Philip Bethge

Tag: conservation

  • Preservation in a Petri Dish: Scientists Hope Cloning Will Save Endangered Animals

    Biotechnicians want to use cloning to save endangered species, but they are having only limited success. Critics say that the push toward a new era of wildlife conservation trivializes extinction and funding would be better spent on preserving animal habitats.

    By Philip Bethge

    A number of times each week, Martha Gómez creates new life. Today, she has set out to produce a South African black-footed cat. Using a razor-thin hollow needle under a microscope, the veterinarian injects a body cell from the endangered species into an enucleated egg cell taken from a house cat. Then she applies an electric current.

    “Nine volts of alternating current for five microseconds, then 21 volts of direct current for 35 microseconds,” says Gómez. Zap! The egg cell rapidly flexes from the electric surges. It bubbles inside the cell. Then everything is calm.

    “I will check in half an hour if the cells have fused properly,” says the researcher from the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans. The very next day, the cloned embryos will be implanted into the uterus of a common domestic house cat, which will serve as a surrogate mother for a foreign species.

    Biotechnicians like Gómez are hoping for a new era of wildlife conservation. In a bid to save endangered species, they tear down biological barriers and create embryos that contain cell material from two different species of mammals. Iberian lynxes, tigers, Ethiopian wolves and panda bears could all soon be carried to term by related surrogate mothers, and thus saved for future generations.

    “Interspecies cloning is an amazing tool to ensure that an endangered species carries on,” says Gómez. “We can’t wait until those species have disappeared.”

    High Mortality Rate

    The world’s first surrogate mother of a cloned animal from another species had udders and was named Bessie. In early 2001, the cow delivered a gaur via cesarean section in the United States. The endangered wild ox calf, native to Southeast Asia, had been cloned by the US company Advanced Cell Technology. But the gaur lived only briefly, dying of common dysentery within 48 hours of birth.

    Since then, researchers have made dozens of attempts at interspecies cloning — but with limited success. Whenever animals were brought into the world alive, they usually died shortly thereafter.

    In 2009, for instance, biotechnicians managed to clone a Pyrenean ibex. The egg was donated by a common domesticated goat. After the birth, the kid desperately gasped for air. Seven minutes later, it was dead.

    Many cloning experiments end this way. Geneticists have so far only been able to speculate on the reasons, but the string of failures actually tends to spur researchers to continue. Gómez, for instance, has specialized in cloning wildcats — and has been quite successful. Cloned African wildcats Ditteaux, Miles and Otis are living in enclosures at the Audubon Center animal facility, and snarl at anyone who approaches them. “They are doing perfectly fine,” says Gómez.

    In addition to African wildcats, the researcher has created embryos for sand cats, black-footed cats and rusty-spotted cats. The surrogate mothers and egg cell donors are domestic house cats, which are both easy to keep and have a reproductive biology that has been thoroughly studied. The animals in Gómez’s research department come under the knife a number of times each week.

    –> Read original article at DER SPIEGEL International

    Saving Genetic Material for the Future

    Today, for example, Olivia the cat is lying on her back on the operating table with her legs spread out. Using a scalpel, research assistant Michal Soosaar makes small incisions in the anesthetized cat’s smoothly shaved abdomen, inserting operating instruments and a miniature camera.

    A monitor immediately provides a view of Olivia’s insides. Soosaar uses tiny forceps to take hold of one of her ovaries. Surgeon Earle Pope then uses a needle to puncture one of the mature follicles. A bloody liquid flows from the cat’s body through a plastic hose and into a test tube.

    The liquid contains mature egg cells from Olivia. In an adjoining room, these circular cells are fished out of the liquid. Now, cell researcher Gómez takes over. Gazing through a microscope, she draws the genetic material from the egg cell and inserts a skin cell from a wildcat. As soon as the cells have merged and embryos have started to grow, they are implanted into the uterus of a surrogate mother.

    “This technology is a viable way to preserve genetic material for the future,” says Gómez. It’s very difficult to collect egg cells and sperm from rare wildcats, she explains, but much easier to obtain skin samples. She goes on to explain that embryos cloned in this manner could be stored for decades in liquid nitrogen and reactivated when needed.

    “By bringing cloning into the set of public policy instruments, we can protect more species, reduce economic costs of protection, or both,” writes US economist Casey Mulligan in a commentary in the New York Times. Mulligan argues that it’s now necessary to freeze the cell material of endangered species and develop technologies that will make it possible to bring the animals back to life after they have become extinct. “In some cases, it may be cheaper to save some DNA, and let a future, richer and perhaps more enthusiastic generation make its own copy of the species,” Mulligan writes.

    Critics Prefer Habitat Conservation

    Other researchers remain unconvinced, though. “The idea of cloning endangered species trivializes what extinction really is,” says zoologist Robert DeSalle from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He argues that the suggestion is a sign of today’s “Western throwaway society,” and says that “technology can’t solve the problem of large-scale extinction.”

    The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also opposes cloning as a quick-fix solution. “Habitats cannot be cloned,” says WWF wildlife expert Sybille Klenzendorf. She says that a species is more than just the sum of its genes. “What use is a cloned animal if we have no more space where the species can live?” asks Klenzendorf. She also argues that cloning is far too expensive. “The money would be better invested on direct aid to maintain habitats,” she says.

    The poor success rate of less than seven percent is also an indication that the Petri dish is not about to become Noah’s ark, though. It takes hundreds of egg cells and dozens of surrogate mothers to create a single viable clone.

    Gómez admits that there are problems. Fusing cells from two different species often leads to huge mix-ups. Genes are activated or deactivated at the wrong time, and developmental stages become delayed.

    In the case of the black-footed cat, for instance, Gómez has so far had no success. “We were able to insert embryos into the uterus of a house cat,” she says. “But unfortunately, they didn’t develop.”

    No Limits

    But the researcher remains optimistic. She hopes that she will soon be able to transform body cells from her wildcats into pluripotent stem cells. Cells of this type could considerably simplify the cloning process because they can be used to create any type of body cell and can be easily multiplied. Other researchers have already succeeded in producing such stem cells from snow leopards and northern white rhinoceroses, which are both endangered species.

    There are in fact virtually no limits to the creative experimentation of today’s biotechnicians. Chinese researchers have fused body cells from panda bears with eggs cells taken from rabbits. But the resulting embryos died shortly thereafter — in the uteruses of house cats. Meanwhile, Japanese researchers have implanted skin cells from an unborn baby sei whale in enucleated egg cells taken from cattle and pigs.

    Other Japanese scientists are even trying to clone the woolly mammoth. Three years ago, cell nuclei from these hairy, tusked ice-age beasts were discovered in mammoth legs that have been frozen in the permafrost of Northeast Siberia for the past 15,000 years.

    In the laboratory, a team led by geneticist Akira Iritani injected cell nuclei from the prehistoric animal into enucleated egg cells from mice. The cell constructs only survived for a few hours, but Iritani remains optimistic that an elephant surrogate mother will soon bring to term the first mammoth clone.

    “From a scientific point of view it is possible,” says geneticist Gómez. But is there any point in doing it?

    The 51-year-old professor hesitates briefly. “I wouldn’t do it,” she admits. “I would prefer spending all the money on those species that haven’t completely vanished from the earth.”

    Translated from the German by Paul Cohen

    –> Read original article at DER SPIEGEL International

  • Papua New Guinea’s Royal Trophy: Are Collectors Key to Saving Giant Butterfly?

    Papua New Guinea is home to the world’s largest butterfly, but oil palm plantations are threatening the rare species’ habitat. Conservationists and local residents alike would like to save the species by lifting a ban on trade in the butterfly and selling it for thousands of dollars to collectors.

    By Philip Bethge

    The butterfly’s silhouette is sharply outlined against the morning sky. It flies high up into the air, beating its wings slowly, more like a bird than a butterfly. Its long, narrow wings are reminiscent of a swallow’s wings, as they shimmer in the sunlight like iridescent sequins.

    The insect makes a wide circle around Grace Juo’s small stilt house and lands on a bright red hibiscus blossom. In Jimun, the language of the indigenous people, the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly is called a dadakul. It’s the world’s largest butterfly, with females attaining wingspans in excess of 25 centimeters (10 inches). “We are proud of our butterfly, and we take good care of it,” says Juo, glancing at the insect, which has now inserted its long proboscis into the flower.

    Juo, a Melanesian, lives in Kawowoki, a small village of huts on the Managalas Plateau in eastern Papua New Guinea. The volcanic soil here is dark and heavy, and the rainforest is an exuberant shade of green. The plateau is the last remaining habitat of any significant size of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly, one of the world’s rarest insects. Some butterfly collectors would pay thousands of dollars for a single specimen. Local residents like Juo hope that they will soon benefit from the appetites of trophy-hungry collectors.

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    But multinational corporations believe that oil and natural gas deposits lie beneath the tropical paradise and the rainforest is threatened. Prospectors have also found copper and gold, and oil palm plantations are proliferating in the region.

    The temptations of the modern age are reaching Papua New Guinea, a country divided into hundreds of ethnic groups. It has a disastrous infrastructure, is wracked by tribal feuds and is at a high risk for disease epidemics. The history of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly isn’t just the tale of a rare species. It also revolves around the question of how to go about protecting species in a developing country that is undergoing rapid change.

    The search for answers begins behind a barbed-wire fence in Port Moresby, the capital city. Armed guards provide security against the city’s criminal gangs, known as “rascals.” A rattling air-conditioner helps to stave off the heat and humidity in the office of the organization Partners with Melanesians.

    A Conservation Plan

    Kenn Mondiai and Rufus Mahuru are sitting at a dark table, explaining their rescue plan. “For the last seven years, we’ve been discussing ways to save the Managalas Plateau together with the local people,” says Mondiai, a heavy man with a round face and a moustache. The activist wants to transform the habitat of the giant butterflies into one of the largest conservation areas in Oceania. “The butterfly helps us convince the people to support this cause,” he says. “It symbolizes the diversity and value of our nature.”

    British naturalist Albert Meek was the first European to spot the giant butterfly in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Hired by the zoologist Lord Walter Rothschild, Meek explored the region in 1906 to find fresh trophies for Rothschild’s private zoological museum in the English town of Tring.

    One day, Meek discovered a butterfly flying at a high altitude, and promptly brought it down with a shotgun. The adventurer dissected the butterfly and sent it to England. Rothschild named the animal “Ornithoptera alexandrae,” in honor of Queen Alexandra, the wife of King Edward VII.

    Meek’s first specimen was a female. A year later, he captured a male near Popondetta in Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province. Today the town can be reached by taking a half-hour flight from the capital. This is followed by an exhausting trip by Land Cruiser on muddy trails.

    Several bridges were washed away in a recent flood, and the SUV struggles through hip-high water, even getting stuck in the sandy riverbed for a while. After a grueling, three-hour drive, we reach the Managalas Plateau, 36,000 hectares (about 140 square miles) of privately owned rainforest, populated by about 20,000 people from 10 different cultures, each with its own dialect.

    Tall trees, covered with vines and orchids, stand next to wild banana trees, coconut palms and breadfruit trees. The indigenous people grow plantains, yams, ginger, tomato and sweet potatoes on small plots of land.

    This is the realm of the giant butterfly. The male looks as if it were wearing a magnificent cloak of turquoise and green, covered with a layer of gold dust. In contrast, the wings of the larger female are a velvety black, interspersed with a few yellow and cream-colored patterns here and there.

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

    Unusual Reproductive Biology

    The threatened butterfly is vulnerable because of its unusual reproductive biology. The female lays its eggs exclusively on a poisonous vine called Aristolochia. Once the caterpillars have hatched, they ingest the plant’s toxic leaves, making them unpalatable for potential predators.

    The Aristolochia winds its way up into the crowns of jungle trees, which can grow to heights of up to 40 meters (131 feet). The butterfly would be lost without the vine, so propagating the Aristolochia is one of the main goals of conservationists.

    Conwel Nukara, 31, is the local head of the butterfly project and an expert in Aristolochia cultivation. His teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a stimulant commonly used by the indigenous peoples of the region. The Melanesian, walking barefoot, leads us into the garden behind his house, where he has set up a greenhouse made of green gauze.

    Aristolochia cuttings are planted in neat rows inside the greenhouse, and a number of the butterfly’s pitch-black caterpillars are already nibbling away at some of the leaves. Bright red appendages protrude from the animal’s body like poisonous barbs, while a yellow band runs around the middle of its body. “We want the animals to reproduce quickly,” says Nukara. “The larvae can develop and pupate in peace here. I release the butterflies once they’ve emerged.”

    A Threatened Habitat

    Nukara is trying to convince his entire community to raise butterflies and, as part of his campaign, he makes regular visits to schools in the area.

    A villager brings him a transparent plastic jar. Nukara carefully opens the lid, revealing a dead female butterfly.

    “We show these butterflies to our children,” he explains, spreading the insect’s wings, which have become frayed after being touched by many small hands. “We want them to discover at an early age what a treasure we have in this area.”

    He means it literally. One of the reasons local residents pay such conscientious attention to the giant butterfly is that they hope to make money with the creatures in the future. But that could prove to be difficult.

    The Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its international trade is banned. From the perspective of species conservationists, the butterfly satisfies all of the criteria to make it a critically endangered species: It lives in only one area, Oro Province, its numbers are unknown, and its habitat is increasingly disappearing.

    Farming Threatens Butterflies

    The problem is already obvious in the flatlands around the provincial capital Popondetta, which is surrounded by plantations of tightly packed oil palms. Local farmers also grow coffee and cocoa. Hardly any of the rainforest, together with the vines that the butterfly urgently needs, is still left.

    Eddie Malaisa is a wildlife officer with the Oro provincial government. He has been concerned with the giant butterfly for the last 25 years. “The butterfly population continues to drop,” he warns. “We only find two or three per month on the lowland plains.”

    On this particular day, Malaisa has an appointment with Paul Maliou, a manager with New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL). Large trucks are parked on the grounds in front of Maliou’s office, fully loaded with the red fruits of the oil palm. Across the street are long rows of the trees. When sunlight strikes the long palm fronds, they create shimmering patterns on the ground.

    NBPOL signs contracts directly with the farmers and sells their crops for them. Maliou’s job is to ensure that this is done in a sustainable way. “We assure that our operations don’t go into areas that affect the butterfly,” he asserts. But wildlife officer Malaisa begs to differ. There were once 27 butterfly reserves planned for the region, he says, and now “twenty of the areas went to palm oil.” Malaisa is left to manage only seven small reserves.

    The government employee seems helpless. His budget doesn’t even include money for a car, which he needs to patrol the reserves. Ironically, the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is depicted on the flag of Oro Province.

    “The butterfly is an important part of our culture,” says Malaisa. But he too recognizes that farmers will only protect the insect if they can make some money with it.

    To address the problem, Malaisa has proposed compensating all landowners who preserve the insect’s habitat by leaving some areas unfarmed. He also favors lifting the ban on trade with the butterfly. “If the landowners don’t get anything out of protecting the butterfly, they will change the butterfly habitat to oil palm, cocoa or coffee and the butterfly will become extinct,” the wildlife officer warns.

    Could Lifting Ban on Trade Help Save Butterflies?

    A softening of the trade ban could indeed be the butterfly’s last chance. Buyers on the black market would pay up to $10,000 a specimen. If the trade were legalized, Malaisa argues, the farmers could charge several thousand dollars per insect. “What is worse?” he asks, “To legally trade a few butterflies or to watch the animal go extinct?”

    Do conservationists have to revise their thinking and accept that species like the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing can only be saved if they have a market value? Activist Kenn Mondiai of Partners with Melanesians also favors adopting a new strategy. “If we want to preserve the forest on the Managalas Plateau, and if no oil palms are to be grown there, then we have to propose alternative sources of income to local residents,” he says.

    It’s afternoon in Kawowoki by now, and half the village has gathered in front of Grace Juo’s house to look for a butterfly. The animal that was fluttering around her hut in the morning was a male. Now everyone hopes to be able to show the visitor from faraway Germany a female specimen of the royal butterfly.

    While the women roast bananas and sweet potatoes in the embers of a fire, the men dispense advice on how to stalk a butterfly. The insects are usually seen high above the treetops, but only when the sun shines. Otherwise the moisture from the forest would make their wings too heavy.

    But the weather is favorable today. Suddenly they all jump up and stare at the tops of nearby large trees. A female Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is gliding through the warm air at a surprisingly fast pace. Grace Juo excitedly lifts her arms up to the sky.

    “The world has to know about our butterfly,” she says, and with shining eyes she follows the flight of the dadakul, “and then people will come here with bundles of dollars in their hands!”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • A Passion for Bigfoot: Hiking the Redwoods with California’s ‘Squatchers’

    Amateur researchers in the United States continue to eagerly search for the mysterious creature known as Bigfoot, staking out California’s redwood forests at night in their hunt for the elusive beast. Despite many claimed sightings, the existence of Sasquatch has never been proven. Yet that hasn’t stopped the obsessed from pursuing his giant footprints.

    The plaintive howl echoes through the forest sounding like a muffled “whoop, whoop, whoop.” Brandon Kiel pauses to listen in the dark, holding his breath for a moment before drawing air into his lungs.

    Once again, Kiel cups his hands in front of his mouth and imitates the call: “whoop, whoop, whoop.” The sound echoes back through the night, but all else is silence. Bigfoot isn’t answering.

    “The season is favorable,” Kiel says, with a touch of disappointment. “But it’s always possible that the animals are not in the area.” The blueberries are ripe, and the calves of the Roosevelt elk, one of Bigfoot’s favorite foods, haven’t matured yet.

    Kiel, 41, is a field researcher with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), a group based in the United States. The creature he is looking for is said to be clever, shy and stealthy — an expert at camouflaging itself. But here in the redwood forests of northern California, Kiel is hoping he’ll be blessed with hunter’s luck. He and 20 fellow field researchers are on an expedition to track down Bigfoot.

    The Believers

    Kiel calls the ominous creature “Squatch,” short for “Sasquatch,” a word in a Native American language that means “wild man of the woods”. The shaggy, mythical creature — half ape, half human — is believed to be powerfully built, reach heights of up to 2.5 meters (over 8 feet) and weigh up to 230 kilograms (500 pounds), and it allegedly spends its time skulking through the forests of North America. So far, there is no real evidence of the existence of this alleged primate species. Indeed, human beings have never actually gotten their hands on a Sasquatch, either dead or alive.

    Nevertheless, experienced “Squatchers” like Kiel are convinced that the animal exists. Even the Native Americans in the region had songs praising this mysterious miniature version of King Kong. Dozens of huge footprints have been found. Hundreds of eyewitnesses from the Canadian province of British Columbia all the way down to Florida — including police officers, park rangers and professors — claim to have laid eyes on the creature. The literature even mentions tufts of hair and a Bigfoot toenail found near the Grand Canyon.

    “I am convinced that the Sasquatch exists,” says British Columbia wildlife biologist John Bindernagel. For years, Bindernagel has put his academic reputation on the line by not only believing in Sasquatch, but also studying it. “I estimate the population of the animal to be several thousand at least,” says Bindernagel, who has already written several books on Bigfoot.

    Bindernagel also has a theory on how Bigfoot reached the American wilderness. He speculates that Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of giant ape, once migrated from Asia across the same land bridge in what is now the Bering Strait that the first humans are believed to have crossed to reach North America.

    The Squatchers

    Bigfoot is believed to be particularly prevalent in the area around the town of Klamath, in northern California, where a group of adventurous souls has gathered on this October day. Camouflage clothing is de rigueur, and the mood is euphoric. The most avid members of the group have studied the BFRO’s expedition handbook, which informs readers to expect “type 1” inspections: a visit by “one or more” Bigfoots to the tent camp while everyone is sleeping, “most often between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.”

    No one in the group questions whether the creature exists. Instead, they discuss its biology. The Squatch is “mainly nocturnal,” Kiel says. It lives in groups and is “stinky, musky.” Its diet includes “roots, slugs, frogs, deer, elk, fish, onions and berries.” It literally licks its fingers after eating a meal of skunk cabbage.

    Kiel has a round face with a vandyke beard, and he keeps his hair cropped short. When asked whether he has ever encountered the creature, he says: “Sure, just a couple of weeks ago.”

    In late July, he explains, the Squatchers gathered at Bluff Creek, less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east across the mountains. “We had walked about a mile and a half, when someone suddenly said: ‘There’s a Sasquatch sitting by the side of the road,’” Kiel recounts. “I didn’t believe him, so I asked: ‘Is it a bear?’ But he was adamant.”

    Kiel grabbed an infrared camera and peered through the viewfinder. “And, sure enough,” he says, “there was the heat signature of a very large animal with its back to us, without a neck, with massively broad shoulders and a pointy head. You could see it from the waist up. I was totally flabbergasted.” Kiel claims that the creature then turned around and looked at him twice. The intimate exchange of glances lasted about 15 minutes. Then Kiel, the expedition leader, decided to pull out. “I wanted to be respectful,” he says.

    The area around Bluff Creek is well known among Bigfoot aficionados. It was where, on Oct. 20, 1967, a legendary amateur film was shot depicting a massive, hairy beast strolling through a riverbed for a few seconds.

    Film experts — and even special-effects artists working for the Disney corporation — have repeatedly scrutinized the blurred, grainy footage. But the evidence remains unclear. Is the creature a person in an ape suit or a world sensation of cryptozoology, the search for animals whose existence has yet to be proven? The man who shot the video, a rodeo rider named Roger Patterson, continued to insist that the film was authentic up until his death in 1972.

    At the BFRO camp in California, at any rate, no one questions the authenticity of the Patterson video. In fact, almost everyone in the group claims to have already seen a Bigfoot at least once. “I was elk hunting”, says Rey Lopez, a government employee who lives near Sacramento. “At first I thought it was another hunter, but then I realized that it was a Sasquatch with whitish hair.”

    Alleged Proof

    We pile into Lopez’s large pickup truck and drive out into the night. After a few miles, he stops the truck on a parking lot in the middle of the woods. The group uses headlamps with red lenses to avoid startling the beast. After a brief walkie-talkie test, everyone is ready to go out “Squatching,” the nightly foray into Bigfoot territory.

    We spend the next few hours whispering and stumbling through the same woods in which parts of Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” were filmed. The undergrowth is wet, and the red light is barely strong enough to illuminate annoying roots poking out of the ground. Kiel, the expedition’s leader, stops every once in a while and sends his “whoop” calls out into the night. Sometimes he also blows on a high-pitched whistle or hits trees with a large “Squatch knocker” — in layman’s terms, a branch — hoping the hollow sound might attract Bigfoot.

    Meanwhile, Robert Collier, who lives near Los Angeles, continues to observe everything with his night-vision goggles, which he proudly points out are “military grade.” His eyes look green in the device’s light.

    The whole production has only one purpose: to somehow convince the woodland beast to communicate with the group. “Bigfoots have been known to answer us,” says Kiel. “We experience time and again that rocks are thrown at us.” He also points out that “wood-knocks,” “whoops” and “screams” are regularly heard echoing from the undergrowth.

    In fact, noisy audio recordings bear witness to the creature’s supposed vocabulary, including sounds like blood-curdling screams and obscure-sounding jibberish. Particularly avid Squatchers say they’ve managed to make out bits of Russian and ancient Chinese in the audio soup.

    Even some of the creature’s genetic material is allegedly in circulation. Kiel claims that Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian based in Timpson, Texas, has analyzed dozens of hair samples, but that the results of her research have yet to be published. Nevertheless, there are rumors in the community that tissue from two dead Bigfoots is in refrigerated storage at Ketchum’s laboratory.

    Ketchum declines to comment, though, and the Squatchers have waited in vain for her to make an appearance at their annual Bigfoot conferences, which regularly attract several hundred attendees.

    ‘A Good Excuse to Go Camping’

    Does all of this sound crazy? Sure it does. And, yet, there are some questions that remain unanswered. For example, the 1992 discovery of a new bovine species, the Saola, in the jungles of Southeast Asia has given the Squatchers hope. The Saola lives in an area that is no less densely populated than many of the forested areas in the United States.

    Couldn’t it be possible that a shrewd giant ape has been hiding undiscovered in the forests of North America for centuries?

    “It’s a good excuse to go camping,” says Bill Brewer, who harbors a healthy degree of skepticism despite being a BFRO member. Squatching, he says, also happens to be a lot of fun.

    Perhaps this explains why these hikers in the northern California night seem undaunted in their enthusiasm, even though the woods remain stubbornly silent until the early morning hours. But at least that gives them a good reason to come back soon.

    And it might also be that the Squatchers don’t even want to find the mysterious, broad-shouldered creature after all.

    “I like the romantic notion of our search, this wonderful gray area,” Kiel says. If Bigfoot is actually discovered one day, he notes: “Then all of this will be over.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    (->read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

     

  • The Stench of Money: Canada’s Environment Succumbs to Oil Sands

    Canada is home to the world’s third largest oil reserves. But extracting the black gold is difficult, and threatens to destroy both the surrounding environment and the homeland of native tribes. With protests growing against a planned US pipeline, the oil sands controversy threatens to spread south.

    Celina Harpe holds up the map like an indictment. “The oil companies are into Moose Lake now,” she says, angrily tapping the paper. Workers have apparently already begun surveying the land.

    “I cried when I heard that,” says Harpe, the elder of the Cree First Nation community based in Fort MacKay in the Canadian province of Alberta. “That’s where I was born.”

    Her feet are shod in moose-leather moccasins decorated with brightly-colored beads. Over her neatly-pressed trousers she wears a checked lumberjack shirt.

    Harpe gets up off her worn sofa and steps out onto the terrace of her blue-painted log cabin. The mighty Athabasca River is just a stone’s throw away. “We can’t drink the water anymore,” says Harpe, 72. Berries and medicinal herbs no longer grow in the woods. Even the moose have become scarce. Harpe wrings her wrinkled hands. “We can’t live off the land anymore,” she laments. “Our livelihood has been taken away from us, and they haven’t even asked if they can use the land.”

    An unequal battle is being waged in Alberta. Multinational oil companies are talking about the biggest oil boom in decades. Standing in their way are people like Celina Harpe, whose culture and health are threatened because the ground under their feet contains the planet’s third-largest reserves of crude oil.

    Geopolitical Significance

    Experts estimate that up to 170 billion barrels of crude oil could be extracted from Canada’s oil sands. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more black gold. In addition, the Alberta deposits are of huge geopolitical significance. Indeed, the US already buys more oil from neighboring Canada than from all the nations in the Persian Gulf region put together.

    Very soon, still more of the so-called bitumen could be helping to fire up the US economy. President Barack Obama wants to decide by the end of the year whether it is in his country’s interests to build a 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) pipeline from Alberta to Houston in Texas.

    This pipeline, named Keystone XL, could pump up to 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. But whereas the industry is dreaming of an oil rush, protests against the plans are growing. Environmentalists spent two weeks in August and September demonstrating in front of the White House against the exploitation of Canada’s oil sands. Among others, they have the support of 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and former Vice President Al Gore.

    The protesters’ rage is directed at a form of oil considered the world’s dirtiest. Ecologists are also worried about the fate of wetlands and water reservoirs along the route of the planned pipeline, including the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies no fewer than eight US states with water.

    Above all, the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands could also lead the US to put off seriously thinking about renewable energy sources for many decades to come. “The point is not to get ourselves hooked on the next dirty stuff,” says US environmentalist Bill McKibben, one of the spokesmen of the anti-oil sands movement. He thinks the exploitation of the sands would make it impossible for America to meet its CO2-reduction targets.

    ‘A Dirty Needle’

    “It’s [like] a drug addict reaching for a dirty needle from a fellow addict,” NASA climate researcher James Hansen says. “It’s crazy, and the president should understand that and exercise leadership and reject the pipeline.”

    Criticism of the plans is also coming from Europe. Only last week the European Commission decided to define oil extracted from oil sands as particularly harmful to the environment. If the European Parliament and EU member states agree, it will make it particularly expensive to import it into the European Union. Importers could, for example, be forced to invest in organic fuels to compensate for the increase in CO2 emissions. The Canadian government is opposed to such moves.

    The area around the town of Fort McMurray, a ramshackle assortment of ugly purpose-built houses in northeastern Alberta, is the epicenter of the oil sands industry. Beefy four-wheel-drive vehicles race along the town’s roads. In winter the temperatures fall to as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s when the locals retreat to the Boomtown Casino or the Oil Can Tavern, a neon yellow-illuminated bar of dubious repute.

    The first oil prospectors came to the region more than a century ago. The commercial exploitation of the oil sands began with the construction of the first extraction plants in the mid-1960s. Suncor and Syncrude were the first two companies involved, but rising oil prices have since attracted the industry’s giants, including Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    Heavy equipment is used to dredge out a mixture of sand, clay, water and heavy oil created from the plankton of a primeval ocean. The upward thrust of the Rocky Mountains pushed the reserves into their present position about 70 million years ago. The area of Alberta underneath which the oil sands lie today is about the size of Iowa (see graphic on left).

    The Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Fort McMurray contains a sample of oil sand under a glass dome. Visitors can open a small hatch and smell the contents. Crumbled oil sand looks like coffee grounds, and stinks of diesel. It is the stench of big money.

    Some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Fort McMurray, the smell hangs in the air day and night. The drive north along Highway 63 leads into the seemingly endless pine forests of the boreal climatic zone. But the woods soon open up, affording a clear view of the smokestacks of an immense industrial complex in the center of an apocalyptic-looking lunar landscape.

    Yellow sulfur tailings flash in the distance. Walls of earth surround a gigantic pit in which Caterpillar 797F industrial tippers are shunting to and fro. Each of these tippers can carry up to 360 metric tons of oil sand in a single load. Their wheels alone are four meters (13 feet) high. The plant is the Mildred Lake Mine belonging to the Syncrude company. Approximately 300,000 barrels of oil are produced on the site every day.

    Oil sands contain about 10 percent bitumen on average. To separate the oil from the mixture, the sand is put into a caustic soda solution at about 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). The bitumen floats to the top of the slurry, from where it can be skimmed off. It is then upgraded to produce what is known as synthetic crude oil (see graphic).

    A Dirty Business

    This procedure enables more than 90 percent of the bitumen to be extracted from the oil sands. The only problem is what to do with the remaining few percent. Mixed with water, sand and clay, it ends up in huge storage basins that already span an area of about 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) in Alberta. The sand quickly sinks to the bottom, leaving a gel-like suspension of minute particulate matter that takes up to 30 years to settle.

    The sludge also contains heavy metals and chemicals. Environmentalists accuse the operators of allowing some of the water to seep into the ground. Indeed, elevated concentrations of lead, cadmium and mercury have been measured in the nearby Athabasca River and Canadian Indians speak of deformed fish and complain that their people are contracting rare forms of cancer. A definitive connection with the oil sands extraction, however, has not yet been made.

    From a hill at the edge of the Syncrude site you can look straight down into the ponds. Oily streaks cover the surface. Last October, 350 ducks landed here during a hailstorm. Their feathers covered in bitumen, they all had to be euthanized. Hollow shots from propane canons now echo across the seemingly endless plains to frighten other birds away. Scarecrows tied to oil barrels bob gently on the ponds.

    Biologists hired by the oil companies are trying to reclaim the land. The hill on the edge of the Syncrude site, for example, is directly above a former mine. A sign informs visitors that if they return in 20 years time, they will find “a landscape reclaimed with lakes, forests, wetlands,” an open invitation for “hiking and fishing.” For now, bison graze on a nearby meadow.

    Gripped by Desperation

    Environmentalists say this is all just greenwashing. “This land is definitely being destroyed forever,” says Melina Laboucan-Massimo, gazing scornfully across the artificial oasis surrounded by gouged out earth. The 30-year-old works as an energy expert for Greenpeace and fights for the rights of the first nations, as Canada’s native inhabitants are known. Laboucan-Massimo is herself a member of the Cree nation, and was born in the area.

    When she sees what is happening to her tribe’s traditional homelands, she seems to be gripped by desperation. Only last April, a pipeline burst just a few miles from her aunt’s house, spilling 4.5 million liters (1 million gallons) of oil.

    Although there are agreements between the native inhabitants and the Canadian state giving the first nations land and usage rights, it’s not clear what the contracts mean for the exploitation of the oil sands. The Canadian Supreme Court is currently considering an appeal by several first nations for a greater say in oil exploitation. Some 23,000 Canadian Indians still live in the oil sands area.

    “My father’s family lived off the land,” says Laboucan-Massimo. “My grandparents hunted, they fished, they trapped; they lived in a more symbiotic relationship with the earth.” Many native Canadians now work for the oil industry: “They are essentially getting paid to destroy their children’s future,” she says.

    For years now, Laboucan-Massimo has been fighting an exhausting battle against the industry. “So far they have only developed like 3 percent of the tar sands in Alberta,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of hope if they develop as much land as they want.”

    Numerous new opencast mines have already been approved; many others are still in planning. The prospect of a direct pipeline to heavy-oil refineries in Texas has prompted investors to reach for their checkbooks.

    Oil Tanks in the Forest

    The International Energy Agency predicts production of conventional oil will soon reach its peak. Oil production in Alberta, by contrast, could more than double to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2025. At today’s prices, that means that the oil sands in Canada, exploitable with today’s technology, are worth about $16 trillion.

    And production costs are falling constantly. Whereas a barrel of oil used to cost almost $75 to produce, new production methods promise to cut that to about $50.

    The eight-seater Beechcraft Super King Air 350, leased by Cenovus Energy, takes off into the skies over Fort McMurray. While the plane is gaining altitude, the shimmering Athabasca River comes into view. Then the mines. From the air they look like oozing wounds in the midst of the green forest. Soon square clearings can also be seen, each with its own oil derrick. Straight roads slice through the forest; the trails left by the geologists searching for the oil sands below.

    As the plane descends, oil tanks and chimneys appear near a lake. Christina Lake is the name of this Cenovus production plant, one of the world’s most modern. But there’s no sign of a mine; the oil sands at the site are being drilled here rather than dug up.

    About 80 percent of the oil sands in Canada are too deep to be retrieved using opencast mining. More than 50 years ago, US geologist Manley Natland came up with idea to separate oil and sand below ground rather than digging them up first. Natland suggested superheating the oil sands so that the bitumen liquefies and can be pumped to the surface. Only now are the required machines available. Engineers can now pump 250 degree Celsius (480 degree Fahrenheit) steam through a borehole and deep down into the ground.

    ‘10,000 Barbecues’

    Cenovus perfected the procedure at Christina Lake. The plant is currently undergoing a dramatic expansion. By the end of the decade, the planners hope it will be producing 258,000 barrels a day, enough to supply some 4 million US citizens with energy for 24 hours.

    “We expect to produce oil at this facility for more than 30 years,” says Drew Zieglgansberger of Cenovus. The youthful-looking manager in blue overalls leads the way to one of five towering steam generators that form the heart of the oil factory. Zieglgansberger climbs a ladder on the front of the gigantic structure and looks through a small window into the white-hot fire burning at 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), turning water into super-heated steam. The plant generates as much heat as “10,000 barbecues,” the manager proudly declares.

    Operating the mammoth oven is a dirty business. Natural gas is burned to bring the machines up to their operating temperature. In fact the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil is needed to recover 10 barrels of oil. The European Commission has calculated that recovering oil from oil sands is about 22 percent more harmful to the environment than conventional crude oil. The US Environmental Protection Agency has even suggested it creates 82 percent more greenhouse gas emissions.

    But that’s not all: Heating bitumen also releases sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and heavy metals into the air, all of which later return to earth as acid rain. The Canadian Ministry for Natural Resources has confirmed that drilling generates twice the emissions as conventional oil production. Worse still, it’s not clear how drilling affects the water table. The independent Council of Canadian Academies regrets that such information is “absent.”

    Zieglgansberger accepts that there are problems. “Yes, we have the dirtiest oil in the world”, he openly admits. But it’ll be another 50 years before renewable energy can replace oil. “It is needed as a bridge to the next energy source.”

    Destined to Be Lost Forever

    Industry lobbyists are increasing their pressure on Washington. Pipeline operator TransCanada has close ties with the office of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The company’s current chief lobbyist was a top advisor to Clinton during the 2008 presidential primaries.

    Most analysts already assume that Obama will eventually authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. Too many jobs are believed to be on the line, and oil has too great a strategic significance to the US.

    Nevertheless, the pipeline’s opponents continue to rally their supporters. A human chain around the White House is planned for early November. However McKibben doubts it will have much of an impact. “The oil companies have more money than God,” he says.

    Time clearly appears to have run out for the native inhabitants of Alberta’s northeast. Their traditional way of life seems destined to be lost forever. Cenovus Manager Zieglgansberger takes a sober view of the situation: “We are now neighbors, whether they want us here or not.” The oil man is at pains to stress that he respects first-nation traditions. “We bring our stakeholders out with us before we do any disturbance,” Zieglgansberger assures us.

    Such respect seems to be rather limited. When tribal elders discovered a traditional burial ground on the site of one of the Cenovus plants, the oil company agreed to preserve the holy shrine.

    The cemetery now lies in the middle of the industrial complex on a tiny square of land spared from the lumberjacks.

    Now the native Indians must pass directly by the oil tanks to honor their dead.

    Translated from the German by Jan Liebelt

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

  • Die Geister des Urwalds

    Die Geister des Urwalds

    In der Karibik versuchen Biologen, den giftigen Schlitzrüssler zu retten. Der Säuger zählt zu den seltensten Arten der Erde. Dass er bislang überhaupt überlebt hat, grenzt an ein Wunder.

    Von

    Im Stockdunkeln schwärmen die Häscher aus. Gerüstet mit Kevlar-Handschuhen und Stirnlampen verschwinden die beiden Männer in der Nacht. Stundenlang ist nur noch das Zirpen der Zikaden, das Singen der Baumfrösche und das leise Wispern der Blätter zu hören.

    Dann, kurz nach Mitternacht, tauchen die zwei Fährtenleser aus dem Dorf Mencia im äußersten Südwesten der Dominikanischen Republik urplötzlich wieder auf. Am langen Schwanz baumeln in ihren Händen zwei Schlitzrüssler, struppig und rotbraun, mit einer Nase wie eine Karotte. Und der Biologe Jose Nuñez-Miño, für den die Einheimischen auf die Suche gehen, kann sein Glück kaum fassen.

    Im Jahr 1906 war der Naturforscher Alpheus Hyatt Verrill auf die karibische Insel Hispaniola gereist, um “Solenodon paradoxus” zu finden, den Dominikanischen Schlitzrüssler. “Hoffnungslos” sei es, des Tiers habhaft zu werden, warnten Kollegen, “genauso wahrscheinlich, wie Geister zu fangen”. Doch Verrill gelang der Coup. Ein Weibchen ging ihm in die Falle.

    Einhundert Jahre später sind Forscher dem Säuger wieder auf der Spur. Sie sorgen sich um das Überleben des nachtaktiven Tiers mit den winzigen Augen und dem merkwürdigen Rüssel. Rund 300.000 Euro hat die britische Darwin Initiative für das “Hispaniolan Endemic Land Mammals Project” bereitgestellt. Im Oktober erst startete die einzigartige Rettungsmission.

    “Wenn wir sie verlieren, gibt es nichts Vergleichbares mehr auf der Erde”

    “Schlitzrüssler sind lebende Fossilien und gehören zu den frühesten höheren Säugetieren der Erde”, erklärt Nuñez-Miño, der für den federführenden Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust arbeitet. “Wenn wir sie verlieren, gibt es nichts Vergleichbares mehr auf der Erde.” Schon vor rund 76 Millionen Jahren – die Dinosaurier stampften noch über die Erde – huschten die Vorfahren der ulkigen Geschöpfe durchs Unterholz. Und noch etwas ist an ihnen besonders: “Sie sind die einzigen lebenden Säuger, die mit ihren Zähnen Gift injizieren können, ähnlich, wie es Schlangen tun”, sagt Samuel Turvey von der Zoological Society of London.

    Der Biologe arbeitet am Projekt “Edge” (“Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered”), das die 100 seltensten und evolutionär einzigartigsten Säugetiere der Erde retten will. Der Chinesische Flussdelphin gehört dazu, der eierlegende Langschnabeligel oder die Hummel-Fledermaus, der wohl kleinste Säuger der Welt.

    Der Schlitzrüssler ist die Nummer vier auf der Liste. Und er steht exemplarisch für eine Vielzahl einmaliger Kreaturen, deren größtes Problem es ist, in ein Inselparadies ohne natürliche Feinde geboren zu sein. Schon die ersten Bewohner Hispaniolas begannen, den Wald abzuholzen. Erste Teile des Schlitzrüssler-Lebensraums gingen verloren. Die europäischen Invasoren setzten den Kahlschlag fort. Noch fataler indes war, dass die Europäer Hunde und Katzen einschleppten. Für die Raubtiere war der Schlitzrüssler leichte Beute.

    Längst steht der knuffige Säuger auf der Roten Liste der bedrohten Arten. Fast an ein Wunder grenzt es, dass es ihn überhaupt noch gibt. In Haiti hält er sich nur noch an den Hängen des Massif de La Hotte im äußersten Südwesten. Das letzte lebende Exemplar einer kubanischen Schlitzrüssler-Art wurde 2003 gesichtet. Die Dominikanische Republik jedoch, so hoffen Experten, könnte noch eine kleine überlebensfähige Population beherbergen.

    Über eine holprige Piste geht es am anderen Tag hinauf nach Mencia, das direkt an der Grenze zu Haiti liegt. Am Steuer des Geländewagens sitzt Jorge Brocca von der Naturschutzorganisation Sociedad Ornitología de la Hispaniola. Zusammen mit Nuñez-Miño betreut er das Projekt vor Ort. Die Biologen sind hoffnungsfroh. Eben haben sie eine ihrer Videofallen geborgen, die sie im Wald installiert hatten.

    Ist ein Schlitzrüssler nächtens durch den Laserstrahl getappt, der die Kamera auslöst? Nuñez-Miño startet den Computer. Die Forscher verstummen andächtig, als sie die kurze Videosequenz sehen: Da tapst das Tier, schwankend wie ein Seemann, tatsächlich durch die Tropennacht. “Nie zuvor wurde ein Schlitzrüssler in freier Wildbahn gefilmt”, schwärmt Brocca.

    Kurz zuvor hatten die Biologen im Wald “Nasenstupser” entdeckt: kegelförmige Löcher im Waldboden, die der Säuger auf der Suche nach Insekten hinterlässt. Ohnehin ist der Schlitzrüssler ein skurriles Wesen: Die Zitzen der Weibchen sitzen in der Leistenregion. Die Muttertiere schleifen ihre daran hängenden Jungen hinter sich her, berichtet Nuñez-Miño. Merkwürdig auch das laute Zwitschern und Zirpen der Tiere, sobald sie gestört werden – oder der Gang, langsam und breitbeinig wie Sumo-Ringer.

    –> Geschichte auf SPIEGEL Online lesen

    Verwechslung mit dem einheimischen Mungo

    Bei schwarzem Kaffee mit Zucker und Zimt erörtern die Biologen die Lage. Bis heute brennen die Bauern vor allem im bitterarmen Haiti Wälder nieder, um Holzkohle für ihre Kochstellen zu gewinnen. Zudem verwechseln die Einheimischen den Schlitzrüssler häufig mit dem Mungo. Das eingeschleppte Raubtier meuchelt Hühner und Hähne der Dorfbewohner. Für dominikanische Männer jedoch ist Hahnenkampf eine todernste Angelegenheit. Können die Forscher den Menschen erklären, dass der Schlitzrüssler schuldlos ist am Geflügeltod?

    Auch die Jagd ist problematisch: Die Einheimischen stellen in den Wäldern verwilderten Schweinen und Ziegen nach. Ihre Jagdhunde lassen sie dabei auch nachts frei herumlaufen. Zusammen mit verwilderten Hunden sind sie die größte Gefahr für den Schlitzrüssler. “Wir wissen, dass Hunde immer wieder Exemplare der Säuger töten”, sagt Nuñez-Miño.

    Doch es geht auch andersherum. Der Biss eines Schlitzrüsslers, gut gesetzt, kann einen Hund zur Strecke bringen. Giftiger Speichel fließt dann durch Rinnen in den unteren Schneidezähnen des Tiers. Ähnlich funktioniert das bei Schlangen.

    Tötet der Schlitzrüssler auch seine Beute mit dem Gift? Die Forscher wissen es nicht. Ohnehin beginnen sie fast bei null. Die Gesamtzahl der Tiere? Unbekannt. Das Verbreitungsgebiet? Unklar. Auch die Lebensweise liegt noch weitgehend im Dunkeln. Bald wollen sie einige der Tiere mit Sendern ausstatten, um ihnen zu folgen. Doch wie fängt man einen Schlitzrüssler? Erfahrene Fährtenleser sind rar.

    Mit Sardinen, Erdnussbutter und Salami versuchten die Biologen zuletzt, die Tiere in Fallen zu locken. Ohne Erfolg. Im Zoo der dominikanischen Hauptstadt Santo Domingo werden nun erstmals die kulinarischen Vorlieben der Säuger ergründet. Drei Tiere hausen dort auf Betonböden in kleinen Räumen. Ihr Fell ist grau geworden. Bislang wurden die Insektenfresser mit Pferdefleisch gepäppelt. Doch was fressen sie in der Wildnis? Testweise kredenzen die Forscher nun Tausendfüßer, Mäuseembryos und Katzenfutter.

    Zäh und andpassungsfähig

    Zoodirektorin Patricia Toribio plant zudem ein Zuchtprogramm, oftmals die letzte Chance für akut gefährdete Tierarten. Noch kann das aber nicht klappen: “Unsere drei Tiere sind allesamt Männchen”, räumt sie ein.

    Wird das alles reichen, um den Schlitzrüssler zu retten? Die Geschichte Hispaniolas spricht dagegen. Rund 25 einzigartige Säugerarten lebten einst auf der Insel, unter ihnen Faultiere, Spitzmäuse und sogar eine Affenart. Bis auf zwei Arten, das rattenähnliche Zaguti und eben den Schlitzrüssler, sind sie alle längst ausgestorben.

    Die Biologen sind dennoch zuversichtlich. Als die Hitze des Tages weicht, bringen die Fährtenleser die markierten und vermessenen Tiere zurück in den Wald. Neben einer Kuhweide unweit des Dorfes haben sich die Säuger angesiedelt. Vielleicht können sich Schlitzrüssler und Mensch doch arrangieren?

    “Der Schlitzrüssler ist ein zäher, anpassungsfähiger Charakter”, sagt Nuñez-Miño. “Sonst wäre er auch längst von der Insel verschwunden.”

    –> Geschichte auf SPIEGEL Online lesen

  • German Cities for the Bees: Wanted — Young, Urban, Professional Beekeepers

    Germany is running out of bees. But urban beekeeping may just be the solution. The country’s aging beekeepers are looking to attract young city dwellers to the hobby.

    By Philip Bethge

    Emil Wiedenhöft’s bees know their way around the urban jungle. They buzz in, flying around the 71-year-old beekeeper’s head as they carry nectar and pollen to the hive. Then they swarm out again, heading back into the surrounding sea of buildings — a squadron of tiny, striped nectar collectors

    “They have to fly out of here at a steep angle to make it over the buildings,” says Wiedenhöft, as he casually wipes one of the bees from his shirt and points up into the air. The gray wall of his apartment building towers over the beekeepers’ patio. Two beehives stand in front of his apartment window.

    Wiedenhöft is a beekeeper in Berlin. “Beekeeping in the big city isn’t a problem at all,” says Wiedenhöft, who is retired. He has even managed to convince a few neighbors to take up the hobby. “I’ve trained six beekeepers in the eight years I’ve been living here,” he says, proudly. “A young beekeeper needs a role model.”

    Still, despite Wiedenhöft’s efforts, there are too few beekeepers in Germany and, as a result, not enough bees. Experts already fear that the shortfall could have serious consequences for fruit farmers, because the industrious pollen collectors are no longer adequately pollinating their plants. But beekeepers like Wiedenhöft are bucking the trend. The profession, which includes a disproportionately high percentage of older people, is trying to recruit new blood with courses and special offers — especially in cities.

    Hundreds of thousands of bees are constantly dashing through the backyards and courtyards of cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. The densely populated Ruhr region is now home to more bees than the surrounding countryside. Bees are at home on Berlin’s balconies, rooftop terraces and hotel roofs. Bees are also popping up in larger numbers in cities around the world. In London, beehives can be seen on the roof of the Bank of England — honey from the London metropolitan area has even won the first prize at Britain’s National Honey Show. And in Manhattan, “Sheriff Beekeeper” David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price.

    Armies of Bees

    “Cities are ideally suited for bees,” says Jürgen Hans, chairman of Berlin’s beekeepers’ association. There are roughly 500 beekeepers in the German capital alone. Hamburg is home to at least 50 million bees from more than 2,100 bee colonies.

    While many city dwellers are likely to gasp at such numbers, the armies of bees are hopeful signs for beekeepers. “The animals develop marvelously in the city, because it’s warmer there than in the countryside,” says Hans, adding that cities offer “a large and constant selection of flowers for bees searching for nectar.” Hans, a beekeeper himself, waxes lyrical about the chestnut, black locust and maple trees lining the streets, and the sweet pea, briar roses and knotgrass on playgrounds.

    Hamburg’s trendy Ottensen neighborhood is the ideal place for lively city bees. On this early summer day, for example, beekeeper Georg Petrausch is checking his hives on the roof of the “Motte,” a neighborhood cultural center. “Nice flying weather today,” says the 45-year-old, as he gazes across streets and alleyways flooded with sunlight, the sound of traffic drifting up from the street below. It is a trendy quarter, with Moroccan restaurants across the street and numerous bars where hip urbanites hang out.

    Petrausch lights a bundle of hemp straw in a pipe-like device. The beekeeper uses the smoke to calm the insects. Then he carefully removes a bee-covered honeycomb from the hive and opens a few of the hexagonal cells. Petrausch has lovingly dubbed the glistening honey flowing from the cells Ottenser Wildblüte (Ottensen Wildflower).

    Bees and Bratwurst

    He harvests between 150 and 200 kilos of the sweet stuff a year, often with the help of neighborhood children. A teacher, Petrausch has also founded a beekeeping program for kids. Once a week, young bee enthusiasts meet in the garden of a school nearby where the students handle the honeycombs without protective clothing while bees buzz around their heads.

    “I’m not afraid at all anymore,” says 12-year-old Iris, “and the honey we make here also tastes better than honey from the store.”

    As enthusiastic as members of the trade are about these young, budding beekeepers, they haven’t prevented the nationwide number from continuing its decline. Today there are only 82,000 beekeepers in Germany, and they manage about 700,000 bee colonies. Experts say this is far too little, and that Germany needs at least a million bee colonies. “The honeybee pollinates 80 percent of our flowering plants,” says Jürgen Tautz of the “Beegroup” at the University of Würzburg in southern Germany. “The loss of bees is a threat to diversity.” Declining bee populations can mean a drop in the numbers and quality of apples, cherries, berries and agricultural crops. Many wild plants also do not reproduce as efficiently without the industrious insects.

    To make matters worse, bees are getting more sensitive. Like domestic pigs, they are now overbred, says Tautz, which makes them more susceptible to disease and environmental toxins. Only recently, clothianidine (sold under the commercial name Poncho), a pesticide used to treat seeds, was blamed for the deaths of large numbers of bees in southwestern Germany. The use of monocultures in agriculture is also detrimental to the insects. According to Tautz, “if bees can only find pollen from rapeseed and sunflowers, it’s about as harmful to them as it is for people to eat nothing but bratwurst.”

    But the insects’ greatest enemy is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor. It infests the hive, sucks bee “blood” and weakens the entire colony. In the end, the bees are no longer capable of surviving winter. In the winter of 2002, for example, about 30 percent of all bee colonies in Germany died with infestations of these killer mites believed to have been one of the main causes.

    Young Beekeepers Needed

    Only experienced beekeepers are capable of controlling mite infestation, which is one of the reasons efforts to train new beekeepers are so important to the industry. The beekeeping profession is in rapid decline, with only about a dozen apprentices throughout Germany today. This highlights the importance of hobby beekeepers — about 95 percent of all bee owners — recruiting young people.

    The latest trend is beekeeping on a trial basis. Experienced apiarists lease individual colonies to young beekeepers for a year and provide them with advice and support. At the end of this trial year, the young beekeepers can opt to continue or return the bees.

    “We had 11 new beekeepers in our club last year,” says “bee godfather” Peter Schömbs of Berlin’s Zehlendorf Beekeeping Club, “and 10 of them decided to stay.” The 65-year-old trained Bert Kleinlosen. Although Kleinlosen is 58 himself, the bearded novice is, oddly enough, considered a young beekeeper. Beekeeping clubs are firmly in the hands of the 60 and old generation. Anyone who can bring down the average age is more than welcome.

    In Berlin’s Schmargendorf neighborhood, experienced and novice beekeepers work side-by-side. Together they make small frames for the honeycombs, hunt down mites or prevent the bees from swarming. This happens when the beehive becomes too crowded and the queen escapes with part of the colony. Recapturing the swarm is an arduous task.

    When bees swarm, they congregate in large groups in trees or on lampposts, as they search for a new place to start a hive. The mere sight of such a large concentration of bees leads many a city dweller to question the wisdom of urban beekeeping. What happens if the poisonous insects decide to sting, after all? Bee stings can be dangerous, even life-threatening to people who are allergic.

    ‘Don’t Try This Yourself’

    “When people and bees begin living in closer quarters, the incidence of allergies automatically rises,” says Munich allergist Bernhard Przybilla. Wolfgang Sieger, an internist from the Bavarian town of Wörth an der Donau, warns “every beekeeper should find out if there are people who are allergic to bees living nearby.” But, Sieger adds, the problem isn’t as dire as some might believe, because only about one in every 100 people is allergic to bees. Compared to wasps, says Sieger, bees are “a very peaceful species.”

    Beekeepers feel the same way. For decades, they have been trying to breed gentleness into these industrious insects. Apis mellifera carnica, or Carniolan bees, are the result of this ongoing breeding effort. “It’s the ideal city bee,” says Benedikt Polaczek, a bee researcher at the Free University of Berlin, “it’ll only sting if I try to turn it into a postage stamp.”

    Polaczek, who has been keeping bees for 40 years, teaches university courses for beekeepers and regularly hosts groups of schoolchildren and even kindergarten classes. Recently, the 51-year-old bee expert was showing the youngsters how to extract honey. Using a tool called a frame lifter, he opened the cells of a honeycomb and then placed it into a honey extractor. The device uses centrifugal force to extract the sweet, amber-colored liquid from the wax.

    “City honey has an outstanding aroma,” said the beekeeper, and gave his young visitors a taste. “And besides, it’s very clean, because they don’t spray pesticides as much in the city.” Then the researcher showed the children his hives. Using his hand, he carefully brushed several dozen worker bees from a honeycomb. The agitated animals crawled around on his fingers.

    “Look, the bees are completely peaceful,” says Polaczek. But before his guests left, he gave them a bit of advice: “Just don’t try this yourself.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • The Price of Survival: What Would It Cost to Save Nature?

    How much is the Earth worth to us? At a global conference in Bonn, Germany, representatives of 191 nations are discussing a revolution in conservation. By making a highly profitable business out of saving forests, whales and coral reefs, environmentalists hope to put a stop to a dramatic wave of extinctions.

    The envoy from Europe can hardly believe his eyes. Butterflies the size of dessert plates are fluttering around his nose. Orchids hang in cascades from towering trees. Hornbills sail across the treetops. The tropical air is filled with the saturated scent of growth and proliferation.

    Biologists have already tracked down more than 10,000 plant and 400 mammal species in the Congo basin. These plants and animals are part of the world’s second-largest uninterrupted rainforest, one of the planet’s most potent carbon storage systems. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that Hans Schipulle, 63, is tramping around in the wilderness near the Sangha River on a humid morning in the Central African Republic.

    “This forest stores carbon dioxide, and thus helps to slow down global warming. It regulates the global water supply and holds valuable pharmaceuticals,” says Schipulle, a veteran environmentalist who works for the German government. “We must finally realize that these are services that are worth something to us.”

    Schipulle is in the region on a sensitive mission. Since December, he has headed the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), a group founded by Americans, Europeans and the countries along the Congo River. The alliance aims to prevent the Congo basin from being plundered and transformed into oil palm and coffee plantations by mid-century. The Congo rainforest is still largely in one piece, but investors from around the world have already discovered the region’s potential for big business — ore, diamonds, plantations and lumber. But Schipulle and his partners have other plans for the Congo basin. They want international financial institutions or the world community to fork over money to preserve the rainforest as it is today. The threat of clear-cutting poses a double risk for the world. First, destroying the Congo rainforest would eliminate one of the earth’s most important cooling systems. Second, the carbon dioxide (CO2) released as a result of slash-and-burn agriculture would further accelerate global warming.

  • 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