Climate change is a significant and emerging threat to public health, and changes the way we must look at protecting vulnerable populations.

The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed that there is overwhelming evidence that humans are affecting the global climate, and highlighted a wide range of implications for human health. Climate variability and change cause death and disease through natural disasters, such as heatwaves, floods and droughts. In addition, many important diseases are highly sensitive to changing temperatures and precipitation. These include common vector- borne diseases such as malaria and dengue; as well as other major killers such as malnutrition and diarrhoea. Climate change already contributes to the global burden of disease, and this contribution is expected to grow in the future. (more…)

Sirajul Hossain

A leading daily newspaper published news about the death of two Bengal tigers (panthera tigris tigris) in Sunderban mangrove during research by anesthesia and radio-collaring (Prothom Alo, January 31, 2008). According to the news the first tigress was captured around end April 2005 and died six months later having the collar on. The second tigress captured in March 2006 and second time tranquilized in December 2006 to remove the collar. The BBC film crew captured this second tranquilizing sequence of near dead tigress and added it to the film “Ganges” and now showing worldwide the last scenes of that pathetic tigress. The tigress assumed dead immediately afterwards.

The research project was initiated about four years back by Bangladesh Forest Department. James. L. D. Smith, Professor, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology of The University of Minnesota appointed as a consultant and Adam Barlow, a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Biology Program is engaged in the field research. The project effectively started its field activities in February 2005. They claimed that the idea for creating such a project was first developed during a field survey in 2001 conducted by Md. Osman Gani, Ishtiaq U. Ahmad, James L. D. Smith and K. Ullas Karanth1. (more…)

What was once seen as the solution to all our CO2 problems, the ability of trees to soak up anthropogenic carbon dioxide, has itself been hindered by global warming.

A 20-year analysis of 30 sites in the frozen north has discovered that trees ability to take in CO2 is weakening. Whereas once it was assumed that just by planting more trees we could slow down the climate change tide. These results tell us unquestionably that we need to stop passing the buck, and stop creating CO2.
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Scientific name: Columba livia

Alternate name: Rock Dove

Family: Columbidae, Pigeons and Doves

Description 13 1/2″ (34 cm). The common pigeon of towns and cities. Chunky, with short rounded tail. Typically bluish-gray with 2 narrow black wing bands and broad black terminal tail band; white rump. There are many color variants, ranging from all white through rusty to all black.

Habitat City parks, suburban gardens, and farmlands.

Nesting 2 white eggs in a crude nest lined with sticks and debris, placed on a window ledge, building, bridge, or cliff.

Voice Soft guttural cooing

Discussion Everyone knows Rock Pigeons, or domestic pigeons, as city birds that subsist on handouts or country birds that nest in pigeon cotes on farms. Few have seen them nesting in their ancestral home-cliff ledges or high among rocks. Over the centuries, many strains and color varieties have been developed in captivity through selective breeding. Since pigeons have been accused of carrying human diseases, there have been several attempts to eradicate them from our cities, but they are so prolific that little progress has been made in this endeavor.

source: enature.com

OSLO (Reuters) - Deforestation in a single Indonesian province is releasing more greenhouse gases than the Netherlands, and the loss of habitats is threatening rare tigers and elephants, the WWF conservation group said on Wednesday.

It said that Riau province, covering one fifth of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, had lost 65 percent of its forests in the past 25 years as companies used the land for pulpwood and palm oil plantations. Big peat swamps had also been cleared.

The changes meant Riau was “generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands,” according to the report by WWF and partners RSS GmbH — a German forest monitoring group — and Japan’s Hokkaido University.

At the same time, the number of Sumatran elephants and tigers in the province plunged as the forests vanished, it said. (more…)

Some pics taken with mobile phone camera k750i

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh will seek emergency funds from the World Heritage Center to restore the ecosystem and biodiversity of the Sundarban mangrove forest, badly mauled by last month’s killer cyclone, officials said on Wednesday.

Cyclone Sidr, which struck the Bangladesh coast on November 15 with winds of 250 kph (155 mph), killed around 3,500 people, made millions homeless and destroyed a large part of the Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to the Royal Bengal Tiger.

Forest officials said they had found two dead tigers and several deer following the cyclone, the worst to hit Bangladesh since 1991, when a storm killed around 143,000 people.
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As warming temperatures push organisms to seek cooler climates at ever-higher altitudes, habitat areas are shrinking, putting many species of plants and animals at risk. This trend could have particularly dire consequences for the world’s bird populations, according to a new report in the journal Conservation Biology. “It’s like an escalator to extinction,” says lead author Cagan Sekercioglu, a senior research scientist with the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. “As a species is forced upwards and its elevational range narrows, the species moves closer to extinction.”

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