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Giant newt and tiny frog

A Gardiner's Seychelles frog rests on a thumb in this undated handout. A giant Chinese salamander that predates Tyrannosaurus rex and the world's smallest frog are among a group of extremely rare amphibians identified by scientists as being in need of urgent help to survive. (Naomi Dook/ZSL/Handout/Reuters)

Giant newt, tiny frog identified as most at risk
by Jeremy Lovell
Mon Jan 21, 5:37 PM ET

A giant Chinese salamander that predates Tyrannosaurus rex and the world's smallest frog are among a group of extremely rare amphibians identified by scientists on Monday as being in need of urgent help to survive.

The Olm, a blind salamander that can survive for 10 years without food, and a purple frog that spends most of its life four meters underground are also among the 10 most endangered amphibians drawn up by the Zoological Society of London.

"These species are the 'canaries in the coalmine' -- they are highly sensitive to factors such as climate change and pollution, which lead to extinction, and are a stark warning of things to come," said EDGE head Jonathan Baillie.

EDGE, which stands for Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered, is a project set up a year ago to identify and start to protect some of nature's most weird and wonderful creatures.

"The EDGE amphibians are amongst the most remarkable and unusual species on the planet and yet an alarming 85 percent of the top 100 are receiving little or no conservation attention," said the project's amphibians chief Helen Meredith.

While last year's launch focused on at risk mammals, this year the focus shifted to neglected amphibians.

"These animals may not be cute and cuddly, but hopefully their weird looks and bizarre behaviors will inspire people to support their conservation," Meredith added.

Not only are the target species unique, the project itself is breaking new ground by using the internet at www.zsl.org/edge to highlight threatened creatures and encourage the public to sponsor conservation.

Global warming and human depredation of habitat are cited as root causes of the problem facing the creatures from the massive to the minute.

The Chinese giant salamander, a distant relative of the newt, can grow up to 1.8 meters in length while the tiny Gardiner's Seychelles frog when full grown is only the size of a drawing pin.

Also on this year's list is the limbless Sagalla caecilian, South African ghost frogs, lungless Mexican salamanders, the Malagasy rainbow frog, Chile's Darwin frog and the Betic midwife toad whose male carries fertilized eggs on its hind legs.

"Tragically, amphibians tend to be the overlooked members of the animal kingdom, even though one in every three amphibian species is currently threatened with extinction, a far higher proportion than that of bird or mammal species," said EDGE's Baillie.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited.

Polar bear's shrinking habitat

The Upwising Begins

Global warming ~ US (re)action

with many thanks to Tom Toles for this chart ... and the time frame mentioned at the bottom:
"What's the time frame on this chart?"
"1980's till the end of the world."

Four gas-buying tips

EARLY MORNING
Buy in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. The colder the ground the denser the gasoline.

FILL SLOWLY
Do NOT squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. The trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less for your money.

WHEN IT'S HALF EMPTY
Fill up when your gas tank is half empty. The more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine.

AVOID GAS DELIVERY
If there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up -- most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

The God Who Can't Be Tamed

The God Who Can't Be Tamed
Could we be losing more than the land when we destroy it?
by Philip Yancey

In what she later called "the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm," Isak Dinesen went flying across the unspoiled plains of Africa with her friend Denys Finch-Hatton. In the film version of Out of Africa, the character playing Denys first invited her by saying, "I want to show you the world as God sees it." Indeed, the next few minutes of cinematography come close to presenting exactly that. As the frail Moth airplane soars beyond the escarpment that marks the beginning of the Rift Valley in Kenya, the ground falls abruptly away and the zoom lens captures a glimpse of Eden in the grasslands just below.

Great herds of zebras scatter at the sound of the motor, each group wheeling in unison, as if a single mind controlled the bits of modern art dashing across the plain. Huge giraffes — they seemed so gangly and awkward when standing still—gallop away with exquisite gracefulness. Bounding gazelles, outrunning the larger animals, fill in the edge of the scene.

The world as God sees it — does that phrase merely express some foamy romantic notion, or does it contain truth? The Bible gives intriguing hints. Proverbs tells of the act of Creation, when Wisdom "was the craftsman at his [God's] side … filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presences, rejoicing in his whole world." The seraphs in Isaiah's vision who declared "the whole earth is full of his glory" could hardly have been referring to human beings — not if the rest of the Book of Isaiah is to be believed. At least God had the glory of Nature then, during that very dark time when Israel faced extinction and Judah slid toward idolatry.

God makes plain how he feels about the animal kingdom in his longest single speech, a magnificent address found at the end of Job. Look closely and you will notice a common thread in the specimens he holds up for Job's edification:

A lioness hunting her prey
A mountain goat giving birth in the wilds
A rogue donkey roaming the salt flats
An ostrich flapping her useless wings with joy
A stallion leaping high to paw the air
A hawk, an eagle, and a raven building their nests on the rocky crags

That's a mere warm up — Zoology 101 in Job's education. From there God advances to the behemoth, a hippo-like creature no one can tame, and the mighty, dragonish leviathan. "Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?" God asks with a touch of scorn. "The mere sight of him is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me?"

Wildness is God's underlying message to Job, the one trait his menagerie all hold in common. God is celebrating those members of his created world that will never be domesticated by human beings. Wild animals bring us down a notch, reminding us of something we'd prefer to forget: our creatureliness. And they also announce to our senses the splendor of an invisible, untamable God.

Several times a week, I run among such wild animals, unmolested, for I run through Lincoln Park Zoo near downtown Chicago. I have gotten to know them well, as charming neighbors, but I always try mentally to project the animals into their natural states.

Three rock-hopper penguins neurotically pace back and forth on a piece of concrete that has been sprayed to look like ice. I envision them free, hopping from ice floe to ice floe in Antarctica among thousands of their comic-faced cousins.

An ancient elephant stands against a wall, keeping time three ways: his body sways from side to side to one beat, his tail marks a different rhythm entirely, and his trunk moves up and down to yet a third. I struggle to imagine this sluggish giant inspiring terror in an African forest.

And the paunchy cheetah lounging on a rock shelf — could this animal belong to the species that can, on a short course, out accelerate a Porsche?

It requires a huge mental leap for me to place the penguin, the elephant, and the cheetah all back where they belong, in "the world as God sees it." Somehow, God's lesson on wildness evaporates among the moats and plastic educational placards of the zoo.

Yet, I am fortunate to live near the zoo. Otherwise, Chicago would offer up only squirrels, pigeons, cockroaches, rats, and a stray songbird. Is this what God meant when he granted Adam dominion?

It is hard to avoid a sermonic tone when writing about wild animals, for our sins against them are great indeed. The elephant population alone has decreased by 800,000 in the last two decades, mostly due to poachers and rambunctious soldiers with machine guns. And every year, we destroy an area of rain forest — and all its animal residents — equal in size to the state of California.

Most wildlife writing focuses on the vanishing animals themselves, but I find myself wondering about the ultimate impact on us. What else, besides that innate appreciation for wildness, have we lost? Could distaste for authority, even a resistance to the concept of God as Lord, derive in part from an atrophied sense? God's mere mention of the animals struck a chord of awe in Job; what about us, who grow up feeding peanuts across the moat to the behemoths and leviathans?

Naturalist John Muir, who never had a vision for "the world as God sees it," reluctantly concluded, "it is a great comfort … that vast multitude of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time of God's love before man was created."

The heavens declare the glory of God, and so do breaching whales and bouncing springboks. Fortunately, in some corners of the world, vast multitudes of creatures can still live and have a time in God's love. The least we can do is make room for them — for our sakes as well as theirs.
__________

"The God Who Can't Be Tamed," by Philip Yancey, Christianity Today, October 1987