Endangered Species

They put people in jail for this in Hawaii! Group Asks Pope to Declare Sea Turtles 'Meat' Reuters Mar 14 2002 2:28PM LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A conservation group wants Pope John Paul II to declare that sea turtles are meat not fish in a bid to cut down on the illegal practice in parts of Mexico of killing and eating them during Lent. "The tradition of serving sea turtle ... is largely due to the fact that the Catholic Church asks its members to abstain from eating meat during (Lent)," the conservation group Wildcoast said in a statement. It said some 35,000 sea turtles are killed off the coasts of Baja each year by poachers, "the highest mortality rate anywhere in the world." "Many eaters think sea turtle flesh is "fish" because it swims. Wildcoast is attempting to reach the Vatican to have the Pope declare that the sea turtle is ... not appropriate to eat during this time," the group said. U.S. Wildlife officials said they did not see much illegal trafficking of turtle flesh despite the group's insistence that there is a thriving black market for it, particularly in Mexico. The killing of sea turtles has been protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act since 1973 and by Mexican law since 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. Penalties for turtle poaching in Mexico, where the practice of eating sea turtles during Lent is a longstanding tradition, were raised last month from three years to a maximum of 12 years in prison, the newspaper said. The conservationists believe that the Pope would have a great influence on discouraging predominantly Catholic Mexicans from eating turtle flesh. The 40-day period of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends the day before Easter Sunday.

thanks for this topic marcia!

*Hugs* I shouda asked you first, but I had this sea turtle article and more will appear as Hawaiian Monk seals begin spring whelping and turtles come ashore to lay eggs. I thought we should have it - sad though it is!

Another reason that some people in Mexico may think that it is acceptable to eat turtle during lent is that as reptiles they are cold-blooded. It is the flesh of warm-blooded animals, which includes poultry, which is prohibited on fast days. Hence, you wouldn't be breaking abstaining from meat if you ate snake, or lizard, or even alligator. That is some people's thinking on the subject, anyway.

interesting, thanks!!

Pacific Sea Turtles Diving Toward Extinction SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Giant Pacific leatherback sea turtles are on a fast track to extinction as commercial fishing and man-made destruction of their beach nesting areas threaten to wipe out the 150 million-year-old species, scientists said on Tuesday. Speaking at the Leatherback International Survival Conference in Monterey, researchers said only a handful of females returned to nesting beaches along the Pacific coast last season -- down from thousands who did so just 20 years ago. The week-long meeting that began Tuesday is aimed at bringing together marine biologists, environmental activists and fishing industry representatives to seek ways to ensure the survival of the only sea turtles without shells. "The decline is an example of the greatest extinction of a population of animals that we have probably witnessed since humans have recorded this sort of thing," James Spotila, a researcher at Philadelphia's Drexel University told a telephone news conference. "It is almost as rapid as the extinction of the bison in North America in the 1800s." Currently there are some 30,000 leatherbacks swimming in the world's oceans, down from about 115,000 in the 1980s, the researchers said. The turtles can reach 9 feet in length and weigh 2,000 pounds. The females come ashore once a year to lay their eggs. PACIFIC NUMBERS DWINDLING FAST But the situation of Pacific leatherbacks -- which are genetically distinct from those in the Atlantic Ocean -- is particularly perilous because their numbers have sunk to about 3,000 from 91,000 just 20 years ago. This creates a downward spiral where fewer and fewer females are left to reproduce, leaving the leatherbacks swimming toward an uncertain future, scientists said. For example, last year just 68 of the animals, which spend most of their time in the water, nested on Costa Rica's most popular leatherback beach, down from 1,600 only 15 years ago. More worrying, along Mexico's coast -- once described as the largest and most important leatherback nesting area in the world -- only 50 females returned to lay eggs this past season, researchers said. "The decline in the last five years is nothing short of catastrophic," said Sylvia Earle, an Explorer in Residence at National Geographic and leatherback expert. "The number has dropped at a precipitous rate." Pacific leatherbacks are facing extinction mainly because of commercial fishing and from commercial development of their nesting areas, the researchers said. The main ocean threat comes from longline fishing where a ship can send out thousands of baited hooks on hundreds of lines that total 60 miles in length, snagging sea turtles, seals and other sea animals, in addition to the target catch of swordfish and tuna, the scientists said. BEACH HOTELS A BIG THREAT Problems on land stem from rapid development of hotels and resorts that encroach on the beaches where leatherbacks come to lay their eggs, they added. Egg poaching is also a danger. But scientists also said there is hope for the sea turtles, so long as something is done soon. This makes it important to hold conferences like the one in Monterey where representatives from disparate groups can search for ways to address the problem, they added. "Scientists have been talking to each other for a long time," Todd Steiner, director of Turtle Island Restoration Network, the nonprofit group that put on the conference. "But it really needs to get into the policy arena." Some ideas for staving off Pacific leatherback extinction included better regulating fishing or exploring technology that could scare the turtles away from the hooks. Other scientists said solutions were as simple as donating money to environmental groups looking to buy beaches to hold off development of hotels and resorts to protect the Pacific leatherbacks' nesting areas. "If we could just set aside some of these beaches that historically are critical for the survival this species, we can make a difference," said Frank Paladino, a biologist at Purdue University. "It is not going to cost billions of dollars, it is only going to cost a few million dollars."

This is more of a resurrection than an endangered species and very exciting. Extinct Tasmanian Tiger One Step Closer to Cloning Reuters May 28 2002 12:52AM SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists announced on Tuesday a breakthrough in efforts to clone the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, saying they had replicated some of the animal's genes using DNA extracted from preserved male and female pups. The scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney said they hoped to clone a Tasmanian Tiger in 10 years if they were successful in constructing large quantities of all the genes of the Tasmanian Tiger and sequencing sections of the genome to create a genetic library of Tasmanian Tiger DNA. "We are now further ahead than any other project that has attempted anything remotely similar using extinct DNA," Mike Archer, director of the Australian Museum, told a news conference. "What was once nothing more than an impossible dream has just taken another giant step closer to becoming a biological reality," he said, adding that the ultimate aim was to clone a viable reproducing population of Tasmanian Tigers. The Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine) was a dog-like carnivorous marsupial with stripes on its back that lived on the southern Australian island state of Tasmania. The creature originally roamed Australia and Papua New Guinea, but sometime between 2,000 and 200 years ago disappeared from the Australian mainland, only to be found in Tasmania. It took man only some 70 years to make the Tasmanian Tiger extinct, as farmers in the 1800s began shooting, poisoning, gassing and trapping the animal, blaming it for attacking sheep. The last known Tasmanian Tiger died in 1936 and it was officially declared extinct in 1986. COMPLEX OF GUILT The project to bring the Tasmanian Tiger back from extinction began in 1999 when Australian Museum scientists extracted DNA from an ethanol-preserved female pup in its collection. In 2001, further DNA was extracted from two other preserved pups -- the tissue source for this DNA was bone, tooth, bone marrow and dried muscle. Archer said the alcohol-preserved female pup's DNA had given scientists the Tasmanian Tiger's X chromosome and the other samples the male Y chromosome. In May 2002 the museum's scientists, using the extracted DNA, replicated some of the Tasmanian Tiger's genes using a process called PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). "The supposedly dead DNA in fact reacts in the way live DNA does. Clearly the DNA we collected was not extinct -- it works," Archer said. "It makes molecule cloning possible." Archer said if the museum was successful it would seek to clone a viable population of Tasmanian Tigers, using the Tasmanian Devil, another carnivorous marsupial, as a host. "We want a viable population. We don't want a strange animal pacing back and forth in a laboratory. What we want to do is put that animal back in the wild and for that we need a viable, reproducing population," he said. But Archer said the technology for the final stage of cloning, putting the Tasmanian Tiger's genetic material into a Tasmanian Devil host cell which has been stripped of the devil's genetic material was still to be developed. "We don't know the length of this journey. Its up to the speed with which technology keeps pace with the vision. But I am optimistic," he said. "The Tasmanian Tiger is an iconic Australian animal, its woven in a complex web of guilt because Australians made it extinct. We need to lift this burden of guilt."

thanks for posting the above, marcia!!

I'm trying to remember to post each time I have something pertinent for Geo that I also put it here. Some co-host I am!! Keep kicking me in the shins to remind me, Sweetie!

don't worry about it sweetie! i'm not doing a very good job keeping up on my hosting duties either!!