Primates Endangered to the Tune of 33%

A Third of All Primates Face Extinction
By MICHAEL CASEY

BANGKOK, Thailand (Oct. 26) - Almost a third of all apes, monkeys and other primates are in danger of extinction because of rampant habitat destruction, the commercial sale of their meat and the trade in illegal wildlife, a report released Friday said.

Of the world's 394 primate species, 114 are classified as threatened with extinction by the World Conservation Union.

The report by Conservation International and the International Primatological Society in Hainan, China, focuses on the plight of the 25 most endangered primates, including China's Hainan gibbon, of which only 17 remain.

"You could fit all the surviving members of the 25 species in a single football stadium; that's how few of them remain on Earth today," said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.

"The situation is worst in Asia, where tropical forest destruction and the hunting and trading of monkeys puts many species at terrible risk," said Mittermeier, who is also chairman of the World Conservation Union's Primate Specialist Group, which prepared the report with the International Primatological Society.

The 25 most endangered primates include 11 from Asia, 11 from Africa and three from South and Central America. The list includes well-known primates like the Sumatran orangutan of Indonesia and the Cross River gorilla of Cameroon and Nigeria, as well as lesser known species, such as the greater bamboo lemur from Madagascar.

Six species are in the report for the first time, including a recently discovered Indonesian tarsier that has yet to be formally named and the kipunji from Tanzania, which was discovered in 2003.

"Some of the new species we discover are endangered from the get go," Mittermeier said. "If you find a new species and it's living in an area heavily impacted by habitat destruction and hunting, you recognize it's in trouble.

"Habitat loss due to the clearing of tropical forests for agriculture, logging and fuel wood continues to be the major factor in the declining number of primates, according to the report.

In addition, climate change is altering the habitats of many species, leaving those with small habitat ranges even more vulnerable to extinction, it says.

Hunting for subsistence and commercial purposes is another major threat to primates, especially in Africa and Asia. Capture of live animals for the pet trade also poses a serious threat, particularly in Asia, the report found.

Four primates on the list from Vietnam have been decimated by hunting for their meat and bones, according to Barney Long, a conservation biologist based in Vietnam for the WWF Greater Mekong Program.

"All four species are close to extinction," Long said of the Delacour's langur, golden-headed langur, grey-shanked douc and Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. "The key populations have been stabilized. But there needs to be a lot more law enforcement and work to persuade local communities to support conservation for those numbers to increase.

"The news is not all bad.

Nine primates from the last report in 2004 were taken off the list, mostly because of bolstered conservation efforts to save their populations. Among them are the eastern gorilla from Africa, the black-faced lion tamarin and the buffy-headed tufted capuchin from Brazil and the Perrier's sifaka from Madagascar.

"If you invest in a species in a proper way and do the conservation measures needed, you can reduce risk of extinction," Mittermeier said. "If we had resources, we would be able to take every one of the species off the list in the next five or 10 years."

Once again, our fellow animal souls need our help. Maybe this will motivate some of YOU to try and help our planet and it's life forms.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe BobbySharpe.blogspot.com

Rare Leopard Captured & Released

Rare Amur Leopard Captured

A rare Amur leopard that is one of about only 30 left in the wild was captured, medically examined and released by experts, according to a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) release.

Such medical exams of the critically endangered leopard could help understand how inbreeding undermines its tiny population in eastern Europe, ultimately helping create plans for their survival, the WCS and other organizations said.

Officials from the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Biology and Soils, the WCS and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) tranquilized the female leopard and medically examined it. Initial findings show it has a heart murmur, which could indicate genetic defects from inbreeding. The team was able to use a portable sonogram device to capture video footage of the leopard's heart, which heart specialists are currently reviewing.

The Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List and is only found in eastern Russia near the Chinese border, an area threatened by human activities. In April 2007, conservationists found a dead Amur leopard, which was shot in the back near Vladivostok, Russia.

Conservationists estimate that there are between 25 and 34 such leopards left in the wild, while European and Russian zoos hold about 130 of the big cats. Male leopards can weigh up to 100 pounds while females weigh as little as 77 pounds.

Please take care of our endangered animal friends. They depend on us.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe reggae8@aol.com www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

Boston Turkey's

Wild Turkeys Take Boston, Surrounding Suburbs a Month Before Thanksgiving

Wild turkeys are running amok in the Boston area, startling, amusing and even chasing residents who have had close encounters with them on the street.

Previously alien to these parts, after having been wiped out long ago, the gobbling fowl are suddenly back and bigger than ever, descending with gusto upon suburbia, according to The Boston Globe.

The brazen little creatures have been so rampant that local police now get up to a dozen calls about them a day.

One woman jumped — and gasped — when she came face-to-face with a turkey right after she parked her car at a meter in Brookline, the Globe reported. But the showdown didn't stop there. The turkey ran after the woman after they locked eyes, gobbling and pecking at her bottom during the chase.
Click here to read the entire story in The Boston Globe.

This is really cool! Especially since turkey's always get the bad end of the story. Click the link above and read the whole story about how they have made this incredible come back in Massachusetts.

Animalz Rule(even Turkey's),

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe Bobby Sharpe's "Indigo Spiritz"

Deputy Mayor Killed By Monkeys?!

Monkeys kill Delhi deputy mayor

Delhi has long struggled to cope with the marauding monkeysThe deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi died on Sunday after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.

SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.

The High Court demanded the city find an answer to the problem last year.

Solution elusive

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

The city has also employed monkey catchers to round them up so they can be moved to forests.

But the problem has persisted.

Culling is seen as unacceptable to devout Hindus, who revere the monkeys as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, and often feed them bananas and peanuts.

Urban development around the city has also been blamed for destroying the monkeys' natural habitat.

Mr Bajwa, a member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is survived by his wife and a son, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Sorry this had to happen to this gentleman. I really don't have an answer or recommendation. No one, yet everyone, is to blame for these sort of events. In this time and space, "this is the way it is".

Animalz Rule(even when bad things happen),

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe reggae8@aol.com

Irish "Jurassic River Dragon" Discovered

River reveals 'Jurassic dragon'

The fossil of a prehistoric sea monster that lived more than 144 million years ago has been found in a river on the edge of west Belfast.

Colin Glen could become known as Northern Ireland's Jurassic Park after the backbone of a plesiosaur was uncovered.

Such a find was a chance in a million said Paul Bennett, the educational ranger at the park.

"The 7cm section of vertebrae was found at Colin River. It would have belonged to a creature known as a 'sea dragon' which was here in the Jurassic period when Ireland would have been down where the Sudan is and covered by seas," Mr Bennett said.

The plesiosaur had a round short body, four flippers, a short tail and a very long neck and small head.

Mr Bennett said the Colin River was rich in fossils and was of great geological interest.

He has found sharks' teeth and the fossil of an extinct marine reptile, an ichthyosaur at the site, in the past.

They had sharp teeth and snapping jaws, which set a deadly trap for small aquatic animals.

"When I found this, I hoped it would be the plesiosaur because that is like finding the Loch Ness monster," he said.

"I've been told the reptile could have been about 20 metres long.

"This is very exciting, not just for me but for the people and the park."

Dr Michael Simms, a curator of palaeontology at the Ulster Museum, has examined the fossil and believes it could be 190 million years old.

"Pleiosaurs are very rare fossils and it is very lucky to find a single bone," he said.

Plesiosaurs were thought to have caught their prey by lashing out with their long necks and then snatching at victims with sharp teeth.

They were thought to be hunters of fish, squid and other free-swimming prey; but recent research has also indicated they would feed on bottom-dwelling animals such as clams and snails, too.

I keep telling everybody, we are getting closer and closer to unearthing Godzilla, dragons, and, things we might not even know about yet. All the uninformed keep talking that garbage about "oh, it's only a myth, that isn't real, they didn't really exist". However, those of us that are in tune, we know better. Keep digging and searching. Here are a couple links to other dinosaur related stories. BBC NEWS Science/Nature Ancient reptile tracks unearthed 'Truly Gigantic' Dinosaur Skeleton Found - AOL News

Dragons(wherever they are)Rule,

Bobby Sharpe reggae8@aol.com www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

Save These Shelter Dogs Lives, Please

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Those are the words of Mahatma Gandhi. That is also a fitting philosophy to start this post.

Seeking to Save Shelter Dogs From Death
By VERENA DOBNIK

NEW YORK (AP) - Sweet William, a young black Labrador retriever in Illinois, has two days to live.

Sandy, a golden female Jindo in New York, also has just two days left. Kate Hepburn, a tan female boxer in California, has 18 days to live.

On Saturday, these were some of the dogs in shelters across the country slated for death - their fate posted on a Web site that aims to save their lives by offering them for adoption.

Each is tagged with a death date set by a shelter - and a countdown clock showing the days, or hours, until the animal is destroyed.

Dogsindanger.com works with more than 120 shelters nationwide that destroy dogs. How much time the dogs get before death varies from state to state. In New York City, a stray dog must be kept a minimum of three days, while a shelter has the legal right to immediately destroy an animal that is abandoned there by its owner.

About 4 million dogs are put to death each year in the United States, by injection or gas.

In the three weeks since the site has been up, dozens of dogs have found new homes. Their photos are posted on a section of the site marked "Success Stories." The images of dogs that didn't make it adorn the site's "In Memoriam" wall.

"It's not the fault of the shelters," said Alex Aliksanyan, a pet adoption advocate who made money in the Internet travel business. "They don't like doing this, but they have to abide by the law, which requires a shelter to control its animal population."

Aliksanyan spent a half-million of his own dollars to start The Buddy Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization that operates the site and is named after his miniature American Eskimo dog.

"I've done well, and it was time to give something back," said the 50-year-old Turkish-born entrepreneur of Armenian heritage. "So I thought, let's bring the story of these animals dying quietly in these shelters to the public and say, 'Can you do something?"

He hired a half-dozen staffers to manage and market the site. Shelters post information about each dog directly, with daily updates and information on how each shelter can be contacted. Aliksanyan ships out free digital cameras and software for the task.

A shelter can sometimes delay a dog's death date - if it has room in its kennel and few new strays coming in. A death date can get moved up, too, if the shelter becomes overcrowded.

The adoption service is free both for shelters and people looking for pets, allowing users to search by location, breed or time until death.

The in-your-face site, Aliksanyan said, "is not a place to sit with your 6-year-old and say, 'This one's going to die, that one is going to die."

He said he is driven by the philosophy of the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, whose words are posted over the "In Memoriam" page: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Please check out the website and see if maybe YOU can help.

Dogs In Danger: http://www.dogsindanger.com

Thank YOU, Animalz Rule

Bobby Sharpe Bobby Sharpe's "Indigo Spiritz" www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

New "Super" Dinosaur Discovered In Utah

'Schwarzenegger' of Dinosaurs Discovered

(Oct. 3) - A toothy, big-boned dinosaur uncovered in Utah is helping scientists recreate what ancient North America looked like 75 million years ago.

Dubbed Gryposaurus monumentensis , the new species was a member of the so-called duckbilled dinosaurs, so named because their flat, bony snouts resembled duck beaks. Unlike ducks, however, duckbilled dinosaurs, also called hadrosaurs, had teeth, which they used to munch on tough, fibrous plants.

Similar to a shark, a duckbilled dinosaur essentially had a conveyer belt of teeth in its mouth, a seemingly endless supply. G. monumentensis, for example, had more than 300 teeth available in its mouth to slice up plants. And stacked below in columns hidden within the jawbone were many more replacement teeth, so a duckbill might have sported more than 800 teeth at any moment.

"It was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," said Terry Gates, a paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the University of Utah who was involved in the discovery. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance."

Jaws weren't the only robust thing about G. monumentensis. All of its bones were likewise massive. Scott Sampson, another Utah Museum paleontologist who was involved in the study, called the animal the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duckbilled dinosaurs."

"It was like a dinosaur on steroids," Sampson added. "The bones were thick, not just in the skull, but in the limbs as well."

The researchers think G. monumentensis was a key player in the ecosystem of ancient North America. "Duckbilled dinosaurs are the most common fossil that we find in the rock that we do our prospecting," Gates said. "From that we know they were probably one of the most common dinosaurs within this ecology 75 million years ago."

The new species is detailed in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Big problem

Most of what is known about G. monumentensis comes from a massive well-preserved skull and jawbone unearthed by the researchers in the Kaiparowits Formation in Utah in 2003. The team later found enough bones in other areas of the site to assemble a nearly complete skeleton. From these bones, paleontologists estimate the creature's head would have been just under three feet (one meter) in length, with an adult G. monumentensis measuring up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length.

The heftiness of G. monumentensis poses several problems for paleontologists trying to envision what North America looked like 75 million years ago. How the massive duckbill could survive alongside other giants, and why it didn't mingle even with its own relatives, are two head-scratchers.

At that time, southern Utah was very different from the arid desert and red-rock country there today. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America into eastern and western landmasses.

The western landmass, where G. monumentensis lived, was only about one-fifth the size of North America. Yet crammed on this relatively small island were several large plant-eating dinosaur species.

While G. monumentensis chomped greens in Utah, other species of duckbilled dinosaurs were grazing farther north in places such as Montana and Alberta, Canada.

Very interesting. I keep telling everyone, "it is just a matter of time before they can verify that Godzilla existed, or, still does. Same thing for "dragons". Come on, they keep finding all this other stuff, why not?

Dinosaurs Rule(ed),

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe Orlando Sentinel - Community Winter Park Blog -