Galapagos emergency over stranded ship

Ecuador has announced a state of emergency in the Galapagos Islands, a week after a cargo ship with hazardous materials ran aground there.

The Galapagos are home to unique animal species such as the giant tortoise

The Floreana - which ferries food and other supplies to the Unesco world heritage site - was also carrying 45,000 litres (10,000 gallons) of fuel.

Booms have been used to contain a fuel spill in the pristine waters.

The islands - famous for their unique flora and fauna - lie some 1,000km (600 miles) off Ecuador's Pacific coast.

The emergency "will allow authorities to have immediate [financial] means to deal with the situation", a Galapagos National Park spokesman told the AFP news agency.

The ship's hull was reportedly destroyed in the incident on 28 January.

Rescue teams are now trying to refloat and remove the vessel.

This is not the first such incident. Last year, another cargo ship ran aground.

And in 2001, an oil spill devastated marine iguana populations.

From BBC News

The world's most-trafficked mammal - and the scaliest

The gentle, solitary pangolin has a tongue as long as its body and curls into a ball when threatened. It is also the world's most trafficked mammal, and threatened with extinction.

In front of a drab government building near Vietnam's northern border with China, a young conservationist named Nguyen Van Thai prises open a flimsy wooden crate with a machete.

He lifts out four plastic sacks and places them on the ground. From each sack he pulls out a brownish-black ball with a scaly exterior, roughly the size and weight of an curling stone.

Gradually - and very, very cautiously - one of those balls begins to uncurl, revealing two blackcurrant eyes, a long snout, an even longer tail and a soft pink belly. It's a pangolin, one of the world's more remarkable creatures.

The pangolin is the only mammal wholly covered in scales, and it simply curls itself into an impregnable ball when threatened by predators.

It eats seven million ants and termites a year using a tongue that's almost as long as its body. It has no teeth, so it stores stones in its stomach to grind up its food.

The reason many of us have never heard of pangolins is because they seldom survive in captivity. Only six zoos in the world - and only one in Europe, Leipzig - have any.

Pangolins enjoy one other unfortunate distinction - they are the world's most trafficked mammal.

While the media focuses on the plight of the elephant and the rhinoceros, the celebrities of the natural world, roughly 100,000 pangolins a year are being snatched from the wild and sent to China and Vietnam.

In both those countries their meat is considered a delicacy, and their scales are deemed to have magical medicinal properties.

Already there are no pangolins left in great swathes of South East Asia, so Africa's pangolin populations are now being plundered. All eight species are threatened with extinction.

In both those countries their meat is considered a delicacy, and their scales are deemed to have magical medicinal properties.

Already there are no pangolins left in great swathes of South East Asia, so Africa's pangolin populations are now being plundered. All eight species are threatened with extinction.

They resemble artichokes on legs. They are gentle, solitary creatures with an almost comic rolling gait. They carry their young on their tails and curl round them to protect them. They use those prehensile tails to hang from branches, or to stretch out almost horizontally to reach ants' nests.

From BBC News-Magazine

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Australian study says fences could halt cane toad menace

Special fences built around dams in arid parts of Australia could help eradicate the menace of cane toads, according to new research.

The toads, regarded as poisonous pests, are drawn to the dams by the need for water and die in large numbers if fences hold them back, scientists said.

The animals were brought to Australia in the 1930s to get rid of beetles.

They have since spread from Queensland into the Northern Territories, New South Wales and Western Australia.

Their numbers have grown because they have almost no natural predators and their toxins kill native animals that normally feed on frogs.

Various methods to eradicate the toads have been tried, including mass culls by teams of volunteers, but have only had limited success.

Now a study led by experts at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) says toad-proof fences around dams may stem their spread because most areas the toads will invade in future are semi-arid or arid.

The dams are built to provide water for livestock but are a magnet for the toads.

Some cane toads are fitted with tracking devices to plot their spread

Numbers "suppressed"

Researchers built small fences from shade cloth around three dams in the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory and maintained them for a year.

They found that the toads were unable to jump over them or burrow under.

"The toads were still attracted to the water but they died en masse while attempting to settle at the fenced dams," said the study's lead author, UNSW Associate Professor Mike Letnic.

"Their numbers remained suppressed for a further year. By comparison, there were 10 to 100 times more toads living at the unfenced dams that were used as controls in the study," he said.

The team has suggested that livestock farmers and wildlife agencies work together to fence out the toads or replace the dams with water tanks.

"If conducted strategically, excluding toads from man-made water sources could effectively control their populations across large areas of Australia," said Prof Letnic.

The research team included scientists from the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Melbourne.

Cane toads are native to South America but were introduced to Australia in 1935 to control beetles that infested sugar cane.

From BBC News-Sci/Environment

From: Brisbane Local food

Poor outlook for Borneo's mammals

Half of Borneo's mammals will see their habitats shrink by at least a third by 2080, according to a study.

The Sunda clouded leopard photographed in the Deramakot Forest Reserve in Sabah Malaysian Borneo

By then, twice as many mammals as now will be at risk of extinction, say conservationists.

Climate change, loss of rainforest and hunting is a threat to many rare mammals on the island.

But there is hope for species like the orang-utan if action is taken to focus conservation efforts on upland areas, scientists report in Current Biology.

Borneo is the world's third largest island, accounting for 1% of the world's land yet about 6% of global biodiversity.

The island has already lost over half its forests, a third disappearing in the last three decades.

A team led by researchers at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, UK, used modelling and satellite images to predict where rainforest will be lost over the next 65 years, based on predictions of climate change and changes in land use.

Working with institutes in Germany, Australia and Indonesia, they mapped the likely suitable habitat for each of 81 Bornean mammals.

They found that deforestation and climate change would lead to 30-49% of mammals losing at least a third of their habitat by 2080.

Endangered Bornean orang-utan photographed in a mining area in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo

This would put at least 15 carnivores, 8 primates and 21 bat species at risk of extinction by 2080, almost doubling the proportion of threatened mammals on the island, according to the research.

But there is hope that better forestry management for conservation outside existing reserves could curb this loss, said lead researcher Dr Matthew Struebig.

"Only a modest amount of additional land on Borneo (~28,000 km2, or 4% of the island) would be needed to safeguard many mammal species against threats from deforestation and climate change."

The logging industry had a major role to play in conservation, given that they manage much of the land, he added.

And since deforestation and climate change is likely to have the biggest impact on lowland forests, it made sense to target efforts to forests at higher elevations.

Special efforts are needed for species like the flying fox and otter civit that would be unable to adapt to higher altitudes, said Dr Struebig.

"It is not so much that species would be doomed, but more that their area requirements would unlikely be met in the land available for conservation," he explained.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers described the outlook as "pessimistic", but said improving conservation outside existing reserves could help meet biodiversity goals.

From BBC News

Beavers allowed back in the wild in south west England

The first beavers found living in the wild in England for 500 years, will be allowed to stay where they are.

The animals, on the River Otter in Devon in south west England, can remain in the wild, as long as they're free of disease.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in England five centuries ago, because their fur and oil were very valuable.

This is the first time permission's been given to re-introduce a mammal previously extinct in England.

The animals, on the River Otter in Devon in south west England, can remain in the wild, as long as they're free of disease.Beavers were hunted to extinction in England five centuries ago, because their fur and oil were very valuable.This is the first time permission's been given to re-introduce a mammal previously extinct in England.

At least three youngsters and eight adults have been spotted living wild in the River Otter, DevonOne theory is that it was the work of "beaver bombers" - wildlife campaigners who illegally release animals in to the wild.

Five-year trial

The government has decided to allow the Devon Wildlife Trust to manage these animals, for a five-year trial.

The animals must first be caught and tested to make sure they are a European species, and free from a parasite called tapeworm..

'Not an easy decision'

Beavers are known as the engineers of the waterways and can have a massive impact on their environment as they fell trees to build their dams and lodges.Their dams slow the rivers which filters the water and this provides other places for wildlife to thrive.

Beavers gnaw trees like this to get to young green shoots at the top

However other people say that blocking up the river with dams in some places, could cause problems with flooding and could harm fish migration.

From CBBC newsround