1st In- Vitro Gives Hope for Endangered Puerto Rican Toad
A critically endangered Puerto Rican toad was for the first time born via in vitro fertilisation as US scientists attempt to save it from extinction.
Olaf - named in honour of the frozen semen he came from - is the first of more than 300 Puerto Rican crested toads that hatched after the first attempt failed, Diane Barber, ectotherms curator at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas.
Barber was part of a team that travelled to the southwest town of Guayanilla in 2018 to collect semen from six male Puerto Rican crested toads that were later released back into the wild. The scientists were careful to select bigger toads that had what are called "nuptial pads" on their thumbs, which indicate sexual maturity and help them grab on to females.
The team, which included scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Puerto Rico's Department of Natural Resources, among others, preserved the semen in liquid nitrogen as they transported it to the Fort Worth Zoo, where a couple of female toads injected with hormones awaited.
The Puerto Rican crested toad was thought extinct until the 1960s and was then rediscovered in the early 1980s.
Sumatra Rhino is Extinct in Malaysia
The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, after the last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer.
The Sumatran rhino, the smallest of five rhinoceros species, once roamed across Asia as far as India, but its numbers have shrunk drastically due to deforestation and poaching.
The WWF conservation group estimates that there are only about 80 left, mostly living in the wild in Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia.
Nov 24, 2019
Oxford Names 'Climate Emergency' Its 2019 Word Of The Year
Oxford Dictionaries has named "climate emergency" as its 2019 Word of the Year, choosing it from an all-environmental shortlist that also included "climate action," "climate denial," "eco-anxiety," "extinction" and "flight shame."
The Word of the Year citation is intended to highlight "a word or expression shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance." Recent winners have included "toxic," "youthquake," "post-truth" and "vape."
Nov 19, 2019
New Hope For Trees Affected By Ash Dieback
Scientists say there is new hope in the fight against a disease that is devastating ash trees.
A study has identified the genes that give trees resistance to ash dieback, which arrived in the UK in 2012 and has now spread to almost every part of the country.
The discovery suggests that trees could now be bred that are unaffected by the epidemic.
The research is published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Nov 18, 2019
Newly Discovered Eel Sets a Jolting Record For Animal Voltage
Electric eels are fish with organs that can generate an electric charge. Scientists thought all electric eels belonged to one species. But a new study has found there are three. And one of the new species unleashes the highest voltage of any known animal.
Electric eels use strong zaps to defend themselves and take down prey. They also send out weaker pulses to sense hidden prey and communicate with each other.
One of the newly found species has been named Electrophorus voltai. It can deliver a shocking 860 volts.
That's way higher than the 650 volts recorded for eels — back when they were all called E. electricus.
Nov 16, 2019
Longest Bad Air Spell in Two Years
People in Delhi breathed 'severely' polluted air for the fourth day, braving the longest spell of hazardous air quality in two years as officials grappled with a crisis that seemed immune to any of their interventions – with a change in weather conditions now being seen as the only hope.
The Supreme Court pulled up the governments of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi to explain why efforts such as a ban on burning crop residue and odd-even vehicle rationing did not help, and ordered scientists to consider installing air purification towers.
The court also recorded in their order that the Delhi government's odd-even scheme barely had any impact on the high pollution levels in the Capital, and asked the Aam Aadmi Party government to submit a detailed affidavit underlining what measures it can take further.
The hearing came on a day when predictions that pollution would decrease due to a pick-up in wind speed failed to materialise, and pollution forecasters said the situation may not increase by much over the weekend.
Centre Drops Plan to Bring in Changes to Forest Act of 1927
The Union Environment Ministry withdrew a draft amendment that proposed updates to the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Activist groups and some state governments had protested this proposed law after it was mooted in March 2019.
The Indian Forest Act, 2019, was envisaged as an amendment to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, and an attempt to address contemporary challenges to the country's forests. The draft law had been sent to key forest officers in the states for soliciting comments and objections.
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