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It often seems that good news about primates—and especially gorillas—is hard to come by. Last year, we reported the sad story of the endangered mountain gorillas of Congo’s Virunga National Park (Guerillas in their Midst), where several of the animals had been massacred. Later, rebel forces overtook the park, and even now much of the park, and the gorillas, remain off limits to the park’s rangers.

This week’s good news should put a smile on anyone’s face, though: a census of western lowland gorillas in Congo, released yesterday at the International Primatological Society Congress, found more than 125,000 in the northern part of the country, or what Steven Sanderson, the president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, calls “the mother lode of gorillas.”

Western lowland gorillas are found in seven central African nations, and estimates from the 1980s had numbered them at fewer than 100,000. With gorillas being lost to hunting, habitat destruction and the spread of Ebola, scientists had thought they would find that the population had been halved. Instead, they found population densities as high as 21 gorillas per square mile, some of the highest ever recorded.

What was the secret of Congo’s success? The researchers cite the remoteness of some of the gorillas’ homes—such as the 6,000 who live in an isolated raffia swamp—a habitat full of food, and Congo’s management of protected areas. Not all of the gorillas live in protected areas, though, and the government of Congo is currently considering protecting more of them with the creation of a new national park.

But the primate conference also brings us bad news. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the organization responsible for the Red List of Threatened Species, released a comprehensive review of 634 primate species and subspecies and found that nearly half are in danger of extinction (defined as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered). The situation is worst in Asia, where more than 70 percent of primates are threatened. The IUCN cites habitat destruction as the major threat, with others including hunting of the animals for food and the illegal wildlife trade.

The mountain gorillas might have been a sorely needed bright spot in this report. Researchers had been considering reclassifying them to endangered from critically endangered. However, they had to delay those plans due to the gorilla killings and ongoing violence in the region.

(Image: Kigali, a western lowland gorilla at the National Zoo. Credit: Jessie Cohen, National Zoological Park.)

Last July, as we began to prepare an article about the mountain gorillas of Congo and Rwanda (Guerrillas in Their Midst) for the magazine, we received the horrible news that one of the gorilla families our author visited had been the victims of a brutal crime. Four gorillas—including the silverback Rugendo—had been killed. By the end of 2007, the body count at Virunga National Park reached ten. And to make the situation even worse, rebel forces had taken over the park and barred the rangers. Thus, the gorillas have gone unwatched and unprotected for months.

Today comes the news, though, that an arrest has been made in the case of last year’s gorilla killings. Honore Mashagiro, the head of the park’s southern sector, has been accused of organizing the killings, and six other foresters may be questioned about their role, BBC News reports. The gorillas may have been killed to divert attention from the illicit trade in a coal-like mineral called makala (according to the AFP) or the destruction of the forest to make charcoal (see the Gorilla Protection blog).

If you live in southern Florida, Burmese pythons might have already settled into your backyard. These invasive species (see Ecocenter: The Land for more about invasive species) are naturally found in Asia but a population took root in Everglades National Park before 2003—probably pets that were released (or escaped) into the wild—and they are now spreading throughout the region.

Where the snakes end up is limited, though, by the availability of suitable food, shelter and climate. That’s good news for people living in the north; it’s too cold for the snakes. At least for now.

Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have mapped out the range of suitable climate for the pythons at present (above) and at the end of the century, after decades of global warming (below). The bad news is that the changing climate could open up new areas to the snakes. Maybe even where you live.

The Burmese python is a scary creature. Anything that would take on an American alligator would be (below, a snake fighting an alligator in Everglades National Park). But what dangers does their spread actually hold?

Bob Reed, a USGS wildlife biologist who helped develop the maps, said in a statement that “wildlife managers are concerned that these snakes, which can grow to over 20 feet long and more than 250 pounds, pose a danger to state- and federally listed threatened and endangered species as well as to humans.”? Furthermore, he said, “Several endangered species have already been found in the snakes’ stomachs. Pythons could have even more significant environmental and economic consequences if they were to spread from Florida to other states.”?

(Maps courtesy of the USGS. Photo by Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service.)

If you’re trying to save the world and prevent global warming by filling your car with biofuel, you may need to think again. The idea of using fuel made from plants in place of fossil fuels seems like a good one. Instead of releasing carbon stored underground for millions of years as fossil fuel, we would instead just recycle that which is already in the atmosphere. But this is not how it has worked out, it seems.

In the November issue of Smithsonian, Richard Conniff made the argument (in Who’s Fueling Whom?) that the biofuels movement isn’t as good as its publicity suggest and might even “be slipping into la-la land,” citing such examples as a biofuel-powered speedboat being taken on a failed around-the-world publicity stunt. Now two papers published online by Science magazine are adding to the argument that biofuels as they are currently produced are not helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, they may be contributing to global warming.

In the studies, scientists looked at the consequences of producing biofuels, including all of the fossil fuels used in producing them (above, a Missouri corn harvest) and the large amount of natural land being converted into farmland to produce more biofuels. This land use change, in particular, has been left out of previous calculations. Their conclusion: biofuels release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than conventional fossil fuels.

The New York Times reports:

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.â€?

(Photo credit: USDA Agricultural Research Service/Photo by Bruce Fritz)

In a region prone to earthquakes, a little warning could make a big difference. Though current early warning systems—such as those in Japan, Mexico and Taiwan—can only give a few to tens of seconds warning before the ground starts to shake, this is enough time to allow some short-term mitigation. Trains and elevators can be slowed or stopped, utilities and factories can put into safe modes, and people indoors and out can move to safer areas. Damage will still occur, but it could be lessened.

Japan is particularly earthquake prone (above, Tokyo devastated after a 1923 earthquake), so it’s no surprise that the country would develop an earthquake early warning system. After years of development, it went online in October. However, the success of the system has been called into question. On January 26, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake shook the Noto Peninsula in the Ishikawa Prefecture about 200 miles northwest of Tokyo. No warning had been issued for the quake, and the Japanese media claimed that system had failed. But did it?

The Japanese system is designed to issue a warning only if the predicted intensity of the earthquake will reach lower 5 or above. (Intensity—see here for an explanation of the Japanese scale—is a measure of the strength of seismic motion at the surface, whereas magnitude is a measure of the energy released at the source of an earthquake.) An earthquake with an intensity of 4 will shake books off the shelf; in a lower 5, the bookshelf will fall over. For the January 26 earthquake, the system predicted an intensity of 4, but in one town, Wajimamonzen, the intensity reached lower 5. Government officials from the Ishikawa Prefecture, though, received no reports of injuries or damage from the earthquake. And a representative of the Japan Meteorological Agency told the journal Nature that this kind of variation was within expected limits.

It can be argued that, technically, the system did fail and there should have been a warning. With a system still in its first year of operation, it is no surprise that it still needs perfecting. However, if there was no serious damage from the earthquake, and the system is meant to mitigate damage, doesn’t this also call into question where they have placed the cutoff? If warnings are given too often for quakes that don’t do much damage, is there a danger people would grow complacent and begin to ignore them? And then what would happen when Japan’s equivalent of the “big oneâ€? (see Tokyo Tremors in Earthquake!) occurs?

(Image: USGS Photographic Library, George A. Lang Collection)