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FLORA AND FAUNA
Gone forever: Little African grebe follows the dodo

Rare antelope deaths in Kazakhstan 'catastrophe'
Almaty (AFP) May 26, 2010 - Around 12,000 endangered Saiga antelopes have died in an apparent epidemic in Kazakhstan, an official said, in what a WWF expert called a potential catastrophe for the rare breed. "Around 12,000 saigas have been found dead," the head of the sanitary and epidemiological department in western Kazakhstan, Serik Imanukulov said, cited by the Interfax news agency. "This situation with the deaths of the antelopes is a large-scale tragedy. It's a natural catastrophe," he told journalists. Tests show the antelopes, which have distinctive bulbous noses, died from pasteurellosis, an infection that attacks the lungs, Imankulov said.

"If the figure of 12,000 is confirmed, it's simply a catastrophe," Olga Pereladova, a WWF saiga expert and head of the Central Asia programme, told AFP. "That means the illness is already very widespread and it will continue." The Saiga, which lives on the steppes of Kazakhstan, as well as in Mongolia and Russia, has seen its numbers fall from around one million in the 1990s to fewer than 100,000. The population fell drastically due to uncontrolled hunting and demand for the antelope's horns in Chinese medicine. The Kazakh authorities estimated that around 81,000 of the migrating animals lived in the Central Asian country before the current epidemic.
by Staff Writers
 Paris (AFP) May 26, 2010
 A tawny water fowl that lived in a tiny corner of Madagascar is extinct, wiped out by an introduced species of predatory fish and by nylon fishing nets, conservationists reported on Wednesday.

The Alaotra grebe, Tachybaptus rufolavatus, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, said the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the famous Red List of endangered species.

The grebe was wiped out by habitat destruction, by the introduction of a carnivorous fish called the snakehead murrel and by nylon gill-nets which accidentally caught and drowned many birds.

"No hope now remains for this species. It is another example of how human actions can have unforeseen consequences," said Leon Bennun, director of science at BirdLife International.

BirdLife contributes data to the IUCN's Red List on the world's 10,027 recognised bird species.

Of these, 132 species are now extinct; four are extinct in the wild; 190 are critically endangered; 372 endangered and 838 near-threatened.

Of the remainder, 7,751 species are categorised as being of "least concern" while data is insufficient to judge the status of 62.

The IUCN sounded the alarm for wetland birds, imperilled by the draining of marshlands and by alien species that are introduced for food.

"Invasive alien species have caused extinctions around the globe and remain one of the major threats to birds and other biodiversity," Bennun said.


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