The idiot way..

Ok..  Here´s what NOT to do..

 

I keep a trio ( 2.1 ) of Zamenis situla, Leopardsnake, and the female is quite big. They are housed together, fed together ( under survelliance, of course.. ) and after a meal I give the terrarium a good shower to minimize the scent from food and to “help” them get out of feedingmoode. The trio is working perfect!! So far, so good..

Z. situla female.

Now, I had hopes last year on getting some eggs and later on juveniles from them, but nothing happened. It the terrarium I have a humidity-box made of a 3 litres plasticbox..

3 litres Bra Plast-box.

This box have a hole cut in the lid, and is covered in a brown tape of the kind that one can use to seal a package with, just to create a dark place for shedding snakes to feel safe in. About 1 litre of damp Sphagnum sp. moss was added in it too.

I was looking in that box every now ant then, especially around the time that I thought she would to lay her eggs.. The placing of the box have been optimal for the snakes, but not for me as it was placed in the rear of the terrarium. But no eggs.. After a while I looked it the box more seldom, then I did in the beginning of the season..

Anyway.. Yesterday evening, when I was to clean the terrarium out, to re-decorate it for them for this season, I flipped the old content out, and guess what!! There they where.! The eggs… 10 good looking eggs, or at least what was left of 10 good eggs..

Lesson learned.. The hard way..

You can surley imagine all the “good” words I called myself.. I WILL place AND check that box much better this year…

/Miqe

Climate threat to Nordic frogs

Climate change is a threat to thousands of frog species all over the world, including the green spotted toad in Sweden and the pool toad in Norway. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that at least half of the world’s approximately 6,000 species are threatened with extinction.

Global warming leads to the water in which frogs live heating up, evaporating and becoming shallower, so ultraviolet rays find it easier to penetrate their habitats and cause mutations. Various forms of disease spread even more easily as temperatures rise.The Nordic countries are fighting back though, e.g. taking measures to save frogs by improving and restoring their habitats.

The outlook for the future is discussed in the latest fact sheet in the series “Nordens natur – trender mot 2010″ (Nordic Nature – Trends towards 2010). The programme, which is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, aims to illustrate trends in biological diversity in the Nordic Region. The title refers to the international target of stemming negative trends in biological diversity by 2010.The series of fact sheets describe Nordic successes as well as instances where it has proven impossible to halt a negative trend.The target group is all those who have an interest in the state and future of biodiversity in the Nordic Region. Subjects covered by previous sheets include cod, currents in the Baltic Sea and the future of the polar bear and sea eagle. The editor-in-chief is based at the Finnish Environmental Administration but the project also has its own websites in Norway and Denmark.

Link to the project website. Click “English” in top right area for English version.

Nordic co-operation on the environment

From Norden.org

Frog population hit by severe frost

THE coldest snap many on The Lizard peninsula can remember may have wiped out an entire generation of frogs.

Sub-zero temperatures in recent weeks have also caused havoc to rare plant species.

The peninsula is home to some of Britain’s rarest flora and fauna, many of which have adapted to flourish in the unique conditions.

But as mild winter weather gave way recently to the severest frosts in decades, the ground was turned rock solid and shallow water froze – killing off plants and animals.

Justin Whitehouse, National Trust area warden for The Lizard, said it was heartbreaking. “It has been the coldest that I and many others can remember on The Lizard.

“Any frost is a rare occurrence and many of the rare and unusual flora and fauna unique to The Lizard only occur here because frosts are so unusual.

“Species like the frogs have adapted their lifecycles to make the most of the mild winters, breeding in October rather than the more usual spring.

“The wet summer and autumn looked like it was going to be a bumper year for the frogs, until the severe frost arrived and froze the tadpoles into blocks of ice.”

Mr Whitehouse said that after a very dry December, the freezing temperatures caused serious damage.

Data from the Met Office recorded a temperature of -7.8 on the night of January 6, the coldest there for 20 years.

The weather recording station, situated at RNAS Culdrose on the outskirts of Helston, reported three nights of consecutive hard frosts with temperatures at -5 and -4.

While residents could wrap up warm or turn their central heating up a notch, the peninsula’s wildlife had been dealt a terrible blow, said Mr Whitehouse.

There is little permanent water on The Lizard, so most of the frogs breed in old cart-tracks and temporary pools on the heaths. The arctic conditions led to shallow breeding pools being frozen solid, wiping out common frog tadpoles en masse.

Mr Whitehouse said he feared for the delicate balance of nature in places like The Lizard as climate change made weather patterns more erratic.

“While the frog population will no doubt recover, my main concern is that with climate change we are likely to get more and more unpredictable weather which some of these highly adapted species will find difficult to survive longer-term.”

The frost has also made life difficult for one of The Lizard’s most celebrated, but elusive, wild residents – the Cornish chough.

The iconic birds usually feed by poking their beaks into the ground and rummaging for invertebrates. But the frozen ground has made this impossible.

It is also feared that the frost penetrated deep into the soil, potentially affecting some winter annuals.

The Lizard, the most southerly point of mainland Britain, is a unique environment. Thanks to the Gulf Stream and relatively warm prevailing southwesterly winds, the peninsula enjoys one of the mildest climates in the country with an annual mean temperature close to 11C (52F).

Severe frosts are exceptionally rare and its micro-climate sees Mediterranean plants which die elsewhere in Britain surviving all year round.

From this is cornwall.co.uk

What Is The World’s Rarest Animal? Herp?

By Whit Gibbons,(Eco-Views) Aiken Standard, SC, 1/09/09

This question needs to be qualified if you expect to get anything like consensus from scientists. For example, you might restrict the question to types of animals (such as bird, fish or frog) or to a location (such as within the United States, within Alabama or in the desert). Even then, you are unlikely to get a single answer on which all scientists would agree.
   
Part of the difficulty lies in establishing what is meant by “rare.” Marble salamanders, which 99.44 percent of the people in the Southeastern United States have never heard of and even fewer have seen, are not rare in the sense of being scarce. Amphibian biologists know that marble salamanders spend most of their lives in the woods under logs, leaves, rocks or even underground. They come onto the surface when they breed in the fall, almost always at night when it is raining. To anyone other than an amphibian biologist, they would be perceived as rare because the average person has never observed them in their natural habitat. By that definition, most animals, as well as plants, are rare.

The more common perception of what makes something rare is that not many of them are known to exist. The Grand Cayman blue iguana indisputably qualifies as one of, if not the, rarest lizard in the world. These turquoise or pale blue lizards, which are restricted to Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands south of Cuba, can get more than five feet long and live more than half a century. The record longevity in captivity is 67 years. Blue iguanas qualify for the rarity category because so few are left on the island. And their odds of survival look grim. Some lizard biologists have predicted that the species will be extinct by the year 2020, except for a few animals in captivity.

Like the blue iguana, one of the rarest turtles in the world also reaches an enormous size and probably lives for decades. The Yangtze (also called Shanghai) softshell turtle is considered to be the rarest turtle in the world by most turtle biologists. Two of these turtles, a male and a female, that are in zoos in China are purported to be more than 80 years old each. One giant softshell turtle is known to inhabit a large lake in Hanoi, Vietnam, and one was found in another Vietnamese lake, but sightings in the wild over recent decades have been few. Females, which get larger than the males, can reach lengths of more than four feet and are estimated to weigh more than 400 pounds. Attempts have been made to breed the remaining pair in captivity, but so far no fertile eggs have survived.

Many ornithologists consider the rarest bird in the world to be a small honeycreeper known as the po’ouli, which is native to rainforests on Maui. According to recent reports, only three surviving individuals are known to exist. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers the species endangered (if it didn’t, we should certainly wonder why not) and is attempting to protect the habitat. Efforts are also being made to get a pair to mate (assuming that both sexes are represented among the remaining individuals).

Rarity among animals, as well as plants, is not a new development. Of the millions of species that have gone extinct through the ages, a point was reached when only two or three were left. Then there were none. To that extent, rarity, even extinction, is a natural biological phenomenon. What is not natural is when we human beings are responsible for the rarity of a species, including the three mentioned above, because we have destroyed their habitat.

Perhaps we have reached a turning point in our stewardship of Earth. If, as I believe, most people value Earth’s biodiversity, then maybe we are ready to recognize the right of other species to inhabit this planet and to set ourselves a goal for the second decade of this millennium: Let us strive to ensure that being a victim of habitat destruction is itself a rarity.

From HerpDigest newsletter.

The ugly toad has its many uses

Amphibians, and this scientists repeat, are not only the best bio-indicators of environmental pollution and climate change, but as predators they also play a large role in maintaining biological stability.

In the last dozen or so years, the world has become aware of a very disturbing phenomenon, that of the fall in plant and animal populations and the complete disappearance of numerous species, off the face of the earth. It has been halfway through the last century that man’s attitude to nature has not changed and the beginning of the twentieth century would start to see the extinction of vertebrate.The world of mammals would be the first to go. From the beginning of the 19th century, hundreds of large birds and mammals apart from reptiles and amphibians have gone extinct and a further 1500 are threatened and need protection. It was when the gold toad (Bufo periglenes) in the Monteverde reserve in Costa Rica, Central America and the Australian frog (Reobatrachus silus) disappeared that the scientific community began to sit up and take notice. This fact was discussed at the first world congress of Herpetology held at Canterbury, England in 1989. At the same congress, the condition of amphibian and reptile populations and their protection was also discussed. It was stressed that amphibian extinction was a signal that we have reached a critical point in environmental degradation because amphibians which inhabit nearly all the eco systems all over the world belong to what are known as the bio-indicators or species who react to changes in the natural environment faster than other species.

Amphibians, and this scientists repeat, are not only the best bio-indicators of environmental pollution and climate change, but as predators they also play a large role in maintaining biological stability. The most important reason for the extinction of amphibians is the drying up of water bodies and the pollution of the countryside. Another reason which has caused the disappearance of the amphibians in the US and Australia is because of epidemics.

 

In several countries including India, edible frogs have been and are still in demand as a culinary delicacy. The result is huge populations are being decimated world wide. Consequently, the price of edible frogs have risen and have triggered off organised farms and breeding in closed frog farms based on foreign species. It was the French who are known to have started off this practice in their country in the early 16th century which spread to a number of other countries. The decimation of natural green frog populations in France created the need to import them from neighbouring countries. Catching of frogs in France was prohibited in 1977. The business of importing began shortly after the Second World War and the largest quantity of 46 tons was sent to France in 1964. In the following years the export of frogs was stopped due to their population being severely depleted.

France is the biggest importer of frog legs in the world. It imports between three to four thousand tons per year.

In 1962, France imported 63 tons of frozen frog legs, and 275 tons of live frogs. In 1978, it imported 3157 tons of legs and 792 tons of live frogs. In 1998, it went up further to 4113 tons of legs and 1005 tons of living frogs. This predatory exploitation of nature has led to an ecological catastrophe especially observed in India and Indonesia resulting in a total ban on catching frogs in these countries.

From Deccan Herald