Nature Ramble

What man is doing by transporting animals around the world…

Newt flesh fungus ‘brought by pets’

The fungus causes skin lesions like those on the lips of this fire salamander

Zoologists say a skin-eating fungus threatens salamanders and newts across Europe, and probably arrived on pet amphibians imported from Asia.

It was discovered in the Netherlands in 2013 after wiping out all but 10 of the country’s fire salamanders.

Now tests show that the fungus causes deadly skin diseases in many related species, but not those from Asia.

The findings, published in Science, suggest that the fungus coexisted with Asian salamanders for 30 million years.

Researchers from Imperial College and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) collaborated on the study with teams in the Netherlands and Belgium.

The parasitic fungus, called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, is related to another fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) that causes a similar disease in frogs and other amphibians, mostly in the tropics.

According to the new study, the recently discovered “B. sal” does not affect frogs or toads but kills a wide variety of salamanders.

It rapidly invades and eats an animal’s skin, which is crucial to its survival because it helps it to breathe.

“Most of the salamander species that come into contact with this fungus die within weeks,” said lead author Prof An Martel from Ghent University, Belgium.

“There appear to be no real barriers that prevent the spread of the fungus throughout Europe.”

Source: BBCNews Read and see more

Make you Fink on Friday

Just how stupid are we?

Europe’s vultures under threat from drug that killed millions of birds in Asia

After an ecological disaster in India, wildlife groups call for ban on vets using diclofenac in Italy and Spain

A Spanish griffon vulture. Vultures in Europe could be under threat from approval of the use of the drug diclofenac in Italy and Spain. Photograph: Chris Hellier/CORBIS

Wildlife groups have launched a Europe-wide campaign to outlaw a newly approved veterinary drug that has caused the deaths of tens of millions of vultures in Asia. They say that the decision to allow diclofenac to be used in Spain and Italy not only threatens to wipe out Europe’s vultures but could harm other related species, including the golden eagle and the Spanish imperial eagle, one of the world’s rarest raptors.

Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory agent and painkiller, was introduced around the end of the 20th century in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh to treat sick cattle. But when the cattle’s carcasses were eaten by vultures, the birds contracted a fatal kidney condition. Within a few years, vulture numbers had declined by a staggering 99.9% across south Asia. The worst-affected species included long-billed, slender-billed and oriental white-backed vultures. Dead cattle were left to rot without vultures to consume their flesh. Packs of feral dogs grew to fill the ecological gap. The risk of rabies also rose, said health experts. Now diclofenac has been approved for use in Italy and Spain.

“It defies common sense to approve of a drug when there is abundant, solid evidence to show that it is deadly to so many species of birds and that it causes such ecological damage,” said José Tavares, director of the Vulture Conservation Foundation. “We now know diclofenac was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of vultures in India. Several species were brought to the brink of extinction in the process. Once the Indian government realised that, it banned diclofenac. That was in 2006. Now two countries in Europe have decided to give it the go-ahead. It is simply appalling.”

Dr Toby Galligan of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: “It is utterly brainless to approve a drug which you know has killed tens of millions of birds in such a short space of time. Yet this is exactly what the Italian and Spanish governments have done. Based on some very, very poor risk assessments, they have given approval to an agent that could have devastating consequences for critically important large birds in Europe.” Galligan’s own research has found that diclofenac not only kills vultures but is also fatal to eagles of the genus Aquila whose members include the golden eagle and the Spanish imperial eagle. At present there are only about 300 pairs of imperial Spanish eagles left.

Most worries are focused on diclofenac’s probable impact on vultures, which play a critical ecological role by rapidly disposing of animal carcasses before they rot. “In Africa, vultures have been in severe decline for a long time,” said Tavares. “Then, in south Asia, we had the impact of diclofenac which has left the subcontinent with hardly any vultures.”

Europe is now the last refuge of Old World vultures. (New World vultures, including Andean and Californian condors, are made up of different species.)

A spokesman for the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate said: “As a precautionary measure the VMD will not approve any requests from vets to import products containing diclofenac. Furthermore, we have agreed not to issue any export certificates which name diclofenac-containing products in the list of products to be exported.”

In a bid to persuade the EU to ban diclofenac, a petition – set up privately in the UK – has been signed by 28,000 people so far. It calls on the European commissioner for health, Tonio Borg, and the commissioner for the environment, Janez Potocnik, to intervene. This could be done by diclofenac being referred to the EU medicines agency, which could ultimately ban the drug.

Source: TheGuardian

Opinion:

Sometimes I just outrightly dispair at the sheer stupidity of man.

This is but one example.

When are we as a species going to get our act together?

 

Make you Fink on Friday

Does this make you think?

Why does America have a greater obesity problem than Europe…

 

Make you Fink on Friday

Here’s something to make you think!

Are our respective governments trying to kill us?

No, I’m not being silly, seriously!

It would be an ideal solution to the over population problem. Are we looking at a genocide issue? If planned obsolescence is possible for 60 or 70 years without us knowing, any thing in the realm of diabolical is possible.

I ask this because everything I read says GM crops are bad, but the governments insist they are not. Nobody can be that stupid, or could they.

FSA ‘endangering public health’ by ignoring concerns over GM food

French researcher who claimed GM food caused cancers in rats says UK should review food safety and assess long-term toxicity

GM maize, like the one above, and other GM crops should be put through rigorous long-term testing, according to Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images

The French researcher who caused a scientific storm when he claimed to show that some GM food led to tumours and cancers in rats has accused the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) of “recklessly endangering public health” by not demanding long-term testing of the foods.

In a series of parliamentary and public meetings held this week in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff, Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini has challenged UK politicians and safety authorities to review the way safety is assessed.

Séralini, a molecular biologist at Caen University, said: “Our research found severe toxicity from GM maize and [Monsanto pesticide] Roundup. The British Food Standards Agency has uncritically accepted the European Food Safety Authority’s dismissal of the study, even though many of EFSA’s experts have been exposed as having conflicts of interest with the GM industry. At the very least, the British government should demand long-term mandatory safety testing on all GM foods before they are released onto the market,” he said.

“The British scientific authorities are deliberately misleading their government and are recklessly endangering public health in ignoring the findings of our research.”

Séralini’s study found that rats developed much higher levels of cancers and died earlier than controls when fed a diet of Monsanto’s Roundup-tolerant GM maize NK603 for two years, or were exposed to Roundup over the same period. The usual industry tests last for 90 days.

The former member of two French government committees assessing the safety of GM foods suggested that the results could be explained by the endocrine-disrupting effects of the pesticide Roundup, and over-expression of the transgene in the genetically modified organism (GMO).

Read more

Opinion:

The prevalence of GM around the world is growing to catastrophic proportions. flying in the face of nearly everything we know; and nearly everything we DO know tells us it’s bad for us. So why do governments accept it?

Is there some diabolical plan?

“The British scientific authorities are deliberately misleading their government and are recklessly endangering public health in ignoring the findings of our research.”

This statement alone, makes me question the status quo; sending a red flag shivering up my spine. It should be doing the same to you.

Maybe we should be asking questions, demanding answers.

 

 

Nature Ramble

We hear about plenty of common small wild animals. Badgers, beavers, moles, racoons, squirrels and the like. But there is another that we don’t hear about often.

.

Martens

A pair of lithe animals are tumbling across the grass within feet of me

Ariege, France: They’re stone martens, slightly smaller than our British pine martens, and just as beautiful and fierce

European stone marten. Photograph: Alamy

My terrier Phoebe bouncing ahead, I trail down into the valley and rest against a false acacia on the bank of the winterbourne – still flowing after the wet winter and spring. In front of me a faint trail leads into thick oakwoods that stretch from Perpignan to Biarritz along the northern apron of the Pyrenees. The path is used by a sounder – a matriarchal group of sangliers, the wild boar of the region, which live deep among the trees, sleep daylong, and emerge to forage towards dusk.

Signs of them are all around. I’ve frequently seen them along the forest margin on my evening walks; watched their endearing, chest-heavy, lolloping run; been delighted by the playfulness of their coffee-and-cream striped young. Just by where I sit, I notice they’ve dug up and nipped clean off from the stem tubers of white bryony that grows here – a plant deadly poisonous to cattle, yet the wild pigs seem immune to its toxicity.

My eye is caught by movement. A pair of lithe, dark animals are chasing and tumbling across the grass within feet of me in what appears to be mating play. I hook my fingers into Phoebe’s collar and watch. They’re stone martens – fouines in French – slightly smaller than our British pine martens, and just as beautiful and fierce. Their undulating motion is hypnotic. They seem amiable with each other. I’ve never seen one before, let alone a pair.

The oddity about these two is that the pale fork-markings on the breast, which descriptions lead you to expect are no more than vestigial. These last six years spent mostly in Europe’s last great wilderness have taught me that variation here is standard: melanistic fouines to match the melanistic red squirrels that gnaw delicately at their hazelnuts on my bedroom window-ledge each morning. Presumably in both squirrel and stone marten it’s an adaptive melanism, to provide camouflage in the dense, shadowy woods of Ariege? Darwin would have been intrigued and vindicated.

Make you Fink on Friday

Here we go again!

Once again man has acted before thinking through the consequences.

Invasive ladybirds wage ‘biological war’ on natives

The Asian Ladybird or harlequin has overpowered native species across Europe

German researchers have discovered the biological keys to the success of an invasive species, wreaking havoc across Europe and the US,

The Asian ladybird was originally brought in to control aphids in greenhouses.

But it has escaped and is increasing uncontrollably across Europe, wiping out native species.

The alien is winning, say scientists, because its body fluid contains a parasite toxic to other insects.

The research is published in the Journal, Science.

Sometimes called the harlequin, the Asian ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) can devour over two hundred aphids a day.

They are seen as a natural and effective solution to the problems posed by these pests in greenhouses.

Killer bugs

But in recent years these imported ladybirds have escaped and rapidly established themselves across Europe and North America at the expense of native species.

In Autumn, the Asian invaders can be a nuisance as they congregate in large groups searching for sheltered locations to hibernate.

They can sometimes cause serious allergic reactions in humans.

The larvae of the Asian ladybird can poison any native who eats it

In this new research, scientists have shown that it is the biological system of the Asian ladybird that gives it the edge when it comes to competing with native species.

The invader has an extremely powerful immune system.

The body fluid of the insect contains a strong antibiotic compound called harmonine as well as antimicrobial peptides. These allow the invasive to fight off pathogens more effectively than natives.

So powerful are the antibiotic elements in the ladybird, that the researchers say they may prove to be promising targets for drug development.

But the most powerful aspects of the ladybird’s biological armoury are tiny fungi called microsporidia.

“They keep them inactive in their own blood, we don’t understand how they do it yet,” said Dr Heiko Vogel from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology,

“But when the other ladybird beetles start to attack the invader’s eggs and larvae, they become active and kill the native ones.”

The ladybird’s immune systems have strong antimicrobial properties

Several studies in recent years have shown the harlequin conquering other ladybirds across Europe. In the UK scientists found that seven of the eight native British species have declined. Similar problems have been encountered in Belgium and Switzerland.

In the UK, researchers are very keen for people to report any sightings of the harlequin. They have just launched a smartphone app that helps people record details of the ladybirds.

Dr Helen Roy from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology near Wallingford, UK, said the German research was “fascinating”. The outlook for native species, however, remained grim.

“The two-spot ladybird, a historically common and widespread species in Britain is suffering the most and experiencing dramatic and rapid declines,” she said.

And the German scientists agree that the Asian ladybird is set to conquer most of the world.

“I don’t see any which way to stop them now – it’s too late in my opinion,”…

 

Read more

Opinion:

Man is too adept at trying to change the course of nature without considering the consequences.

Whether is is well-meaning or just straight ignorance we have to stop meddling with the natural order of things.

If there is money involved, then the consequences don’t even matter, just plough ahead and face the music if necessary.

 

 

Deception, once again

This is not so much an eco question, but it is another example of how profits are put before people, how shops, businesses and companies deceive their customers.

Mislabelled fish slip into Europe’s menus

Fish often take a circuitous route before reaching our plate

We are all eating much more fish than we used to – but are we eating the fish we think we are?

Official figures show that global consumption of fish and seafood per person is rising steeply – but research also reveals that much of what gets sold turns out to be not as described on the packet.

Earlier this year Europe’s horsemeat scandal revealed how processed meat can get mislabelled in a complicated supply chain. That appears to be an issue with fish, too.

On a large scale, cheap fish is being substituted for expensive fish without the consumer knowing. Moreover, new varieties, never before consumed, are being detected in fish dishes.

Take a British national dish, for example: fish and chips. It is often thought to be the epitome of Britishness – “as British as fish and chips”, the saying goes.

But scientific testing reveals that the traditional cod or haddock and chips is often something else entirely. Research reveals that 7% of cod and haddock – the deep-fried staples of British fish and chips – actually turn out to be cheaper fish substituted to cut costs.

In the Republic of Ireland, a similar study of samples bought in Dublin restaurants, shops and supermarkets revealed that a quarter of products labelled as cod or haddock were in fact completely different species.

In the United States, a study showed that 25% of the fish served in restaurants in New York were not what they were said to be on the menu.

And in Europe, about a quarter to a third of fish products tested turned out to be not what was described on the packet or menu.

New species

Fish and chips: much-loved, but do you know where the fish came from?

The global industry transports large amounts of frozen fish around the world in containers, with China producing much of it. This means, for example, that one of the biggest points of entry for fish into the European Union is not a port at all – no wharves or boats or even water. It is Frankfurt airport.

Samples here and elsewhere across Europe are tested at the big Eurofins laboratory in Hamburg. Its Director of Scientific Development, Dr Bert Popping, said that tests were turning up types of fish which had never been in the food chain before.

“The authorities at the airport in Frankfurt have found some new species – species which have not been caught previously; fish species which have not previously entered the food chain; which have not previously been commercialised,” he said.

So researchers believe that there is large-scale deception going on when it comes to fish – cheap is being substituted for expensive, so deceiving the consumer and bumping up the profits of the deceiver.

Read more

Opinion:

One of the fish mentioned is the Vietnamese Pangasius

Big fish, lots of flesh

Nice pinky flesh, looks good enough to eat

It’s raised in the Mekong River Delta

The Mekong River is arguably Asia’s biggest cesspool!

The Mekong River comes from China, passes Burma, Laos, Cambodia with the delta in Vietnam collecting sewerage and industrial waste along its entire length.

Has your fish ‘n chips, or your fancy New York restaurant food been raised on Asian faeces?

This fish called, among other things, Panga has taken the world by storm. It’s cheap, it looks good, but is it healthy?

One report labels it ‘the latest abberation of globalisation’, another ‘Government pressured into removing Vietnamese panga from school canteens‘, and another ‘Don’t Eat this fish: Pangas (Pangasius, Vietnamese River Cobbler, White Catfish, Gray Sole)‘, yet another ‘I don’t know how someone came up with this one out but they’ve discovered that if they inject female Pangas with hormones made from the dehydrated urine of pregnant women, the female Pangas grow much quicker and produce eggs faster (one Panga can lay approximately 500,000 eggs at one time).’

The bottom line is making profits!

Update

Through a comment by ECOCRED, I found she had a very pertinent post on the same subject; Seafood: Fraud, Mis-labelling and Laundering