BBC Wildlife’s Photographer of the Year Stripped of His Title

Late last month, the Telegraph reported that 2009’s Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year was under investigation, after allegations that he violated the rules of the contest. Specifically, contest co-organizer The Natural History Museum (NHM) received a complaint that winning photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez had used an animal model in his remarkable photo of a wolf in mid-air.

Rodriguez vehemently denies the claim, but in a press release issued by the NHM today, Louise Emerson stated:

It saddens us to confirm that after a careful and thorough investigation into the image, the storybook wolf, the co-owners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide Magazine have disqualified the winning entry of the photographer José Luis Rodríguez. The judging panel was reconvened and concluded that it was likely that the wolf featured in the image was an animal model that can be hired for photographic purposes and, as a result, that the image had been entered in breach of Rule 10 of the Competition. The judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves. They also considered the responses to specific questions put to the photographer José Luis Rodriguez.

The competition rules clearly state that photographs of animal models may not be entered into the competition and that images will be disqualified if they are entered in breach of Rule 10. Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rules are available to all entrants including versions translated into several languages.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the world’s most prestigious photography competition of its kind. Any transgression of the competition rules is taken very seriously and if entries are suspected of breaching the rules they are disqualified. José Luis Rodríguez’s image will be removed from the exhibition and tour.

Mr Rodriguez strongly denies that the wolf in the image is a model wolf.

The £10,000, first place prize will not be re-awarded, and Rodriguez will his £500 category winner’s check in lieu of royalty payments.

 

2009: A Year in Review

2009 was a very busy year for me. As the Assistant Librarian for the zoo, I kept the library running smoothly (no easy task), by handling all of the collection maintenance, supervising volunteers, obtaining inter-library loans and answering any questions people threw at me. But that’s not really enough, is it?

• I cataloged 342 items for the library, sending out monthly emails to alert our staff when new items came in.
• I added 205 articles published in 2009 by our staff to our publications list, reformatted that list, and added password protection to the directory of PDFs to be in compliance with copyright law.
• I created an online archival database for the Zoological Society archives, based on Archon open-source software (the records are still being propagated with data, however).
• I created a sitemap for our library website and set-up a Google custom search engine, so our staff can more easily find whatever they’re looking for on the site.
• In honor of Darwin’s 200th anniversary, all three of our library staff members teamed up to create a video for the zoo’s Darwin Day celebration. It’s not available online, but it was pretty neat and worth mentioning.
• I updated the library’s Technical Processing manual, last updated in 2003, to reflect the myriad technological developments and revised processes we’ve had since then.
• I bottle-fed and hosed down a baby rhino.

…But, as an hourly employee, my workweek is only 40 hours long. What on earth have I been doing with the other 100+ hours I have each week?

• I worked four days in the SLA-SD Chapter Archives as a member of the Archives Committee. (In 2010, I’m now the Chapter Archivist, looking for committee members to assist me… but that’s a different, forthcoming post of its own.)
• I posted in this blog 95 times since its inception in April, for an average of nearly three posts per week.
• I uploaded 1067 photos to Flickr, most of which I actually quite like.
• I read 66 books. Some were excellent, some were not.
• I visited a new and exciting place, and re-visited somewhere very dear to me.
• I sent out a staggering 2,271 emails.
• I taught three SAT prep classes and tutored high school students for Kaplan Test Prep.
• I bottle-fed a baby otter.

And, most importantly, I spent a lot of time with my two favorite guys in the world. Like I said, a very busy year indeed.

 

Last Chance to Survive: Northern White Rhinos

Four of the world’s remaining eight Northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) are settling in to their new home in the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya. They were shipped to the reserve from Dvůr Králové zoo in the Czech Republic, where they’ve been for the past 30 years. The two remaining Czech Northern white rhinos and two Northern white rhinos at the Wild Animal Park, in San Diego, aren’t reproductively viable, so the four now in Kenya are the last hope of continuing the genetic line.

The Northern white rhino has a sad history. From the 1970s to the 1980s, their population was reduced to 15 due to poaching. Earlier in this decade, that population had doubled and seemed to be on the slow road to recovery. Since 2003, though, the last remaining Northern whites were killed and the species has been extinct in the wild until this week’s transfer. At this point, the goal is merely to pass on as much of the subspecies’ lineage as possible. Rob Brett, director of Flora and Fauna International, acknowledges that inter-breeding with Southern white rhinos in Kenya is “inevitable”.

Whether or not they will even be able to breed is still up for debate. San Diego Wild Animal Park mammal curator Randy Rieches contends that there is no chance of breeding in the herd, due to reproductive pathologies that set in after a period of reproductive dormancy. On the other hand, Dana Holeckova, director of the Dvůr Králové zoo, said at the time of the transfer, “I feel so happy. It’s my birthday today and this is like a gift to Africa. There is a 90 percent chance they will reproduce and I hope that we will start a new group of Northern White rhinos in Africa.” Clearly, the jury is still out on the rhinos’ fate, and only time will tell.

The money for the transfer was supplied by Alastair Lucas, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs in Australia, explicitly for the purpose of relocating these rhinos.

 

Special Library Association Will NOT Become “ASKPro”

*Cue sigh of relief*

The Special Library Association name change has been all over the librarian blogosphere. Over the past few months, my email inbox has been inundated with listserv messages about the name change (mostly expressing disgust over the suggested name, “Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals”, or “ASKPro”). The final vote happened this week, and I’m relieved to report that the proposed name change was roundly voted down.

Direct consequences of this are that I will most likely renew my membership this year. I’m also volunteering with the programming committee of the San Diego SLA chapter, so I can proceed with that process without feeling the huge identity disconnect that belong to ASKPro would have registered with me. Some of the program possibilities include workshops about open source in libraries, which I’m very excited about, and probably something about new developments in mobile access. If you have any other suggestions for me to bring to the committee, please feel free to comment!

 

A Collection of Links and Stories for Your Enjoyment in My Absence (Science Edition)

I’m leaving for a few weeks on vacation tomorrow night. I couldn’t be happier about this, and I’ll post all about my trip when I get back (at least, the science-y and library-related parts of it), but for now, I need to prepare. I anticipate being very busy playing catch-up when I return, and I’ve been posting here less than I’d like to. Therefore, I present to you a huge list of things I’ve been meaning to post about but never got around to. I might post in more detail on some of these topics later as I get a chance, but I encourage you to check out these links in my absence. In no particular order:

• HOME is a stunningly beautiful 90-minute film from director Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It was released on June 5th simultaneously in over 50 different countries, and is freely available to watch on YouTube in HD. It covers the history of life on Earth, focusing heavily on human changes to the environment that have resulted in ecological collapses across the planet and global warming. The last 20 minutes or so provide a summary, but I highly recommend setting aside some time to watch the whole thing.
• Another possibly global-warming related news item: The New York Times reports on the PNAS study about disappearing ice caps atop Mt. Kilimanjaro.



• Toxic waste from a shipwreck off the coast of Madagascar is wreaking ecological havoc, according to the WWF.
• Two female spectacled bears at the Leipzig Zoo are suffering from hair-loss. The Telegraph article isn’t very informative, but spectacled bears have a history of this problem in captivity. It’s limited to female bears and is thought to be stress-related. Incidentally, cross your fingers that I see a fully-furred spectacled bear while on vacation… they’re native to the Andean forests!
  
• This collection of photographs of pollution in China has been heavily making the internet rounds. You’ve probably already seen it, but if not, you’ll be shocked. The photographs are so well-done they’re almost beautiful, but the content will make you cry.
  
• Here’s some happy news, albeit a bit old: decades-long efforts by the French to clean up pollution in the Seine is finally paying off! After high levels of pollution in the middle of last century killed off all but four fish species in the river, France instituted large-scale efforts to clean up the waters, including a purification plant. Now, Atlantic salmon have returned to their historic breeding grounds up-river without any human interference. One of these was caught by an angler outside of Paris. There are now 32 species present in the river!
• Have you heard about the Genome 10K project? “The Genome 10K project aims to assemble a genomic zoo—a collection of DNA sequences representing the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species, approximately one for every vertebrate genus.” Thanks to the drastic reduction over the years of the cost to sequence a genome, this project is finally feasible, and collaborators are coming from all corners of the globe.
• DNA is also going to ensure that we have delicious heritage apples for years to come, I hope.
• The Bronx Zoo’s Wildlife Conservation Society recently opened a new LEED gold-certified Center for Global Conservation that looks to be very impressive.
• Attention parents: Black bears in Yosemite prefer minivans.
• The winners of the British Wildlife Photography Awards were announced last month. Here’s the Coast & Marine winner:
  

New York is seeing “coywolves”, coyote-wolf hybrids that are smaller than wolves and larger than coyotes. These are fertile hybrids, stronger than coyotes, but appearing in areas where wolves can’t cope with the human development.

• There are more article I have bookmarked, but I’ll save those for another vacation. See you next month!

 

Transgender Library Worker Sues Public Library for Discrimination

I made a post on MetaFilter yesterday, which is a rare occurrence for me. Since it’s library-related, I’ll cross-post it here.

Bobbie E. Burnett is suing her employers, the Free Library of Philadelphia, for discrimination. She’s been employed there for nearly 20 years, but transitioned to a female gender identity in 2001, at which point she says discrimination set in.

"Slurs hurled at Burnett by some staffers include ‘freak,’ ‘man in woman’s clothing’ and ‘nigger,’ according to the suit. On one occasion, when Burnett expressed wishes for a nice weekend to a coworker, the employee responded with, ‘Burn in hell,’ according to the lawsuit."

Last year, the Library of Congress lost a lawsuit against a trans person over a job offer. LoC "claimed at trial that transgender people are not covered under federal anti-discrimination laws". The American Library Association has an active GLBT Round Table, but it can still be difficult to find trans information in libraries. Many universities have special resource pages instructing library patrons in searching for GLBT info, because "transgender" isn’t a LoC Subject heading. Users need to search for "transsexuals" or "hermaphroditism" instead of "intersex".

What I didn’t put into the post is how deeply sad and disappointed the article made me. Normally, any time I come across a library or librarian-related news article, I either end up being depressed because I’m reading about massive budget cuts, lay-offs, or library closures, or I end up being proud and happy because I’m reading yet another in a long, long list of “librarians are awesome because _______” articles. Librarians are pretty well-known for protecting intellectual freedoms, lobbying for public access to information, and promoting diversity. To read about a library worker suffering so severely at the hands of her library colleagues was devastating to me.

After reading the article, I turned to the internet to mine for other links to include in the post. I was hoping to find a lot of fantastic trans-librarian stuff. Maybe some uplifting article about the long history of LGBT friendly library administration? A trans-librarian blog, with chronicles of supportive co-workers and naive patrons? Well, not exactly. As you can see, I ended the post with an article about another discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress, of all places, and the discovery (which was news to me), that “transgender” isn’t even an LoC subject heading.

If you have any recent “librarians are awesome and promote diversity” stories, please post them in the comments. I could use a bit of a pick-me-up.

 

Librarians are Tuff

Via LibraryStuff, a really cute Cops parody from the Seattle Public Library:

 

82 Baby Green Turtles Born at Sea World

I originally heard about this on NPR, and it brightened my morning drive up a bit to hear about Sea World’s successful hatching of 82 endangered green sea turtle babies last month. As a lifelong San Diego resident, I’ve been to Sea World many, many times. They’re a for-profit organization and I never got the impression that the animals there were very happy, so I haven’t felt compelled to visit for many years, but I was delighted to hear about the turtle births.

According to the Associated Press reports, the turtles were all hatched on the park’s Shipwreck Beach without any human assistance or intervention. Thad Dirksen, curator of fishes remarked, “It’s unusual to have sea turtles hatch in a zoological environment. And this time marked the first time we’ve done so without assisting the eggs through incubation.” Indeed, hearing about sea turtle births anywhere is pretty exciting for me, since they’re adorable and all sea turtle species are endangered or threatened. But it’s especially fun to hear about a hatching this size, right in my own neighborhood. They should go on display before the end of the year, so I’ll try to go out and visit them.

 

Dolphin Slaughter Documentary The Cove Finally Shows at Home

The Cove, the striking documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, has finally screened in Japan. It was shown at the Tokyo International Film Festival this week, according to an interview with director Louie Psihoyos, posted on Boing Boing today.

Although Psihoyos noted the screening was tucked away at 10:30am and not publicized, showing the movie in Japan is a hugely important step for those concerned about dolphin conservation. The movie debuted earlier this year (I saw a preview for it before The End of the Line), and shows damning footage of the bloody annual hunt, including dolphin meat being sold to Japanese schools surreptitiously. Since dolphins are top-level predators, they can have dangerously high levels of mercury — up to 5000 the levels legally allowed by Japan. Of course, dolphins are also highly charismatic animals, beloved by most people. It’s particularly striking that the dolphin hunters in Taiji make a much larger profit for capturing a dolphin and selling it to amusement parks or aquariums than selling it for meat.

Last month, on September 1, the media arrived in Taiji to publicize the beginning of the annual hunt. For the first time, even members of the Japanese media were present. Under the pressure, the hunt was delayed as hunters debated how to proceed. Former Flipper trainer Rick O’Barry, star of The Cove, was even in town to watch events unfold.

By the end of the first week of September, however, the hunt had finally begun. Of the dolphins caught that day, half were sold to aquariums, and half were released.

Although the publicity has been unkind to Taiji, their dolphin hunt is not the only one of its kind. Because of the cove setting, it’s very photogenic, but dolphin hunts outside of Japan persist, mainly for food. Dolphin hunts are ongoing in the Soloman Islands. Less than 100 dolphins are killed there each year, but there may only be hundreds of dolphins in the entire population in that area. The public outcry over The Cove will hopefully help contribute to awareness of dolphin slaughter.

 

Special Library Association (San Diego Chapter) Interview with Yours Truly

Because it’s pretty important to me to continue learning and improving my skills at my chosen profession, I made an effort this year to overcome my moderate social anxiety and try my hand volunteering for my local professional association chapter. The zoo library doesn’t fit perfectly into the mold of the Special Library Association, but it’s about as close as we come. Certainly it’s more relevant to us than the public-library-centric American Library Association.

I’ve been volunteering for the San Diego chapter’s Archives committee with Daria DeCooman, who asked if she could interview me for an interview series she’s doing for the chapter’s blog. So, my interview is up now! If you’ve ever wanted to hear me answer such burning questions as, “What exactly do you do for the zoo?”, “What kinds of amazing animal encounters have you had on the job?” or maybe “What tips can you offer other info pros seeking jobs in the zoo industry?” then look no further, and head over to the SLA-SD chapter blog.