MuncangNature News Update
Swedish government defends licensed wolf hunt
Stockholm – Licensed wolf hunting is necessary to secure public support for a viable wolf population in Sweden, Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren on Monday said in response to European Commission criticism of the practice earlier this year.Controlled hunting was “necessary to secure acceptance” for wolves among farmers, hunters, reindeer herders and others in rural areas, Carlgren said, adding that the number of wolf attacks on livestock trebled between 2007 and 2009.Licensed hunting was also necessary for the government to go ahead with plans to import wolves from Russia or Finland to help improve the wolf population’s genetic status, he said.There are currently believed to be around 200 wolves in the Scandinavian country of 9 million people.Sweden faces a potential court case if the European Commission is not persuaded by the government’s arguments. Carlgren said he expected further dialogue before the situation came to a lawsuit.
Seaside visitor gored by buffalo on Hong Kong beach
Hong Kong – A young father spent two days in hospital after being charged and gored by a buffalo on a beach in Hong Kong, a newspaper reported Tuesday.The attack saw the man, who was with his 3-year-old daughter, “tossed about like a toy” after the water buffalo charged at him from 30 metres, the Hong Kong Standard said.The man was gored in the leg and then hurled in the air, according to a witness who told the newspaper, “It was like something you might see in a bullfighting arena.”He was admitted to hospital with leg injuries and was released Monday, according to the Standard. His daughter was unharmed.The attack happened on a beach on Hong Kong’s rural Lantau Island, which is popular with weekend visitors and has a large population of water buffalo forced onto beaches by inland development.The Lantau Buffalo Association said it was highly unusual for a buffalo to attack humans and believed the attack might have been triggered by visitors trying earlier to climb on the buffalo’s back.Despite its image as a high-rise, neon-lit city, Hong Kong has extensive rural areas that are home to wildlife, including monkeys, Burmese pythons, wild boar and porcupines
Germany hands over tsunami warning system to Indonesia
Jakarta – Germany on Monday transferred the ownership of a tsunami warning system developed jointly with Indonesia to the government in Jakarta.The handover marked the end of the German involvement in the project and allowed Indonesia to take the sole responsibility.”The tsunami danger is omnipresent,” said Thomas Rachel, the German parliament’s state secretary for education and research.”A warning system can not prevent destruction caused by tsunami, but it can minimize its impact and the number of victims.”A test version of the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System was launched in 2008. It has since been expanded and optimized.The system consists of seismometers, sea level sensors and GPS land stations.Indonesia is especially prone to tsunamis because of its proximity to the Sunda Trench, one of the Earth’s largest subduction zones extending from the north-west tip of Sumatra island to Flores island in the east.The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, killed an estimated 170,000 people in Indonesia alone.A 7.7-magnitude earthquake in October last year triggered a tsunami that killed more than 400 people on Indonesia’s Mentawai islands.Rachel said the system worked on Mentawai, with some survivors saying they heard a siren, but the tsunami came too fast for many victims to escape.Local media reported after the disaster that deep sea buoys installed off the coast of Mentawai had been damaged even before the earthquake.Indonesia’s Technology Research and Minister Suharna Surapranata said local preparedness was key to saving lives during a tsunami.”The early warning can do so much and that’s why the government is making efforts to improve local communities’ preparedness by conducting drills and training,” he said.
Thailand hit by storms, floods and cold spell
Bangkok – Thousands of tourists were stranded on Samui Island in southern Thailand Tuesday by storms, high waves and floods blamed on freak weather that has claimed at least eight dead.Floods caused by incessant downpours since the weekend have already claimed eight dead in in Nakorn Si Thammarat province, which includes the popular tourist island of Samui, situated 600 kilometres south of Bangkok in the Gulf of Thailand.Samui’s airport has been closed since Sunday. Bangkok Airways, the main airline servicing the island, had cancelled all flights Tuesday.The ferry service between Samui and the mainland was cancelled because of stormy weather and high waves, meaning that thousands of tourists had no way off the island.
Eleven dead as Thailand hit by floods and cold spell – Summary
Bangkok – Thousands of tourists were stranded on Samui Island in southern Thailand Tuesday by storms, high waves and floods blamed on freak weather that has claimed at least 11 dead.Floods caused by incessant downpours since the weekend have killed 11 and affected 265,000 people in Thailand’s six southern provinces rimming the Gulf of Thailand, according to the National Disaster Prevention Department. The storm has stranded thousands of foreigners on the popular tourist island of Samui, 600 kilometres south of Bangkok in the Gulf of Thailand.Samui’s airport has been closed since Monday afternoon
Mudslide kills 10 in flood-hit southern Thailand
Bangkok – A mudslide on Wednesday killed at least 10 people in southern Thailand, which has been battered by heavy rains, floods and high seas since the weekend. Khao Panom village in Krabi province, 628 kilometres south of Bangkok, was hit by a mudslide triggered by the collapse of a reservoir on top of a nearby hill, news reports said. “We have already found 10 bodies but we expect to find more,” Khao Panom district head Suphot Channakhet told a radio station
Pythons prey on house cats in Queensland
Sydney – Scrub pythons, which can grow to 7 metres, are getting a taste for domestic cats in the far-north Queensland city of Cairns.Nine cats have gone missing in the past five weeks, snake wrangler David Walton told the Cairns Post on Wednesday, and the culprits are almost certainly snakes.”They’ll bite and grab the cat and quickly intertwine the animal and squeeze and suffocate … until they sense there is no more heartbeat,” he said
Unidentified New Zealand quake victims may be buried in mass grave
Wellington – The 12 unidentified victims of last month’s earthquake that devastated New Zealand’s second-largest city could be buried in a mass grave, Chief Coroner Neil McLean said Thursday.Police have identified the bodies of 169 people who died in the magnitude-6.3 quake on February 22 in Christchurch, but 181 have been reported missing, and McLean told Radio New Zealand it might never be possible to identify the remains of the others.All were believed to have died in the six-storey, reinforced-concrete Canterbury Television Building, which collapsed, killing many foreign students in an English language school.McLean said he would meet relatives of the missing Friday to discuss what to do if they could not be identified but a mass grave for the remains was possible.Civil defence officials said nearly a quarter of the more than 4,000 buildings in the heart of Christchurch that have been inspected have been deemed unsafe along with more than 1,800 homes.
Berlin polar bear Knut died of excessive brain fluid
Berlin – Knut, the Berlin Zoo polar bear who became an international celebrity before dying earlier this month aged just 4, died of an excess of brain fluid, not stress, according to sources quoting an post-mortem report Wednesday.Cerebrospinal fluid fills the cavities of the mammal brain. An abnormal build-up of fluid can expand the cavities, known as cerebral ventricles, causing fits and death.Knut died without warning March 19, slumping lifeless into his pond as horrified visitors watched.Animal lovers around the globe have offered varying theories on his demise. Some demanded the zoo’s closure, accusing it of hounded Knut to death by penning him up with three bossy older female bears.But the pathology report, to be delivered to the zoo Thursday, says Knut, was already ill.The sources told the German Press Agency dpa that an autopsy at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wild Animal Research checked Knut’s adrenal glands but found no signs of stress.Nor did he have epilepsy, or a genetic defect caused by incest, but instead had developed a fatal brain disease.Doctors said that once the fit happened, nothing could have saved Knut.
Thai navy evacuates stranded tourists from storm-hit island
Bangkok – Thailand’s sole aircraft carrier delivered 618 foreign and Thai tourists safely to the Sattahip naval base Thursday after rescuing them from an island in the Gulf of Thailand.The Chakri Naruebet evacuated the tourists off Tao Island, 412 kilometres south of Bangkok, in helicopters and small boats Wednesday afternoon, then shipped them overnight to Sattahip, 120 kilometres south-east of Bangkok on the mainland.From the base, the navy arranged 18 buses to take the tourists to Bangkok.The tourists had been stranded on the island all week due to a storm that has hit Thailand’s southern provinces since the weekend.Another 500 tourists who were reportedly stranded on Tarutao Island in the Andaman Sea were rescued by chartered speedboats, authorities said.Thousands of foreign tourists were also stranded on Samui Island, 470 kilometres south of Bangkok, where authorities were forced to shut down the airport late Monday and halt ferry services to the mainland because of heavy rains and high seas. Bangkok Airways and Thai Airways International resumed flights to the island Wednesday. Floods caused by incessant downpours since the weekend have killed at least 15 people in Thailand’s central southern provinces between the Gulf of Thailand in the east and the Andaman Sea in the west. The floods have caused an estimated 7 billion baht (233 million dollars) in damage, according to the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce