Fishermen in Pakistan spotted an animal almost never seen anymore: A leatherback turtle.

From The International Herald Tribune:

On Tuesday, a group of fishermen operating a monofilament gillnet caught a large leatherback turtle at Gwadar near Surbandar village. Since the turtle was stuck inside their net, the fishermen brought the turtle to the beach, after which the World Wildlife Fund – Pakistan (WWF-P) helped them rescue it and release it back into the sea.

According to WWF-P technical adviser on marine fisheries Muhammad Moazzam Khan, leatherback turtles are very rarely found in the coastal areas of Pakistan. They have been spotted four or five times before but they were all dead.

“It is our luck that leatherback turtles exist in our sea as these are signs of the existence of life in natural position,” Khan said.

WWF-P has trained the fishermen, who venture out into the sea, to make sure they don’t harm the wildlife that is not of interest to them, such as turtles and whales. “We are happy that our fishermen now have a sense of the value of marine life.” The young fishermen had no recollection of leatherback turtles, but the older ones remember seeing them.

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: WWF-Pakistan …read more
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By Herp News

Title: Could Turtle Gene Findings Aid Human Health? Category: Health News Created: 4/17/2013 6:36:00 PM Last Editorial Review: 4/18/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C., the adviser of NDP, NTG, TPZ, TTP, TYG, TYN and TYY announced today the release of first quarter 2013 reports for each of these funds. The reports are available online at www.tortoiseadvisors.com.

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We had some pretty bad floods here, and finallyits spring(worm season!). My little three toed boxie, Mack,just adores worms, but I never seem to dig in the right spot. So when I came home today I saw 8 small worms in the driveway. So, I set out to the ‘lake’ that just formed at the end of our street. All along the curd, many, MANY worms lay in the water. I grabbed a stick and started moving them onto the street. I used the stick and scooped and got at least 1-3 worms on my stick each scoop! I collected about 30 worms from the curb! We continued on to look at the park and other streets. By the end of the 2 trips I made I had at least 8 small snake sized worms! Some of the worms were at least 7 inches long and pretty darn thick!

My theory is that if all the large worms go in with my little boxie, they will revolt. For now, they are all in a bucket with some dirt.I’m going to dump them in my turtles new tank outside.

The new tank looks great! It is 20” by 40” and about 15” high. It is made of plywood and has stilts to keep it off the ground. With holes on the bottom for drainage. For a 4” turtle, it should be pretty good!

It was pretty nice out last weekend, so I brought Mack outside to walk supervised in the yard. My dog, Rowdy, got to say hello. Rowdy seemed to be really curious in Mack, and Mack didn’t really like Rowdy. I don’t really mind as long as my dog doesn’t hurt Mack, which he doesn’t. I sat down with him after having to bring him back onto the grass multiple times. I began to rub his shell, and I think he might have liked it. By then I was already surprised that Mack hadn’t run off to explore the yard. Then he turned aroundtoward my leg and, I guess, tried to burrow under my leg. I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with turtle love, but some how It made me feel like Mack likes me. …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times

By Herp News

Earlier this month, officials took down a fence allowing the first herd of European bison (Bison bonasus) to enter the forests freely in Germany in over 300 years, reports Wildlife Extra. The small herd, consisting of just eight animals (one male, five females and two calves) will now be allowed to roam unhindered in the Rothaar Mountains as their ancestors did long ago.

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By Herp News

Earlier this month, officials took down a fence allowing the first herd of European bison (Bison bonasus) to enter the forests freely in Germany in over 300 years, reports Wildlife Extra. The small herd, consisting of just eight animals (one male, five females and two calves) will now be allowed to roam unhindered in the Rothaar Mountains as their ancestors did long ago.

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By Herp News

After three months, officials still don’t know for certain what killed at least 14 Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) in the Malaysian state of Sabah. However tests do indicate that the herd perished from a “caustic intoxicant,” possibly ingested accidentally or just as easily intentionally poisoned. A distinct subspecies, Bornean elephants are the world’s smallest with a population that has fallen to around 2,000 on the island.

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ExxonMobil is reporting that more than 200 animals, including 125 snakes, were found dead at the site of the Mayflower oil spill, died while being transported, or were euthanized at the clean-up facility.

From THV11.com:

David Eglinton, with ExxonMobil, said 238 animals were captured and 62 were declared dead on arrival, which means they were either found dead or died in transport. Of the 238 captured, 14 died and 64 were released, bringing the death total to 76. One duck, three turtles, and 125 snakes were euthanized, bringing the final total to 205 wildlife deaths.

Exxon said the Unified Command and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission provided for the euthanasia in circumstances where the animals were critically injured or posed a risk to the safety of clean-up personnel.

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By Herp News

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) approved revisions to its gopher tortoise permitting guidelines April 18 at its meeting near Tallahassee.

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By Herp News

Koos Hermanus would rather not give names to the lions he breeds. So here, behind a 2.4-meter high electric fence, is 1R, a three-and-a-half-year-old male, who consumes 5kg of meat a day and weighs almost 200kg. It will only leave its enclosure once it has been “booked”‘ by a hunter, most of whom are from the United States. At that point the big cat will be set loose in the wild for the first time in its life, 96 hours before the hunt begins. It usually takes about four days to track down the prey, with the trophy hunter following its trail on foot, accompanied by big-game professionals including Hermanus. He currently has 14 lions at his property near Groot Marico, about two and a half hours by road west of Johannesburg.

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By Herp News

The remains of a 195-million-year-old reptile have been discovered on Britain's Jurassic Coast.        

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By Herp News

POCOMOKE CITY — Reptiles may be scaly, cold-blooded and sometimes venomous, but they aren’t necessarily the villains of the animal kingdom.

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By Herp News

Researchers are using the feet of tree frogs as a model for a tiny robot designed to crawl inside patients’ bodies during keyhole surgery.

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By Herp News

The Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will be holding an amnesty day later this month, where anyone who is keeping an illegal reptile can turn the animal in, no questions asked.

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By Herp News

EUSTIS — Ron Concoby is in the know when it comes to the gopher tortoise.        

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By Herp News

Talk about a “grand” opening. Today, the Winking Lizard family welcomes two new babes into the mix. Located under one very big roof in Copley is both a Winking Lizard Tavern and Lizardville Beer Store and Whiskey Bar.

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There’s a new lizard species in town, and you might already have one.

From the Somaliland Sun:

Czech amateur herpetologist Tomas Mazur has discovered a new agama species, Xenagama wilmsi, a small lizard with flat “beaver-like” tail, in Somalia, and found out that this is actually the species most reptile fans keep in their vivariums without knowing it, Mazuch has told CTK.

The species inhabits the Horn of Africa countries, Etiopia and Somalia. Its tail is flat at the beginning and it narrows towards its end.

Mazuch cooperated on uncovering and examining the new agama with Philipp Wagner, a professional expert from a Bonn museum.

Read all about it (and see if you have one in your own collection) here. …read more
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By Herp News

POCOMOKE CITY — Reptiles may be scaly, cold-blooded and sometimes venomous, but they aren’t necessarily the villains of the animal kingdom.

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By Herp News

Two men suffer from smoke inhalation which leaves one of them in hospital after a fire started in a pet reptile tank.

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Popularization of the world’s strangest coffee may be imperiling a a suite of small mammals in Indonesia, according to a new study in Small Carnivore Conservation. The coffee, known as kopi luwak (kopi for coffee and luwak for the civet), is made from whole coffee beans that have passed through the guts of the animal and out the other side. The coffee is apparently noted for its distinct taste, though some have argued it is little more than novelty.

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What do you do if you find an iguana bleeding and wounded by the side of the road? You move heaven and earth to save him, of course.

“Big Guy,” an endangered Rock Iguana, was discovered on Brac Cayman with severe injuries, lying on the roadside. Thanks to the generosity of Cayman Airways, he was flown free to Grand Cayman for veterinary care then back to his rehab home in Cayman Brac with volunteer Bonnie Scott Edwards of the Cayman Species Management Team.

You can view extensive photos here, and see more details of his story here.

Oh, and there’s a happy ending: Big Guy recovered well and was released to the wild today.

Photo: Big Guy waiting for his flight to Grand Cayman. …read more
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By Herp News

A survey late last year found that the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) population has been cut in half in just six years. During a 44-day survey, experts estimated 1,000 river porpoises inhabited the river and adjoining lakes, down from around 2,000 in 2006. The ecology of China’s Yangtze River has been decimated the Three Gorges Dam, ship traffic, pollution, electrofishing, and overfishing, making it arguably the world’s most degraded major river. These environmental tolls have already led to the likely extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, and possibly the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), which is one of the world’s longest freshwater fish.

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By Herp News

A survey late last year found that the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) population has been cut in half in just six years. During a 44-day survey, experts estimated 1,000 river porpoises inhabited the river and adjoining lakes, down from around 2,000 in 2006. The ecology of China’s Yangtze River has been decimated the Three Gorges Dam, ship traffic, pollution, electrofishing, and overfishing, making it arguably the world’s most degraded major river. These environmental tolls have already led to the likely extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, and possibly the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), which is one of the world’s longest freshwater fish.

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By Herp News

Turtle Wireless LLC, a wholesale and retail cell phone accessory distributor based in Dallas, Texas is proud to announce a new management/ownership team consisting of Jeremy Schrader and Samin Odhwani.

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By Herp News

What do you do when you’re smuggling 22,000 pounds of an endangered species on your boat? Answer: crash into a protected coral reef in the Philippines. Last Monday a Chinese vessel slammed into a coral reef in the Tubbataha National Marine Park; on Saturday the Filipino coastguard discovered 400 boxes of pangolin meat while inspecting the ship. Pangolins, which are scaly insect-eating mammals, have been decimated by the illegal wildlife trade as their scales are prized in Chinese Traditional Medicine and their meat is considered a delicacy.

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By Herp News

The biodiversity of Europe today is largely linked to environmental conditions decades ago, according to a new large-scale study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Looking at various social and economic conditions from the last hundred years, scientists found that today’s European species were closely aligned to environmental impacts on the continent from 1900 and 1950 instead of more recent times. The findings imply that scientists may be underestimating the total decline in global biodiversity, while future generations will inherit a natural world of our making.

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By Herp News

How many animal individuals are needed to ensure a species isn’t doomed to extinction even with our best conservation efforts? While no one knows exactly, scientists have created complex models to attempt an answer. They call this important threshold the “minimum viable population” and have spilled plenty of ink trying to decipher estimates, many of which fall in the thousands. However, a new study in Conservation Biology shows that some long-lived animals may not need so many individuals to retain a stable population.

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By Herp News

Rising Dane… For too long a lesser heralded area of Scandinavia's musical landscape, Denmark has come to the fore with a series of fantastic new exports. The past few months have brought us the debut album from Indians, while the likes of The Choir Of Young Believers and the Crunchy Frog collective are continuing to impress. With health newcomers and well respected elders, the Danish scene has …

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Fishing is not a woman’s domain in most countries across the globe. In parts of India there are fishing communities who believe that having a woman onboard a fishing boat brings bad luck. Despite this, Divya Karnad, a scientist who studies marine life in India, has spent several years studying fisheries and their impact on species like sharks and sea turtles. Her work forms a part of global efforts to track declining marine species and encourage more sustainable fishing.

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By Herp News

A new species of forcepfly named Austromerope brasiliensis, was recently discovered in Brazil and described in the open access journal Zoo Keys. This is the first discovery of forcepfly in the Neotropics and only the third known worldwide. The forcepfly, often called the earwigfly because the male genital forceps closely resemble the cerci of the common earwig, remains a scientific enigma due to the lack of information on the family.

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A tortoise that vanished 10 months ago has been found alive after being dug up from its garden by a JCB.        

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Some researchers and conservationists are urging the state Department of Natural Resources to reconsider its plan to remove the Blanding’s turtle — whose numbers the agency admits are declining — from the state endangered species list.

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Biologist Tyrone Hayes and his team at UC Berkeley have linked to exposure to the pesticide atrazine to cancer, hormonal disruption, and reproductive failure in frogs and rodents.

From The Eastern Progress:

During [a] trip to Africa, Hayes noticed that one species of frogs characterized by a distinct difference in color between male and female was actually changing to where some of the male frogs were taking on the spotted yellow colors of their female counterparts instead of the male green color.

Hayes had a theory the male frogs were changing because of the contaminates in the water. He theorized that water contained high concentrations of the female hormone estrogen.

When he got back to the states, he tested his theory by giving frogs different types of estrogen, which proved different forms of the hormones were causing the physical changes in the frogs.

After word got out that Hayes’s frogs could tell if substances had a harmful amount of concentration of estrogen, Hayes was hired by Syngenta Corporation to test their herbicide Atrazine.

“Here’s what I found: Atrazine inhibited the growth of the voice box in males,” Hayes said. “Now that’s bad news for the company because the same reason why males have lower voices, testosterone, is the some things that males frogs have that females don’t. This data implied that Atrazine demasculinized the male frogs. I like to use the term ‘chemically castrating’ because it pisses them off.”

He knew that Atrazine was harmful to amphibians, and he knew that amphibian hormones were sometimes almost identical to mammals, so what were Atrazine’s effects on mammals, including humans?

After even more tests and experiments he and his undergraduates at the University of California-Berkely stumbled across a startling discovery. Mammals- lab rodents- that were exposed to Atrazine induced breast and prostate cancer and were also more likely to have abortions.

If Atrazine had these deadly affects on lab rats, what were the effects on humans who were drinking water that was contaminated with Atrazine? What about the farmers and fieldworkers that were constantly being exposed to concentrations of Atrazine over long periods of time?

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By Herp News

Posted By: Harrison Barrus/CBS12.com It was a celebration of an endangered species who call Florida home part of the year. Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Turtlefest, at the Loggerhead Marine Life Center. The event is put on to appreciate ocean conservation and sea turtles. …

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Ask a silly question . . . For pure, unintentional, unfiltered absurdity, we dare you to top NBC’s “Today” show of April 3rd. The topic, among co-hosts Natalie Morales, Al Roker and Bill Geist, was the results of a poll about conspiracy theories. Several of which were so stupid as to only…

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Puerto Rico protects top US turtle nesting site long eyed by developers        

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Frogs, whose voices were once a prominent part of wildlife sounds in the Carribbean, are barely making a peep this spring. And that silence carries deadly implications for both amphibian survival and human health.

From 9News.com:

Without new conservation measures, there could be a massive die-off of Caribbean frogs within 15 years, warned Adrell Nunez, an amphibian expert with the Santo Domingo Zoo in the Dominican Republic. “There are species that we literally know nothing about” that could be lost, he said.

Researchers such as Lopez and his wife, Ana Longo Berrios, have been fanning out across the Caribbean and returning with new and troubling evidence of the decline. In some places, especially in Haiti, where severe deforestation is added to the mix of problems, extinctions are possible.

It is part of a grim picture overall. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has found that 32 percent of the world’s amphibian species are threatened or extinct, including more than 200 alone in both Mexico and Colombia.

“Everywhere we are seeing declines and it’s severe,” said Jan Zegarra, a biologist based in Puerto Rico for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Frogs may be less charismatic than some other troubled species, but their role in the environment is important. They are consumed by birds and snakes and they in turn are major predators of mosquitoes. Their absence could lead to a rise in malaria and dengue, not to mention discomfort.

There’s more — a lot more — here. …read more
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saw huge snapping turtle on road. Its that time of year again …read more
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By Herp News

A Winter Haven couple recently spotted a rare invasive lizard from their backyard porch.

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A game reserve in South Africa has taken the radical step of poisoning rhino horns so that people risk becoming ‘seriously ill’ if they consume them.

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