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It's been a popular sport for thrill-seeking divers and even photo-snapping tourists here and abroad. Toss chunks of fish and blood in the water and wait for great whites to show up. But it will no longer be permitted around the Farallon Islands off San Francisco under a new management plan for three marine sanctuaries off Central California.
Such chumming was abolished years ago off Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve just south of San Francisco, a place frequented by the sharks and marine mammals of various kinds. Beside the seals and sea lions, surfers also take to these waters. Understandably they objected to the practice of teaching white sharks to associate humans with blood and chunks of fish in the water. These waters, after all, are known as the "Bloody Triangle" or "Red Triangle" for the concentrations of humans and white sharks that have brought about a legacy of shark attacks. The triangle roughly covers the waters from Santa Cruz to Bodega Bay and reaching offshore to the Farallones.
Under the extensive new rules, federal officials also forbid attracting seabirds by tossing food in the water, as well as other kinds of sea life. Tour boats will have to remain a respectful 55 yards away when white sharks feed on elephant seas, as they go there to do. That'll make it harder to get a close-up shot, but managers say that whites have been seen abandoning a kill when boats venture too close.
Some researchers and others have used seal-shaped decoys that lie passively on the water's surface to attract sharks. Once the new regulations go into effect in mid-March, such decoys would only be allowed by special permit.
-- Kenneth R. Weiss
Photo: Great white shark; Credit: Scot Anderson
There's poaching, then there's Peter Ignatius Ciraulo.
The 42-year-old Gilroy man was the subject of a wildlife poaching case the California's Department of Fish and Game termed "extraordinary."
Ciraulo had been under investigation by the department's law enforcement officers, who made their move at the end of the state waterfowl season last January. Game wardens Kyle Kroll and Greg Grinton approached Ciraulo and discovered he had killed a swan, which is protected under California law, as well as eight geese. In addition, Ciraulo had several goose breasts concealed in his jacket.
That was just the start. Kroll and Grinton discovered "hundreds" of birds stashed in freezers at Ciraulo's home. According to the Department of Fish and Game, "The dead birds included specimens of almost every waterfowl species that migrates into California, but also included many non-game, protected species." Included in the cache was a Sandhill Crane.
In addition to 335 dead birds, game wardens also found seven live and crippled snow geese.
"Not since the market poaching days of the early 1900s have we seen waterfowl poaching of this scope," said Nancy Foley, chief of the department's Law Enforcement Division.
Ciraulo pleaded no contest to three violations: possession of waterfowl over the limit, failure to declare a migratory game bird, and failure to show game to a warden upon demand. The state limits are 14 ducks and eight geese.
And what was the punishment for this wildlife crime of the century?
Two years probation, a $7,105 fine and 100 hours of community service. Oh, and he's banned from hunting in California for one year.
-- Julie Cart
Photo: A sandhill crane wades in Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
Dead and dying forests across about 50 million acres from Alaska and Canada to the Southwestern United States attest to the devastation wrought by a massive infestation of pine beetles over the past decade. Scientists have documented that the withered, dry trees cough out millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping heat and contributing to the greenhouse effect that is warming the earth's climate.
Now, an international team led by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally-funded laboratory, is exploring new dangers: the tiny insects, each the size of a grain of rice, may also be altering rainfall patterns and polluting the air we breathe.
Large areas of dead trees may change cloud and precipitation patterns for a decade or more, scientists have found. "In the Western United States, it is particularly important to understand these subtle impacts on precipitation," said NCAR scientist Alex Guenther, a principal researcher on the project. "Rain and snow may become even more scarce in the future as the climate changes, and the growing population wants ever more water."
Preliminary computer modeling suggests that temperatures may increase temporarily as much as 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, as a result of the beetle infestation. The lack of foliage diminishes the reflection of the sun's heat back into space. And, according to the scientists, beetle attacks may stimulate trees to release more particles and chemicals into the atmosphere as they try to fight off the insects. That increases ground level ozone and particulates, which can cause respiratory disease in humans.
The four-year field project, known as BEACHON, was launched this summer and is funded by the National Science Foundation. It includes scientists from nine U.S. colleges and universities, federal agencies and universities in Austria, France and Japan.
-- Margot Roosevelt
Photo: Mountain Pine Beetle; Credit/USDA Forest Service
 The California red-legged frog, which got caught in a political tempest created by an Interior Department official, may get much of its habitat restored.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on Tuesday to increase the threatened frog's critical habitat to some 1.8 million acres in the state. The agency revisited the original habitat designation, citing scientific miscalculations and political manipulation by a former Interior Department official, Julie MacDonald.
MacDonald resigned last year after an internal review found that she pressured scientists to alter conclusions to reduce protections for endangered species and provided internal documents to lobbyists. The report said MacDonald improperly provided department information to lobbyists and private-sector interests, such as the California Farm Bureau and the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California. "MacDonald appears to have a close personal and business relationship with a farm bureau lobbyist," the report said.
The California red-legged frog was one of the species whose habitat was reduced to make way for development interests. The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposed habitat. The agency will undertake an economic analysis to determine if the financial burden on property owners from habitat protections is outweighed by any benefit to species. A final rule is expected by late next summer.
-- Julie Cart
Photo credit: Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times
 If you don't get it, or even if you do, the Golden State's most brilliant minds are ready to help.
Beginning Monday, California is serving up a feast of global warming information, its Fifth Annual Climate Change Conference, with three days of speeches, panels and presentations streamed live on video. No state has done more to examine the causes, effects and possible adaptation to climate change than California, which enacted the nation's first and most stringent greenhouse gas control law.
At the Sacramento conference, more than 70 scientific researchers and policymakers will present their findings and analyses, focusing on issues with California-specific perspectives. Will the sea rise? Will species die out? Will agriculture suffer? Will water supplies dwindle? Will forests burn? Experts from such institutions as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the California Air Resources Board, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and a passel of universities will weigh in with the latest information.
Sunbathers take note: There is even a presentation on "Estimating the Potential Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Southern California Beaches."
Presentations can be downloaded from the website. And video of the conference will be archived on the climate conference website.
-- Margot Roosevelt
Image: Robert Neubecker / for the Los Angeles Times
Environmental secretaries from all 10 U.S.-Mexico border states met today for the Border Governors Conference in Hollywood. They signed the Tire Initiative Letter of Understanding, which includes "tire pile prevention measures" and tries to eliminate the public health risks.
Often disease-carrying pests such as rodents inhabit these tire
piles. After a rainfall, mosquitoes may breed in the stagnant water
collected inside tires and carry deadly diseases such as encephalitis,
West Nile virus, dengue fever and malaria.
Scrap-tire fires are difficult to extinguish and can burn for weeks
or months releasing thick black smoke that can contaminate the soil
with oily residue, generate significant liquid waste and contaminate
ground and surface water.
So far 4 million scrap tires have been removed from the U.S.-Mexico border to decrease the risk of fires and disease that they pose to border residents, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Tire Initiative is a joint partnership by the EPA and the Mexican Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. Representatives at the conference were from California, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
State and local governments on both sides of the border as well as private industry such as the U.S. Rubber Manufactures Assn., have joined in implementing Tire Initiative's measures, according to the EPA.
Last month, the California Integrated Waste Management Board awarded $325,000 to El Cerrito in Contra Costa County and Baldwin Park to divert 21,000 waste tires from California landfills and use them to create rubberized asphalt concrete.
The EPA's Border 2012 U.S.-Mexico Environmental Program works to protect the environment and public health for 10 states on both sides of the 2,000-mile border.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Dump truck and tractor tires. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
The death of frogs, salamanders and other amphibians could be a sign of a larger biodiversity disaster, according to an article published online this week by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University.
"Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians" was co-authored by David B. Wake and Vance T. Vredenburg, and published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wake and Vredenburg concluded the "substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet." A 2004 study by the researchers found that nearly one-third or more of roughly 6,300 amphibian species are threatened with extinction: Amphibians have received much attention during the last two decades because of a now-general understanding that a larger proportion of amphibian species are at risk of extinction than those of any other taxon. Why this should be has perplexed amphibian specialists. A large number of factors have been implicated, including most prominently habitat destruction and epidemics of infectious disease; global warming also has been invoked as a contributing factor. What makes the amphibian case so compelling is the fact that amphibians are long-term survivors that have persisted through the last four mass extinctions.
The scientists study of frogs in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains showed that a disease caused by a fungal pathogen has had a "devastating" impact on the species -- in addition to the effects of pollution and new predators. The new disease, chytridiomycosis, may be spreading across the globe, including key tropic areas, and its effects may be worsened by global warming. The researchers believe the fungus may be linked to the serious declines and extinctions of more than 200 species of amphibians and "poses the greatest threat to biodiversity of any known disease," according to the article.
Of the Sierra Nevada's seven amphibian species, five are threatened. Two of these species, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog and the Southern yellow-legged frog, had their populations decline by up to 98% over the last few years, even in highly-protected areas such as Yosemite National Park.
The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health helped fund the study.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: A mountain yellow-legged frog tadpole. Credit: Zoological Society of San Diego
Though Lake Tahoe continues to warm, the clarity of its waters were little affected by smoke and ash from last summer's Angora fire and the lake has continued to turn bluer, according to a report released today by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
Deposits of nitrogen and phosphorus from smoke and ash were estimated to be 2.5 to 7 times their normal summer rate, but was still only 1% to 2% of all deposit sources annually.
Because 2007 was the 14th driest year on record, the impact of pollutants such as those phosphorus and nitrogen particles being carried into the lake by streams and urban runoff has thus far been negligible, the report said. Scientists warned that the long-term effects, especially in the 3,100-acre burn area of the Angora fire, may not be known for several years.
The 60-page "Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2008 " was the second such report completed by scientists from the university who have monitored Lake Tahoe for nearly 40 years. Writes Geoffrey Schladow, the center's director, in the introduction: This report is not intended to be a scorecard for Lake Tahoe. Rather, it sets the context for understanding what changes are occurring from year to year: How much did the Angora Fire affect Lake Tahoe? Was Lake Tahoe warmer or cooler than the historical record last year? Are algae increasing? And, of course, how do all these changes affect the lake’s famous clarity?
All those answers, and more (including some nifty graphs), in that report.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: A 1997 photo shows a greenish algae caused by sediment flowing into Lake Tahoe that discolors portions of the deep blue water. Some worried the entire lake could eventually become gray-green. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times
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