A new species of monkey has been found in northern Myanmar — puzzling scientists because of a snub nose that means the monkeys are often heard “sneezing in the rain”. Why would anyone want, let…

Bjorn Lomborg worries that people will conclude he’s becoming like Al Gore

World leaders will hold special talks at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday about preserving “biodiversity”. 

That might clear up some misunderstandings — an official involved in negotiating a new U.N. treaty said that some surveys show a worrying number of people reckon it’s a brand of washing powder.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s definition runs: “Biological diversity – or biodiversity – is a term we use to describe the variety of life on Earth. It refers to the wide variety of ecosystems and living organisms: animals, plants, their habitats and their genes.”

And it’s being lost at a shocking rate — some U.N. estimates are that three species an hour are going extinct because of loss of habitats to cities, farms and roads to make way for ever more people. Related problems of pollution, climate change and alien species of plants and animals brought in from other parts of the world are also adding to losses. Only about 2 million species have been identified but there could be up to 100 million — by some estimates — from blue whales to amoeba.

As part of a harder-headed way of persuading governments to do more to protect biodiversity, economists are highlighting largely hidden values of nature, such as how forests clean the air or store carbon dioxide, or how coral reefs are nurseries for fish or help cut coastal erosion from storms or tsunamis.

Pavan Sukhdev heads The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity and wants governments to place proper values on the “free” services nature provides. “Just because something is free doesn’t mean it’s worthless,” he says. His team estimates that losses of “natural capital” may be between $2 and $4.5 trillion a year. His project tries to highlight how much it would cost to replace services like insect pollination. Or it shows that the long-term value of a mangrove in Thailand (a source of building wood, fish, coastal protection) is higher than cutting it down and changing it into a shrimp farm.

Negotiators have been working on a draft 20-point plan under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, meant to be agreed in October at a U.N. meeting in Japan. Among the points in the plan (perhaps to discourage people from trying to put it in their washing machines) is that ”by 2020 at the latest, all people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably”.

Talks have been sluggish — hours went on deciding whether to use the word “people” in that sentence or alternative phrases using ”everyone”, “everybody”, “humankind” or ”mankind”.

Some want an ambitious overriding mission of “halting biodiversity losses” by 2020 — many others reckon that is out of reach after the world failed even to achieve a goal, set in 2002, of a “significant reduction” in losses by 2010. What’s the best target?

(Pictures: top left – A green grasshopper is seen at the San Francisco University Biodiversity Tiputini Station in Yasuni National Park September 9, 2010. Ecuador is launching a one-of-a-kind initiative to protect a jungle reserve in the park that contains not only a huge variety of plants and animals but 20 percent of the country’s crude oil. REUTERS/Guillermo Granja. Bottom right – A rare albino Southern Right Whale surfaces off southen Argentina, Sept 13, 2010. REUTERS/Maxi Jonas)

A thaw of ice in the mountains of Norway is helping Lars Piloe and his team of archaeologists uncover a 1,500-year-old trove of equipment used by ancestors of the Vikings to hunt reindeer.

Their work as “ice patch archaeologists” points to one of a few positive side-effects of man-made climate change, widely blamed for shrinking glaciers worldwide.

On other missions to dwindling ice fields they have found arrows, even some with feathers attached. And another expert found a 3,400-year-old leather shoe. (…they speculate that the shoe’s first owner threw it away because it has a hole in the sole).

I was up by the ice a few days ago with my TV colleague Kurt – luckily about 40 cms of snow that fell shortly before had melted away, or the trip would have been in vain for everyone — on days with snow, ”ice patch archaeologists” can’t find anything.

And at almost 2,000 metres, the season is already extremely short — it starts in mid-August and ends as soon as the autumn snows fall, usually around now. Their finds are a stark sign that the ice has not been this small for centuries: feathers or leather turn to dust within days of exposure unless they are properly preserved.

Most of the finds at the ice, known as Juvfonna, are “scare sticks” — perhaps a metre long with another small piece of wood tied to the top to flap in the wind (see picture below left for the carved end of a scare stick where string was tied). Placed in rows on the ice, they would worry the unwitting reindeer just enough to guide them towards hunters lying in wait behind rocks, without causing a stampede. The archaeologists found dozens of the sticks — even I managed to find a couple among the rocks.

Archaeologists speculate that teams of hunters came up from the valley below — probably a 10-hour slog — and left gear at altitude between hunts to avoid carrying the extra weight. Maybe one year at the start of the Dark Ages there was an especially bad early snowstorm that covered up rows of scare sticks — until now. 

Juvfonna is part of a Climate Park that says the finds are “one of the visible consequences of climate change”. And apart from rising global temperatures come natural, local shifts.

As the day wore on during our visit, the noise of water dripping and running off the ice became louder and louder,  even though temperatures were not much above freezing with a chill wind. Lars looked often at the very fringe of the retreating ice — where the most fragile finds can be made.

The archaeologists have even worked out guidelines about what to do if they ever find an ancient corpse in the ice (first rule: call the police).

In Norse mythology, the mountains were inhabited by the “Ice Giants” who battled gods such as Thor and Odin — they myths even explain that the top colour of a rainbow is red to burn the feet of giants and prevent them from climbing to Valhalla, the home of  the gods.

Now even the giants’ mountain stronghold is shrinking.

(Photos:  top – archaeologists Elling Utvik Wammer (left), Lars Piloe (centre) and Trond Vihovde (right) lay out markers to show where they have found small wooden artefacts on the ice field. Centre right: Vihovde (left) uses a GPS satellite marker on a find of a pre-Viking hunting stick as Wammer (right) watches. Bottom: the top of a reindeer “scare stick”.)

The drugged tiger cub (left) hidden among cuddly toys in a bag at Bangkok airport  ranks as one of the most bizarre smuggling tricks.

Imagine the shock of X-raying the bag — as airport workers checking luggage did — and finding a live tiger among the fluffy tiger toys. Maybe it moved, or they spotted the outline of its skeleton among the other toys?

For a story about the two-month-old cub (photo courtesy of wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic) click here. A 31-year-old Thai woman was about to board a flight to Iran when they found the cub in her oversized bag.

It highlights how smugglers find extreme ways of packing away live creatures.

In July, officers at Mexico City’s airport arrested a man trying to smuggle 18 small monkeys from Lima wrapped inside his socks.

Women smugglers have several times been caught with endangered bird eggs hidden in their bras — an aid to incubation and far easier to hide on an international flight than a flapping, squawking parrot.

But Traffic says it’s no joke: smuggling is pushing species of some animals and plants towards extinction. And while it’s hard to pin down the scale of wildlife smuggling, some estimates are between $10 and $20 billion a year, it says.