Poachers put Balkan lynx on brink of extinction

GALICICA MOUNTAIN, Macedonia (AFP) – The camera sits hidden in a field ready to track every move of the Balkan lynx, a wild cat both revered as an icon and reviled as a pest that has teetered on extinction for nearly a century.

"The lynx has no natural enemy except man," said Georgi Ivanov, an ecologist working on a project to monitor lynx numbers in western Macedonia's Galicica National Park, where 30 such cameras have been set up.

Poaching is one of the biggest threats to the survival of this Balkan subspecies of the European lynx, the largest wild cat found on the continent.

Though its overall numbers are uncertain, they seem to hover dangerously around the 100 scientists say are needed for their population to remain stable.

In Albania and Macedonia, foreign experts put their number at less than 80 though local counterparts say there are fewer than 40. The estimates in neighbouring Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia are even worse.

Lynx are killed by villagers in the impoverished region mainly for their prized fur, a spotted golden-brown. But dwindling forests and a lack of prey are also factors in their decline, experts say.

"The main cause of the extinction threat is illegal hunting, as well as environmental destruction and, above all, uncontrolled forest cutting," said biologist Dime Melovski of the Macedonian Ecological Society.

The monitoring scheme is also underway in Mavrovo National Park, also in western Macedonia, and in Albania in cooperation with the Swiss-based research group KORA, Germany's Euronatur and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA).

Adeptly maneuvering his jeep along Mount Galicica's winding roads, Zoran Celakovski said members of the Ohrid Hunting Society, which he heads, are also doing their part to protect the Balkan lynx.

"We have information that there are some lynx here so we help the ecologists in their work, patrols and file-keeping," he said.

In addition to determining the cats' status, via camera date, research and interviews, the project aims to establish protected areas for the animal and help local authorities develop a conservation strategy. It is due to wind up at the end of 2009, Melovski said.

Long seen as an unofficial national symbol in Macedonia, the Balkan lynx -- whose scientific denomination is "lynx lynx martinoi" -- features on both a postal stamp and a coin. With a short tail, long legs, and thick neck, its defining characteristic may be the striking tufts of hair on both ears. They grow to an average one metre (three feet) in length and 65 centimetres (two feet) in height and can weigh up to 25 kilograms (55 pounds).

The wild cat prey mainly on roe deer, the mountain goat-like chamois and hares, but never attack its greatest threat -- human beings.

Although hunting lynx is punishable by prison terms of up to eight years, poachers continue to pursue the animal with impunity, knowing that no one has ever been prosecuted for doing so.

Lynx-advocates like Macedonian ecologist Aleksandar Stojanov have been pushing to have areas where the cat roams proclaimed as national parks, to "reduce threats and increase the number of protected mountainous areas".

Raising awareness among villagers is also needed, he said. Local lore holds that lynx are "pests that kill livestock and that is why they do not like it."

"But our data has shown that in only four cases has the animal actually caused any damage, and it was minimal," said Stojanov.

Experiments in other parts of Europe have been encouraging. Conservationists reintroduced wild lynx to Switzerland after its eradication there at the end of the 19th century, raising the population to 140 in the last two decades.

Similar action has seen the lynx population recover in the Baltics, in the Carpathian mountains that run from Slovakia to Romania, and in Scandinavia.

Some experts involved in the Balkans project, like John Linnell of NINA, warn this success might be difficult to repeat here because "poaching is obviously a factor that is limiting their ability to recover."

Another, Manuela von Arx of KORA, stressed that improving law enforcement and stepping up efforts to educate locals about the animal was the key to the Balkan lynx' survival.

"Legal protection is meaningless if violations are not persecuted," she said in a statement.

"In the long run co-existence between large carnivores and people can only be achieved and secured if the local people and land users are willing to tolerate animals such as the Balkan lynx in their vicinity.

Rarest Animals in the World

The Pinta Island tortoise - Without argument, this turtle is one of the few species of Giant Galapagos tortoises and the rarest animal in the world since there is only one left alive. Lonesome George is the sole surviving member of the Pinta Island race, the giant tortoise being a symbol for the fragility of the Galapagos islands, and a constant reminder for vigilence and conservation of the species. The species was considered extinct until 1971, when a lone example was located by rangers. Since then, the Charles Darwin Research Station has been searching for a female tortoise, even posting a reward of $10,000 to those that find one.




Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) - With no more than a few tens of individuals, the dolphin is one of the world’s rarest mammals, and a victim of China’s breakneck economic growth, competing for food with the human beings. It has been driven to extinction due to the activity in 50 years, this being the fourth time when an entire evolutionary line of mammals has vanished from the face of the Earth since the year 1500. The main reason for this fact are the numerous dams and barrages, built starting in the 1930’s, that have fragmented the population and reduced the amount of available habitat. There are news that the species is functionally extinct, experts still searching for members of the species. Fingers crossed!



The Vancouver Island Marmot - This marmot is found only in the high mountainous regions of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, the Canadian Species at Risk Act listing it as endangered in May 2000. In 1998, the population reached an all-time low of 75 individuals, a captive breeding programme being started during that time. In captivity, there are around 90 Vancouver Island marmots in four breeding facilities, while an estimated 30 members of this species live in the wild ibn 2004. The ultimate goal is to restore a sustainable population of 400-600 Vancouver Island marmots in the wild, so there’s still much to be done. 2005 was a successful year, with 150 individuals in captivity and over 44 pups born.



Seychelles Sheath-tailed Bat - Inhabiting the central granitic islands of the Seychelles Islands north of Madagascar, the bat is part of our list, being one of the most endangered animals since fewer than 100 are believed to exist in the world. It was once commonly found in Seychelles, but the species has undergone a dramatic decline in population during the mid to late 20th century. More research needs to be done in order to understand how the species behave and what needs to be done in order to save them. Scientists believe that, with a heavy amount of effort, 500 individuals may be sufficient to guarantee long-term persistence of the population.



Javan Rhino - This scarce animal is one of the rhino species with fewer than 60 animals surviving in only two known locations: one in Indonesia and the other in Vietnam. Though once widespread throughout Asia, by the 1930’s the rhinoceros was nearly hunted to extinction in Peninsular Malaysia, India, Burma and Sumatra. It was poached for its horn, that is believed to have medicinal uses, and driven to extinction to the intense agricultural practices. Even with all the conservation efforts, the Javan rhinoceros’ chance of survival is small: the population is reduced, hence there are risks of disease and inbreeding.



Hispid hare - Also called the “bristly rabbit”, this hare has been recorded along the southern foothills of the Himalayan mountain chain, Nepal, , Bengal, and Assam. Deforestation, cultivation, and human settlement had the most negative impact on the species, isolating the rabbits in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. This animal was feared extinct in 1964, but in 1966, one was spotted. There were an estimated 110 hispid hares worldwide in 2001, numbers continuing to plunge due its unsuccessful adaptation to captivity.



Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat - In the 19th century this species of wombat was present in New South Wales and Victoria but now can only be found in a small national park near Epping Forest Station in tropical Queensland. While this area has been protected as a National Park, the native grasses that the wombat eats are overtaken by non-indigenous plants. The Northern hairy-nosed wombat is the rarest Australian marsupial, and probably the world’s rarest large mammal. In the latest population study, there are an estimated 113 (range 96 to 150) individual. A major recovery program is underway, funded by the Queensland and Commonwealth governments to the tune of $250,000 per year.



Tamaraw (Dwarf Water Buffalo) - Found in the the island of Mindoro in the Philippines, the tamaraw is the only endemic Phillipine bovine. In 1900 there were an estimated 10,000 tamaraw on Mindoro, 120 in 1975, 370 in 1987 . It was declared critically endangered species in 2000 by the World Conservation Union and remained so until today, being threatened by agriculture, hunting or disease brought by domestic species. The current population was estimated in 2002 at a number between 30 and 200 individuals. Although protected by law, the illegal capture and killing of this species continues to occur.



Iberian Lynx - The Lynx, the most endangered of the world’s 36 cats, stands on the edge of extinction. This lynx was once distributed over the entire Iberian Peninsula but now its area is severely restricted in Andalusia. Threatened by destruction of habitat and of its prey, the cat was killed by traps set for rabbits or hit by cars as the number of roads increase. The Spanish Government is now in the process of developing a national conservation effort to save the Iberian Lynx. Studies from March 2005 have estimated the number of Lynx to be as few as 100, down from about 400 in 2000. On March 29, 2005, the birth of 3 cubs, the first born in captivity, was announced, a hope for the future reintroduction of the species.



Red Wolf - This wolf is a smaller and a more slender cousin of the gray wolf, historically ranging from southeastern United States to Florida and Texas. Now, their home is the 1.7 million acres throughout northeastern North Carolina, including Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Only 20 pure red wolves were estimated in 1980, however the number increased to 207 captive red wolves, found in 38 captive breeding facilities across the United States. With the successful breeding programs, over 100 red wolves currently live in the wild.



Dwarf Blue Sheep - The Dwarf Blue Sheep or Dwarf Bharal Pseudois schaeferi is an endangered species of caprid found in China and Tibet. The dwarf blue sheep population in the world has declined to a total of 70–200 individuals, currently being listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The species is hunted, and in their limited range cannot escape from humans and livestock. As of 1997, China did not recognize them as a seperate species so efforts to conserve the species have not been initiated.

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If you think scorpions are scary, just take a look at this guy.

Named Schinderhannes bartelsi, it was found in fossilized form in a German quarry, and dates to 390 million years ago.

That's about 100 million years after the extinction of the last known animal to sport what's technically known as a "great appendage" — a giant claw growing out of its head.

But there it is, right between S. bartelsi's eyes: a great appendage.

If great appendage-bearing creatures survived 100 million years longer than we realized, then maybe they didn't die out.

Maybe they evolved — and come to think of it, scorpion claws look an awful lot like great appendages.

But if scorpions are a sign of ancient times, then S. bartelsi's discovery, announced Thursday in Science, contains an unfortunate sign of our own times: with business slumping, the quarry in which it was found has closed.

Citation: A Great-Appendage Arthropod with a Radial Mouth from the Lower Devonian Hunsrück Slate, Germany." By Gabriele Kühl, Derek E. G. Briggs and Jes Rus. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5915, Feb. 5, 2009.

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Giving ancient Islam its due

In the 12th century, a Mesopotamian known as Al-Jazari invented mechanical devices that represent history's first robots - more than 200 years before Leonardo da Vinci sketched a design for a humanoid automaton. A few decades later, Egyptian doctor and theologian Ibn Nafis described the human circulatory system, almost 400 years before English doctor William Harvey published similar work.

These are but two examples of the huge advances that Islamic civilization contributed to science and technology during a golden age usually dated from the eighth to 13th centuries. It's these achievements that are celebrated in Sultans of Science, an informative if intellectually limited exploration of the topic now showing at the Ontario Science Centre.

Happily, this is an exhibition full of fascinating facts about the history of science and technology, peopled by such intriguing characters as Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral who first depicted the Atlantic coast of the Americas on a map in 1513, and Abbas bin Firnas, of Cordoba, Spain, who strapped wings to his body to make the first recorded human flight, in the ninth century.

Divided into brief sections on optics, astronomy, flight, exploration, mathematics, medicine, architecture, mechanics and hydrology, the show contains replicas of historical manuscripts and instruments. There is also a wide assortment of interactive gizmos, including a model of an early astrolabe, water wheels that will splash the visitor as they explain early Middle Eastern systems for bringing moisture to parched fields and thirsty cities, and an exercise in optics in which the hand proves incapable of tracing a pattern reflected in a mirror.

The centrepiece is a reproduction of Al-Jazari's famous elephant clock. Comprising an Indian elephant with a Moorish castle on his back encircled by two Chinese serpents, the famous clock is presented here both as a symbol of Islam's multicultural reach and its ingenuity: The device uses a float in a water chamber hidden inside the animal's body to trigger the timekeeping mechanism.

Sadly, this is also a show that insists, quietly but emphatically, that there is some kind of cultural contest in global history, and that these guys were the winners of their day.

The problem is that this exhibition, originally created for a shopping mall in Dubai in 2006 by the themed-architecture firm MTE Studios, is not a scholarly exercise: Your first clue is its repeated use of the term "Dark Ages" to describe the state of Europe at the time. Contemporary historians now largely eschew those words. Certainly, the Islamic world was civilization's bridge between the ancient world and the Renaissance, but how exactly learning was communicated from Islam to Europe is a question largely ignored here.

Europe was hardly "stagnating in the Dark Ages," if the medical canon written by Persian doctor Ibn Sina (or Avicenna) in the 11th century was widely enough known in the West to become a standard medical text there, as the exhibit tells us. And if the organizers are going to insinuate that the English doctor Harvey plagiarized Nafis, as they do, it would help if they talked a bit about the spread of Nafis's ideas outside Islam.

At its most subjectively silly, Sultans of Science invites children to use foam blocks to build both a round Roman arch and the Islamic Ogee arch (formed by two S curves that meet in a point). It then argues the superior merits of the latter, which it judges not merely stronger but also more aesthetically pleasing.

The exhibition pushes its definition of Islam's Golden Age all the way up to the 18th century, 200 years beyond scholars' most expansionary estimates, probably because that justifies the subtitle, 1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered. If you think of Western equivalents, science museums would be unlikely to organize a display in which Leonardo's early designs for a flying machine and Harvey's research into the circulatory system were lumped together as evidence of Western civilization.

Although not overtly political, this prepackaged exhibit is being touted by the Ontario Science Centre as a great multicultural outreach exercise in that institution's diverse corner of the city. If such an exercise in local Islamic pride may have made some sense in Dubai (although you could only hope that the United Arab Emirates has access to more sophisticated material about ancient Arab culture than that provided here), it seems rather removed from a Canadian context. Surely, all Canadians, whatever their ethnic background, can claim the same bragging rights to the achievements of a Leonardo as to those of an Al-Jazari; these great creators are all rather far removed from us by time and geography.

Of course, some corrective is needed to add the fascinating Islamic figures to our Eurocentric cultural lexicon, but every Canadian school kid must already have at least a passing awareness of Islam's great contributions to learning: The numerals we use every day are called Arabic for a reason.

This version of the Dubai show was recreated and rewritten specifically for the North American market and was displayed at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey before moving to Toronto. Clearly a lot of Americans have previously enjoyed it: As the show was unveiled for the first time in Canada this week, it revealed signage and display cases that were visibly worn, video screens already covered in fingerprints and a couple of interactive elements that were simply broken.

The physical evidence suggested that the Ontario Science Centre had merely uncrated the show, only reinforcing the unfortunate impression that Sultans of Science is Islam in a box. Ship it over from Dubai and just add water.

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Journey to Mecca

In addition to Sultans of Science is a new IMAX film, Journey to Mecca. It is based on the travel diaries of Ibn Battuta, a young scholar who crossed North Africa in 1325 on a pilgrimage to Mecca, thousands of miles from his home in Tangiers, enduring obstacles such as dehydration and bandit attacks. lbn Battuta ultimately joins the legendary Damascus Caravan with thousands of pilgrims bound for Mecca for the final leg of his 18-month journey. When he arrives in Mecca, the viewer experiences the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage that all Muslims must complete at least once in their lifetime, as he did more than 700 years ago.

"Ancient" Syriac bible found in Cyprus

NICOSIA (Reuters Life!) – Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.

The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script.

Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake.

Experts said the use of gold lettering on the manuscript was likely to date it later than 2,000 years.

"I'd suspect that it is most likely to be less than 1,000 years old," leading expert Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, University of Cambridge told Reuters.

Turkish Cypriot authorities seized the relic last week and nine individuals are in custody pending further investigations. More individuals are being sought in connection with the find, they said.

Further investigations turned up a prayer statue and a stone carving of Jesus believed to be from a church in the Turkish held north, as well as dynamite.

The police have charged the detainees with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations and the possession of explosives.

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is used wherever there are Syrian Christians and still survives in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India.

Aramaic is still used in religious rituals of Maronite Christians in Cyprus.

"One very likely source (of the manuscript) could be the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community," Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London told Reuters.

Stories regarding the antiquity of manuscripts is commonplace. One case would be the Yonan Codex, carbon dated to the 12th century which people tried to pass off as earlier.

After further scrutiny of photographs of the book, manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge library and Fellow of Wolfson College JF Coakley suggested that the book could have been written a good deal later.

"The Syriac writing seems to be in the East Syriac script with vowel points, and you do not find such manuscripts before about the 15th century.

"On the basis of the one photo...if I'm not mistaken some words at least seem to be in modern Syriac, a language that was not written down until the mid-19th century," he told Reuters.