Back from the brink

 Have the bison, bears and rare birds of Europe won the lottery? The EU is pouring over €700 million into saving the continent’s most threatened wildlife and vulnerable habitats. Over the next five years, the LIFE + Nature and Biodiversity fund will protect habitats from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, offering a lifeline to charismatic species such as lynxes and vultures.

The Yangtze and the Ganges may look never-ending, but they’ve been added to a list of ten world-famous rivers at risk of drying up. Climate change, pollution and bad planning are to blame, says WWF. Other rivers on the danger list include the Danube, Nile and Rio Grande.

Remember those graphic photos of fishing boats stranded in a desert that used to be sea? The Aral Sea shrank by two-thirds after Soviet-era schemes diverted rivers to irrigate cotton fields. Long written off as a terminal case, it was expected to dry up completely by 2020. But now the northern remnant is edging back to health, as a dam helps replenish its waters. Kazakhstan has just secured World Bank funding to build a second dam. But on the Uzbek southern side of the sea the lake continues to recede…

Sounds great when yet another species is removed from the federal Endangered Species List in the US, doesn’t it? The gray wolf has been de-listed in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana - meaning that the state authorities, rather than Washington, are now entrusted with wolf management. But Idaho’s governor is keen to shoot more than 80% of the state’s wolves to protect the elk - essential to the multi-million dollar hunting industry there. And Wyoming is planning to eradicate two-thirds of wolf packs in the name of livestock safety. De-listing could turn out to be a real howler…

30 April 2007