CLIMATE CHANGE

This report is published as a BTO Research Report and was funded by Defra. It comprises a review of the primary literature on climatic change and its effect on migratory species. It arises from collaboration between the BTO, Aberdeen University and CEH. Extra support and information were provided by participants at the conference “Climatic Change and Migratory Species”, held at Madingley Hall, Cambridge on 16 and 17 March 2005.

Background

Our climate is changing, both naturally and due to man’s actions. There is already compelling evidence that animals and plants have been affected in both their distribution and behaviour. Migratory species are likely to be affected by climate change as their behaviour usually involves seasonal movement between different geographic areas and across national boundaries. The primary framework for migratory species conservation is the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). Several other international policies cover some migratory species, but only the Ramsar Convention (migratory waterbirds) currently provides for climate change.

To be able to successfully predict the impacts of climate change we need a better understanding of how populations of animals and plants will respond. Effects on breeding performance and survival are crucial, yet are poorly understood. Our understanding of the likely impacts of future climate change also varies greatly between taxonomic groups, with the best information being available for birds. Of the bird species listed on the CMS, 84% face some threat from climate change. Almost half of these are because of changes in water usage; this is equivalent to all other man-made causes put together. Although it is thought that no species has yet become extinct solely because of climate change (Golden Toad is a possible exception), many extinctions (of both migratory and non-migratory species) are predicted in the near future.

Climate Change Impacts on Migratory Species

Changes in range have been widely documented in all taxa, with distributions of most shifting towards the poles. In the UK the incidence of ‘southern’ species, such as the Little Egret (a bird), Loggerhead Turtle and Red Mullet (a fish) is increasing. The wintering areas of bird populations are changing as a result of climate-driven changes in migratory behaviour. In response to warmer temperatures, many waders, such as the Ringed Plover, are now wintering on the east of Britain (closer to their breeding grounds) rather than the west coast. Increasing numbers of European Blackcaps are now migrating west to Britain rather than south to Africa, and Chiffchaffs are remaining in the UK over winter (rather than migrating south).

The act of migration itself may become more difficult due to climate change. For example, many migratory birds use the Sahel region of Africa to refuel before making the northerly crossing of the Sahara Desert. Decreased rainfall and over-grazing is causing increased desertification in this area, leading to declines in a number of species such as the Whitethroat. Further declines in trans-Saharan migrants might be expected with climate change.

Interactions between climate change and human exploitation are widespread, though poorly understood. Examples include:

changes in migratory journeys of Wildebeest in Africa are hampered by the presence of park fences.
changes in rainfall patterns in Southern America are leading to the construction of dams that are proving a major barrier to the migration of the Tucuxi (a river dolphin).
many waterbirds are reliant on a network of a few, widely separated wetland sites for migration, which are at risk from rising sea levels.
many sites also face development and increasing water removal (due to climate change), making direct climate-driven threats even worse.
A major conservation concern is for arctic and montane species (most of which are migratory), the distributions of which cannot shift further north. Many migratory waders, such as the Red Knot, face large population declines and some, such as the endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper , face extinction. Among mammals, Polar Bear and northern seals are of key concern, due to the loss of Arctic sea ice.

Sea-level rise has the potential to affect a range of species. Examples include:

turtles could lose their nesting beaches - 32% of beaches used by nesting turtles in the Caribbean could be lost with a 50cm sea-level rise
seals need beaches upon which to raise their pups - e.g. the endangered Mediterranean Monk Seal
there could be a net loss of shallow coastal areas used by whales, dolphins, dugongs and manatees - e.g. White-beaked Dolphins require cold water less than 200 m deep

A major effect of climate on migratory (and other) species will be changes in prey distribution, some of which are already well documented. Such changes are a major threat in marine ecosystems. Changes in sea surface temperatures have already been linked to large shifts in distribution (as much as 10° latitude) and abundance of plankton communities (with declines to as little as one thousandth of former values). These changes have affected the distribution and abundance of many marine species, such as Cod, Salmon, Long-finned Pilot Whale and a number of penguin species.

Changes in the timing of parts of the life cycle are already well documented. For example, migratory British birds are arriving in their breeding areas two to three weeks earlier than thirty years ago. Laying dates have also advanced for both birds and turtles. However, changes in laying date of migratory birds (typically 2 days earlier for a rise of 1oC) appear to be less than those in the life cycles of vegetation and invertebrates (typically 6d/1oC). This may lead to a mismatch between the birds and their prey. There is also evidence to suggest that long-distance migrant birds, such as the Swallow, may be less able to adapt their timing than short-distance migrants, such as the Chiffchaff. Warmer winters are also encouraging the earlier emergence of bats from hibernation but the population impacts of this are unknown.

The breeding success of bird species is positively related to temperature, and long-term increases have been reported in many species, such as the Pied Flycatcher. In contrast, whales have lower breeding success in warmer waters (for example Sperm Whales breed less well during warm water El Niño events, which are becoming more frequent), although to what extent populations will be able to adapt to these changes by shifting their distribution is unknown. Sex ratios of hatchling turtles are temperature dependent and increased warmth could potentially lead to all-female populations.

Survival of individuals is also strongly related to climatic conditions. For birds, warmer winter temperatures are likely to increase survival for those that winter in northern latitudes, while those that migrate south in the winter are likely to suffer from reduced rainfall.

Changes in population size are a combination of changes in survival and breeding performance and the impact of climate change will depend on the relative balance of these two factors. For example, in one colony, increased sea surface temperatures meant that Emperor Penguins had to forage further from the breeding colony (reducing survival), but the penguins benefited from increased hatching success. The effects on survival were greater and colony size declined. In general, changes in survival and breeding success will interact with population density (through a process known as density-dependence), and thus scenarios where there are changes in population size require further study.

Future Priorities

On land, changes in water availability (e.g. due to increased water abstraction and drought frequency) and loss of vulnerable habitat (particularly Arctic tundra) are likely to affect the greatest number of migratory species. While adaptation (through habitat management) to climate change may bring benefits in terrestrial ecosystems, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will be required to achieve significant benefits in marine systems where habitat management is less feasible. In many cases, a reduction in human impacts (such as over-exploitation or habitat loss) will help animal and plants to adapt. In more general terms, the maintenance of large population sizes, in order to maximise genetic variation, will allow populations the greatest chance of adapting to changes.

Some migratory species require a coherent network of discrete sites, so site management will need to be flexible in response to changing conditions. Other species will require continuous habitat corridors and broad-scale land-use planning. Changing patterns of human exploitation in response to climate change are a major threat and conservation measures need to take these into account, both as threats and as opportunities for providing benefits through the management of habitats to benefit both people and wildlife (multi-functional ecosystem management).

It is critical that there is a commitment to long-term monitoring schemes to detect the impacts of long-term climate change and to assess the abilities of plants and animals to adapt to it. There is also a need to gather information on migratory stopover sites so as best to target conservation action. Targeted implementation and enforcement of existing measures should provide much of the protection needed, as would the broader use of existing guidance codes. However, much more detailed research is still needed to be able to make accurate predictions of the effect of climate change on plants and animals.
The full text of the report is available on the Defra web site

Citation

Robert A. Robinson, Jennifer A. Learmonth, Anthony M. Hutson, Colin D. Macleod, Tim H. Sparks, David I. Leech, Graham J. Pierce, Mark M. Rehfisch & Humphrey Q.P. Crick.

Climate Change and Migratory Species. BTO Research Report 414.

Published in August 2005 by the British Trust for Ornithology, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk, IP24 2PU, UK.

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Broads Authority

The Broads Authority was set up in 1989, with responsibility for conservation, planning, recreation and waterways.

The Broads Authority, a statutory body, was set up to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the Broads, to promote the enjoyment of the Broads by the public and to protect the interests of navigation.

It must also consider the needs of agriculture and forestry, and the economic and social interests of those who live or work in the Broads.

The Broads is a fascinating area with a rich history, reflected in the many wonderful places to visit and the unique wildlife. There are restored windmills, medieval churches, beautiful gardens and great places for family visits. If you enjoy walking or cycling, there are also many routes to choose from.

For many people, a great way to explore the Broads is by water, as much of the history of the Broads revolves around the way the rivers have been used over the years. For many, the charm of the Broads rests on the illusion of remoteness you get when you're on the water. You can be near a village without knowing that there is anybody or anything for miles around. So, whatever you do, try to get afloat and you will find much to surprise and delight you.

www.broads-authority.gov.uk

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Most of our Universe is Missing

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The importance of recycling

Watch out! There's a nasty (deafening) 'beep' at the beginning, but after that this clip is worth watching.

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What is a blog?

Mini-clip interview with for TheWeblogProject with Reed Donoghue: What is a blog? Shot in February 2006 in Rome. Here what he says:

"It's just like an online journal.

I mean, you put down whatever you want to in there. You can put down something about sports, your favorite football team, or your personal feelings.

Personally I think that someone... to let people know how they're feeling and use this way to get their emotions out instead of actually telling somebody.

Or a way to push your opinion about sports and things like that.

Blogs are a place to get people's opinions and how they feel, so I think it's an alternative source from news media outlets because you can get other opinions to what they are telling you."

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Brokeback Anal-ysis

Everyone who’s tired of the media—and Madonna—calling Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger “brave” for acting in Brokeback Mountain, please raise your hands. Then say it with me: “poppycock” ....

Read more here:

http://ladybunny.net/blog/2005/12/brokeback-anal-ysis.html

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Drawn conclusions

Drawn conclusions

Arab governments have joined the fray over the cartoon row for their own political reasons, writes Brian Whitaker

Tuesday February 7, 2006

From The Guardian

In one of the less-reported protests against you-know-what, thousands of Yemeni women marched through the streets of Sana'a on February 1 with banners saying "Boykot Danish products".
The demonstration lasted a couple of hours and was a peaceful affair, marked not so much by fury as puzzlement over the Danish newspaper's behaviour in publishing the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

"The question 'why?' was asked again and again among the women," a reporter for the Yemen Times wrote. "A lot of the protesters believe that the drawings [sic] has to do with ignorance. People in the west do not have enough knowledge about the prophet Muhammad and the place he has in the hearts of Muslims."

One woman demonstrator told the Yemen Times: "If the editor of the [Danish] newspaper had known about Muhammad's life, he would not have published these drawings. The people of the west should read about Islam, because then they would understand why we love him so much, and why we feel so insulted."
Another agreed: "There are bad people all over the world. Bad Christians, bad Jews, bad Muslims. We all know that. But the newspaper portrayed Muhammad as a terrorist, and terrorism has nothing to do with Muhammad or with being a Muslim."

I had been reluctant to write about the Great Cartoon War until now, believing there are more serious things for the world to worry about, but the political consequences of the affair have become difficult to ignore.

Of course, there are plenty of Muslims who are upset by the drawings (now that they have heard about them) - though bombarding the editor of Jyllands-Posten with protest letters or following the peaceful example of the Yemeni women strikes me as a far more appropriate response than setting fire to embassies.

On the other side of the argument, there are also more useful ways of asserting free speech than by reprinting the cartoons and causing gratuitous offence.

Since the cartoons were first published last year, all sorts of people with an axe to grind have muscled in on the row. A posting on the notoriously Islamophobic website, Jihadwatch, for instance, describes it portentously as "a struggle between exponents of a free society and organised thuggery". Meanwhile, several Arab governments - for their own political reasons - have busily fanned the flames in the opposite direction.

I spent most of last week in Qatar where there was coverage in the press and the authorities permitted a demonstration, but the cartoons were scarcely the topic on everyone's lips. In the hotel where I stayed - a small place frequented by Pakistani Muslims - nobody mentioned it, nor did any of the local taxi drivers. On Friday lunchtime, when news of the Red Sea ferry disaster first appeared on TV, people in Qatar seemed much more concerned about that.

The main offence of the cartoons, as far as I can see, is that several of them stereotype Muslims, portraying Islam as an inherently violent religion. The additional matter of insulting the prophet is more difficult for non-Muslims to understand.

Theologically, it's a bit of a puzzle. In Christianity Jesus is divine but in Islam Muhammad is simply a man chosen by God to deliver 'His message'. Profane images of Jesus may provoke controversy in the west but these days they don't usually cause serious uproar - so why all the fuss among Muslims over images of the prophet?

The Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey offered a non-theological explanation in an interview with the Austrian newspaper, Der Standard: "This reaction isn't really about the cartoon or how offensive it is. Not really. This is actually an outlet to the huge frustration that millions of Muslims have accumulated over the years ... they are so angry and frustrated and hopeless that they all turn more and more to religion for solace and comfort and it becomes their focus.

"The prophet for many of them is the ultimate symbol of the good strong Arab Islamic leader at a time where such leaders are inexistent. It's the only role model, only hero, they have left. So naturally they are not exactly the most understanding people when it comes to what they view as attempts to mock or discredit him."

At the level of Arab governments' reactions, however, there are grounds for cynicism. Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Abul-Gheit, for example, took up cudgels over "this disgraceful act" last November, in the midst of parliamentary elections where the opposition Muslim Brotherhood were making gains.

Despite being steeped in corruption (or perhaps because of it), the Mubarak regime's efforts to appear holier than the Brotherhood - by banning books, rounding up gay men, and making diplomatic representations about the cartoons - have become a regular feature of Egyptian politics. The Islamists, in turn, then have to try even harder so as not to be outdone in the religiosity stakes.

Meanwhile, a Saudi blogger known as The Religious Policeman has suggested that the kingdom's complaints against Denmark are a way of diverting attention from matters closer to home - such as the deaths of hundreds of pilgrims in the recent hajj disasters.

Last week the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, insisted that calls for a boycott of Danish products had not come from the government but from the Saudi people "to express dismay".

But the Religious Policeman found it hard to believe that "simultaneous Saudi government statements, Saudi newspaper articles, and sermons in all Saudi mosques, suddenly appearing four months after the original cartoons were published, were all spontaneous and coincidental events". On January 29, he noted that the Saudi press was struggling to keep the campaign alive, having more or less run out of things to say: "They are just recycling the same old pious claptrap and dodgy theology, repeating themselves and each other ad nauseam ..." he wrote.

Unlike the Saudis, the Syrian regime has never been big on religion but it's in deep doo-doo over the assassination of Rafiq Hariri and other matters, so having a few embassies in Damascus torched over the cartoons might be a useful way of rallying nationalist sentiment.

Whether this was the real aim of the demonstration that led to Saturday night's riots is unclear. Probably it started with official encouragement but then got out of hand.

An eyewitness account by Nate Abercrombie on syriacomment.com indicates that the demonstrators were well organised and had plenty of Danish flags (not something I recall ever seeing on sale in Damascus) ready to burn.

The account continues: "What surprised me most were the men with hand-held radios directing the rioters. When a sizeable crowd had gathered in Rawda Square, these men ran around yelling 'rooh a' a-safara Francieh' [go to the French embassy]. I wasn't sure if this was just an attempt to lessen the threat to the American embassy or an attempt to increase the threat to the French embassy."

While the men with walkie-talkies were almost certainly government agents, there were also plainclothes police beating up demonstrators. "I couldn't help wondering if the authorities were working against each other," Abercrombie continued. "Why were the men with hand-held radios directing the demonstrators? Why weren't greater precautionary measures taken before demonstrators arrived at embassies, especially in the case of the Danish embassy?"

After the event, as exiled dissident Ammar Abdulhamid notes on his blog, "Syrian officials did not show any sign of real remorse for the failure of their security apparatuses to protect the Danish embassy from vandals."

But perhaps we should not be too surprised by that, he adds. "Ba'ath officials have never acknowledged mistakes or shown any signs of remorse for anything before (not even for the loss of the Golan Heights), and they are not about to do so now. So there."

Iran, no less than Syria, feels threatened by the outside world and has now joined the fray too. On Monday, firebombs and stones were hurled at the Danish embassy in Tehran. The government has imposed a formal ban on Danish goods and a newspaper has announced a contest for "Holocaust cartoons".

It's all horrible and unnecessary. But, as the saying goes, this one will run and run.

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A statement from Kate Moss

Jess Cartner-Morley
Thursday February 2, 2006
The Guardian

It is often said that Kate Moss makes a point of not speaking to the press. Are these people blind? True, she doesn't do doorstep press conferences, but then supermodels, like silent movie stars, know that a pout and a new hairstyle can be much more eloquent than a speech. A case in point: Moss's appearance as she arrived for her long-awaited audience with the Metropolitan police. For the occasion, Moss wore a pale trenchcoat over black trousers and a black scoop-neck sweater; her long blonde hair was held back by a wide black hairband, which matched her large dark glasses. The reference: 60s sex kitten number one, Marianne Faithfull.
This is a smart bit of brand alignment on Moss's part. Both women have famous images in the public mind relating to drugs busts. Moss's Mirror front page was a candid shot of her with a grubby rolled-up note wedged in one nostril, an accessory that not even Moss manages to imbue with any class or charm. Faithfull, meanwhile, was famously discovered naked, wrapped only in a fur rug, by policemen raiding a Rolling Stones party - an image that has lodged itself in the public consciousness despite not having been photographed. In referencing Faithfull - who, as it happens, is one of Moss's friends - the supermodel reminds us of a time when Swinging London had a little more mystique. Moss is doing what she can to sprinkle a little glamour over a sordid situation.
As in any good fashion picture, the hair and makeup are a crucial part of the story. The hairstyle (slightly bouffant, very blonde, behind the face-framing hairband) is very 60s; whip off the coat, add a strategically placed chair, and you've got Christine Keeler. It also echoes the image of the long-suffering June Carter, gold-hearted saviour of Johnny Cash, as portrayed by Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line. Compare and contrast the subtlety of the Moss look with Victoria Beckham, whose idea of sartorial semiotics is a slogan T-shirt.
There is another 60s icon who matters in fashion right now. Princess Margaret's style as a young woman - in which smart coats, backcombed hair and a haughty attitude were crucial elements - has been much alluded to since October, when the hot British designer Christopher Bailey, creative director of Burberry, named her as his muse for the Spring 2006 collection. Burberry, for whom Moss shot several advertising campaigns, distanced themselves from Moss after the scandal, but have recently made sympathetic noises; if Moss could secure a new campaign for the label, her professional rehabilitation would be complete. In the light of this, I think we can conclude it is no coincidence that in the photographs in question, Moss is wearing a trenchcoat, a garment always associated with Burberry. Another set of photographs, then, is brought to mind: Moss in a Burberry trenchcoat, for last year's advertising campaign. This girl is good.

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