorded “the lowest
ozone values ever measured” by satellite
monitoring over the Arctic, according
to Goddard Space Flight Center
weather scientist Pawan K. Bhartia.
Bhartia reported that ozone levels
over the North Pole in March were
40% lower than the 1979-1982 average,
coming a year after levels that were 24%
lower than the 1979-1982 average.
Bhartia cautioned that, “These low
ozone amounts are still nearly a factor of
two greater than the lowest values” discovered
in the Antarctic, but ozone layer
depletion at either pole is already associated
with increased ultraviolet radiation
and global warming, leading toward
potential ecological catastrophe.

BOOKS: Lifetimes

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Lifetimes
by David Rice,
illustrated by Michael Mayda
Dawn Publications (14618 Tyler Foote Road,
Nevada City, CA 95959), 1997.
32 pages, $7.95 paperback or $16.95 hardcover.
Teaching guide available: 1-800-545-7475.

The theme is deceptively simple: David Rice
tells young readers how long a variety of plants and
animals live, ranging from bacteria to banyan trees,
working his way from mayflies, who live just a day, to
the age of the earth itself. Each discussion of lifespan
includes the essentials about the entity in question.

Pig disease scares capitalists

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

LONDON–– Millions of
dollars invested in genetically engineering
pigs to produce organs for
human transplant may be lost, and
tens of thousands of people desperately
awaiting transplants amid a shortage
of donated human organs may die, if
the biomedical research industry can’t
find a way around PERVs, short for
“pig endogenous retroviruses.”
It may be that pigs will have
to be genetically re-engineered to
eliminate PERVs before engineering
transplantable organs can proceed.
In the March 1 edition of
Nature, neurosurgeon James
Schumacher and colleagues reported
successfully transplanting fetal pig
cells into the brains of 12 patients with
advanced Parkinson’s disease, demonstrating
for the first time that animal
tissues can grow within the human
body. Some patients, Schumacher
said, had experienced relief of
Parkinson’s symptoms for up to two
years after the transplants; all were
improved. The Schumacher team has
now implanted fetal pig cells into the
brains of seven Huntington’s disease
patients, hoping for similar results.

Space for the birds

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

How far should habitat protection
go? How big is critical habitat?
A four-ounce common tern banded
at Helsinki University in Finland last June
gave a holistic answer on January 24 when
captured by ornithologist Clive Minton of
Victoria, Australia, having winged 16,000
miles, 125 miles a day, since she left
Finland on or about August 15. The flight
broke the record held since 1956 by an Arctic
tern who flew 14,000 miles, from White
Russia to Fremantle, Australia.
Swallow-tailed kites have been
known to make one of the longest migrations
of any raptor since the 1960s, when a kite
banded in southern Florida was shot in southeastern
Brazil, but their winter habitat was
discovered only this past winter, when ecologist
Ken Meyer of the Big Cypress National
Preserve tracked a kite from Florida to the
same part of Brazil through the use of a tiny
satellite transmitter, weighing just a twelfth
of an ounce, glued to the kite’s tailfeathers.

A sheep who keeps ethicists awake

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

EDINBURGH––Embryologist Ian
Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh,
Scotland, on February 23 announced the birth
of a lamb cloned from a mammary gland cell
taken from one adult ewe, fused with an egg
cell of another adult ewe, and implanted into a
surrogate mother last July.
The first known successful cloning of
a mammal from fully developed adult cells, the
experiment was done by a team of 12, of
whom only Wilmut and three others knew the
details––and the announcement was delayed
until the team patented the lamb, named Dolly.

Deer hunting kills birds

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

PHILADELPHIA– – Managing
deer to suit hunters may be the major cause
of vanishing songbirds.
“We’re talking about vireos, warblers,
ovenbirds, all birds who use that bottom
five feet” of the forest ecosystem,
explained National Zoo wildllife biologist
William McShea as far back as 1992,
assessing deer damage to the Shenandoah
Valley, in Virginia. “These birds are all
declining in eastern forests.”
But that’s a message the National
Audubon Society avoided last December 12
at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
near Tinicum, Pennsylvania. Unveiling a
new national program to encourage bird
habitat conservation, the speakers addressed
“habitat loss” and “fragmentation,” blaming
development rather than deer nibblings.

TRIBUTE TO CARL SAGAN

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Carl Sagan, astronomer, pioneer
in exobiology, and author of many best-selling
books, died of pneumonia on December
20, 1996, at age 62 from complications
resulting from a bone marrow transplant
which, ironically, had cured him of
myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disease he
had battled for two years.
Sagan actively and sympathetically
participated in public discussion of animal
rights for at least the last 20 years of his scientific
career. He viewed intelligence as the
definitive requirement for the possession of
rights, rather than the capacity to suffer, but
did not draw the line at the limits of human
intelligence. He remained aware of animal
suffering, raising it in works that might otherwise
have been quoted in defense of unrestricted
animal use.

WHALES

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Four baby gray whales and a
young male pygmy sperm whale washed
up on California beaches between
December 17 and February 1––a possible
warning of a depleted food chain. The
pygmy sperm whale was only the fourth to
wash up in northern California since 1969,
but the third to beach in California during
1996. The other two beached far to the
south, in the same vicinity as the grays.
Sea World San Diego reported that the
one grey whale calf it was able to rescue
was recovering, and would be returned to
the wild when able to survive. Sea World
San Diego previously rehabilitated and
returned a gray whale to the wild in 1971.

What the Strah Polls say about roadkill

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

MENTOR, Ohio––Shocked at the
carnage and curious about the impact on local
wildlife, transportation department employee
Cathy Strah some years back began counting
the roadkills collected for disposal by the
town crews of Mentor, Ohio. In 1993 Strah
began sending her data to ANIMAL PEOPLE,
as a participant in a single-year national
roadkill census we were doing, concurrent
with the separate start of the now nationally
recognized Dr. Splatt counts. The latter are
done by middle school students across the
U.S., coordinated by Brewster Bartlett, a
science teacher at Pinkerton Academy in
Essex, New Hampshire.

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