giraffe in kruger national park by arno and louise from fotopediaPenguin chicks perish in the cold

Frigid weather and strong winds have taken their toll on African penguins on islands offshore of Port Elizabeth.

Nearly 500 chicks living on Bird Island died over a 24-hour period early this week, more than half the island's juvenile population.

More died on St Croix Island, home to the largest breeding colony in South Africa, but because of heavy seas, SA National Parks officials have not been able to count the dead birds.

Spokesperson Megan Taplin said the deaths were concerning because the penguin population in South Africa was already in decline.

She said it was normal for about a third of the chicks to die with the first cold weather every winter, but this time a lot more had died.

Penguin mortalities were not abnormally severe at colonies closer to Cape Town, Venessa Strauss of the seabird rehabilitation centre Sanccob said.

Animals thriving in Kruger Park

Good annual rains over the past 15 years in the Kruger National Park have caused game populations to surge, says Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.

In written reply to a parliamentary question, tabled on Tuesday, she said not a single large mammal species in the park was currently under threat.

According to a table attached to her reply, numbers of the so-called big five - with the exception of leopards and lions - were increasing at rates of between 4 percent and 7 percent a year.

Black rhinoceroses in the Kruger Park are now estimated to number between 590 and 670; their numbers are estimated to be increasing by about 7 percent a year.

The park's buffalo population has grown from 22 260 in 2000 to 37 500 this year; the big African bovids are increasing at a rate of 5 percent a year.

Elephant numbers are up from 8 350 in 2000 to an estimated 13 700 this year; their population has been increasing at a rate of 4 percent a year since 2004.

The lion population is estimated at between 1 620 and 1 750. According to the table this was "most likely stable". More

Our oceans are choking on carbon dioxide

Sydney - The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says.

The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods.

"It's as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day," said the report's lead author, Australian marine scientist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.

The Australia-US report published in Science magazine on Friday, studied 10 years of marine research and found that climate change was causing major declines in marine ecosystems.

Oceans were rapidly warming and acidifying, water circulation was being altered and dead zones within the ocean depths were expanding, said the report.

There has also been a decline in major ocean ecosystems like kelp forests and coral reefs and the marine food chain was breaking down, with fewer and smaller fish and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms.

"If we continue down this pathway we get into conditions which have no analogue to anything we've experienced," said Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. More

Oil Spill costs reach 2 billion says BP

BP PLC said Monday that its partners in the leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well must share responsibility for the costs in dealing with the disaster, on which BP said it has now spent $2-billion (about R15.1-billion).

BP hit back at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, which has a 25 percent stake in the gushing well, following Anadarko's statement on Friday accusing BP of gross negligence in operating the drilling rig.

BP shares were down 4 percent in early trading in London at 343.4 pence ($5.12).

Anadarko said the joint operating agreement makes BP responsible to co-owners for any damage due to gross negligence or willful misconduct.

In a statement on Monday to the London Stock Exchange, BP countered that all the partners shared in liability for damage resulting from exploration in Mississippi Canyon Block 252.

"All the co-owners of the leasehold interest previously entered into a written operating agreement under which ... the parties would share the costs of operations, including the cost to clean up any spill resulting from drilling the MC252 exploratory well, according to their respective ownership interests," BP said.

It added that the co-owners had confirmed to the US federal government that they would be liable for oil spill cleanup costs. More

Proposed whale kill quotas too high say experts

The International Whaling Commission starts a key meeting Monday to debate catch quotas which could replace a moratorium on hunting though a key scientific committee will say the catch limits are too high, sources said.

The 88-nation body will debate the proposal, put forward by the IWC's chairperson in an attempt to break a 24-year deadlock that has nearly wrecked the global whaling regime.

Despite a 1986 moratorium on the commercial hunting of whales, Japan, Norway and Iceland have flouted the ban and still kill the animals, more than 1 500 in the 2008-2009 season alone.

The draft deal tables reduced annual catch numbers through 2020 for four species of whale as a baseline for negotiations, in the hope of coaxing the renegades back into the IWC fold.

Under the scheme, total allowable kills in each of the first five years would be just over 90 percent of the 2008-2009 figure, dropping further from 2015 to 2020.

The IWC's own scientific committee is set to say that these numbers are not sustainable, committee members said.

Using a formula based on estimates of population levels, scientists calculated that the proposed catches were far too high for the North Pacific Bryde's whales, and double tolerable limits for North Atlantic fin whales and eastern North Atlantic minke whales.

Only for the central North Atlantic minke whales were the tabled suggestions well under conservation-safe limits, they found.

"Science has been sidelined during the negotiations," said Scott Baker, a marine biologist at Oregon State University and a committee member since 1994. More

China devastated by floods

Huge floods in southern China have killed at least 132 people and displaced 800,000, the government said today as the annual storm season picked up ferocity.

Local media showed images of people abandoning their homes in rubber dinghies in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, one of the worst-hit areas.

Many carried bundles of possessions salvaged from the waters that turned the streets into rivers.

More than 10 million people have lost property, been injured or suffered a cut in power or water supplies as a result of the week of torrential rain across Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Sichuan.

Many of these areas have gone from one extreme to another, according to the government. Earlier this year, south-east China endured its worst drought in living memory, but in the past week, some places have been inundated with three times the average rain for this period.

With thousands of houses destroyed and businesses and power lines put out of action in Guangdong and Fujian – the industrial hubs on the coast – the ministry of water resources estimated the economic damage at 14bn yuan (£400m).

The deaths occurred when people were washed into fast-flowing rivers that burst their banks, or when mudslides buried homes. As well as the confirmed dead, another 86 people were missing.

The emergency services have upgraded their threat assessment as the National Meteorological Centre warned of more downpours in the days ahead. "The scope and intensity of the rain have increased," it said on its website. Some areas are forecast to receive 200mm (nearly 8in) of rain.More

Siberian tiger threatened by mystery disease

A mystery disease is driving the Siberian tiger to the edge of extinction and has led to the last animal tagged by conservationists being shot dead in the far east of Russia because of the danger it posed to people.

The 10-year-old tigress, known to researchers as Galya, is the fourth animal that has had a radio collar attached to it for tracking to die in the past 10 months. All had been in contact with a male tiger suspected of carrying an unidentified disease that impaired the ability to hunt. "We may be witnessing an epidemic in the Amur tiger population," said Dr Dale Miquelle, the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Russia director.

Galya had recently abandoned a three-week-old litter of cubs and come into the town of Terney looking for an easy meal. Following a series of all-night vigils by researchers, attempts to scare the tigress away failed. She was reported to the Primorsky State Wildlife Department as an official "conflict tiger", and a state wildlife inspector was called in to destroy her earlier this month.

"This tiger had lost its fear of humans – typically Amur tigers will never expose themselves for observation. It was like seeing someone you know turn into a vampire," Miquelle said.

Scientists are attempting to understand what compromised the tigress's ability to capture wild prey, which she had lived upon almost exclusively since birth. Her cubs, which were subsequently found dead at the den, are likely to have had their mother's disease transmitted to them through the placenta.

"Initial necropsy results show an empty digestive tract, which is highly unusual. We're still waiting for results of further tests, but the abnormal behaviour suggests disease, possibly neurological," said Miquelle. "We are extremely concerned about the possibility of an epidemic that could be sweeping through this region. Animals we have studied extensively, and known well, have demonstrated radically changed behaviour, which is extremely disconcerting."More