Poisonous rats

predatory birds and mammals are being poisoned after eating rats which have high levels of pesticides in their bodies. The proportion of barn owls found with anticoagulant rodenticides in their livers increased from 5 per cent in 1983-84 to 36 per cent in 1995-96. This was stated in a study done by Ian Newton and his colleagues at the Institute of Terres-trial Ecology ( ite ) in Monks Wood, Huntingdon, uk.

PRESERVE WATER BODIES

The forests and the environment minister of Bangladesh Sajeda Chowdhury, has urged the country's Jahangirnagar University authorities not to lease out its water bodies as it will disturb the habitat of migratory birds. Every year thousands of birds from Siberia and other parts of the world throng the varsity sanctuaries. The chief conservator of forests, Golam Habib announced that his department would supply saplings to varsity authorities free of cost to implement afforestation programme.

Controlled sleeping

BIRDS can sleep with one eye open and half of their brains awake. It is called Unithemispheric Slowave Sleep (usws). It allows birds to detect approaching predators while still getting a bit of sleep. "They are able to make behavioural decisions about whether to keep one half of the brain awake or allow both halves to sleep," said Niles Rattenborg, a neurophysiologist at

Poaching in Chilika

Chilka lake in Orissa has become a poacher's delight. The railway station in the sleepy town of Bhusandpur, the gateway to the lake, has become a thriving market for birds caught in and around the lake. Rafi, one of the traders who has been in business for several years, says, "On an average I get five birds a day. The catch goes up in winters when lakhs of birds throng Chilka from far

Pushed into oblivion

This time, there are no excuses. It was not climate change, not a meteor and not global warming. Humans, and not any other agent, may have pushed Genyornis , an ostrich-sized Australian bird, into extinction some 50,000 years ago, recent research has revealed. More than 40 of Australia's animals disappeared around the same time, say Now Gifford Miller and his team from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. Miller and his team have dated thousand of eggshell fragments from the extinct bird. "Eggshells are vastly superior medium for dating," he says.

Scared birds

A verstile digital scarecrow promises to put a virtual cat among the pigeons. Birds soon get used to conventional scarecrows, and though simulated gunshots are effective, they are too loud. Now Bramley and Wellesley, a company based in Gloucester, UK, and Phoenix Agritech of Canada are all set to patent their invention: a solid-state digital recorder that stores birds' distress calls, predators' cries and the flapping of frightened birds taking flight. An amplifier linked to weatherproof loudspeakers intermittently generates the sounds.

Trees fight back

DUTCH elm disease (DED), a dreaded fungal disease that afflicts elm trees, has had a ghastly record. Spread by bark beetles, DED has wiped out tens of millions of trees around the world. It first appeared in the Netherlands in 1917, from where DED reached the UK through infected elm logs in 1927. US contracted the disease in the 1930s and since then, DED has claimed some 43 million trees in the US alone. The disease, however, is

Falling eagles

Environmentalists in Japan have found high levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Dichloro dimethyl-trichloro ethane (DDT), in dead Golden Eagle chicks and unhatched eggs around the country. Experts say that further tests are needed to find out if these chemicals are responsible for the plummeting breeding rates of the eagle over the past ten years. Some researchers say that recent findings suggest that adult birds, which ingest the chemicals, are passing the compounds on to their offspring.

Poison in plenty

A survey conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, in December 1998 confirms the presence of high levels of pesticides such as HCH and DDT in cattle and pig carcasses collected from areas surrounding the Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur : Vulture cuisine). Eight samples were collected, of which three were from Saidpur and Dharapur villages, close to Bharatpur. The other samples were collected from Azadpur, Nangloi, Alipur and Najafgarh areas in Delhi and from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.

The Silent killer

T he pesticide threat first emerged in the West, the us in particular. In the early 1930s, the Dutch elm disease spread across the us. A fungus disease spread by beetles, it proved fatal to trees, blocking their water-conducting vessels. In 1954, us farmers began spraying ddt to kill the beetles in a bid to curb the disease.