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Singapore is attempting to reduce its reliance ASTRONOMY
on imported sand for its land reclamation projects.
on the island’s west coast, is from domestic dredging Arecibo
Much of the fill for a new container port in Tuas,
and excavation.
telescope saved
dozens of migratory species, including al-
most all of the 4000 or so surviving Sibe-
rian cranes. But sand dredging campaigns by university
in the middle Yangtze Basin have expanded
the consortium
rapidly since the early 2000s, when such
activities were banned on sections of
lower Yangtze. “Sand mining has signifi-
cantly lowered the water level, especially University of Central Florida
in winter,” says Lai Xijun, an environmen- will take over operations of
tal hydrologist at the Nanjing Institute of
Geography and Limnology in China. Falling iconic radio dish
lake levels can curtail the birds’ access to
aquatic vegetation. And when lake bottom By Daniel Clery
mud dries and hardens, the birds may not
be able to pluck out nutritious tubers. fter a dozen years of uncertainty
In grasslands near Poyang, the kind and about its future, the iconic Arecibo
amount of food the cranes consume “may no radio telescope in Puerto Rico fi-
his team has found. The meadows nour- longer be enough to fuel egg laying” at the nally found a savior last week: a Downloaded from
ish several species, including the dugong, levels the birds managed in the past, says consortium led by the University of
which is in decline. “If they lose their food James Burnham, a conservation biologist at A Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando.
source, the dugong could eventually be gon- the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His The National Science Foundation (NSF)
ers,” Unsworth says. group has documented a worrisome decline in Alexandria, Virginia, had been looking
Another sand mining victim is the in the ratio of juvenile cranes to adults at for another group to shoulder the burden
southern river terrapin, a critically en- Poyang between 2010 and 2012. of paying for the Puerto Rican observatory
dangered turtle in Southeast Asia. Every Scientists in China are calling on the ever since a 2006 review suggested the
year, Chen Pelf Nyok, a biologist with the government to curtail sand mining across agency ramp down its funding to free up http://science.sciencemag.org/
Turtle Conservation Society of Malaysia in the entirety of the Yangtze Basin. In a let- money for newer projects. “We’re delighted
Kemaman, spends a few weeks patrolling ter to Nature last October, Yushun Chen of that there are signatures on paper,” says
sandy beaches near Ma- the Institute of Hydro- Richard Green, director of NSF’s astro-
laysia’s Kemaman River biology in Wuhan, China, nomical sciences division. “That’s a fabu-
during the terrapin’s and colleagues argued lous moment at the end of a long process.”
brief egg-laying season; that sand mining there Astronomers, planetary scientists, and
her team collects and “has destroyed crucial atmospheric physicists all use the 55-year-
incubates eggs to pro- spawning, feeding and old, 305-meter radio dish, the biggest in on March 1, 2018
tect them from poachers. rearing grounds for its the world until a 500-meter telescope in
Three years ago, sand aquatic organisms,” in- China surpassed it in 2016. But its impor-
mining erased a nesting cluding the now-extinct tance has waned. NSF now spends about
site they had monitored. Yangtze river dolphin $8 million a year to run Arecibo, with NASA
“Terrapin habitat cannot and the endangered Yang- pitching in an additional $3.6 million. Un-
be easily replaced,” Chen tze finless porpoise. “We der the agreement signed last week, NSF’s
PHOTO: VERA NIEUWENHUIS ON BEHALF OF PHOTOGRAPHERS WITHOUT BORDERS
says, because female tur- appeal to the Chinese gov- contribution will shrink to $2 million by
tles return each year to lay Sand mining has wiped out nesting sites ernment to clamp down 2022, with UCF and its partners making up
eggs at the same beaches. of critically endangered southern river on this wholesale destruc- the difference. “There was not a moment’s
Also under siege, in terrapins in Southeast Asia. tion of aquatic organisms’ hesitation. It’s a real opportunity,” says
Bangladesh and India, is habitat,” they wrote. Elizabeth Klonoff, UCF’s vice president
the northern river terrapin. “Sand mining “We are not saying we need to stop sand for research.
is one of the biggest problems and reasons mining altogether. We are saying we need UCF will take over management on
why they are so endangered today,” says to minimize the impacts,” says Jack Liu, a 1 April, although an agreement detailing
Peter Praschag, a biologist at the Conserva- biologist at Michigan State University in the transfer of funds must still be finalized,
tion Breeding and Research Center for Tur- East Lansing who is spearheading an effort says James Ulvestad, NSF’s chief officer for
tles in Graz, Austria. “When the sand banks to assemble a comprehensive picture of the research facilities. NSF will retain owner-
are gone, the [terrapin] is gone.” Other crea- damage. Construction standards should be ship of Arecibo and will regularly review
tures directly affected by river sand mining, raised to extend building longevity, he says, UCF’s stewardship of it.
scientists say, are the gharial—a rare croco- and building materials should be recycled. UCF, founded in 1968 to provide techni-
dile found in northern India—and the Gan- Those sand grains on the beach may not be cal staff for NASA’s burgeoning space pro-
ges River dolphin. innumerable after all. j gram at the nearby Kennedy Space Center,
Poyang Lake, a key wintering ground on has teamed up with the Metropolitan Uni-
the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, hosts Christina Larson is a journalist in Beijing. versity in San Juan and Yang Enterprises in

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 2 MARCH 2018 • VOL 359 ISSUE 6379 965
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