March 1, 2002
No protection yet for Bering
Sea whales
Citing a lack of basic
biological information about the feeding habits and migration patterns of the
endangered North Pacific right whale, the National Marine Fisheries Service
ruled last week that it doesn’t know enough yet to set aside part of Bering
Sea off Alaska for special protection.
The decision prompted an
angry reaction from the Center for Biological Diversity, which had petitioned
the agency last year to designate about 70,000 square miles in the southeast
Bering Sea as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act.
"The marine agency
has failed to take the most basic steps to protect this population," Brent
Plater, the center’s lawyer, told the Anchorage Daily News.
Once thought to number
11,000 in the North Pacific, the slow-swimming right whales were almost wiped
out because they are easy to harpoon and float when killed.
U.S. government biologists
plan to conduct an extensive survey this summer, the agency reported.
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March
1, 2002
Skeptic named to important
Danish post
A man who believes global
warming is a minor affair has been named to head a new Danish independent environmental
institute, according to Reuters news service.
The appointment of Bjorn
Lomborg, author of the controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, as
director of the Institute for Environmental Valuation, has enraged environmentalists
and invited criticism from opponents abroad.
The 37-year-old statistician’s
book earned the scorn of the green movement for saying there’s no environmental
crisis when it was published in English by Cambridge University Press in August.
The book argues that forests
are not declining, few animal species have gone extinct lately, rivers and oceans
are becoming cleaner, raw materials, energy and fresh water are in plentiful
supply and that global warning will be minor.
Most of the book contradicts
the conclusions of a host of prominent scientists, who were astonished the book
had even been published.
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March
1, 2002
Rabies epidemic confirmed
in northern Alaska
Rabies has been found in
44 Arctic foxes, 18 red foxes and four dogs in northern Alaska. Most of the
animals were from the North Slope Borough.
As well, 15 people, mostly
in Nuiqsut, a village about 160 miles east of Barrow, have been exposed, most
likely through a bite that broke the skin.
Rabies infects the central
nervous system, causing brain disease and ultimately death.
Exposure for humans calls
for five doses of a vaccine, administered through shots in the arm over four
weeks, plus a shot of human rabies immune globulin.
Rabies epidemics have been
documented every three to five years in northern Alaska, but do not occur in
all regions at the same time.
According to the Anchorage
Daily News, rabid foxes are easy to spot. If a fox takes on the town’s
meanest dog, it’s likely something’s not right. Sometimes rabid foxes
stagger. They have also been known to attack the tail rotors of helicopters.
One rabid fox was flattened after it attacked a bulldozer.
At the other extreme, some
infected animals act confused and sluggish.
If a rabid fox bites a
dog, the virus usually shows up 18 to 25 days later. The virus moves up nervous
system fiber about two millimeters per hour until it reaches the brain. Animals
die within days after the virus reaches the brain.
Symptoms show up sooner
in dogs or humans bit in the face because the virus has a shorter route to the
brain.
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Nunavut 99
