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Science In Action: 31/12/2010

31/12/2010

BBC World Service - Science In Action, 31/12/2010

Biodiversity special featuring reports on extreme animals in exotic locations.

Biodiversity special with extreme animals in exotic locations, featuring saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan, Tasmanian devils, skunks in New York and black guillemots.

Tracking saiga antelope in Kazakhstan

Our reporter Robin Forestier-Walker takes a bone-jarring drive several hundred kilometres west of Kazakhstan's capital Astana, to one of the last great wildernesses on Earth to capture and tag the ancient saiga antelope.  Once there were half a million beasts roaming the steppe, but the population was almost wiped out by unregulated hunting after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Numbers are slowly rising again, but they are still vulnerable.

Contagious cancer pushing Tasmanian devils to extinction

Earlier this year we heard how one very unusual species, the Tasmanian devil – a carnivorous marsupial from the island of Tasmania off Australia, is being threatened by a very strange form of cancer. Science in Action's Monika Seynsche went to Tasmania to meet the scientists who are desperately trying to save the devil from extinction.


Wildlife in New York
Not all wildlife is restricted to the wilderness, and not all of it is welcome. 
Living alongside millions of people in New York City, you can now find increasing numbers of raccoons, geese, skunks and deer.  Some ecologists are warning that their growing numbers will lead to increasing conflict between New Yorkers – human and animal.  Science in Action reporter Laura Sheeter went for a walk on the wild side.


Bird Biodiversity 
Professor George Divoky, who we heard on Science in Action earlier this year, has dedicated the past 40 years of his life to studying the black guillemot – a black and white, pigeon-sized seabird.  Every spring he moves into a cabin on Cooper Island, just off the coast of Alaska.  Now, as he nears his fourth decade of study he is closing in on a record for running one of the longest seabird studies in the world.  But last summer his life's work came dangerously close to an end.  The warming climate of Alaska has brought new visitors to Cooper Island.  Recently puffins have moved up from the south, and polar bears have taken to land as their sea ice disappears.  Both species feed on guillemot chicks.  We hear Divoky's very personal account of daily life with his beloved guillemots.

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