Biodiversity is a Priority -- Two New Reports

"Lost forest reveals new species", BBC News, 8 August 2007.

An expedition to a remote forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo has uncovered six new animal species.

Conservationists discovered one new bat species, a new rodent and two new species each of shrews and frogs.

The region, which is in eastern DR Congo, near Lake Tanganyika, has been off limits to researchers since 1960 because of instability in the area.

"Rare river dolphin 'now extinct'" BBC News, 8 August 2007.

A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded.

The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.

The team, writing in Biology Letters journal, blamed unregulated fishing as the main reason behind their demise.

If confirmed, it would be the first extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years.

Comment: People are generally more interested

• in animals than in plants,
  
• in plants than in insects, and
  
• in insects than in microbial organisms.

But the web of life on earth depends on all of these. Indeed if we look at potential benefits and threats to man, all of these kinds of organisms are important. Finding six species of animals in a brief survey of one place suggests how much more we have to do to understand biodiversity. The loss of a charismatic large vertebrate species illustrates how urgent is the need to gain such understanding. JAD