Persian Gulf: wildlife threatened

This is a white-collared kingfisher video.

Associated Press reports:

Persian Gulf Wildlife Threatened

Booming development driving away Persian Gulf’s endangered wildlife

KHOR KALBA, United Arab Emirates, Jul. 3, 2006

By JIM KRANE

It’s one of the world’s rarest birds, but there it sat on a mangrove branch, motionless, eyes peeled for a fiddler crab.

The handsome white-collared kingfisher, its iridescent green back flickering in the dappled 110-degree sunshine, suddenly disappeared.

A loud splash came from the swampy thicket.

A millisecond later, the bird flashed past, on its way to a hideaway to crunch a live crab in its sharp black beak.

Although the kingfisher is a common bird, only a few dozen of its Arabian subspecies, kalbaensis, are thought to remain on the planet, since their nesting places are restricted to the hollows of knotty old mangroves.

Conservationists here worry that relentless real estate encroachment could push the kalbaensis subspecies into extinction.

Already it has only three known nesting grounds: this ancient mangrove swamp 80 miles from Dubai and two smaller ones just across the border in Oman.

All three are threatened by Florida-style luxury resorts and housing along hundreds of miles of once pristine Arabian coastline.

The kingfisher is just one of the species threatened by the building boom.

In Oman, a luxury hotel was just finished on a stretch of beach used as a nesting site for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle.

Other developments have taken habitat from the rare Socotra cormorant and the dugong, or sea cow, a marine mammal akin to the manatee.

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Cuba: the ancient lions of Havana

Prensa Latina reports:

Emotion & Poetry in the Center of Havana

Havana, Jul 2 For years, the amazing bronze figures located in a downtown avenue in the Cuban capital, “Leones del Prado” (Lions of the Prado Park), have been motive of delight for foreign tourists and even for Cuban citizens due to their character, beauty and poetry.

As permanent guards of Havana, they appear with their strong figures all along the Marti or Prado Park, which full of trees, takes passers-by from the emblematic Malecon to the Central Park amid the hustle and bustle of the city.

With their always-aggressive look and a roar that only the most imaginative people could hear, the “Leones del Prado” become perfect setting for a family photo or an informal walk.

Historians recall that in late 1700 the Spanish colonial authorities endorsed a public-works program intended to confer a different look to the village of San Cristobal de la Havana, founded in 1519.

After some contradictions, the great city had obtained the rank of capital of the island and so it deserved a special architectonical treatment.

The first changes included two tree-lined avenues, the city’s first theater and a presidential house.

By late 19th century, the image of the Prado Park was totally renewed with the construction of houses in the surroundings, the included marble banks, lights and the most important ornament the so-called “Leones del Prado”.

Book on Cuban wetlands birds: here.