Best of our wild blogs: 26 Feb 09

Looking for ‘real’ change
on the Straits Times Blogs - Grace Chua speaks for greener conferences

brown stripe flatworm @ labrador nature reserve
on the sgbeachbum blog

Rain, lightning and rainbow at Pasir Ris
on the wonderful creation blog

After the rain
on the ashira v3.0b blog

Yellow Bittern catches a frog
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Birds and chillies
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children on the Hell Hath No Fury Like Nature Scorned blog

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Indonesian community moves to protect reefs

Indah Setiawati, The Jakarta Post 26 Feb 09;

“If our diving equipment breaks, we can always buy new equipment in shops. But if the precious coral reef is damaged, where do we buy a new one?”

That remark was not made by a political party targeting voters who support the vulnerable marine treasury protection in Bali in the upcoming general election.

Marthen Welly, a professional diver and project leader of a worldwide organization concerned with natural resources conservation, reiterates that message to everyone he meets when he talks about coral reefs and species living in reefs.

He works for the Nature Conservancy-Coral Triangle Center (TNC-CTC), which is working on a project aimed at conserving the marine area in the Nusa Penida islets, which comprise Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida islands.

Known as a paradise destination for tourists who love scuba diving and snorkeling, the islets feature 1,800 hectares of pristine coral reefs made up of 247 protected coral species. The coral reef beds are home to 562 species of reef fishes.

The islands, however, are ill-equipped with regulations to protect the marine resources, and there is a limited budget to preserve the underwater treasury, as tourists only have to pay entrance fees of as little as Rp 1,000.

Marthen said the TNC-CTC proposed the inclusion of three zones, namely the central, the utilization and the marine tourism zones, in the marine conservation area plan.

The central zone will cover areas that have the most breathtaking underwater view and are often visited by the world-famous Mola-mola fish and other types of marine life, including the manta ray and sperm whale.

The utilization zone comprises offshore areas that can be utilized for seaweed farming and fishing; while the marine tourism zone, which also includes the central zone, can be used for water sports activities.

“Separating the zones is important because the activities in the islets are not well-managed now. People can plant seaweed anywhere, or fish in the snorkeling and diving spots,” Marthen said.

He added if such practices continued, they could trigger a horizontal conflict among seaweed farmers, tourism-related businesspeople and fishermen, as each sought out the best locations for their activities.

“We need to conserve the Nusa Penida islets immediately to prevent damage to the coral reefs, but it can’t been done instantly,” he said, adding the program required local residents, the Klungkung administration and the tourism industry to share the same vision the conservation activists proposed.

He said the idea of a marine conservation area itself could somehow give a wrong impression to local residents because they could mistakenly think they would be prohibited from conducting activities in the conserved area.

Marthen said that once the marine conservation area was approved by the local administration in the form of a regent’s decree, it would be run by a collaborative management body.

“The body will consist of representatives from the local residents, the administration, a local NGO and businesspeople. They will run some programs and determine the dos and don’ts in the conservation area,” he said.

“Currently, there are no rules on the maximum number of people who can dive at the same time. Once I saw 20 boats anchored in the same spot.”

Marthen also said the TNC-CTC would run a study to see how much money overseas tourists were prepared to pay to help conserve the marine area each time they visited the islands.

“I’m sure they would be willing to pay, because most divers understand that the coral reef is priceless,” he said.

He added his organization expected it would take five years to set up the project, and said he hoped that by the end of 2012, the collaborative management body would be able to be an independent and financially sustainable institution.

The project aims to endorse the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI), a program proposed by several countries to halt the degradation of vulnerable coral colonies and conserve threatened marine species in the coral triangle area, which comprised Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The six countries will sign the initiative at the first ever World Ocean Conference (WOC) in Manado, North Sulawesi, in May this year.

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Water usage rises as temperatures soar

Today Online 26 Feb 09;

THE recent weeks of hot and dry weather have seen Singaporeans using more water. With temperatures hitting 34°c last week, the daily potable water consumption rose to 3 per cent beyond the daily average. The increase is enough to fill 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Said Mr Chong Hou Chun, director of PUB’s Water Supply Network: “Consumption patterns typically move upwards during dry spells. However, small acts can go a long way in helping Singapore as a whole save big on water.”

For instance, turning off the tap while soaping up can help save more than 10 litres of water. “If everyone cuts his water use by just 10 litres a day, the amount saved is enough to fill more than 6,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools in a year,” Mr Chong added.

Tips on how the public can conserve water at home are at tenlitres.sec.org.sg/index.asp. Or call PUB’s 24-hour call centre for a water saving kit.

As for the non-domestic sector, responsible for half of the island’s water consumption, building managers and owners can help by installing constant-flow regulators at all taps and use water efficient labelled fittings with the “excellent” rating.

Checking for and fixing leaks promptly also helps – a leaking pipe can waste up to 1,000 litres of water in a day. More measures are at www.tenpercent.sec.org.sg.

To enhance the resilience of Singapore’s water supply, PUB has invested in technology and infrastructure to strengthen the Four National Taps (local catchment water, imported water, NEWater and desalinated water).

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Poison-Arrow Killings Surge in Africa Elephant Poaching

Nicholas Wadhams, National Geographic News 25 Feb 09;

Poachers on the hunt for ivory have stepped up their use of poison arrows and spears to kill elephants in southern Kenya, according to conservationists who say the techniques are harder to trace than gun attacks.

The surge is part of a nationwide increase in attacks on the animals, according to a report issued earlier this month by the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.

Since the start of 2008, 19 elephants have been killed and another 25 wounded by spears, arrows, and bullets in the Amboseli region near Mount Kilimanjaro, the report says.

Of those killed, ten animals had had their tusks removed—the first time in many years that ivory has been taken from Amboseli elephants, the group said.

In the last six weeks, poachers have also killed five elephants in the nearby Tsavo National Park region. Some were felled by gunfire, others by poisoned arrows.

Conservation groups fear that the rise in poaching is a result of a UN decision to allow the first ivory auction in a decade in 2008, an event that yielded more than a million U.S. dollars from Chinese and Japanese bidders.

"Since the one-off ivory sales from southern Africa countries late last year, we have noted an unprecedented rise of elephant poaching incidents in Tsavo," Jonathan Kirui, Tsavo National Park's assistant director, said in a statement released Monday.

"Our security team is on full alert and is going full force to ensure that the poachers are deterred."

"Soft" Killing

Officials with the Amboseli trust think poachers are using a poison made from acocanthera shrubs, which are common in Kenya.

"The toxin is frighteningly effective and there is no antidote," the report says.

Poisoning elephants attracts far less attention than shooting them with a gun, wildlife officials note.

"When you shoot an elephant—that loud bang—people will hear it," said Patrick Omondi, head of species conservation at the Kenya Wildlife Service.

"You shoot this elephant with a poisoned arrow, then they follow the elephant until it dies, and then they pluck out the ivory," Omondi said. "It's a soft way of killing."

In 2008 the Kenya Wildlife Service reported 98 elephants killed for their ivory, double the 2007 figure, Omondi said.

Conservationists from the Amboseli Trust and Kenya Wildlife Service link the rise in attacks to demand from Chinese workers constructing a road near Amboseli National Park and to lucrative trade across the border into Tanzania.

The wildlife service has launched an investigation into the trade and is collecting evidence in hopes of arresting those involved, Omondi said.

In a recent interview with a local East African newspaper, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Bo denied that Chinese in Kenya are smuggling ivory.

Threatened But Healthy

Officials estimate that 1,600 elephants currently live in the Amboseli region. While the attacks are disturbing, the local population remains healthy, conservationists say.

"The threat is there—the indication is that there is a high demand for ivory," Omondi said.

"But it has not hit the elephants in a way that we are going to lose our Amboseli elephants."

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"Gaia" Scientist Says Life Doomed By Climate Woes

Peter Griffiths, PlanetArk 26 Feb 09;

LONDON - Climate change will wipe out most life on Earth by the end of this century and mankind is too late to avert catastrophe, a leading British climate scientist said.

James Lovelock, 89, famous for his Gaia theory of the Earth being a kind of living organism, said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions.

His apocalyptic theory foresees crop failures, drought and death on an unprecedented scale. The population of this hot, barren world could shrink from about seven billion to one billion by 2100 as people compete for ever-scarcer resources.

"It will be death on a grand scale from famine and lack of water," Lovelock told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. "It could be a reduction to a billion (people) or less."

By 2040, temperatures in European cities will rise to an average of 110 Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) in summer, the same as Baghdad and parts of Europe in the 2003 heatwave.

"The land will gradually revert to scrub and desert. You can look at as if the Sahara were steadily moving into Europe. It's not just Europe; the whole world will be changing in that way."

Attempts to cut emissions of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in an attempt to reduce the risks are probably doomed to failure, he added.

Even if the world found a way of cutting emissions to zero, it is now too late to cool the Earth.

"It is a bit like a supertanker. You can't make it stop by just turning the engines off," he said before the release of a new book on climate change.

"It will go on for a long, long time. If by some magic you could suddenly bring the C02 down, it wouldn't suddenly cool off."

SAFE HAVENS

Campaigns to promote recycling and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are a waste of time, Lovelock adds, although he concedes that nuclear power will help meet growing demand for energy.

While financial markets and politicians promote carbon emissions trading schemes to reduce emissions and help the environment, Lovelock says they, too, will have little effect.

"I don't see the efforts of governments around the world succeeding in doing anything significant to cut back the emissions of carbon dioxide," he said.

Efforts should instead be focused on creating safe havens in areas which will escape the worst effects of climate change.

In his book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," he adds: "We have to stop pretending that there is any possible way of returning to that lush, comfortable and beautiful Earth we left behind some time in the 20th century."

The destruction of natural ecosystems for farmland, deforestation and the rapid growth of the human race and livestock have all exacerbated the problem, he added.

Scientists should not underestimate the crucial role of the oceans as an indicator of rising temperatures and tool for reducing carbon dioxide, Lovelock argues.

"Most of the Earth's surface is the ocean. That holds 800 times more than the atmosphere or the land. And there is no question that the ocean is steadily warming," he said.

A former skeptic of doom-laden predictions, Lovelock admits he is not entirely comfortable with his role as a modern-day Cassandra, the cursed prophetess of Greek mythology whose counsel was ignored.

However, he says the scale and speed of the looming crisis are so great he must speak out. He is still struck by the public's apparent lack of urgency about the problem.

"Don't blame me for the terrible predictions," said Lovelock, a sprightly, trim figure with silver hair who looks younger than his age and was soberly dressed in navy jumper, tie and casual trousers.

"The U.N.'s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) even in its 2001 report was suggesting temperatures by 2040 and 2050 that were devastatingly hot. All I'm doing is drawing people's attention to it."

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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World Lags In Breeding Climate-Proof Crops: Experts

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 26 Feb 09;

OSLO - The world is running out of time to develop new seed varieties to confront climate change and head off food shortages that could affect billions of people, experts said.

Marking the first anniversary on Thursday of the opening of a "doomsday" seed vault on the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic, they said that people in Africa and Asia were most at risk from a lack of climate-proof crops.

"It's a question of urgency," Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, told Reuters by telephone with other experts from Spitsbergen. He said governments needed to invest more in breeding new seeds.

"Unlike the bank that needs to be bailed out this week, this problem is going to be an emergency 20 years from now. But by then it will be too late" he said.

The vault, blasted from icy rock 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, opened on February 26, 2008 and has doubled its holdings to 200 million seeds in the past year, representing 400,000 varieties. It is run by the trust, the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center in Sweden.

"My opinion is that not enough is begin done" to develop new varieties of crops, said David Lobell, an expert in food security and the environment at Stanford University.

There was work under way to help develop crops that can withstand drought and floods but exposure to very high temperatures had not been a focus historically, he said.

AFRICA

Priorities could be southern Africa to help people heavily dependent on crops such as maize in a region likely to be hard hit by climate change, he said. Similarly, India and Pakistan faced disruptions to crops such as rice and wheat.

"We need some tremendous advances," said David Battisti, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington.

"The whole world will be stressed at the same time" because of global warming, he said. Crops can take a decade to breed and test, with no guarantee of success.

Battisti authored a study in the journal Science last month that predicted that climate change would disrupt growth by both crops and livestock and cause serious food shortages for half the world's population.

Crops cannot simply be moved to new areas as the climate warms because soils, pests, insect pollinators, daylight hours and other factors differ even if temperatures seem suitable.

"It's not going to be enough to create heat-tolerant maize," Fowler said. "We are going to need new varieties appropriate in Ghana, in South Africa, or Brazil. You need crops adapted all over the place."

The seed vault will mark its anniversary on Thursday with delivery of four tons of seeds -- almost 90,000 samples of hundreds of species from collections in Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States, Syria, Mexico and Colombia.

The vault is meant to be a fail-safe for national collections of everything from potatoes to coconuts, a sort of Noah's Ark in case of disasters such as nuclear war. It has capacity to store about 4.5 million samples, or 2 billion seeds.

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CO2 Rise In Atmosphere Accelerates In 2008

Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 26 Feb 09;

LONDON - Increases in the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere accelerated last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters on Wednesday.

The new data may dampen hopes that a slowdown in industrial output and carbon emissions, which started at the end of last year, will temporarily deflect climate change.

Some analysts had hoped that recession would give the world breathing space to reverse its impact on the climate. The new NOAA data showed that levels of carbon dioxide accelerated slightly last year.

"For us to see (the impact) in the atmosphere it would take a large drop in emissions, but it hasn't happened yet and that's very clear from this data," said Thomas Conway, a NOAA climate scientist who helped compile the figures.

"If the change in emissions is only a few percent we're not going to see that in the atmosphere," Conway told Reuters, explaining that natural processes, whereby for example forests and oceans mop up carbon dioxide, masked small changes in manmade emissions in the short-term at least.

Recession means that developed nations' greenhouse gas emissions will fall by about 2 percent this year, some analysts estimate, although that effect could be much greater if the world slipped into a wider slump or depression.

Emissions are expected to continue to rise in China, which analysts say is the world's biggest carbon emitter.

Levels of carbon dioxide last year reached a global average of 384.9 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere, up 2.2 ppm on 2007, compared with a previous annual increase of 1.8 ppm, the NOAA data showed.

Annual increases had been greater in the past decade compared with the 1980s and 1990s, said Conway.

That acceleration was mostly due to increases in emissions, he added, but may also support an unproven theory that oceans, which currently mop up a large part of excess manmade carbon emissions, were becoming saturated.

"There is some evidence that a sink in the southern (Antarctic) ocean is not keeping up ... has been saturated."

Rising global carbon emissions are stoking global warming, most scientists agree. One threshold for dangerous climate change adopted by the European Union is 2 degrees centigrade warming above pre-industrial levels.

"Levels of CO2 at 385 ppm are already approaching a level which in the long-term we have to stay below to have a likely chance of staying below 2 degrees," said Malte Meinshausen, a climate scientist at the Germany-based Potsdam Institute.

It was possible for levels of carbon in the atmosphere to peak and then fall again, however, if people adopted low-carbon sources of energy and technologies which suck carbon dioxide out of the air by burying it underground, Meinshausen added.

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New Products Aim To Save Money And The Planet

Timothy Gardner, Reuters 26 Feb 09;

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Want to save money as well as the planet?

Dual-flush toilets, glitzy homemade club soda kits and reusable bamboo fiber diapers are just some of the eco-products being offered to consumers at the second annual Green Products Expos as the idea of green shifts to thrift amid the economic crisis.

"Last year green products were mostly about women's apparel made out of eco-friendly materials, this year with the economic crunch people are staying at home and looking to see where they can make a few changes to save money," said Kevin Nichols, the head of Propel Media, whose products were shown at the expo.

To reduce water waste Kohler designed efficient toilets that feature two buttons -- one to produce a flush of 1.6 gallons (6 liters) and a second that uses only half that amount for smaller jobs.

Todd Weber, a manager at the company, said an investment of about $500 into a package that includes the dual flush and high-tech shower heads, which trick consumers into thinking they are using more water than they really are, can pay for itself with in one to two years.

The toilets can save a family up to 16,500 gallons of water per year and the shower heads can save more than 20 percent on hot water bills, according to the firm.

Some companies and consumers have become increasingly concerned about water waste with higher temperatures from climate change expected to bring more droughts and melt mountain glaciers, a source of fresh water for billions of people around the world.

The saving of heated water can cut use of fossil fuels and emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet.

Weber said the toilets are selling well in the Pacific northwest of the United States, where consumers are more aware of water shortages, and in Georgia, which recently experienced severe droughts.

For families who like fizzy drinks Sodastream, a company based in New Jersey, sells kits that inject carbon dioxide into tap water to make seltzer water and flavored sodas.

Company manager Steve Smith said the basic $80 kit can pay for itself in three to six months depending on much it is used. It also saves fuel in the transportation and packaging of carbonated beverages.

If rising landfills are a concern, the Maine Cloth Diaper Co. may have the answer. It produces reusable diapers made out of bamboo fiber.

Murray Perce, a co-founder of the company, said disposable diapers cost about $1,500 from birth to potty training, while bamboo reusables cost about $350, not including water and power bills for washing and drying -- or labor costs.

Perce said sales have not suffered during the economic crisis as consumers see the diapers as a way to save money.

"Sales have been stable this year, isn't that the new up?"

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

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