Sinds enkele weken zit er bij Iguana in Vlissingen een groooote netpython in de tentoonstelling.

Het dametje is een meter of zes lang en weegt zo’n 80 kilo.

Stijgende lijn in aantal boomkikkers

SLUIS – Het aantal boomkikkers in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen vertoont een stijgende lijn. In de Kievittepolder bij Cadzand en nabij het fort Nassau achter de wallen van Retranchement zijn de meeste waarnemingen gedaan. Rondom Aardenburg lijkt de situatie zich te stabiliseren.

René Beijersbergen van Het Zeeuwse Landschap maakte zaterdag tijdens de boomkikker- vrijwilligersdag in Retranchement bekend dat het aantal aogeputen, zoals ze in de streek genoemd worden, rond de duizend ligt. Over de streek verspreid liggen momenteel een kleine honderd poelen als mogelijk woongebied voor het diertje.

In de Kievittepolder bevindt zich een zogeheten mozaïeklandschap met plassen, putten en begroeiing. Een ideaal gebied voor de populatie. Het grootste aantal, tussen de vijf- en zeshonderd bevindt zich in Retranchement. Hier is de stijgende lijn het grootst.

In Vlaanderen bevinden zich nog twee populaties: In het Zwingebied in de Oude Hazegraspolder nabij de Oosthoek in Knokke-Heist en in Limburg in de buurt van Hasselt.

Verschillende organisaties en overheden werken grensoverschrijdend samen om het voortbestaan van de boomkikker mogelijk te maken. In Damme en Knokke-Heist werden ondertussen poelen aangelegd bij landbouwers en particulieren.

Kees Kostense, voorzitter van het Boomkikkerfonds, reikte de eerste Boomkikkerverjaardagskalender uit aan Tom Wolkers die zijn vader Jan vertegenwoordigde. Jan Wolkers, beschermheer van de boomkikker, had voor de vrijwilligersdag een gedicht geschreven dat een plekje kreeg op de kalender.

De Aogepuutpries, in de vorm van een illustratie van Awie de Zwart, voor de meest boomkikkervriendelijke tuin, werd door Kees Kostense uitgereikt aan Jacq Paridaen en Marian Blaakman. „Het voortbestaan van de aogepuut hangt ook af van de menselijke bebouwing. We streven er naar om tuinen daarop te laten inrichten met waterpartijen, oeverbegroeiing en struikgewas.“, zei Kostense.

Bron: PZC

May 13, 2006, 5:43AM34 Endangered Turtles Returned to Vietnam

By MICHAEL CASEY AP Environmental Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand — Thirty-four rare pond turtles have been returned to Vietnam in what a conservationist said Saturday was the first time that smuggled wildlife was repatriated to the country.

The turtles _ two rescued from a market in Hong Kong and 32 others born into captivity there _ were flown Wednesday to Vietnam aboard a Cathay Pacific flight and will eventually be released into the wild.

The two turtles were believed to have been caught in the marshes of Quang Nam Province in 1999 and were found for sale in a Hong Kong market. They were turned over to the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden of Hong Kong where they flourished _ producing the 32 offspring that joined them on their return to Vietnam.

“We believe this is the first known case of smuggled wildlife being returned to the country. The great irony is that most of the turtles flow the other way,” said Douglas Hendrie, a fresh water turtle expert who helped coordinate the return with the government.

“There is a huge trade underway with most turtles making their way to Chinese markets,” he said. “Vietnam has decimated its wild turtle population.”

Paul Crow, a conservation officer at Kadoorie Farm, said the return was delayed because authorities wanted to ensure there would be a safe place for the turtles to live.

“It’s fantastic,” Crow said. “With all the animals we have here, the ultimate goal is to get them to their range country or natural habitat.”

Of the 25 native species of tortoises and freshwater turtles in Vietnam, Hendrie said the pond turtle is among the most threatened. Last recorded in the wild in 1939, the pond turtle’s numbers have fallen as a result of hunting and trade to meet the demand of export markets, as well as the loss of its lowland habitat.

Vietnam’s new wildlife protection law for the first time specifically lists the Vietnamese pond turtle as a protected species that may not be bought, sold, traded, or consumed without a permit from the government. It is also listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) banning export of the species without a specific CITES permit from the national government.

But even with national and international laws, Hendrie and Crow both acknowledge the turtles will remain at risk.

For now, they are being kept temporarily the Turtle Conservation Center (TCC) at Cuc Phuong National Park where the government runs a conservation program for critically endangered species, including the Vietnamese pond turtle.

“We are looking for a suitable site where these turtles will be protected,” Hendrie said. “The last thing we want to do is drop them in a pond and then see them in China two months later back in the trade.”

___

On the Net:

Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden of Hong Kong: http://www.kfbg.org.hk/

Asian Turtle Conservation Network: http://www.Asianturtlenetwork.org

Agents find cocaine in cage with boa constrictor
May 12, 2006
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Shreveport police report finding crack cocaine in an unusual place — a plastic bag hidden under gravel that lined the bottom of a boa constrictor’s aquarium.

Narcotics agent Ben Raymond lifted the snake out of the cage to remove the 1.4 ounces of the drug from the cage in a home in the 3100 block of Frederick Street on Thursday, authorities said.

Agents with the Caddo-Shreveport Narcotics Unit and Shreveport police also reportedly found scales, baggies, a handgun and a quarter ounce of marijuana when they searched the house.

Emanuel Ford, 21, of Shreveport has been booked on one count of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.

©The Times
May 12, 2006

‘Third eye’ of Lizard sheds light on evolution of color visionBy Audrey HuangJohns Hopkins MedicineLizards have given Johns Hopkins researchers a tantalizing clue to the evolutionary origins of light-sensing cells in people and other species.

Published in the March 17 issue of Science, their study describes how the “side-blotched” lizard’s so-called third, or parietal, eye distinguishes two different colors, blue and green, possibly to tell the time of day.

Specialized nerve cells in that eye, which looks more like a spot on the lizard’s forehead, use two types of molecular signals to sense light: those found only in simpler animals, like scallops, and those found only in more complex animals, like humans.

Although the blue-green color comparison method used by the parietal eye is not one shared by humans, it does reveal one potential step in the evolution of color vision, the Johns Hopkins researchers say.

Human light-reception cells responsible for color vision are called cone cells or photoreceptors, and they contain only one kind of pigment — red, green or blue — per cell. A color image results when light-triggered signals in the three different types of cone cells are compared by other nerve cells in the retina as well as the brain.

The lizard’s parietal eye photoreceptors contain two pigments per cell, blue and green. Having two different pigments allows the cell to respond to two different colors of light and process that information within the same cell.

According to the researchers, when the lizard’s third eye sees blue light, the blue pigment triggers a molecule called gustducin, which is very similar to a molecule found in human photoreceptors as well as in the lizard’s lateral eyes, those on the sides of its head. But when the lizard’s third eye sees green light, the green pigment triggers a different molecule called Go, known as “G-other,” which also signals light responses in the light-sensing cells of the scallop and other creatures without a backbone. That Go is found in spineless creatures suggests it is the evolutionarily more ancient light-triggering signal.

Although gustducin and Go are dif-ferent molecules, they are similar and considered “related” proteins. However, gustducin and Go activate different molecular pathways that work against each other physiologically. Blue light and gustducin generate an “off” response in the nerve cell, while green light and Go generate an “on” response.

“It may seem strange to have two opposing signals in the same cell,” says the study’s senior author, King-Wai Yau, a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, “but the unique mechanism renders these parietal photoreceptors most active at dawn and dusk.”

“So incorporating two different pigments and two separate signaling molecules in one cell may have been an economical way, in a primitive eye with relatively few cell types, to tell the transitions of the day based on changes in the spectrum of sunlight,” continues Chih-Ying Su, the first author of the study and a former neuroscience graduate student at Johns Hopkins.

The researchers propose that the lizard’s parietal eye photoreceptor cells — by sharing features found in human photoreceptors as well as those found in simpler organisms like the scallop — represent a “missing link” between the light-sensing apparatus in lower animals and ours.

It turns out that some frogs and fish also have a spot on their foreheads that might play the role of a light-sensing third eye. Yau says he hopes to pursue these structures to obtain more clues about how our photoreceptor cells, the rods and cones, came about. He’s most curious, he says, about how the same function can be achieved in different ways in different animals.

The researchers were funded by the National Eye Institute and the Allene Reuss Memorial Trust.

Authors on the paper are Su, Dong-Gen Luo, His-Wen Liao and Yau, all of Johns Hopkins; Akihisa Terakita and Yoshinori Shichida, of Kyoto University; and Manija Kazmi and Thomas Sakmar, of the Rockefeller University.

Exotic Pet Amnesty Day

Saturday is Exotic Pet Amnesty Day. So if you have a big python, like one that almost killed a man in South Florida last year, you can turn it in.

Florida Fish and Wildlife says there are more than 130 non-native species now living in Florida. It hopes to cut back on that number by holding its first Exotic Pet Amnesty Day.

People can drop off their exotic pets, like snakes, fish, iguanas or birds, no questions asked. Even illegal species can be turned in without penalty.

The exotic pet amnesty is today from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Barnett Park located at 4801 W. Colonial Park Drive in Orlando.

For more information, call the Wildlife Commission at (850) 410-5291.

For more information tune to Central Florida News 13. Only on Bright House Networks.

The turtle is back – on a coin

KUALA LUMPUR: After the terrible insult of being dropped as the mascot of Terengganu’s 2008 Sukma Games and replaced by Nemo the clown fish, the penyu or greenback turtle has made a comeback.

Thanks to Bank Negara, the turtle is now immortalised in a commemorative coin as part of the central bank’s “Endangered Marine Animals and Reptile” series.

The coin – made of Nordic gold alloy with a face value of 25 sen and sold at RM5.50 each – is packaged in an attractive and colourful coin card, complete with information on the respective endangered species.

According to a statement, the obverse of the coin depicts one of the 12 marine animals and reptiles.

Divers holding up a mock commemorative coin, which depicts a turtle on its face, during the launch of Bank Negara’s ‘Endangered Marine Animals and Reptile’ series at the Aquaria KLCC in Kuala Lumpur. The first two issues of this coin series featuring the Green turtle and Hawksbill turtle were released yesterday. This will be followed by monthly releases featuring 10 other issues.

Divers holding up a mock commemorative coin, which depicts a turtle on its face, during the launch of Bank Negara’s ‘Endangered Marine Animals and Reptile’ series at the Aquaria KLCC in Kuala Lumpur. The first two issues of this coin series featuring the Green turtle and Hawksbill turtle were released yesterday. This will be followed by monthly releases featuring 10 other issues.
Other features on the coin are the words “Endangered Species Series” on the upper part of the coin’s circumference.

The common name of the animal in Bahasa Malaysia and English as well as its scientific name are on the lower part of the coin’s circumference.

The reverse side of the coin depicts the denomination and the logo of the “Endangered Marine Animals and Reptiles” coin series, which is represented by a stylised leatherback turtle.

Bank Negara said it was issuing the coins, its third in the “Endangered Species” series, as part of its Coins in Education Programme, to create public awareness of the species of endangered animals and birds in Malaysia.

Similar to the previously issued “Land Animals” and “Birds” coin series, the “Endangered Marine Animals and Reptiles” series will be available to the public in 12 issues.

The first two issues of this coin series, featuring the Green Turtle and the Hawksbill Turtle, were released yesterday.

This will be followed by monthly releases featuring the other ten issues.

Curly-Tailed Lizard Population Threatens Native Lizards
Animal Devours Lizards Native To South Florida

POSTED: 7:01 pm EDT May 1, 2006
UPDATED: 7:12 pm EDT May 1, 2006

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PALM BEACH, Fla. — In 60 years, an exotic carnivore capable of devouring Florida’s native lizards has taken over more than 50 miles of South Florida’s urban coastline.

The northern curly-tailed lizard (Leiocephalus ssp.), called the “T-Rex of ground lizards” by biologists, came to South Florida from the Caribbean and thrives in rocky, sandy areas, the Sun-Sentinel’s Raelin Storey reported.

“In particular, this animal, the northern curly-tailed lizard, likes cement and types of habitat that man has created along the east coast of Florida,” said Florida Park Service biologists Hank Smith.

Smith is one of the scientists who are tracking the spread of the animal.

“It’s had a very, very rapid geographic range expansion,” Smith said.

Documents show that 20 pairs of curly-tailed lizards were imported to the island of Palm Beach in the 1940s. Within 20 years, they had spread 20 blocks, Storey reported. By 1968, researchers discovered that the lizards had spread to the mainland. In 2002, when Smith and others started counting, they found a solid population from Lighthouse Point to Hobe Sound.

“It’s rare that you know exactly where a population became started and then its march across an area,” Smith said.

Biologists have watched larger curly-tailed lizards eat Florida’s native lizards. Where the northern curly-tailed lizards move in, other lizards move out.

http://mfile.akamai.com/12908/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2006/0501/9142763.200k.asx

Northern curly-tailed lizards have been spotted in four state parks from the Florida Keys to northern Palm Beach County. Biologists said they worry that they will take food and habitat from other native animals.

“We know that their propensity to eat other lizards is a very large portion of their dietary habit,” Smith said.

Scientists view the curly-tailed lizards’ rapid spread as a warning about what can happen when exotic animals are released into a welcoming environment.

Scientists are now researching how often the northern curly-tailed lizards reproduce and what they eat.

Turtle tracers track creatures’ sea voyage
Transmitters check on ridleys’ travels in nesting season

By kathryn garcia Caller-Times
April 28, 2006

Big Brother is watching, or in this case the Padre Island National Seashore’s biologists and technicians.

Three Kemp’s ridley sea turtles that laid eggs Wednesday along the seashore returned to the Gulf Thursday carrying small transmitters to monitor them during the nesting season, said Donna Shaver, the seashore’s chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery.

“We use the data to try to predict where and when the turtles might nest again,” Shaver said.

Sea turtles lay an average of 2.5 nests a year, Shaver said.

Other researchers said each nest typically contains 80 to 100 eggs.

Todd Yates/Caller-Times

Donna Shaver, Padre Island National Seashore chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery, uses fiberglass to attach a satellite transmitter on Thursday to one of three female Kemp’s ridley sea turtles captured, fitted with monitors and then released.

This year saw the reappearance of Sally, a ridley who was hatched at the seashore and has returned to nest five times, Shaver said.

“It’s just so gratifying and we hope to see her in the future,” she said.

Sally was born in 1987 as part of the 10-year program called Headstart that brought 22,507 ridley eggs from Mexico to hatch at the seashore allowing them to crawl toward the Gulf, Shaver said. They were then caught and taken to Galveston’s sea lab for a one-year incubation period, she said.

Sally is proof that project worked, she said.

Todd Yates/Caller-Times

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle named Sally who was hatched in 1987 made her fifth return to the area this week to lay eggs, at which time she was fitted with a transmitter and then released

Eleven ridley sea turtle nests were found Wednesday, one on Matagorda Island and 10 along the seashore, breaking the record for the number of nests found in a single day, she said.

One male ridley was captured by a fisherman along the Texas coast Wednesday and outfitted with a transmitter, making the turtle named Pierre the first male to be tracked by the seashore, Shaver said.

“We don’t know what they do in the marine environment,” Shaver said. “The females mostly leave the waters off the Texas coast and go to the waters north along the Gulf coast, but males are mostly residents. Are our males hanging around or leaving the area?”

Contact Kathryn Garcia at 886-3792 or HYPERLINK mailto:garciak@caller.com garciak@caller.com