Music and surf event not one for the birds

The Conservation Council says a surfing competition soon on Kangaroo Island could wipe out the entire breeding season for a vulnerable bird species in South Australia. The Kangaroo Island Pro surfing event will be held at Vivonne Bay in November, in conjunction with a music festival that is expected to attract about 5,000 people. Conservation Council CEO Tim Kelly says there are fewer than 540 hooded plovers in South Australia and the festival could spell trouble for six pairs that have made their nests on the beach at Vivonne Bay. "The adults are likely to leave the eggs and the chicks, exposing them to predators such as seagulls and other things," he said. "We think there's a very real possibility that with this event being in the middle of our nesting season that you would get 100 per cent mortality of all of those birds nesting on that beach." Mr Kelly thinks the music event could be moved to another part of the island, south of Adelaide. "What we certainly want to see is a full analysis of the environmental impacts and the impacts on these species and certainly before there's any more events planned into the future, we need to understand what the impact's going to be," he said.

Malaysia cracks down on illegal ivory trade

THE noose is tightening on a key hub used to smuggle ivory from Africa to Asia. In three months, Malaysian authorities have seized over 1700 African elephant tusks - a first for the nation. Chris Shepherd of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC says that in 20 years of working in anti-animal trafficking he has never known Malaysia to seize any tusks, despite other authorities making seizures on ships to - or from - Malaysia. In the last two weeks alone, over 1000 tusks were seized on their way there. Because of this apparently lax approach to control, Malaysia is thought to be a trafficking hub. "Smugglers look for the path of least resistance," says Shepherd. Most of the ivory is headed to China to be used in luxury items. The seizures come hard on the heels of the 61st meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in August, at which an action plan was launched to raise $100 million over three years to crack down on global tusk smuggling.

Chemical makes rhino horns toxic

A South African game reserve has developed a treatment for rhino horns that is safe for the animals but causes convulsions and headaches to people who consume them, a wildlife group says. The potion is a mixture of drugs used to kill parasites on the rhinos, and includes a dye that turns even finely ground horns neon pink when seen by airport scanners, Rhino and Lion Reserve spokeswoman Lorinda Hern told national news agency SAPA. "The chemicals have the dual threat of keeping away both natural and human parasites ... and last for three to four years," she said. The treatment has been tested on rhinos at the park outside Johannesburg, she said. "A permanent solution would be to eliminate the demand for rhino horn altogether," Ms Hern said. Since the beginning of the year 279 rhinos had been killed for their horns at parks across the country, according to the national parks agency. Last month, the ministry of environmental affairs said it was investigating dehorning rhinos and stopping legal trophy hunts to fight poaching, which has seen the army being deployed to the Kruger National Park. Poaching has soared from just 13 cases in 2007, an increase powered by demand for rhino horns in Asian traditional medicine. "Education would go a long way towards teaching consumers that rhino horn contains no nutritional or medicinal value," she said.

Source: Greeen Times