Cyrene walk with URA
on the wildfilms blog
Beautiful Cyrene
Another trip on the wonderful creations blog
Reef Survey at Sisters Islands
with surprising encounters on the colourful clouds blog
Pulau Sekudu Discoveries
on the discovery blog
Details of the Baya Weaver’s nest
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Ubin romp
on the mountain and sea blog
Starfish suckered
Coral-bashing starfish held in check by fishing ban on Journal Watch Online
That's the cost of a bungalow which developer must forgo to retain tree in present spot
Desmond Ng, The New Paper 22 Jul 08;
THIS is one premium durian tree.
Not because it produces fruit that is of top-grade variety, but because it is sitting on a prime piece of real estate off Holland Road.
And the developer, instead of chopping it down like any profit-driven company, is spending more money to conserve it and include it in its redevelopment plans.
The opportunity cost of keeping the tree?
About $5.5 million - which is the estimated selling price of a new cluster bungalow unit there.
In saving the tree, the company has had to cut down the redevelopment by one unit.
The Link Group's business development manager, Mr Peter Ng, said: 'We want to save it because this is possibly the only durian tree in this area. It's our way of conserving the environment too.
'We think it's environmentally friendly and it will be part of our green features and efforts.'
The tree, which is six storeys tall, occupies a land area just under 700 sq ft, about the size of a three-room Housing Board flat.
It is right smack in the middle of Ban Guan Park estate, which was bought en bloc for $31 million last year. The total area of the parcel of land is about 32,910 sq ft.
The estate now comprises two rows of shophouses, and the tree is situated right in the middle.
With the durian season in full swing, between six and nine durians drop from the tree daily, Mr Ng said. They are usually given to workers in the estate.
The developer has plans to build not more than 20 units of cluster bungalows for the new project. Each unit will have a built-up area of at least 4,500 sq ft.
This yet-to-be-named boutique project is expected to be launched later this year, with each bungalow priced at about $5.5 million.
Mr Ng estimates that, apart from the opportunity cost, his company will have to spend at least $200,000 to build a retaining wall to protect the tree's roots as part of its conservation.
There are plans for safety measures to ensure that future residents will be protected during the durian season, when the fruits start to drop.
Other environmentally-friendly measures they are exploring include solar-powered technology for water heaters and lighting, and ways to recycle rainwater for watering plants.
The developer is also planning to invite all the previous owners back to Ban Guan Park for a farewell celebration and to have a durian party.
Ms Tan Mee Leng, who used to live in the estate, remembered playing under that tree during her primary school days.
That was back in the 1970s.
Ms Tan, 39, and her family used to own a beauty saloon in that estate.
She remembered that the tree was planted by a provision shop owner back in the 1960s.
She said: 'It is good that the developer is keeping the tree. It is something by which residents can remember the estate. I used to play catching around the tree. I've many memories of the estate and that tree'
Knight Frank's research director Mr Nicholas Mak said that, typically, developers will chop down such trees unless required by law to conserve the mature tree.
He said: 'The easiest thing is to destroy it and put in a swimming pool instead. But I guess they can differentiate their project from another in that it has a durian tree as a centrepiece.
'It will tie in with their environmental pitch.'
Letter to the Editor, Business Times 22 Jul 08;
I REFER to the article: 'Subsidies the thorny issue for a sustainable renewable energy market' (BT, July 17), which reported a roundtable discussion on the theme 'Is Singapore ready for renewable energy', held by the LKY School of Public Policy and the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS).
The panel discussion aimed to raise awareness of the challenges and opportunities Singapore faces in its bid to become a clean energy hub.
Opinions differed on some ideas to promote the adoption of renewable energy, most notably the option of feed-in tariffs versus other forms of incentives and technology to kick-start widespread adoption.
But the roundtable succeeded in generating robust debate, ending in a general consensus that much has improved in the last two years.
As the chairman of SEAS, I summarised the panellists' united opinion that:
# Singapore (like most of the world) is not yet quite ready for renewable energy (RE) as it is in its infancy, and there is still much work to do to look at applying RE successfully and find a model to fit into Singapore's open and competitive energy market yet encouraging the test-bedding and showcasing of this technology in Singapore.
# The most cost-effective form of energy conservation today is to improve energy efficiency, and initiatives by BCA and NEA promote this nicely.
# The Singapore government has decided that the clean energy sector, like the water sector, will be one of the growth pillars of the economy and has already initiated significant investments to promote manufacturing and R&D in this sector, but has yet to finalise a model for the successful mass-market adoption of RE.
# To take Singapore ahead of the pack as a clean energy hub, the industry and SEAS would welcome quicker convergence of government and industry views, leading to a clearer policy road map.
SEAS, being an association representing renewable energy and energy efficiency companies, welcomes coverage of this important topic in The Business Times. But we were disappointed at the unbalanced reporting that chose to:
# Sensationalise the debate as 'crossing swords', which implied that industry is at odds with government, while failing to mention the overall consensus on the sector's potential and recognition of the government's positive steps thus far;
# Conclude that the discussion ended on a 'pessimistic note', whereas all parties actually expressed the optimistic view that Singapore is heading in the right direction.
Renewable energy is critical to sustainable development and the mitigation of climate change globally and in Singapore and we look forward to The Business Times' continued interest and support in covering this topic factually.
Edwin Khew
chairman
The Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore
The New Straits Times, Asia One 22 Jul 08;
Perhentian Island in Terengganu is in danger of losing its marine and coral life in 10 years time, no thanks to over development. -NST
But all is not lost, says Reef Check representative in Malaysia Julian Hyde who believes that, with controlled development, the situation will improve.
"There's too much tourism activity in and around Perhentian and it has led the waters around it to lose much of its reef. We have to seriously make efforts to correct things if we want people to continue visiting the island.
"What's the point of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? In 10 years, Perhentian will be gone and so will the tourists."
Hyde said it is okay to have tourism development in and around marine parks but this shouldn't be done at the expense of the environment which tourists and locals want to see.
"Also, authorities must make sure there are no fishing activities near reefs and marine parks. Fishing can be done a distance away from the park which will not affect the reefs.
"Even resorts must make changes, like having better waste management system. What happens on land, including sedimentation from excessive land clearing, affects the water in the marine park," he added.
Corals reefs are affected by sedimentation and coral bleaching. The reefs need clear water and sunshine to survive. Over-fishing in our waters also poses a great threat to coral reefs along with dynamite and trawler fishing.
So which islands are setting a good example in reef conservation? Hyde names Redang in Terengganu and Tioman in Pahang.
Reef Check has offices in 80 countries worldwide and has a registered office in Malaysia since August last year. It works hand-in-hand with Malaysia Underwater, which has some 1,900 divers.
Malaysia Underwater member Izwar Zakri said: "We have sustainable island programmes and we collaborate with Reef Check to do surveys on marine life to find out what's happening to certain types of fish including the garoupa which is killed with spear guns. We then pass the data on to the relevant authorities. The surveys are done twice a year with six to 10 divers taking part."
Hyde and Izwar presented papers on The Role Of Monitoring In Coral Reef Conservation and Sustainable Island Development at the recently concluded Malaysia International Dive Expo 2008 (Mide).
Yahoo News 21 Jul 08;
More than half the birds, amphibians and mammals found only in the Philippines are either threatened or nearly extinct, the environment and natural resources department said Monday.
The tropical southeast Asian archipelago is the sole host to 1,137 animal species and 14,000 species of plants, the government agency said in a statement.
"Worldwide, we rank fifth in the number of plant species. We also rank fourth in bird endemism, which means that these birds are found only in the Philippines," Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Joselito Atienza said.
However, the Philippines is also one of the top biodiversity hot spots, with 592 endemic species of amphibians, birds and mammals considered "threatened or endangered," Atienza said.
In addition 227 endemic species of flowering plants are listed in the "Red List" of "critically endangered" species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The department's own "Red List" of threatened, endangered or vulnerable fauna includes 215 species of birds, 96 mammals, and five reptiles.
The department did not give any list for the other threatened or near-extinct animals.
The most famous Philippine fauna in the IUCN Red List are a dwarf buffalo called the tamaraw, found only on the central island of Mindoro, and the Philippine eagle, one of the largest in the world and found only on Mindanao island.
Mindanao police said last week that they arrested a farmer who shot and ate a Philippine eagle that had been released from a raptor conservation project just four months earlier.
The giant bird, one of only 250 estimated to be still alive, had been shot and wounded in 2006 but was nursed back to health by eagle conservationists and released back into the wild earlier this year.
ScienceDaily 21 Jul 08;
The replanting of mangroves on the coasts of the Philippines could help save many of the lives lost in the 20-30 typhoons that hit the islands annually.
This is one of the numerous reasons for the ‘urgent need for immediate and massive mangrove replanting’ that J.H. Primavera from the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center and J.M.A. Esteban from De La Salle University, both in the Philippines.
The study presents an analysis on a range of programs demonstrating that low-cost locally led projects have a much higher rate of success than high-cost government-led projects.
The mangrove forests along the Philippines’ 36,300 km of coastline play an important role in fisheries, forestry and wildlife as well as providing protection from typhoons and storm surges, erosion and floods. In the last century, they have declined from 450,000 ha to 120,000 ha, mostly due to their development into culture ponds. This has led to many replanting initiatives ranging from small community projects to large scale international development assistance programs. During this time planting costs have escalated from $100/ha to >$500/ha, mainly due to the overhead costs of large-scale projects. Unfortunately, despite heavy funding, the majority of these replanting schemes have been unsuccessful with only 10-20 percent of the mangroves replanted surviving.
In a comparison of a number of replanting initiatives, the authors found that the most successful projects had been low budget and locally led. One World Bank-sponsored project costing $38 million for coastal and nearshore fisheries (in addition to agriculture, forestry, livelihood and infrastructure subprojects) reported only a 35 percent survival rate for the mangroves planted. Conversely, a small £23,100 project implemented by a local government unit in co-operation with a people’s organization had a mangrove survival rate of 97 percent. Primavera and Esteban point out that the community involved had a shared interest in the survival of the mangroves and lived next to the plantation site therefore making maintenance easy.
They also noted a distinct lack of ecological knowledge as the wrong species of mangrove is consistently being planted in inappropriate sites. The sheltered areas which have been largely converted to fishponds were historically home to the mangrove forests. These ponds are theoretically covered by legal title if privately owned. This has led to the most popular species of mangrove, Rhizophora, being planted on exposed coastlines, where there are no ownership issues, despite its inability to withstand wave action.
The authors point out that many of these government-leased ponds have no legal basis and many are underutilized or have been abandoned. They challenge the Philippine government to ‘muster enough political will to make abandoned, undeveloped and otherwise illegal culture ponds available for mangrove rehabilitation’. Planting in these more appropriate sites, together with the use of hardier species such as S. alba and A. marina in more exposed areas, would have a significant effect on survival rates.
Primavera and Esteban conclude that the ecological benefits of mangrove rehabilitation involve planting the correct species on suitable sites, the involvement and commitment of the community and grant of tenure. Funding appears to be of secondary importance.
How to replant a mangrove forest: local, low-cost initiatives prove most successful
Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com 23 Jul 08;
Mangrove replanting and rehabilitation has become a widespread and important environmental initiative worldwide. Mangrove forests play key ecological roles, including sustaining fish populations and other wildlife, preventing erosion along coastlines, and acting as an overall carbon sink. Furthermore, mangroves have received attention lately for their role in providing an effective buffer against typhoons. In light of the many replanting initiatives now occurring, researchers J.H. Primavera and J.M.A. Esteban conducted a study of the overall effectiveness of different mangrove rehabilitation schemes. Their findings show that small, local, and generally cheaper initiatives have a higher success rate over large costly government and international programs.
The researchers chose the Philippines as their subject area. A nation of over 7,000 islands, the Philippines is a prime place for mangrove replanting, since the country has cut down over two-thirds of its mangroves in the past century. Most of this was due to fish and shrimp culture ponds, which now cover 232,000 hectares, compared with the 120,000 hectares of remaining mangroves.
Comparing eight different mangrove replanting initiatives in the Philippines, the authors found a lot of money was being spent on programs with low success rates: most initiatives showed only a 10-20 percent survival rate of planted mangroves. A World Bank project has spent 38 million on various coastal projects, including replanting mangroves, but despite the funds spent, their success rate—35 percent—was only slightly higher than average. Local programs with community-involvement have proven far more successful; one local government program reported a survival rate of 97 percent and spent a bargain-rate of just over 23,000 pounds ($45,000). Costs were cut and the survival rate raised, because adjacent communities invested time and energy into maintaining the mangroves.
A lack of knowledge also plagued larger initiatives. Sites that had never seen mangroves before were planted with poor success. A popular species, Rhizophora, was planted on sandy open coasts, in favor of two species more suited to that environment. Not being able to tolerate ocean waves, the trees did not survive.
A lack of political willpower has also proven paramount in the Philippines' unsuccessful mangrove programs. Most of the suitable areas for mangroves are now culture ponds; some of these ponds are abandoned or underused, yet so far the government has failed lacked the political will to take-back such areas for mangrove cultivation. Instead, they continue to plant mangroves on seagrass beds and tidal flats where mangroves have never survived.
The authors believe that the Philippines is in 'urgent need for immediate and massive mangrove replanting'. To create an effective barrier against typhoons and a stable environment, the authors suggest implementing a plan that would make the ratio of mangroves to culture ponds 4 to 1, where now culture ponds possess nearly double the land of mangroves. For a nation that sees 20-30 typhoons a year, mangroves could save lives and mitigate property damage. For example, in June of this year, the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Fengshen which destroyed over 50,000 homes, cost over 4.27 billion pesos, and killed 598 people.
Eliza Barclay, National Geographic News 21 Jul 08;
The loss of Mexico's coastal mangrove forests to development is threatening the country's multimillion-dollar fishing industry, according to a new study.
Around Mexico's Gulf of California—between Baja Peninsula and the west coast of the mainland—mangroves are being destroyed to make way for high-end tourism resorts, marinas, and controversial industrial shrimp farms.
The government has overvalued such development and grossly undervalued the vital role mangroves play in supporting the region's U.S. $19-million-dollar fishing industry, the report said.
The Gulf of California harbors more than a hundred fish species, 30 percent of which depend on mangroves for survival.
In particular, the roots of the saltwater forests serve as sanctuaries and nurseries for commercial fish species such as snapper, snook, and mullet.
The study, led by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Money Trees
In the Gulf of California, 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of coastal mangrove helps produce an average of $37,500 worth of harvestable fish and crab species annually, the study said.
Over the productive life of a mangrove forest, more than 30 years, 1 hectare is worth $600,000.
When considering the ecological cost of development, the Mexican National Forest Commission requires developers to pay $1,020 per hectare. Over the course of ten years, this would be 300 times less than what that hectare is actually worth to fisheries, researchers say.
The research is one of the first quantitative analyses of the economic benefits of mangroves to fisheries.
"We can plant mangrove seedlings but we can't bring back all the biodiversity and complexities, and seldom can we bring back all the ecosystem services that they provide," said Enric Sala, a study co-author and marine ecologist formerly at Scripps and now a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)
Thirteen fishing regions in the gulf produced an average of 11,500 tons of mangrove-derived fish and blue crab a year between 2001 and 2005, generating nearly $19 million for local fishers, the study found.
Worldwide, mangrove benefits have been estimated at $1.68 billion.
"Up to now, mangroves have only been recognized for their aesthetic value for high-end tourism and development," said Miguel Àngel Vargas of Pronatura Noroeste, the regional arm of the Mexican conservation organization Pronatura.
"Now we know they form the base of the region's fishing industry as well," Vargas said.
Acre for Acre
The country's mangroves, which currently encompass 2.2 million acres (886,760 hectares), are being lost to development at a rate of 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) annually, according to the environmental group Greenpeace Mexico.
In an attempt to slow the destruction, Mexican President Felipe Calderón approved changes to the national General Wildlife Law in February 2007 that prohibit the "removal, refilling, transplant, pruning, or any project or activity that affects the integrity of the hydrologic flow of the mangrove, of the ecosystem and its zone of influence."
Conservationists applauded the change. But the country's powerful tourism industry—which has billions of dollars invested in future resorts sited on or near mangroves—is taking legal action in hopes of being granted exemptions from the law, according to news reports.
The Scripps study has broad implications for coastal conservation policy in Mexico, according to the paper's authors, who say it will give communities new ammunition to defend their fishing grounds from development.
"So far the fishery sector has not spoken out about the value of the mangroves," said Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, the study's lead author and a marine biologist at the Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation in San Diego.
"It's very important that they come to the discussion table to start saying how important mangroves are for food production and economic benefits for families," Aburto-Oropeza said.
The authors suggest that if mangroves are to be converted for development, then fishers dependent on the resources should be paid.
Mexico's National Fisheries and Aquaculture Commission (CONAPESCA) does not offer compensation to communities that lose fishing resources when mangroves are razed.
Ral Villaseor is deputy director of regulations for CONAPESCA.
"CONAPESCA recognizes the environmental services of the mangroves, but it is not able to compensate coastal communities for their protection," he said, "given that the mangrove is not itself a fishing resource."
ABC 21 Jul 08;
A crackdown on abalone poaching on the New South Wales south coast has netted 10,000 illegally caught abalone this year and at least one repeat offender has been jailed.
NSW Fisheries says poaching has been on the rise particularly since recreational bag limits and commercial quotas were drastically cut.
Fisheries investigator Nick Schroder says there is a healthy black market for the shellfish.
"Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne all have thriving black markets, they're paying as much as $75 a kilo for black market fish," he said.
"We're dealing with very well-organised syndicates, they learn from each time we apprehend them.
"They're using methods such as dummy runs, getting dropped off, they're paying what we call cockatoos or lookouts, on the rocks."
John Lichfield, The Independent 21 Jul 08;
Baby oysters are dying in their millions along the French coast from Normandy to the Mediterranean, puzzling scientists and plunging France's shellfish industry into crisis.
On some parts of the Norman and Mediterranean coast, the entire one-year-old "class" of juvenile oysters, due to be eaten by Christmas 2009, has died in the space of a few days.
A number of theories have been put forward by marine biologists and oyster farmers, mostly linked to a slight rise in the temperature of the seas around western Europe this summer. Has some form of toxic algae reached French waters? If so, why are adolescent and adult oysters apparently unaffected? Are rapid changes in water temperature damaging to baby oysters? If so, why are some oyster parcs, or beds, devastated while others nearby are relatively immune?
One theory is that the warmer sea water – up to 1C higher than normal – has generated abnormal quantities of the microscopic plankton eaten by oysters. The baby shellfish, aged from 12 to 18 months, may have been dying of over-eating.
The French Agriculture and Fisheries minister, Michel Barnier, has commissioned the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) to "mobilise all its resources" to identify the cause or, more likely, combination of causes. The government is expected to announce emergency aid to oyster producers to enable them to buy new oyster fry or "larva".
"The losses run to tens of millions of euros," said Joseph Costard, an oyster producer at Saint-Vaast in Normandy and president of the Norman association of shellfish producers. "We are going to have to change completely the way we do things and spread out the harvesting of the [older oysters] over two or three seasons."
Martial Monnier, director general of the national shellfish producers' body, the Comité National de la Conchyliculture, said there were fears that the mysterious ailment could spread to mature oysters. "We have a serious, serious problem," he said "There is death rate of young oysters of between 40 and 100 per cent, compared to, at worst, 30 per cent in a normal year. It is only when the next neap tides arrive that we will know whether or not the adult oysters have been affected."
The crisis is the worst to hit the French oyster industry – Europe's largest – since disease all but wiped out the native European or "Portuguese" oyster 30 years ago. Since then almost all oyster farms in Europe have been restocked with the Pacific "creuse" oyster from Japan and British Columbia. The French government and shellfish producers say the death of baby oysters should not discourage people from eating full-size oysters. Nothing remotely threatening to humans has been discovered. But the fisheries minister, M. Barnier, has asked the food safety agency, AFSSA, to investigate.
Kate Ravilious, National Geographic News 21 Jul 08;
More than a hundred bat species have been found packed into about five acres (two hectares) of Ecuadorian rain forest.
While the species found are not new, the diverse mélange—in Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the eastern part of the country—marks the highest number of bat species ever recorded in one place, researchers report.
Tropical rain forests such as Tiputini offer bats a plentiful menu.
Some of the flying mammals—munch on frogs, insects, fruit, and nectar. Others have a taste for fish. And for vampire bats, only a blood meal will satisfy.
Katja Rex, of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, and colleagues spent several months capturing bats and identifying species in three tropical rain forest locations: La Selva Biological Station, a lowland rain forest in Costa Rica; Podocarpus National Park, a highland rain forest in southern Ecuador; and Tiputini.
Tropical Boon
Though Tiputini had the highest number of bat species, the other stations also displayed rich diversity.
The authors describe 72 species at La Selva and more than 30 from Podocarpus in a recent issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
By comparison, the number of bat species in temperate regions rarely climbs into double figures.
David Hill, a bat expert from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, was not involved with the study.
"To have one hundred species in such a small area is remarkable, as it represents 9 percent of all bat species," Hill said.
The high level of biodiversity in tropical rain forests gives bats an advantage, experts say.
"These bats will exploit fruit, nectar, insects, blood, and even small vertebrates, and this wide variety of food types may be the key to the high species richness there," said Gareth Jones, a bat expert from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
Diverse Talents
Rex and her colleagues also observed the different skills displayed among the many bat species.
"Fish-eating bats skim the surface of waters with their legs and detect fish that come to the surface using their echolocation [biological sonar] calls. They catch them using their large feet," said Christian Voigt, Rex's Ph.D supervisor, also from the Leibniz Institute.
Frog-eating bats listen for the calls of male frogs to find their prey, and vampire bats have razor-sharp teeth to slice through the skin of their victims.
Many of the bats are also important seed dispersers and pollinators, playing an essential role in the productivity of the forest.
Unfortunately the outlook doesn't look so sunny for some of the exotic bats.
Roads built for oil prospecting and easy access to the forest encourages illegal logging, for example.
"Oil exploration and other forms of human disturbance are a great worry, because they inevitably lead to habitat fragmentation and degradation," the University of Sussex's Hill said.
"This reduces the complexity of the environment and consequently reduces the diversity of species that are able to coexist," he said.
Human influences could prove fatal for bats, Voight added. "Rain forest degradation has the potential to make most tropical bat species become extinct."
Carlos Tabja, Reuters 21 Jul 08;
PUCALLPA, Peru (Reuters) - Delia Pacaya grew up in Peru's Amazon in a nomadic tribe that shunned contact with outsiders, but when loggers invaded the land she fled the virgin rain forest and settled in a tiny village.
Like many others born in the jungle, Pacaya says she felt threatened by loggers, who often cut beyond the reach of police. The result, environmental and human rights groups say, is the destruction of the Amazon and ancient tribal life.
"There were a lot of loggers and we were afraid," said Pacaya, now in her 20s, speaking Chitonawa and sitting in a three-sided hut, made from palm leaves, where her young son played and chickens pecked at the dirt floor.
Pacaya left her jungle tribe a decade ago and now farms a small plot on the Murunahua nature reserve in Peru's northeastern region of Ucayali. Most trappings of modern life escape her but some others, like nail polish and T-shirts, do not.
Although experts do not know for sure how many indigenous people have abandoned the rain forest and wound up in towns in recent years, they say former tribe members struggle to adapt and often fall to illnesses that their people had never before been exposed to.
"Uncontacted communities are in a very difficult situation. Most of them are being encroached on by loggers, among others, and their lives are in danger," said Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist who often works with AIDESEP, a rights group.
Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half are thought to live along the Brazil-Peru border. In May, photographs taken near the border showed two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at an aircraft, apparently feeling threatened.
The photos reignited a debate between rights organizations and the government at a time when Peru is encouraging companies to explore for oil and gas in the jungle.
Peru's state-run energy agency Perupetro recently said it would exclude areas where isolated communities live from an auction of oil and gas lots. It was a sharp turnaround for Perupetro, which had previously cast doubt on the existence of remote jungle tribes.
Rights advocates applaud the move but said Peru must do more to prevent encroachment that threatens to expose tribes to deadly diseases. They say the government's plans fall short as nomadic tribes travel in and out of protected parks and enforcement is lax.
ILLEGAL LOGGING
Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous for Peru's Indians. More than half of the Murunahua tribe died of colds and other illnesses after they were contacted by development workers for the first time in 1996.
An aerial shot of the Murunahua nature reserve shows circular spots of downed trees that scar an otherwise lush, green canopy.
Corruption, inadequate policing, poor local cooperation and rampant rural poverty all encourage illegal logging, said INRENA, the agency charged with protecting Peru's resources.
The government insists it is doing its best.
"People say Peru isn't interested in taking care of the tribes ... but we are," said Ronald Ibarra, director of indigenous affairs at the ministry for social development.
Huertas spoke of the dangers to indigenous groups as she stood next to a river that loggers use to move fallen trunks from the jungle to a plant where they are collected, processed and shipped.
Once trees arrive at the yard, it is tough to know where they came from, hindering efforts to combat illegal logging.
A policeman patrolling a processing plant near Pucallpa said both kinds of wood move through the yard, a sprawling complex piled high with cut lumber and mud-covered tractors.
"Some of it's legal, some of it's illegal," he said, declining to give his name.
(Writing by Dana Ford; Editing by Terry Wade and Kieran Murray)
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 22 Jul 08;
Britain imports more illegal timber than almost any other country in Europe, a new report claims.
Almost one-fifth of wood imported into the EU in 2006 came from illegal sources, according to WWF. And the UK imported 3.5m cubic metres of illegal wood making it the second biggest importer behind Finland.
This included the biggest quantities of furniture, finished wood products, sawn wood and plywood of all EU states.
WWF claims that in total the EU imported between 26.5m and 31m cubic metres of illegal wood and related products in 2006, equal to the total amount of wood harvested in Poland in the same year. Most came from Russia, Indonesia and China.
The conservation organisation claims its findings demonstrated the need for stronger European laws to prevent illegal wood entering EU markets.
Julia Young, manager of the Forest and Trade Network at WWF-UK, said: "Illegal logging reduces the protective function of forests which frequently increases the risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides and leads to deforestation, one of the main causes for climate change.
"Illegal logging also pushes down wood prices leading to major economic losses for the producer states, industries and local communities.
"As the UK clearly plays a major role in fuelling this illegal trade, the Government needs to ensure the EU urgently introduces legislation to prevent illegal timber entering the EU - and thereby help protect the world's last remaining forests."
The study, carried out by WWF in Germany, showed an estimated 23 per cent of wood-based products from illegal or suspect sources were imported from Eastern Europe, 40 per cent from South-East Asia, 30 per cent from Latin America and 36 per cent to 56 per cent from Africa. Finland, UK, Germany and Italy were the main destinations..
WWF says the findings highlights the ineffectiveness of the existing voluntary scheme, the EU Forest and Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Licensing Scheme, set up to tackle illegal logging.
WWF called for the introduction of an EU law to guarantee that only legal wood is sold in the European market. Traders would have to prove the origin and legality of wood and face a penalty for any violation.
The European Commission is expected to make a proposal on this issue within the next few months.
About 20 percent of EU timber illegal or suspect: report
Reuters 21 Jul 08;
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Nearly a fifth of wood imported into the European Union has been harvested illegally or comes from suspect sources, mostly in Russia, Indonesia and China, according to a report by environmental group WWF.
In all, 40 percent of wood-based products from southeast Asia, 30 percent from Latin America and over 36 percent of those from Africa originated from illegal or suspect sources, said the report on 2006 imports.
Major importers were Finland, Britain, Germany and Italy, it added.
"Illegal logging destroys the protective function of forests, increasing risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides, and leads to deforestation, one of the main causes for climate change," said WWF forestry campaigner Anke Schulmeister.
The report said illegal timber hit local economies by pushing down timber prices, and called for tough EU action to clamp down on the trade.
The EU's executive body will adopt proposals in September aimed at curbing the trade by demanding certificates proving timber imported into the EU is legally harvested.
The WWF report said the main trader was Russia with 10.4 million cubic meters of illegal or suspicious wood transferred to EU countries in 2006, almost half of it via processing plants in Finland.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison; Editing by Catherine Evans)
WWF blasts EU's illegal wood imports, led by Finland
Yahoo News 22 Jul 08;
The World Wildlife Fund on Tuesday criticised the European Union's illegal wood imports, singling out Finland as the top offender and calling for EU-wide legislation to tackle the issue.
"Illegal logging destroys the protective function of forests, increasing risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides and leads to deforestation, one of the main causes for climate change," WWF forest policy officer Anke Schulmeister said in a statement.
Illegal tree cutting also pushes timber prices lower, hurting companies, countries and local economies, she added.
In 2006, the EU imported some 30 million cubic metres of wood or wood products that were of illegal origin, mainly from Russia, China and Indonesia, according to the WWF report "Illegal Wood for the European Market."
"WWF is calling for additional legislation at the European level to stop the trade in illegal timber and wood products within the EU," the group said.
The bloc needs to "put the onus on companies which trade in wood products to demonstrate compliance with the law" and show that their raw material comes from legitimate sources, it added.
Finland, which is home to several of the world's largest paper makers, is the biggest importer of Russian wood to Europe, but legitimate imports into the Nordic country have fallen since Moscow began gradually ratcheting up export duties in 2006.
According to WWF, some 3.7 million cubic metres of Russian roundwood was illegally imported into Finland that year, corresponding to about 14 percent of all EU wood imports "based on products derived from illegal sources."
The conservation group acknowledged that some large Finnish forestry groups have gone to great lengths to exclude illegal wood from their production chain. However, it maintained that other companies with limited ability to exclude such timber "continue their operations, seemingly doing virtually nothing to improve."
WWF meanwhile listed Britain, Germany and Italy as the largest importers of furniture and other wood products from Asia, including China and Indonesia, estimating that about 40 percent of these products originated from illegal logging.
Heather Whipps, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 21 Jul 08;
Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today.
Boobies and lava gulls and giant tortoises, oh my!
The Galapagos Islands host a faunal freak show of rare animal species endemic only to those volcanic specks isolated in the Pacific Ocean. While still very interesting to ecologists today, in the 19th century the life there proved key in Charles Darwin's seminal study on the evolution of species.
Darwin (and some of his colleagues) had suspicions about the nature of speciation in years' prior and solidified his theories in the years that followed, but it was the fantastic menagerie of the Galapagos that ultimately lit the fire under the theory of natural selection, which changed biology forever and fuels debates still today.
Isolated islands created unique species
When the young British naturalist landed in the Galapagos at San Cristobal Island in 1835, he compared the hot and dusty place to the infernos of hell, and mused at the strange animals that seemed unafraid of their new human visitors.
Indeed, most of the Galapagos wildlife had limited contact with humans and, therefore, no reason to be afraid.
When the Galapagos were first spotted by humans in 1535, its animals had already spent thousands of years adapting and readapting to their island home. Located 500 miles off the western coast of South America, the unique conditions of the isolated islands created a variety of species unlike any others across the globe, differing slightly even from island to island. Giant tortoises, for example, grew so large there because their smaller ancestors that first swam over from the mainland no longer had predators to hide from, scientists think.
Darwin observed the giant tortoises (and, unfortunately, ate many of them), iguanas and sea lions on the Galapagos, but it was the enormous variety of birds on the islands that especially captured his attention. Eighty-five percent of Galapagos birds can't be found anywhere else, including the famous finches.
Beaks developed from natural selection
Thirteen species of finch are endemic to the Galapagos Islands, similar in look except for the distinct shapes and sizes of their beaks. The different beaks allow them to take advantage of the unique food sources of their particular island. Some eat like woodpeckers, others use sticks to dig insects out of holes, and still others are nourished by ticks and mites plucked from the backs of tortoises.
Over five weeks in 1835, Darwin made careful observations of the peculiar birds on each island, but did not have his great eureka! moment about evolution while on the Galapagos, contrary to popular belief.
It was only in 1839, after comparing his notes with fellow scientists, that Darwin's observations jelled into a theory with a name - natural selection. Each living thing that Darwin catalogued had adapted to its specific environment over many generations because its ancestor possessed characteristics favorable to its survival and the survival of its offspring, he supposed.
The idea that animals develop gradually from simpler to more complex organisms was not a new one - naturalists had proposed that theory in the late 18th century - but it was the "how" of this transformation that eluded scientists. Natural selection, as displayed in real time in the Galapagos Islands, connected the dots.
With the groundwork essentially laid, Darwin went about collecting evidence to support the then heretical notion that his observations in the Galapagos could be applied to all animals, including humans. It took 20 more years before he felt comfortable enough to publish his work in "The Origin of Species."
Yahoo News 21 Jul 08;
Nutrients carried by the Amazon River help create a carbon sink deep in the Atlantic Ocean, a study released Monday has found.
The key ingredients transported by the river are iron and phosphorus.
These elements are all that an organism called a diazotroph needs to capture nitrogen and carbon from the air and transform them into organic solids that then sink to the ocean floor.
Researchers from the United States, Greece and England found that the Amazon carries these elements hundreds of kilometers into the ocean and has an impact on the carbon and nitrogen cycles much farther afield than previously thought.
It is likely that other rivers also help seed carbon sequestering in the world's oceans, wrote senior author Doug Capone of the University of Southern California.
The findings may help scientists find the best places to test seeding the ocean with iron, a controversial practice that some biologists believe could help mitigate climate change.
There are concerns that iron fertilization could harm sea life and potentially lead to increased production of other greenhouse gases, Capone said.
But while iron fertilization in cooler waters could be undermined by the upward flow of water from the depths, tropical waters could keep captured carbon solids from returning to the surface, he said.
"If we choose as a human society to fertilize areas of the oceans, these are the places that probably would get a lot more bang for the buck in terms of iron fertilization than we would at high latitudes," Capone said.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Business Times 27 Jul 08;
MANILA - The era of cheap food for Asia is over as surging demand, supply problems and the growing production of biofuels will keep food prices high, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned.
In its latest Asia Economic Monitor report on Tuesday, the Manila-based lender warned that while previous food price surges were 'cyclical and temporary', the higher prices now being seen were caused by permanent changes.
'This time, the impetus appears to come from persistently rising demand ... primarily from rapidly-growing emerging market economies, suggesting that there is a structural and permanent trend at work,' the report said.
The ADB cited the average 7.4 per cent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in Asia since 2000, saying it had created a 'structural shift in demand, particularly for food'. Higher incomes have resulted in increased food consumption and a greater demand for meat, which bolsters the need for grain and feed stock.
This shift comes as agricultural productivity remains low or stagnant, with production unable to meet the demand due to low capitalisation and underinvestment in agricultural research and development, the bank said.
Growing urbanisation has also created competing demands for land and water, while rising energy prices have increased the costs of fertiliser, irrigation and food transport by 30-50 per cent in the past year, it said.
Production of biofuels in Europe and the United States, frequently supported by government subsidies, have also driven up the prices of agricultural commodities such as corn, forcing increased use of substitutes like soybean and palm oil.
The ADB said public hoarding, through export bans and restrictions in China, Thailand and Vietnam, and panic-buying in the Philippines, had contributed to the price pressures.
Because only 10 per cent of total rice production is traded internationally, any news of supply disruptions, especially in big producer countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, quickly set off price spikes, the bank said.
Strong economic growth is likely to keep demand on the rise, while biofuel production is expected to grow. -- AFP
Chris McGreal, The Guardian 21 Jul 08;
Millions of Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation after the widespread failure of the latest harvest brought on by the government's disastrous mishandling of land redistribution, and food shortages in the shops caused by hyperinflation.
The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people require food aid immediately because they have harvested little or nothing in recent weeks. It has warned that up to 5 million will need assistance in the coming months. A third of the population is chronically malnourished.
But attempts to assist them are blocked by a ban on foreign aid agencies working in rural areas after President Robert Mugabe said they were fronts for "regime change" by Britain and the US.
Aid workers say the first signs of looming famine are evident, with significant population movements and children arriving at hospitals suffering from kwashiorkor (a form of malnutrition). Many families are reduced to one meal a day, with some living on fruit berries.
The UN says that it has seen a significant rise in the number of entire families fleeing to South Africa.
Food availability has also been hit by hyperinflation, which economists say runs above 10m%. The central bank is issuing a $100bn note today, the highest denomination to date but worth less than 10p.
The crisis is adding to the pressure on Mugabe to cede power to his opponents and save his country from further disaster.
But he defiantly continues to blame the shortages on an anti-government conspiracy, accusing companies of deliberately withholding fertiliser and other agricultural necessities. He has threatened to jail those he says are responsible.
At the weekend, the government said it was preparing to seize foreign-owned firms it accuses of supporting sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders.
A medical worker in Matabeleland, where the maize crop failure was almost total, said that there were widespread food shortages and what did arrive was mostly given to members of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
"The situation is extremely severe in Matabeleland. Hunger is extreme. There are the odd maize deliveries but it only goes to people with Zanu cards. Even where there is food people can't afford it," she said.
"In St Luke's hospital in Lupane there are 16 children aged five to 12 with kwashiorkor. That's significant because in children of that age it's usually not related to HIV. It's almost certainly because of malnutrition and it's only the tip of the iceberg. These are the ones who made it to hospital. Most wouldn't."
"You see other signs that people are not getting enough to eat. There's an avalanche of people leaving."
In the Masvingo area in the east, witnesses say newly settled farmers are abandoning their land after the crop failures and making for towns. A Zimbabwean official in the area said large numbers of people were now resorting to desperate measures to survive including selling off precious livestock that often represented the bulk of a family's wealth.
"It is difficult to stop people leaving the land," he said. "People are selling livestock. They get five kilos of maize for two goats. For a cow it's 300 kilos of maize."
"People are no longer interested in politics. They are talking about how to survive, how to get money or food."
A report last month by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food Programme estimated that the recent maize harvest was down 28% on last year, which itself fell 44% on 2006.
The former white-owned farms are producing just 10% of the food they did a decade ago and long-established communal farmers, who used to grow the bulk of Zimbabwe's maize supply, are now growing about 25% of former production.
The report blames the crop failure on a combination of poor weather, a collapse in productivity on the redistributed white-owned farms and other government policies that have helped created shortages of seeds and fertiliser, and led to the collapse of infrastructure such as power and irrigation. It says unrealistic price controls have undermined the market.
The FAO/WFP report says that 2 million people will need assistance in the coming weeks as what remains of their food stocks runs out.
That number will rise to to 5.1 million early next year.
A WFP spokesman, Richard Lee, said that the principal obstacle to delivering food was the ban on foreign aid organisations that handle distribution on the ground. "The issue is the continuing ban on NGO activity. We were rounding up 300,000 of the most vulnerable people but because of the restrictions on NGOs we are only able to reach about 135,000 people. NGOs are absolutely crucial to our ability to deliver," he said.
The UN is pressing the government to lift the ban, although some foreign aid agencies feel it is not pushing hard enough.
Lee said that the WFP was hearing anecdotal evidence "that the situation is worrying in many areas".
"We're hearing these sorts of stories about reduction in meals earlier than usual. It is worrying that it is happening so close to the harvest. It's not Ethiopia in the mid-80s but clearly it is very worrying," he said.
Agriculturalists warn that the situation is not likely to improve with the next harvest. Zimbabwe requires 27,000 tonnes of maize seed for a season's planting. This year's yield looks likely to fall as low as 2,500 tonnes, leaving farmers with little to plant.
A transport gear change could see vehicles given away free, with revenue made from selling motorists contracts to supply power
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent 20 Jul 08;
Gordon Brown is to launch the biggest revolution in the way Britons drive since the development of the internal combustion engine. He will meet manufacturers this week to try to persuade them to mass-produce electric cars, and is considering a remarkable plan to sell the cars cheap, together with their fuel, that is modelled on mobile-phone contracts.
The scheme, which has already been taken up by Israel and Denmark, would sell heavily subsidised vehicles – or even give them away – in return for contracts to buy the electricity to charge them.
Its inventor, a Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, believes it will at least halve the cost of motoring while dramatically reducing one of the main sources of the pollution that causes global warming.
The Prime Minister – who will reveal some of his thinking at the Motor Show this week – wants all new cars sold in Britain to be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2020, and is trying to enlist leaders of the motor industry because he wants "to see those cars manufactured in Britain".
He also wants to "incentivise" the rapid changeover to electric vehicles in Britain, and so is studying the mould-breaking scheme being promoted by the 38-year-old entrepreneur, Shai Agassi, backed by $200m (£100m) of venture capital. Under the scheme – the most advanced of several proposals the Government is considering – motorists would be provided with cars just as mobile-phone customers now get their handsets. In return, they would take out a contract for a maximum number of miles.
The contract would entitle them to receive the electricity, either by plugging into any one of hundreds of thousands of recharge points across the country, or by exchanging flat batteries for fully charged ones. At present, the cars' range is likely to be only about 100 miles between recharges, which would take about two hours, so, on longer journeys, motorists would pop into filling stations for a three-minute battery exchange.
However, the plan will only help to fight climate change if the electricity comes not from fossil fuels, but from nuclear or renewable energy.
Catherine Boyle, The Times 21 Jul 08;
A British company may have the answer to soaring petrol prices after it claimed yesterday to have become the first to have found a way to make fuel from rubbish.
Ineos, the chemicals company, said that it had patented a method of producing fuel from municipal solid waste, agricultural waste and organic commercial waste.
The company claims that it can produce about 400 litres (90 gallons) of ethanol from one tonne of dry waste. The new process works by heating the waste to produce gases, then feeding the gases to bacteria, which produce ethanol that can be purified into a fuel.
Ineos plans to sell the environmental product in industrial quantities by the end of 2010. Peter Williams, the chief executive of Ineos Bio, said: “This should mean that, unlike with other biofuels, we won’t have to make the choice between food and fuel.”
The development of fuel from waste could be a relief for motorists who have watched pump prices soar in the past year to an average of 133.3p per litre of diesel.
The bioethanol that Ineos produces will have to be combined with a fossil fuel, however, because very few cars in Britain can run solely on bioethanol. Ineos has a large traditional refinery business. It owns the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland, where a strike resulted in petrol shortages this year.
Cars that run on bioethanol have been made in Brazil, where a comprehensive biofuels industry is based on sugar cane.
Biofuels have been backed by governments as one of the key ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The EU aims to get 10 per cent of its road transport fuel from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020.
Present methods of producing biofuels from crops have been criticised for causing high food prices by taking up land that would have been used to grow food. Although bioethanol production releases a lower volume of greenhouse gases than petrol, critics say that it has encouraged deforestation.
The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said this month that it believed that current biofuel production in North America and the European Union did little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Ineos is talking to authorities in the United States, Canada and Europe about selling the fuel when it is made on an industrial scale. The company began research into the biochemical process nearly 20 years ago in Arkansas, in the US. A pilot plant was built and researchers have been working with a variety of waste materials since 2003. Mr Williams said that the company would soon announce the location of its first commercial plant.
“We will aim to quickly roll out technology around the world. We plan to be producing commercial amounts of bioethanol fuel for cars from waste within about two years,” he said.
He added that he expected at least 10 per cent of North America and Europe’s petrol use to be replaced with bioethanol, adding that because it released up to 90 per cent less greenhouse gases than petrol, the company’s technology “will make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and the world’s need for fossil fuels”.
The announcement was welcomed by the National Non Food Crops Centre in York, the UK’s home for the development of renewable fuels.
Geraint Evans, one of its managers, said: “This is a breakthrough in two areas. Technologically because we can use municipal solid waste. And commercially because we have the potential to produce large amounts of bioethanol viably across the world.”
The OECD estimates that as much as 14 per cent of the crop land in the EU, the US and Canada will be used to grow plants for biofuels by 2017, up from about 8 per cent last year. This could push the prices for some crops up by 19 per cent.
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