MEERKATS ENJOY PEA ICE CUBES IN THE HEATWAVE

With temperatures in London Thursday (25 JULY 2019) breaking records as the hottest July on record – animals at ZSL London Zoo are doing their best to stay cool.

Meerkats, who are originally from southern Africa's Kalahari Desert, have been lying on their bellies in the shade to keep cool. It helps that they have inbuilt sunglasses as the dark circles around their eyes help them to deal with the sun.

They soon jumped up and got moving when a keeper provided some icy treats for them – peas frozen in heart shaped ice cubes.

There are seven meerkats at ZSL London Zoo at the moment, 3 females and 4 males - with the biggest one called Dracula.

But two more meerkats will be on display at the new children's zoo, called Animal Adventure from next Wednesday. They are welcoming two brothers (named Liam and Roo) into shared living quarters with three friendly porcupines (Lena, Polly and Nancy).

London, 25 July 2019

1. Various of meerkats in the shade

2. Close of meerkat in the sun

3. Close of meerkat sign by enclosure

4. Wide of zookeeper bringing in ice treats

5. Various of zookeeper putting down ice treats

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Veronica Heldt, zookeeper:

"Yeah, it kind of has two purposes. So one is a bit of enrichment, so it keeps them busy trying just to keep them cool in this hot weather we've got. Yeah they do like to sunbathe. I think this is a is a little bit too much for them now."

7. Zoom in meerkat eating ice treat

8. Various shots meerkats eating ice treat

9. SOUNDBITE (English) Veronica Heldt, zookeeper:

"Yes these guys are from the Kalahari Desert so they are used to fairly high temperatures but when it does get a little bit too hot they do lie on their stomachs in the shade to try and keep cool. But they do have a great adaptation of a inbuilt pair of sunglasses. They've got dark circles around their eyes which helps a lot on bright sunny days."

10. Zoom in meerkat eating treat out of ice cube tray

11. Wide shot meerkats

12. Close-up meerkat with ice treat

13. Wide shot meerkat on log

14. SOUNDBITE (English) Veronica Heldt, zookeeper:

"So we've got seven in this group here. So they do live in fairly big family groups. So the biggest one in this group here is called Dracula. So you can tell him apart from all the others. And then we do have two other merekats called Liam and Roo and they are going to actually be moving in with our porcupines ready for our new Animal Adventures children's area to be open."

15. Medium shot meerkat with ice treat

16. Various wide shots meerkats on log

17. Medium shot meerkat playing with ice cube tray

18. Zoom in meerkat on log

AP TECHNOLOGY SCRIPT FOR 24/07/2006

COLORADO LAB RECREATES EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

SOURCE: AP TELEVISION NEWS

RESTRICTIONS: TECHNOLOGY CLIENTS ONLY

LENGTH: 04:36

SHOTLIST:

1. "Gothic" town sign

2. Researchers looking at animals through binoculars

3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dan Blumstein, UCLA Ecology professor:

"The Rocky Mountain Biological lab is one of these places where people come and come and come for years and years and years and in terms of creating long-term data sets it is really unprecedented to have such a collection, and a diverse collection, of long term data sets."

4. Wide of Gothic

5. Close-up solar panels

6. Laboratory, on the mountainside

7. Mid cabin

8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Billy Barr, Gothic resident since May 1972:

"I didn't think much of it and then over the years you know suddenly there was twenty, thirty years of animal emergences or returns, coordinated with snow pack and snowfall amounts and so on. And some of the researchers here took that information and started to use it in a more biological manner."

9. Wide view of town and research centres

10. Various views researchers collecting insects

11. Close-up flags showing where plants are being studied

12. Wide view of heaters set up over the field

13. Mid view researcher John Harte inspecting experiment

14. Close-up heater

15. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Harte, Professor of Environmental Science, University of California, Berkley:

"The idea, as you can see, these heaters was to warm an outdoor ecosystem - a real ecosystem - with electric heaters that would provide a low level of heat roughly comparable to what we expect the climate to look like around the year 2050."

16. Various views heater, plants and Harte

17. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Harte, Professor of Environmental Science, University of California, Berkley:

"More than the temperature effect directly, or the drop in the moisture effect, the earlier snow melt has increased the length of the growing season and somewhat paradoxically that has caused a reduction in the total amount of plant production in the heated plots compared to the controls."

18. Mid view of heater, mountain in background

19. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Harte, Professor of Environmental Science, University of California, Berkley:

"It has also given an advantage to certain species that do well under early snow melt conditions and one of those species is the sagebrush which you can see behind me."

20. Mid view of heater experiment

21. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Harte, Professor of Environmental Science, University of California, Berkley:

"Certainly the Alps, the Andes, the Himalaya, the Sierra in California - all of these mountain ranges are almost certainly going to be experiencing the same kinds of transitions that we are projecting from this experiment."

22. Experiment heaters

23. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Harte, Professor of Environmental Science, University of California, Berkley:

"And it occurred to me that we might be seeing, as a result of climate change, a major extinction episode like the one that occurred 65 million years ago at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary - because if you look, you know if you think about global warming you are talking about a four or five degree temperature change - but that is not that different from the temperature difference between the depths of the last ice age and the present."

24. Wide and close-up flowers on river bank

LEAD IN :

Much of Europe and North America is in the grip of a heatwave this week. with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees fahrenheit (38 degrees celsius) in California and similar temperatures in the UK's capital London.

With global warming a concern across the world, scientists based high in Colorado's Rocky Mountain range, are using electric heaters to raise the temperature still further to test nature's response to what meteorologists predict may be average temperatures by the middle of this century.

STORYLINE:

Nestled in a secluded part of Colorado's Rocky Mountain range is the former mining town of Gothic.

Its now home to a number of long range environmental studies that have dramatically demonstrated the effects of climate change.

Ten miles (16 kilometres) north of the nearest town of Crested Butte, is the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (R-M-B-L).

Founded in 1928, R-M-B-L has, for the past seventy eight years, hosted scientists from around the world as they perform high attitude experiments

R-M-B-L is one of North America's leading field stations offering students and residents the opportunity to research and study biological sciences.

Amongst the scientific community, the Rocky Mountain labs are one of only a few in North America that offer a long term view of the environment and the mountain's local ecosystem.

R-M-B-L owns 245 acres (0.9 kilometres square) and more than 50 buildings, including research laboratories, offices, cabins, a library, dormitories, a dining hall, classrooms and visitor centre.

The main lab is surrounded by National Forest and Wilderness which is available to scientists and students for research and experiments.

The R-M-B-L field campus is surrounded by wildflower meadows, waterfalls, mountainside forests and a variety of elevations that make it possible for researchers to study various ecosystems.

Scientists are studying changes in birds, bird disease, flowers, and other species of animals and plants to measure effects of climate change on the local ecosystem.

UCLA Ecology professor, Dan Blumstein, describes the experiments as providing an "unprecedented" collection of basic information that is key to long term studies.

Accountant Billy Barr moved to Gothic as a year-round resident in 1972.

He says a lack of local experiments in the once ghost town of Gothic led him to record everything from the snow fall, snow pack and thaw ,emergence of birds, animals and wildflowers.

In his continuing observations and experiments, Barr found that in his thirty one years on the mountain local temperatures had increased.

Barr passed this information onto the biological researchers.

He believes increasing temperatures have affected animal species, plant life and insects in the valley.

To study the phenomenon of global warming, John Harte, a professor of environmental science at the University of California-Berkley intentionally created hot zones in the valley around Gothic.

He placed electric radiant heaters above selected plots to heat the ground one to three degrees Fahrenheit to simulate global warming.

The heaters are left on day and night, summer and winter.

Professor Harte has found that the heaters have warmed up the soil temperature by four degrees, making the soil dryer and melting the snow an estimated three weeks earlier than unheated areas.

In the heated plots, local flora and wildflowers have suffered and the drought-resistant sagebrush has thrived.

Professor Harte describes this as a major change in the local environment and he believes this would be replicated in mountain ranges around the world as the climate heats up.

With just a four or five degree Fahrenheit temperature (minus 15 degrees centigrade) change Professor Harte believes the globe could be facing another mass extinction event - similar to the one that occurred at the boundary of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods which is believed to have wiped out 85 per cent of all species living on Earth.

As vital as the research being done at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory is to environmental science - development in the nearby areas is also forcing the R-M-B-L scientists to grapple with issues of encroaching human development and land conservation.

The battle is on to preserve the area for its natural beauty as well as its irreplaceable scientific value.

AP TELEVISION NEWS

====

Clients are reminded:

(i) to check the terms of their licence agreements for use of content outside news programming and that further advice and assistance can be obtained from the AP Television News Library on: Tel +44 (0) 20 7482 7482 Email: info@aptnlibrary.com.

(ii) they should check with the applicable collecting society in their Territory regarding the clearance of any sound recording or performance included within the AP Television News service

(iii) they have editorial responsibility for the use of all and any content included within the AP Television News service and for libel, privacy, compliance and third party rights applicable to their Territory.

LEAD IN:

New research in the Indian Ocean shows how two heatwaves between 2015 and 2017 have killed off as much as 70 percent of the coral reefs in the region.

Corals take about a decade to recover from events like this, but UK zoologists suggest global warming means these events could become more frequent.

STORY-LINE:

A kaleidoscope of life and colour set in the crystal clear waters of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the world's ocean beds, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine life on the planet.

However between 2015 and 2016 record temperatures in the southern hemisphere exposed corals around the world to bleaching.

According to many scientific reports it was caused by El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather system.

This is an occasional shift in the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific. It affects weather around the world.

During the back to back heatwaves scuba diving researchers from ZSL (Zoological Society of London) closely examined the waters ten metres deep off the Chagos archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory) near the Seychelles archipelago.

The team was focussed on the hard corals which the 2015 heatwave depleted by 60 percent.

Other corals were also affected, 86 percent of the Acropora was killed, previously it had been the most abundant species.

ZSL's Dr Catherine Head has been part of a team which has been investigating the corals over the past seven years.

She says she saw extensive bleaching which showed the corals were under stress.

"Corals take on this white appearance and that's as a result of corals basically expelling their zooxanthellae which are single celled algae which they live in symbiosis with, and these algae provide the corals with a lot of their energy budget. So when they expel these algae they're able to survive for a period of time, but it depends how long the temperatures stay high and how high they go," says Head.

She says there was particular concern about the staghorn coral:

"The staghorn corals for instance which are known to be more weedy species were highly impacted. So 86 percent of the Staghorn corals were actually affected by these heat waves, whereas some of the more robust corals were less affected," she says.

According to Head the hard corals are like the vital infrastructure of an environment, upon which other species are able to live and thrive.

Head says: "So hard corals are really the foundations of the reefs. They're what build the reefs themselves because they lay down a calcium carbonate skeleton and that actually forms the physical structure of the reef and allows many other creatures to inhabit them, provides them with homes and a food source."

Over the two heatwaves the ZSL researchers found seventy percent of the hard coral structures had been killed.

The findings are reflected in studies carried out by other researchers earlier this year.

Leo Barret is the Project Leader for Marine Conservation Society in the neighbouring Seychelles archipelago (MCSS).

He says: "We lost up to 50 percent of all corals, now three years ago in 2016. This is mainly the branching corals, so we're talking about acropora, for example."

Barret and his colleagues are establishing two several coral nurseries with the aim of rearing stronger corals.

Corals are very important habitats, they support a vast number of other species, some according to Head rely on particular corals to survive:

"The different species of fish that you see for instance would reduce because some fish species are reliant on just one particular coral. We have species of butterfly fish for instance which are corallivours, they eat certain corals, so certain species of coral. So some of these species are likely to die out or at least become locally very rare. So we will see a reduction in the diversity of the fish and the invertebrates which live on the reefs and perhaps also a reduction in the structural complexity of the reef. So some corals contribute more to the calcium carbonate structure than others. And that's what causes this really complex, really interesting, integral structure. So we could see a reduction in that as well."

Scientists are concerned the heatwaves are increasing in regularity as well as becoming more severe.

Head says: "So if these heatwaves become more frequent as they are predicted to do, then the reefs simply won't have a chance to recover. So there are predictions which say perhaps reefs may go functionally extinct by about 2050 should the (carbon) emissions continue as they are at the moment, but really it depends how much we can reduce our carbon emissions as per the Paris Climate Change Agreement to keep sea surface temperatures below 2 degrees."

The areas around the Chagos are becoming protected, development surrounding the area is restricted as it is on other coral reefs across the world.

But scientists like Head say this alone is not enough and cutting carbon emissions is key.

Archive : Cerf Island, Seychelles - 20 February 2019

1. Various underwater shots of coral reef off coast of Cerf Island

2. Wide of beach

3. Close of crab crawling on sand

London, UK - 11 July 2019

4. Various of ZSL researcher Dr. Catherine Head looking at coral exhibit in the aquarium of London Zoo

5. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Catherine Head, researcher, ZSL (Zoological Society of London)

"Corals take on this white appearance and that's as a result of corals basically expelling their zooxanthellae which are single celled algae which they live in symbiosis with, and these algae provide the corals with a lot of their energy budget. So when they expel these algae they're able to survive for a period of time, but it depends how long the temperatures stay high and how high they go."

6. Various of staghorn coral and fish in aquarium tank in London Zoo

7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Catherine Head, researcher, ZSL (Zoological Society of London)

"The staghorn corals for instance which are known to be more weedy species were highly impacted. So 86 percent of the Staghorn corals were actually affected by these heat waves, whereas some of the more robust corals were less affected."

Archive : Cerf Island, Seychelles - 20 February 2019

8. Various underwater shot of Indian Ocean coral reef

London, UK - 11 July 2019

9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Catherine Head, researcher, ZSL (Zoological Society of London)

"So hard corals are really the foundations of the reefs. They're what build the reefs themselves because they lay down a calcium carbonate skeleton and that actually forms the physical structure of the reef and allows many other creatures to inhabit them, provides them with homes and a food source."

Archive : Cerf Island, Seychelles - 20 February 2019

10. Pan right of Leo Barret, Project Leader, Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS), entering water

11. Close of Barret in water

12. SOUNDBITE (English) Leo Barret, Project Leader, Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS):

"We lost up to 50 percent of all corals, now three years ago in 2016. This is mainly the branching corals, so we're talking about acropora, for example."

13. Various of diver cleaning coral nursery

London, UK - 11 July 2019

14. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Catherine Head, researcher, ZSL (Zoological Society of London)

"The different species of fish that you see for instance would reduce because some fish species are reliant on just one particular coral. We have species of butterfly fish for instance which are corallivours, they eat certain corals, so certain species of coral. So some of these species are likely to die out or at least become locally very rare. So we will see a reduction in the diversity of the fish and the invertebrates which live on the reefs and perhaps also a reduction in the structural complexity of the reef. So some corals contribute more to the calcium carbonate structure than others. And that's what causes this really complex, really interesting, integral structure. So we could see a reduction in that as well."

Archive :Cerf Island, Seychelles - 20 February 2019

15. Various underwater shots of coral reef off coast of Cerf Island

London, UK - 11 July 2019

16. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Catherine Head, researcher, ZSL (Zoological Society of London)

"So if these heatwaves become more frequent as they are predicted to do, then the reefs simply won't have a chance to recover. So there are predictions which say perhaps reefs may go functionally extinct by about 2050 should the (carbon) emissions continue as they are at the moment, but really it depends how much we can reduce our carbon emissions as per the Paris Climate Change Agreement to keep sea surface temperatures below 2 degrees."

Archive :Mahe, Seychelles - 20 February 2019

17. Various underwater shots of coral reef off coast of Cerf Island

18. Wide of sunset on beach

19. Close of waves on beach