Tuesday, October 23, 2012

This Is Tomorrow's Story (talking-points-memo)

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Protesters denounce oil pipeline plans

Sitting on the steps of the legislature, away from the thick of the protest, Samantha Sansregret surveyed the crowd gathered Monday to protest the threat of tar sands, oil tankers and oil pipelines.

?I think we should be good ancestors and think about future generations,? said the soft-spoken Metis woman who lives in Victoria, her drum in hand. ?Spills are inevitable.?

Sansregret was one of an estimated 3,000 people who travelled to the B.C. legislature to participate in the Defend Our Coast protest, led by a coalition of First Nations groups, unions and environmental organizations.

Some watched quietly, while others cheered and chanted, and waved placards while wearing elaborate costumes.

With the help of three friends, Leona Marchand navigated the crowd as the body of an enormous blue puppet representing Mother Earth.

?I made the dress last night,? Marchand said, barely visible through the blue polyester costume. ?I?m here to represent the earth and how important she is to all of us.?

Among the last to speak, Green Party leader and Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

?Today the Fraser Institute issued a report saying we need to drill for oil and gas,? she said. ?They?re addicted to fossil fuels. ? When you have a friend with an addiction, you need an intervention and we are the intervention!?

In what was billed as a massive act of civil disobedience, more than 200 people helped to unfold a giant, black fabric banner and staked it into the legislature lawn. Stretching 235 metres, it equalled the length of a super tanker.

Marcus Waddington, a retired teacher, was third in line to lead the march.

?We?re prepared to go to jail,? he said, echoing the sentiments of many protesters. It was thought that staking the banner into the ground could incite police to start arresting protesters, however members from the Victoria Police Department simply watched the event from a distance.

The police will only get involved if people hurt others or vandalize property, said one officer.

?We?re not here to cause a riot,? added another.

While the conclusion to Monday?s protest may have been anti-climatic for many who prepared for arrest, the protest continues across the province Wednesday (Oct. 24).

MLA Ida Chong?s constituency office will be the site of one such protest, intended to drive home opposition to the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipeline proposals.

Celine Trojand, spokesperson for the Defend Our Coast coalition, said protesters will link arms in front of Chong?s office to show an ?unbroken wall of opposition? to Enbridge. ?She?s the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and this is important to them (First Nations people),? Trojand said.

Similar demonstrations will take place at MLA offices across the province.

Organizers want today?s protest to draw attention to Chong?s role and responsibilities regarding aboriginal affairs.

?It?s a swing riding that was won by a very narrow margin,?? Trojand said. ?The way she handles this issue will make a difference in the next election.?

Chong says she and her government share the group?s concern. ?They?re saying what we?re saying. It?s a matter of risk/benefit and right now there?s nothing but risk.?

In July, the B.C. government outlined its position on the pipeline proposals by listing five points that needed resolution before the projects could proceed, including that aboriginal and treaty rights be addressed.

?There are some 20 B.C. First Nations groups at the (federal joint review panel) hearings. Not one of them supports the project. That tells us something,? Chong said. ?If there is no support that develops from First Nations, I would have to go to the Premier and say ?we haven?t met that point and can?t proceed.??

? with files from Tim Collins

rholmen@vicnews.com

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Source: http://www.saanichnews.com/news/175322891.html

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Monday, October 22, 2012

Healthy Mind: How To Stay Motivated On Your Fitness Plan | Beijing ...

In physics, inertia is defined as the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force. I believe this description is applicable to one?s mental state as well, especially when it comes to getting fit.


This time last year in 2011 I was fairly overweight, exercising occasionally and not thinking about my food intake. Just when I thought I had done enough, I had coffee with World Health Store Founder Drew Campbell who encouraged me to go the distance again and try to not only lose weight but bulk up a bit. I was bitten by the health bug and couldn?t resist the challenge.

At the time of writing this piece, I have reached the nine-week mark of the World Health Store 12-Week Challenge, and lost about 12 kg while reducing my body fat by about 6-8 percent. Over the next three weeks I will make a final push to really shed as much weight as possible.

But the challenge doesn?t stop there. I?ve known people who went on temporary health binges only to gain the weight back by reverting to their old habits of indulgence. While a fitness challenge is a great starting point, it is only a starting point. The real challenge lies in maintaining that healthy mental momentum and resisting the temptation to return to a couch potato lifestyle.

Certainly I have been faced with temptation plenty of times. I would wake up thinking ?Maybe I can skip the workout today? or ?I?ll have some oily gaifan and make up for it later.? Committing to my program has produced results. I feel much more alert at work thanks to morning exercises. I used to dread having to spend so much time cooking my lunches in batches, but I?ve now gotten used to it, and I?ve even developed some interesting, healthy recipes to spice things up.

I?m glad that my mental inertia continues to be a healthy one. My body acts differently now than before, such as feeling un-energetic on days I don?t exercise, or my skin feeling very refreshed when I eat more fresh fruits and veggies.

It?s been great so far, but it never stops. I?m going to continue to seek out different exercise programs and new food ideas and recipes. If you?re reading this and you?re a contestant, I hope you surpass your goals and continue to improve your health long after the challenge is over. For everyone else thinking about improving themselves, stop thinking. Just do it! I know, I?m ripping off Nike?s slogan. But you have to admit they?re on to something.


Check out these other articles for fitness motivation:
Kicking Off the 12-Week Challenge
Getting Back on the Fitness Train
The Challenges of Healthy Eating
Eating Right: Healthy Cooking for Life

Source: http://blog.expatriateinchina.com/healthy-mind-how-to-stay-motivated-on-your-fitness-plan.html

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Default Tricks ? Tips On How To Improve Your Home

Given the unstable condition of the real estate marketplace, creating home improvements symbolizes a fantastic option for many home owners. Here are some ideas that you might like to employ in relation to beginning a significant remodeling project. The better you already know, the higher the decisions you can make.

When planning for a landscaping design undertaking, you must consider the fashion of your residence into mind. When you put in a garden or patio area it will appear like the rest of your house, it will be greater to look at rather than be described as a conflicting style.

Take into consideration the installation of a shower room if your residence doesn?t have 1. This can lessen exactly how much drinking water you employ, especially if there are children in your household, and baths will be more reachable than bathtubs. A shower room that takes five minutes will use only one-fourth the liquid of any complete tub.

One simple redecorating which is usually forgotten is gutter and chimney routine maintenance. It is essential to inspect these things frequently to see if you have to make maintenance. Chimneys are more prone to fires while they are not cleaned out at regular intervals. Furthermore, dirt usually clogs gutters and downspouts, and that may cause water damage and mold should it be not looked after routinely.

To present your washrooms a deal with-elevate, try out re-glazing all of the earthenware surfaces. Having the glazing redone will make a big difference on earth towards the way a restroom seems and seems. If you devote a whole new surface with your bathroom it costs you more than you feel, new glaze is incredibly cheap. Glazing your bath room is actually a terrific strategy to increase the price of your house without spending a lot of money.

Artwork your walls may give a quick and rejuvenating change to an area without having to spend too much money! Take a look at a neighborhood home improvement store to take into consideration your different alternatives for painting. Look for interesting kinds and acquire them! In the event that you aren?t thrilled from it, you can just fresh paint more than it.

You must do investigation and discover just how much your resources will surely cost before you start. Property owners can know wonderful savings by purchasing materials in big amounts. Very long lead occasions are frequently involved when purchasing certain supplies and devices are involved. Your whole undertaking can be delayed by not purchasing them in advance.

Weigh up the options meticulously when you?re supplying your bed room, and present due considered to freestanding home furniture. Household furniture that may be that are part of your bedroom certainly will save space and offers an attractive image, but as it pertains a chance to move, it is difficult for taking individuals pieces of furniture along. Free standing items can even be devote distinct bedrooms, or offered if you want a fresh look.

When pre-organizing any project, outline an area your location comfy to position the ensuing particles. Demolition will make a big mess that you must place a place. By organising a location to placed this dirt, you won?t find yourself with piles getting in the right path.

A variety of anchoring screws are used in different home remodeling projects. Know which screws you need to use for what ever home improvement tasks you could have. Timber screws are ideal for timber projects, given that they proceed through timber easily. When working with sheet metallic, you can find particular screws offered also.

Create your budget as thorough and accurate as is possible. It might be pricey once you have costs that you just failed to think of ahead of time. The wrong product can be bought and will have to be changed or purchase items may not be readily available. So, help make your spending budget a little bit larger than your genuine charge projection to be able to cover any of the unforeseen transactions that will likely come about.

When employing installers to do any work in your house, always maintain precise and comprehensive information. Never ever depend upon your contractor to do so. Keep a folder with all of commitments and receipts highly relevant to the venture you are carrying out. This allows the contractor to focus on finishing the job.

By making use of the following tips, you will certainly be prepared for each and every project you are taking on. Also, this data could be beneficial in helping you decide if a specific task is in your scope of potential or if you need to retain the services of guidance.

If for any reason you crave further details on http://www.orlandoroofcleaning.net read Cecilia B. Godbold?s site there is loads of details not detailed in this post, take a look at Author?s site to discover more.

Source: http://www.defaulttricks.com/tips-on-how-to-improve-your-home/

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Sunday, October 21, 2012

The Second Billion Smartphone Users

Burmese_daysI speak with little fear of contradiction when I tell you this is the first TechCrunch article posted from Myanmar aka Burma. Only a few years ago the Internet here was both tightly censored and insanely slow. But now that this country is "on the path to democracy," according to Daw Aung Sun Suu Kyi herself, Free Wi-Fi signs are widespread, and its Internet is freewheeling and ... merely incredibly slow. So slow that it often reminds me of the 2400 baud modems of yore. Progress!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/pFEDrmmHuiA/

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'War on coal' label obscures battlefield realities

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) ? Drive through the coalfields of Central Appalachia, and signs of the siege are everywhere.

Highway billboards announce entry to "Obama's No Job Zone," while decals on pickup truck windows show a spikey-haired boy peeing on the president's name.

"Stop the War on Coal," yard signs demand. "Fire Obama."

Only a few generations ago, coal miners were literally at war with their employers, spilling and shedding blood on West Virginia's Blair Mountain in a historic battle for union representation and fair treatment.

Today, their descendants are allies in a carefully choreographed rhetorical war playing out across eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and all of West Virginia. It's fueled by a single, unrelenting message that they now face a common enemy ? the federal government ? that has decided that coal is no longer king, or even noble.

Blame the president, the script goes. Blame the Environmental Protection Agency. And now that it's election season, blame all incumbent politicians ? even those who have spent their careers in a delicate dance, trying to make mines safer while allowing their operators to prosper.

The war on coal is a sound bite and a headline, perpetuated by pundits, power companies and public relations consultants who have crafted a neat label for a complex set of realities, one that compels people to choose sides.

It's easier to call the geologic, market and environmental forces reshaping coal ? cheap natural gas, harder-to-mine coal seams, slowing economies ? some kind of political or cultural "war" than to acknowledge the world is changing, and leaving some people behind.

War, after all, demands victims. And in this case, it seems, victims demand a war.

___

Coal helped build America. It powered steam engines on railroads that opened up the West. It fueled homes and factories. It made a lot of people rich and others comfortable. By the early 1900s, more than 700,000 men and boys worked in the nation's mines, many for coal barons offering opportunity and brutality in equal measure.

The miners who resisted exploitation helped shape the principles of modern labor law: Pay by the hour. A week that lasts five days, not seven. Black men and white men paid the same.

Small towns sprang up along railroads and rivers that shipped the coal out. Miners were proud of their work, and still are. Today, though, fewer than 100,000 remain. Machines replaced many, while other jobs vanished as the fat, easily mined seams played out.

To hear industry tell it, those who remain are an endangered species in the crosshairs of overzealous environmental regulators directly responsible for wiping out thousands of jobs.

But in war, casualties are often inflated. The numbers are eye-catching, but details are lost. Too often, the narrative overlooks the fact that when layoffs occur, many workers transfer to other locations. One mine closes, another absorbs.

In reality, U.S. Department of Labor figures show the number of coal jobs nationwide has grown steadily since 2008, with consistent gains in West Virginia and Virginia, and ups and down in Kentucky.

There have been layoffs, to be sure.

Between January and June, coal companies in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky cut a combined 3,000 jobs. But mines in the Virginias still employed more people at the end of June than at the same points in 2008 and 2010, while Kentucky was only down by 1,000.

That coal faces challenges is a fact. It always has. During warm winters like the last one, for example, demand falls and stockpiles grow.

But what's happening now is more than a seasonal slump or even a response to new regulations.

It's a fundamental shift, and it's likely permanent, as even coal executives say. When St. Louis-based Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy in July, it didn't mention a war. It said the industry is going through "a major correction," a convergence of "new realities in the market."

Environmental standards are growing tougher as Americans outside coal country demand clean air and water. Old, inefficient, coal-fired power plants are going offline or converting to natural gas, cutting into a traditional customer base. And that gas poses fierce, sustainable competition, thanks to advanced drilling technologies that make vast reserves more accessible than ever.

Even if the reviled regulations fell away, many experts say, coal's peak has passed.

Thin Appalachian seams won't magically thicken and become easier or cheaper to mine, as the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy notes. Production in the East has been already falling for more than a decade, first surpassed by Western states like Wyoming in 1998.

Now, even those states are struggling as domestic demand dwindles. U.S. coal production plummeted 9.4 percent between the first and second quarters of 2012.

By the end of the year, coal is expected to account for less than 40 percent of all U.S. electricity production, the lowest level since the government began collecting data in 1949. By the end of the decade, it may be closer to 30 percent.

Operators are adjusting to survive.

___

On a single day in September, Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources closed eight mines in four states, announcing that by early next year, some 1,200 jobs nationwide will be gone.

"That's 1,200 people not going to the grocery store," says Tracy Miller, a miner's wife in Keokee, Va.

Not going to Wal-Mart. Buying less gas. Postponing home improvements. Forgoing little luxuries like a dinner out.

Most of the first 400 cut were lucky; all but about 130 got transfers. Driving to a new job several hours away is hard, but it's better than no job at all. For those truly out of work, options are limited. Logging, maybe. More likely, something in the service sector.

"But if there's no coal mines," Miller says, "there's not going to be a Dollar Store, either."

Coal remains the economic pillar of many Appalachian communities, the foundation of a mono-economy that political leaders have for generations lacked either the will or the ability to diversify.

Without coal, families can't put food on the table or pay for the roofs over their heads.

The specter of losing it creates fear, frustration and anger.

"I've done a lot of praying, and my family's done a lot of praying. We've literally been scared to death," says Shana Lucas, whose husband Trent was among the lucky ones, transferred when the layoffs hit Wise, Va.

"I don't think people understand the lack of job opportunities here," she says. "Coal is the only thing we have here besides fast-food restaurants."

A miner can make $30 an hour, plus overtime ? as opposed to the $8 an hour in the service industry.

"They have worked so, so hard, and they are losing everything they've worked for," Lucas says. "It's devastation to this place that we love and to the men that we look at as heroes."

Somebody must be to blame.

___

Obama is an easy target. He armed his opponents during a 2008 campaign interview that touched on global warming.

"If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can," he said. "It's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

He now espouses an "all of the above" energy strategy that includes a role for coal. But after he took office, the EPA provided more weapons to his critics.

It rolled out tough new air pollution standards, some of which had begun under the previous, Republican administration. It vetoed a permit for a massive West Virginia mountaintop removal mine four years after it was issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, triggering a federal court battle that's still playing out.

And EPA cracked down on the permitting process for mountaintop mining, a highly efficient and highly destructive form of strip mining unique to Appalachia. The practice of flat-topping mountains, then filling valleys and covering streams with rubble has divided communities and led to multiple confrontations between coal miners and environmental activists.

"I know we need the EPA to keep our laws," says Allen Gibson, a disabled surface miner from Elkhorn City, Ky., who recently helped organize a United for Coal demonstration that stretched across several states. "But instead of telling the companies what to do to fix a problem, they shut the whole thing down."

The EPA, he says, just wants to collect fines.

"But when they do that, the miners lose," Gibson says. "I'm sick of seeing the little guy pay."

During the permitting dispute in 2010, companies crammed miners onto buses and packed public hearings, forging a formidable alliance of management and labor that drowned out the environmentalists.

"They have completely turned the men on their heels," says Nick Mullins, a 33-year-old former miner from Clintwood, Va., who blogs about coal country as The Thoughtful Coal Miner.

"They're paying them better, and they've managed to really win the hearts and minds," he says. Younger miners "didn't see how bad the coal companies were to the men before them. ... They don't know their own history.

"The industry has done this really, really good propaganda," he says. "It's really easy to buy into it, especially when you only hear one side of the story and you're shutting out the other side."

West Virginia University history professor Ken Fones-Wolf says coal companies have also tapped into a proud heritage, heading off any potential opposition miners might have by reminding them they are valuable family providers.

"They feel that being against coal somehow denigrates all the sacrifices that generations of their families have made to the development of this nation."

So they fight for their way of life.

___

War sells because fear sells.

It's an emotionally charged metaphor that has taken over much of political discourse in America, says Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and author of "The Argument Culture."

There have been wars on drugs, wars on women, wars on the middle class. Why not a war on coal?

For people who want to govern, she says, war is about "destroying the opposition so they can get the power back." For media, it's about grabbing the attention of an easily distracted public. The more polarizing the voices, the more entertaining the story.

But such language, she says, contributes nothing to genuine understanding.

Rather, "it has this effect of making people angry, defensive and fearful," Tannen says. "It has a corrosive effect on the human spirit."

Two years ago, the phrase had only begun to creep into a conversation. Today, it's an inescapable, daily drumbeat, dominating not only conversation, but campaign ads and newscasts.

"The idea of taking land in a moving front, there's something there," says Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association.

"Yes, it's part of a PR campaign," he acknowledges. "But people are pretty jaded and pretty quick to recognize false arguments. The idea that we somehow hoodwinked people in the coalfields is a bit of a stretch.

"It's not just some PR machination," Bissett says. "It is a real, real concern."

In Kentucky, more than 55,000 people now drive vehicles with "Friends of Coal" license plates, a slogan that Bissett helped launch to get people emotionally invested. Instead of seeing the industry as faceless men in suits, they see the pickups next to them at the supermarket parking lot, the tags instantly identifying the like-minded.

So too, with the "war on coal."

Today, you're either friend or foe. Meaningful discussions and middle ground have vanished.

In one of his last major speeches in 2009, the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd warned that change was upon coal country. He chastised the industry for "scapegoating and stoking fear," calling it counterproductive.

"To be part of any solution," he said, "one must first acknowledge the problem."

The greatest threats to coal, Byrd warned, come not from regulations "but rather from rigid mindsets, depleting reserves and the declining demand."

Byrd was 91 at the time and revered in his home state of West Virginia. The speech was largely ignored.

But fast-forward three years to another Democrat who's dedicated his political career to the Mountain State.

When Sen. Jay Rockefeller gave a remarkably similar speech in June, deriding the industry for what he said were divisive, fear-mongering tactics, the state's Young Republicans said he'd "gone from out of touch to dangerous."

They even invoked the language of terrorism, suggesting he's "an anti-Mountain State sleeper cell that has lain dormant for 40 years."

Allen Johnson of Christians for the Mountains ? a group that opposes mountaintop removal mining and advocates living "compatibly and sustainably" with the environment ? sees such verbal smack-downs as nothing less than a threat to democracy.

"If any politician dares step over the coal line ... you will get hammered back into place, and quickly," says Johnson, of Frost, W.Va. "You just metaphorically crack knuckles and knee caps."

Johnson, 64, once worked the coke ovens for U.S. Steel. He worked for a railroad that moved coal and a power plant that burned it. He wants people to have good livelihoods. He also wants balance, and a government that prevents uncontrolled pollution of earth, air and water.

"The EPA," he says, "is a patsy in the war on coal."

___

For the past 11 years, Kevin Spears has been a sought-after commodity ? a young, healthy Caterpillar mechanic with nine mining job certifications and a willingness to work 60-75 hours a week.

But he lost his job in April when his employer ran out of money to finish reclaiming a strip mine site.

Spears has since applied for 20 positions, with no luck. He used to make $80,000-$110,000 a year, depending on overtime. With only a high school education, he earned more than a friend with a doctorate in psychology.

Today, he supports his girlfriend and their three children on $1,660 a month in unemployment compensation.

"You give up everything. You cut down to the bare essentials ? food, water, power," says the 32-year-old from Pikeville, Ky.

Girlfriend LeAndra Conley juggles bills, deciding each week which to pay and which to postpone.

"This whole thing is crushing us," says Conley, who's going through a divorce and won't move her daughters away from their father to Texas, where Spears was offered a $35 an hour job.

"It's not something you think is ever going to happen," she says. "The coal was put here for us to use, and you can't survive without it.

"There's nothing else here, unless you want to work for a phone marketing company. And they only stay until their tax breaks expire, and then they pull out, too."

Mining supported three generations before her, and Conley is certain there's enough coal underground to support three more.

"But Obama said, 'I will bankrupt you,'" she says, "and he is."

The couple still believes life in the coalfields can go back to the way it was. Maybe not overnight, but in time.

As leaves change and a chill settles over the mountains, they pray for two things ? a new president and a cold winter that forces people to crank up their furnaces.

"If something doesn't change for this area soon," Spears says, "it's either going to be migration or starvation."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/war-coal-label-obscures-battlefield-realities-142035132--finance.html

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Big Tex: On Fire!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/10/big-tex-on-fire/

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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Great apes, small numbers: Genetic study reveals recent decline in endangered orangutan population, but offers hope for the future

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2012) ? Sumatran orangutans have undergone a substantial recent population decline, according to a new genetic study, but the same research revealed the existence of critical corridors for dispersal migrations that, if protected, can help maintain genetic diversity and aid in the species' conservation.

One of two species of orangutans, the Sumatran orangutan is classified as "critically endangered" by the IUCN Red List. Once widespread on the island of Sumatra, only an estimated 6,600 individuals remain, restricted to small forest patches on the northern tip of the island. Recent large-scale deforestation is among the most significant factors bringing about the range collapse of the apes.

A recent study published via Advance Access in the Journal of Heredity investigated population structure, movement patterns, and reproductive interchange in Sumatran orangutans using genetic techniques. The investigators isolated DNA from fecal and hair samples from wild apes throughout their Sumatran range, as well as blood samples from orangutans of known origin that had been kept privately as pets before being confiscated by authorities. The investigators used two different genetic markers to examine population structure and gene flow: mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from an individual's mother, and autosomal microsatellites, short, repeated DNA elements that are inherited from both parents.

A strong genetic signal revealed a striking population decline in Sumatran orangutans. "The orangutans from one of the study areas on the west coast of the island exhibited very high genetic diversity," explained Dr. Alexander Nater of the University of Zurich Anthropological Institute & Museum, lead author on the study. "This diversity is a clear indication of a large historical population size. However this area currently harbors only around 400 orangutans," leading the authors to conclude that the population has recently declined dramatically.

The data also showed that Sumatran orangutans have a pronounced population structure containing a number of subpopulations, resulting from geographical barriers including major rivers and a large volcanic caldera. These barriers isolate groups of orangutans, some of which contain only a few hundred individuals.

"Such isolated, small populations will inevitably suffer from a decline in genetic diversity and negative effects of inbreeding," said Nater. "This means that local orangutan populations are at substantial risk of extinction."

Extinction risk can be further exacerbated when the subpopulations adapt to specific local environmental factors such as food sources or disease. While these local adaptations may allow the subpopulation to thrive in the short run, if environmental conditions change quickly the group may be unable to adapt.

Despite the isolation of the subpopulations, the authors found genetic evidence for recent reproductive interchange, specifically by breeding males. "Our study revealed that some males can range widely over large distances and across natural barriers in search of females," Nater said.

The data pinpointed a specific inland high-elevation area as an important corridor for reproductive interchange across the island. The males appear to be using this passage to circumvent major rivers close to their headwaters high in the mountains, providing important genetic exchange among Sumatran populations.

But it is critical that these corridors remain forested to facilitate these migrations. Sumatran orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all of their time in the forest canopy.

"This result highlights the need to conserve these important dispersal corridors to uphold genetic exchange," Nater said, "and it also gives hope that it is not yet too late to preserve these unique Asian great apes."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Genetic Association / Journal of Heredity, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Alexander Nater, Natasha Arora, Maja P. Greminger, Carel P. van Schaik, Ian Singleton, Serge A. Wich, Gabriella Fredriksson, Dyah Perwitasari-Farajallah, Joko Pamungkas, and Michael Kr?tzen. Marked population structure and recent migration in the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii). Journal of Heredity, October 16, 2012 DOI: 10.1093/jhered/ess065

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/xJ8O0-kdRD8/121016085130.htm

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