A slow loris (top) and a captive loris having its teeth clipped before being sold.

Their enormous round eyes and cuddly coats make the slow loris one of the world’s most appealing animals. Unfortunately the same characteristics make it a prime target for poachers who sell the small and vulnerable creature as ’pets’.
The UK animal charity International Animal Rescue (IAR), probably best known for rescuing dancing bears in India, has been investigating the Loris trade in Indonesia, Telegraph.co.uk reported.
They have just built a new rescue center on the island of Java which they will use for the rehabilitation of wild animals captured for the pet trade before they are released back into safer areas.
During a trip to Indonesia in November the charity’s investigators took shocking photos at an animal market in Jakarta. The images show a terrified slow loris having its teeth cut down with nail clippers to prevent it from using its bite to defend itself.
This is standard practice in Indonesia before putting Lorises up for sale for about £10 each and many of them die from the trauma or from septicaemia within days of capture.
Five slow lorises were found in tiny rusting cages behind the scenes at the market. Naturally shy and nocturnal, the little animals were visibly suffering in the bright sunlight and the extreme heat.
IAR’s chief executive, Alan Knight, who took the photos said: “These rare and beautiful animals should have been sleeping in the trees of the Sumatran jungle.“
He added, “Instead they were in a completely alien environment and could be heard screaming in agony as their teeth were cut down before our very eyes.“
The slow loris was upgraded from Appendix II to Appendix I in June at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. While species listed on Appendix II may be commercially traded, species on Appendix I are afforded the greatest legal protection and may not be traded for primarily commercial purposes.
However, in spite of the legislation, slow lorises are frequently smuggled from Sumatra by wildlife dealers and sold in their hundreds in the pet markets in Jakarta.
Their big round eyes and soft fur make them hugely appealing as pets, and hundreds pass through the Indonesian animal markets every year.

Researchers suggest, the benefits of cutting down tropical forests in order to convert the nutrient-rich soil into farmland are only short-lived.
US researchers studied deforested land in Mexico and found that soil levels of phosphorus, a key nutrient for plants, fell by 44 percent after three growing cycles.
In the long-term, the land risked becoming so degraded that it would be uneconomic to farm, they added, BBC reported.
The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers from the University of Virginia examined the disruption to the phosphorus (P) cycle in southern Yucatan, where a dry tropical forest had been felled to become farmland.
“After three cultivation-fallow cycles, available soil P declines by 44 percent, and one-time P inputs from biomass burning decline by 76 percent from mature forest levels,“ they wrote.
The team added that the lack of a forest’s canopy also resulted in hampering an area’s ability to replenish phosphorus levels.
“The decline in new P from atmospheric deposition creates a long-term negative ecosystem balance.“
The ongoing decline of the nutrient, which is a key component in the growth of organisms, triggered a “feedback“ effect, they explained.
It could affect the growth of plants in the study area, and “may induce a shift to sparser vegetation“, they warned.
As well as the area’s ecosystem, the researchers added that local farmers were likely to be affected.
“Without financial support to encourage the use of fertilizers, farmers could increase the fallow period, clear new land, or abandon agriculture for off-farm employment,“ they wrote.
“[The farmers’] response will determine the regional balance between forest loss and forest regrowth,“ they added.

Police dogs are to help Pandas survive in the wild.

Chinese researchers in southwestern Sichuan province plan to use a police dog to help captive-bred giant pandas survive in the wild.
The first panda returned to the wild died after getting involved in a fight.
Experts are now to release the police dog and some other herbivorous animals into the living area of four giant pandas to teach them how to fight, Chengdu Daily quoted the Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in Sichuan as saying, Xinhua reported.
The four giant pandas are candidates for the country’s second project to release the animals into the wild after Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old male panda, was found dead in the snow on February 28 this year, almost 10 months after it was released into the wild, the report said.
Xiang Xiang, who had received almost two years of training, was said to have fallen from a high place after getting into a fight with wild pandas for food or territory.
Experts at Wolong said the fact that Xiang Xiang was male may have caused his death because males are usually regarded as a threat.
The location of the release may also have contributed, the report said.
Experts may release more than two female artificially-bred pandas into the wild this time as females are seen as less of a threat by their peers, according to the report.
Other options were to release one or two panda couples or a mother panda with her cub or a pregnant panda, since the cub could adapt to its new environment at a younger age, the report added.
Locations for the second release may be around the Emei Mountain areas in Sichuan where pandas used to live.

South Korea’s coastguard has applied for court permission to arrest the captains of the vessels that collided in early December causing the country’s worst oil spill, an official said.
Human error was probably to blame for the accident, when a crane mounted on a Samsung-owned barge punched holes in a Hong Kong-registered tanker, spilling over 10,500 tons of crude oil that washed up on the west coast beaches and blackened a nature reserve, local media said.
“We sought arrest warrants for the four captains,“ said a Taean Coastguard official.
The four are the captain of the Hebei Spirit tanker, the captains of two tugboats towing the barge and the person responsible for the sea-bound crane.
The barge operators were suspected of failing to heed warnings not to take the crane out in rough waters and the captain may not have responded properly to emergency calls, Yonhap news agency cited a coastguard report as saying.
A towline between the crane of one of the tugboats severed about 15 minutes before the accident on December 7 and the tanker did not move out of the way in time, the report said.
A conservation group said several thousand birds may have been contaminated with oil.
“While great efforts have been made to clean a few oil-contaminated birds, it is apparent that the existing infrastructure is completely inadequate to deal with the large numbers of birds presently affected,“ said the report from Birds Korea.
Environmental groups said oil now sitting on the sea bed will cause problems for years.
Most of beaches have been cleaned but local residents say their livelihoods have been ruined because the spill wiped out fisheries and the tourism industry had dried up.

Golden Eye Lichen

A rare lichen which was believed to be extinct in the UK has been rediscovered in a Herefordshire orchard.
The Golden Eye Lichen, which was once common across southern England, was last seen in Cornwall in 1998.
The charity Plantlife said the new location was being kept secret to ensure the lichen’s safety, BBC reported.
Air pollution, fertilizer use and fewer orchards were blamed for it dying out but climate change could explain its reappearance, some scientists say.
The Golden Eye Lichen (Teloschistes chrysophthalmus) is normally found in dry, sunny climates including Madeira, parts of North America, Australia and New Zealand.
It had last been spotted in Cornwall on a blackthorn bush, while the last recorded sighting prior to that was in Devon in 1966.
But the recent find on a fallen branch has excited biologists who believed it was extinct.
Cliff Smith, a lichenologist who discovered the plant with colleague Joy Ricketts, said there could be more specimens to be found.
He said: “This species grows best at the top of trees or bushes, in this case at the top of an apple tree.“
He added, “It is outside the normal view of lichenologists unless we are nimble enough to climb trees.“

Bon whirlpool near the Iranian city of Shahr-e Kord, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province.

Plans are in the pipeline for beavers to be released into the Scottish wild for the first time in 500 years.
Wildlife bodies have asked the Scottish government for a license to allow about 20 beavers to be set free in Argyll in 2009.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland believe the animals will improve the eco-system and boost tourism. Beavers were hunted to extinction in Scotland in the 16th Century, said BBC.
The mammals, best known for their dam building and tree felling skills, have been successfully reintroduced elsewhere in Europe, including parts of Germany and the Netherlands.
The license application submitted to the Scottish government is for a trial reintroduction of European beavers in the Knapdale Forest in Mid-Argyll.
The bid follows the publication of the results of a two-month long local consultation.
The survey showed almost three quarters of people in Mid-Argyll backed the beaver plan, but more than half of those living directly around Knapdale were opposed to the scheme.
Beavers are thought to play an important role in aquatic and wetland eco-systems, and on the wider biodiversity of the area in which they live.
Allan Bantick, chairman of the Beaver Project Steering Group and trustee of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said: “We are delighted that this license application has now been submitted and we look forward to conducting a full scientific trial of the first formal reintroduction of a native mammal into the wild in the UK.
He added, “The first beavers could be reintroduced to Mid-Argyll in spring 2009.
In January 2007, the Scottish Government and Scottish Natural Heritage launched a wildlife strategy that included restoring the European beaver to Scotland.
The Scottish Beaver Trial partnership hopes that the government will make its decision on the licence application in spring 2008.

Brazil has banned the sale of farm products from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon in an attempt to reverse months of increasing destruction in the world’s largest rain forest, officials said.
A decree signed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva imposes fines for buying or trading goods such as beef or soy produced on illegally deforested properties.
“This applies to international traders as much as local butchers in the Amazon,“ Environment Minister Marina Silva told a news conference in the capital Brasilia.
Seven hundred federal police were sent to the Amazon region last Friday with orders to help combat environmental destruction. They join roughly 1,650 government inspectors there, including army troops and intelligence officers, according to Reuters.
The new decree follows a 10 percent increase in the rate of Amazon deforestation between August and November, Silva said.
An unusually long dry season allowed loggers to cut trees while rising commodity prices encouraged farmers and cattle ranchers to move ever deeper into the forest, she said.
The measure responds to growing international pressure for Brazil to step up Amazon conservation. Rain forests help absorb greenhouse emissions while burning or cutting down trees releases carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, scientists say.
In August, Brazil celebrated a 50 percent reduction in deforestation over the past two years to the lowest rate in at least seven years. It said an estimated 9,600 square km (3,707 sq miles) were cleared in the year ended July 31.
Environmentalists say the rapid expansion of Brazil’s agricultural frontier has caused the destruction of huge tracts of jungle.
The government plans to name in coming months 35 municipalities identified as hot spots of destruction. Land holders who do not legalize their properties will be denied government credit and blacklisted. Anybody buying or trading products from them will face fines.
But Silva said Amazon development would continue on millions of acres (hectares) of unused and cleared land.
“We are not saying nothing will be produced anymore in the Amazon,“ she said.