Earthweek : A Diary of the Planet (March 8, 2013)

Disrupted Migration
The world's greatest migration of wild mammals will likely be considerably shorter this year in East Africa, according to a Tanzania official.  Each year during May, the mass movement of the great wildbeest and other species begins in the southern Serengeti of Tanzania.  Months later, the animals typically wind up in lower Kenya's Maasai Mara Reserve, about 500 miles north.  The animals involved in the migration include about 1.5 million wildbeests, 400,000 zebras and thousands of antelopes as well as gazelles, Hyenas and lions typically scavenge behind them.  But the migrants now seem to be spending more time than usual in the southern part of the Serengeti as well as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.  Tanzania's Daily News reports that the animals may not reach the Maasai Mara at all this year.  "Increasing human activities at Maasai Mara....is what causes the animal migration of wildbeests to reduce and eventually stop going to the Kenyan sanctuary altogether."  Godson Kimaro, the senior warden at Serengeti National Park, told the daily.
Passover Plague
Clouds of desert locusts swarming over Egypt in recent weeks arrived in Israel as that country was prepairing to observe the passover holiday.  According to the Bible, a Plague of locusts was one of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians for enslaving and abusing ancient Hebrews.  Israel Radio reports a large swarm of the ravenous insects darkened the skies over southern Israel as they arrived in fields across the Negev desert, where they caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.  Israeli officials were preparing pesticides to be sprayed on farmland to keep the insects from munching on more crops.
Shark Extinction Threat
As many as one in 15 of all sharks on Earth are fished from the oceans each year, leading many to fear the species is on the path to extinction.  A new study has offered the first tentative tally of the number of sharks killed by humans each year, many illegally.  Writing in the journal Marine Policy, lead author Boris Worm of Canada's Dalhousie University estimates that some 97 million sharks were caught and killed in 2010.  That figure represents only a modest decline from the 2000 estimate of 100 million.  From one year to the next, between 6.4 percent and 7.9 percent of the worldwide shark population is fished, the study claims.  The global shark fin market, which the study estimates to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is the primary driver of aggressive shark fishing.
Russian Rumblings
Far East Russia's Plosky Tolbachik volcano created vivid flows of lava across the otherwise frozen landscape of the Kamchatka Peninsula.  The closet settlement to the eruption is the remote community of Klyuchi, about 30 miles away.  Plosky Tolbachik began erupting last Nov. 27 for the first time in 36 years.  It is one in a chain of several volcanoes in south-eastern Kamchatka that have a history of producing at least some kind of eruptive activity in recent years.
Earthquakes
A quake caused hundreds of homes to collapse and injured 20 people in China's Yunnan province.
* Earth movements were also felt in Taiwan, the Bangladesh-eastern India border region, the Dominican Republic, southern Oklahoma and the Inland Empire of Southern California.
Lingering Risks
People living in the area most directly affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster face a slightly higher risk of developing certain cancers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report.  It adds that the risk is negligible for those residing elsewhere in Japan at the time of the disaster and is virtually nonexistent for those who were out of the country when the meltdowns occurred.  The WHO report estimates that females infants living within 12 miles of the plant at the time of the disaster face a 70 percent higher risk of developing thyroid cancer later in life than comparable babies living outside the contaminated area.  Slightly elevated rates of leukemia and breast cancer can also be expected, the report says.
Rodent Intelligence
Russia's military intelligence agency is reported to be readying a new field weapon for special ops --- a platoon of secret agent mice.  The rodents will replace dogs in detecting explosives, ammunition and people being hidden, such as hostages.  Izvestia reports the tiny troops are being tested at a secret location and could be used soon throughout Russia's secret service operations.  Experts say that mice have a better sense of smell than dogs and take only a couple of weeks to train.  Anton Venediktov told reporters that they are also less prone to "emotions" than canines, which could affect their performance.  "Mice canbe taught to detect the smell of certain substances," explained Venediktov.  "Smelling it, they run to a special place in their cage, and make a certain pose."