Seen on STOMP: Toco Toucan
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog
Little Tern feeding fledgling in the water
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Common Iora and chicks
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
年年有餘，牛年快樂!
on the colourful clouds blog
Shore constructions announced
near Changi and on the East Coast on the wild shores of singapore blog
Trouble in Paradise
about the Perhentian Islands on Wild Asia
Straits Times Forum 22 Jan 09;
I REFER to the article, 'Senator cites Mexico's sad experience with dolphins' (Jan 12), which reported that Mexican senator Jorge Legorreta Ordorica had written to National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan last month to relate Mexico's experience - 12 out of 28 dolphins Mexico had imported from the Solomon Islands in 2003 had died from illnesses, ranging from a muscle disorder to pneumonia.
Mr Ordorica urged Mr Mah to consider the disturbing mortality rate of the animals when evaluating import applications for such animals.
It had been reported previously that seven bottlenose dolphins, part of a group of 18 destined for Resorts World Sentosa, were taken from the wild in the Solomon Islands.
Although Singapore reportedly thanked Mr Ordorica for his letter, and has stated that the dolphins here will require Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) import and export permits, this in no way addresses or eliminates the stress, suffering and health risks these creatures have been subjected to and will endure in the whole process.
Marine Life Park has said its dolphin enclosure will more than meet the minimum space requirements for the dolphins, but in an era where corporate social responsibility is emphasised in relation to environmental concerns, it will not reflect well on Singapore's image and may also cause a dent in its reputation.
The act of taking these animals from the wild (endangered or not) is at odds with the letter and spirit of Singapore's Wild Animals & Birds Act, which prohibits the taking of an animal from the wild.
The list of injustices throughout the dolphins' ordeal is extensive and heart-rending to those in animal welfare:
# Removing them from their natural habitat involves loss of their freedom and natural behaviour;
# Being subjected to long holding periods before their arrival in Singapore;
# Having to endure a stressful journey involving handling and transport; and
# Forcing them to adapt to an alternative lifestyle in a man-made structure, to be tamed and trained for human benefit and enjoyment.
The SPCA wrote recently to Resorts World Sentosa to object to the import of these dolphins caught from the wild and asked for a review and reversal of its decision.
Kudos to cargo air services company UPS, which reportedly refused to ship the dolphins from the Philippines to Singapore because 'the practice violated its environmental principles'.
Yes, people must be educated to appreciate marine life, but not at the animals' expense.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Officer
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Related articles
Straits Times Forum 22 Jan 09;
THE Defence Ministry (Mindef) has conducted extensive clearing of Singapore's forest in several areas, such as along Woodlands-Mandai (beside the Kranji Expressway), Jalan Bahar and Jalan Kayu (beside the Tampines Expressway) over the past three years.
These cleared plots, which have Mindef signage, have remained empty for the past few years.
Trees take several years to grow to a good size and serve numerous useful functions. For example, they help to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from the air. Trees also absorb heat and provide shade.
I appeal to Mindef to replace the carbon sink by planting back the same number of trees that were removed, and to consider relocating some of the valuable and mature trees as some of the developers and institutions have done.
Most importantly, I would like to appeal to Mindef to minimise the destruction of the valuable but fast-disappearing secondary rainforest left in Singapore.
Finally, I would encourage Mindef to contribute to the environment as part of its social responsibility. This is crucial as Mindef has ownership of relatively big plots of state land. Such privileges should come with responsibility.
I strongly urge Mindef to do the right thing for the environment and send the right message to our youth.
Dr Tan Lay Pheng
Straits Times Forum 22 Jan 09;
I REFER to letters on the issue of stray cats at East Coast Park and former Big Splash (Jan 16 and 20).
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is aware that there are a number of stray cats in the vicinity of East Coast Seafood Centre and the former Big Splash. It is unfortunate that the cats there are viewed as a threat, as our experience with these animals is that they are quite docile and may even approach humans for a pat or interaction. It is extremely rare for cats to 'charge', unless, for example, a mother cat is protecting her kittens from potential danger.
One has to consider the root cause of the problem of homeless stray animals existing in any location. For decades, cat populations have escalated due to pet abandonment. Unsterilised, the abandoned animals have multiplied. Cats breed prolifically - up to four times per year.
The SPCA has sponsored the cost of sterilisation of many cats in the area from carparks B to D. The left ear of each sterilised animal is tipped. For a number of years now, volunteers have fed and cared for these cats, and have taken responsibility for transporting them for sterilisation.
The SPCA acknowledges that there will be people who may be fearful or intolerant of strays, but we ask for a little empathy - to 'live and let live'.
The choice to have these cats sterilised so they can live out their lives without breeding is, in the SPCA's opinion, the more humane and effective way to ultimately reduce the stray population. Removing them all because they are perceived as a nuisance will not solve the problem because, wherever there is an abundant food source, abandoned pets and strays will converge. Taking away the sterilised cats from East Coast Park will ultimately result in new (unsterilised) cats taking their place. It will also mean the death sentence for the sterilised cats if they are rounded up by the authorities and culled.
The SPCA is liaising closely with the authorities and volunteers on this matter and steps will be taken to ensure that the cats are fed a distance away from the areas mentioned in Ms Serene Tan's letter. At the same time, we urge the public not to feed stray cats while eating at the restaurants as that would in turn encourage strays to frequent the area.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Officer
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Managing cats in East Coast Park: Cat Welfare Society responds to letters
Straits Times 23 Jan 09;
I REFER to the letters by Mrs Serene Tan, 'Stray cats a pest at former Big Splash' (Jan 16), and Mr Noel Peck, 'Pests: Beware aggressive felines at seafood centre' (Jan 20).
Most cats may not 'look friendly', but few will attack a human unless provoked. There is therefore little reason to believe people are in any immediate danger of random cat attacks.
If the authorities act on these complaints, the Cat Welfare Society hopes other options will be considered. Culling cats is only a temporary fix which will have what is known as a 'vacuum effect'. This means that before long, new, unsterilised cats will move in from surrounding areas, causing the same annoyance as the previous ones.
A long-term and more humane solution to reducing the community cat population is a programme known as Trap-Neuter-Return-Manage (TNRM). This is a systematic programme of sterilising community cats and managing their colonies responsibly. Sterilised cats can be identified by a tipped left ear.
We wish to highlight the ongoing efforts of a volunteer group that has been involved in TNRM work at East Coast Park since October 2006. With support from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, this group has invested a significant amount of time and money in sterilising and controlling the community cats at the park. With time, the number of cats will decline due to natural attrition.
These volunteers also provide care to the cats. Members of the public should therefore not feel compelled to feed the cats, especially near food outlets. If members of the public want to join these volunteers in their caregiving work, they should get in touch with the society.
Not everyone views community cats with disdain. Many tourists and park users have commented that their visits to the park are made more enjoyable by the presence of 'feline friends'. The views of this group should surely be balanced against complaints about cats.
The ongoing TNRM efforts at East Coast Park are slowly but surely delivering benefits. We hope the active citizenry displayed by these volunteers and the organisations involved will be taken positively and their efforts will not be dampened by the sanctioned killing of cats.
Michelle Lee (Ms)
President
Cat Welfare Society
Pests: Beware aggressive felines at seafood centre
Straits Times Forum 20 Jan 09;
I REFER to last Friday's letter by Mrs Serene Tan, 'Stray cats a pest at former Big Splash'. Mrs Tan would probably have another big shock if she goes to East Coast Seafood Centre where, directly across the canal, I counted at least 16 stray cats roaming in the open field.
This happened on the very day Mrs Tan's letter appeared. As I approached, some of the cats charged at me.
Noel Peck
Teach kids to have some empathy for stray cats
Straits Times 20 Jan 09;
I REFER to Mrs Serene Tan's letter last Friday, 'Stray cats a pest at former Big Splash'.
While I respect Mrs Tan's sentiments, I was caught by surprise when she said her concerns need to be addressed immediately in view of the numerous children in the area.
In my opinion, this is a good chance for parents to educate their young children on teaching kindness and empathy towards our voiceless furry friends as they live in harsh conditions where they have to forage for food and the likelihood of being caught and put to sleep is high.
I hope Ms Tan's letter won't result in a massive culling of cats at Big Splash to ensure that only 'pleasant' creatures like birds and butterflies are allowed in the 'lush greenery and soothing ambience' at Vista Bistro.
Christina Kwan (Ms)
Stray cats a pest at former Big Splash
Straits Times 16 Jan 09;
Recently, my family and I visited East Coast Park and realised that the former Big Splash has been revamped into a lifestyle beachfront attraction that appealed greatly to my family and children.
However, I would like to raise a grave concern about the stray cat situation there. With so many children in the area, this needs to be addressed immediately.
My children and I were walking down the stairs to the second floor from the mini-golf area when we saw two fierce and hungry-looking cats in the passage. My five-year-old was very frightened as the cats did not look friendly.
My children walked back up to the third floor and eventually took the lift down to the ground floor.
My shock and dismay did not end there. We walked towards the beach, and were alarmed to see three cats loitering around the rubbish dump area, with litter all over the place. One was searching for food, and toppled one of the portable rubbish disposal bins.
As we walked along the perimeter, we chanced on an F&B establishment called Vista Bistro. We were impressed with the lush greenery and soothing ambience.
As we were enjoying our cocktails, we had another unwelcome surprise. We saw two stray cats skirting past our tables, engaged in a high-speed chase.
We were certainly not impressed with the ambience any more. We had expected birds and butterflies in a natural setting like this, and did not appreciate the extra feline activities.
Serene Tan (Mrs)
Straits Times Forum 22 Jan 09;
I REFER to last Thursday's letter by Mr Lim Zi Xun, 'Ease up on import of ornamental birds'.
While Singapore has remained free from highly pathogenic avian influenza (commonly known as bird flu) since the emergence and spread of the disease worldwide, bird flu outbreaks in the region pose a constant threat to our local poultry and bird farms, as well as to public health. We have to maintain our vigilance and strengthen our defences to prevent an incursion of bird flu in Singapore.
As part of our measures to keep out bird flu, the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) allows only import of birds, poultry and their products from countries that are free from bird flu.
These risk management measures in regulating bird imports are consistent with international standards set by the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE).
Countries affected by bird flu are allowed to resume exporting to Singapore only when they have successfully eradicated the disease.
As wild birds are known to carry the bird flu virus, pre-export isolation of ornamental birds and testing for bird flu in the source country are also required to mitigate the risk of introducing an infected bird into Singapore.
In the case of Taiwan, cited by Mr Lim, an import suspension was imposed in January 2004 due to a bird flu outbreak. The suspension was subsequently lifted in June 2004 when Taiwan established freedom from bird flu. From 2006 to last year, there were 17 shipments of birds from Taiwan.
However, AVA re-imposed the import suspension last year following a bird flu outbreak in Kaohsiung.
AVA will review the import suspension in due course when the Taiwanese authorities inform us of the elimination of the disease and provide satisfactory results of surveillance in support of freedom from bird flu.
We would also like to clarify that imports of live poultry and frozen poultry products from Malaysia originate from AVA-accredited bio-secured farms and processing establishments located in bird flu disease-free zones in Malaysia.
However, unlike poultry imports, ornamental birds imported from Malaysia in the past were generally wild caught birds. As wild birds are free-flying and not confined to disease-free zones, AVA has not allowed the resumption of imports of ornamental birds from Malaysia.
AVA's risk management measures will allow Singaporeans to enjoy keeping ornamental birds as a hobby while not compromising public health.
Goh Shih Yong
Assistant Director, Corporate Communications
For Chief Executive Officer
Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority
Estella condo project expected to yield annual cost savings of $850,000
Keith Chee, Business Times 22 Jan 09;
THE Estella, a condominium being developed by Keppel Land, has become the first property in Vietnam to be granted the Green Mark Gold award by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore.
The BCA Green Mark is a rating system to evaluate a building for its environmental impact and performance.
Through some of the latest green technology, The Estella is expected to yield overall annual savings of 23 and 48 per cent in energy and water consumption, leading to over $850,000 in cost savings. The green initiatives used include solar roof panels, special paint and composite wood.
To promote eco-consciousness among residents, Keppel Land will set up an information corner on going green, as well as collection and storage areas for recyclable material at The Estella.
On the Green Mark Award, Keppel Land's executive director and CEO, International, Ang Wee Gee, said the group is 'privileged to contribute to the growth of Vietnam while balancing our economic and environmental objectives'.
The Green Mark for The Estella adds to Keppel Land's four developments in Singapore that have achieved the Green Mark Award, with each property yielding up to 40 per cent in energy and water savings.
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity 22 Jan 09;
When the subprime mortgage crisis hit the United States, fear of a deep and prolonged recession quickly spread across continents. Another panic attack ensued when the Melamine scare shook milk-importing countries. World attention is focused on the humanitarian implications of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Buried under these infamous issues and other problems such as terrorism, high crimes, and corruption is a less popular crisis with far greater implications than anyone can imagine -- biodiversity loss. 
“We are losing plants, animals and other species at unprecedented rates due to deforestation, large-scale mining, massive wildlife hunting and other irresponsible human activities. This poses a significant threat to our food security, health, livelihood, and the world’s overall capacity to provide for our needs and those of future generations’,” ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity Executive Director Rodrigo U. Fuentes said.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published in 2005 reported that humans have increased extinction levels dramatically over the past decades at 100 to 1,000 times the normal background rate. In Southeast Asia alone, 1,312 out of 64,800 species are endangered.
“Ultimately, the loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest threats that we face. No one will argue that it is in the area of food security, perhaps more than any other, that biodiversity’s value is most clear.
Nature provides the plant and animal resources for food production and agricultural productivity.
When we destroy biodiversity, we destroy our source of food,” Director Fuentes explained.
The Food and Agriculture Organization reported that out of more than 10,000 different plant species used for food by humans over the millennia, barely 150 species remain under cultivation. Of these, only 12 species provide 80 percent of the world’s food needs and only four – rice, wheat, maize and potatoes – provide more than half of human’s energy requirements. “What happened to the 9,850 other species? If they have not been lost already, they are vulnerable,” Director Fuentes said.
The ongoing food crisis, he explained, is testament to decades of misguided energy policies, extensive use of unsustainable agricultural practices, and wanton destruction of nature and damage to ecological services.
Health is another arena where the natural benefits of a healthy biodiversity are most obvious. “The natural world holds the key to many medicinal resources and pharmaceutical drugs. If the world continues to lose around 13 million hectares of its forest cover every year, it would be difficult to develop better kinds of medicine to cure both existing and emerging illnesses. We have to remember that about 80 percent of the world's known biodiversity, many of which have medicinal value, could be found in forests,” Director Fuentes said.
The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, an intergovernmental regional centre of excellence that facilitates coordination among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and with relevant national governments, regional and international organizations on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, is at the forefront of highlighting the importance of conserving biodiversity in Southeast Asia.
According to the Centre, apart from providing people with food and medicine, nature also offers a wide range of ecosystem services such as contribution to climate stability, maintenance of ecosystems, soil formation and protection, and pollution breakdown and absorption. Biodiversity is also a source of livelihood to millions as the economy of many communities is driven by the use of species in industries such as biotechnology, forestry, agriculture and fisheries. Moreover, biodiversity provides social benefits including recreation and tourism, as well as cultural and aesthetic values.
“Forgetting the biodiversity crisis is therefore akin to cutting our lifeline to the world’s natural treasures. We at ACB wish to remind everyone that extinction is forever. And with every species lost, the natural ecosystems we call home become biologically poorer,” Director Fuentes underscored.
The consensus to save the region’s thinning biodiversity moved the ASEAN, with funding support from the European Union (EU), to establish the ASEAN Regional Centre for Biodiversity Conservation (ARCBC) project. From 1999 to 2004, the project facilitated collaboration among ASEAN Member States for biodiversity-related initiatives. A year later in 2005, the ASEAN and EU agreed to establish the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity to carry on the work of the completed ARCBC project.
“It is the first regional initiative to save the ASEAN’s rich but highly threatened biodiversity,” Director Fuentes said. All ASEAN Member States are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the first global agreement to cover the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. By signing the convention, they committed to reducing biodiversity loss by 2010 --- the International Year of Biodiversity.
With its slogan “Conserving Biodiversity, Saving Humanity,” ACB performs its mandate through five components: program development and policy coordination, human and institutional capacity development, biodiversity information management, public and leadership awareness of biodiversity values; and sustainable financing mechanism.
To further shore up its efforts, ACB also forms alliances with key stakeholders in the regional and global levels. “There is an urgent need to involve all sectors to save the region’s endangered biodiversity. The issue may not be as hot as politics or the global financial crisis, but massive biodiversity loss will have a huge impact on the lives of hundreds of millions if left unsolved. Our biodiversity faces a bright future if all sectors would work together to conserve it,” Director Fuentes underscored.
Fidelis E. Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 22 Jan 09;
Amid the constant hum of heavy traffic from the adjacent Pantai Indah Kapuk estate, the Muara Angke Nature Reserve, Jakarta’s last mangrove forest, is screaming silently for its very existence.
Ben Saroy, the head of the DKI Jakarta Nature Conservation Agency, said he believed the forest could be gone within 15 years.
“[The Muara Angke Nature Reserve] cannot actually be called a conservation area because it is too polluted,” Saroy said. “It is not a healthy place for plants and animals to grow.”
The reserve, located in North Jakarta, was originally established as a nature park by the Ministry of Forestry in 1939, when the total area of mangrove forests along the Jakarta coast was estimated at 8,000 hectares.
Jakarta’s mangrove forests have now dwindled to 170 hectares, of which 25 hectares is occupied by the nature reserve.
The park lost its battle against developers within just a few years after 1998, when the area’s status was changed from “nature park” to “nature reserve” in the unsuccessful hope that human intervention could save the forest.
In 2007, the department again tried to attract interest in preserving what was left of the forest by establishing the Muara Angke Nature Reserve Center for Education, Conservation and Research. “We cannot expect the forest to stay just as it is, so it was better to make use of it [for educational and research purposes],” Saroy said. “It gives people a chance to help preserve Jakarta’s last mangrove forest.”
After most of the original forest was cut down to give way to new housing areas, the next threat to the forest, which also serves as a sanctuary for 83 bird species, was domestic waste. Garbage finds its way to the reserve through the Ciliwung River, and much of it gets stuck among the mangroves.
“The river brings six to eight tons of trash every day,” Saroy said. “The volume of trash started to increase after squatters started settling upstream on the banks of the river, which also carries trash from other small rivers in Jakarta, Banten and West Java.” A fishing village on one side of the nature reserve is another source of waste problems, he said.
Hendra Aquan Michael of Flora and Fauna International-Indonesia said garbage arrived in almost every form.
“Last year, we found a refrigerator among the trash,” he said. “The sight of a floating sofa, even dead animals such as dogs and goats, is not a strange experience any more, especially during the rainy season.”
Hendra said that the reserve needed the proper equipment to handle the garbage problem.
“It is very unlikely that garbage could be cleared every day,” Hendra said. “It would be a never-ending task for the people here.”
The waste already poses a major threat to the local biodiversity. Ady Kristanto of Jakarta Green Monster, a local community group dedicated to the forest’s conservation, said the garbage kept many birds from breeding in the area. The Javan Coucal, known locally as Bubut Jawa, is endemic to Indonesia, and is believed to have a current population of only 800. The bird inhabits lowland shrub communities and wetlands, particularly mangrove forests.
Years ago, the population of Javan Coucals flourished in big numbers in the reserve, but in the whole of last year, only four of the red-winged birds were seen.
Mochammad Indrawan, president of the Indonesian Ornithologists Union, said the Javan Coucal population in the park has dwindled “because the loss of habitat and the reserve’s garbage problem has prevented [the bird] from engaging in mating and breeding activities.”
Justine Gerardy Yahoo News 21 Jan 09;
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – When three rotting crocodile carcasses were spotted in a remote corner of South Africa's world famous Kruger National Park wildlife reserve, alarm bells started ringing for scientists.
A quickly organised autopsy, and aerial survey, confirmed their worst fears.
The giant reptiles were victims of a killer condition that had hardened their body fat to a rubber-like state, leaving them unable to move and defenceless against exposure, hunger, drowning or being eaten alive.
Since the first cases were found last May, some 170 crocodiles are dead and the true death toll could be double the figure. But a team of experts are still baffled by what triggered the die-off.
"It's almost incredible that we're struggling so much -- there's nothing unfortunately that's jumping out at us," said Danie Pienaar, head of scientific services at Kruger Park.
Although the exact catalyst is proving elusive, the experts say the deaths are a telling sign of heavily strained water resources that flow into the park, which is home to Africa's big five: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino.
"We don't have a clear idea but the sort of the general agreement among all the researchers that it's probably the whole system that has deteriorated over time and been pushed to the brink," said Pienaar.
"There's no problem that crocodiles are going to die out," he added, "but it is just a very clear signal that there is something severely wrong in our river systems. And that we cannot really afford to ignore this anymore."
Kruger is South Africa's flagship wildlife park, drawing 1.3 million tourists a year and covering a landmass roughly half the size of the Netherlands.
With the 110-year-old park home to some 850 non-plant species, it was feared that the infections could spread.
Known as pansteatitis or "yellow fat disease", the condition is associated with eating rancid fish and has been found in commercial crocodile farms, domestic cats, birds and fresh-water turtles but is not known to affect humans.
The condition attacks fat stores, depleting anti-oxidants and inflaming the fat in a process that scientists believe is very painful.
"There was a big concern that other species could be affected," Jan Myburgh, veterinarian specialising in toxicology, told AFP.
The chief worry was for lions -- seen feeding on the dead crocodiles -- and other cat species, based on the susceptibility of domestic cats, but no dead or sick felines have been found, he said.
The Nile crocodiles, which average five metres (16 feet) in length and 225 kilogrammes (500 pounds), are indiscriminate eaters and well-known cannibals.
To prevent further infections, park officials burnt the recovered carcasses and shot two hippopotamuses to provide easily-accessible food.
"Crocodiles are opportunists, they are going to try eat any available food source," said Pienaar. "I saw a couple big crocodiles swimming with smaller crocs in their mouths."
"You don't want to get to a stage where crocodiles start dying because that is the top of the food chain predator. By the time they get affected, the whole food chain below them is probably affected," Pienaar added.
While dead crocodiles are no longer being found, the team of experts are still probing the die-off, which was not accompanied by mass fish kills as seen in an earlier flare-up outside park borders but farther along the same river.
The Kruger deaths occurred in a remote gorge which has faced increased siltation from a dam in neighbouring Mozambique, and is fed by one of South Africa's hardest working rivers which supports various heavy industries.
Clues are now being sought by a multi-pronged programme looking at the entire river system to get a better understanding of the cause and effect links around the deaths.
Scientists will also attempt to reproduce the disease in a controlled experiment from mid January to understand more about how it develops in crocodiles.
Meanwhile, the park and the team of experts are prepared for any further outbreak.
"Everybody is on the lookout, if one crocodile dies, we'll know about it immediately," said Myburgh.
One of the most endangered species of gorillas could be in greater peril than previously thought.
Kate Devlin, The Telegraph 21 Jan 09;
Experts could have to scale back their estimates of how many mountain gorillas are left in the wild after a new survey cut numbers in one of their main habitats.
Only around 700 of the gorillas still live in the wild after years of uncontrolled hunting, destruction of their forest habitat and illegal capture as pets.
Traditionally researchers have estimated the species population by counting the number of 'nests' which the animals build.
According to this method, there are 336 gorillas left in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.
However, DNA tests on the animals' dung show that counting nests could be inaccurate and that there are far fewer mountain gorillas in the park than previously thought.
The scientists found just 302 separate genetic codes, suggesting that some of the animals create more than one nest, the findings, reported in New Scientist magazine, show.
Katerina Guschanski, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Liepzig, Germany, who led the new study, said: "We assumed that each individual constructs a single nest, but genetic analysis shows that several individuals construct more than one nest."
Previous studies of other species of gorilla have shown that they can build more than one nest if the original develops problems, such as leaking.
Conservationists had previously thought that the number of mountains gorillas in the Bwindi national park, one of only two places in the world where gorillas still live in the wild, had been growing.
There were just 300 of the animals left in 1997 but a census in 2003 found 320.
"Now we don't really know what is happening with this population," said Guschanski. "Probably the safest thing is to assume that the population is stable, but we will need to wait for another four to five years to assess how it is changing."
Researchers believe that only an accurate idea of population numbers can help prevent the species from becoming extinct.
"It is much better to have an accurate estimation of the population", said James Burton from the Earthwatch Institute in Oxford.
"Knowing whether it is increasing or decreasing governs the conservation activities."
The other main habitat for the gorillas is Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, thought to contain an estimated 380 animals.
Scientists believe that this figure could be more accurate as the gorillas there are more accustomed to human contact and scientists have been able to get closer to count numbers.
The mountain gorilla belongs to the Eastern Gorilla family, of which there are around 16,000 in the world.
The other family, Western Gorilla, has around 350,000 members, but both are considered endangered.
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 22 Jan 09;
ROTHERA BASE - Antarctica is getting warmer rather than cooling as widely believed, according to a study that fits the icy continent into a trend of global warming.
A review by U.S. scientists of satellite and weather records for Antarctica, which contains 90 percent of the world's ice and would raise world sea levels if it thaws, showed that freezing temperatures had risen by about 0.5 Celsius (0.8 Fahrenheit) since the 1950s.
"The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," said Eric Steig of the University of Washington in Seattle, lead author of the study in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.
The west of Antarctica is warming faster than the east, according to the new analysis, as this representation shows.
The average temperature rise was "very comparable to the global average," he told a telephone news briefing.
Skeptics about man-made global warming have in the past used reports of a cooling of Antarctica as evidence to back their view that warming is a myth.
Cooling at places such as the South Pole and an expansion of winter sea ice around Antarctica had masked the overall warming over a continent bigger than the United States where average year-round temperatures are about -50 Celsius (-58.00F).
The scientists wrote that the Antarctic warming was "difficult to explain" without linking it to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
Until now, scientists have generally reckoned that warming has been restricted to the Antarctic Peninsula beneath South America, where Britain's Rothera research station is sited.
Temperatures at Rothera on Wednesday were 2.6 C (36.68F).
WEST ANTARCTICA
"The area of warming is much larger than the region of the Antarctic Peninsula," they wrote, adding that it extended across the whole of West Antarctica to the south.
Rising temperatures in the west were partly offset by an autumn cooling in East Antarctica. "The continent-wide near surface average is positive," the study said.
Antarctica's ice contains enough frozen water to raise world sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft), so even a tiny amount of melting could threaten Pacific island states or coastal cities from Beijing to London.
West Antarctica "will eventually melt if warming like this continues," said Drew Shindell, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was one of the authors. A 3 Celsius (5.4 F) rise could trigger a wide melt of West Antarctica, he said.
Greenland is also vulnerable. Together, Greenland and West Antarctica hold enough ice to raise sea levels by 14 meters.
"Even losing a fraction of both would cause a few meters this century, with disastrous consequences," said Barry Brook, director of climate change research at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
Ten ice sheets on the Antarctic Peninsula have receded or collapsed since the 1990s. The Wilkins sheet is poised to break up, held in place by a sliver of ice 500 meters (1,640 ft) wide compared to 100 km in the 1950s.
Other scientists said that the study did not fully account for shifts such as a thinning of ice sheets in West Antarctica.
"This warming is not enough to explain these changes," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist for the British Antarctic Survey at Rothera, by an iceberg-strewn bay. He said the thinning was probably linked to shifts in the oceans.
The Nature study compared temperatures measured by satellites in the past 25 years with 50-year records from 42 Antarctic weather stations, mostly on the coast. Scientists then deduced temperatures back 50 years.
(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Antarctica Is Warming: Climate Picture Clears Up
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com 21 Jan 09;
The frozen desert interior of Antarctica was thought to be the lone holdout resisting the man-made warming affecting the rest of the globe, with some areas even showing signs of cooling.
Some global warming contrarians liked to point to inner Antarctica as a counter-example. But climate researchers have now turned this notion on its head, with the first study to show that the entire continent is warming, and has been for the past 50 years.
"Antarctica is warming, and it's warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet," said study co-author Michael Mann of Penn State University.
This finding, detailed in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature, has implications for estimating ice melt and sea level rise from the continent, which is almost entirely covered by ice that averages about a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. The revelation also undermines the common use of Antarctica as an argument against global warming by contrarians, Mann said.
Ozone and cooling
Not all of Antarctica was thought to be immune to rising global temperatures, of course. Scientists have been watching as the Antarctic Peninsula, the only part of the continent that juts outside the Antarctic Circle, has warmed faster than the global average, and entire ice shelves have collapsed into the south polar ocean.
In stark contrast, a large part of the continent - the East Antarctic Ice Sheet - was found to be getting colder. The cooling was linked to another anthropogenic (human-caused) effect: ozone depletion.
Ozone in the Earth's stratosphere absorbs the sun's incoming ultraviolet rays, protecting living things on the surface (including humans) from detrimental effects. Certain types of manmade chemicals have depleted much of this protective layer over the last few decades.
As ozone was depleted, less radiation was absorbed at this layer of the atmosphere, which altered the layering of temperatures over Antarctica, over which the largest ozone "hole" is found (it's not really a hole, but rather a region of extreme thinning). This in turn altered wind patterns and strengthened the circumpolar vortex, creating a wall of winds that isolated the cold air over Antarctica from the warm air over the South Pacific Ocean, Mann explained.
Essentially, the effect of ozone depletion was "overwhelming the influence of greenhouse warming," Mann told LiveScience. He and his colleagues were able to show this in their study by compiling a more comprehensive temperature profile of Antarctica than scientists have ever had.
Weather stations and satellites
Weather stations have been in place in Antarctica since 1957, but almost all of them are near the coast, providing no information about conditions in the continent's interior.
Satellites are available now that calculate the surface temperature of the interior based on how much infrared light is radiated by the snowpack, but these records only go back 25 years.
The key to the study was comparing the two records and finding that they matched up closely for overlapping time periods. The researchers then developed a statistical technique that used the data from both sources to make a new estimate of Antarctic temperature trends.
"People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math," said lead author of the study Eric Steig, of the University of Washington in Seattle. "What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope."
Their work showed that not only was the Antarctic Peninsula warming, but the interior of West Antarctica - the ice sheet most susceptible to potential future collapse - was as well. And not only that, but that "the continent on the whole is warming," Mann said. "This is the first study to demonstrate that."
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded about 0.18 degree Fahrenheit (0.1 degree Celsius) per decade for the last 50 years - more than enough to offset the cooling in East Antarctica.
And with ozone depletion having leveled off, that cooling is unlikely to continue in the future.
"Efforts to repair the ozone layer eventually will begin taking effect and the hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world," Steig said.
"The greenhouse signal is now out-competing the ozone depletion signal," Mann said.
The study is "good work," said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., but he says there are unique aspects of Antarctica's climate that haven't been taken into account. Trenberth was not involved in the Nature study.
One problem is that temperature inversions can bring warmer air down influencing surface temperatures. "This aspect has not been addressed to date," Trenberth told LiveScience.
The authors dispute this comment: "There is no evidence to support Trenberth's speculation, and there is much evidence that he is wrong," Steig told LiveScience.
Steig explained that they saw the same results whether they used satellite temperatures or those from the weather stations that sit a few meters above the surface, which wouldnt' be the case if inversions were an important factor.
Andrew Monaghan, also of NCAR, said that he agreed with the broad findings of the study, which line up with similar studies he has done of Antarctic temperature trends. He told LiveScience that the biggest finding of the study was the warming of West Antarctica, which is part of the broad ice sheet contributing to ice melt - "it's a Greenland-sized chunk of Antarctica," he said.
Monaghan, who was also not part of the Nature study, said that it is harder to generalize to the continent as a whole and that Antarctica has a highly variable natural climate and that "we still don't understand the natural component well at all."
Implications and contrarians
The implications of the findings for the stability of the Antarctic's ice sheets aren't entirely clear yet and will have to be evaluated by ice sheet modelers, Mann said.
The worry isn't so much from East Antarctica, which sits at a higher elevation than the rest of the continent and is so cold (many degrees below freezing) that the few tenths of a degree of warming isn't yet an issue.
But the study likely means that "a larger part of West Antarctica is melting" than previously thought, Mann said.
West Antarctica is more subject to warm, moist storms and because its ice is all landlocked, it could contribute to sea level rise if it melts. (Ice that's floating on the sea does not raise the sea level if it melts.)
Modelers won't be the only ones interested in the study's findings, as other scientists will likely seek ways to independently and directly confirm or refute the data. Mann mentioned one such study that has been submitted to a journal that used holes in the ice to see how temperatures have changed in the past and has confirmed the underlying warming in East Antarctica.
Outside of these impacts, the study also take away "one of the standard talking points of [global warming] contrarians," Mann said. The argument used by skeptics was "how can the globe be warming if a whole continent is cooling," Mann explained.
Mann said that this argument was "disingenuous" to begin with because the cooling caused by ozone depletion was reproduced by climate models, but the new study soundly routs contrarian claims, he said.
Mann is one of the scientists behind the blog RealClimate.org, which aims to explain the science behind climate change. Steig is contributing a post there on the new study to explain the findings.
Study: Antarctica joins rest of globe in warming
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON – Antarctica, the only place that had oddly seemed immune from climate change, is warming after all, according to a new study. For years, Antarctica was an enigma to scientists who track the effects of global warming. Temperatures on much of the continent at the bottom of the world were staying the same or slightly cooling, previous research indicated.
The new study went back further than earlier work and filled in a massive gap in data with satellite information to find that Antarctica too is getting warmer, like the Earth's other six continents.
The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
"Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming," said study co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ... It is not bucking the trend."
The study does not point to man-made climate change as the cause of the Antarctic warming — doing so is a highly intricate scientific process — but a different and smaller study out late last year did make that connection.
"We can't pin it down, but it certainly is consistent with the influence of greenhouse gases," said NASA scientist Drew Shindell, another study co-author. Some of the effects also could be natural variability, he said.
The study showed that Antarctica — about one-and-a-half times bigger than the United States — remains a complicated weather picture, especially with only a handful of monitoring stations in its vast interior.
The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions with such sparse information.
"This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is hard to make data where none exist."
Shindell said it was more comprehensive than past studies and jibed with computer models.
The research found that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, but still is 50 degrees below zero. West Antarctica, which is about 20 degrees warmer than the east, has warmed nearly twice as fast, said study lead author Eric Steig of the University of Washington.
East Antarctica, which scientists had long thought to be cooling, is warming slightly when yearly averages are looked at over the past 50 years, said Steig.
However, autumn temperatures in east Antarctica are cooling over the long term. And east Antarctica from the late 1970s through the 1990s, cooled slightly, Steig said.
Some researchers skeptical about the magnitude of global warming overall said that the new study didn't match their measurements from satellites and that there appears to be no warming in Antarctica since 1980.
"It overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," said Roger Pielke Sr., a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado.
Steig said a different and independent study using ice cores drilled in west Antarctica found the same thing as his paper. And recent satellite data also confirms what this paper has found, Steig added.
The study has major ramifications for sea level rise, said Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most major sea level rise projections for the future counted on a cooling — not warming — Antarctica. This will make sea level rise much worse, Weaver said.
New evidence on Antarctic warming
Richard Black, BBC News 21 Jan 09;
The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.
Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say the trend is "difficult to explain" without the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, scientists in Antarctica say a major ice shelf is about to break away from the continent.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is said to be "hanging by a thread" from the Antarctic Peninsula, the strip of land pointing from the white continent towards the southern tip of South America.
In isolation
Most of Antarctica's scientific stations are located along the peninsula, and scientists have known for many years that this portion of the continent is getting warmer.
But trends across the bulk of the continent have been much harder to discern, mainly because data from land stations is scarce.
It is somewhat insulated from the rest of the world's weather systems by winds and ocean currents that circulate around the perimeter.
In the new analysis, a team of US scientists combined data from land stations with satellite readings
"We have at least 25 years of data from satellites, and satellites have the huge advantage that they can see the whole continent," said Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.
"But the [land] stations have the advantage that they go back much further in time.
"So we combined the two; and what we found, in a nutshell, is that there is warming across the whole continent, it's stronger in winter and spring but it is there in all seasons."
They conclude that the eastern region of the continent, which is larger and colder than the western portion, is warming at 0.1C per decade, and the west at 0.17C per decade - faster than the global average.
The 2007 assessment of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded: "It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic (human-induced) warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica", with the word "likely" in this context meaning "at least 66% probability".
The scientists said this study did not change that picture, with natural climatic cycles probably involved as well as elevated greenhouse gas concentrations.
"It's hard to think of any situation where increased greenhouse gases would not lead to warming in Antarctica," said Drew Shindell from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) in New York.
"We're almost certain that greenhouse gas increases are contributing to this warming, but what's difficult is to attribute this warming and so say how much is down to natural warming and how much down to anthropogenic causes."
Last year, scientists from the UK Met Office used climate models to attribute trends at the poles, and concluded that human emissions of greenhouse gases were largely responsible for the observed warming.
Gareth Marshall from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who was not involved in the analysis, commented: "This study shows that, similar to the other six continents, Antarctica has undergone a significant warming over the past 50 years.
"The magnitude of this warming is similar to the rest of the southern hemisphere, where we believe it is likely that human activity has played some role in the temperature increase, and therefore it is also likely that this is the case regarding an Antarctic warming."
Cool analysis
Over the last 30 years, satellites have also shown that sea ice is slowly growing in extent around Antarctica, which some observers say indicates a cooling across the continent or at least in the surrounding seas.
But Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, which follows ice trends at the poles, said wind patterns were probably the main reason.
"Around Antarctica, the winds play a much bigger role than they do in the Arctic," he said.
"If they're blowing northwards you can grow ice quite quickly and in contrast if they blow southwards the ice can contract quickly, whereas in the Arctic it's much more constrained (by land masses).
"So this positive trend in the Antarctic is certainly not an indication of any cooling trend."
One region that has seen spectacular losses of ice in recent years is the peninsula.
A BAS team currently on site is reporting that the Wilkins shelf, about 15,000 sq km in area, is probably about to break free.
"It really could go at any minute, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final cracks started to appear very soon," said BAS's David Vaughan.
If it does, it will follow the course of other shelves that have made breakaways in recent years, such as the Larsen B in 2002.
Although spectacular, such events are not necessarily due to man-made climate change.
A much bigger question is whether the new analysis of Antarctic warming heralds any major melting in the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to big changes in sea level and global impacts.
"The vulnerability is higher than we thought, but still we face uncertainties in understanding these processes that make it very difficult to forecast when these changes would occur," said Drew Shindell.
Maggie Fox, PlanetArk 22 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON - Looking forward to spring? The good news is that it is coming two days earlier on average, but so are summer, autumn and winter, researchers said on Wednesday.
They found that on average, the hottest day of the year in temperate regions has moved forward by just under two days, and so has the coldest day of the year.
While the consequences of this shift are not clear, it is worrying, Alexander Stine of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues said.
"All of the seasons are coming earlier. They are both hotter and they are earlier," Stine said in a telephone interview.
The effect can be seen in both the northern and southern hemispheres, said Stine, whose team studied more than 100 years of temperature data to tease out the pattern.
Writing in the journal Nature, Stine and colleagues said the effect is related to global warming and is very likely to be caused by humans.
The shift in seasons is unsettling because none of the climate change computer models predict this, Stine said.
"There are certain things that we expect from global warming and there are certain things that we don't," he said.
"You expect that, say, the ice is going to melt a little earlier ... and you expect the ice is going to form a little bit later in the year. But what you don't expect to see is for the hottest day of the year to be earlier."
Stine's team found that land temperatures between 1850 and 1950 showed a simple pattern of variability, with the hottest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere around July 21. Between 1954 and 2007, temperatures peaked 1.7 days earlier.
Peak temperatures come about a month after the solstices -- when the sun's rays hit the Earth more or less indirectly, causing summer and winter. Stine said it takes time for the rays to heat up the land in the summer, and for things to cool off during the period of indirect sunlight.
This pattern suggests the planet has lost something that helps draw out the process.
"The land is putting up less resistance to what the sun is telling it to do," Stine said.
There may be a loss of moisture in the soil, or some other factor like pollution, he said.
"If the way the Earth is responding to the sun is changing, we'd like to know that," Stine said. "There is a concern that we may be missing some important processes."
The finding fits in with other research that shows spring begins earlier in certain areas of Britain, for instance, and that growing seasons have shifted forward.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
Reuters 21 Jan 09;
JAKARTA, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Indonesia's PT Musim Mas has been certified as the country's first firm to have adopted stricter sustainability standards in producing palm oil, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said on Wednesday.
Five other crude palm companies from world's biggest producer of the commodity are currently in the process of getting certificates, he said.
Under fire from green groups and some Western consumers, the palm oil industry established the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004 to develop an ethical certification system, including commitments to preserve rainforests and wildlife.
In order to promote the production and use of sustainably produced palm oil, the RSPO has developed a set of standards called the RSPO principles and criteria (P&C), addressing legal, economic, environmental and social requirements of producing sustainable palm oil.
The first sale of the certified products hit the market last November with a shipment from Malaysia to Rotterdam. The 500 tonne shipment was produced by United Plantations (UTPS.KL: Quote, Profile, Research), with Unilever (ULVR.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Britain's third largest grocer J. Sainsbury (SBRY.L: Quote, Profile, Research) among the buyers.
A host of products on an average supermarket's shelves contain palm oil, ranging from margarines and biscuits to lipsticks, shampoo and detergents.
The issue of "green" palm remains contentious and some conservation groups argue that the current voluntary rules are ineffective in protecting the environment.
Indonesia and Malaysia, with more than 4 percent of the world's rainforests, produce nearly 85 percent of total palm oil.
Industry officials have projected the sale of certified sustainable palm oil to reach around 1 million tonnes this year, or just about 2.6 percent of the total output of Indonesia and Malaysia. (Reporting by Aloysius Bhui; Editing by Peter Blackburn)
The clearing of Indonesia's rainforest for palm oil plantations is having profound effects – threatening endangered species, upending the lives of indigenous people, and releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide, writes Tom Knudson from Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
From Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk 21 Jan 09;
As a child, Matt Aman grew up in the lush tropical lowland rain forest of Sumatra. Tigers padded through the underbrush, rarely seen and silent as shadows. "It made my skin prickle," the indigenous leader recalled recently as he sat on the floor of a stick hut surrounded by fellow villagers.
"When I was young, it was easy to find the mouse deer, monitor lizard, and wild pigs," Aman said.
The birds were majestic, too, he said, as he nodded and lit a cigarette. They filled the forest with a chorus of coos and trills that woke the Kubu village every morning. "We never hear those birds anymore," Aman said.
It is easy to see why. The storybook forest of his youth, the great green riot of reeds and vines, the cathedral-like thickets of fruit and hardwood trees — all of it is gone. In its place, for mile after monotonous mile, is a rolling carpet of palm trees, not the kind that sway in the wind at Waikiki, but a shorter, pudgier variety — the oil palm — that like corn and soybeans is rapidly becoming one of the world's major sources of biofuel.
Not long ago, biofuels were billed as a green dream come true, a way to burn less fossil fuel and shrink our carbon footprint. But today, mounting evidence indicates that producing biofuels — particularly those derived from food crops such as corn and oil palm — may be doing considerably more harm to the planet than good, actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions and driving up food prices worldwide.
Some of the most devastating costs of the biofuel revolution are on display in Indonesia, where massive clearing of tropical forests for oil palm plantations has caused staggering environmental damage and tremendous loss of biodiversity. Only the Amazon and Africa's Congo basin harbor more tropical forests than Indonesia, but the reality today is that all three regions are seeing their rain forests disappear at an alarming rate. And in the Amazon and Indonesia, growing world demand for food and biofuel is now driving much of the damage.
A flurry of scientific field work and environmental reports have linked the spread of oil palm plantations in Indonesia to the decimation of rain forests, increased conflict between logging and oil palm interests and rural and indigenous people, and massive CO2 emissions through logging, burning, and the draining of carbon-rich peat lands. And most of the trouble, as I learned on a recent visit, is playing out in the Indonesian lowland rain forests on Sumatra and Borneo, an ecosystem long regarded as a global hotspot for rare and endemic species — but perhaps not for much longer.
Over the past three years, researchers with the Zoological Society of London have searched exhaustively for tigers, clouded leopards, and other rare mammals on oil palm plantations in Sumatra. They have turned up next to nothing. "Most endangered species were never detected," they wrote in a report last year. Initially, they found hope along the edges of plantations where, against all odds, some tigers — which have roamed the rain forest for millennia — managed to survive. But even as their studies were underway, much of that land was also cleared, often illegally by settlers.
"If developed responsibly, oil palm should be able to provide economic growth and development without turning some of the earth's most important tropical ecosystems into ecological deserts," the researchers noted in the report. But they added: "This is a big 'if.' Achieving responsible development is a major challenge."
Roughly the size of California, Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world. But it is home to fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers, down from around 1,000 in the 1980s. Historical population figures are sketchy. But the big cat is believed to have lost 80 percent of its natural habitat over the past century, reducing the tigers to scattered groups in increasingly beleaguered forest oases.
"The tiger is going to go extinct if we don't do something," a wildlife biologist named Sunarto told me in Pekanbaru, the steamy capital of Sumatra's Riau province, a center of oil palm planting.
For his part, Sunarto is working to persuade oil palm managers to leave strategic corridors of forest around plantations untouched so the endangered big cats do not become genetically isolated. But it's a struggle.
Not long ago, he journeyed to a research site only to find the area cleared and burned to make way for an oil palm plantation. "The trees are gone," said Sunarto, who is working on a Ph.D. through Virginia Polytechnic Institute. "The animals are gone. There are many places like that."
According to Indonesia's own figures, 9.4 million acres of forest have been planted with oil palm since 1996, an area larger than New Hampshire and Connecticut combined. That works out to 2,000 acres a day, or about one football field a minute. Indonesia is the Kuwait of palm oil. Only Malaysia, which has less at stake biologically, produces more.
"This isn't mowing your lawn or putting up a factory on the outskirts of town," said Stephen Brend, a zoologist and field conservationist with the London-based Orangutan Foundation. "It's changing everything as far as the eye can see."
Like tigers, orangutans — which are found only in Sumatra and Borneo — are also being nudged into increasingly isolated population units by rain forest destruction. Their numbers are dropping, too. But because there are more of them — between 45,000 and 69,000 in Borneo and 7,300 in Sumatra — extinction is not an imminent threat.
"They are still going to be in the wild, but in fragmented populations that can never meet," Brend told me one evening. "And if it's reduced to that, we've just lost everything. It's not only the orangutans. It's what you lose alongside them — the birds, insects, pollinators, all the environmental services that forests give, as well as a thing of beauty."
Indonesia has long been known for its heavy-handed logging and plantation clearing. Rain forests fall faster in Indonesia, in fact, than almost anywhere else on earth. But Riaz Saehu, a spokesman for the Indonesia Embassy in Washington, D.C., told me that under the country's new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took power in October 2004, the era of widespread clearing for oil palm may be coming to a close.
"There is an effort to reduce plantation expansion," Saehu said. "What we do now is basically to promote sustainability."
Many scientists are skeptical. "After 23 years there, I must say they can talk the talk but never walk the walk," Lisa Curran, director of Yale University's Tropical Resources Institute, told me in an e-mail. "The richest folks in Indonesia are owners of these oil palm plantations, so the corruption and patronage are linked to the very top of the food chain and power structures."
In 2006, Curran was awarded a so-called MacArthur genius award for her work on deforestation in Indonesia. "Oil palm is a disaster all the way around for biodiversity if converted from logged forest or peat swamp," she said. "Oil palm is fine if they actually put it on totally degraded lands – but they don't."
Even if new planting were stopped tomorrow, it would be too late for the Kubu people I met in Sumatra, whose once-rich rain forest pantry has been stripped bare by an oil palm plantation. "I have lost my garden," a Kubu woman named Anna told me. "I cannot grow the rubber, bananas, chilies, and other things I need to feed my family."
A plantation oil palm tree grew in her front yard. Not long ago, Anna said, plantation workers even bulldozed Kubu homes to plant oil palm.
"We tried to stop them," she said. "We started crying. But the man said, 'Keep quiet or I'll take you to the police.'"
In Jakarta, I told Art Klassen, regional director of the Tropical Forest Foundation — a science-based U.S. non-profit — about what I heard from the Kubu villagers. He did not seem surprised.
Indigenous land claims "are not enshrined in any legal framework," he said. Oil palm, he continued, "occupies the land totally and squeezes out local populations. They become marginalized. They become slave workers for the oil palm industry basically. There is no other economic opportunity for them. That's it. End of story."
But it's not just tribal people and wildlife that are displaced by oil palm. So, too, is the very atmospheric gas now at the center of the global warming debate: carbon dioxide. All forests release CO2 when logged. But Indonesia's jungles and carbon-rich, peaty soils hemorrhage the stuff. Last year, a World Bank report put the loss from deforestation at 2.6 billion tons a year, making the impoverished southeast Asian island nation the third largest source of CO2 on Earth, behind China and the United States.
The week I visited Sumatra, Greenpeace activists aboard the Rainbow Warrior were blockading a shipment of palm oil off its coast. A banner tied to the ship's mast read: "Palm Oil Kills Forests and Climate."
Perhaps the right kind of biofuels can help slow carbon emissions. But scientists say that by rushing into biofuel production in recent years, we failed to look ahead. What would make the best biofuel? Switchgrass? Soybeans? Sunflower seeds? Algae? That's open to debate, but one thing is certain: Raw materials for biofuels should not be grown on plantations hacked out of tropical forests that are home to the richest concentrations of plant, insect, bird, and animal species on the planet.
• This article was shared by our content partner Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
IUCN 21 Jan 09;
A hands-on guide to producing bioenergy without harming the environment was launched today by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to coincide with the World Future Energy summit in Abu Dhabi.
Biofuels are on the agenda of the Summit, the largest meeting of the renewable energy industry this year. IUCN’s publication, Implementing Sustainable Bioenergy Production: a compilation of tools and approaches, urges governments, bioenergy producers and investors to learn from the environmental community and to start implementing sustainable approaches for bioenergy production.
“The biggest potential for biofuels does not lie in filling jet engines and SUVs, but in improving access to modern energy services to the more than 2 billion people who depend on unhealthy and inefficient forms of energy, “ said IUCN’s Director General Julia Matron-Lefèvre.
The publication addresses a range of sustainability issues from gender to invasive species; water management to landscape planning – some of which are rarely included in the bioenergy debate.
IUCN Chief Scientist, Jeff McNeely, who also chaired the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) environment group, said, “This collection of 30+ tools illustrates that we shouldn’t wait to start implementing sustainability practices when it comes to large-scale bioenergy production. We are not saying that we and our members and partners have all the answers, but this is a good place for a politician or developer to start when they are considering how biofuels can be produced sustainably. This is just a beginning. As the biofuel industry gains more experience over the years, they will also realise the market as well as ecosystem benefits of implementing sustainable production”.
A number of sustainability schemes for biofuels are under discussion. The RSB has launched its “Version Zero” set of twelve principles addressing numerous sustainability issues. IUCN’s work is contributing to bringing these principles to life and enabling developers to deliver sustainable products to the market.
The publication will be presented at the World Water Forum in Istanbul from the 16th to the 22nd March, where the links between water, energy and agriculture will be focused upon.
Matthias Williams, PlanetArk 22 Jan 09;
NEW DELHI - Giving energy to the poor should have been a Millennium Development Goal and a "glaring neglect" of the sector is holding back the world's fight against poverty, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday.
Rajendra Pachauri said developing countries such as his native India need to confront the "huge gap" in energy supply to the poor even as those nations must prepare for the acute effects of climate change.
Pachauri, whose panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, said meeting the poor's energy needs should have been listed as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) when the issue was debated at a key development summit more than six years ago.
"As a result of the insistence by some country governments, and in fact particularly just one country government, the whole sector of energy was dropped from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," Pachauri said at a seminar in New Delhi.
"Today energy remains the missing MDG."
Energy was discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, Pachauri said, though he did not elaborate on which countries blocked its inclusion.
"Without the provision of adequate and appropriate supply of energy ... we would be falling far short of what is desired and what we need to achieve in eliminating poverty across rural areas across the world," Pachauri said.
There are 1.6 billion people without electricity in the world, which impacts their health, education and ability to work, Pachauri said.
(Editing by Alistair Scrutton)
Catherine Brahic, New Scientist 21 Jan 09;
Never mind the downturn, a green economic revolution must be launched within months, one of the world's top economists has told New Scientist.
"You do hear voices saying now is not the moment," says Nicholas Stern, former head of the World Bank, in an exclusive interview. "Now is precisely the moment to make the change" to a low-carbon economy.
Stern believes low-carbon technologies have the potential to bring nations out of the recession and fuel economic growth that will be sustainable in the long-term, transforming society in as striking a way as railways and information technology did in previous centuries.
To reverse the slowdown, politicians and economists have ordered some of the biggest cash injections in decades. Interest rates in many countries have fallen sharply. "That means investment opportunities are there at lower cost," says Stern.
Act now
As part of a comprehensive fiscal package, he says, governments must also invest in the construction and transportation sectors that will provide jobs and long-term infrastructure. "Home insulation, making buildings much more efficient, can be done quite quickly," and often with the kind of skills possessed by many workers that are unemployed during the recession.
"It has got to be fast, though," Stern stresses. "The fiscal expansion has got to be put in place, the policy decisions have got to be taken in the next three to four months. They take time to kick in. "The urgency of decision making should be very clear to everybody. A package that is formulated and decided upon at the end of 2009 and early 2010 will be a package that's too late."
Stern was speaking last week as he prepared an article for New Scientist which outlines his latest assessment of the cost of addressing climate change (see Decision timeMovie Camera). In February, the team which put together the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of climate change will publish an updated assessment.
New world
Since 2006, which alerted the world to the relatively low cost of tackling the causes of climate change compared with mitigating its effects, Stern says the situation has changed in every respect.
From a scientific point of view, studies suggest the effects of climate change will be worse and happen faster than was thought two years ago. The technical horizon, says Stern, appears more promising. "The focus in this area has led to such activity and creativity on the research and development fronts that the range of technologies available to us looks even more rich and exciting."
The political situation is also more optimistic, he says. "The focus and commitment of the leaders of the world has changed remarkably in the last few years - the election of Barack Obama of course being an enormous change in the US. In China too, and in India, the understanding of the issue and how important it is for them has really deepened in the last two years."
Growth story
Finally, the economic outlook is uncertain. "The last two booms were the dotcom boom, where people sold half-baked websites for zillions of dollars, and a housing boom financed by loose monetary policies. They were rather artificial booms, both of them. What we need is to come out of the recession in a way that lays the foundation for what could be the really big growth story of the 21st century."
The policies of governments worldwide in the next few months will set the tone for whether or not the opportunity offered by the recession can be harnessed, says Stern. "If the private sector doesn't get clear signals about where policy is going, it will be a major setback," he says. "If you lose the moment, people may feel that 'well, we'll come back to this'."
That, says Stern, is not an option. Delays mean more carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere, and a greater problem to address further down the road.
Read our exclusive article by Stern: Time for a green industrial revolution
Nicholas Stern is chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics
Yahoo News 21 Jan 09;
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany said on Wednesday it expected more than 100 countries to attend a major conference in Bonn next Monday to establish a new international agency promoting renewable energy (IRENA).
Around half the countries represented would sign a founding treaty for the agency, which aims to boost the use of renewable sources of energy around the globe, Germany's environment ministry said in a statement.
Sigmar Gabriel, the environment minister, said the creation of the agency was "a huge step forward" for the renewable energy sector which has "enormous potential" not only for climate protection but also for economic development.
"The potential for solar, wind, hydro and biomass energy is so big that we could supply energy to more than nine billion people on Earth," Gabriel said.
The founding members of IRENA will decide in June 2009 where the agency will be located.
Germany is pushing for it to be based in Bonn -- also the home of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the body tasked with crafting a new global climate deal in Copenhagen in December.
Representatives from the United States, China and Japan would attend the conference, but are not expected to sign the founding document immediately, the minister told reporters.
The EU is aiming for use renewable sources for 20 percent of its energy needs by 2020.
In Germany, 15 percent of electricity consumption comes from renewable sources of energy and the government aims to double this by 2020.
Gabriel said that a quarter of a million jobs had already been created in Germany's renewable energy sector and Berlin also aims to double this by 2020.
Yahoo News 21 Jan 09;
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The global cost of tackling climate change will reach 175 billion euros annually by 2020, according to European Commission estimates, an EU source said Wednesday.
The annual figure will rise progressively to that amount, the EU's executive arm estimates in an internal report prepared for international climate change negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December.
Last month European leaders approved a climate change action plan which it hopes will become a model for the Copenhagen talks.
The European Commission has drawn up a series of proposals on the climate change/energy objectives to be shared out by other continents.
These will be discussed in Brussels next Wednesday when the global investment figure will be considered by EU commissioners and their departments among other measures.
All sectors of the global economy, including notably aviation and maritime transport, should take part in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the commission.
In their own climate battle plan, the European Union has obliged all airlines flying in and out of EU nations to cut CO2 emissions to 97 percent of 2005 levels and, from 2012, to buy 15 percent of their polluting rights.
The US and IATA, the international air transport association, have opposed such constraints.
By contrast, the EU has not fixed its own environmental targets for maritime transport, preferring to aim for an international accord rather than introducing a European deal which would have to be adapted later, the European source told AFP.
The overall EU climate change goals oblige EU member states and industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels.
EU nations have also agreed to boost renewable energy sources to make up 20 percent of total energy needs and to make 20 percent cuts in overall energy use.
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