Meet the world's first snow leopard with a collar

A November picture of a rare snow leopard after being captured and fitted with a satellite collar to track its activites in Nepal. AFP photo/WWF Nepal/Kamal Thapa.  

Putting a collar on a snow leopard, one of the most elusive animals on the planet, is like trying to teach a dog to meow. Equally impossible.

But now World Wildlife Foundation has done just that, for the first time.

A snow leopard in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area in Nepal has been fitted with a satellite-GPS collar for the first time. The snow leopard, says WWF, is an adult male about five years old, weighs 40 kilogram was fitted with the collar and released into the wild late last month.

“The snow leopard collaring is indeed a new win for Nepal,” said Megh Bahadur Pandey, director general of the department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in Nepal. “It reiterates the commitment of the government to strengthen measures to better understand and protect the snow leopard whose survival is under threat from anthropogenic actions and the pervasive impacts of global climate change.”

The expedition lasted 45 days.

Collaring will play a key role in identifying snow leopard hotspots for tracking and monitoring.

“While past studies on the snow leopard have been limited to areas that are accessible to people, this technology will help provide important information on the ecology and behavior of the wide ranging snow leopard,” said Narendra Man Babu Pradhan, coordinator for development, research and monitoring at WWF Nepal.

Data from the satellite collar will determine the snow leopard’s movement patterns, habitat use and preferences.

The snow leopard is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species as globally endangered. According to estimates, there are less than 3,000 snow leopards in the wild.

Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star’s environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh

Philippines typhoon: A relief worker's small victories, lingering concerns

In late November, we met Toronto nurse Sherri Grady, who is currently helping with post-disaster relief in the Philippines with Médecins Sans Frontières. We last heard from Sherri one week after her arrival in the city of Ormoc, where she settled into her new surroundings and treated survivors of the devastating typhoon Yolanda.

 

Here is Sherri's latest update.

 

The last time we heard from you, you were based in Ormoc. Where have you been since and where are you now? Tell us about the journey and the logistics involved.

 

For the last two weeks, I have called the municipality of Carigara, Leyte home. Moving here was pretty painless for me, requiring little more than for me to pack my bags.

 

It did, however, require extensive logistical planning for my non-medical colleagues: a home and office were located, generators were put in place, food was organized for a team of 20-plus, cold chain for vaccines, staff were hired and trained on said generators... Typing this now, the list seems endless but as I hung my mosquito net that first night, I was most impressed by how organized these “logs” seemed. They made the impossible look easy.

 

It was only after a few days in our new home that I learned of our new Philippino/American benefactor who had temporarily rented two properties to us free of charge, out of respect for MSF’s work and reputation. The generosity that I have witnessed in this country continues to inspire me. 

 

Being able to live in Carigara provides our team with proximity to the population affected by Yolanda, and the hours previously spent driving now go towards consultations in some of the most isolated barangays of Leyte.

 

What is something that has really surprised you?

 

My medical team comes from all over the Philippines and when a nurse on my team commented on how you could hear Yolanda’s wind in Cebu, another replied, “You may have heard it, but in Ormoc we could see it.”

I remember being constantly aware of Yolanda’s destruction during my first week -- and newly amazed with each new piece of evidence of her wrath. However, at some moment near the end of my second week, I was surprised to realize that I had stopped noticing the devastation. Could I possibly be that callous, that hardened by the disasters I have seen? 

I spent the next few days focusing on the little details as we drove down now-familiar roads and onward to distant villages. I saw it then: improvement, clean-up and rebuilding. That stack of palm wood there used to be a tree that our car would have to drive around on the road. That house has a new roof built out of scrap metal and plastic sheeting, where last week there was a gaping void screaming up at the clouds, daring it to rain. Those choking evening fires that have us racing to roll up the car windows before yet another coughing fit ensues -- those are from people burning the debris that they have cleaned from around their homes.

It wasn’t that I had stopped noticing how bad things were. Instead, I had failed to recognize how much better they were getting. Now every day, I celebrate the small victories we come across: a new roof, fresh lumber being cut from downed trees, coconut plantation workers drying their lost crops for oil instead of food. It is here that I find hope, embodied in the men and women who keep pushing forward.

What are the most common health issues you are dealing with now?

Primary health care here in Leyte is not that different from most places I have practiced. I see a lot of coughs and colds, hypertension and skin diseases in my work here -- just like I do when working in the Canadian Arctic.

But what the medical teams are always monitoring for here, amongst these common complaints, are signs of outbreaks, dengue, cholera and meningitis, to name a few. These are precarious times for the people of Leyte and current conditions make them a population at risk when discussing health. 

Happily, I can report that the wounds we see are getting smaller and the infections less severe as people's access to health care improves. I had an interesting discussion with my project coordinator, in which he managed to put to words the sentiments I have been struggling to articulate: “Sherri, it’s not just about treating the common cold, it’s about restoring dignity."

What has been the most frustrating moment from your first few weeks in the Philippines?

The most frustrating part of my job is when we find a patient who needs more help then I know how to give. 

MSF’s emergency intervention in the Philippines has been appropriately focused on post-typhoon health needs. But what do I do when in a remote barangay, I find a psychotic man whose father has had to lock him up in his room for years to prevent him from running away and hurting himself? A one-year-old the size of a two-month-old baby with an unrepaired cleft palate? A little girl suffering from an unknown disease causing progressive paralysis and pain? Or a little boy with an eye deformity that I worry is a retinoblastoma?

In these moments, I depend on my colleagues and the partnerships we have formed with other organizations and the Department of Health. Together, we try to find the most appropriate places to refer these individuals, we advocate on their behalves, and we do everything we can -- but our time here is so short. We have already begun talking about the end of our emergency activities here: finding long-term partners to hand over projects to, donating supplies/equipment to the already-existing health structures, providing trainings as needed and making sure that the transition goes as smoothly as possible. 

While the plan for our departure has been well thought out and organized, and I am confident we will leave no gaps in the care for the local population, I can’t help but worry about these four innocent people. While not victims of Yolanda, life’s unfairness has caused them suffering nonetheless. 

Anything else you would like to share?

 

There are these surreal moments here where I drive around a bend or over a hill and suddenly, I find myself in this moment of suspended reality -- like time has stood still in the midst of Yolanda’s fury and if I listen I might still hear the wind. All the trees are leaning in the same direction, with the palm fronds still pointing straight out, suspended as if the wind is still blowing them. The houses on the hills are tilted, too, and for that split second, it seems to me as if someone has pressed pause on the world in the midst of Yolanda and if they dare hit play again it will all fall over.

 

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

Madagascar run-off could spell better days ahead – or maybe not

Richard Jean-Louis Robinson (left) squared off against Hery Martial Rakotoarimanana Rajaonarimampianina (right) in Madagascar's mainly peaceful run-off vote held Friday.

 

 

 

 

Finally: some good news from Madagascar.

Voting in Friday’s presidential run-off has been mostly peaceful, with only a few scattered incidents of violence, and foreign observers describe the process as having been both free and reliable.

That will be a welcome source of reassurance both to Malagasy people and to farther flung Madagascar-watchers, a not especially numerous breed of folk who closely follow events in the world’s second-largest island nation (surpassed in size only by Indonesia).

The truth is that few people in other countries pay a great deal of attention to the news in Madagascar. Many would likely have trouble locating the place on a map.

Just for the record, Madagascar is that very large, insular mass of land rising above the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa.

Formerly a French colony, Madagascar has been independent since 1960. It is probably best known around the world as almost the sole remaining natural home for lemurs, a range of primates found nowhere else on Earth except the nearby Comoros Islands.

But lemurs are only the beginning, for Madagascar is a treasure trove of biological and botanical diversity. At least 90 per cent of its plants and animals exist nowhere else on the planet. Mainland Africa, for example, has just one variety of baobab tree, that thick-trunked behemoth (and stirring symbol of the continent) that looks as if it’s growing upside-down. Madagascar has eight.

Sadly, almost all of the island’s endemic species are disappearing at an alarming rate, hapless victims of human encroachment upon their habitat.

But back to Friday’s vote – a second-round run-off that was rendered necessary after neither of the front-running candidates managed to gain more than 50 per cent of the vote in last October’s initial round.

As a result, they had to go at it again this month.

Actually, to call the two men “candidates” is at least somewhat misleading, considering that both of them are stand-ins for someone else.

Former health minister Richard Jean-Louis Robinson is a surrogate for Marc Ravalomanana, who was the country’s duly elected president until his 2009 overthrow by current president Andry Rajoelina.

In turn, Rajoelina was represented in Friday’s vote by a stalking horse of his own, a man by the somewhat challenging name of Hery Martial Rakotoarimanana Rajaonarimampianina.

Both Ravalomanana, the ousted president, and Rajoelina, the incumbent, were barred from participating directly in the recently completed vote.

The conflict between the two men has resulted in four years of sporadic bloodshed and ongoing economic stagnation for the country of 22 million.

Whoever becomes president now, here’s hoping that things get better soon.

Oakland Ross is a foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star.

From Peru, with bus accidents

This bus crash in Peru in June, 2013, left 30 dead. (Julio Quinto /Efe.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

They sometimes say that the news from Peru consists in roughly equal measure of drug busts and bus crashes.

Unfortunately, they seem to be fairly close to the mark – at least when it comes to bus crashes.

Just consider some recent headlines.

Dec. 19, 2013: 11 Killed in Peru Bus Crash.

Oct. 13, 2013: Bus Falls Off Cliff in Peru, Killing All 51 People On Board.

Oct. 7, 2013: Horror As Peru Bus Crash Kills 19, Including Two Children.

July 12, 2013: Fatal Bus Crash in Peru.

June 20, 2013: Bus Crash in Peru Leaves 30 Dead.

April 14, 2013: Peru Bus Crash Kills At Least 30.

The list goes on (and on), but you get the picture.

“Local and long-distance buses alike can be a risk to your personal safety, as fatal accidents are not unusual in Peru,” warns the Lonely Planet travel guide to the country.

According to a 2011 report in The Peruvian Times, automobile accidents in the Andean nation were occurring at a rate of about 200 a day between 2000 and 2010, causing 3,243 deaths in 2009 alone. (Nearly 50,000 people were injured during the same period.)

Not all of these accidents involved buses by any means, but it’s a fair bet that more than a few of them did.

Of course, fatal bus accidents tend to attract what may be disproportionate attention – at least compared to more frequent mishaps involving smaller vehicles – because the death tolls from bus crashes do tend to be high.

The good news, for some people, is that not all Peruvian bus lines were created equal. If you plan on traveling around the country by bus, stick to the high-end companies, said to include Cruz del Sur, Ormeño, and Oltursa, among several others. Their safety records are reported to be pretty good.

That is not much comfort to impoverished Peruvians who have little choice but to brave the cheap seats on older vehicles in dubious repair, piloted by inexperienced or reckless or possibly exhausted (inebriated?) drivers.

The Peruvian Ministry of Transport and Communications publishes a list of the 50 worst-offending inter-city bus lines in the country, although it is a little out of date. Based on the record from mid-2007 to mid-2008, however, you should absolutely avoid Tarapoto Tours S.A.C. (eight buses, five accidents, 49 killed, 22 injured), as well as Empresa de Transportes Flores Hermanos Ltda. (299 buses, 23 accidents, 16 dead, 155 injured), among many others.

Peru isn’t the only country in the world with unsafe buses, and it probably isn’t even the most dangerous. There are plenty of contenders, especially in the world’s more impoverished regions. A 2011 report by American broadcaster NBC – citing the World Health Organization – said that nine out of 10 road deaths occur in low- to middle-income countries.

An investigation conducted earlier this year by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting includes an inter-active map showing the annual road-related death rate per 100,000 population of most of the world’s countries. (Note: these figures are not just for fatal bus accidents, but for all deaths on the road.) According to these figures, Peru’s roads (with an annual death rate of 15.9 per 100,000 population) are not as dangerous as those of other poor countries in the Americas or elsewhere and are actually safer than other Andean countries such as Bolivia (19.2) or Ecuador (27).

So it’s probably unfair to gang up on Peru.

The real moral of this story probably applies more or less equally in just about any land (but perhaps especially in countries with lots of mountainous roads): When it comes to choosing which bus company to use, do some research – and don’t scrimp on the fare.

Oakland Ross is a foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star.

Comet ISON's last hurrah: shooting-stars in January, hopefully

Comet ISON before its demise. (NASA handout photo)

 

Astronomers are still digging through the data from Comet ISON's nail-biting and ultimately fatal solar journey in November. Because ISON fell apart, we Earthlings won't have the pleasure of watching it streak through the sky this month. 

 

But now Karl Battams, one of the astronomers tracking ISON and the man behind the twitter handle @SungrazerComets, says we may get a show out of ISON's demise after all: a shooting-star gallery in January, with any luck.

To briefly recap, ISON was a comet that originated in the Oort cloud, a deep-frozen part of the solar system, and was on track to orbit the sun. Astronomers had never witnessed that combination of factors before, which prompted a lot of excitement and guesses as to what ISON's fate would be. But ISON ultimately didn't survive grazing so close to the sun and broke up.

At its perihelion -- its closest approach to the sun -- ISON stopped emitting what's known as "Lyman-Alpha photons," Battams previously explained. The Alpha-Lyman photons are indications of sunlight reacting with hydrogen, in this case the ice. No photons = no ice = no nucleus, the icy head of the comet. ISON's nucleus appears to have been totally incinerated.

All that remains of ISON is a dusty trail. 

But in mid-January, there's a chance that Earth could pass through this dusty trail. The tiny, sand-grain-sized remnants of ISON will burn up in our atmosphere, causing shooting stars to appear. 

Any remaining larger chunks of the comet will continue along their original orbit, winging all the way out of the solar system. 

So take heart, sky watchers! ISON might give us a show after all, albeit less spectacular than hoped.

Battams also has reassurance for the apocalyptic wingnuts who seem to be a permanent fixture when space-object stories make the mainstream news:

"We are safe, I promise! I just paid all my bills for the month. Believe me, if I thought the apocalypse was around the corner, I'd be sitting somewhere hot and sandy with a beer in my hand right now instead of blogging and reaching for another mug of mediocre coffee!"

 

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

Hunger stalks Congo in war and peace

On the rocks: Neena holds her baby sister Amina outside their makeshift tent near a volcano in Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo:World Vision/ Paul Bettings

War or peace?

Democratic Republic of Congo's government has signed a peace deal with the M23 rebels who have been raping, pillaging and murdering their way across the mineral-rich eastern part of the country. since 1996.  But for the battered people who have survived years war,  hunger and deprivation are a daily battle.

And both are about to get worse.

"In the past six months, funding shortages have meant that the World Food Program has already had to halve the rations distributed to displaced people in the North Kivu province, at a time when the overall food security situation is deteriorating," said a bulletin from the UN agency earlier this month.

For thousands of "food insecure" -- read hungry -- school children the daily meal they can count on is no longer assured.  Some 180,000 malnourished children, pregnant women and nursing mothers across the country could also lose their vital rations, if international donors fail to stump up $75 million to bridge the gap from now to May 2014.

But with newer, urgent emergencies taking place in countries like Syria and the Philippines,  Congo's catastrophic struggle has fallen through the cracks of the world's aid efforts.

"Crops have been ravaged, homes burned and subsistance farmers don't have fertilizer," says Dave Toycen, head of World Vision Canada, who just returned from the strife-torn region. "The challenge is for people to find something they can work with. "

For women the plight is worsened by the danger of foraging for food for their families. "One woman was out collecting peanuts," said Toycen. "Two bandits followed her and raped her horribly. She was so ashamed she didn't tell her husband. When he found out he walked out and left her with four children."

In a particularly poignant case, a young girl called Neena and her baby sister Amini were sole survivors when a bombing raid destroyed her home and killed her family.  Carrying the child, she made her way to a refugee settlement where she lives in a makeshift tent pitched over rocky lava from a 2002 volcanic eruption. 

"She doesn't qualify for food distribution because she isn't with her family," said Toycen. "Neighbors do some scounging for her, and occasionally she goes into the national park, which is notorious for rape. At night she closes the tent flaps and piles up rocks to stop people from getting in. She's living in fear. "

World Vision and some other charities support displaced people in Congo:  "but we just don't have the resources to look after 50,000 people," Toycen says. Donations support basic medical and psychosocial care for wounded and traumatized people, and small grants to start up grassroots businesses. But even if the shaky peace holds, Congo's long journey to recovery is barely beginning.

"The encouraging thing is that word is getting out that women have rights, and boys have rights if they've been child soldiers," says Toycen. "Even among children there's a new realization of their rights.  It's a small first step.  After so many years of conflict we can be hopeful about the peace deal. But it's still hard to be optimistic."

Olivia Ward has covered politics, conflicts and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Improving child health in Malawi, one text message at a time

A girl is weighed at the Makhwira Health Centre in southern Malawi, where a growth monitoring clinic is screening children for malnutrition using a new text messaging system. Jennifer Yang/Toronto Star

Last week, I stood beneath the shade of a giant mango tree and met perhaps the most miserable little girl in all of Malawi.

Just moments ago, she had been happily strapped to her mother's back, held snugly in place with a patterned mint-green cloth known as a chitenge. But now, the chitenge is knotted to a weighing scale and hanging from a thick tree branch – and the little girl is still wrapped inside, suspended hammock-style and screaming bloody murder.

As she twists and squirms, her tiny legs scissoring frantically in the air, a man calmly holds her in place and leans in to peer at the scale. After he notes her weight, the little girl is taken down but her ordeal is not quite over yet – next, she is laid on a wooden measuring board and her upper arm is wrapped in measuring tape.

When all of this is over, the little girl's job here is finally done. But her measurements – weight, height, arm circumference – will travel more than 250 kilometres north to the capital city, Lilongwe, where a computer software program will analyze the data, assess the girl for malnutrition, and send back any necessary treatment instructions.

This process used to take months. But nowadays, it only takes minutes, thanks to a cheap, basic and increasingly accessible technology: text messaging.

In Malawi, malnutrition is a massive and widespread issue. An estimated 10.6 per cent of Malawian children die before their fifth birthdays and at least a third of these fatalities are caused by acute malnutrition. Seventeen per cent of all under-five children in Malawi are underweight and a staggering 47 per cent are stunted, meaning they have a low height for their age. 

Stunting is caused by chronic undernutrition and its effects are sometimes fatal. Children who are severely stunted are more vulnerable to disease and four times more likely to die.

But stunting also has long-term consequences. It impairs cognitive development and cripples a child's capacity to learn, thus trapping him or her in a cycle of poverty. According to estimates by the World Bank, countries with high levels of undernutrition suffer GDP losses of between two and three percent every year. The World Bank has also said that in Malawi – currently ranked 170 out of 186 on the Human Development Index – more than $600 million U.S. in GDP is lost every year thanks to vitamin and mineral deficiences. 

A child is measured at the Makhwira Health Centre in southern Malawi, where a growth monitoring clinic is screening children for malnutrition using a new text messaging system. Jennifer Yang/Toronto Star

A major challenge when it comes to stunting, however, is that it is largely irreversible. It also tends to set in before the age of two.

This makes it crucial to identify and treat malnutrition as early as possible – which brings us back to the disgruntled little girl dangling from the mango tree in Chikwawa, a district of more than 500,000 people in Malawi's southern region.

This tree grows just outside the Makhwira Health Centre, which I visited last week as a press fellow with the United Nations Foundation.

It serves as the site of an ongonig growth monitoring clinic and every week, mothers bring their children here from all over Chikwawa, some trekking for hours with their babies strapped to their backs (roughly 80 per cent of Malawians live in rural, often-remote areas). On the Friday that I visited, a line of more than 50 mothers snaked up to this mango tree, the air filled with the screams and cries of babies.

In the past, measurements were recorded on paper and shipped off to Lilongwe, where the information would be manually entered into a database. Needless to say, this was a time-consuming process, with data entry and analysis taking anywhere between two months to a year – precious time lost for the malnourished child in need of treatment.

The paper-based system was also prone to mistakes. According to a UNICEF report, an average of 14.2 per cent of all data collected was unusable in 2007 due to data entry errors or illegible handwriting.

So in 2009, UNICEF teamed up with the Malawian government and graduate students from Columbia University to develop a new system using text messages and an open-source software platform called RapidSMS.

Here is how RapidSMS works: after a child is weighed and measured, a health surveillance assistant – typically a high school graduate who has received two hours of RapidSMS training – texts the information to a central server in the capital Lilongwe, where the software program automatically analyzes the data for signs of malnutrition. A reply is then texted back to the health assistant, along with a diagnosis and any necessary treatment instructions.

Any data entry mistakes are caught by the software program, which can detect them and message the health worker to re-send the info. The data also gets updated in real time on a website, which automatically flags cases of severe malnutrition.

A pilot study of RapidSMS was a resounding success and the award-winning system is now being rolled out across Malawi, including in Chikwawa, which launched the new SMS system in September 2012. (You can read UNICEF's final report of the pilot program here).

A new text messaging system is being used at the Makhwira Health Centre in southern Malawi, where a growth monitoring clinic is screening children for malnutrition. Jennifer Yang/Toronto Star

Last Friday, I watch as a health worker named Stephane January types the following message into his weathered Nokia cellphone:

GM 1177 031211 m 9.6 83.0 n 12.1

January explains that the "GM" stands for "growth monitoring" and the "1177" is a code identifying the child. The next six digits are the date of birth – December 3, 2011 – followed by the sex (male).

The remaining characters paint a picture of how this two-year-old is developing; he is 9.6 pounds, 83 centimetres tall and a mid-upper arm circumference of 12.1 centimetres. The "n" also indicates "no" for oedema, which is a symptom of severe acute malnutrition.

According to UNICEF nutrition officer Benson Kazembe, this child's measurements indicate he is "mild to moderate malnourished" and may even be "moderately acute malnourished" judging from his arm circumference. He is eligible for treatment and has likely now been admitted to a feeding program, where he will receive a corn-soy blend and nutrition counselling. 

The above information is what should have been texted back to January after he hit "send" on his cellphone. But on this particular Friday, there is a problem.

"The network," he says, laughing sheepishly as he stood up and waved his cellphone around, trying to capture a signal. "I'll just try and send it again."

This is a common issue, January admits, and likely the biggest hiccup in Malawi's RapidSMS program so far. Kazembe says the RapidSMS servers are currently being hosted by UNICEF but there are now plans to move to a server hosted by the Malawian Ministry of Health, which should hopefully improve connectivity.

But server issues aside, the program has been a huge success and is only growing in size. Kazembe said 4,619 Malawian children are now registered and in Chikwawa alone, RapidSMS is being used at 21 health facilities.

"Now we are able to track – to monitor – every child," said John Mugawa, the district nutrition coordinator for Chikwawa. "This technology has really helped us."

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

Grand River has highest levels of artificial sweeteners on record

A file photo of soda cans. 

The Grand River dumps about 81,850 to 188,650 cans of soda pop into Lake Erie every single day.

Okay, not literally but that’s roughly the equivalent of artificial sweeteners that the Grand empties into the lake. Researchers with Environment Canada and the University of Waterloo discovered record levels of acesulfame, sucralose, saccharin and cyclamate — artificial sweeteners found in diet pop and toothpaste — in the Grand River. They found “the highest reported concentrations of these compounds in surface waters to date anywhere.”

These compounds do not degrade easily: they exit the human body intact, pass through wastewater treatment plants and are discharged to the local watershed.

John Spoelstra, an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo as well as a researcher with Environment Canada, called it a good news story because they serve as ideal tracers of human wastewater.

The sweeteners could be quite useful for researchers who want to trace where waste water ends up. They could be really useful in tracing waste water that seeps into groundwater via septic systems, Spoelstra said.

“We now have the technology to detect waste water in the groundwater,” he said. “It will help learn about effluents.”

Another advantage of sweeteners is that they can be used to distinguish human from agricultural waste in surface and groundwater systems, thus allowing regulators to pinpoint the sources of pollution.

Spoelstra and his researchers analyzed water samples from 23 sites along the river and from municipal household taps from Brantford, Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo.

The sweeteners are not considered toxic but there is very little research on what sort of impact they might have on fish, plants and other wildlife in the river, said Spoelstra.

It is an obvious area for future research.

Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star’s environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh

A chance encounter? Or something more?

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro greet one another at this week's memorial for Nelson Mandela.

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparently cordial handshake with his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro during a memorial service this week for Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Was it planned? Was it deliberate? Was it merely common courtesy? Was it a gross affront to Castro’s adversaries in Florida? Or was it a sign, at long last, of an improvement in what must be among the world’s most weirdly dysfunctional relationships between neighbouring states?

A report in The New York Times stated pretty confidently that the encounter between the two men must have been anticipated by presidential aides on the American side who – the Times declared – “would have known in advance which world leaders would be at the podium when the president approached for his own remarks.”

Well, maybe.

It’s a fair bet that Obama’s organizers did not know in advance the identity of that very odd guy – named Thamsanqa Jantjie, it would turn out – who completely mishandled the signing translation for the deaf during the American leader’s eulogy, just as he botched the addresses delivered by a succession of other speakers.

Jantjie would later admit to seeing angels during the memorial and to having cognitive or behavioural problems that apparently have led to violence in the past.

If an individual of that unsettling description nonetheless managed to escape the attention of U.S. presidential security, then who knows whose hand Obama thought he was shaking when he greeted Fidel Castro’s slightly younger brother? Raúl might have been just about anybody, and so the gesture might very well have been meaningless.

Or maybe not.

More than 50 years have churned past since Fidel, Raúl, and Ché Guevara marched triumphantly into Havana after defeating the armed forces of Fulgencio Batista. Relations with Washington turned poisonous before long and have remained that way ever since.

But (a) the Cold War is over; (b) economic and social reforms in Cuba are finally gaining traction, albeit not fast enough for some; and (c) the Cuban exile community in southern Florida no longer collapses in collective and unanimous apoplexy at the merest suggestion of progress in relations between the two sides.

Except for an awkward problem with prisoners – the Cubans are holding an American named Alan Gross, while the Americans are detaining four Cubans – there is no longer a readily defensible reason for anyone on either side to oppose improved ties.

That doesn’t mean improved ties are imminent. Havana and Washington have demonstrated many times since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 that they are both highly adept at the art of missing opportunities.

In his salute to Nelson Mandela, however, Obama seemed to be saying that the future needn’t be a slave to the past – and that handshakes can have meaning.

“South Africa shows we can change,” he said. “We can choose to live in a world defined not by our differences but by our common hopes. We can choose a world defined not by conflict but by peace and justice and opportunity.”

Barack Obama, meet Raúl Castro.

Oakland Ross is a foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star.

 

 

Will microchips in Kenyan rhinos save them from poachers?

Officers of Kenya Wildlife Services attend to a sedated black rhino at the Nairobi national park during an excercise to implant microchips in an effort to stem poaching of the endangered mammal. (AFP photo)

It’s the last resort to save rhinos.

The Kenya Wildlife Service began implanting microchips in every rhino at its Masai Mara Games Reserve in an extensive process that will include sedating hundreds of animals there.

The microchip is less than two inches long and can barely be traced by poachers. The process will take up to four months and will strengthen rhino monitoring and anti-poaching activities in the country.

When it’s done, it will allow for the successful traceability of every live animal within Kenya and all rhino horns in the stockpiles. “The forensic DNA technology will greatly improve the ability of prosecutors to bring to court a case of not only possession of a wildlife trophy, but will also be used to trace back the horn to a poaching incident, thus providing greater evidence hence more punitive penalties,” Isaac Lekolool, a veterinary surgeon with the KWS, said in a statement.

Investigators will then be able to link any poached case to a recovered horn and it will serve as crucial evidence in court.

Kenya has over 630 black rhinos and a total of 1,030 rhinos.

It’s another step to combat killing of rhinos for their horns even as poachers are using sophisticated technology to decimate rhino population.

Rhino horns are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in South-East Asian countries like Vietnam. Though the weight of rhino horns varies, an individual horn can fetch up to $350,000 and a kilogram of the horn sells for as much as $65,000.

In Vietnam, it is believed that the rhino horn has miraculous healing properties, including a cure for cancer.

In just South Africa, over 800 rhinos have already been killed this year — last year, 668 were killed while only 13 were poached in 2007.

Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star’s environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh