Category: Environment

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Update On Mad Cow Disease

Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.

February 11, 2001  Atlanta, Georgia - The London Times reported this week that animal feed protein contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSE or mad cow disease, is estimated to have reached 70 countries through exports by a British company between 1988 and 1996. The company, Prosper de Mulder based in Doncaster, northern England, admitted to the Times that its animal feed was exported as pig and poultry food which were not banned until 1996, but could still have been mixed up with cattle feed which was illegal. The BSE-contaminated pig and poultry food was exported to Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malta, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The United Nations is now warning all countries that have imported cattle or animal feed from western Europe, especially Britain, to be concerned about the risk of BSE and variant CJD.

 

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94% Decline In Aleutian Islands Sea Otter Population

"We aren't aware of any mammalian decline of either this magnitude or geographic extent. It's really kind of mind boggling, actually."

- Tim Tinker, Marine Ecologist, University of California, Santa Cruz

Sea otter with arms folded floating on its back in Aleutian Islands. Photograph courtesy U. S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska.
Sea otter with arms folded floating on its back in Aleutian Islands. Photograph courtesy U. S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska.

February 7, 2001  Santa Cruz, California -

Changing Environment and Impact On Animals

­ The past ten years have been the warmest in a thousand years; the Arctic ice cap has shrunk over the past three decades to about half the size it was.

 

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Mad Cow-like Chronic Wasting Disease in North American Deer and Elk

Wild mule deer in Colorado. Photograph courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Wild mule deer in Colorado. Photograph courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife.

February 4, 2001  Denver, Colorado - This past week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned countries around the world to be concerned about the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) known as mad cow disease. In a formal statement, FAO said: "All countries which have imported cattle or meat and bone meal from Western Europe, especially Britain, during and since the 1980s can be considered at risk from the disease."

 

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U. N. Global Warming Forecast: Up to 10.5 Degrees F. Hotter At End of 21st Century

"The idea of having a planet that really warmed 10 degrees Fahrenheit is rather baffling. That's the same change we saw back to the last Ice Age. And obviously that was a hugely different kind of world to live on. So, if we really experience something at that high end of temperature warming, it sounds like there is a possibility for widespread disaster."

- Drew Shindell, Ph.D., Atmospheric Physicist, NASA/GISS

Lightening in violent thunderstorm courtesy National Severe Storm Center, Norman, Oklahoma.
Lightening in violent thunderstorm courtesy National Severe Storm Center, Norman, Oklahoma.

January 28, 2001  New York City ­ The largest decline in a mammal population ever recorded by modern scientists has occurred in the otter population of the Aleutian Islands off the west coast of Alaska. In the 1980s, as many as 100,000 otters inhabited the islands. Today, there are only about 6,000 left. And 70% of that decline occurred between 1992 and 2000, a rate of decline that scientists say is unprecedented for any mammal population in the world. Researchers have been trying to find out what happened. And the answer seems to be global warming. Warmer ocean currents in the Aleutians have driven out the huge population of seals and sea lions that used to be the staple food of killer whales. When the seals and sea lions disappeared, the whales turned to otters for food. As water temperatures increased, so did the salmon population. Salmon have attracted sharks. So, in a few short years a warmer water temperature has transformed the once safe mammal sanctuary of the Aleutian Islands into a feeding ground for predators.

 

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Environmental Updates

Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.

November 26, 2000 Western Europe - On Friday, a shocked Germany and Portugal reported two new cases of mad cow disease that seems to be spreading in Europe. Doctors think the brain destroying prions that cause loss of muscle control and progressive dementia originated in Great Britain after cattle were given feed containing the ground up remains of infected sheep. There is a form of mad cow disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob which enters humans who eat infected meat. In England, 81 people have died of that disease since 1996.

 

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Update On Increased UV Radiation and Amphibian Decline

 

Deformed frog, only one rear leg. Photograph courtesy University of Minnesota.
Deformed frog, only one rear leg. Photograph courtesy University of Minnesota.

November 12, 2000 Corvallis, Oregon - This year the largest ozone hole on record at the Antarctic extended over the city of Punta Arenas in Chile, exposing humans, animals and plants to increased ultraviolet radiation which can cause skin cancer, kill amphibian embryos and stunt and deform those that survive. Over the next four months, atmospheric scientists will be monitoring what happens at the North Pole. Will the Arctic ozone hole also get bigger as winter takes hold and expose more humans, animals and plants to increased ultraviolet radiation?

 

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Mysterious Shark Deaths Near Panama City, Florida

More than 100 dead sharks on the eastern side of Shell Island near Panama City, Florida were reported on October 16, 2000. Photograph © 2000 by John Brusher, National Marine Fisheries Service.
More than 100 dead sharks on the eastern side of Shell Island near Panama City, Florida were reported on October 16, 2000. Photograph © 2000 by John Brusher, National Marine Fisheries Service.

October 22, 2000  Panama City, Florida - More than a hundred blacktip and Atlantic sharpnose sharks were found October 16, 2000 dead and decaying along a half mile of beach on the eastern side of Shell Island near Panama City, Florida. Marine biologists so far cannot explain the mass deaths of a rugged species sometimes called "living fossils" because modern sharks arose during the Jurassic Period between 135 and 190 million years ago. No one can remember so many shark deaths at one time before.

 

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Kentucky Governor Declares State of Emergency After Coal Sludge Spill

Big Sandy River, Kentucky. Seventy miles of waterways filled with 210 million gallons of coal mine sludge headed for Ohio River after a slurry impoundment broke on October 11. Photograph courtesy Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet.
Big Sandy River, Kentucky. Seventy miles of waterways filled with 210 million gallons of coal mine sludge headed for Ohio River after a slurry impoundment broke on October 11. Photograph courtesy Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet.

October 22, 2000 Frankfort, Kentucky - Kentucky Governor Paul E. Patton visited the Martin County site near Inez where an estimated 210 million gallons of coal mine sludge collapsed into the Big Sandy and Cold Water Branches of Wolf Creek. Public water supplies in the town of Louisa and Martin County District Number One were immediately polluted. On October 16, Governor Patton declared a State of Emergency for ten counties "in the wake of last Wednesday's failure of a Martin County coal slurry impoundment. ...The declaration covers the counties of Boyd, Bracken, Carter, Fleming, Greenup, Lawrence, Lewis, Martin, Mason and Robertson, all lying within the Big Sandy and Ohio River watersheds." By October 22, at least seventy miles of waterways were filled with the cement-like sludge.

 

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Unidentified Primate (Bigfoot?) Body Print and Hairs Discovered in Washington State

Gifford Pinchot National Forest west of Yakima, Washington is location of unidentified and possible Bigfoot body print and hairs discovered in mud on September 22, 2000.
Gifford Pinchot National Forest west of Yakima, Washington is location of unidentified and possible Bigfoot body print and hairs discovered in mud on September 22, 2000.

October 8, 2000 Tahuya, Washington – Bigfoot tracker, landscape contractor and Tahuya resident, Derek Randles, has a large plaster cast of what might be the first partial body print of a Bigfoot ever found. In September, he helped the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) plan an expedition of fourteen people into the Gifford Pinchot wilderness west of Yakima, Washington. Their goal was to find Bigfoot tracks, hairs and screams for an Australian camera crew producing a segment for the Discovery Channel program Animal X . The group set up a sound projection system to loudly broadcast a Bigfoot scream recorded recently at Lake Tahoe, California. On September 21st, after one of the broadcasts of three Bigfoot screams, the researchers were shocked to hear a nearly identical series of three screams answer back.

Around 3:30 AM on September 22, Derek Randles and some of his colleagues went in the direction of the screams and placed fruit in the middle of a watery, muddy wallow in hopes that whatever was producing the eerie answers might be tempted to eat the fruit and leave tracks in the mud. After sunrise, the men found more than footprints.

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Largest-Ever Antarctic Ozone Hole

 

September 2000 Antarctic ozone depletion rates are unprecedented. NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data shows huge white hole over the South Pole devoid of ozone and severe thinning over the entire Antarctic continent and the tip of South America. Graphic courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
September 2000 Antarctic ozone depletion rates are unprecedented. NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data shows huge white hole over the South Pole devoid of ozone and severe thinning over the entire Antarctic continent and the tip of South America. Graphic courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

September 10, 2000  Greenbelt, Maryland - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is the biggest it's ever been and it's only the beginning of September. Usually Antarctic ozone depletion starts in July during the South Pole's winter. That's when extremely cold air intensifies ozone destruction, reaching a peak by the end of September and into October. But this year, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland reports that already the ozone hole is larger than all of the Antarctic and extends over the southern tip of South America. That's 11 million square miles and breaks all previous records. A spokesman at the United Nations World Meteorological Observation agency in Geneva, Switzerland told reporters: "It is remarkable to find these low values so early in September, perhaps one or two weeks earlier than in any previous year."

 

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