A school of Bluefine Tuna

Nearly a fifth of the world’s fish landings are illegal and the proportion is increasing, adding to the global problem of declining fish stocks, scientists have said.
The global illegal catch is reckoned at between £1 and £4.5 billion a year, according to a study carried out for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Telegraph.co.uk reported.
The body also known as the World Conservation Union said declining fish stocks and growing consumer demand for marine food were encouraging corrupt fishing practices and even the false labeling of products as “eco-fish“.
Research showed there were incidents of officials taking bribes, of renaming and mislabeling of fish products, of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, exceeding of quotas, piracy and harassment of observers.
Corruption in fisheries ranged from the fishermen themselves right up to officials and governments on a national and international level.
Ahead of a meeting in Washington on fisheries and corruption organized by the IUCN and hosted by the World Bank, a briefing paper for the conservation organization said illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing accounted for an estimated 16 million tons in 2002.
It is getting worse as wild-caught fish become scarcer and demand grows, the IUCN warned.
Also according to AFP, the environmental group WWF (World Wide Fund) called on supermarket chains around the world to take bluefin tuna off their shelves, saying overfishing, driven by the craze for sushi, threatened to wipe out the species.
Praising several retail chains that have taken the lead in refusing to sell bluefin, WWF said it was time for “retailers around the world to emulate their courageous decision... until this fish is out of danger“.
Last November, European Union (EU) fisheries ministers agreed to restrict the fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean under a 15-year plan to revive dwindling stocks.
The French supermarket giant Auchan, as well as the Italian subsidiaries of Coop and Carrefour, have already stopped selling bluefin.

China and Australia are phasing them out, Germany and Ireland tax them, but in the United States, the plastic shopping bag is still king.
Outside supermarkets across the country, Americans push shopping carts laden with a dozen or more plastic bags full of groceries to their cars. Even the smallest purchase, such as a magazine at a newsstand, seems to come in a plastic bag.
Americans use 100 billion plastic shopping bags a year, according to Washington-based think tank Worldwatch Institute, or more than 330 a year for every person in the country. Most of them are thrown away, according to Reuters.
A handful of US cities and states have made moves to cut that number organic, but critics say the United States is years behind countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
“We are still in the stage of taking baby steps,“ said Eric Goldstein, a director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a US environmental group.
Plastic bags, favored because they are durable and cheap, have been blamed for clogging drains, filling landfills and choking wildlife.
They can take from 400 to 1,000 years to break down, and their constituent chemicals remain in the environment long after that, environmental groups say.
Made from crude oil, natural gas and other petrochemical derivatives, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the bags the US consumes each year.
Countries from Taiwan to Uganda, and cities including Dhaka in Bangladesh, have either banned plastic bags outright or impose a levy on consumers. Australia aims to phase them out by the end of this year, and China by June 21.
Ireland charges shoppers 22 euro cents ($0.29 cents) per bag, a move credited with reducing plastic bag use by 90 percent. Some European cities first imposed fees as early as the 1980s.
In Britain, which uses 13 billion single-use plastic bags a year, or more than 200 per person, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged the country’s biggest supermarket chains to cut use faster than planned and said Britain can eliminate them altogether.
But in the United States, the federal government has been reluctant to impose measures that would interfere with competition and be unpopular with consumers.

Aliens are landing in Antarctica. Seeds, spores, mites, lichens and mosses alien to the continent have been brought unwittingly by scientists and tourists, and could disrupt life in the icy wilderness.
Antarctica is best known for penguins as well as seals and whales, but scientists are finding a host of other tiny organisms from springtails--closely related to insects--to mosses.
And they fear global warming may create conditions suitable for outside marauders such as rats or mice in Antarctica, where the biggest land creature is now a tiny flightless midge.
Among plants a type of European grass--agrostis stolonifera--may be among threats if the icy climate thaws, reported Reuters.
“It’s a species that gets everywhere, it’s already on most of the Antarctic islands,“ said Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division, who leads an international research project entitled ’Aliens in Antarctica.’
“It would just create lawns,“ she said.
Invasive species have long disrupted life on earth, from rabbits brought to Australia by European settlers to zebra mussels from Russia clogging pipes and piers in North America’s Great Lakes, and now Antarctica is a target.
“Antarctica is the last bastion of a pristine environment compared to the rest of the world,“ Bergstom said in a telephone interview.
“It has been isolated by the southern ocean--people are starting to break that barrier,“ she said. New species are getting in partly because visitors’ clothes often contain seeds, spores or insect eggs.
So far, invaders have bridgeheads on Antarctic islands ringing the continent, which have been getting warmer in recent decades. Among the most damaging were reindeer on South Georgia and rats and cats on Macquarie Island, Bergstrom said.
Elsewhere in Antarctica, grass was found growing under a Japanese research hut. Invasive plants were found near a Russian station and a wide variety of fungi near an Australian station.
People are acting to try to stem the invasion, even as visitor numbers rise. “Our flowers are all plastic. We are not allowed to bring in any living thing,“ said Atle Markussen, head of the Troll scientific research station in a sector claimed by Norway, pointing to a vase of fake red roses on the canteen table.

Exposure for more than eight hours a day to sound in excess of 85 db is potentially hazardous.

From blaring car horns to wedding parties, rising noise pollution in the 24-hour metropolis of Cairo has reached alarming levels, leading to hearing problems, irritability and even death.
Living in the city center, where noise levels reach an average of 90 decibels (dB) and never drop below 70 dB, is like spending all day inside a factory, a 2007 study by the Egyptian National Research Center (NRC) said.
“What’s striking about Cairo is that noise levels on different streets at different times of day are well over limits set by the environmental protection agency (EPA),“ the NRC’s Mustafa Ali Shafiye said.
“In downtown, noise levels may attain 90 dB at 7:30 am, bearing in mind that the normally acceptable level set by the EPA is 35-55 dB,“ he told AFP.
In December, the New Scientist magazine said that “noise kills in much the same way as chronic stress does“.
It causes “an accumulation of stress hormones, inflammation and changes in body chemistry that eventually lead to problems such as impaired blood circulation and heart attacks“.
According to Dr. Mohammed El-Shazly, an ear specialist at Cairo University, “The noise in Cairo is exceptional--it cannot be compared to any other Arab city.
“What is special about Cairo is that industrial zones and residential areas are not separated.
People like policemen who are permanently on the street can be severely affected.“
People start to lose their hearing gradually, he said, and once that happens the only cure is to get a hearing aid.
“Car horns, loud music, shouting, ageing engines and the occasional party can lead to a series of health problems including hypertension, hearing loss, cardiovascular effects and general irritability“ said Nagat Amer, an environmental health specialist at the NRC.
“Noise severely affects pregnant women who are permanently exposed to it. It causes retraction in blood vessels and they give birth to small babies,“ she added.
“The cost of this is enormous--we can count non-concentration at work, absenteeism, accidents, handicaps,“ she said. “Protecting ourselves from noise is much less expensive than what it may cost later.“
According to the World Health Organization, which considers noise pollution to be the world’s third worst after polluted air and water, exposure for more than eight hours a day to sound in excess of 85 db is potentially hazardous.
The ministries of health and environment are planning to establish a national network for monitoring noise levels in Egypt, but no date has yet been fixed for it to begin gathering data.

A crocodile in Sistan-Baluchestan province

African Grey parrot

Cameroon wildlife authorities have rescued at least 1,200 African Grey parrots being trafficked to Bahrain and Mexico for the exotic pet trade, an animal welfare group said.
Kenya-based Wildlife Direct said Cameroon’s ministry of forests and wildlife intercepted two shipments at Douala International Airport that were carrying the parrots to their destination, AFP reported.
It did not give the day they were intercepted, but said the birds are currently being cared for at Limbe Wildlife Center (LWC), situated in the small fishing town of Limbe at the foot of Mount Cameroon.
In 2006, Cameroon had a legal quota of birds that it could export, but lost it temporarily last year after a ban was imposed on trading of birds owing to the global outbreak of avian flu.
The African Grey parrot is listed on CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Appendix II which restricts trade of wild caught species, because wild populations cannot sustain trapping for the pet trade. It is popular as a pet, partly because of its ability to imitate speech.

The mole is thought to be widespread in the UK, but it rarely leaves its subterranean burrow.

Molehills, the bane of gardeners and groundkeepers, today became a key research tool when a wildlife charity urged people to count them, potentially yielding a mountain of information about the secretive creatures which produce them.
The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) wants at least 10,000 spotters to log molehills over the next eight months, the Guardian reported.
Some 2,000 of the trust’s supporters have already signed up for MoleWatch which aims to produce a map highlighting areas where moles are scarce, giving researchers an insight into factors which may affect their numbers and forming a springboard for more in-depth studies.
The mole is thought to be widespread in the UK, but it rarely leaves its subterranean burrow and no one knows--or has studied--exactly how many there are, or how many molehills an individual mole is responsible for.

A $180m (£90m) five-year project to revive sub-Saharan Africa’s depleted soils has been launched in Nairobi, Kenya.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s (AGRA) Soil Health Program will work with 4.1 million farmers to regenerate 6.3m hectares of farmland, BBC said.
Organizers hope the scheme will boost farmers’ incomes, improve crop yields and protect the region’s soils.
“Currently, farm yield in Africa is one-quarter of the global average, and one-third of Africans face chronic hunger,“ said Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA’s president.
“We know that the use of high quality seeds, combined with the rejuvenation of African soils, can begin to turn around this dismal situation,“ he added.