Blasting Light Pollution and a Right to Starlight

Due to our light pollution we can only see 150 out of 5000 stars with the naked eye today. To be able to view the sky "should be considered a fundamental socio-cultural and environmental right", according to the International Astronomical Union.

Life evolved between heaven and earth. Ancient civilisations observed constellations in the sky with their naked eye for eons. Stargazing took place in ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican civilizations, Aboriginal Australia , the Pacific and many other places. The observation of natural phenomena shaped human society, their knowledge and the landscape. Astronomy and technology developed further thanks to a dark and observable sky.

After 'the candle' and gas, electrification illuminated the industrial world in the 19th Century to work 'around the clock'. Rapid urbanisation followed at lightning speed. Aggregations of people blocked the universe out to get on with business. Networked mega cities glow 24/7, illuminating the Earth. Speeding navigation in the sky, on the waters or on the terrestial zones relies on artificial 'stars' that guide us through augmented reality. Bright billboards inform us of our desires while drifting through light tunnels. Dwellings are show cased by bright lights, announcing their presence to the universe, or prospective buyers.More (of the same) is always better, so it is with light. Perception and orientation function better with more watts. No one wants to be kept in the dark. The absence of light is more concerning than the end of energy and water on the planet. Dark is just so dark.

Ineffective lighting design and unnecessary illumination is wasting energy and water. Light pollution is also negatively affecting humans, flora and fauna.The legacy of a degraded sky is an irrevocable loss for living beings on earth. Future generations will be deprived of a social right of 'being in the universe' that all previous generations had enjoyed.

More on
Light Pollution, delicious
More on Light pollution, Mnly Blog

Images:
Milky Way, via Zeno
Vincent Willem van Gogh, The Cafe Terrace, 1888, via Zeno
Vincent Willem van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone, with gas lighting, 1888 via Zeno

Camels - Invasive Species in Australia and Aerial Shooting

The dromedary or Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius) was introduced in 1840 to the driest inhabited continent, Australia. As a beast of burden (images) it was to carry heavy loads and cross the dry and inhospitable lands. Their water-conserving abilities made them suitable as "draught and pack animals for exploration and construction of rail and telegraph lines; they were also used to supply goods to remote mines and settlements." Together with Muslim cameleers they pioneered inland routes of arid Australia from 1860s - 1930s.

The arrival of petrol powered motor vehicles in the 1920s made the work animal obsolete. Many were killed, but some escaped and prospered without predators. Today they are an invasive species in a desert ecosystem, constituting a threat to biodiversity.
Anthropogenic climate changes, permanent drought and increasing desertification are a stress for settlers, their stock, wildlife and feral animals. The camels are seeking the watering places where humans and their stock have settled. They are "tearing down fences and smashing troughs to get at water.""Camels are also an increasing hazard to motorists traversing outback roads."

They are to be culled in national parks and on pastoral leases. It will cost AS $19m to fire at them from helicopters, as was done in the aerial predator control programme shooting wolfs in the same way. Contraceptives are thought of as too ineffective as they would still have time to trample vegetation. Selling the meat in controlled harvest is also thought of as not feasible.

There is no doubt, invasive species have to be limited or eradicated from Australia, but is this method the most appropriate one?

Questions remain:
What is being done about live stock 'trampling' water courses and National Parks etc?
What is being done about epidemic populations of dogs and cats going feral?
What is being done about selling exotic flora and fauna?
What is being done about smuggling exotic flora and fauna?
What is being done about peak oil mobility in a desert environment?
What is being done about the many off-road vehicles in the 'outback', 'trampling' the landscape and biodiversity?

Camel season opens in Australia, The Great Beyond August 12, 2009

Images:
Pisanello, Dromedary, 1425–1450 via Zeno
Camel, Abû Sa'îd 'Ubaydallâh ibn Bakhtîshû, Persian Master, 1297-1299, via Zeno

Depriving Other Species of the Right to Live on Earth

Depriving other species of the right to a habitat on planet Earth:

The Polar bear and the Pacific walrus in Alaska are disappearing due to our actions.

"Both species are imperiled due to the loss of their sea-ice habitat due to global warming, oil and gas development, and unsustainable harvest...Polar bears and walrus are under severe threat, and unless we act rapidly to reduce greenhouse pollution and protect their habitat from oil development, we stand to lose both of these icons of the Arctic"

Via Center for Biological Diversity (2009, June 19). Polar Bear And Walrus Populations In Trouble, Stock Assessment Report Suggests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 20, 2009

The report by the Marine Mammals Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the walrus and the Polar bear.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Study of the landscape, natural resources, and natural hazards of Alaska
The Cryposphere Today

Image: American Photographer, 1898 Alaska Goldfever stampede via Zeno

Shooting Wombats

The ancestor of the wombat, the diprotodon "existed from 1.6 million years ago until about 40,000 years ago". The 2.5 tonne wombat-like Diprotodon was 1.8 metres tall and 3.5 metres long. Kangaroos reached 2.5m height at that time.

The wombat today is a surviving shrunk-down version of this mega fauna. 100 % vegetarian, it eats mainly grasses and roots. Home is a burrow which they defend fiercely.

The problem today is, that they are running out of a habitat, or it is fragmented and criss-crossed by roads and dangerous vehicles. Additionally, it has to compete with all the invasive species that have been introduced to Australia.

Formally protected in its habitat, mainly 'National Parks', it seems ignorant of human real estate and wanders great distances to be a wombat. Private landholders of the South Coast and Southern Highland do not wish to share and asked to shoot the 'intruders'. 'Property damage' was a 'knock-me-dead' argument to the wombat's guardians, the National Parks and they handed out 200 licences to shoot the marsupials this year. "Most of these shooting licences are restricted to 10 or 20 animals and that can be the whole wombat population that is on a particular farm"

Soon tourists wishing to see the iconic wildlife of the area, will only be able to view the impeccable fences and pipes of private properties. An alternative would be to bestow effective protection on to the native fauna and require, vineyards and other private enterprises to install appropriate fences to signal their unwillingness to share the land with the indigenous fauna.

Update:
And the slaughter continues:
'Farmers are illegally slaughtering thousands of wombats in South Australia. Burrows of southern hairy-nosed wombats are being bulldozed or blown up on Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas and in the Murraylands. Farmers can get permits to destroy a few wombats, but that it not a licence to wipe out the entire population. Mass killings with petrol bombs or bulldozing'.. abc 011009

Images:
1. Wombat and Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), lithograph, 1878, via Wikimedia Commons
2. John Gould, Vombatus ursinus,"Mammals of Australia", Vol. I Plate 55, 1863, via Wikimedia Commons

Strangling and Piercing Fur Seals 'Unintentionally' with Fishing Gear

Fur Seals were killed during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to lubricate human progress. In proud defiance the glorious deeds are continued today, despite the marine mammals protected status.
It is common practice in Australia in the 21 Century to shoot the sea creature with bullets or arrows. Recently a pair emptied 100 bullets in an hour into a fur seal colony on Canowa Island near Wilson's Promontory. If not intentionally eradicated, then they are apparently "unintentionally" pierced, strangled and cut up by the marine debris left by mind-less "recreational" fishing people. Here is one example from Victoria's Bass Coast:

"Over the past 10 years, seal rescue crews have found more than three entangled seals for each day they spend researching the colonies...Thirty-one seals were found entangled in discarded fishing debris at Seal Rocks in the year to June 2008. The shark hooks were embedded deep. One was lodged in the side of the seal's head; the other was caught in the underside of its tongue. It looked like it had a bridle on because it had these two hooks through its head and a wire trace." connecting between them...Material like fishing line starts to wear its way into the seal pretty quickly, then they get wounds opening up and they can die of dehydration because they've got these big open wounds weeping all the time. Squid jigs and hooks create the most gruesome scenes, while recent missions have also found seals trapped in a pair of fisherman's overalls and another seal was found sporting a degraded baseball cap."

The fin-footed mammals escaping fishing debris have to deal with other human 'debris, toxic pollution and oil spills'.

Toothless 'appeals' do not pose effective conservation of the species. Make "recreational taking" with such a high by-kill rate illegal in wildlife protected areas and densely populated areas. Enforce the law, otherwise the 'ecotourism' industry will get to see 'Seal Rocks' in name only, as it is so common in Australia.
Images:
1. Baldung Grien, Hans, 1516 (altered) via Zeno
2. Skeleton of a seal, A. Brehm, (altered) via Zeno

Leatherback Turtles out of a Habitat

For 100 million years the giant leatherback turtle (Dermochelyidae) swam in the warm and open oceans and sought to lay its eggs on a beach. It can get up to 3m long, can weigh up to 550 to 1,545 pounds (250-700 kg). The dinosaurs, came and went, but the largest living sea turtle continued on its long migration paths. One has been recorded swimming 20,000-kilometers (13,000-miles), from Indonesia to the U.S. looking for food. It loves eating jellyfish and other marine invertebrates. The the human species expanded and robbed it of all of its habitat.

The Beaches ashore - no place to nest

• Beachfront developments, infrastructure and the activities of people destroy their habitat
• SUVs on beaches damage the eggs and light pollution disorients the hatchling orientation.
• Poaching turtles, eggs, leather or oil or commercializing the 'out-door zoo' is devastating
• Nesting beaches are disappearing through human caused global warming-induced sea level rises and cyclone destruction.

At the Ocean of foreshore - a dangerous place to be

• It becomes bycatch/bykill through ineffective fishing activities (longline and gillnet, crab pots and trawls)( "An estimated 50 000 leatherback turtles were likely killed incidentally by the pelagic longline fishery in 2000".)
• It gets eaten as meat or used as an aphrodisiac to boost the human population
• It gets entangled or injured in the marine plastic debris form the fishing industry (lines, fishing hooks, nets, ropes, floats or traps)
• It eats the plastic litter (especially plastic bags, as they look like a jelly under water) and dies.
• Boats and ships strike it and cut up the soft 'shell' with sharp propellers and anchors contributed to the mortality of the turtle.
• Pollution and pathogenic bugs (sewage) dumped into the ocean impact on the health of the turtle
• Urban shark nets trap turtles
• Deliberate acts of cruelty by human beings
• Sea grass depletion and reduced water quality

No Place to Live

• In Baja California, Mexico," almost 3,000 sea turtles were found dead along a 27-mile stretch of coast during a five-year period from 2003 to 2007."
• "Leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean have declined by more than 90% over the past three decades as a result of drowning in industrial longline and gillnet fisheries targeting swordfish, sharks, and tunas."
• "Nesting in the Pacific (principally Japan and Australia) has declined by more than 90 percent over the past 25 years."

Swimways - lobbying for turtle real estate
To reduce the risks for the sea turtle in "areas of highest risk/interaction with fisheries" 'safe swimways' are to be created. "The IUCN is urging nations to protect the leatherback turtle from the world's industrial fisheries by identifying and creating marine protected areas along the Pacific leatherback's migratory routes. " It is to be seen what coastal habitat is put aside for the giant to reproduce and not hit the extinction vortex.
A giant jelly bloom in a dead sea is sure to be left behind without the jelly eater. "If current trends continue, Pacific leatherbacks are predicted to go extinct within the next few decades...Now it's time to turn the high-tech science into political will and conservation action for critically endangered leatherbacks."

Images:
1. Part of Chelonia, E.Haeckel via Wikipedia
2. Discomedusa, plate 8, E.Haeckel via Zeno

Links:
SWOT Report, The State of the World's Sea Turtles
As a Threatened Species, NSW
Conservation Status, gov.au
Tagging (attaching huge radio transmitters on their backs) to hopefully go beyond the gathering of hard 'census' data.
How NOT to eat turtle as a bycatch/bykill
Boat strike and entanglement, Queensland.gov.au.

Updates:
- In the name of conservation, 'hard data' has to be gathered on the species to be protected. Previously animals had to be cut up, stuffed and staged in dusty museums. The mode of the day is to tag them or 'observe them in captivity'. So it is that the 100 million years survivor, potentially making it to the size of a small car is serving science today. The leatherback is being kept for 2 years in captivity with a rubber harness to "generated new information crucial for the conservation of the critically endangered species." On the human-wildlife interface, it is only the 'wild-life' that serves as object to be managed. The anthropogenic values and impacts are not on the agenda. The human can continue to roam and erase the other species unhindered in their habitat. A 'blind spot' of 'science' ?
Howard, Peter, The Beast Within: An Exploration of Australian Constructions of Wildlife, Griffith University, 2007
Soft Rubber Harness Enables Researchers To Study Leatherback Turtles In Captivity For Years. University of British Columbia (2008, November 1) ScienceDaily.

Shooting Endangered Eagles

Shooting endangered birds on South Australia's west coast:
"Two white-bellied sea eagles and a juvenile coastal raptor have been found with bullet wounds near Searcy Bay, Ceduna and Port Fowler in the past three weeks. In the case of the white-bellied sea eagle, we know that there are only about 50 breeding pairs left in South Australia so they're a very endangered species" abc 171008
Image: C. Spitzweg, Shooter of Eagles, 1875 via Zeno

Update: Birds of prey killed illegally in Scotland: 69 in 2007. "Of these, 37 were confirmed as pesticide or poison abuse killing or threatening raptors...Carbofuran, an agricultural pesticide which has been banned since December 2001, was used in 30 out of the 37 confirmed cases. There were also 78 reports of other types of persecution, such as nest destruction, traps and shooting incidents, down on 85 in 2006." BBC 1108
- Ingestion of Spent Lead Ammunition:Implications for Wildlife and Humans, 2008 ( of blinded eagles starving due to lead)

Water and Desalination Factories by M. Barlow

Maude Barlow speaking about water and desalination plants in May 2008.

"Desalination plants will ring the world's oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities who will sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remote parts of the world left or sucked from the clouds by machines, while the poor die in increasing numbers. This is not science fiction. This is where the world is headed unless we change course."

Her book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water – (October 16, 2007) is a very readable and an informative insight on the expropriation of water. From water as a right to water only to be delivered in the commodity form for those who can pay.
There are also more videos of her talks
- Door Wide Open for Private Investment in the Water Industry, Department of Water and Energy, NSW gov. au, 080808

'World Animal Day' - Facing the Animal within

Is is "world animal day" today. One day to "To celebrate humankind’s relationship with the animal kingdom". The WAD is out there visualising what 'animals' means, namely dogs. In Sydney it is spelled out as: "...dogs, cats, ferrets, birds and mice" which are to be brought by pet owners to be given a blessing. Animals requiring their own habitat seem to be excluded. Only 'pets', degenerated lineages, richly bestowed with resources are to be 'blessed'.
The rest, not at our command, are pushed off the degraded planet. Mostly robbed of a habitat and resources, 'wild'-life is being made extinct by our actions on this planet.

Tolerated 'wild-life' in captivity, generating revenues, is frequently violated by young human beings. In the latest case, a seven-year-old boy illegally entered a N.T. zoo, " bludgeoned some of the animals to death with stones and hurled others over the two fences surrounding the crocodile enclosure...A turtle, four Western blue-tongued lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and the zoo's 20-year-old goanna were among those killed....The fact a seven-year-old can wreak so much havoc in such a short time, it's unbelievable," said the zoo director. They are looking at suing the parents.

Going wild in the wild
Many formally protected native animals get violated in their remaining fragmented habitat. Just some of the recent hate crimes:

The Koala

• A group of young humans at a park in Kallangur:"It had a crushed skull, a punctured left eye, big trauma to the left side of its body, it had a broken right arm and when I asked the vet is this consistent with clubbing or bashing or whatever they said, yes," Brisbane, 0808
• Koala bashed to death, mutilated (leg removed), Clear Mountain property, south-east Queensland.0808
• An adult firing a slingshot at a protected Koala, Adelaide, 0908
• A 19-year-old rammed his ute into a tree at the Barmah State Park, north-east of Echuca, trying to dislodge a koala from a branch.Victoria 0908

Kangaroos

• "Five western grey kangaroos have been found shot and dumped at a rubbish tip in Adelaide's south."near a National Park, Adelaide, 1008
• A youth using a young kangaroo as a punching bag, knocking it unconscious, Western Australia, 0908

Birds

• Cruelty against seabirds, pelicans are being deliberately snared with nylon fishing line and hooks.: "Local children who have been throwing rocks and trying to actually catch the pelicans with hooks."These birds have a lot of hooks in them, but one of the things that have really stuck out are the number of injuries to their pouch and head from ... local children we understand, from people around the area" Eurobodalla, 0808 It is not just an unintentional 'accident' of 'recreational' fishing.
• "We've had a number of bird poisonings and possum poisonings and that horrific case where a crow had its wing sawn off at the shoulder and was left to hop around a shopping centre in Sinnamon Park - I mean you just have to wonder what's going through the minds of these people" SE Queensland 08

These are just a few examples of hate crimes committed by individuals/ groups against iconic and 'protected' creatures of Australia. There is also the systemic culling, shooting, sterilising, poisoning (baiting) etc of wild-life as a form of 'management'. It is a mystery why Australians seem to have so much hate for their iconic native animals and pamper foreign animals. But often, they too get sadistically abused, dogs get burnt, horses raced to death.
Cruelty against pets is also right up. "Animal cruelty by children is correlated with exposure to domestic violence". Working on the mental health of young human beings prevents not only cruelty against pets and Australian animals, but also is a good strategy to prevent violence between human beings.

Still, the ever expanding sprawl of industrialised human society is pushing the animal kingdom off the planet. Animals that are commercialisable or are obedient to our whimsical wills may stay for a while longer. The next round is for humankind’s relationship with the animal within themselves and others.

Images:
1. Bruegel d. Ä., Jan: Paradise 1620, via Zeno
2. Haeckel, Ernst: Plate 79: Lacertilia. Lizards via Zeno
3. Blake, William,1819, Tate Gallery,via Zeno

Links:
World Conservation Union
The Encyclopedia of Life
The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi

Updates:
- Almost one in four mammals are at risk of disappearing forever, according to the latest comprehensive assessment. IUCN 061008
- "Australia a key culprit. One in five Australian mammal species is in danger of dying out, the highest proportion of any developed country, the global survey of more than 44,000 animal and plant species found." SMH 061008

- "We've seen over 30 extinctions in Queensland since records were kept, we've got 151 endangered plants, 51 endangered animals, we've got 220 endangered regional ecosystems, so Queensland has really got to get going to stop a tidal wave of extinctions.They'll go extinct on massive scales, many times above the natural level of extinction...The current rates of extinction that are caused by people are 20 or more times the natural rate of extinction." abc 071008
- Dolphins are being lured with fish, then attacked by local youths in Whyalla in South Australia. The dolphins were tame because of human feeding. Youths dropped rocks on the marine mammals. abc 151008
- A killed platypus, an endangered lungfish and other fish were found dead in an illegal net...along Obi Obi Creek near Kenilworth. Maroochidore.The EPA is calling on the public for help. abc 171008

- "Sickening" attacks on endangered birds on South Australia's west coast:
"Two white-bellied sea eagles and a juvenile coastal raptor have been found with bullet wounds near Searcy Bay, Ceduna and Port Fowler in the past three weeks. In the case of the white-bellied sea eagle, we know that there are only about 50 breeding pairs left in South Australia so they're a very endangered species " abc 171008
- An 80 years old, blind flamingo in a zoo has been bashed by a 17 yo ,18 yo and 19 yo persons in the middle of the day. The animal is in a critical condition. Adelaide. Do we need to cage animals to protect them from human beings ? abc 301008 >The flamingo has survived, but is so traumatised that all food is refused. The Adelaide Zoo is considering higher fences to protect the animals from violent human beings. abc 021108

Pelican Shooting in a Coastal Wildlife Reserve

A pelican, a protected Australian species (Pelecanus conspicillatus) has been shot by 'hunters' in the Shoal Bay Coastal Reserve in the Northern Territory. In another catchment reserve another ' hunter' has been fined $ 330 as he was caught with a lead shot. About the effects of this heavy metal on birds and the environment Folly has reported before. Elsewhere Albatrosses and Pelicans are dying from human caused eutrophication.
Via abc 021008
Image: altered, Brockhaus image, via Zeno
Videos: Pelicans