Best of our wild blogs: 18 Dec 08

December: Last Chek Jawa Boardwalk Tour for 2008
on the Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs blog

Siloso Surprises
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog

Flathead
on the annotated budak blog

Bulbophyllum vaginatum
on the Garden Voices blog

Common Sandpiper: Foraging behaviour
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Crimson Sunbird in the rain
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Black-naped Tern feeding chick
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Half a Million Sharks Finned Each Year in Ecuador
on Shifting Baselines

Read more!

Scientists predict severe bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef

The Sydney Morning Herald 18 Dec 08;

Northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef is likely to suffer severe coral bleaching this summer, the conservation group WWF Australia warns.

A report from the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, the Coral Triangle and the reef, WWF said.

The Coral Triangle is home to 75 per cent of all known coral species and covers waters from the Philippines to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

WWF's climate change expert Richard Leck said the bleaching would impact on tourism, food supply and livelihoods in northern Queensland and South East Asia.

"The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains," Mr Leck said.

"There would be severe impacts for communities in Queensland, Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.

"More than 120 million people rely on its marine resources."

He said there would be significant impacts on Cairns and Port Douglas where the reef's tourism was centred.

Large scale coral bleaching was expected to happen regularly if average global temperatures rose at least two degrees Celsius.

Mr Leck said the latest data showed how important it was for Australia to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The WWF and many other environmental groups have condemned the Rudd government's carbon pollution reduction scheme as weak.

The government this week announced a 2020 carbon reduction target of at least five per cent, but was open to a higher target if a global consensus could be reached.

Hot summer will bleach Coral reef
Jennifer Macey, ABC News 19 Dec 08;

TONY EASTLEY: Predictions of a long hot summer may please many Australians but it's not good news for one of the country's top tourist attractions.

There's a high risk the Great Barrier Reef will suffer severe coral bleaching with sea temperatures expected to be above average.

Meteorologists in the US and Australia have used satellites to predict the death of corals in the Great Barrier Reef and in the Coral Sea.

Jennifer Macey reports.

JENNIFER MACEY: It's only the start of summer but satellite images show sea surface temperatures in the Coral Sea are already higher than average.

The Bureau of Meteorology and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have both forecast a high risk of coral bleaching this summer.

Dr Russell Reichelt is the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

RUSSELL REICHELT: They're likening the conditions that we're looking at this summer now to be same as they were in 1998 when a very large global event occurred where 16 per cent of world's coral reefs died from coral bleaching.

JENNIFER MACEY: Ten years ago, half of the Great Barrier Reef was affected by coral bleaching but only five per cent suffered permanent damage.

Dr Reichelt says reefs can recover from bleaching if they don't face further stresses from pollution, over-fishing or repeated hot weather events.

RUSSELL REICHELT: Things like poor water quality running off the land should be cleaned up. Things like damaging corals from anchoring on corals should be prevented. We want a healthy reef to be able to withstand the pressures that are happening from the global warming.

JENNIFER MACEY: Professor Terry Hughes is the director of the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He says if the warmer temperatures last for more than two months there's a serious risk of coral dying.

TERRY HUGHES: If you lose the structure that the corals provide through their skeleton then fish populations inevitably decline as well.

JENNIFER MACEY: He says bleaching is a clear sign of global warming.

TERRY HUGHES: It's important to remember that for coral reefs, global warming is not some distant threat that might or might not happen in the future. It's already happening. So the Great Barrier Reef has already bleached twice and there's a very good chance that this year will be the third major bleaching event to impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

JENNIFER MACEY: Environment groups accuse the Federal Government of ignoring the reef in its response to climate change this week.

Richard Leck is from the Conservation group WWF Australia.

RICHARD LECK: What would be a horrible irony of the release of the emissions trading system targets this week would be to see a taste of things to come in the future, of more severe and frequent bleaching events. And that's what will happen unless we get action on climate change - significant reductions, not five per cent reductions.

JENNIFER MACEY: Marine biologist Professor Terry Hughes agrees.

TERRY HUGHES: We've got to sharply reduce CO2 emissions and if we don't do that then we will lose the Great Barrier Reef. We've got 10 to 15 years to significantly reduce CO2 emission. We need to do better.

JENNIFER MACEY: But scientists stress that a cyclone or winds that may cool water temperatures could also prevent a major bleaching event this summer.

TONY EASTLEY: Jennifer Macey.

Read more!

Chilling developments in Dubai

A refrigerated swimming pool and an artificially cooled beach - Dubai's latest excesses are enough to make conservationists weep. Leo Hickman reports

Leo Hickman, The Guardian 18 Dec 08;

There will surely come a day when Dubai runs the world's reserves of hyperbole dry. But in the meantime, we continue to draw a sharp intake of breath each time a new construction project is announced. We have had ski domes built in the desert, seen vast artificial islands rise from the sea and watched several structures vying for the title of world's tallest building. Dubai represents the will, vision and ambition of our species. Yet many believe it shines an unflattering light on our tendency for folly and hubris, too.

This week, it was reported that the Palazzo Versace hotel - the Emirate's latest offering for those still in the market for exorbitant luxury - will boast, when completed in 2010, a refrigerated 820sq metre swimming pool and a beach with artificially cooled sand to protect its guests from the excesses of a climate that can see summer temperatures exceeding 50C. Wind machines will even be on hand to provide a gentle breeze.

"We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on," said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, a hotel group with plans for a further 15 luxury hotels around the world to add to the one that already exists on Australia's Gold Coast. (I'm a Celebrity junkies will know this as the hotel where the celebrities are sent once voted out of the "jungle".) "This is the kind of luxury that top people want," he added.

The energy required to run this project can only be guessed at (when questioned, Hyder Consulting, the British company hired by the hotel to build these facilities, said it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Palazzo Versace and therefore couldn't comment), but it is likely to leave the world's environmentalists with their heads in their hands. First there is the energy required to power giant wind machines all day long, not to mention the electricity needed to pump coolant around tubes laid under the sand. However, the most energy-intensive element of this plan is likely to be the power needed to refrigerate a whole swimming pool under Dubai's baking sun.

Of course, in a place like Dubai, this kind of audacious project goes relatively unnoticed, among the many others currently underway. To pick just one other example, 30,000 mature trees are scheduled to be shipped to Dubai to help landscape a new Tiger Woods-designed golf course that will be bordered by "22 palaces and 75 mansions". Even without the twin threats of climate change and a global economic recession, Dubai's grandiose plans might seem short-sighted to some. Is it really wise to be building at all, let alone on this scale, in a place that the United Nations describes as one of the most "water-imperilled" environments on the planet, but where per capita water use is three times the global average?

"It's grotesque that while the world's poorest people face the loss of their homes and livelihoods, as well as disease and starvation, because of climate change, the world's richest people think it's acceptable to waste precious energy so pointlessly on things such as artificially cooled beaches," says Robin Oakley, head of climate and energy at Greenpeace UK. "While Abu Dhabi, like Barack Obama, is betting on green technology as the engine for growth this century and even building a zero-emissions city, Dubai is apparently still stuck in the 1980s."

Dubai's ruling elite insists it now places "sustainability" at the heart of its plans for existing and future projects. Last year, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, spelled out the "Dubai Strategic Plan 2015" in a speech. He explained that oil now contributes only 3% to Dubai's GDP and that his plan is to "sustain Dubai's environment, ensuring that it is safe and clean". Each new construction project now boasts a paragraph in its brochure about how it will "follow environmental best practice", but even if these new measures do materialise, Dubai is a place built on the ideology and convenience of cheap, free-flowing oil. Its business model, particularly its ever-expanding tourist sector, is based on the premise that people will always be willing and able to fly long distances to get there. (Some airlines now euphemistically describe Dubai as both a "long short-haul" destination and a "long-haul weekend break destination".) A new six-runway mega airport is being built to serve a predicted capacity of 120 million passengers a year.

These latest plans for an artificially cooled beach may be causing ripples around the world, but why isn't there more vocal opposition by environmentalists within Dubai? The simple answer is there are no environmentalists in Dubai; not in the sense of a campaigning, placard-bearing activist that you might find elsewhere. NGOs are barely tolerated within the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part. When I visited Dubai two years ago to investigate the environmental and social impacts of its tourism industry for a book I was writing, no one was willing to talk to me on the record, such was their fear of speaking out against the ruling class. The few environmental groups that do exist in Dubai rarely stray from a brief that seems largely limited to educating school-children about the importance of recycling.

The one place where dissent does seem to be allowed - or is harder to police - is the internet, where people can hide behind their anonymity. Discussion forums are a popular way to vent criticism about the direction Dubai is taking, as are blogs such as Secret Dubai Diary. One recent controversy is that over Sammy the Shark, a young whale shark that was caught in the Arabian Gulf and then transferred to the aquarium at the Atlantis Hotel, which opened last month with a £20m party and firework display. More than 16,000 people joined a Facebook group calling for its release, and one local newspaper started a campaign urging that the shark be returned to the sea. A local radio DJ has even been playing a "Free Sammy" interpretation of Michael Jackson's Heal the World.

But while Dubai's citizens fight for Sammy to be freed, its leaders refuse to be diverted from realising their vision. At the United Nations climate talks, held in Poland earlier this month, Dr Rashid Ahmad Bin Fahad, the UAE's minister of environment and water, gave a speech in which he spoke of the need for his country to consider using nuclear power to desalinate its fresh water. Well, how else are they going to keep those swimming pools filled and chilled?

Read more!

Cleaning up the Citarum River in West Java

Trying to Stop Pollution From Killing a Lifeline
Peter Gelling, New York Times 13 Dec 08;

BEKASI, Indonesia — The Citarum River, which winds its way through West Java past terraced rice paddies and teeming cities, is an assault on the senses. Visitors can smell the river before they see it.

Some fishermen still make their living off the river’s fouled waters, but many are no longer casting lures. Instead, they row their boats through floating garbage, foraging for old tires and other trash they can sell.

The river, considered by many environmentalists to be among the world’s most polluted, is woven tightly into the lives of the West Javanese.

It provides 80 percent of household water for Jakarta’s 14 million people, irrigates farms that supply 5 percent of Indonesia’s rice and is a source of water for more than 2,000 factories, which are responsible for a fifth of the country’s industrial output, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Villagers living along its banks use the Citarum’s dangerous waters to wash their clothes — and themselves.

Almost everyone sees the river as something of a movable dump: a convenient receptacle for factories’ chemical-laced effluent, farms’ pesticide-filled runoff, and human waste.

As a result, in stretches of the river near Jakarta, fish have been almost wiped out, destroying the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen.

“I know the color of the river is not right,” said Sutri, the owner of a small restaurant in Bekasi, an industrial suburb of Jakarta. “But I don’t know anything about dangerous chemicals. Anyway, there is nowhere else for me to get water.”

Sutri — who like many Indonesians uses only one name — said she washed the restaurant’s dishes in the river, along with her clothes and her children.

Environmentalists blame rapid, and unregulated, industrialization and urbanization over the past 20 years for the degradation of the 5,000-square-mile river basin.

The environmental damage is already costing lives; flooding, caused by deforestation and drains clogged with garbage, is a constant problem in cities along the Citarum.

The list of woes is worrying enough that the development bank committed this month to provide Indonesia with a $500 million, multiyear loan to finance a wide-ranging cleanup and rehabilitation plan devised by the bank and the government.

The money would be used clean the Citarum and the West Tarum Canal, which connects it to Jakarta, and to create a long-term plan for how to best use the river. A portion of the loan would go toward setting up an independent organization that would become the steward of the Citarum.

But even before the bank has begun to dole out the loan, it has opposition from local civic groups. They fear that the government is taking on too much debt and that there are inadequate protections to ensure that the poor see enough benefits and that the money is not lost to the corruption that is endemic in Indonesia.

“We are worried that the money could be lost through corruption,” said Nugraha, 30, a community activist who has been working to clean up this Jakarta suburb since he graduated from high school.

“And we are worried the farmers will be left out,” he continued. “The focus seems to be on the people of Jakarta, not the local people here.”

That the battle lines are being drawn so early, and despite the obvious need for change, is not surprising. “Water wars” in the United States and elsewhere can be nasty affairs.

Like most such battles, the fight over the Citarum will revolve around the complex issues of equity, economic development and environmental protection. Coming up with a plan that satisfies everyone’s needs will be difficult.

Raising community activists’ concerns, the first $50 million of the Asian Development Bank’s loan is designated for cleaning up the canal that brings the river’s waters to Jakarta, and for additional treatment plants. Because of health concerns, residents of the city rarely drink out of the tap, opting instead for bottled water.

Christopher Morris, a water resources engineer with the development bank, says it is committed to financing projects over 15 years that will benefit all the river’s users. Not all of the projects can be done quickly, he said.

“We are taking a long-term approach while recognizing there are some things we can fix quickly,” Mr. Morris said. “But changing the behavior of the community takes a lot of careful planning and preparation.”

Among the goals: building waste treatment plants to clean household water for the Greater Jakarta area, creating more dams so that additional water will be available for growing communities like Bandung, Indonesia’s fourth largest city, and simply cleaning the river so people living near it, including fishermen, can again depend on the source of water.

The plan calls for reforesting stretches of the river basin to help erosion and landslides that clog the river and regularly cause floods in Bandung, in Bekasi and elsewhere.

The tricky part of the work will be getting the many people who rely on the river for their living, or simply to live, to agree to changes. Conflicts can arise over the allocation of water between farmers who use it for irrigation and city dwellers. And trying to get farmers to use more efficient irrigation methods, so there is more water for others, can be challenging.

The solution proposed by the Asian Development Bank and the Indonesian government is a “water council,” with half the representatives from government agencies and half from the communities involved and nongovernmental organizations.

What authority the council would have remains to be seen; different levels of government already disagree about water allocation.

Of particular concern to community activists is how this council might be manipulated, becoming yet another avenue for corrupt practices.

Mr. Morris said the bank had not been blind to the opportunities for the money to be misused. That, he said, is why the bank decided to parcel the loan out over many years.

“The point is to make the money available to the government in an efficient way, so they aren’t sitting with a loan and paying charges on it until they actually need to use it,” he said. “But it also allows us to put in some safeguards and implement our anticorruption policies and other policies the Asian Development Bank promotes.”

With loan, a chance to clean up polluted Indonesian river
Peter Gelling, International Herald Tribune 12 Dec 08;

BEKASI, Indonesia: During the height of the dry season here, a once raging river and the canal that leads it to Jakarta, supplying the city with 80 percent of its water, carry a thick layer of sludge, a flotilla of solid waste that former fishermen now use to forage for potentially valuable trash in their wooden boats.

Some environmentalists call the Citarum the most polluted river in the world.

"There is no scale really to determine which is the worst," said Christopher Morris, a water resources engineer with the Asian Development Bank. "But it is very nasty. To say you can't swim in it, I mean, you know when you are a few kilometers from it."

The Citarum is a mighty river. Its basin stretches 13,000 square kilometers, or 5,000 square miles, across West Java, supporting a population of more than 28 million people and more than 20 percent of the country's industrial output.

Three hydroelectric dams produce 1,400 megawatts, and the river irrigates 400,000 hectares, or one million acres, of farms that supply 5 percent of the country's rice.

But rapid, and unregulated, industrialization and urbanization over the last 20 years have reduced the river to a national embarrassment.

More than 2,000 factories are now situated along its banks, everything from steel to oil to garments is produced using the river as both a source of water and a dumping ground for waste. The hundreds of smokestacks here in Bekasi, an industrial suburb of Jakarta, could be mistaken for a forest consumed by fire.

The 70-kilometer, or 43-mile, canal passes through Bekasi on its way to Jakarta, and along its banks another industry has formed - prostitution. Young women sit outside small houses, or cafés, offering sex to the thousands of nearby factory workers.

Along this stretch lives a woman in her 40s who runs a small restaurant.

The restaurant sits atop a high slope, at the bottom of which meanders the river. In the distance, the fog of industry swirls.

"I know the color of the river is not right," Sutri says, adding that she washes the restaurant's dishes in the river, along with her clothes and occasionally her family. "But I don't know anything about dangerous chemicals. Anyway, there is nowhere else for me to get water."

She will be one of the first to benefit from a $500 million loan from the Asian Development Bank that aims to jump-start a government program to clean up the entire Citarum River and the West Tarum Canal that connects it to Jakarta. In all, the Indonesian government expects the cleanup to cost $3.5 billion and take 15 years.

The loan from the Asian Development Bank, approved last week, will be delivered in several phases over those 15 years, with the first $50 million to go toward revitalizing the all-important canal, securing Jakarta's main source of water. The entire loan package will fund a myriad of sanitation and environmental projects as well as the building of waste treatment plants.

"We are taking a long-term approach while recognizing there are some things we can fix quickly," Morris said. "But changing the behavior of the community takes a lot of careful planning and preparation."

The plan, however, has critics. A coalition of community advocacy groups, collectively called the People's Alliance for Citarum, have raised concerns over the amount of debt the country is taking on for a cleanup plan that, they say, has few safeguards from corruption. Indonesia is widely considered to be one of the world's more corrupt countries.

Also, more than 800 people, mostly banana growers, who live along the canal might have to relocate. The alliance says there is no clear plan for their relocation or to reimburse them for the loss of their livelihood.

"We are worried that the money could be lost through corruption," said Nugraha, 30, who has been working to clean up the Bekasi environment since he graduated high school. "And we are worried the farmers will be left out. The focus seems to be on the people of Jakarta, not the local people here."

Nugraha's comment touches on another potentially difficult issue down the line: management of the Citarum River Basin, which spans several provinces. Questions remain about the allocation of clean water across the provinces.

The solution proposed by the Asian Development Bank is a "water council," half of which would represent government agencies and the other half civil society. What authority the council would have remains to be seen, as different levels of government disagree. Of particular concern to the alliance is how this water council might be manipulated, creating yet another avenue for corrupt practices.

The bank will, for the first time in Indonesia, introduce a multitranche financing system to address this very problem, Morris said, disbursing portions of the loan over time as needed.

"The point is to make the money available to the government in an efficient way, so they aren't sitting with a loan and paying charges on it until they actually need to use it," he said. "But it also allows us to put in some safeguards and implement our anti-corruption policies and other policies the Asian Development Bank promotes."

Read more!

Malaysia's RM2.5b seafood export industry near collapse

The Sun Daily 17 Dec 08;

SEBERANG PERAI (Dec 17, 2008) : Malaysia's RM2.5 billion seafood export industry is on the verge of collapse with no concrete help thus far from the government following a ban on Malaysian seafood by the European Union (EU) in June.

The Malaysian Frozen Foods Processors Association (MFFPA) has raised an alarm that the industry has a lifeline of only three months left, as millions of ringgit in stocks languish in cold rooms, unable to be exported.

The situation is worsened because the product cannot be sold to other countries due to different packing and logistical requirements.

"The seafood exporters have reported an estimated loss in sales and production of more than RM1.5 billion to date," said MFFPA president Ch'ng Chin Hooi.

"The players can no longer withstand the losses and pressure from commercial banks," he told a press conference at the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) headquarters here today.

Ch'ng stressed that some 10,000 workers from the MFFPA's 25 member operators stand to lose their jobs, alongside another 30,000 indirect workers in related services.

"Many factories have started to retrench workers, if they are not already reducing working days since the ban came into force."

"To add insult to injury, the government has increased the electricity rate by 30%," he added.

Ch'ng said the cabinet had three months ago approved a RM500 million rescue package through soft loans to help industry players, with priority given to MFFPA members. However, the money has yet to be given out.

The Malaysian seafood industry is the country's second largest food export earner, with Europe its main market.

But the EU has found environmental and hygiene standards in the Malaysian industry to be wanting.

Ch'ng said the Malaysian government had been given the Guidelines for Export to the EU in 2005, but these were not properly implemented when EU inspectors came here in April and May 2008.

He noted that the inspection team's main concerns were fishing vessels, landing ports and agriculture farms.

"The processing factories were not the main concern as most of the processing plants were audited by the EU Health Authority on an ad hoc basis," he said.

Ch'ng said a Malaysian team comprising representatives from the Health Ministry, the Fisheries Department and the MFFPA had met EU Health Authority after the ban, but failed to gain a reprieve.

"The seafood export industry is still viable as there are still orders from foreign customers. What the industry needs is a financial helpline to hold the stocks and soften killing interest rates," he said.

"The point is that this industry can be saved if the government acts fast. We will be back on our feet if we can catch the 2009 summer holiday sales."

Read more!

Time to revive Stray Cats Rehabilitation Scheme

Letter to the Straits Times Forum 18 Dec 08;

I AM writing to urge the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority's (AVA) Centre for Animal Welfare and Control and the town councils to revive the Stray Cats Rehabilitation Scheme and step up awareness among the public that offenders caught abandoning pets are liable on conviction to a maximum fine of $10,000 and/or 12 months' imprisonment.

The presence of stray cats and dogs is the result of irresponsible pet owners abandoning their pets. These strays end up scavenging at food centres and rubbish bins for survival. Like humans, they mate and multiply. As their numbers increase, we complain of their defecation, noise from cat fights, caterwauling and scratches on cars.

If we can set up old folks' homes to house elderly folk abandoned by their children, if we can run campaigns to raise awareness for Aids and yet continue to permit the oldest trade in the world, why can't we make a humane effort to control strays rather than just cull them and teach the public responsible pet ownership.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the AVA put down 10,000 to 15,000 stray cats a year. Since 2002, the AVA has, on average each year, impounded some 3,500 dogs and 5,700 cats and received 4,000 and 5,000 calls complaining about stray dogs and cats respectively. SPCA receives some 700 abandoned pets every month but fewer than 20 per cent are successfully found new homes.

Controlling the population of stray cats and dogs requires a multi-pronged approach. As stated in the AVA's media release dated June 13, 2003, culling of strays is one necessary method to control the population. But when will such a cruel exercise be stopped?

The Stray Cats Rehabilitation Scheme sterilised some 3,000 stray cats before it was stopped in 2003. These sterilised cats would have remained at 3,000 to this day, if they survived road accidents or illness. A pair of cats can mate and produce up to 324 progeny in about two years. Assuming an equal number in sexes and using only simple mathematical calculations, the scheme has effectively saved at least 486,000 homeless cats from being born in 2005. This naturally translates into fewer public complaints for the AVA and the town councils, and savings in costs incurred rounding up and culling these cats.

Phyllis Tan (Ms)

Read more!

US proposes protecting 7 penguin species

Dina Cappiello, Associated Yahoo News 18 Dec 08;

WASHINGTON – Seven penguin species have reason to have happy feet: The Bush administration is moving to protect them. But three other types of penguin — including the stars of recent movies — got the cold shoulder.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list six species of penguin as threatened species and one — the African penguin — as an endangered species.

But it has denied protection under the 1973 Endangered Species Act for three others — including the emperor and northern rockhopper penguins, the stars of such popular movies as "March of the Penguins" and "Happy Feet."

The penguins live far from the U.S., in places like Antarctica, South Africa, Peru, Argentina and New Zealand so the protections of U.S. endangered species law are limited, officials said. But listing the penguins under the act will raise awareness about the species and could give the U.S. leverage in international negotiations to protect them from fishing, habitat loss, development and other threats.

Environmentalists hailed the Bush administration's proposal to fully list six penguin species, but criticized its decision not to protect three others, including the emperor penguin, the largest penguin in the world and one that depends on sea ice for breeding and feeding.

Endangered species advocates also faulted the government for protecting a seventh species — the southern rockhopper penguin — in only a small part of its range.

"Penguin populations are in jeopardy, and we can't afford to further delay protections," said Brendan Cummings, the oceans program director for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, which requested in November 2006 that the administration protect a dozen penguin species.

The government decided in July that there wasn't enough information to do a review of two of the 12 species for which protection was sought.

The decision to protect seven is still open for public comment so the Obama administration will make the final determination on them. For the others, any action to alter the Bush decision would require an entirely new review.

The administration said that there was not enough evidence to list the emperor as threatened because of global warming now or in the foreseeable future, although research has predicted that increasing temperatures could melt ice in Antarctica and also diminish populations of the penguin's preferred food such as krill.

About 390,000 emperor penguins live in 47 colonies in Antarctica. But while the populations of many penguin species are high, recent research has shown that about a dozen species are in decline because of numerous stresses, including climate change.

The other species not getting protection include the northern rockhopper penguin and the macaroni penguin.

"There are certainly issues with those species, but we did not believe at this time that the populations were reduced or that there were significant threats to lead us to make a determination that they are threatened with extinction," said Kenneth Stansell, deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in an interview.

Earlier this year the Bush administration listed the polar bear as a threatened species, the first to be protected because of the threats of global warming. But the administration has also finalized regulations to ensure that the law is not used to block projects that contribute to global warming.

The Fish and Wildlife Service was under a court-ordered deadline to make decisions about the penguins by Thursday.

Scientists believe there are at least 16 and perhaps up to 19 penguin species, depending on whether some are categorized as subspecies.

Read more!

Protected habitat proposed for sea otter in Alaska

Yahoo News 16 Dec 08;

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A federal agency proposed nearly 6,000 square miles of southwest Alaska shoreline be protected habitat for a threatened population of northern sea otters.

About 90 percent of northern sea otters live in coastal Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands population was declared threatened three years ago under the Endangered Species Act.
About 40,000 northern sea otters exist today, less than half 1970s estimates. The reasons for the decline aren't known, but increasing predation by killer whales is suspected.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal issued Tuesday would designate nearshore waters in southwest Alaska as critical habitat. Nearshore is defined as within 100 meters, or 328 feet, of the mean tide line.

The agency said nearshore waters provide sea otters with cover and shelter from marine predators, particularly killer whales.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the government eight years ago to protect sea otters. The conservation group maintains that proposals to open Bristol Bay in the Bering Sea to oil development, overfishing and global warming are threatening sea otters.

The agency's designation is a good start, but the protected habitat should extend at least a mile from shore, said Brendan Cummings, the center's oceans program director.

A critical habitat designation requires all federal agencies to ensure that any activities in the area would not harm sea otters.

Fish and Wildlife does not anticipate that the designation would restrict commercial fishing because little is done in the area and because sea otters eat mostly sea urchins, crabs, octopuses and some bottom-dwelling fish that have little or no commercial value.

Public comments can be made until Feb. 17, and the final habitat designation would be made by Oct. 1.

Read more!

Zimbabwe: extinction looms in a paradise lost to guns, greed and hunger

Martin Fletcher, The Times 18 Dec 08;

At first it seemed a paradise. Baboons played on the dusty track ahead of us. Impala and zebra, wildebeest and spiral-horned kudu bounded into the bush as our vehicle approached. We stopped to admire a 3,000-year-old baobab tree with a trunk that dwarfed our four-wheel drive, and spotted a herd of African elephants. It seemed scarcely possible that this semi-arid land in the Lowveld of southeastern Zimbabwe could support so much wildlife.

It was only as we approached the eastern edge of the million-acre Save Valley Conservancy that we began to encounter the problems besetting this idyll. “Resettled farmers” had moved in - burning trees, building huts of mud and thatch, and clearing land in an improbable attempt to grow crops.

Soon Clive Stockil, chairman of what is the biggest private conservancy in Zimbabwe, turned off the track and stopped. We were hit by the stench of rotting flesh. A few yards away was the decomposing carcass of a black rhinoceros, one of the world's most endangered species, shot by poachers three days earlier.

In life this 15-year-old bull was a magnificent creature weighing a tonne. Now it had been stripped of its meat by hungry villagers, writhing maggots feasted on the contents of its belly and clouds of flies hovered overhead. Its head was intact except where its second horn had been hacked off. That was what the poachers had been after because, thousands of miles away in eastern Asia, rhino horns are prized for their alleged medicinal value and fetch a small fortune.

What made this rhino's death even more tragic was that the conservancy had removed its horns last year to stop it becoming a target for poachers. The horns for which it was shot were regrown stumps barely two inches long. The same was true of the young female rhinoceros whose remains festered near by in the summer heat. Her horns were also mere stumps.

The cow was in season and the pair were probably in the process of mating when they were slaughtered. “You feel angry. You feel bitter. You have the urge to get even,” Mr Stockil said. “It sounds silly to say, but it's almost like a member of my family. I can recall when she was born and watching her give birth, and giving birth again 28 months later, and you come here and see this.

“My tears, they came down,” added Jackson Kamwe, head of the conservancy's rhino surveillance unit, recalling the moment he found the corpses. The conservancy knows its rhinos so well that it even has names for them. The bull was Enoch, the cow Gladys.

Sadly, this massacre was far from isolated. Last month poachers used an AK47 to kill Ice, a young cow whose mother, Natalia, was shot in 2007. This year 16 black rhinos have been killed in Save, and Mr Stockil admits that he is losing his battle to protect the 120 others that the conservancy has nurtured so lovingly since it was established in 1991.

Nor is this “onslaught” confined to Save. In the past two years criminal syndicates have begun targeting the rhinoceros. Experts believe that between 50 and 100 black rhinos have been shot in Zimbabwe this year, twice as many as last year, and between 50 and 60 in neighbouring South Africa - up from 30 in 2007. There were once hundreds of thousands of the rhino, with their distinctive prehensile upper lips, across Africa. Today there are barely 4,000. One of the four sub-species was declared extinct in 2006. The rest have been designated “critically endangered” and Mr Stockil says that “the countdown to extinction” has begun.

Zimbabwe's hunger, poverty and collapsing law and order make it a particularly soft target for the syndicates, and nowhere more so than Save.

Some 10,000 “resettled farmers” have seized a quarter of the conservancy in recent years, giving them easy access to the rhinos' habitat. Like millions of other Zimbabweans, they are destitute and starving, making it easy for the syndicates to recruit poachers and guides for paltry fees.

When the poachers are caught, the syndicates use their wealth to subvert justice. Not one Zimbabwean rhino poacher has yet been prosecuted successfully. Many are caught, freed and return straight to poaching.

The three men who killed Enoch and Gladys are good examples. They had removed just one of the pair's four stumpy horns before they were surprised by Mr Kamwe and his scouts. They ran away but the scouts recognised two. They had been arrested for killing another black rhino earlier this year but somehow managed to “escape” - unseen and unhandcuffed - from the police van taking them to court.

Save goes to great lengths to protect its rhinos. It employs a scout for every 20sq km (8sq miles), each armed and with radios. It has airdropped leaflets over villages bordering the conservancy offering $1,000 rewards for information about poachers, and has established a network of informers - one of whom alerted Mr Kamwe to the killing of Enoch and Gladys. It has built up dossiers on poachers and their firearms, micro-chipped each rhino, and sought to co-opt the surrounding villages by establishing a trust that would make them beneficiaries of its success.

It would like to do much more but it is hamstrung by another problem unique to Zimbabwe: the tourist trade on which the conservancy depends for its finances has collapsed.

Before the white farm seizures began in 2000, Mr Stockil's Senuko Lodge had an occupancy rate of more than 60 per cent. Today it is almost empty. “We're in a very serious financial crunch,” says Mr Stockil who, in desperation, recently began catering for wealthy hunters of non-endangered species such as elephants. Without that, he says, “we would have had to close”.

Mr Stockil believes, though, that no amount of scouts would be able to protect the rhinos over such a vast area, and that more drastic measures are needed.

The conservancy de-horns the rhinos that live nearest to the encroaching settlers to minimise their value to poachers but that has been ineffective: sometimes the poachers cannot even see a rhino's head before they shoot. He now wants all Zimbabwe's rhinos de-horned, and the wildlife authorities agree, but that would be vastly expensive, requiring helicopters, drugs, four-wheel drives and huge manpower. Moreover, it would have to be repeated every two years.

He believes that the poachers would still kill for mere stumps, and advocates an even more ambitious scheme that would destroy the five to ten syndicates behind the rhino poaching.

As Mr Stockil points out, the actual poachers are mere pawns - he knows of one who has made just enough to buy himself a motorbike. The real money is made by the middle men who spirit the horns across Zimbabwe's borders to South African ports and airports or up to the fast-growing Chinese community in Harare. From there they are shipped to the Far East, some in diplomatic bags. A Vietnamese Embassy receptionist in Pretoria was photographed recently taking delivery of a rhino horn from a dealer.

Mr Stockil wants African states to establish how many horns the end-users in China, Vietnam and North Korea require, to provide that number themselves, and to use the proceeds to protect the world's last black rhinos before they vanish forever. “You would stop poaching, raise money for conservation, increase the rhino population, do away with the illegal trade and provide a legal product that for centuries has been used by cultures that say they need it,” he argues.

In the meantime the black rhino population is in danger of shrinking to a level that is barely sustainable, and at Save, and across Zimbabwe, poaching of all sorts is escalating rapidly as the human population grows hungrier.

Near Senuko Lodge two tall poles support 6,000 snares that scouts have discovered on the conservancy over the past six years. Today they are finding between 30 and 50 a week, the more recent made of copper stripped from telephone wires. A few are for rhino. Most are designed for impala and other “bushmeat” but they trap animals indiscriminately - giraffes, zebras, lions, cheetahs. The conservancy has put down half-a-dozen maimed elephants. But it is another highly endangered species, the carnivorous African wild dog or Lycaon pictus, that the snares threaten most.

There used to be half a million of these brightly coloured dogs in Africa, but they were hunted almost to extinction as vermin. Today there are fewer than 5,000. In three years Save's wild dog population has shrunk from well over 150 to barely 100.

The victims of Zimbabwe's implosion are not just its people. They include some of the world's rarest animals. The difference is that the human race will outlast Robert Mugabe.

THE MIGHTY FALLEN

65,000 rhino in Africa 35 years ago. Now there are an estimated 3,600

2,000 black rhino in Zimbabwe before the peak of poaching in the 1980s

370 at the lowest point in 1993

201,000 overseas vistors to Zimbabwe in 2005, down from 597,000 in 1999

Sources: International Rhino Foundation, Times archives

Read more!

Corn pests to thrive as global climate warms: study

Karl Plume, Reuters 17 Dec 08;

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Populations of insects that feed on corn and other crops in the United States may flourish and expand to new territory as global climate change brings warmer summers and milder winters in the decades ahead, according to a new study.

More frequent or more severe pest infestations may cut crop yields and drive up the price of corn, used for food and animal feed and to produce renewable fuels.

"Our projections showed all of the species studied spreading into agricultural areas where they currently are not endemic," said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Purdue University associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study.

"The greatest potential range expansion was seen with the corn earworm, which is known to infest other high-value crops such as sweet corn and tomatoes. Warming could allow populations to survive the winter in the upper Midwest, the key region for corn production, as well as areas of the West where other high-value crops are grown," he said.

Researchers used climate model simulations that suggest winters will be milder more often later in the 21st century while summer growing seasons will be longer and warmer more often than they are now.

They compared the climate models to the temperature survival thresholds of four common corn pests found in the United States, the world's top corn producer and exporter.

"Basically, we examined both the number of days warm enough for the pests to grow and the number of days cold enough to kill the pests," said Purdue entomologist Christian Krupke. "This tells us what could happen in projected future climates."

For example, temperatures in Iowa, the top U.S. corn producing state, were suitable for corn earworm survival in zero to three years of every 24 years in the 20th Century. But in the 21st Century, that frequency was projected to increase to one to seven out of every 24 years.

More frequent insect pressure means farmers will need to spend more on pesticides or high-priced biotech seeds that help control pests or risk yield losses, researchers said.

More frequent pest problems can also result in more variable yields, which can drive up the cost of crop insurance or disaster relief for farmers, they said.

"Losses due to insect pests, including the resources required to control them, is the biggest cost for corn production," said Corinne Alexander, an agricultural economist at Purdue.

"The European corn borer has been estimated to cost the United States around $1 billion annually, and the corn earworm is responsible for destroying about 2 percent of the corn crop," she said.

The World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday that 2008 will be the coolest year since 1997, but still the tenth hottest since scientists began recording the data 150 years ago. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997.

(Reporting by Karl Plume; Editing by David Gregorio)

Read more!

£1 million boost for marine power in the UK

Technology used in aviation and the oil industry is to form part of a £1 million plan to boost wave and tidal power in the UK.

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 18 Dec 08;

Energy from the sea could provide up to 20 per cent of the UK's current electricity.

However at the moment the renewable power is too expensive, compared to other options such as wind farms.

The Carbon Trust, an organisation set up by the Government to boost green energy, is to invest £1 million over the next year to try reduce the cost of generating marine power by 20 per cent. Research will include investigating the possibility of using giant turbines used on aeroplanes and hydraulics used in the oil industry.

Lord Hunt, energy innovation minister, said the UK must lead the world in the sector.

"These innovative technologies, when proven to be commercially viable, could play a significant role in meeting our renewable and climate change targets," he said.

The announcement came as the Liberal Democrats called for a new "green road out of the recession".

Leader Nick Clegg said his party would scrap the Government's temporary 2.5 per cent cut in VAT and spend the £12.5 billion on "green" measures to kick-start the economy instead.

The plan would include a five-year programme to insulate every school and hospital; subsidies for home energy efficiency; 40,000 new zero-carbon homes; improvements to rail lines and 700 new train carriages.

The Government announced a consultation on plans to make all homes zero carbon by 2016 yesterday.

However campaigners have warned the economic downturn could threaten the target as the construction industry is investing less in innovative building methods and less people will be updating their homes to improve energy efficiency.

Read more!

Prince Charles warns environmental threat even more alarming than recession

The Prince of Wales, in his first intervention on the recession, has warned that the threat to the environment is even more "alarming" than the economic downturn.
Andrew Pierce, The Telegraph 17 Dec 08'

In an address to some of Britain's business leaders he said the principal factors which caused the collapse in the international banking system also lie at the heart of the "climate crunch".

He said: "There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between the current financial crisis and the looming, and even more alarming, environmental crisis."

He cited, overconsumption, indebtedness, overconfidence in market and regulatory systems and short-termism, as features that lay at the heart of the looming environmental disaster.

"Just as the world is hopefully coming together to tackle the credit crunch, so we need to work together even more powerfully, and with the same sense of urgency, to tackle climate change and the challenges of a resource constrained world," he said in a speech at a conference at St James's Palace for the Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Forum.

The forum has brought together more than 200 representatives from the business, investor, academic, accounting and public sectors to help develop systems to enable organisations to measure more effectively the wider environmental and social costs of their actions and business decisions.

The speech comes after the Daily Telegraph reported that the Queen hoped that members of the Royal Family would follow her example and avoid any overt displays of public extravagance because of the deepening recession, which threatens to push unemployment to three million.

The Queen also revealed her deep concern about the impact of the recession when she was overheard asking academics at the London School of Economics: "Why did no one see it coming?"

The Prince said he was not trying to suggest that governments should focus on solving one of the problems rather than the other. But he said a "growing chorus" of voices now urges a response which is geared to dealing with both at the same time.

"New industries, millions of new jobs and many new commercial opportunities can go hand-in-hand with transformation toward an ecologically durable economy," he said.

"The ecosystems on which we all rely for our survival are more complex and less well-understood than the global financial system, and my great fear – a long-held one, for which I have been roundly abused and ridiculed – is that by the time these problems are understood and addressed it will be too late and, very importantly, that unlike financial capital our natural capital cannot be replenished."

He said the Accounting for Sustainability project, which he set up in December 2006, was created to help ensure that sustainability becomes embedded in the DNA of organisations.

"Unless this is the case, sustainability considerations will not become embedded within organisations' day to day operations and decision making so that having, hopefully, survived the credit crunch, we will not have learned the much larger lessons and will merely carry on regardless to a much more painful, calamitous and, crucially, irretrievable climate crunch."

The conference was also addressed by Stephen Green, group chairman of HSBC bank which stands to lose up to £688 million in the Madoff Wall Street fraud.

Mr Green warned against reducing the priority attached to tackling climate change in the crisis. He said: "The climate change agenda will not pass, this is something that is with us for the rest of time. This is something that we do have to attend to for the sake not only of our children but for our grandchildren and onwards."

Read more!

U.S. carbon output slower than thought by 2030: EIA

Reuters 17 Dec 08;

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. energy-related emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 2030 will be 9.4 percent less than forecast last year as renewable energy develops and prices cut fossil fuel demand, the top U.S. energy forecasting agency said on Wednesday.

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will hit 6.410 billion tonnes in 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its annual long-term forecast. In last year's forecast, the EIA, the independent statistics arm of the Department of Energy, had forecast the emissions to hit 6.851 billion tonnes by 2030.

"Efficiency policies and higher energy prices ... slow the rise in U.S. energy use," the EIA said. "When combined with the increased use of renewables and a reduction in the projected additions of new coal-fired conventional power plants, this slows the growth in energy-related (greenhouse gas) emissions."

Total consumption of renewable fuels including hydropower, solar and wind power, biofuels, and wood burning will grow 3.3 percent per year through 2030, according to the report. Some of the growth will be spurred by the U.S. 2007 biofuels mandate, and state mandates for minimum levels of renewable electricity generation, the EIA said.

New power generation fired by coal, which emits more carbon dioxide than any other fuel, will hit 46 gigawatts, not the 104 gigawatts forecast last year, the report said.

"It's a tremendous sea change in the forecast for coal plant construction from last year," said Alan Nogee, the clean energy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. He said Wednesday's forecast showed EIA expectations of about 100 fewer average-sized coal plants by 2030 than last year's forecast.

This year alone utilities anticipating future federal greenhouse gas emissions have canceled plans for about 13 coal-fired power plants.

President-elect Barack Obama wants to cut total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change including droughts, floods and more powerful storms. Last year those emissions were about 16.7 percent above 1990 levels.

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources represented about 81 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas output in 2007. Other sources of gases blamed for warming the planet include methane, which is given off at farms and waste dumps.

Nogee said more renewable energy will need to be developed as more coal plants will be planned in coming years.

Coal's share of U.S. power generation will fall from 49 percent in 2007 to 45 percent by 2025 and then rebound to 47 percent by 2030, the EIA said.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

Read more!

EU finalizes deal to fight climate change

Pete Harrison and Huw Jones, Reuters 17 Dec 08;

BRUSSELS/STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union finalized plans for its battle against global warming on Wednesday, seeking to lead the way toward a broad alliance including other big polluters like China and the United States.

The European Parliament approved a cut in carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, heeding warnings of severe weather, famine and drought as the atmosphere heats up.

The deal takes on a greater importance coming just before Barack Obama assumes the U.S. presidency, amid hopes in Europe he will cooperate more on tackling climate change than incumbent George W. Bush.

"Happily Bush is going," said European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. "Everybody knows what Mr. Obama has set as priorities -- energy security and climate change."

World leaders will meet in Copenhagen next December to try to agree a global deal, but preparatory talks in Poland ended last week with deep divisions between rich and poor nations.

The advancing economic crisis had at times threatened to derail the EU's climate negotiations.

A myriad of concessions to water down the costs for industry helped pin down a deal, although this fueled criticism from environmental groups.

DISSENT

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had fought successfully for industries like German steel, chemicals and cement and Italian glass and ceramics, as well as their powerful auto sectors.

Lawmakers approved measures on Wednesday to cut CO2 emissions from new cars by 18 percent by 2015, after intense lobbying by the industry won it a three year reprieve.

"There was an explosion in dissent and manufacturers were at loggerheads," said Italian socialist Guido Sacconi, who led the rules for cars through parliament.

"Trying to secure a conclusion came when the car industry found itself at the epicenter of the economic crisis and this heightened difficulties," he added.

Green group politicians branded the rules as a sell-out to industry, while industry group ACEA repeated calls for billions of euros in EU support to help manufacturers meet the targets.

The biggest threat to a deal was the opposition of nine former communist nations, which feared the deal would ramp up costs for their highly polluting coal-fired power sectors.

To buy their support, the EU has offered a partial exemption and agreed to give them 12 percent of revenues from the EU's flagship emissions trading scheme (ETS), which makes industry buy permits to pollute.

The European Commission, which originated the climate laws in January, demonstrated its appetite for further action by adopting rules on eco-friendly design on Wednesday, which would cap the energy consumption of televisions on standby mode.

Environmentalists vented their anger over the dilution of the EU's ambition, most of them criticizing the high levels of carbon offsets, which allow member states to pay for most of their emissions cuts in developing nations rather than at home.

"People will look back at 2008 and ask...knowing what they knew then, why did they not do more to save all of us from the unbearable impacts from a warming planet?" said British Green group politician Caroline Lucas.

(Reporting by Huw Jones, writing by Pete Harrison; editing by Sue Thomas and Anthony Barker)

EU parliament approves climate change package
Christian Spillmann Yahoo News 17 Dec 08;

STRASBOURG (AFP) – The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the EU's climate change package, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, lifting the last hurdle to the ambitious plan.

Six texts on the package, already agreed by the 27 European Union member states, were passed by a large majority of the MEPs present.

"We have sealed the climate package," said European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, after the vote.

The so-called "20-20-20" climate package, which Europe hopes will serve as a model to other nations, will oblige EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, make 20 percent energy savings and bring the use of renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of the total.

The parliamentary approval came five days after EU heads of state and government worked out a compromise deal on the package at a summit in Brussels.

Within the overall EU targets, each EU nation and industry sector has its own obligations under the package, and last-minute dispensations were given, particularly to Warsaw and Berlin which were concerned at the effects on industry.

German conservatives also complained that the package was too tough on industry and evoked the spectre of "carbon leakage" whereby jobs would move out of a highly regulated region with no benefit to the European economy or the global environment.

However, environmental groups complain that the package was so watered-down in the attempts to reach a deal that the measures adopted will no longer deliver on the promised climate change targets.

"The parliament has marginalised itself by lacking the courage to make even small changes to the compromises negotiated by the EU summit last Friday," said Greenpeace EU climate and energy policy director Joris den Blanken.

"Europe promised leadership on climate, but so far it has led us up the garden path. The climate package doesn't even take us half way to where we should be in the fight against climate change," he added.

"This is not quite the third industrial revolution trumpeted when proposals were presented at the beginning of the year," complained Delia Villagrasa, Senior Advisor to WWF.

"The 20 percent target sounds nice in words, but is void because EU countries are allowed to accomplish approximately three quarters of the effort outside EU borders, which translates into European emission reduced by only 4-5 percent between now and 2020," she added.

However, Swedish Liberal Democrat MEP Lena Ek hailed the agreement as "a win-win situation."

"Finally we have this package. In a period where we have to go through an economic crisis this package is a win-win situation," she said.

"The green investments will create jobs and give our industry a lead. By adopting this set of measures we have confirmed Europe's leadership in tackling global warming," she added.

"Mission accomplished," French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told AFP. "We'll see the full benefit if we reach a global deal in Copenhagen."

The European Union hopes that its climate and energy package will serve as a model for the United States, China, India and other major polluters at international climate change talks to be held in Copenhagen next December.

The EU nations have said they are prepared to increase their greenhouse gas cuts to 30 percent if there is an international climate change deal.

The six texts adopted by the parliament constituted the main planks of the overall package -- renewable energy, emissions trading, carbon dioxide capture and storage, efforts by member states, overall reduction of CO2 emissions and reducing car emissions.

All six went through with a large majority, with between 559 and 670 European deputies voting in favour out of the total of 785.

The plan must be formally published before its measures come into effect.

Read more!