Saturday, November 10, 2007

Yangtze river dolphin (the Baiji)

The Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer)

Facts:
-estimated 75-150 in the wild.
-endemic to the Yangtze
-Declined from 500 in 20 years
-no captive population
-hard to find/assess

Probs:
-10% of the world's human population lives on the banks of the Yangtze
-pollution from factories
-collision with boat propellers
-fishing
-hard to locate

Proposed solution:
-100 km impounded stretch of th river where fishing would be banned and pollution from the banks controlled
-a 25 km oxbow lake with nets at each end
-captive breeding including 3 pools and a 1 km artificial river has been constructed.


erm...Any other solution??

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Ant wet specimens moved to Wet Collection Room

Hassan and I have moved most of the ant wet specimens from Bilik Belajar 3 to the Wet Specimen Collection room, just next to the Isoptera cabinet. All what we need now is to sort and document them. In some cases, we need to identify them too to genera. Thanks Hassan for the help.