By Herp News

On November 3, Cameroonian activist Nasako Besingi was convicted of four criminal counts against a controversial palm oil company operating in the country. But a coalition of environmental and human rights organizations is denouncing the charges, urging authorities to stop what they call the “repression” of Besingi and other activists. Besingi is the director of the Cameroonian NGO Struggle to Economize our Future Environment (SEFE), a group galvanizing resistance to the recent development of palm oil plantations in Cameroon by producer Herakles Farms. After three year of legal battles, he was recently convicted of two counts each of defamation and propagation of false news against the U.S. agribusiness company. He was sentenced to pay a fine of $2,400 or face up to three years in prison. But a group of six international organizations, including Greenpeace Africa and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), refute the legitimacy of the charges. In a statement, EIA referred to the judgment as “a great threat to freedom of expression in Cameroon.” Nasako Besingi, director of the Cameroonian NGO, SEFE, speaks during a press briefing at the National Press Club about the impacts of the Herakles Farms Palm Oil plantation development on the community and environment in his native Cameroon. The image behind him is an aerial view of one of the plantations. Photo courtesy of Greenpeace. The object of contention is a group of industrial palm oil plantations in northwest Cameroon, near its border with Nigeria. Run by Herakles Farms, a…

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By Herp News

The Green Macaw (Ara ambiguus) is an Endangered species. Traffickers hunt it on the banks of Nicaragua’s San Juan River. Captured birds are often transported for sale to San Salvador more than 1000 kilometers away. From there some birds are moved north through Mexico into the United States. Photo credit: Carlos Chávez. They call it the Central Market. It is the heart that breathes life into the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador. It is impossible not to feel lost in this huge maze of dealers where the purchase of almost anything is possible, ranging from “magic” potions to cure any ill, to broken jukeboxes, or wild animals, especially parrots that say “hello” inside their narrow cramped cages. No one has been able to stop illegal trafficking here. No one. In the last five years, the Salvadoran environmental police have moved in occasionally to inspect the Central Market. Nearly every raid results in the confiscation of a few species that are close to extinction, especially psittaciformes: parrots, parakeets and macaws. In April 2012, 58 birds were rescued; in March 2014, 32 more; in March 2015, 23. According to the estimations of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (known as MARN), more than 300 birds are confiscated every year. Some are released into the forest; some others are rehabilitated in an animal shelter in the west of El Salvador. No one knows how many birds and other animals escape the notice of police. Recently the MARN set up fences in San Salvador…

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By Herp News

The Indian star tortoise (Geochelone elegans) is a little-known, but common, victim of illegal wildlife trade. In 2014, at least 55,000 wild tortoises were poached from just one “trade hub” in southern India, a recent study published in Nature Conservation has uncovered. “We were most shocked at the sheer scale of the illegal trade in this species,” Neil D’Cruze, lead author from the University of Oxford and Head of Research at World Animal Protection, UK, told Mongabay. “A great deal of suffering is involved too — stuffed into sacks and suitcases, cracked shells stress and associated disease is rife and many do not survive the arduous smuggling process.” The Indian star tortoise is popular as a pet and a spiritual symbol, largely because of its striking shell that has a star-like radiating pattern of yellow and black. However, no one had taken a closer look at where the tortoises were coming from, D’Cruze said. The star tortoise is a popular pet mainly because of the attractive star-like radiating pattern on its shell. Photo by Neil D’Cruze for World Animal Protection. The star tortoise’s status in the wild was last assessed 15 years ago in 2000, he added, when it was categorized under ‘Least Concern’ on the IUCN Red List. Concerned about the tortoise’s current status in India’s wilderness — where they typically occur in grasslands and scrub forests — D’Cruze and his team initiated a 17-month investigation in two Indian states to try and find some answers. The…

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Hopefully this adorbable shot of an Elongated Tortoise in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user TylerStewart will help brighten your Monday! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Gallery photo by user Dean Alessandrin
Police are trying to track down a Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) stolen from the Pierrelatte crocodile farm in the Drôme département of southeastern France. The monitor lizard was one of four on loan from the Barcelona Zoo where it was born in captivity.

“This is the work of an enthusiast, or at least someone who was acting on orders,” farm manager Samuel Martin

The dragon, which weighed around 12 pounds and measured 4 feet long, was the only reptile taken by the thieves who used a cloth over the lizard’s eyes to prevent it from panicking.

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By Herp News

White-faced saki monkey (Pithecia pithecia). Photo by Rhett Butler. It’s being called the “landmark” conservation policy [ThinkProgress] President Obama recently released a presidential memorandum declaring that development projects on America’s public lands, such as energy and mining, should result in in net benefit for the nation’s rivers, lands, and wildlife resources. Peru creates ‘Yellowstone of the Amazon’ [Mongabay] After more than a decade of discussion and planning, Peru on Sunday will officially designate Sierra del Divisor National Park, a 1.3 million hectare (3.3 million acre) reserve that is home to uncontacted indigenous tribes, endangered wildlife, and one of South America’s wildest landscapes. The people have spoken and SeaWorld has listened [Washington Post] What has been viewed for many years as an iconic experience at SeaWorld San Diego, will soon be no more. As a result of the ongoing public criticism, the amusement park has announced they will phase out the “theatrical” killer whale show by 2016. What’s going down in Greenland will affect us all [Grist] This major glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and now it’s beginning to crumble into the sea. Scientists say the glacier holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a meter. Stream on Mendenhall Glacier. Photo by Rhett Butler. Pollution levels have turned China into an eerie doomsday scene [The Guardian] Residents of north-eastern China have locked themselves indoors after their homes were enveloped by record high levels of smog.…

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On the week of October 9th, a 10-man ranger patrol team was ambushed by wildlife poachers equipped with heavy artillery as they searched for an elephant tracking collar in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo. Most of the unit escaped, but four men were killed in the attack, bringing the ranger death toll in Garamba to eight just this year. As similar stories play out across Africa, it’s easy to see why reserve managers have turned to military technology, including drones, to combat poaching of high-value wildlife.Drones to the Rescue?The use of drones, a.k.a. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), is among of the most sophisticated of the proposed solutions to the poaching crisis, and certainly the headline-grabber. Conservationists have called for deployment of UAS’s to the front lines of the poaching crisis, in order to enhance surveillance of protected areas and detection and pursuit of elephant and rhino poachers. White rhino in Kruger National Park, South Africa, a target for poachers. Photo credit: Rhett A. ButlerRecent press coverage on the transformative nature of UAS’s to protect wildlife, however, is often misleading or thin on evidence that the devices work as intended. Unmanned Aerial Systems are complicated, and reporters are not UAS experts; reports by manufacturers of successful field applications are frequently unsubstantiated by data. These rarely consider that the deterrence resulting from applying a novel technology is likely to be short-lived, once poachers recognize the UAS’s shortcomings. These claims have thus generated confusion and unrealistic…

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A group of scientists from the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and World Animal Protection is on the prowl for new tools to help protect wild tigers. Today, they launched a competition called “Think for Tigers,” which urges anyone associated with academic institutions, NGOs, governments and tech companies to propose an “innovative idea, product or solution” that could help scientists and park personnel monitor or track tigers in the wild. Tiger and cub in the snow. Photo credit: Dave Pape, licensed under Public Domain via Commons The population of wild tigers has dwindled to a mere 3,200 individuals that are confined to four percent of their former range. The species is listed as “endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and two of the current tiger subspecies are critically endangered. Poaching, habitat loss and fragmentation, overhunting and other threats have contributed to the startling decline of the biggest of the big cats. “Tigers are in trouble. They are threatened by poaching for illegal trade, habitat loss and conflict with people. Researchers and rangers are working around the clock to protect them, but the threats are increasing and time is running out,” David Macdonald, founder and director of Wild CRU and Think for Tigers project director, said in a press release. Researchers currently depend on an array of tools and techniques to keep tabs on wild tigers, ranging from the traditional to the high tech. The tiger toolbox includes monitoring natural signs, such as…

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By Herp News

The world’s largest amphibian sounds like a work of fiction: virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, and reportedly growing as long as a man, the Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus) is clinging to survival in the wild in a few fast-flowing rivers scattered across the highlands of China. Meanwhile, the aquaculture industry is breeding the animal in large numbers in captivity for the gourmet food market.The Chinese Giant Salamander is a fully aquatic amphibian that grows to a maximum length of 1.8 meters (almost 6 feet). More typically measuring about 1 meter (3.28 feet), it breathes through its mottled brown, rough, wrinkled skin, and has a broad, flat head, and tiny eyes. Poor eyesight means that this large animal relies heavily on smell, touch, and the sensing of vibrations — via special sensory nodes in its skin — to catch prey of fish, frogs, and insects.Females lay strings of hundreds of eggs in dens, or underwater cavities, which are then guarded by male den masters until the eggs hatch a couple of months later. Measuring just 3 centimeters (1.18 inches) long when they emerge from the egg, the salamanders grow slowly to their adult size, reaching sexual maturity when they are about 15 years old.An ancient animal disappearing from wild riversPart of a lineage stretching back 170 million years, these ancient creatures are “living fossils” now at risk of extinction in the wild due to a deadly combination of over-exploitation, disease, and habitat loss. Long generation times make…

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By Herp News

Nature isn’t quite so natural anymore. Our interaction with the world around us has changed it drastically, and nowhere more so than in cities, vast artificial landscapes lacking in biodiversity. However, cities are also evolutionary hotspots, home to moths that changed color to camouflage themselves amongst pollution-stained trees, “superworms” that can munch on heavy metals, and birds that changed their tune to battle with noise pollution. Species are changing their bodies and behavior to fit into the human environment.According to a recent review paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, these changes may be occurring much quicker than scientists imagined to be possible.“What the evidence is saying is that ‘rapid evolution’ is occurring,” Marina Alberti, the author of the study and a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Washington in Seattle, told mongabay.comAs we build our cities we tinker with ecosystems, creating conditions that force species to adapt. In doing so we unleash change in wildlife communities. Previously scientists thought such change took a long time to occur. However, Alberti writes that “human-driven trait changes occur roughly twice as fast as those driven by [natural] forces,” according to research cited in her paper.According to Alberti, if current evidence about the pace of change is correct there will be “significant implications for ecological and human wellbeing on a relatively short time scale.”In urban areas we change the number of species and their diversity, but we also create habitats — or a lack of them…

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By Herp News

Phenological mismatches, or a mistiming between creatures and the prey and plants they eat, is one of the biggest known impacts of climate change on ecological systems. But a new study finds that one common migratory songbird has a natural flexibility in its breeding time that has helped stave off mismatches, at least for now.

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Gallery photo by user antshrike
The British newspaper The Guardian has published an in depth article targeting the illegal trade in protected lizard species in Europe. The article details some of the species it’s undercover reporters encountered in their search, including Earless Monitor Lizards and Alligator Lizards, as well as others.

“All the specimens (of Earless Monitor Lizards) available outside Borneo have been illegally obtained and brought there,” Mark Auliya, IUCN’s monitor lizard specialist group

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will hear proposals to ban the international trade in earless monitor and some arboreal alligator lizards at its next conference in South Africa in 2016.

To read more, check out The Guardian

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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! Gotta love a field found Black-tailed Rattlesnake in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user SDeFriez ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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kingsnake.com gallery photo by chaz901
Four campers in Maryland that decided to go all “Bear Grylls” on a protected timber rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus, by killing it with a BB gun then grilling and eating it, have been sentenced to probation and a $200.00 fine and probation from 14 to 28 months each. Court records show the men from Glen Burnie plead guilty Tuesday in district court to possessing or destroying the snake, a state-protected species.

A fifth defendant is scheduled for trial Dec. 8.

To read more check out the story at ABC11.com …read more
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What a cute lil Punkin! Loving this gorgeous shot of a young Tokay Gecko in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user mfontenot ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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A black female Kaznakov’s viper.
One female is orange with black markings, one is almost all black, and the male is mostly orange. I can let you have them for, awwww—I’ve forgotten how much—but the amount was almost affordable so I became the owner of a viper taxon that I had long wanted to work with. These were Kaznakov’s vipers, Vipera kaznakovi.

This is a small (15 to 24 inch long), rather heavy bodied viper (females tend to be stouter than males and gravid females become noticeably heavy) of forested slopes of the Caucasus region, specifically of Georgia, Turkey, and a small area of Russia.

My 3 were housed in a naturalistic terrarium having a substrate of scree, 3 snake-sized caves, and a few live plantings. Of course a small dish of clean water was always present.

The little snakes quickly settled in and within days were accepting large prefrozen fuzzies from forceps. As spring turned to summer and summer to autumn, the vipers began breeding. They were cooled for about 60 days, and when warmed they again resumed breeding. Even during breeding the appetites of all 3 were always good. By late spring the female was noticeably gravid and by midsummer she presented us with 5 beautiful babies.

Sadly many of my records and notes became irretrievable when a recalcitrant computer chose to die so many particulars are now merely memories. But at least I can share a few pix with you. Enjoy.

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By Herp News

In the mid 2000s, Patricia Parker of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and her colleagues were trying to solve a mystery. Concerned by how avian pox was wiping out several bird species on the Hawaiian Islands, the researchers wanted to find out if the disease was a threat to a unique bird species of another group of islands — the Galapagos. The team investigated which avian pox viruses were affecting birds in the Galapagos, and when and how these viruses may have been introduced there. They believed that determining this would help them protect the birds. The researchers found some of their answers in museum specimens. Between 2004 and 2008, the team combed through more than 10,000 specimens of taxidermied birds — including thousands of mockingbirds and finches — at the California Academy of Sciences and the Zoologische Staatssammlung in Munich (ZSM), Germany. Explorers had collected these birds during expeditions to the Galapagos Islands between 1891 and 1908. Parker and her team scanned the birds carefully, looking for wart-like growths on the birds, which could indicate possible infection by the avian pox virus. The team found that only specimens collected after 1898 had wart-like growths consistent with avian pox, suggesting that avian pox could have appeared in the Galapagos Islands in the early 20th century. A Chatham mockingbird (Mimus melanotus) collected in May 1899 from San Cristobal Island (in CAS collection). The lesion on the center left toe was sampled, and was found to be positive for an avian pox virus. Image from Parker et al, 2011. The…

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Photo: (Photo: Andrea Stetson/Special to The News-Press)

Two locations in Florida are reporting record sea turtle nests this year, despite the actual numbers of hatchlings being slightly lower than last year.

Collier County and Sanibel Island in Lee County smashed the turtle nesting record for the second year in a row, with 1,510 nests laid on Collier beaches this season and 522 nests laid on Sanibel.

“We had a really good year” “At the end of July we had storms that lasted over a period of 3-4 days with extremely high tides so we did have some inundations and some washouts,” “Last year we didn’t have any storm issues at all.” – Maura Kraus.

The 2015 numbers on Sanibel and Captiva include 26 green turtle nests, which is a record for green turtles as most of the turtles that lay eggs on the local beaches are loggerhead turtles.

To read the full article, visit The News Press.
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Every year I try to do something in my snake rooms that I have never done before. One thing I tried this year that actually worked out was having one of my Children’s Python maternally incubate her clutch of eggs. I found her on her clutch on 27 April 2015, but I think she laid her clutch 2 days before while I was out gathering native snake data. I kept her in a 28 quart box inside a rack system with 11 inch heat tape mounted on the back wall of the rack and maintained by a Ranco thermometer.

She placed her clutch right up against the tape in the back of the box, and stayed coiled on her clutch, not accepting any meals during the entire process. The clutch began to hatch on 22 June 2015. I found this interesting because I have had clutches hatch much more quickly when incubating with artificial incubation. Sure enough, the babies from this clutch proved to be strong feeders and continue to thrive. I also got a pretty even split of males and females in this clutch. It was fun, I had a good time doing it, and got some nice healthy babies when the process was completed. …read more
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By Herp News

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ew places offer a glimpse of Indonesia’s forlorn environmental track record like Meru Betiri, a 58,000-hectare national park tucked away in the southeast corner of Java island. The park is perhaps best known as the last-known sighting of the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) before it was declared extinct in the 1990s. Today environmentalists and the local community are working on a pilot program that offers some hope of a change in direction. “The people living around the forest should be engaged to defend the forest,” Arif Aliadi, a community organizer with the Indonesian Institute of Tropical Nature (Latin), told Mongabay. “If they maintain the forest, then they benefit. It’s not just money from produce, there is also the sale of carbon.” Indonesia’s vast land mass spanning three time zones was almost entirely covered in forests at the beginning of the 19th century. Today around half of its tropical forests has disappeared, with an estimated 6 million hectares lost between 2000 and 2012. A moratorium on new logging concessions on virgin “primary” forest was announced in 2011, but the evidence indicates it has failed to stop the rot. Meanwhile annual dry season fires have erupted on 2 million hectares of land this year as the El Nino weather phenomenon prolongs the annual burning season. Meru Betiri National Park in East Java. Photo by Petrus Riski Latin is one of a clutch of environmental NGOs trying to prune Indonesia’s growth in forest loss. In Meru Betiri, it is…

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Sucha lovely contrast against the blue, this Angolan Python takes the spotlight in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user EdCB ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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By Herp News

Species in Southeast Asia are in crisis.  Compared with most other regions, Southeast Asian countries — Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam — have a higher proportion of species that are categorized as threatened on the IUCN Red List. Southeast Asia also harbors large numbers of endemic species, and faces the highest rate of habitat loss compared to South America, Meso-America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, some studies have estimated that Southeast Asian countries could lose more than 60 percent of endemic taxa by 2100. Moreover, achieving conservation goals in these countries remains a big challenge due to lack of resources and funding, corruption, apathy, poverty, and booming human populations. Sumatran Rhinos are critically endangered. Photo by S. Ellis | Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0. Given the staggering rate at which species are disappearing in the region, and the urgency to save them, the IUCN Species Survival Commission and other international conservation organizations have come together to form the Asian Species Action Partnership (ASAP!). The main aim of ASAP is to “mobilize support where it is urgently needed, drawing on the collaborative expertise of conservation practitioners; pooling resources, maximizing efficiency and influencing political will by communicating the issues to a global audience”. ASAP prioritizes conservation of critically endangered species in Southeast Asia, such as the charismatic Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), the Siamese Crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) and the Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii), as well as numerous lesser-known, but critical species, such as Sir David’s long-beaked…

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By Herp News

Need an antidote to all the gloomy and frustrating environmental news? The new book No More Endlings: Saving Species One Story at a Time may prove just the thing. No More Endlings (an endling refers to the last individual of a doomed species) details 47 endangered species success stories. Told in the words of the passionate and heroic conservationists working to save their favorite species, the book crisscrosses the world in search of both the attention-grabbing charismatic species and the little-known underdogs fighting for their survival with little funding and less attention. “Ultimately, my aim is for No More Endlings to help people make the connection between all species, their importance within each of their ecosystems and their importance within our own lives,” the editor of No More Endlings, Allison Hegan, told Mongabay in an interview. “Animals and plants provide beauty in our world, food and medicine, pique our curiosity, inspire creativity and innovation, and enrich our lives in countless ways.” The book also walks the walk: fifty percent of proceeds for No More Endlings: Saving Species One Story at a Time will go back to conservation efforts to help save wildlife on the ground. In an interview with Mongabay, Hegan tells how a conversation on LinkedIn led her to start work on the book, how she chose the species and stories and the many ways in which wildlife make the world better. Hornbills are a focus of one of the chapters in the book. Knobbed hornbill…

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He may look relaxed here, but the Cuvier’s Dwarf Caiman in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user JeffP is forever alert and ready to pounce! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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A portrait of the Trans-Danubian Sand Viper
Like the herpetofauna of the USA, the nomenclature of the Old World herpetofauna is in great disarray. However, it seems that at the moment, at least, the beautiful Trans-Danubian sand viper (all of the several subspecies are often referred to as “nose-horned vipers” by American herpetoculturists) continues to be known as Vipera ammodytes montandoni. The Trans-Danubian sand viper is adult at from 24 to 34 inches in total length and is restricted in distribution to Bulgaria and southern Romania. Often differentiated by the shape of the rostral projection which is deeper than broad this sturdy viper is sexually dichromatic. Females are usually of some shade of fawn with a deep brown dorsal pattern while the ground color of the males is from a rather light gray to a dark olive gray and the dorsal markings are black(ish). And the keyt word here is “usually,” for some individuals in populations may be quite brightly colored.

This snake can vary as greatly in disposition as in coloration with some being placid and reluctant to strike while others will strike with very little provocation. The venom is complex and the toxicity has been found to vary populationally. This snake should be considered dangerous and if handling is necessary this should be accomplished with extreme care and a clear plastic restraining tube.

Continue reading “The Trans-Danubian Sand Viper” …read more
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Photo : Florida Atlantic University
Loggerhead sea turtles have been around for 60 million years and have survived through many changing environments, however, a new study has revealed the turtles survival is being threatened by climate change. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) discovered that warming temperatures during incubation yield more females, while more males develop under cooler conditions.

“If climatic changes continue to force the sex ratio bias of loggerheads to even greater extremes, we are going to lose the diversity of sea turtles as well as their overall ability to reproduce effectively. Sex ratios are already strongly female biased,””That’s why it’s critical to understand how environmental factors, specifically temperature and rainfall, influence hatchling sex ratios.” – Dr. Jeanette Wyneken Florida Atlantic University

To read the full article, visit natureworldnews.com. …read more
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Hopefully the gorgeous blues of this Dendrobates auratus uploaded by kingsnake.com user amazonreptile will brighten your Monday. Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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While the IUCN lists The Panamanian golden frog Atelopus zeteki as critically endangered, it may in fact have been extinct in the wild since 2007, but thanks to efforts like the captive breeding project at the Maryland Zoo, they may have a better chance. For 15 years the program has been running with the tiny amphibians being bred and reared in the zoo, with hopes for eventual release into the wild.

“We’re the first institution to breed the frogs and we’ve been instrumental with a lot of the husbandry and medical side of things,” said Kevin Barrett.
Barrett is the herpetology collection manager and runs Project Golden Frog at the Maryland Zoo.

This year the Zoo is being acknowledged for it’s efforts with a conservation award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

To read the full article and watch the video, visit CBS Baltimore. …read more
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By Herp News

Obama administration rejects Keystone XL pipeline [USA Today] After more than six years of review, President Obama announced on Friday that his administration has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. He said the pipeline was neither a “silver bullet for the economy” nor “the express lane to climate disaster.” Checking food labels is good for health and forests [The Malaysian Insider] You may check the nutrition labels on your food for health reasons, but have you checked product labels for sustainability reasons? Experts say checking labels and purchasing the right products could make a difference in saving the world’s forests. These scientists are experimenting with growing ‘super coral’ [The Guardian (UK)] At a time when environmentalists are warning about the rapidly declining health of the world’s coral reefs, scientists have embarked on a quest to breed coral that can withstand the hotter and more acidic oceans caused by global warming. Purple coral in Wailea, Maui, Hawaii. Photo by Rhett Butler. China and France release joint climate commitment [Mongabay] France and China released a joint statement to “reaffirm their strong conviction that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity” on the first day of French President François Hollande’s official state visit to China last week. How snakes are helping beetles to invade Guam [USA Today] The brown tree snake, one of Guam’s most notorious invasive species are assisting the Guam coconut rhinoceros in an unexpected way, making it easier for the beetles to breed in the…

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The effects of a global economic slowdown are finally trickling down to all of us lowly snake hunters. The prices paid for commodities are in steep decline, and this includes all metals, including the scrap tin loved so much by reptile collectors. I have been getting anecdotal reports about local metal scrappers being offered less than the cost of a tank of gas for entire truckloads of metals that weigh several tons.

Sadly, much of the damage has already been done as tens of thousands of metal pieces have already been stolen and scrapped. This snake hunter is taking great joy in hearing about how upset these metal thieves become when they find out they are not getting paid enough money after spending an entire day destroying prime snake collecting habitat and stealing from people like myself. Perhaps we will all have a chance to rebuild our old sites and it is my hope that the market in base metals does not recover for decades to come! If things go our way we will be finding downed barns with metal to lay out for years to come! …read more
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By Herp News

Despite widespread protests by conservation groups and citizens, Mauritius will start culling its native Mauritius fruit bats (Pteropus niger) tomorrow. These bats are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. According to a press statement released by Mauritius’s Ministry of Agro Industry and Food Security today, culling of 18,000 bats will begin on Saturday, November 7. The culling will be carried out from 6 PM to 6 AM in state forests — which includes national parks, nature reserves, mountain reserves, and river reserves — in collaboration with the Police Department and the Special Mobile Force. Media reports speculate that the bats will be killed using shotguns. The statement warns the public not to enter any state forest lands until further notice. ”The Ministry will not be held responsible for any incident which may occur as a result of non-compliance with this communique,” the statement said. While the Ministry did not spell out duration of the culling, conservationists speculate that it will be done over three weeks as planned by the Ministry earlier. Mauritius fruit bats. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. According to Mauritian media reports, the cull will be possible due to a new law that was passed recently — the Native Terrestrial Biodiversity and National Parks Bill — which allows “controlling” or culling of any species that has attained “pest” status “in the national interest”. The Mauritian government believes that fruit bat populations on the island have increased to over 90,000, which makes them a pest. By culling 18,000 bats,…

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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! Here’s lookin’ at you kid! Check out this gorgeous albino Southern Pacific Rattlesnake in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user lichanura . Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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By Herp News

The Endangered great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) is restricted to continental shelves and highly valued for its fins. It only reproduces once every two years. Photo by Jake Mohan licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license [dropcap]O[/dropcap]n July 19, 2011, officers from the Galapagos National Park Service and the Ecuadorian Navy stopped the Fer Mary I, a long line fishing vessel out of the bustling Ecuadorian port of Manta as it sailed within the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). They found more than just the crew on board; they also found 379 shark carcasses. Shark capture inside the GMR is an environmental crime under Ecuadoran law. The case made international headlines not only because of the illegal cargo; but also because of the initially outrageous response it received from the local judiciary, which annulled the case. That local judge was later suspended by the Ecuadorian federal government and the case taken up for review. This year, after a tumultuous four-year legal battle, the captain of the Fer Mary I was sentenced to two years in prison and each of the 12-member crew received a one-year sentence. Their example demonstrates both the growing legal tide against illegal fishing in the GMR, and Ecuador’s toughening stance against wildlife trafficking. A wake up call for Galapagos enforcers The Galapagos Marine Reserve is one of the world’s largest protected marine areas, covering nearly 133,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles). It’s recognition as a global biodiversity hotspot is well earned,…

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Photo: AUREAPTERUS/ISTOCKPHOTO
A new study shows that the prehistoric amphibians were not all that different from their modern day relatives. Limb regeneration was found in animals estimated to be 290 million years old.

The findings suggest that some salamander ancestors had the ability to regenerate body parts nearly 80 million years before the first salamander existed.
The results “show that salamander-like regeneration is not something that is salamander specific, but was instead widespread in the evolutionary past,” says study coauthor Nadia Fröbisch, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin.

To read the full article, visit Science News. …read more
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Several new species of amphibians and a reptile that lived in what’s now Brazil from 278 million years ago have just been discovered and described by a team of scientists from around the world, including Chicago’s Field Museum. Their paper helps fill in gaps in our knowledge about fauna in the southern tropics of Pangaea.

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On Tuesday, an overwhelming majority of Washington voters — around 71 percent — passed an anti-wildlife trafficking initiative called Initiative 1401 (I-1401) that bans trade in wildlife parts and products. Initiative 1401, backed by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen, makes it a crime to sell, purchase, trade, or distribute parts and products of any wildlife species covered under the initiative. The animals included under this initiative are elephants, lions, tigers, rhinos, leopards, cheetahs, marine turtles, pangolins, sharks and ray species listed in Appendix I or II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Treaty, or listed as as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) red list. “This is an enormous momentum-builder for the movement in the United States to shut down the commerce in trinkets, powders and pelts that are driving some of the world’s most iconic creatures to the precipice of extinction,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, said in a statement. “The animals need their tusks, horns, heads and hides more than we do, and Washington voters have given our movement a shot in the arm with this resounding vote.” Initiative 1401 bans sale, purchase and distribution of parts and products of endangered species like elephants, rhinos, tigers, leopards, lions, cheetahs, pangolins, marine turtles, sharks and rays. Photos courtesy of Mongabay. Violations are punishable either as a gross misdemeanor, or a class C felony, which…

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This Wood Frog in our herp photo of the day brings back memories of summertime herping. Uploaded by kingsnake.com user casichelydia . Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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This is a normally colored and patterned dusky pygmy rattler.
Dusky pygmy rattlers, Sistrurus miliarius barbouri, are among the most abundant snakes, including both nonvenomous and venomous—in Florida. I can remember finding these in such numbers beneath the Australian pines that lined the old Tamiami Canal west of Dade County that it was far easier to ignore them than to count them. They were nearly as plentiful in Broward, Lee, Collier, Charlotte, and Brevard counties. And they remain one of the snakes that we can be almost assured of seeing when weather conditions are reasonable in Union, Baker, and Liberty counties. Simply stated, although they can be absent from some locales dusky pygmy rattlesnakes are almost everywhere in Florida.

In keeping with the common name dusky pygs are usually just that, dusky in color and “dusty” in appearance. The dusty appearance is created by a varying overlay of melanin that may obscure the precise outlines of the dark dorsal and lateral spots. This nervous (even twitchy) little rattlesnake usually has a prominent but broken orange vertebral stripe between the dark blotches and often brightest anteriorly. Some examples, these often termed “anerythristic” by hobbyists, may lack the orange. Rarely—very rarely—the pattern of the dusky pyg may be lineate rather than blotched. On these examples the lateral blotches are usually entirely lacking and the orange vertebral stripe may be unbroken, bisecting both the gray ground color and the dark dorsal blotches. And now to the photos of this interesting little crotaline, click below…
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The Endangered Lear’s Macaw (Anodorhynchus leari). Birds, loved for their plumage and their songs, are among the most trafficked of all animal species in Latin America. Photo by Joao Quental licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. [dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith its spectacularly diverse ecosystems, rare and endemic species, remote terrain, often loophole-riddled laws, and sketchy enforcement, Latin America is a haven for a booming illegal wildlife trade. South and Central America’s diversity is a magnet for wildlife traffickers dealing in the rare and unusual. Brazil alone holds 15-20 percent of the planet’s biological diversity and reportedly supplies 5-15 percent of the global illegal wildlife trade. What is most notable about this unlawful trade is the range of species involved. Birds — particularly parrots, macaws and songbirds — are among the most trafficked. Reptiles, including iguanas and snakes are popular in the pet trade. Turtles are harvested for their eggs, meat, and shells; caimans for their skins. Also striking is the immense volume and high prices obtained for illegally taken seafood delicacies — ranging from shark fins, totoaba swim bladders, sea cucumbers, and queen conch meat. A remarkable variety of other animals are also trafficked, including jaguars, armadillos, monkeys, frogs, scorpions and spiders. A close-up of a seizure of tropical birds hidden within a car seat at the U.S. border in San Diego. Photo courtesy of USFWS. The breadth and complexity of the black market trade in wildlife complicates analysis of both its…

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Photo: Cuba HeadlinesScientists have announced the discovery of a new species of small frog only about 14 mm long, near Guantanamo, Cuba.

First found in 2014, scientists have now officially named the newly discovered amphibian Eleutherodactylus beguei.

“This vertebrate has close to brown coloration. Its natural habitat is the soil moist, hence its survival in this area of eastern Cuba where rainfall is abundant throughout the year” – Gerardo Begue-Quiala

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