When wildlife gets too close to home ...

Raccoons hang out on mailboxes. River otters slither under the foundations of houses. Squirrels burrow into attics.
When Whatcom County habitat and homes intermingle, wildlife bumps up against settlement and cute animals become urgent problems. That’s when Dave Vinke gets involved: he’s the guy you call when wildlife gets too close for comfort.
As a nuisance wildlife control operator licensed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Vinke runs interference between wild animals and humans.
“With our urban sprawl, it’s a big old mess for everybody,” says Vinke. “They’re cute and cuddly until they’re causing problems.”
Requests for special trapping permits are expected to reach 1,000 by year’s end, up from 789 in 2005, according to Sean Carrell, who issues special trapping permits for Fish and Wildlife. The increase is an indication that nuisance wildlife complaints are on the rise, says Lt. Richard Mann.
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Time bomb ticking for coral reefs?

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands - Coral reef experts heard dire predictions for the underwater kingdoms, including one estimate that 60 percent of the world’s coral reefs could die in less than 25 years due to pollutants and global warming.

Sea temperatures are rising, weakening the reefs’ resistance to increased pollutants, such as runoff from construction sites and toxins from boat paints. The fragile reefs are hosts to countless marine plants and animals.

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Damage to Coral Reefs Threatens Tourism

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) -- A rapid decline in the world's coral reefs could damage national economies that rely on underwater sea life for tourism revenue, researchers said Friday.
Tourists spend billions of dollars each year on hotels and tours to experience the marine habitats in areas including the Caribbean, Australia and the Pacific islands.

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Vermont island features oldest coral reef

ISLE LA MOTTE, Vt. - To the uninitiated, the flat rock slabs found across the center of this island at the northern end of Lake Champlain appear to be nothing more than giant stones.

But the rocks offer a history of the last half billion years of this area, which was washed by a warm equatorial sea and saw long-extinct plants and animals congregate in what is believed to be the earliest ancestor of modern coral reefs.

The walls of the now-preserved Fisk Quarry offer a vertical timeline — in stone — of the different layers of fossilized plants and animals that inched their way north as the world's continents drifted into their present locations.

Fossils Show Corals Survived Past Warming

Oct. 23, 2006 — A critical reef-building coral that has been thought especially vulnerable to global warming of seas may not be so frail after all.

A new study of past climate effects on the same kinds of corals, now fossilized on land in the Dominican Republic, shows that Acropora cervicornis has done just fine through other warm times and even managed to survive through times when the water was particularly mucky.
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Bill aims to stop reef oil drilling

A private member's bill has been tabled in the Senate seeking to block oil and gas exploration near the Great Barrier Reef.

The bill, co-sponsored by Labor's Jan McLucas and Democrat Andrew Bartlett, seeks to extend the exploration ban to waters inside Australia's economic zone.

Senator McLucas says areas identified for future exploration, including the Queensland and Marion Plateaus, the Townsville and Cato Troughs and the Capricorn Basin, are all east of the marine park.

She says it is unacceptable the park could be threatened by future oil spills.

"The reef is in a fragile state presently because of the effects of climate change and to contemplate drilling for oil near the boundary of the marine park is just astonishing to most people," she said.

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Experts grow coral reef in London

Marine specialists from London Zoo are growing a massive coral reef for an £85m aquarium in the East End.
The reef includes living colonies seized from smugglers who had tried to bring the coral into Britain.

The living reef, comprising of species from the Indian and Pacific oceans, is thought to be the biggest of its kind to be grown in the country.

The feature will form the centrepiece of the Biota centre in Newham, covering the size of five football fields.

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Haze puts Malaysia's fireflies, wildlife at risk

By Clarence Fernandez
Reuters
Saturday, October 14, 2006; 10:42 PM

KUALA SELANGOR, Malaysia (Reuters) - Malaysia's most famous insects, a colony of fireflies that blink like Christmas lights, top the list of wildlife hit by a thick haze of pollution from Indonesian forest fires.

For many visitors, no trip to Malaysia is complete without a star-lit canoe ride to see the twinkling fireflies near the mouth of the Selangor river, but some residents fear memories could soon be all that remain of the insects.

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Madagascar's coral reef under threat

Johannesburg - A new survey of coral reefs along Madagascar's southwestern coast found massive damage from coral bleaching caused by rising sea temperatures, researchers said on Thursday.

However, the survey team, funded by Conservation International and led by the conservation groups Blue Ventures and the Wildlife Conservation Society, said scientists also discovered several small reefs with corals that appeared to be resilient to rising sea temperatures and that could be used to reseed damaged reefs.
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Fish and Wildlife Commission adopts 2007 big game regulations

The Fish and Wildlife Commission recently adopted 2007 regulations governing the hunting of big game including deer, elk, cougar, bear, Rocky Mountain goat, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope and Western gray squirrel.

The new regulations will make the reporting of hunter harvest and effort mandatory beginning next year, coinciding with implementation of ODFW's new point-of-sale (POS) system in spring 2007. The system will replace telephone surveys by ODFW staff and enable hunters to report by phone through an interactive voice response or over the Internet. Hunters will need to provide the following information: days hunted, wildlife management unit hunted, sex of animal harvested and antler points of bucks and bulls. To introduce hunters to the new system, there will be no penalties or incentives related to participation in the survey for the first year. story continued

Corals info

There are more than 2,000 living species of corals. Fossil records show that stony corals have existed for 230 million years. Corals are responsible for building the many beautiful reefs around the world. From the Great Barrier Reef, to the small patch reefs, the ecosystems rely on corals for their foundation. Corals are divided into families based upon their anatomy and physiology. Different species can be called the same common name, and one species can have several common names. Therefore, if you do not find the name of the coral you are interested in within the categories below, please use our search feature. Using the scientific, or Latin, name will give the best results. link

Cold-Water Corals or Deep Sea Corals

What are cold-water corals?

Cold-water corals, also referred to as deep-sea corals, include scleractinian corals (stony corals), antipatharians (black corals), hydrocorals and octocorals (gorgonians, soft corals and sea pens). These organisms may occur as solitary individuals (e.g., solitary scleractinian corals) and also can form both reef-like structures and thickets that provide habitat for numerous species. more info

How to Propagate Your Own Coral Frags at Home

As reef aquariums gain popularity, the amount of knowledge regarding the husbandry of corals steadily increases, developing better and more successful techniques. However, understanding and replicating conditions that induce coral spawning is still an elusive aspect of coral care. It is still uncommon for corals to spawn in the home reef aquarium. Luckily, corals employ more than one reproductive strategy to propagate. Though sexual reproduction is yet uncommon, asexual reproduction is extremely common in a well-maintained reef aquarium. info continued

Fish research aids Utah cancer study

By Lois M. Collins
Deseret Morning News
Research on zebra fish has helped Huntsman Cancer Institute scientists identify a target that might one day lead to prevention or treatment of colon cancer — the No. 2 cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
The findings, published in the current online Journal of Biological Chemistry, indicate that a process the researchers used to rescue zebra fish from abnormal intestinal development may also head off a series of events known to be involved in development of colon cancer in people.
The scientists "knocked out" the molecule C-Terminal Binding Protein (CTBP) to save the zebra fish from a mutation in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene. Mutations in the same gene in humans lead to colon polyps, which are the precursor to colon cancer. The APC mutations are involved in 85 percent of human colon cancers, according to David A. Jones, a University of Utah associate professor of oncological sciences and leader of the study.story continued

Understanding the World's Oceans

By Ioana Patringenaru

They examined coral in Tahiti while the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean gently lapped at their feet. They caught fish on an atoll located 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. They dove off Christmas Island.

It might sound like a vacation to you. But researchers from UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography actually spent their summer trying to make sure that the rest of us will be able to enjoy the world’s oceans for many years to come. story continued

Weather-beaten corals now face 'worst' threat

By Mat Probasco

Virgin Islands - Scientists have issued their strongest warning so far this year that unusually warm Caribbean Sea temperatures threaten coral reefs that suffered widespread damage last year in record-setting heat.

Waters have reached 29,7°C around the U.S. Virgin Islands and 29,5°C around Puerto Rico - temperatures at which coral can be damaged if waters do not cool after a few weeks - said Al Strong, a scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, in a telephone interview on Monday.

The warning issued Saturday by NOAA urges scuba-dive operators and underwater researchers in the US Caribbean territories to look for coral damage and use caution around the fragile reefs, which are easily damaged by physical contact.
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