LOL

From the Onion.com
Thanks to Cleve H. for the link

Gropenhagen Conference

Image from F!#@ for forest (site is very NSFW!)

Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex
from Spiegel online
By Politiken Staff & Edited by Julian Isherwood

Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to city hotels warning summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.

Copenhagen's city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and delegates to 'Be sustainable - don't buy sex'.

"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the approach to hotels says.

Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk.

According to the report, the move has been organized by the Sex Workers Interest Group (SIO).

"This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don't understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way," SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller tells avisen.dk.

Møller adds that it is reprehensible and unfair that Copenhagen politicians have chosen to use the UN Climate Summit as a platform for a hetz against sex workers.

"But they've done it and we have to defend ourselves," Møller says.

More on In Vitro Meat

From Sphere.com 
by Andrew Schneider

Scientists Create Lab-Grown Pork; Bacon Industry Unmoved
Scientists in the Netherlands have created pig in a test tube. Debate has already started on whether it will save the world, or just throw vegetarians into a quandary.

In the meantime, the researchers may be in line for a celebratory feast: They could be the new front-runners for a million-dollar prize offered by a major animal rights group.

The research team, funded by a major sausage maker and the Dutch government, used cells from a live pig to grow pork muscle tissue in a Petri dish. After extracting cells called myoblasts from the muscle of a live pig, the scientists then incubated the myoblasts in a nutrient solution, which allowed the cells to multiply and create muscle.

The implications of this breakthrough in "in vitro meat," as it's sometimes called, are potentially enormous.

Physiology professor Mark Post of Eindhoven University, who led the research team, believes it could make it possible to end world hunger. "You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals," he told the media in the United Kingdom.

Making meat in a laboratory instead of a feed lot could also reduce climate change by eliminating billions of tons of methane and other greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals across the globe.

Dutchman Mark Post, a professor of physiology and expert in biomedical engineering, is working on generating meat in his lab at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Of course, all these potential boons depend on whether consumers think the man-made meat is tasty enough to eat. And even the scientists had to admit to reporters that they don't know if their creation is flavorsome, because laboratory regulations forbid them from tasting anything they create.

It certainly doesn't sound very appetizing. It's hard to imagine ordering up eggs and "wasted muscle tissue," which is how Post described his creation.

Nonetheless, the professor believes that steps can be taken to give the lab-grown meat a more marketable, steak-like consistency.

"We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there," Post told reporters. "This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it." He and his colleagues predict that within five years, sausages and other pig products made from laboratory meat could be on the market.

At this point, the U.S. pork industry doesn't sound too alarmed at the prospect of being rendered obsolete by a lab beaker.
Cindy Cunningham, an officer of the National Pork Council, called the Dutch research "very interesting." But she noted that beyond the need to take the technology to a commercial level capable of supplying enough product to replace traditionally grown meat, USDA and FDA labeling issues would have to be worked out.

"The question of consumer demand would then be the driving factor," Cunningham said.

On that end, greater marketing savvy would help. (First order of business: come up with a better label than "in vitro meat.")

But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is also doing its part to create additional financial incentives for researchers. Last year, the group announced it would pay $1 million to anyone who came up with a way to produce large quantities of test-tube-spawned meat at competitive prices by 2012.

"Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year," says New Harvest, a nonprofit research organization working to develop new meat substitutes.

The group's Web site predicts that the resulting cells will then be harvested, seasoned, cooked and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger or chicken nuggets.

Today, pig. Can foie gras be far behind?

See previous post on the topic: Eight ways in vitro meat will change our lives

Singing gorillas at Rwandan MGVP orphanage

The gorillas at the mountain gorilla veterinary project (MGVP) orphanage sing while fed (singing is a natural gorilla behaviour, although its function is not entirely understood)

Annual monkey feast in Lopburi.

Its not the greatest example of human/wildlife interactions, but at least its not polar bear canabalism

Canadian polar bears turning to cannibalism in Hudson Bay

Image from Zareen's blog

From the WWF-Canada blog
by Peter J. Ewins, D.Phil.
Senior Officer, Species
Arctic Program

In the last few days the polar bears in western Hudson Bay, Canada, the best-studied subpopulation among the 19 across their Arctic range, have been giving us a dramatic and stunning new signal of population stress - at least 10 reported cases now of cannibalism.

In the last few days the polar bears in western Hudson Bay, Canada, the best-studied subpopulation among the 19 across their Arctic range, have been giving us a dramatic and stunning new signal of population stress - at least 10 reported cases now of cannibalism.

I was born in a coal-mining town in England, and was trained as a scientist, especially in marine animal ecology. The well-worn references to, and use of, the "canary in the coalmine" reflected very hard-learned lessons from past generations of miners in my birth-town. Better to read the signs in the canary in its cage 100 ft underground than to keel over yourself as carbon monoxide or other gases built up then poisoned you and your fellow miners.

In the last few days the polar bears in western Hudson Bay, Canada, the best-studied subpopulation among the 19 across their Arctic range, have been giving us a dramatic and stunning new signal of population stress - at least 10 reported cases now of cannibalism. Three decades of intensive polar bear studies here have hardly ever recorded such cannibalism. This is very new, and dramatic. The Nobel prize-winning IPCC team of 3000 world class scientists used this polar bear subpopulation and its responses to declining sea-ice coverage as an important signal in their assessments and modeling of the impacts and projections of/for rapid climate change. As an ecologist, I know that these are great studies over the past 30 years, and that the trends of key population parameters (cub survival, recruitment, adult survival, body condition, and eventually total population estimate) are familiar to any animal population experiencing major stress. It’s not specific to polar bears; most species when experiencing major habitat or population stresses respond in just these ways. That is the forces of nature at work. That's why the miners used the little canary in its cage.

It's December now, and to the amazement of local people and polar bears, and even cautious Arctic scientists, the sea ice has not yet returned to Hudson Bay! It’s late, very late, and so the polar bears who have spent the past five months or so along the coastline without significant fat-rich food , waiting for their sea-ice platform to return, are forced to wait even longer. It's likely that the hungriest, skinniest individuals are starving and desperate.... probably killing the weak and the young. That sea-ice used to be back in early November, then the bears all headed out quickly to catch ringed seals. Polar bears cannot survive on seaweed, berries or dried grass. They are top carnivores, evolved on a high fat diet. They have no option but to catch marine mammals from a stable sea-ice platform. No ice means no bears; it’s as simple as that. And our inattention to the GHG problem is thinning and shrinking the sea-ice at unprecedented rates.

The big question now is whether Canada's leaders are reading these signs, and whether these urgent alarm bells rung by the polar bear will be heeded as heads of state gather in Copenhagen to make decisions that will take care of GHG emissions, and hence the future of not only polar bears and sea-ice, but also the stability of our planet's climate patterns and economies. Perhaps the coal-miners could teach some of the world's leaders a few fundamental lessons about the need to pay serious attention to such biological signs, and then to take very quick actions in response!

Rhino poaching surges in Asia, Africa

From the WWF facebook page

Rhino poaching worldwide is on the rise, according to a new report by TRAFFIC and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The trade is being driven by Asian demand for horns and is made worse by increasingly sophisticated poachers, who now are using veterinary drugs, poison, cross bows and high caliber weapons to kill rhinos, the report states.

Since 2006 the majority (95 percent) of the poaching in Africa has occurred in Zimbabwe and South Africa, according to new data.

“These two nations collectively form the epicentre of an unrelenting poaching crisis in southern Africa,” said Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC.

The report, which was submitted to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ahead of its 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP15) in March, documents a decline in law enforcement effectiveness and an increase in poaching intensity in Africa. The situation is most serious in Zimbabwe where rhino numbers are now declining and the conviction rate for rhino crimes in Zimbabwe is only three percent. Despite the introduction of a number of new measures, poaching and illicit horn trade in South Africa has also increased.

“Concerted action at the highest level is needed to stop this global crisis of rampant rhino poaching,” said Amanda Nickson, Director of the Species Programme at WWF International. “We call on the countries of concern to come to COP 15 in March with specific actions they have undertaken to show their commitment to stopping this poaching and protecting rhinos in the wild.”

The report also raises concerns regarding the low and declining numbers as well as the uncertain status of some of the Sumatran and Javan rhino populations in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

“Sumatran and Javan rhino range countries need to increase efforts to better assess the current status of many of their rhino populations - to enhance field law enforcement efforts - prevent further encroachment and land transformation in rhino areas - and improve biological management of remaining rhinos to ensure the few remaining Sumatran and Javan Rhino numbers increase,” said Dr. Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, Chair of the IUCN/SSC Asian Rhino Specialist Group

Most rhino horns leaving southern Africa are destined for medicinal markets in southeast and east Asia, especially Vietnam, and also China. The report highlights Vietnam as a country of particular concern – noting that Vietnamese nationals operating in South Africa have recently been identified in rhino crime investigations. In addition, concern has been expressed about the status of Vietnam’s single Javan rhino population.

However, the report does note that in some areas populations of rhinos are increasing.

“Where there is political will, dedicated conservation programs and good law enforcement, rhino numbers have increased in both Africa and Asia,” said Dr Richard Emslie, Scientific Officer of IUCN’s African Rhino Specialist Group.

IUCN’s Rhino Specialist Groups and TRAFFIC were mandated to produce the report by CITES. The data collection and report writing for the report was partially funded by WWF and partners.