Philip Bethge

Category: Stories

  • The Taxidermy World Championships: Finding Life in Dead Animals

    Last week saw the World Taxidermy Championships take place in Salzburg, Austria — the first time the event has ever been staged in Europe. It offered an unusual glimpse of a world as unsettling as it is fascinating — one where the greatest joy comes from pulling the pelt off an alpine marmot or a white-tailed deer.

    The magic lies in the squinting eyes of the fox; she turns her head slightly away from the younger animal next to her, irritated and yet full of affection.

    Like a queen she tolerates being humbled by the others. Her muzzle is still closed, and it looks like she could yawn at any moment. But this is where Dirk Opalka’s devotion ends. “I had to do them over,” Opalka, 40, says, referring to the yellow eyes of the fox, “they were seated wrong — and then the clay in the eyelids slid too.”

    Opalka is an animal taxidermist. His mission could almost be called religious: He is seeking life in death. “The animal must look very much alive, that’s the secret,” says the man from Fuhlendorf, near Rostock, the German Baltic sea port. His great act of creation took eight weeks — and it paid off. Opalka has won a world championship of a particularly bizarre kind.

    The World Taxidermy Championships came to an end on Sunday in Salzburg, Austria. One-hundred-forty participants from 25 countries had flooded into Salzburg, the city of Mozart, to find out who could best preserve the nostril of a stag, most perfectly model the lips of a hyena, or color the anal opening of a common pipistrelle (a small bat) the rosiest shade possible. Over 500 dead animals transformed a Salzburg exhibition center into the deck of a Noah’s Ark of absurdities — full of lifeless passengers.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    Animal cadavers are the objects of this eccentric craft; freezers, scalpels and de-greasing liquid the tools. And the craft unifies this unsettling passion with a nearly devout obsession for preserving the beauty of nature beyond death.

    “Taxidermy is not just a craft, it’s an art,” says Larry Blomquist, the American doyen of taxidermists and organizer of the competition, which has taken place in Europe for the first time. “I am thrilled with the quality we get to see here.”

    Practiced as far back as ancient Egypt, the art of taxidermy gained popularity in the 19th century when it became a way to preserve the trophies of colonial hunting societies. Today taxidermy — the preparing, stuffing and mounting of skin — is a multi-million-dollar business, especially in the United States, where it is estimated that 50,000 taxidermists preserve hunting trophies and other animals for American living rooms.

    Germany’s national association brings together around 260 biological taxidermists. There are professionals like former world champion Berend Koch, who has created a menagerie at the Technical University in Darmstadt that is highly esteemed in the field. But above all there are the self-employed, who fervently bathe bagged does in polyethylene glycol or give deceased ducks new dark brown eyes, diameter 9 millimeters (0.35 inches), from the German company KL-Glasaugen (KL-Glass Eyes).

    Measured against the World’s Best

    They have all come to Salzburg, to this high-performance show of animal preservation, in order to measure themselves against the best in the world. The contest is carried out by people in outdoor clothes, whose greatest joy is pulling the pelt of an alpine marmot or a white-tailed deer over its head.

    Rewind to two weeks earlier, and Dirk Grundler is preparing for the Salzburg event at his taxidermy workshop in the eastern German city of Magdeburg. His workshop has a low ceiling, and the carpeted floor is littered with hair and spare bits of foam. Paint brushes, forceps, resins, dyes, hairsprays and varnishes complete the chaos. It’s a whimsical zoo: magpies with fluttering wings, frozen in motion, dance on the floor; on the ceiling flies a huge raven. Alongside it are a bearded tit, a hoopoe and a large, black-billed Capercaillie.

    “That one comes from Lake Baikal (in Russia),” says Grundler, 43. With a full beard, gray vest and sturdy build, he doesn’t look like a man who deals in fine motor skills. But his daily bread does indeed consist of detail work. “I only preserve birds,” says Grundler. He operates according to the motto: emptied and feathered. He skins the birds, cuts bodies out of polyurethane foam and sprays the legs with formalin (“so they don’t shrivel,” he explains). Then he molds the skin over the artificial body. As a final step, he applies a substance to protect the bird from insects. Any “naked areas of skin” are colored in with an airbrush.

    The expertise of a taxidermist is vast. That’s the only way the work can succeed, says Grundler. He knows bird anatomy like the back of his hand. Neck length? “Female peregrine falcon 5.5 centimeters, mallard duck 19, ringed teal nine,” he says, ticking off data.

    “It calls for the greatest possible perfection,” explains Grundler, who is self-taught in the profession. “You have to know: How does the bird look in nature? How would it move? For example, if a pheasant looks to the side, it gets a very certain kind of swing in its neck.”

    The birds for Salzburg are already sitting ready in two boxes. Grundler wants to enter the most challenging division for the first time. Among his taxidermic preparations are a peregrine falcon, a kingfisher with iridescent blue plumage and an eagle owl, at least half a meter long. And where do all the animals come from? “All bred,” affirms the taxidermist, “anything else would be illegal.”

    This is one of the basic problems faced by taxidermists: Exotic species are both a challenge and a curse. It’s not difficult to find someone preserving a freshly shot lion for a big game hunter. Indeed, taxidermists argue that without hunting tourism, many species would be worse off than they already are. But what are people supposed to make of a person like Ron from Texas, who bags a leopard, stuffs it and then says: “I just love being able to take something that’s lifeless and give it life again, make it look like it was, you know, out there in the wild”?

    Still, whether it’s a tiger, a macaw or a Komodo dragon, taxidermy is all about high art. The work of Ken Walker, a Canadian who specializes in creating taxidermic representations of extinct species, is legendary. At the 2005 world championship, he wowed the crowds with an Irish Elk — a species that died out more than 7,500 years ago. To reconstruct the animal, Walker sewed together the skins of three stags.

    More Obssessive than a Model Train Enthusiast

    And then there’s Matthias Fahrni of Switzerland — a luminary in the art of fish taxidermy. “Since childhood” he has been obsessed with fish, says the taxidermist. “It is probably a genetic defect,” he jokes. Fahrni almost exclusively preserves scaled fish smaller than 15 centimeters. When it comes to his fastidiousness in terms of detail, he even outdoes model train builders.

    With miniature scalpels and instruments used for eye surgery, Fahrni removes the fish skin with its scales still intact. Then, like anatomist Gunther von Hagens, creator of the “Body Worlds” exhibits of human bodies, he pumps in plastic. For the head, he keeps the original. The last step is to color the fish: living animals provide the model. “A fish changes its color and the expression of the eyes in the first five minutes after death,” says Fahrni. For this reason, he has developed a technique of anesthetizing the animal he wants to observe.

    Fahrni has brought a bullhead and a perch to Salzburg and they rest, effectively lit, among the other mortal remains. A pair of men, their eyes hidden behind thick magnifying glasses, bend over the fish, whispering to one another. They are the jurors, designated experts who assign the points here.

    And the Winner Is …

    Further away, among the preserved deer, American Joe Meder shines a flashlight into the nostrils of a stag. The last fern of its life dangles from the animal’s mouth. Meanwhile, Peter Sunesen bends over a lilac-breasted roller. “This bird has problems with its anatomy,” deems the Danish judge. For this, points are deducted.

    Or take Dieter Schön of Munich’s Museum of Man and Nature. The 46-year-old taxidermist was responsible for preserving Bruno, the brown bear shot in Bavaria in 2006. Now his critical eye falls on an Eversmann’s hamster. “The whiskers are very good,” Schön says to Berend Koch. But he is skeptical: “The body is far too compacted — the animal looks half starved to death.”

    So what is taxidermy? Is it a morbid plundering of bodies or a celebration of the high art of life? It is the contrast between the loving devotion of the taxidermists and the macabre slaughterhouse atmosphere that simultaneously unsettles and fascinates.

    At the end of the event, the taxidermists stock up on plastic bear tongues and artificial lion’s teeth at the exposition stands. Dirk Grundler is satisfied: For his kingfisher, he receives 88 out of 100 possible points. The jury also agrees on 96 points for Opalka’s fox, the overall winner.

    “This entry captures the essence of the moment,” says Larry Blomquist, running his hand devoutly over the fox’s red fur. “You hardly ever get to see something like this in nature.”

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

  • The Future of Coitus: Life-Long Loving with a Sexbot

    Sexbots have been around forever, but they are getting smarter all the time. David Levy, an artificial intelligence expert, sees a future when people will prefer robots to humans. They will offer, he says, better sex and better relationships.

    By Philip Bethge

    Andy, whose measurements are 101-56-86 centimeters (40-22-34 inches), has what many men want in a woman: “unlimited patience.” At least that’s what the manufacturer, a company called First Androids based in Neumarkt near the southern German city of Nürnberg, promises. Andy also comes with options, including a “blowjob system, with adjustable levels,” a “tangible pulse,” “rotating hip motion” and a “heating system with adjustable controls” to raise the body temperature.

    “Except in the feet — they remain cold, just like in real life,” says David Levy. The British scientist’s interest in Andy is purely academic, he insists. For Levy, his high-tech sex doll is nothing less than a harbinger of a new world order.

    Levy is an expert in artificial intelligence. He is fascinated with the idea of “love and sex with robots,” and his visions of the future include “malebots” and “fembots” as lovers and life partners. A chess champion and the president of the International Computer Games Association, Levy, 62, has just published a book, “Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships” — that is provocative in the truest sense of the word. He is convinced that human beings will be having sex with robots one day. They will show us sexual practices that we hadn’t even imagined existed. We will love them and respect them, and we will entrust them with our most intimate secrets. All of this, says Levy, will be a reality in hardly more than 40 years from now.

    Read original story at SPIEGEL Online International —>

    “The mere concept of an artificial partner, husband, wife, friend or lover is one that, for most people at the start of the 21st century, challenges their notion of relationships,” says Levy. “But my thesis is this: Robots will be hugely attractive to humans as companions because of their many talents, senses and capabilities.” Given rapid developments in technology, Levy believes that it is only a matter of time before machines will be capable of offering human-like traits. According to Levy, “love and sex with robots on a grand scale are inevitable.”

    The idea of love involving androids isn’t exactly new. In Greek mythology, the sculptor Pygmalion makes an ivory statue of his ideal woman. He prays to the goddess of love Aphrodite to bring the statue, which he has named Galatea, to life. Aphrodite agrees to help him and when Pygmalion kisses Galatea, she returns the kiss and the two marry.

    The same thing could soon be happening with robots. Levy already sees signs of budding robophilia wherever he looks. According to Levy, the appeal of Sony’s Aibo robot dog and of Furby, a toy robot that looks like a ball of fur with appendages, and a built-in computer circuit board, shows the potential for technology to serve as a sounding board for human emotions. “Nowadays, it is relatively commonplace for people to develop strong emotional attachments to their virtual pets, including robot pets,” says Levy. “So why should anyone be surprised if and when people form similarly strong attachments to virtual people, to robot people?”

    Even simple computers exert an almost magical attraction on some people. The dedication in Levy’s book reads: “To Anthony, an MIT-student who tried having girlfriends but found that he preferred relationships with computers. And to all the other ‘Anthonys’ past, present, and future, of both sexes.” What will computer nerds say when they can play with computers that move, talk, look like people and could possibly even experience emotions?

    When it comes to sex, robots could soon supplant the original flesh-and-blood human experience, says Levy. The researcher has delved deep into the history of erotic machinery to document Homo sapiens’ susceptibility to mechanical sex toys. He discovered documented evidence of early vibrators powered by clockwork mechanisms and steam machines. Levy describes a pedal-driven masturbation machine for women designed in 1926 by engineers in the German city of Leipzig. In a late 17th-century pornographic anthology from Japan, the author read about a “lascivious traveling pillow.” The artificial vulva, known as “azumagata” (substitute woman) in Japanese, was made of tortoiseshell and had a hole lined with satin.

    Dutch seamen shared their bunks on their globe-trotting trading journeys with hand-sewn leather puppets, which explains why the Japanese still refer to sex dolls as “Dutch wives” today — although today’s version is no longer made of leather. The Japanese company Orient Industry sells female dolls that are near-perfect replicas of young Japanese women — down to the tips of their hair and consistency of their skin. The company’s success is based on an earlier model known as “Antarctica,” a doll scientists used to take along to Japan’s Showa research station to keep warm during the long Antarctic winter.

    The US company RealDoll, the market leader in the business of life-like sex dolls, sells its “Leah” and Stephanie” models for $6,500 apiece. Customers can order the dolls with bra sizes ranging from 65A (30AA) to 75H (34F). Each doll comes with three “pleasure portals.” Another model, “Charlie” even comes with a penis in various sizes, as well as an optional “anal entry.”

    Are these all just erotic toys designed for the occasional quickie? Not at all, says Hideo Tsuchiya, the president of Orient Industry. “A Dutch wife is not merely a doll, or an object,” he insists. “She can be an irreplaceable lover, who provides a sense of emotional healing.”

    Levy has a similar take on the issue. But will robotic women and men resemble humans so closely within a few decades that they will pass as an equivalent or even better alternative to a human lover?

    Mimicking human appearance seems to be the least of the challenges. Two years ago, Japanese robot expert Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled his “Repliee Q1” robot. The awkward name is misleading. Ishiguro’s creation can easily pass as the first robot woman in human history. Thanks to 42 actuators driven by compressed air, the gynoid can “turn and react in a humanlike way,” says Levy. “Repliee Q1 can flutter her eyelids, she appears to breathe, she can move her hands just like a human, (and) she is responsive to human touch…,” he adds enthusiastically.

    Much more difficult than external traits, however, will be the challenging of breathing something approaching a soul into the robots. The biggest stumbling blocks are some of the most fundamental of human behaviors. Current robotic sensors, for example, are incapable of reliably distinguishing between individual people, says Levy. He concedes that if a robot fails to recognize its partner, or possibly even confuses him or her with someone else, the relationship is easily ruined.

    Nevertheless, Levy predicts that advances will come rapidly. For Levy, imbuing robots with such human traits as empathy, humor, understanding and love is merely a question of technology. Empathy, for example, is “essentially a learning task,” he says, and therefore “relatively easy to implement in robots.” All the machine has to do is observe its partner, make intelligent assumptions about the partner’s thoughts and react accordingly.

    Levy sees a future in which artificial intelligence will enable robots to behave as if they had gone through the entire spectrum of human experience, without this actually being the case. He cites emotions as an example. “If a robot behaves as though it has feelings, can we reasonably argue that it does not,” he asks? “If a robot’s artificial emotions prompt it to say things such as ‘I love you,’ surely we should be willing to accept these statements at face value, provided that the robots other behavior patterns back them up.”

    Levy finds the advantages of artificial companions over human partners appealing. Infidelity, moodiness, poor taste, poor hygiene, an unhealthy obsession with soccer — all of these relationship difficulties would be resigned to the dustbin of history. Robotic partners would even be immortal. Levy envisions backing up the entire personality of his androids on hard disks. If a robot is destroyed, it’ll be easy to order a new one.

    And the sex! Always willing, never disappointed, goodbye migraines — and with the dirtiest possible fantasies available for download. A robot could be programmed to offer “sexual positions and techniques from around the world” or placed in “‘teaching mode’ for the sexual novice,” says Levy. Everything from vagina dimensions to penis size, body scent to facial hair could be available as options.

    “Imagine a world in which robots are (almost) just like us,” says Levy. “The effect on society will be enormous.” He also addresses the potential ethical and moral issues in the days after the great robot invasion. Will it be unethical to lend sexbots to friends or, for instance, “using a friend’s sexbot without telling the friend?” Will it be permissible to deceive androids? What will husbands do when their wives tell them: “Not tonight darling, I’m going to make it with the robot?”

    Levy is convinced that women, in particular, after initial misgivings, will welcome robots as an alternative to their sweaty husbands. The fact that their sexual appetites often go well beyond the mediocre performance of many men is reflected in the “staggering sales figures” for vibrators, says Levy.

    And the men? Well, as far they’re concerned, all the fuss about artificial intelligence is wasted energy.

    Men are willing to “have sex with inflatable dolls,” says Henrik Christensen, the coordinator of the European Robotics Research Network. It’ll be easy to do one better than that. According to Christensen, “anything that moves will be an improvement.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Polar Bears for the South Pole?: Biologists Debate Relocating Imperiled Species

    As global warming changes the face of habitats around the world, scientists are asking if humans can help save species from extinction by moving them to cooler climes. But before polar bear resettlement and tiger transports begin, is it time to take a look at easier alternatives?

    Indian and Bangladeshi fishermen appeal to Bonobibi, the goddess of the forest, before they set out into the swamps. They also send their prayers to heaven to placate Daksin Ray, the tiger god.

    But no amount of prayer can deter the Bengal tiger. People are killed by tigers almost weekly in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, located in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. The region is one of the last refuges for Bengal tigers. Though still the masters of the forest, a gas could prove to be the tigers’ undoing. The gas is called carbon dioxide, and it’s warming the earth. … More

  • The Nuclear Temptation: The Perils of Pushing Atomic Energy as the Climate Change Panacea

    Is nuclear power on the verge of a renaissance? Its supporters argue that atomic energy is the only way to satisfy humanity’s hunger for more energy without aggravating the effects of global warming. Critics, however, regard the nuclear hype as over-simplistic optimism fueled by an industry in distress.

    The constant drizzle coming down over the Cotentin Peninsula on Normandy’s coast has cloaked France’s nuclear future in a fine mist. Massive electricity towers stand in the wet fog looking like identical giants with slumping shoulders. “British weather,” says Philippe Leigné while looking at the dirty hulks of concrete that comprise the nuclear reactors Flamanville 1 and 2. The construction foreman for French energy titan Electricité de France then points to a pit near the foot of a small rise.

    “We have to move 600,000 cubic meters of granite,” says Leigné. There’s not much time left. He has to pour the foundation for Flamanville 3 onto the rocky Norman soil this year to keep what will become the world’s most powerful reactor on schedule to deliver electricity to the grid by 2012. … More

  • ‘Time for a Revolution’: Ways to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe

    The rapid change in the world’s climate and shrinking oil and natural gas reserves are forcing a radical shift in the way we think about energy. Declining prosperity seems unavoidable unless the global community chooses a more sustainable approach to producing and consuming energy.

    Have you taken a shower today? Have you sipped a cup of hot coffee, stepped out of your warm apartment and driven to work? Booked your next vacation flight?

    People have never enjoyed as much material comfort as they do today. More than one-tenth of the world’s population own cars, and 4 billion people have electricity in their homes. Growing prosperity has been the goal of civilization since people began to populate the earth. That prosperity is measurable — by a currency called energy.

    Mankind burns up to 10 million tons of crude oil a day, 12.5 million tons of hard coal and 7.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas. All this consumption is accompanied by the creeping certainty that supplies will run out in only a few decades. Besides, the evidence that things are on the decline has never been more clear than since early February of this year, when … More

  • Elephant Poaching on the Rise: Africa Mulls Loosening Ivory Trade Ban

    Some African nations are seeking to relax an international ban on the ivory trade, but wildlife conservations fear that will lead to a renewed massacre of African elephants. Meanwhile, poachers in Africa are killing more elephants than they have in almost 20 years.

    Four hours before the freighter was scheduled to arrive in Singapore, customs officials received a tip; and sure enough, when they examined a container from Malawi, they discovered 532 gleaming elephant tusks. The tusks were accompanied by a shipment of 42,120 hankos, carved ivory seals used in Japan to notarize documents. By the time they had finished their inspection, Singapore harbor officials had seized more than 6.5 tons of gleaming ivory. The Hankos alone were worth around $8.4 million. That 2002 Singapore smuggling bust has …. More

  • European Wildlife: Bringing the Sturgeon Back to Germany

    Biologists want to repopulate German rivers with sturgeon. A test batch of aquarium-raised fish has already been re-introduced and a school of fish will likely be released in the Oder River this autumn.

    By Philip Bethge

    Seen from above, the young sturgeon resemble little prehistoric sharks. They splay their rounded fins as if they were little wings and glide elegantly through the water using their pointed tails. The only things that don’t seem to fit into the picture are the yellow plastic bands attached to their angular dorsal fins.

    “We’ve marked the fish so we can identify them later,” says Frank Kirschbaum as he adeptly scoops one of the sturgeon from the water and runs his finger over its archaic-looking bone plates, which line the narrow, 30 centimeter (12 inch) body like an ornamental strip. The sturgeon gasping for oxygen in Kirschbaum’s hand is one year old. In a few weeks, it may be drawing oxygen from the Oder River.

    Kirschbaum is a fish specialist at Berlin’s Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). He’s pursuing an ambitious species-protection project along with his colleague Jörn Gessner and Polish researchers. “We’re planning Europe’s largest practical experiment in sturgeon re-population,” Gessner says. The scientists want to set some 6,000 young fish free in the Oder by 2008. That would herald the return of sturgeon to Germany’s rivers.

    “You could find sturgeon virtually anywhere in this country as recently as a century ago,” says Henning von Nordheim from Germany’s Federal Nature Conservation Agency, which has invested about €2 million ($2.6 million) in the sturgeon program. “The sturgeon is the product of 200 million years of natural history, (and) we want this charismatic animal to feel at home in our rivers again.”

    A primordial fish

    The sturgeon is one of those rare creatures that have survived virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. Most of the sleek, bony-sided fish spend the greater part of their lives in the sea, like salmon, and migrate upriver only to mate. They’re threatened with extinction worldwide, but 27 varieties of sturgeon still live in the world’s rivers, including the Hausen variety, which can weigh up to a ton and yields the best Russian caviar.

    The Elbe, the Weser, the Oder and other German rivers feeding the North Sea and the Baltic once belonged to the fish’s habitat. As recently as 1888 fishermen on the Elbe managed to catch about 3,500 sturgeon, including massive specimens weighing between 60 and 70 kilograms, or 132 and 154 pounds. (The fish can reach a length of up to six meters, or 20 feet.) But the 20th century thinned their population. Factories and sewage from the cities polluted the rivers; modern weirs prevented the fish from reaching their spawning grounds. The last German sturgeon was seen in the Eider, a small river in Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein region, in 1969. Since then, sturgeon has been considered extinct in Germany.

    Now researchers at Berlin’s IGB want the fish repatriated. This project looks promising, at least along the Oder, which feeds the Baltic Sea. The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhyncus) migrated to the Baltic about 1,000 years ago, displacing the European variety, and adopted the river between Germany and Poland as its natural home. This proved to be a stroke of luck for the biologists, because Atlantic sturgeon still live in the tens of thousands in North America.

    The young fish at the IGB in Berlin were imported from across the Atlantic. They travelled to Europe via Canada as fertilized eggs. In some cases the scientists even transported fully grown sturgeon: Twenty of the massive gilled creatures flew to Frankfurt airport on Air Canada last April. IGB researchers had caught them in St. John’s River in southern Canada, then transported them to Halifax airport across a distance of 600 kilometers (373 miles).

    Back from extinction

    These fish now swim in aquariums in the Regional Center for Agriculture and Fishery in the Baltic Sea town of Born. They’ve grown to a length of almost two meters (6.6 feet). “We hope they’ll soon be ready to spawn,” says Gessner. “Then we want to start breeding young sturgeon for the Oder ourselves.”

    Repopulating the Elbe and Weser Rivers will be more difficult. Both North Sea tributaries were once dominated by the European variety of sturgeon (Acipenser sturio). Unlike its Atlantic counterpart, the European variety is now extremely rare. The Gironde River, near Bordeaux, France, is the only place where an estimated 2,000 of the European variety still exist. “That’s the only variety suitable for repopulating the North Sea tributaries,” says Kirschbaum. “Anything else would mean falsifying the historical situation.”

    Kirschbaum imported some of these fish from France in 1996. Sixteen adult sturgeon born in the Gironde now populate the IGB aquariums. Taking care of these demanding creatures is no easy task, though; they refuse to touch regular food. Every day, Kirschbaum has to feed his primordial gourmets five kilograms (11 pounds) of imported French prawns.

    But it pays off. Kirschbaum discovered eggs in one of his female sturgeon early this year. The discovery was a sensation. It’s been 10 years since scientists last saw young sturgeon in the Gironde. “If we can breed them, that would be an enormous success,” says Kirschbaum. Repopulating the Elbe, at least in theory, would then be possible. The question is whether migrant fish can navigate the river. “There’s a weir near the town of Geesthacht on the Elbe,” Kirschbaum says. The weir blocks the route the sturgeon would follow to reach their spawning ground. The weir, in fact, was built to let salmon cross it. “But it won’t work for sturgeon,” says Kirschbaum.

    Not enough for caviar

    So the scientists, for now, have pinned their hopes on the Oder. They consider the river sufficiently unspoiled to attempt repopulation. “Since 1997, we’ve done research to find out whether there still are spawning grounds in the Oder or any of its tributaries,” says Gessner. The researchers found a number of gravelly sections of riverbed provided with a strong current, the kind sturgeon need to deposit their eggs — most of them in the Polish river Warta. Local fishermen have been informed, too: Proposals have been developed to change their net-pulling techniques in order to avoid trapping the sturgeon, which live mainly close to the river bottom.

    The researchers eventually want to attach ultrasonic devices to all these fish and follow them by boat. They’ve tested the method in the Peene, a little river in West Pomerania — since July they’ve observed the behavior of 15 young, ultrasonic-equipped sturgeon there.

    Now the IGB scientists are waiting for the right moment to release sturgeon into the Oder. They had been focused on a date in April, but the plan fell through at the last minute because of a political quarrel over expanding the river’s usefulness as a commercial waterway.

    Now, though, the signs are favorable again. Some sturgeon could be placed in the Oder as part of preliminary tests in late fall. The river itself would stand to benefit, say the biologists. “If we restore the sturgeon’s habitat, the whole ecosystem will improve,” says Kirschbaum. Typical river fish such as barbs and rock herring could follow the sturgeon back to the Oder.

    But it will take some time before the project’s success can be gauged. Sturgeon need 10 to 15 years to grow sexually mature. Only then can they return to their native rivers to spawn. “It would be a sensation if even a few of those fish survive that long and then find their way back to the Oder,” says Gessner.

    Anyone looking forward to buying Baltic Sea caviar, though, will be disappointed. Sturgeon roe from Europe used to be a gourmet specialty, Gessner admits — “but if some of our sturgeon come back and a fisher catches one of them, that will hardly be enough to give birth to a new industry.”

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Bearded Vultures Re-introduced to the Alps: The Return of the Bone Crusher

    In the 19th century, the Bearded Vulture had a bad press. It was accused of carrying off and devouring lambs and even small children. Alpine authorities declared open season on the bird and the last one was shot in 1913. But the vulture, which is capable of digesting large bones, is back thanks to a successful and costly 20-year program of introducing bred birds into the wild.

    By Philip Bethge

    Portobello and Tauernwand aren’t yet comfortable with their new-found freedom. The two bearded vultures, born and bred in captivity, seem wary as they slowly ascend to a height of 1,500 meters above the Seebachtal valley in the Austrian Alps.

    Half an hour earlier rangers had hauled the birds up the mountain in wooden crates to their new home in a prepared nest. The birds are part of Europe’s longest-running wildlife re-introduction scheme. Since 1986 zoologists in Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland have released 144 bearded vultures to the Alps.

    They recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the project. “Progress so far has been very pleasing,” said Hans Frey of Vienna’s Veterinary University who is coordinating the program. “The project proves that with persistence the re-introduction of wild animals can actually work.”

    The bird doesn’t look like a typical vulture and is often mistaken for a Golden Eagle. It has a conspicuous red circle around the eyes and a wingspan of around 2.7 meters. A black strip over the eyes and the bristles at the base of the beak form the distinctive appearance of a beard.

    Character assassination wiped out the Bearded Vulture in the Alps in the 19th century. The local population blamed the scavenger for the loss of lambs, goats and even small children. Hunters were offered rewards for shooting them and the last vulture living in the alps is believed to have been shot in 1913 in the Italian Aosta valley.

    “The Bearded Vulture unfortunately never had a very good image,” said Frey, adding that it didn’t reserve its reputation because the birds aren’t dangerous to living animals.

    Bone Crusher

    The bird feeds mainly on the bleached bones of dead goats and sheep. If the bones are too big, it drops them 50 to 80 meters onto plates of rock to shatter them, and eats the splinters. No other animal is capable of digesting bone which means that the Bearded Vulture has no competitors for its food. Its powerful stomach acids can dissolve even large bones.

    By the beginning of the 20th century the “Bone Crusher” was virtually extinct in the wild in Europe. Then in the 1970s zoologists decided to try to re-introduce the bird to the Alps. “We managed to breed the birds again,” said Frey, who manages Europe’s largest vulture breeding station at Haringsee near Vienna.

    In 1986 the first four Bearded Vultures were released in the Hohe Tauern national park. Since then birds have also been released in Switzerland’s Engadin region, Italy’s Stilfser Joch national park, and in the French Haute Savoie region, as well as the Maritime Alps. In 1997 the first of these birds bred and 33 chicks have been born in the wild so far.

    “Conditions for Bearded Vultures are better now than 100 years ago,” said Wolfgang Fremuth of Frankfurt’s Zoological Society which co-financed the project. Less hunting takes place in the Alps, which means that there is more wildlife. And another problem appears to have been solved. “We were surprised, but the population has embraced the Bearded Vulture to an incredible extent.”

    Some 200 guests braved rainy weather to witness the release of Portobello and Tauernwind, which marked the 20th anniversary of the re-introduction program. Even local hunter Ferdinand Gorton praised the project. He said there had initially been some resistance to it. “But if one explains it well it becomes understandable even to the most simple hunter,” he said.

    Natural garbage collectors

    “The return of the vulture means farmers won’t have to remove dead animals,” said Frey. In addition, many local hoteliers have discovered the bird as a tourist attraction. Biologists see other advantages. “Bearded Vultures together with other types of vultures are a natural form of waste disposal and are important for the ecosystem of the mountains,” said Fremuth. Humans alone were to blame for their disappearance. “We have a duty to bring them back.”

    The plan could work. Around 100 of the released birds are known to have remained in the Alps. Almost 5,000 unpaid helpers regularly document their whereabouts.

    Newcomers Portobello and Tauernwind are constantly monitored. They will soon leave the Seebachtal valley. Biologists hope that in four to six years they will return to the Hohen Tauern range to breed.

    At that point the time may have come to stop the program and leave the Bearded Vulture population alone. “We hope we will be able to stop releasing animals from 2010 because the population is regenerating itself,” said Frey. The project will have spent around €100,000 on each new vulture.

    Frey recommends that future generations show more foresight. “Rendering a species extinct only to re-introduce it later is incredibly expensive. Wildlife protection pays off — it’s always cheaper in the end.”

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International