Giant Tortoise Returns to its Original Galápagos Home

The return of the Floreana giant tortoises to their original home is a win for both the animal and its long-lost island ecosystem. 

The Galápagos Islands are famous for their biodiversity, especially their giant tortoises. But around 180 years ago Floreana Island (part of the Galápagos) lost its unique tortoise, the Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger). After it fell victim to the arrival of sailors, pirates and a host of invasive species, it was thought to be extinct. 

In 2000, however, scientists made a shocking discovery: a population of tortoises 70 miles away on Isabela Island looked strikingly like the Floreana giant tortoise with their telltale saddle-shaped shells. Genetic testing confirmed these were hybrid tortoises descended from Floreana giant tortoises that must have accidentally wound up on the island after being put onboard a ship for food.

Now, for the first time in nearly 200 years, tortoises with Floreana ancestry have returned to Floreana Island, following the release last week of 158 individuals reared in a special captive breeding program.

In the carefully managed breeding program, James Gibbs, vice president of science and conservation for the nonprofit Galápagos Conservancy and his colleagues paired adults collected from Isabela Island based on genetic testing to maximize their offspring’s Floreana ancestry. 

While the resulting animals are not exact genetic replicas of their ancestors, they do carry much of the original Floreana lineage, Gibbs says.

In addition to being a win for the animals themselves, the tortoise’s return will also be a boon for the island, Gibbs says. The tortoise is a what is called a keystone species, dispersing seeds and helping to regenerate forests, so the hope is that its return will begin to push the island more closely toward its original ecological state.

It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes what seems lost forever is simply awaiting the chance to return.

Julian Assange is Free After US Plea Deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (right) was released from a UK prison and making his way back to his home country Australia after his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States ended in a plea deal. 

 

Assange has spent the past five years in UK’s high-security Belmarsh prison and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, trying to avoid arrest that could have led to life imprisonment. 

 

On Monday, the fifty-two-year-old agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge related to his alleged role in one of the largest US government breaches of classified materials after his whistleblowing website published nearly half a million secret military documents relating to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 

The plea deal caps a long-running legal saga, allowing Assange to avoid prison in the US and return to Australia as a free man – but not until he has made a court appearance in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, at 09:00 AM on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday), where he will be sentenced to 62 months of the time already served.

 

Public interest journalism is no crime, and the USA and UK erred big time in pursuing after him. Anyway, his No.1 priority is to get his life back together again.

 

In Ecuadoran Amazon, Butterflies Are a Gauge of Climate Change

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biologists on a trail in the Ecuadoran Amazon hold their breath as they distribute a foul-smelling delicacy to lure butterflies, critical pollinators increasingly threatened by climate change. 

 

A team has hung 32 traps made of green nets, each baited with rotting fish and fermented bananas. They are meant to blend in with the forest canopy. Their pungent odor clearly does not. 

 

Since last August, a team of biologists and park rangers has been monitoring butterfly numbers in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve (in Spanish: Reserva de Producción Faunística Cuyabeno), a park in the northeast area of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest is famed for their abundant flora and fauna. 

 

They catch and document the colorful insects, releasing most with an identifying mark on their wings. Some of them, possibly from previously unknown species, are kept for further study. The results of the team’s work, however, have been discouraging. 

 

Butterflies are “bioindicators”, living organisms whose well-being provides a measure of the health of their surrounding ecosystem, and their numbers are decreasing, biologist Maria Fernanda Checa told AFP. While the number of species may not have declined by more than 10 percent, in terms of absolute butterfly numbers “the decrease is very significant... maybe 40/50 percent”, she said. “It is something that alarms us”.

 

Under expedition leader Elisa Levy, a team checks the nets for captured butterflies. They hold the insects delicately by their tiny abdomens and manipulate their legs and wings with tweezers. 

 

Some are bright red and blue, others have what resemble zebra stripes. Some are see-through, like glass. About three-quarters of fruit- or seed-producing crops for human consumption depend on pollinators, which provide a free service worth billions of dollars. 

 

The UN have warned that 40 percent of invertebrate pollinators – particularly bees and butterflies – risk global extinction, posing certain risks to humanity itself. 

 

Butterflies, said Checa, are “very sensitive, even to small changes in the ecosystem” throughout their short lifespan from egg to caterpillar to reproductive adult. Levy explained that tropical plants – unlike ones in regions with distinct seasons – are not accustomed to extreme weather variations. If they do not adapt to a fast-changing climate, these plants could be lost, along with the butterfly larvae that feed on them.

 

Ecuador, relatively small but extremely biodiverse, hosts about 4,000 butterfly species – nearly as many as its much larger neighbors Peru and Colombia. Yet in places like the Yasuni National Park, which neighbors Cuyabeno, “the rate of species discovery is slower than the rate of extinction”, said Checa. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liverpool brushed off their European disappointment to move up to second in the Premier League – level on points with table-topping Arsenal – after a 3-1 win against Fulham yesterday.

 

The Reds dominated possession but struggled to turn their dominance into goals – until Trent Alexander-Arnold stepped up and curled a glorious free-kick in the 32nd minute. The Cottagers leveled before the break but Ryan Gravenberch's perfectly-measured 20-yard effort flew in off the post to restore the Reds' advantage.

 

Diogo Jota put the contest to bed in the 72nd minute, racing onto Cody Gakpo's pass to fire low into the bottom right-hand corner. 

 

Five more games to go.

Tourists Outnumber Locals Five to One In This Destination

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tourists to the Galapagos Islands will be asked to pay twice as much in entry fees from this year amid concerns that a rise in visitor numbers is putting pressure on the ecologically sensitive destination. 

 

Ecuador’s Ministry of Tourism have announced the new fees, which will take effect on August 01, 2024. The entry fee will go from $100 to $200 for nationals of almost all countries, except for other members of the South American trade bloc Mercosur, which includes Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. Mercosur members will now have to pay $100 per person, up from $50. Children under age two can visit for free, regardless of nationality. This is the first increase in Galapagos entry fees since 1998. 

 

“The Galapagos Islands are not only a national treasure but a global one. It is our collective responsibility to protect and preserve this unparalleled ecosystem for future generations”, Niels Olsen (left), Ecuador’s tourism minister, said in a statement shared with  the Galapagos Conservation Trust. 

 

Olsen added that the additional money will go toward conservation efforts for the islands, which are 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) off the coast of mainland Ecuador. 

 

The Galapagos are a UNESCO World Heritage site comprised of more than 100 islands. The islands, nicknamed a “living museum”, are home to many rare or endangered plants and animals. 

 

Only some 30,000 people live on one of the Galapagos islands, but about 170,000 tourists visit in a typical year. 

 

The Galapagos Conservation Trust, a UK-registered charity focused on promoting conservation and sustainability on the islands, have warned of ecological consequences from rising visitor numbers. 

 

“Recent years have seen worrying growth in the number of visitors to the Islands, driven by a sharp increase in land-based tourism”, they said on their website. “This is pushing waste management systems to the limit, exacerbating water and food insecurity, and increasing the threat of devastating invasive species being introduced to the Islands”. 

 

Celtic reclaimed top spot in the Scottish Premiership yesterday when they beat St Johnstone 3-1.

 

A fortieth-minute header by Kyogo Furuhashi put the former ahead before the Japanese international turned provider for Nicolas Kuhn in the forty-sixth minute. Substitute James Forrest made it three for Celtic before Saints netted a consolation late on in the 81st minute.

 

 

Countries as Supervillains

Start from the premise that there's no such thing as a guiltless country. 

 

We must admit that as human beings, we're some of the foulest and most violent specimens roaming the surface of the Earth. History is mostly filled with villains and monsters – and the truth is that no country is a goody two shoes. 

 

If the world were a wrestling promotion, everyone would be a heel. And so, Lucas Freitas decided to make AI art that personified countries as supervillains. 

 

Here’s a selection: 

 

 

Jane Goodall on Bigfoot

Eminent primatologist and conservationist 87-year-old Jane Goodall (left) has just launched a new initiative called Trees for Jane to restore the world's forests and help stop climate change. 

Sure, this is important and I’ve blogged about the importance of planting trees previously. There is no doubt that tree-planting has become a cornerstone of many environmental campaigns. The call to plant trees is everywhere, seen as a simple and effective way to help reduce the impact of carbon emissions and restore natural ecosystems. 

But in this post, I’m on a different tangent, i.e. the topic of Bigfoot (also commonly referred to as Sasquatch). 

In fact, in a GQ interview this month itself, Goodall has spoken publicly about the possibility that there may be undiscovered primates hiding in remote locations around the globe. Check out her response to the question about the existence of Bigfoot: 

“For various reasons. And I'll tell you one, my most striking one. I was in Ecuador. We'd flown for two solid hours over unbroken forest in a small plane and we visited four tiny little communities. 30 to 50 people, no roads, and they communicate with each other by means of like in the old days – it was the town crier, but these are hunters actually, and they carry the news from one village to another and letters and things like that. So I had an interpreter and I said to him, "When you next meet one of these hunters, could you ask if they've ever seen a monkey without a tail?" Three of the hunters came back and said, "Oh yes. We've seen monkeys without tails. They walk upright and they're about six foot tall". 

Now this was an interpreter from the village. He knew nothing about Bigfoot, nothing at all. Every single country has its version. Yeti, Yowie in Australia, Wild Man in China. So I don't know if it's perhaps a myth that stems from maybe the last of the Neanderthals. But then is the last of the Neanderthals still living in these remote forests? I don't know. But I'm not going to say it doesn't exist and I'm not going to say people who believe in it are stupid”.

Two Malaysian Cities Win Jean Paul L’allier Heritage Prize Award

Melaka and Georgetown, Penang have won the ‘Jean Paul L’allier Prize For Heritage’ award organized by the Organisation of World Heritage Cities. 

The award given out every two years is aimed at recognizing and appreciating cities that had distinguished themselves by their achievements in the conservation, enhancement or management of property inscribed on the World Heritage List.

This proves that the two Malaysian cities are still sitting pretty at the top of the list in terms of heritage cities. 

Other cities that have won the ‘Jean Paul L’allier Prize For Heritage’ are Cidade Velha (Cape Verde), Cuenca (Ecuador), Hue (Vietnam), Krakow (Poland), Kutna Hora (Czech Republic), Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Mexico City (Mexico), Queretaro (Mexico) and Safranbolu (Turkey). 

Celtic had needed loads of perseverance before they could secure a hard-fought Scottish Premiership win against a stubborn Ross County in yesterday’s game. 

They had to wait until the 64th minute, when debutant centerback Cameron Carter-Vickers' long-range strike deflected over the helpless Staggies’ goalie and into the net. This was followed six minutes later when Albian Ajeti headed in to kill the game, before nodding in a third in the eighty-fifth minute. 

The brace certainly put some gloss on the scoreline – but the fact is Celtic had nearly 80 percent possession and just one shot on target. Still the 3-0 triumph earned them a very precious 3 points to move them up to fifth place. 

Latin America Hits 7 Million Cases

Latin America finds itself mired in a desperate situation insofar as Covid-19 is concerned. 

The virulent pathogen is stalking and hurting many countries – and yesterday, it breached the 7-million mark. Its caseload and fatality numbers represent 28.5% and 32.2% of the world total respectively. 

You may be interested to know that among the 12 worst-hit countries in Latin America, they combine to account for 98% and 99% of the region’s total confirmed cases and deaths. And 8 of those countries are among thirty nations from around the world yielding 100,000 cases or more. 

In Malaysia, the residents of Slim, a small, rural, Malay-majority constituency in Perak ensured that BN (actually UMNO) retained 13,060 votes to win the by-election today. It's a 10,945-vote majority.

Mahathir Mohamad’s party, Pejuang which made their debut lost, having secured only 2,115 votes.

Latin America Tops 5 Million Cases

Latin America broke through five million confirmed cases of Covid-19, a Reuters tally showed, underscoring the region's position as the area of the world hardest hit by the pandemic. After all, five of the countries are in the world's Top 12!

It is also noteworthy to mention that the 12 worst-affected Latin American countries account for 98% of the continent's total. 

Elsewhere, India climbed to 1.7 million cases on Saturday, and within a day, added another 100,000 to reach more than 1.8 million.

 

The US tallied 4.8 million cases on Sunday. The Philippines too made further inroads with 100,000 cases on the same day and Iraq accumulated 130,000 yesterday.

 

In fact, the Americas account for 54% of the world total.

 

Today, I received an email which confirms that my scream has just been blasted from speakers placed in Djúpivogur, East Iceland. That's super cool!

[If you don't know what I'm talking about, kindly refer to my blog post “S-C-R-E-A-M” published July 27, 2020. I watched a recording of it at https://lookslikeyouneediceland.com/?share=71f9270d-339e-466a-82de-d66975e5d398].

 

But in my particular case, my scream was heard when it went all the way to Iceland!