Pedal Ubin - ride's over after 12 years!
from Habitatnews and otterman speaks
Macaques Acquired Taste For Flour
from Life's Indulgences
Bukit Timah - Sad :(
from Singapore Nature
Scene from above
from The annotated budak
Oriental Pied Hornbill - Tanibar Corella confrontation
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Natural hazards: lightning
from wild shores of singapore and severe sunburn too
Bernama 25 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE, Sept 25 (Bernama) -- A significant milestone in the history of Singapore's industrial development, Jurong Island's reclamation, has been completed on Friday.
Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang who officiated at the completion ceremony, said that from an initial area of less than 1,000 hectare, Jurong Island now spans a land mass of about 3,000 hectare.
Jurong Island is now home to 95 companies and is the cornerstone of Singapore's energy and chemical industry, reports China's Xinhua news agency.
The minister said that the key was industry integration. It was about helping chemical companies save costs by capitalising on vertical and horizontal linkages: upstream plants supplying feedstock to downstream manufacturers, sharing common facilities.
He added that it was about finding out the right match of companies to maximize the synergies of integration and co-location, about reaping the benefits of economies of scale.
"The story of Jurong Island is the result of innovation, determination, hard work, and perseverance. This project showcases the foresight, tenacity and teamwork of many government agencies in overcoming extraordinary odds. Their efforts have contributed in no small part to Singapore's economic success," he said.
Land reclamation completed for Jurong Island
Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia 25 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE: The reclamation of Singapore's Jurong Island was completed on Friday after nearly a decade, marking a major milestone in the country's industrial development.
Although the initial completion date was 2030, the project finished some 20 years ahead of schedule, due to high demand from big global names for space on the island.
The companies currently housed on the 3,000-hectare island account for about 80 per cent of the manufacturing output from the energy and chemical sectors in Singapore.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the completion of the reclamation, Lim Hng Kiang, Minister for Trade and Industry, said the plan is to position the island as the industrial development model of the future – coupling world-class competitiveness with sustainable and responsible development growth.
"The key was integration. It was about helping chemical companies save costs by capitalising on vertical and horizontal linkages - upstream plants supplying feedstock to downstream manufacturers, sharing common facilities," said Mr Lim.
Ninety-five leading energy and chemical companies have invested more than S$31 billion in fixed assets on Jurong Island.
JTC Corporation, the island's industrial landlord, said the eastern part of the island is now fully occupied, but plots remain for investors on the western side.
JTC also said that it hopes to see more companies conduct research and development on the island to bring Singapore's petrochemical production up the value chain.
And while reclamation may have been completed, further expansion of the island has not been ruled out. Currently, further storage and infrastructure projects, such as the Jurong Rock Cavern and Very Large Floating Structure (VLFS), are well underway.
"We are looking at jetties to see how we can better facilitate jetties... because as the population grows here, roads will be more congested, so if you use barging as an alternative means to trucking for transport of chemicals, I think it will be helpful," said Cedric Foo, chairman of JTC Corporation.
Plans for a second link, connecting the mainland to the island, have been confirmed, but details of the project have yet to be announced.
- CNA/sc
Ramp up for Jurong Island
Robin Chan, Straits Times 26 Sep 09;
JURONG Town Corporation is ramping up its infrastructure spending on Jurong Island to support more investments.
These will include the building of a barging terminal and a possible second road link that will improve access and transport of products to and from the island, on top of the ongoing billion dollar underground Jurong Rock Cavern for storing petrochemicals and oil.
JTC chairman Cedric Foo also said some investment projects on Jurong Island that had been postponed due to the financial crisis have resumed. He would not say which companies these were.
Companies like Jurong Aromatics Corporation and Lanxess have pushed back projects on Jurong Island because of the financial crisis.
Mr Foo was speaking on Friday at a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the island's land reclamation project that finished 21 years ahead of schedule, to meet the surge in demand.
He said that JTC will also implement a biometric access system at its checkpoint which is due to be ready in 2011.
Jurong Island is home to 95 global petrochemical companies that have invested over $31 billion.
'We will continue to find ways to adjust the Jurong Island profile to bring about stronger integration for greater operating efficiencies by the companies, in particular to accomodate new entrants,' said Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang at the ceremony.
'Our vision is for Jurong Island to be a global energy and chemical hub.
'We intend to achieve a critical mass of feedstock, move to higher value chemical chains which produce specialty chemicals and advanced materials and partner companies in developing new chemical products.'
Jurong Isle to get new facilities
New barge terminal, second road coming up
Robin Chan, Straits Times 26 Sep 09;
JURONG Island, the centrepiece of Singapore's petrochemical industry, is getting a major infrastructure upgrade.
A new barge terminal and a second road to the mainland to ease traffic congestion and improve logistics will be built by industrial landlord JTC.
These new projects are in addition to the ongoing construction of the billion-dollar underground Jurong Rock Cavern for storing petrochemicals and oils.
The additional infrastructure work was announced by JTC chairman Cedric Foo yesterday at a ceremony to mark the completion of Jurong Island's 14-year land reclamation project.
The huge undertaking was finished ahead of its original intended target of 2030 to meet a surge in demand for development space.
Mr Foo told the media later that some companies had indicated that they would resume Jurong Island projects postponed because of the financial crisis now that the economy was looking up.
He declined to specify which companies.
Jurong Aromatics Corporation (JAC) and synthetic rubber producer Lanxess pushed back Jurong Island projects earlier in the year because of the downturn.
JAC is so far the only known company reported to have indicated that it would use the Jurong Rock Cavern facility for storage.
Mr Foo said JTC will also be implementing a biometric access system at its checkpoint to enhance security. This facility is expected to be completed in 2011.
The first phase of the barging terminal is slated to start operating in 2011, while the second road link is still under study.
Mr Foo said that JTC may also place more ship berthing facilities, such as jetties, on the island.
Jurong Island is home to 94 global petrochemical companies such as ExxonMobil and Japan's Mitsui Chemicals that have invested over $31 billion. These companies make up 80 per cent of Singapore's energy and chemicals industry.
The petrochemicals industry is an important segment of the economy and contributed 5.3 per cent of the value added to gross domestic product last year.
The island itself is formed from seven separate islands off the south coast. The 991ha of original land has been expanded to 3,000ha over 15 years.
'The story of Jurong Island is the result of innovation, determination, hard work and perseverance,' said Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang at the ceremony.
He recounted how Singapore had not allowed the disruption to the import of sea sand to delay the reclamation plans, instead using alternative sources of sand supply and exploring other ways to meet the need.
The island now also hosts research and development facilities in addition to manufacturing plants.
Mr Lim said: 'We will continue to find ways to adjust the Jurong Island profile to bring about stronger integration for greater operating efficiencies by the companies, in particular to accommodate new entrants.'
Carving more routes to Jurong Island
JTC to build new road link and barging terminal for energy and chemical firms
Emilyn Yap, Business Times 26 Sep 09;
JURONG Island will be getting a new road link and barging terminal to support its growing energy and chemicals cluster.
Industrial landlord JTC Corporation unveiled these new projects yesterday as it celebrated the end of reclamation works on the island - 21 years ahead of schedule.
Jurong Island was formed by merging seven southern offshore islands with a total land mass of 991ha. Reclamation began in 1995 and was targeted for completion in 2030. But JTC sped up the project as demand for land on Jurong Island surged and exceeded expectations.
In 2000, there were 61 petrochemical companies which had invested $21 billion on the island. Today, there are 95 firms which have poured in over $31 billion into fixed assets.
Jurong Island spans 3,000ha and companies have fully taken up land on its east side. There are 'small pockets' of land left in the western part of the island and 'many investors are very keen to come here', JTC chairman Cedric Foo told the press on the sidelines of the event. Investments will grow 'probably at a good pace. . . My estimate is, probably no worse than the historical average'.
The economic downturn had forced some companies such as Tuas Power to postpone projects on Jurong Island. Mr Foo said that some firms may be resuming the projects, though he did not identify them.
To anchor more investments, JTC will continue to improve infrastructure on Jurong Island. It has finished a preliminary study on building another road from the mainland for the growing working population - some 38,000 people pass through the island's checkpoint daily.
The agency will need to iron out details such as the position and cost of the second link, which could be completed by 2017.
ExxonMobil Chemical manufacturing director (Singapore chemical plant) Derk Jan Hartgerink welcomed the news. 'There is a lot of traffic coming to the island, the industry is growing. . . Sooner or later the second link has to be built.'
JTC will also be building a barging terminal on the western part of the island. The first phase of the project will be ready by 2011 and it will give chemical companies another way to transport products. The option is particularly useful because there are only a few roads trucks carrying hazardous materials can use to get to the island.
To boost security on Jurong Island, JTC will also introduce a biometric access system at the checkpoint. It is assessing various technologies and will award the tender for the project by the end of the year. The system should be completed by 2011.
Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang was also speaking at the event yesterday. 'We will continue to find ways to adjust the Jurong Island profile to bring about stronger integration and greater operating efficiencies,' he said.
'We intend to achieve a critical mass of feedstock, move to higher value chemical chains which produce specialty chemicals and advanced materials, and bring in partner companies in developing new chemical products.'
Companies on Jurong Island accounted for 80 per cent of the energy and chemical industry manufacturing output, Mr Lim said.
Foong Thim Leng, The Star 26 Sep 09;
IPOH: The state government will gazette the Kinta Nature Park (KNP) as a wildlife sanctuary to prevent encroachment,
State Tourism Committee chairman Datuk Hamidah Osman said gazetting the park would not take much time as the groundwork for it had been prepared when Datuk Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali was the Perak mentri besar.
“We will have to decide on which agency would manage and upgrade the facilities,” she told reporters after inspecting the park in Batu Gajah following complaints received from the Perak branch of the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) yesterday.
“It will be a waste if a potential tourist attraction is neglected. The park is said to be the best place for bird watching in Malaysia.
“It is home to more than 130 species of birds and has the largest heronry in the country on one of its islands,” she said.
It was reported in The Star on Tuesday that the the park will lose the heronry if illegal activities continue there.
Almost 60% of the birds in the park are listed as totally protected or protected under the Protection of Wild Life Act 1976.
A recent check by the MNS revealed that someone had fenced up the whole lake where the heronry, with five breeding species of 2,000 waterbirds, is located with the intention of starting commercial fish farming.
The MNS had complained that pristine mining pools at the southern end of the Park have been taken over by duck farms and that incursions by sand extraction activities have increased.
The lack of a management body had resulted in the park’s infrastructure being damaged and fallen into disrepair.
Hamidah said the Park was managed by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan).
”We would like the park to be managed by the Kampar district office with Perhilitan playing a monitoring role,” said Hamidah.
She agreed to look into a suggestion by MNS to place the park under the Perak State Parks Corporation.
Duck farms operating without a permit would have to stop operations Hamidah said, adding that she would discuss with the Kampar District Office not to renew the permits for sand mining in the park.
Accompanying her were MNS Perak branch vice-chairman Lee Ping Kong, MNS council member Tan Chin Tong and ornithologist Lim Kim Chye who is the MNS Perak Branch bird group coordinator.
Ruben Sario, The Star 26 Sep 09;
KOTA KINABALU: State-owned Yayasan Sabah is ceasing all conventional logging operations near the Maliau Basin by year’s end, said Forestry Department director Datuk Sam Mannan.
He said the closure of the designated logging areas would pave the way the for the implementation of reduced-impact logging in the affected commercial forest reserves such as Sungai Pinangah, Sapulut, Kalabakan and Gunung Rara from 2010.
He had been asked about concerns voiced by various groups about logging within the buffer zones of the Maliau Basin.
The reduced-impact logging would include third party auditing similar to what has been done at the Malua forest reserve.
“This has proven effective in reducing damage by 50% compared to conventional logging operations,” he said.
Mannan said logging operations within the buffer zones of conservation areas such as the 590sq km Maliau Basin, which is about double the size of Penang island, was completely legal.
“Now, the standards for harvesting within these buffer zones have been raised to reduced-impact logging standards by next year,” Mannan said.
Mannan said logging in such areas was not new as forest harvesting was also carried out at the buffer zone in the eastern boundary of another pristine area, the Danum Valley in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The logging was carried out on a massive scale by Yayasan Sabah at what was dubbed its “industrial reserve” to feed its mills in Silam, he added.
He said those logged-over areas were now being reforested as part of the Innoprise-FACE Foundation Rainforest Rehabilitation Project (Infapro).
Jon Afrizal, The Jakarta Post 25 Sep 09;
Sumatra's low-plain forests are fast diminishing, currently measuring only 400,000 hectares. The main cause of the deforestation rampant illegal logging and clear-cutting, and if this prevails, experts warn, low-plain forests in Sumatra will likely be completely wiped out by 2010.
The Harapan rainforest, spanning 101,355 hectares and located in Jambi and South Sumatra provinces, is part of the remaining low-plain forests on the island.
It straddles the four regencies of Batanghari, Muarojambi and Sarolangun in Jambi, and Musi Banyuasin in South Sumatra.
The area is currently being reforested to replenish the damaged forests, formerly a timber concession.
"We're currently repairing the damaged ecosystem," said Harapan rainforest agency intern head Yusuf Cahyadin recently.
As part of the reforestation efforts, the agency will issue an outright cessation on logging in the area, or at least a 20-year moratorium.
This, Yusuf said, will allow the forest to be densely wooded once again.
The ban will not affect local communities that live off the forest, particularly the Anak Dalam and Bathin IX tribes that use non-timber products such as rattan and resin.
Communities living near the forest will also stand to benefit, Yusuf says, by growing rubber, for instance.
"We're currently initiating a community-based forest through an agreement between forest caretakers and local residents, in the hopes that they can also protect the forest," he said.
He added 30 percent of the forest has been damaged through clear-cutting, particularly for oil palm plantations.
"Oil palms are not suited to the forest," he pointed out.
In Jambi province, the problem of clear-cutting of forests for farmland has been underway now on a large scale.
Jambi has a total area of 5,100,000 hectares; around half of that, or 2,482,315 hectares, are forested areas, stretching from the Kerinci Seblat National Park in the west, to the Berbak National Park in the east.
"Forests function as water catchment areas as well as homes for wildlife and plant species," said Arief Munandar, head of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment's (Walhi) Jambi branch.
However, the area's natural bounty has gone to waste under poor forest management that has hastened the rate of environmental destruction, Arief said.
He added the widespread deforestation can be blamed on the Forestry Ministry's policies, which favor investment over conservation.
The ministry has issued permitted a host of state and private companies to clear large swaths of forest to make way for hectare upon unending hectare of oil palms and rubber trees.
The total current timber concession area in the province is 487,249 hectares, while the area of forest cleared for oil palm estates is 403,467 hectares.
Muhammad Cohen, Asia Times 26 Sep 09;
HONG KONG - Cutting down Asia's forests has for decades been an easy way to get rich. Now a trio of pan-Asian "serial entrepreneurs" hope to prove planting trees can be a moneymaker, too. Paolo Delgado, Paolo Conconi and Victor Yap started Project Oikos last year hoping to profit from concerns about global warming. But their primary goal is to educate Asians about the benefits of tree planting and protecting forests.
The trio launched a website, www.projectoikos.com, where people can buy trees priced at US$10 and dedicate them to loved ones or special events. Buyers get a certificate (save paper and don't print it) that includes the dedication and a tracking number to identify their tree.
Project Oikos is one of several services that allow people to buy trees for a variety of reasons. Equinox Publishing, a sponsor of WWF Indonesia's NewTrees planting program for corporate customers (see In a haze, Indonesia slows deforestation Asia Times Online, September 26, 2009), recently released My Baby Tree, a smart phone application as a retail version of the NewTrees corporate. Buyers can purchase a tree, locate it via an online map and give it a virtual watering by shaking their phone.
Different from many other online tree planting programs, Project Oikos aims to move beyond the virtual experience. "As we kept on digging we found that while planting trees does make a difference, the reality in this ever growing world is that the act of planting trees alone is not enough to make a substantial change in the world's environment," Delgado, who calls himself the project's creative director, said.
Delgado, a Philippine native educated in the US who worked in China before basing himself in Manila, and Conconi, an Italian citizen who worked with Danone in France before moving to Asia in 1992, germinated the idea over drinks in Beijing last year.
"We are both quite professionally driven and tend to forget things that are not alarmed on our phone calendars," Delgado said. "We were laughing about all of the silly, last minute gifts we purchased for girlfriends, when we forgot birthdays or anniversaries while off on some business trip somewhere.
"Buying a star was one of the most memorable, as it was last minute, reasonable, doable by Internet, and turned out to be hugely romantic - this was back in the '90s. Paolo [Conconi] then said, 'What if we sold trees'?"
That turned out to be a prescient suggestion. "I grew up active in the Boy Scouts, then became an avid mountaineer and scuba diver," said Delgado, whose family links to Boy Scouts of the Philippines (BSP) span three generations. "When you grow up around these influences, you become quite aware of the environment and our impact on it."
Those scouting links led his family's logistics company, Delgado Brothers, to partner with BSP and Coca-Cola on "Go Green", a project to plant 200,000 trees across the Philippines using saplings grown in BSP nurseries. The connection gave Delgado a potential source for trees and a process for planting them. Yap, a Hong Kong native who has worked with a variety of multinationals, joined the team to provide international marketing expertise, and Project Oikos was born.
The name Oikos traces to ancient Greece. "Oikos was the basic family unit, the shared center of an individual's world," Delgado explains. "In today's globalized world, we believe the environment has become our modern oikos. It is the center of our world, and we all should care for the well being of our shared oikos."
"Everyone is screaming about the environment and how we need to reduce this footprint, recycle that plastic, but for a lot of the developing world - particularly Southeast Asia - there is not enough information out there for individuals to understand exactly what the problem is and what they can do to assist ... This is why at Project Oikos we put a focus on developing an experience that we hope can change mindsets."
Down and dirty
Project Oikos doesn't only want participants to buy trees, it wants them to pick up a shovel and plant them as part of events it stages to build public awareness. "We involve local environmental groups, so that they too can gain some exposure and be part of the resource group that the public has access to," Delgado said.
Because trees absorb carbon wherever they grow, plantings don't need to be in wilderness areas. "There is that saying, 'if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it ... ' [and] similarly, 'if a tree is planted and nobody knows it ...' Planting areas need to be in line with our focus on creating awareness," Delgado said. "We try to pick high visibility areas that can generate media impact as well as drive up participation."
For example, in the Intramuros area of Manila, Oikos staged plantings following a scandal that revealed decades-old trees were cut there. Another large planting took place at Manila's Smoky Mountain, the former central garbage dump that was transformed into a low-income housing area.
Planting events have been held in several areas of the Philippines and Malaysia, where co-founder Conconi now lives, in partnership with environmental groups, schools, community organizations, government and publications. Conconi says Project Oikos hopes to expand its base of corporate clients to build joint marketing campaigns. Targets include high profile polluters such as airlines, using trees to offset carbon emissions from passengers' travel.
"We feel that Project Oikos is a great CSR [corporate social responsibility] investment," Delgado says. "With the global financial crisis still reverberating through most companies, we offer an inexpensive alternative to traditional corporate gifts; we can be a part of company-client bonding experiences, and we fulfill CSR requirements."
Although it's traditionally non-profit organizations that offer CSR programs, Oikos' partners decided to make theirs a for-profit venture. "What we knew that we wanted was the ability to run Project Oikos like a business, with good professionals at each location for the activities," Delgado says. "We wanted it to have the freedom to invest in local organizations that were already in existence and making a difference in their own way.”
"We also felt that it would be wonderful to someday have Project Oikos work like a sort of investment fund, where MR = MC [marginal revenue equals marginal costs; the point at which profits are maximized], where we are answerable to investors for returns and growth,” he said. “It may be developing awareness today, but perhaps something related but different tomorrow. In this way, we keep ourselves sharp and efficient. I guess with these sort of ideas, a for-profit was the best way we knew how."
Project Oikos' founders are looking to clean up in every sense, and, everyone, including Mother Earth, can profit from their success.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow Muhammad Cohen’s blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post 25 Sep 09;
Villagers around the Way Kambas National Park (TNWK) in Lampung have been living in a state of fear over the past few days due raging wild elephants destroying their crops.
The herd of around 50 elephants has also damaged the residents' huts and chicken coops. Villagers are also gripped with fear because the elephants are no longer afraid of torches and bamboo drums, which were successfully used in the past to drive them away.
"The elephants have destroyed dozens of people's chicken coops. Residents had initially intended to cook the chickens for Idul Fitri," said Sulasno, a resident in Labuhan Ratu 9 village, Labuhan Ratu district, East Lampung.
"We are terrified because the elephants trampled to death a number of people."
Sularno added that the herd of elephants had invaded the village two days before Idul Fitri. "We are still afraid to go outdoors at night because the elephants usually come at night," he said.
The Lampung chapter of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) coordinator, Dwi Nugroho Adhiasto, said the herd of elephants had actually ventured into their own habitat.
"They have naturally returned to the area they regard as their habitat. The human settlement was once the habitat of Sumatran elephants," said Dwi.
WCS data shows that herds of wild elephants from the TNWK have been encroaching into human settlements and destroying farms for the past three years.
"In the past three months, 16 herds of wild elephants from TNWK even destroyed hundreds of hectares of farms in Purbolinggo, Sukadana, Way Jepara, Braja Selebah and Labuhan Ratu districts."
The 16 herds are made up of 327 elephants, Dwi said. "Villagers have suffered huge losses because the raging elephants destroyed everything in their path.
Dwi said the elephants' behavior had changed. "Previously, they could be pushed back into the forest by using torches and sounding bamboo drums. They were also afraid of the sound of bamboo cannons. But now, they will fight back when driven away," said Dwi.
The TNWK and WCS are currently working every night to drive back the herd of elephants into the forest with the help of four trained elephants from the TNWK Elephant Training Center, dozens of forest rangers and WCS activists. However, they are overwhelmed because the elephants keep venturing out of the forest and destroying farms.
The TNWK Center has been digging a 29-kilometer ditch across 12 swamps in three villages in the past few years to prevent the elephants from venturing out in the forest. However, most of the ditches near the swamps are currently damaged.
Hendrawan, the Lampung chapter Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) director, said the rampaging elephants frequently intruded into human settlements as their habitat had been damaged by illegal logging and forest conversion.
"Their habitat has been further threatened. If they still had plenty of food and their habitat was intact, they would not be venturing into villages and destroying crops," said Hendrawan.
Apart from environmental damage in both national parks, the elephants are also seriously threatened by the presence of poachers hunting for their tusks.
Muhammad Cohen, Asia Times 26 Sep 09;
BALI - This year's haze season is in full swing across Kalimantan and residents of Indonesia's portion of Borneo are set for the worst. With the El Nino effect signaling a long dry season and smoke from forest fires already causing airport and school closures across the island, as well as air quality complaints from neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, it once seemed this annual rite would end only after every last hectare of Asia's largest remaining rainforest was slashed and burned.
But cutting through the fog of this war against nature, the truth is that once rapid deforestation is slowing in parts of Indonesia, including in Kalimantan. That smoldering ember of optimism is based on this reporter’s observations and the consensus of knowledgeable people met while traveling across Kalimantan's 558,000 square kilometers (205,000 square miles) in 2006-07 and again this year, writing travel guides.
These resident experts overwhelmingly believe rainforest protection is improving and that the trend is sustainable. While the haze persists, in many areas it is less severe than in previous years. And despite the progress, sources caution that gains are not complete, universal or irreversible.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), elected in 2004 and re-elected this year, gets widespread credit for leading the fight against deforestation. Like his recent predecessors, Yudhoyono pledged to preserve Indonesia's rainforests. Unlike them, he's taken strong steps to keep his promise, starting with Operation Sustainable Forestry, launched in 2005.
"Illegal logging decreased rapidly the first year SBY was in power," veteran travel organizer Lucas Zwaal of De'gigant Tours in Samarinda, East Kalimantan's provincial capital, said. "Powerful people, including government officials, were sent to jail for their roles in deforestation."
That jailhouse roll call includes a governor of East Kalimantan, a Forestry Ministry director, a top provincial forestry official, several Kalimantan regents and chief executives of the largest provincial subdivisions. Previous crackdowns had netted only laborers, truckers and the occasional junior police or military enlisted personnel. Times Tours and Travel founder Juniardi Saktiawan in Pontianak verifies many logging arrests have also taken place in West Kalimantan, where he regularly leads wilderness treks.
Indonesia's military has long been suspected of overseeing illegal logging, a prerogative of its status as an unaccountable, independent fiefdom. Yudhoyono is a former general, and in his quiet, quintessentially Javanese manner, sources believe he's asserted greater civilian control over the military, particularly regarding illegal logging. That said, the military remains deeply opaque and reports of reform are based largely on rumors or distant impressions rather than quantifiable evidence.
Down to the roots
Zwaal notes that the central government's war on illegal logging reaches down to the grassroots. Ordinary citizens can now anonymously report suspected instances to national authorities, bypassing possible corruption at the local level. National ministry officials in the provinces are also being replaced on tighter cycles to prevent overly cozy relationships that in the past have promoted illegal logging.
East Kalimantan Guides Association chairman Rusdiansyah and Zwaal both note that many wood processing plants and wood product factories in Samarinda closed following Yudhoyono’s initial crackdown. Since then, the government has dramatically reduced legal logging as well by reducing the number of permits it issues.
Hosting the December 2007 United Nations Climate Change meeting in Bali gave Yudhoyono's drive to stop deforestation a renewed impetus. The meeting with thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries highlighted Indonesia's breathtaking rate of deforestation that had catapulted it into the top five global countries in terms of net carbon impact, causing substantial national embarrassment.
More importantly, Indonesia's deforestation example helped create momentum for delegates to endorse REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (see Seeing REDD over deforestation Asia Times Online, December 11, 2007). If enacted as part of the UN's new climate change treaty, the program will enable government at all levels and communities to receive payments for preservation of forests and reforestation.
That has sparked projects across Kalimantan poised to take advantage of REDD funding. Whether REDD turns out to be a massive boondoggle with little conservation impact, as some environmental groups fear, or a useful tool to stop deforestation, the prospect has gotten many Kalimantan officials thinking green. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid donors have also contributed to the decline in deforestation.
One of Kalimantan's most infamous illegal logging areas was Sebangau National Park. Logging concessions in the area ended in 1990, yet there were 147 sawmills still operating as late as 2001. Loggers had also built extensive networks of canals to transport cut timber, making the lowland peat forest area more susceptible to burning.
"The government has put forward a real effort to stop illegal logging," WWF's Sebangau conservation and socio-economic development project leader Rosenda Chandra Kasih recalls, "In 2001, only WWF was patrolling this area. Since 2006, there have been a lot of patrols by government authorities."
WWF has begun reforestation with corporate partners in 850 hectares of the worst hit areas of Sebangau, located just 45 minutes by speedboat from Central Kalimantan's provincial capital Palangka Raya and believed to have one of world's largest wild orangutan populations.
In 2007, Nokia and Equinox Publishing, Indonesia's leading English language book publisher, sponsored NewTrees, a corporate initiative that recently spawned an individual version as a smart phone application. (See Trees of profit Asia Times Online, September 26, 2009.) Last year, Indonesian national flag carrier airline Garuda joined the effort with a "one passenger-one tree" planting program.
Going legit
Yayorin, a self-proclaimed "orangutan foundation that focuses on people", works to rehabilitate illegal loggers operating in and around Central Kalimantan's Tanjung Puting National Park, the world's best place to see orangutans in their native habitat. The Indonesian NGO offers villagers alternatives to logging such as cash crop farming and animal husbandry.
"My family life has become much more comfortable, I feel safer and free of fears," said Arsyad, a 30-year-old reformed logger. "I no longer have to move from one place to another; I am happier and feel proud now that I own a rubber plantation and vegetable gardens, as well as a house on my own land."
Not every expert believes less logging is purely good news. "Most easily accessible forest areas have been logged already, so now the cost of transporting timber is more expensive and difficult: more bribes need to be paid for longer distances," said Gabriella Fredriksson, founder of East Kalimantan's sun bear reserve and environmental education center near Balikpapan.
While acknowledging increased law enforcement has had an impact, Fredriksson said, “There is still a lot of illegal timber available for the local market, but possibly large shipments abroad have diminished.” Fredriksson, also co-chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Bear Specialist Team, adds, "The fire situation seems similar to other years, although the damage to forests is less, as less forest is left in those areas that are easily set on fire. So less forest is being burned, but there are a similar number of hotspots."
Boediono, founder of Irrawaddy dolphin conservation foundation YK-RASI in Samarinda, observed, "Investors are now more attracted to coal mining which is more destructive than illegal logging and gives them quicker profit." Coal barges feeding energy demand from China have replaced log barges along East Kalimantan’s mighty Mahakam River.
Biofueling forest destruction
"Besides that," Boediono adds, "palm oil plantations are easier to get permits [for] from the government since Indonesia always needs cooking oil." Palm oil has become a key factor in deforestation here; biofuel demand has exploded for export to China and India, even though palm oil is a particularly bad energy choice in terms of efficiency.
In Indonesia, oil palm plantation concessions have provided cover for cutting timber and then abandoning the land, often after burning it for final clearance. Even when developed, large plantations rob wildlife of habitat and are a poor substitute for native forests.
"There is more pressure on land as massive land grants have been given for oil palm plantations," Palangka Raya tour operation Kalimantan Tour Destinations (KTD) reported. "The easiest way to clear the land is to log it, then burn it. Also, for the masyarakat [common people], there have been many fires lit by small landholders to clear land for land claims and small plantations, usually rubber."
"The haze this year in Palangka Raya is akin to the horror years of 2002 and 2006, also El Nino years," KTD added. "Pollution factors are well over the dangerous limit of 500 parts per million, according to the scale updated daily in the Bundaran Besar [main traffic circle] in Central Palangka Raya, by the [local] university, and are set to rise further, as villagers plan further burns after Lebaran [Id-ul Fitri, celebrated from September 19]."
Just ahead of Id-ul Fitri, Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), which conducts reforestation and community development in and around Tanjung Puting, urgently appealed for support for emergency fire fighting. In 2006, fires damaged the NGO's seedling nursery, but FNPF has since expanded the program. Despite this year's setbacks, many in the area believe Kalimantan's forests seem poised to continue their recovery.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow Muhammad Cohen’s blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
Antara 25 Sep 09;
Jambi, South Eastern Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Haze coming from South Sumatra, Bengkulu and Riau Provinces, has affected Jambi Province over the past three days.
The haze was especially very thick in the morning and had disturbed flights over the past two days, Remus L Tobing, head of the Jambi provincial meteorological and geophysics office, said here on Friday.
"Today, the haze has hampered visibility in the morning although it does not disturb flights which require a visibility of at least 1,800 meters for a plane landing," he said.
The wind moved from southeast to southwest and it caused the haze from Riau, Bengkulu and particularly South Sumatra, to accumulate in Jambi, he said.
There was no hot spot detected in Jambi from September 19 to 24, 2009, according to Frans Tandipau, head of the Jambi forestry service`s forest protection unit.
However, NOAA Satellite detected five hot spots in Jambi Province, on Friday (Sept. 24). Three hot spots were found in Sarolangun District, and two in Merangin District.
Sultan Thaha Saifudin Airport in Jambi City is located close to South Sumatra Province`s peat forest.
"Most likely the haze which has been covering Jambi, is from peat forest fire in the neighboring province," Frans Tandipau said.
Sultan Thaha Saifudin (STS) Airport in Jambi was closed for two hours from 7 am to 9 am local time, Thursday (Sept. 24), because of haze.
Thursday morning`s haze reduced visibility at Jambi`s airport to only 1,000 meters from the minimum normal visibility of 2,000 meters for pilots, he said.
On Wednesday (Sept. 23), a Garuda Indonesia plane serving the Jakarta-Jambi route was forced to land at Palembang`s Sultan Mahmud Badarudin II airport, and three hours later finally landed in Jambi at 11 am, also due to haze. (*)
Hannah Devlin, The Times Online 26 Sep 09;
He shared his ideas on natural selection with Charles Darwin and studied birds of paradise in the Malay archipelago to prove his case. Alfred Russel Wallace, however, always lived in the shadow of Darwin.
This week Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s foremost naturalist broadcaster, attempted to address the injustice. He described Wallace as one of the greatest naturalists to have lived.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bristol, Sir David outlined Wallace’s contribution to the evolution of the natural selection theory.
Over 150 years ago, while Darwin was ensconced in his country manor breeding pigeons, Wallace, wracked with malaria, was living in a primitive hut in Borneo.
He had set off in 1854 for the Malay Archipelago in pursuit of the most sought-after creature of the day: the bird of paradise.
Although skins and feathers of the elaborately plumed birds were available to buy in Europe, nobody had ever brought back a live bird. Wallace told his dealer that the first live specimen would be worth £100, several thousand pounds in today’s money.
Wallace also had an academic interest in the natural world. As he travelled from one island to the next he meticulously noted variations in the colourful birds and features that made them uniquely suited to their own particular conditions. After eight years living in huts and paddling up rivers, he had collected five species from the bird of paradise family and come to a striking conclusion about how the different varieties had emerged.
He suggested that when two populations of a species became geographically isolated, each adapted to its own environment. Eventually when the two species diverged beyond a certain point, natural selection would tend to eliminate hybrids should the two species come back into contact because hybrid offspring would be less well adapted than either parent variety. The result would be two distinct species.
He wrote to his friend, Darwin, laying out his theory of evolution. Wallace’s theory mirrored Darwin’s thinking so exactly that when Darwin received his letter he declared: “If Wallace had my manuscript, he could not have made a better short abstract!”
Darwin then fast-tracked the publication of his own book, On the Origin of Species, cementing Wallace’s obscurity. Sir David said that the lack of credit granted to Wallace was unfair.
“The two men could scarcely have been more different. Darwin was a scholar and a nobleman, Wallace left school at 14, was largely self-educated and worked under extremely hard conditions, but both were devoted collectors and exceptional scientists,” he said.
Despite being academic competitors, the scientists’ correspondence reveals mutual admiration rather than animosity.
“Both great naturalists behaved with such courtesy to each other that it’s a delight to read,” said Sir David.
Home owners are being asked to overcome their fear of spiders in order to help carry out the first nationwide survey of the insects.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 25 Sep 09;
For the last two summers invertebrates have struggled because of the rain washing away nests and making it impossible to feed.
However this year the conditions have been more favourable with warm temperatures and shorter wet spells.
Spiders have had a particularly good year and are a good indicator of how wider species are doing because they feed on other insects.
Buglife, the insect charity, are asking householders to report the number of spiders spotted in and around the home this weekend in order to find out how well the insects are doing.
There are some 600 species of spider in Britain and they are particularly visible this time of year as the adults get fat with eggs and the new generation are hatching.
Mr Shardlow said urged people to get over their fears in order to help conservationists.
"We hope people can overcome to some degree their fears and look out for this important invertebrate over the weekend and learn about the spider, which are harmless animals that keep our homes free of flies and other creatures we do not want."
This year has seen an explosion of some butterflies and common insects like ladybirds, wasps and daddy longlegs
But specialist species that rely on particular habitat like wetland or heath such as the fen raft spider and ladybird spider are still struggling, said Mr Shardlow.
"It has been a good year this year for insects. Which is great news for biodiversity as we had a lot of bad years recently," he said.
More spiders expected this autumn
More spiders and daddy longlegs are expected in homes and gardens this autumn because recent weather has provided favourable breeding conditions.
Alastair Jamieson, The Telegraph 25 Sep 09;
Experts say the mild summer, which was warmer than recent years, is likely to have boosted the number of spiders, which traditionally head indoors at this time of year.
Last year’s wet autumn will also have helped daddy longlegs by providing the perfect conditions for larvae in the soil.
Insect conservation charity, Buglife, insisted the expected surge in spider numbers was good news even thought their presence in homes is usually greeted with horror.
Matt Shardlow, chief executive of the charity, said it could also slow the decline of some insect species.
“Without spiders we would be overrun with flies and other pests,” he said. “If people really can’t tolerate them they can use a jam jar and a piece of paper to put them outside rather than killing them.
“Last year's damp autumn was good for the larvae of crane files, which people know as daddy longlegs, because it there was plenty of food in the soil.
“The summer has also been good for spiders because we didn’t have too much extreme weather, just the humid and temperate weather spiders like.
“Unless there is a severe cold snap in the next few days we can expect to see a lot more spiders than coming indoors over the next two or three weeks compared to last year.”
He added that daddy longlegs were “very important for biodiversity because their larvae improve soil.
Buglife is appealing for households to survey the number of spiders appearing over the next two weekends and submit the results.
John Partridge, secretary of British Arachnological Society, told the BBC: "It is this time of year that people become more aware of them – it is the silly season for spiders.
“The garden spiders are getting fatter for laying eggs and bundles of tiny spiders start hatching," he said.
He said there are some 600 species of spider in Britain and it was important to remember the service they provided.
John Heilprin, Associated Press Yahoo News 25 Sep 09;
UNITED NATIONS – The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world's first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.
But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau's newly protected waters — including its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, that extends 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its coastline — enforcement of the new measure could be almost like swimming against the tide.
Palau's president, who is to announce the news to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, acknowledges the difficulty of patrolling ocean waters nearly the size of Texas or France with a single boat. But he hopes others will respect Palauan territorial waters — and that the shark haven inspires more such conservation efforts globally.
"Palau will declare its territorial waters and extended economic zone to be the first officially recognized sanctuary for sharks," Palauan President Johnson Toribiong told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
Shark fishing has grown rapidly since the mid-1980s, driven by a rising demand — mainly in China — for shark fin soup, a highly prized symbol of wealth. Because of their long life spans and low fertility rates, sharks are vulnerable to overfishing.
Within its EEZ, a nation may regulate fisheries and scientific research and develop other economic efforts. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates more than half of highly migratory sharks are overexploited or depleted.
Toribiong said a recent flyover by Australian aircraft showed more than 70 vessels fishing Palau's waters, many of them illegally.
"We'll do the very best we can, given our resources," he said. "The purpose of this is to call attention to the world to the killing of sharks for commercial purposes, including to get the fins to make shark fin soups, and then they throw the bodies in the water."
Tourists go to Palau for its spectacular diving in the tropical waters, dramatic coral and rich marine life. The remote Pacific nation recently made global headlines when it agreed to President Barack Obama's request to take a group of Uighurs — Turkic Muslims from China's far western Xinjiang region — as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Palau is one of the world's smallest countries, with some 20,000 people scattered over 190-square mile (490-square kilometer) archipelago of lush tropical landscapes in the Western Pacific.
Its shark sanctuary will shelter more than 135 Western Pacific species of sharks and rays considered endangered or vulnerable, or for which there is not enough data to determine how the species is faring.
"Palau has basically raised the bar for the rest of the world for shark conservation," said Matt Rand, director for global shark conservation for Washington-based Pew Environment Group, an advocacy organization.
Elsewhere, Europe is trying to crack down on shark fishing in its waters.
In February, the European Commission proposed its first-ever shark conservation rules for European waters. EU countries account for a third of shark meat exports globally, and shark steaks are increasingly served in restaurants, replacing pricier swordfish steaks, and shark products are also finding their way into lotions and leather sports shoes.
Toribiong said he also will call for a global moratorium on "shark finning" — the practice of hacking off shark fins and throwing the body back into the sea — and an end to unregulated and destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.
Palau is among 20 seafaring nations that already have voluntary agreed to end bottom trawling, which involves fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor.
Enormously effective at catching fish, the nets from bottom trawling also wipe out almost everything in their path, smash coral and stir clouds of sediment that smother sea life, marine experts say.
The U.N. has called bottom trawling a danger to unique and unexplored ecological systems and said slightly more than half the underwater mountain and coral ecosystems in the world can be found beyond the protection of national boundaries.
Palau pioneers 'shark sanctuary'
Richard Black, BBC News 25 Sep 09;
Palau is to create the world's first "shark sanctuary", banning all commercial shark fishing in its waters.
The President of the tiny Pacific republic, Johnson Toribiong, announced the sanctuary during Friday's session of the UN General Assembly.
With half of the world's oceanic sharks at risk of extinction, conservationists regard the move as "game-changing".
It will protect about 600,000 sq km (230,000 sq miles) of ocean, an area about the size of France.
President Toribiong also called for a global ban on shark-finning, the practice of removing the fins at sea.
Fins are a lucrative commodity on the international market where they are bought for use in shark fin soup.
As many as 100 million sharks are killed each year around the world.
"These creatures are being slaughtered and are perhaps at the brink of extinction unless we take positive action to protect them," said President Toribiong.
"Their physical beauty and strength, in my opinion, reflects the health of the oceans; they stand out," he told BBC News from UN headquarters in New York.
The president also called for an end to bottom-trawling, a fishing method that can destroy valuable seafloor ecosystems such as coral reefs.
Local benefits
A number of developed nations have implemented catch limits and restrictions on shark finning.
Some developing countries such as The Maldives have also taken measures to protect the creatures; but Palau's initiative takes things to a new level, according to conservationists close to the project.
"Palau has recognised how important sharks are to healthy marine environments," said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group.
"And they've decided to do what no other nation has done and declare their entire Exclusive Economic Zone a shark sanctuary.
"They are leading the world in shark conservation."
Mr Rand said that about 130 threatened species of shark frequented waters close to Palau and would be likely to gain from the initiative.
Although the country has only 20,000 inhabitants, its territory encompasses 200 scattered islands, which means that its territorial waters are much bigger than many nations a thousand times more populous.
Economics is clearly an incentive for the Palau government, which derives most of its income from tourism.
Sharks are themselves a big attraction for scuba-divers, and may also play a role in keeping coral reef ecosystems healthy.
Globally, 21% of shark species whose extinction risk has been assessed fall into the "threatened" categories, and 18% are "near threatened". For a further 35%, there is not enough data to decide.
Over half of the species that spend most of their time in the upper layers of the ocean, exposed to fishing, are on the threatened list.
Illegal shark-finning is the main cause; but there are legal targeted hunts for fins and meat, and sharks are also caught accidentally on longlines set for fish such as marlin and tuna.
Port side catches
Enforcing the ban will be an issue for Palau, which possesses just one patrol boat capable of monitoring its waters.
A recent aerial survey found fishing 70 vessels in the area, most of them illegally.
But Carl-Gustaf Lundin, who heads the marine programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said there were other ways of tackling the illegal trade.
"For example, the US has been sharing lists of illegal vessels with established fishing companies, so that they can report on their dishonest or non-decent peers," he said.
"We're also exploring what options there are for monitoring remotely at low cost.
"And you don't need to catch people out there in the ocean; everyone needs to land their fish, so as long as you have most nations signed up to oppose illegal fishing, your chances of catching them are pretty decent."
Dr Lundin noted that earlier this week, another Pacific island state, Kiribati, signed off a collaboration with the US that establishes the largest marine reserve on the planet.
"The time for setting aside tiny areas of sea that only protect a few sedentary species is over; and it (the Palau sanctuary) is important because it shows the way in terms of putting large areas aside."
Considered position
In organisations such as the International Whaling Commission and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Palau has in recent years regularly sided with pro-hunting countries such as Japan.
Mr Toribiong told BBC News that before going to New York for the UN General Assembly, he had planned to "state to the world that Palau will revisit its current position" on whaling.
But following the recent change of government in Japan, and because of the two countries' "close relationship", he said there would now be a bilateral meeting.
"My position is to reconsider our current position in light of the most recent scientific data to ensure that the current position that Palau takes will not lead to the depletion and extinction of whales," he said.
But when it came to sharks, the president said he was sure that the sanctuary is backed by science - sharks are threatened as a group of species, and sanctuaries can help.
"Not all nations consider shark fins as delicacies," he said.
"And we feel that the need to protect the sharks outweighs the need to enjoy a bowl of soup."
Asked what he would be urging other leaders to do, he said simply: "To follow suit."
France-Size Shark Sanctuary Created -- A First
Ker Than, National Geographic News 25 Sep 09;
The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau, the country's president said today.
Johnson Toriboing announced the creation of a shark haven without commercial fishing during an address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
"I believe the physical well-being and beauty of sharks reflects the well-being of the ocean," Toriboing told reporters at a news conference.
"It is my honor and opportunity to tell the world to join me to protect these species, which are on the brink of extinction."
Sharks are increasingly under threat as the demand for shark-fin soup—a delicacy in many Asian countries—has risen worldwide.
"The need to save the ocean and save sharks far outweighs the need to enjoy bowls of soup," Toriboing said.
An estimated 130 rare shark and stingray species live in or pass through Palau's waters, including great hammerheads, oceanic whitetips, and leopard sharks. (See more shark pictures.)
France-Size Haven
Located roughly 500 miles (805 kilometers) east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean, Palau is made up of about 200 small islands and is one of the world's smallest and youngest nations. (See map.)
But what it lacks in land, Palau makes up for in water: Its territorial waters span more than 230,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometers)—an area about the size of France.
All of that water is now safe harbor for sharks.
"Palau has taken the ultimate step toward shark protection. There's no clearer way of protecting sharks," said Matt Rand, director of the global shark conservation campaign at the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Environment Group, which worked with Palau officials to create the sanctuary.
However, enforcement could be a problem for the tiny island republic, Palauian president Toriboing admitted.
Palau will heavily fine boats caught with sharks or shark parts on board, but the country has only one patrol boat to monitor its large expanse of water.
"Pioneering Move"
Still shark conservationists hailed the sanctuary's establishment as an important step in the right direction.
"It's fantastic news," said National Geographic marine ecologist Enric Sala.
"This is a pioneering move by Palau that shows how well they understand the role of every species in the marine ecosystem."
(The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
Jill Hepp, a marine conservationist at the nonprofit WWF, hopes other countries will follow Palau's lead.
"There's a pretty dismal lack of protection for sharks, even though they're a key species in the oceans' waters," Hepp said.
"This could really help raise the profile of the issue."
Mark Davis, New Scientist 25 Sep 09;
HUMANS have been transporting species around the world, intentionally and unintentionally, for centuries. Many of the species we think of as a natural part of our landscape are, in fact, non-native. For example, the honeybee, which nearly a third of US states have named as their state insect, was introduced into North America from Europe in the 1600s.
Naturalists have long been aware of this bio-globalisation, but widespread research on introduced species did not begin until the early 1980s. In those days, the message from invasion biologists was clear and simple: introduced species were bad news. They were referred to as invaders, aliens, exotics or even "biological pollution". A common refrain was that invasive species were one of the greatest extinction threats for native species, second only to habitat destruction.
Make no mistake, some introduced species have caused great harm. For example, the brown tree snake, introduced into Guam in the mid-20th century, caused the extinction of most of the island's native birds. Many other island and lake species have been driven extinct by introduced predators. The global cost of damage by non-native species to farming, timber, fisheries and waterways is estimated at well over $100 billion annually. Many of the human diseases of greatest concern are viruses that have been transported to new regions, such as SARS, West Nile virus, Ebola, H1N1 flu and HIV.
However, you may be surprised to learn that only a few per cent of introduced species are harmful. Most are relatively benign; some, such as the honeybee, can even have beneficial effects.
Despite this, many people cling to the idea that non-native species are uniformly undesirable. In my discussions with people involved in conservation and restoration programmes, for example, I find that many view native species as inherently more desirable than non-native ones. Many land managers and ecologists also hold this view.
If most non-native species are not harmful, why have so many people adopted this "nativism paradigm"? I believe there are two explanations. The first is the message sent by invasion biologists to the public over the past three decades. The second involves some general predispositions that we seem to share as humans.
Some anthropologists argue that the desire to classify is inherent in humans, as we crave a sense of order. Similarly, recent evolutionary research suggests that humans are predisposed to impose group boundaries and to see outsiders as a threat. We seek every opportunity to identify with a home land, a home tribe, a home religion, a home team, and to declare everybody else the enemy. This declaration of identity extends to the natural world. Most countries, states and provinces have designated a species of animal or plant as "theirs", declaring it the national bird or the state flower. Given this powerful predisposition, it is not surprising that people, including ecologists, show favouritism toward native organisms.
We need to move on. Scientific disciplines are often guided at their outset by a few simple ideas. However, as the field matures, participants typically recognise the complexity of their subject and the need for a more nuanced approach. This is what is happening in invasion biology.
Philosophers, social scientists and some invasion biologists have challenged the choice of language used to describe non-native species and have argued that conclusions about them sometimes rest more on prejudice than science. Others have criticised the preference for native species as scientifically unsound, arguing that invasive species do not represent a separate category, evolutionarily, biogeographically or ecologically. Others have pointed out flaws in the claim that non-native species are the second-greatest extinction threat after habitiat destruction. In fact, with the exception of insular environments such as islands and lakes, there are very few examples of extinctions being caused by non-native species.
Despite this more nuanced approach, many of my invasion biologist colleagues are reluctant to discard the nativism paradigm. Some have told me that "message enhancement" is a necessary strategy when dealing with the public and policy-makers, in order to get their attention.
I believe this strategy carries serious risks. If messages are enhanced to the point of exaggeration, they can end up eliciting well-intentioned but misguided responses, such as spending scarce resources on projects that should not be a priority. The harm being caused by introduced species is well documented. We do not need to enhance the message.
Whether we like it or not, the world's biodiversity is becoming globalised. We can call them aliens, exotics or biological pollution, but the fact is that introduced species are our new residents. It is common for humans to resist change, particularly when change is rapid and profound, as is the case with globalisation of cultures and biota. In some cases, real economic, social or ecological harm is caused. When the harm is great, society needs to mobilise its human and financial resources and respond quickly and effectively.
But resources are finite. It is crucial that we distinguish harm from mere change so that we can spend scarce human and economic capital wisely. We scientists can best assist by making sure that our messages are accessible, interesting and meaningful without compromising the science. As long as the harm is real, it should not be necessary for us to overgeneralise, exaggerate, use incendiary language or misrepresent data in order to attract attention.
caycompass.com 25 Sep 09;
The Cayman Islands Department of Environment has confirmed significant amounts of coral bleaching on local reefs.
Following up on reports from the diving community as well as a ‘bleaching potential’ alert from the recently installed ICON weather monitoring station in Little Cayman, DoE staff conducted a rapid assessment of reefs on the north, west and south coasts of Grand Cayman.
The scientific diving team found that nearly all corals in the shallow reefs to about 30 ft showed signs of moderate to severe bleaching, while approximately 80% of corals in the deeper reefs to 120 ft exhibited the early signs of coral bleaching.
Bleaching appeared more intense on the north coast although the reasons for this are not fully understood at this stage.
Coral bleaching is a stress related reaction whereby the coral colonies lose their colour and ‘bleach’ white either due to the loss of pigments by microscopic algae living in symbiosis with their coral hosts, or because the algae have been totally expelled. Bleaching is closely associated with sustained elevated water temperatures and UV light and has been linked to global climate change as the world’s oceans heat up.
Corals can recover from less severe bleaching episodes although recovery is variable and in some instances entire reefs have been lost to single bleaching events. The last major bout of bleaching to impact the Cayman’s reefs occurred in 1998 with significant mortality following. Minor bleaching events have been recorded in the warmer summer months with increasing frequency during the last decade.
The DOE has a Long Term Coral Reef Monitoring Programme, in place since 1997, to the track the health of Cayman’s reefs and is well placed to monitor the current extent and severity of impact associated with the recent bleaching having only just completed an extensive video survey at 55 reef sites around all three islands. Monitoring efforts will be increased over the next few weeks to better quantify and assess the impact of this bleaching event and to determine levels of recovery.
The DOE expects this current bleaching episode to increase significantly in severity in the following weeks as water temperatures remain above the threshold 29.5 degrees Celsius.
However, past water temperature data collected since 1996 suggest that local waters start cooling down from mid–October, which hopefully may bring some relief for the heat stressed corals.
Richard Black, BBC News 25 Sep 09;
The company behind Iceland's fin whaling industry is planning a huge export of whalemeat to Japan.
This summer, Hvalur hf caught 125 fins - a huge expansion on previous years.
The company's owner says he will export as much as 1,500 tonnes to Japan. This would substantially increase the amount of whalemeat in the Japanese market.
The export would be legal because these nations are exempt from the global ban on trading whalemeat, but conservation groups doubt its commercial viability.
Last year, Hvalur hf exported about 65 tonnes of whalemeat to Japan, a consignment that owner Kristjan Loftsson described as a "loss-leader".
But following this year's huge catch, he believes the next one can make money.
"We'll get a good price - we're intending to make a profit, that's for sure," he told BBC News.
Mr Loftsson said he had now suspended fin whaling for this season, having caught 125 from a quota of 150.
The remaining 25 can be carried over into next year's hunting season.
This compares with a total of seven caught in the previous three years.
The fin is globally listed as an endangered species, though Icelandic marine scientists maintain stocks are big enough locally to sustain a hunt of this size.
EU centre
New quotas were controversially set by the government of Geir Haarde just before it left office in January.
The new left-green coalition government has promised to review the situation, but has so far chosen not to revoke the five-year quotas set by its predecessor.
The government has formally applied to join the EU, and it is entirely possible that the EU would demand an end to whaling as a condition of Iceland's entry.
The application still has to be endorsed in a referendum - and some conservationists believe Mr Loftsson is using whaling as a way to lobby against EU membership.
"I think he is holding Icelandic politicians hostages to fortune," said Arni Finnsson of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association (INCA).
"He's saying that 'unless I can do this, you would be denying Iceland $40m in export income' - and how can you argue against that if you're a politician?"
The $40m figure was cited by the Fisheries Ministry under Mr Haarde's government, said Mr Finnsson, as being the size of the potential annual export market.
Election issue?
Along with other conservation organisations, INCA is adamantly opposed to trading in whalemeat, which they see as something with the potential to increase hunting in various parts of the world.
The trade is generally banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
But Iceland and Japan - along with a handful of other countries - lodged reservations, as the treaty permits, and so are exempt.
Conservation groups doubt that such a huge export of meat to Japan can be profitable.
A consignment of anything approaching 1,500 tonnes would mark a major expansion of the amount of meat available on the Japanese market each year.
The exact tonnage caught by Japan's whale and dolphin hunts varies each year, but 4,000 tonnes would be a reasonable ballpark figure.
Conservationists have raised the possibility that Japan's new government will re-address its whaling policies.
But Yukio Hatoyama's pre-election position appears close to that of his predecessor, holding scientific whaling to be a sovereign right and promoting the resumption of commercial whaling on abundant stocks.
Fresh supplies
Hunting for the much smaller minke whales in Icelandic waters, meanwhile, will probably end next week, with 80 caught so far.
"This is our best year yet - we're very happy about that," said Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, head of the minke whalers' association.
"We didn't start freezing any meat before around 15th/20th August - we sold it all fresh - now we're just freezing so we have something for restaurants and stores over the winter."
Mr Jonsson said the minke whalers were also interested in exporting if the fin whale consignment proved successful.
THE LEGALITIES OF WHALING
# Objection - A country formally objects to the IWC moratorium, declaring itself exempt. Example: Norway
# Scientific - A nation issues unilateral 'scientific permits'; any IWC member can do this. Example: Japan
# Aboriginal - IWC grants permits to indigenous groups for subsistence food. Example: Alaskan Inupiat
Anthea Rowan, BBC News 25 Sep 09;
At a road block in western Tanzania, miles from anywhere, a uniformed official raises a flagged barrier. Nearby is a spill of black, like an oil slick.
This is one of several checkpoints which have been set up around the country in a half-hearted attempt to curtail the largely unregulated trade of charcoal, widely used across the continent as a fuel for cooking.
The guard on duty has confiscated six sacks. They lean against one another and bleed black dust into the sand.
Over the next 50 miles there are dozens of sacks propped up under trees. These will be loaded up by truck drivers who pay around $4 a bag to sell for up to six times the price in the city.
The guard at the roadblock has clearly opened his hand for "kitu kidogo" - a pay-off from coal traders in search of a quick buck.
The numbers tell the story - according to the Tanzania Association of Oil Marketing Companies, 20,000 bags of charcoal enter the capital Dar es Salaam every 24 hours.
Millions at risk
But the impact of this unregulated coal trade is chilling.
Aid agency Christian Aid estimates that 182 million people in Africa are at risk of dying as a consequence of climate change by the end of the century.
Meanwhile, Oxfam believes climate change is frustrating the efforts of millions on the continent to escape poverty.
Nobel laureate Professor Wangari Maathai offers a solution.
Why is climate change such a harbinger of doom? Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation explains: "Global warming means that many dry areas are going to get drier and wet areas are going to get wetter."
This imbalance will make subsistence farming, upon which millions of Africans depend, even more precarious. It will also exacerbate famine and disease.
"One adaptation option for Africa is to keep her forests standing so that they provide essential environmental services such as carbon sinks," she said.
It is estimated that carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere at an annual rate of 3.5 billion metric tonnes.
A 40-year-study by the University of Leeds of African forests - which account for a third of the world's total tropical forest - demonstrates that Africa is, indeed, a significant carbon sink.
Lee White, a climate change expert, concurs: "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests should be valued at around $25 billion a year. This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests."
But Africa has not been very good at this.
According to the UN the continent is losing forest twice as fast as the rest of the world.
"Once upon a time, Africa boasted seven million square kilometres of forest but a third of that has been lost - most of it to charcoal."
Lucrative business
The reality, however, is that in sub-Saharan Africa only 7.5% of the rural population has access to electricity.
Wood and its by-product charcoal are, unless radical steps are taken, likely to remain the primary energy source for decades.
Additionally, charcoal is a lucrative business - not only for those collecting wood to burn.
In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, over 70 tonnes of charcoal dust is discarded daily. Some 10% of that waste is absorbed by a company called Chardust, which salvages it from charcoal traders across the city and processes it with binders as a charcoal alternative.
The company manufactures 250 tonnes of saleable product a month.
Some though are trying to look beyond the finite resource. To the west of Nairobi, Cheryl Mvula of the Tribal Voice consultancy has introduced the extraordinary Cow Dung Fuel Initiative to counter deforestation in the Mara Triangle of Kenya's Masai Mara.
Here dung is mixed with waste paper and water, fashioned into briquettes and sundried for use.
Since the project's inception in March 2009, firewood collection has reduced by 75% in the five villages where the scheme has been piloted.
Organic alternative
Back in Tanzania, where the charcoal market remains largely backstreet, the industry is valued at upwards of $150 million a year.
This figure encouraged Briton Nicholas Harrison to get involved. His company, the East Africa Briquette Company, is the only producer of an organic alternative in a region where 90% of people use charcoal.
The company's product, Mkaa Bora, is prepared from waste and post-harvest products - sawdust, charcoal dust, maize cobs and even banana skins.
Effectively, local "recipes" are designed according to a given area's crop predominance.
The waste burns more slowly and is 30% hotter than traditional charcoal.
The production is also much leaner than traditional charcoal-making, where just 40% of the wood felled is converted into a useable fuel.
But how to balance job creation with the need to protect the environment?
In Uganda, for example, which has lost half of its forest cover in the past 30 years, charcoal production yields 20,000 jobs and generates more than $20 million in income every year. In Kenya it is 10 times that figure.
Clearly any future charcoal alternative has to fill the gap.
Whether any African governments are keen to break away from the convenient job-creator - particularly during a challenging economic climate - to invest in alternatives will be a true test of their commitment to the environment.
POWER IN AFRICA
# Only 4% of electricity generated worldwide is produced in Africa
# Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's lowest electrification rate at 25.9%
# Rural electrification rates in sub-Saharan Africa are only 8%
# 70% of household income in Africa is spent on energy (diesel, kerosene, charcoal)
# 80% of Africans rely on biomass for energy (wood or charcoal fuel)
# 4 million hectares of forest are felled each year in Africa, twice the world average
Source: The World Future Council
Kieran Cooke, The Times Online 21 Sep 09;
Q: I was persuaded to sign a petition as part of a successful campaign preventing the building of a local incinerator. Now I’m wondering if I was too hasty: I know that we can’t continue just dumping waste in the ground — is incineration safe?
A: A petition is thrust at you. An incinerator will be harmful to health — think of your children. It will emit a serious pong. It will be unsightly and, the final weapon in the anti-incinerator armoury, having one nearby is sure to bring down the value of your house.
Amid all the emotion and Nimbyism about waste disposal, the facts tend to go up in smoke. Modern incinerators are far more efficient and well-designed than those of only 15 years ago.
According to a recent report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), air pollution — expressed in volumes of what’s called particulate matter — is a tiny fraction of that caused by the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
“The evidence suggests that any potential damage to the health of those living close to incinerators is likely to be very small, if detectable,” the HPA says.
The Germans, Swedes and Danes have been happily incinerating on a big scale for years. The UK at present has 23 incinerators in operation, with another 70-80 planned. Burn it, don’t bury it is the new catchphrase: as you say, we can’t go on shoving our refuse into holes in the ground. Landfill creates large amounts of methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. If we don’t find alternative ways of dealing with waste, the EU will clobber us with ever-bigger fines.
While the health issue might not be so important, incineration does give rise to other problems. A modern incinerator, capable of not only burning enormous amounts of rubbish but also of generating energy to be fed into the grid, is an extremely expensive piece of kit. Waste companies want to be sure that they will have enough waste in the future to justify their investment.
The trouble is that it’s very difficult to forecast just how much waste will be generated in the years ahead. After all, we’re all being told to recycle as much as possible: in some areas waste volumes are already falling.
What’s needed are smaller high-tech incinerators on the edge of most big towns and cities. But the waste business talks of “economies of scale” — the bigger the plant, the more cost-effective it is.
It’s a real conundrum, so don’t worry too much about being confused. We all are.
Kieran Cooke
Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, New Scientist 25 Sep 09;
GLOBAL population growth has slowed significantly, but it hasn't stopped. By 2050 there may be about 35 per cent more people on Earth than there are today. We are already seeing increasing shortages of food, water and other resources and growing numbers of hungry people.
Yet to embark on any discussion about limiting our numbers is to enter sensitive and controversial territory. Perhaps this is not surprising, as in the 1960s, when population growth became an issue of widespread concern, the discussions often had a racist undertone, in which the "well-off" focused on the exploding populations of "underdeveloped nations".
Nowadays it is understood that the key population-related issue is the destructive pressure human activity is exerting on our life-support systems, posing a growing threat to the sustainability of civilisation. Of course, this is not all because of human numbers; it also has to do with how much each of us consumes. That's why, in our view, the US with its population of over 300 million and high per capita consumption should be seen as Earth's most overpopulated nation. It is also why the emergence of "new consumers" constitutes a major additional assault on global life-support systems. Moreover, the 2.3 billion people likely to be added to the human population by 2050 will undermine those systems much more seriously than did the previous 2.3 billion, as each additional person will, on average, have to be supported by scarcer, lower-quality resources imposing ever greater environmental costs.
Yet many people still assume that humanity will easily manage to support more than 9 billion people in 2050 and beyond. Such confidence ignores some grim possibilities. There are only two ways by which population can stop increasing: a falling birth rate or rising death rates. We have already seen a rise in death rates in southern Africa and Russia, and there may well be further increases in death rate ahead, especially as disruption to the global climate increasingly destabilises agricultural systems. Even today, more than a billion people are going hungry.
The environmental deterioration resulting from ever more people consuming ever more resources will place the heaviest burdens on those least able to cope, as the great majority of those additional billions of people will be in the poorest nations, where poverty and high birth rates are inextricably linked. Uganda's population, for example, is predicted to almost treble by 2050, growing from around 33 million today to 91 million in the next 40 years. Rapid population growth undermines development efforts. The resulting poor education, lack of public health facilities, and inadequate infrastructure in turn foster high birth rates.
Yet the priority given to population issues has diminished compared with concerns about development. If population growth continues unabated, we fear the problems of development will be "solved" by rises in death rates. For this reason, efforts to slow population growth should be treated as a human rights issue.
The way to reduce fertility rates is well known. It involves a cultural shift towards improving the education and status of women, making family planning and safe abortion more widely available, and moving towards a world where every child is a wanted child.
Nearly all developing countries have family planning programmes, but they are badly in need of renewed support. There has to be a recognition, at the highest political level, of the importance of reducing birth rates both as a pressing human rights issue and as a proven contributor to successful development.
This has to be linked to family health and welfare programmes, to education (especially for girls) and to the opening up of opportunities for women to participate in their nations' economies. An example of what can be achieved is provided by the Grameen bank, which offers credit to the poor people of Bangladesh, especially women, and has no doubt helped reduce birth rates there simply by boosting grassroots economic development.
Somehow, cultural attitudes toward large families everywhere need to be changed. It should be considered immoral to have excessive numbers of children - an attitude that already exists in most industrialised nations with low birth rates. Nothing is more clearly a governmental responsibility than keeping a nation's population size sustainable by benevolent measures.
As well as curbing population growth, we shouldn't forget the pressing issue of excessive consumption by the rich. Humanity needs to get behind a global discussion of these issues, perhaps through a framework we have devised called the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (http://mahb.stanford.edu). This is a forum for global discussion of key ethical and cultural issues related to the human predicament. A major element of that discussion must be how to end the growth of the total human population humanely and begin a slow decline similar to the one that has so fortunately started in Europe and Japan. If that can be done, then a sustainable future for civilisation might be possible.
Days when the world has shrunk
The inexorable rise of the human population has been the dominant theme of our planet for centuries. In recent history, days that we know to have ended with fewer people than they started with are extremely rare.
The most recent was 26 December 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami killed nearly 250,000 people. Another 160,000 died that day of other causes, and the day's 370,000 births couldn't compensate, according to environmentalist Robert Engelman in his book More.
You have to go back to the 1970s to find other days of world population shrinkage, such as the Tangshan earthquake in China on 28 July 1976 and the devastating cyclone that hit Bangladesh on 12 November 1970, both of which killed at least 250,000 people. Even China's great famine of 1958 to 1961, which caused around 15 million deaths, dented rather than stalled world population growth.
Further back in time, the 70,000 deaths caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on 6 August 1945 outweighed the population growth of around 60,000 people that would otherwise have taken place that day. With a lower death toll, the same probably isn't true of the bombing of Nagasaki three days later. Even a particularly bad day during the first world war, such as 1 July 1916 when the British alone lost around 20,000 men at the battle of the Somme, probably didn't stall the world's upward population trend. However, the flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920, which killed about 50 million people, almost certainly did.
The biggest hit to world population in (relatively) recent times is the Black Death of the 14th century, which killed perhaps 75 million people and reduced Europe's population by 30 per cent.
Things will be very different in the future. There will still be disasters and wars, of course, but some time after 2050 the world will enter a new era when the population will shrink on many days. We will simply be having fewer children.
Alison George
Paul Ehrlich is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist who became a best-selling author with his 1968 book The Population Bomb. He is now professor of population studies at Stanford University, California.
Anne Ehrlich has co-authored several books with Paul, and is a director at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford
Russell Blinch, Reuters 25 Sep 09;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There's nothing like a recession to help clear the air of toxins and drive down pump prices -- but we all know it can't last. Or can it?
Even some of the gloomier environmental prognosticators see the world's steep recession possibly prompting a lasting shift in consumer behavior that could form the basis of a more sustainable environment.
As nations haggle about how to battle climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions are in sharp retreat despite an ample supply of fossil-based fuels.
"The United States has entered a new energy era, ending a century of rising carbon emissions," said activist Lester Brown in a recent article.
As president of the Earth Policy Institute, Brown is known for bleak forecasts but now sees the world on a better course.
"Even though part of this decline in carbon emissions was caused by the recession and higher gasoline prices, part of it came from gains in energy efficiency and shifts to carbon-free sources of energy, including record amounts of new wind-generating capacity," he wrote on his website.
While the U.S. Congress is deadlocked and hope is fading for an international deal to combat global warming at a December meeting in Copenhagen, carbon dioxide emissions are shrinking around the world.
Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by about 2.6 percent this year, the steepest fall in more than 40 years, the International Energy Agency predicted this week.
Even more startling, U.S. emissions are expected to drop 6 percent, to their lowest level since 1999, according to the World Resources Institute.
A fall in industrial production and sharp decline by the world's top gas-guzzler, the United States, is a big part of the improving outlook for emissions, which scientists say need to be controlled to prevent global warming.
NEVER SCALE THAT PEAK AGAIN?
Some changes of the past two years seem set to continue, even after the U.S. economy recovers.
Record energy prices in 2008 prompted many consumers to switch to smaller cars and even to public transit. Even though prices later retreated, analysts increasingly see the classic American gas guzzler as an artifact of the past.
"The general trend for improved energy efficiency is likely to continue and has been going on for a long time. I don't see a groundswell of people buying Hummers," said John Felmy, chief economist with the American Petroleum Institute, referring to oversized cars that symbolized U.S. excess.
Even after more autos return to the roads, tough new fuel economy standards will soon begin kicking in.
Average fuel standards for new cars and light trucks will rise by 10 miles a gallon to 35.5 miles per gallon between 2012 and 2016. Carbon emissions should fall by 900 million metric tons, or more than 30 percent, over the life of the program.
When gas prices soared in 2007 and 2008, Americans still drove over 3 trillion miles (4.8 trillion km) a year.
Last year, miles driven fell by 3.6 percent and the figure stayed just as low during the first seven months of this year.
"It's going to be a long time before we get back to that '07 peak," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Illinois-based Ritterbusch & Associates, an oil trading advisory firm.
Renewable energies are expanding their role. China is promising big strides while the Obama administration is lavishing $90 billion dollars to boost solar and wind power.
Some environmentalists worry that progress on emissions could backfire if politicians use the improvement to argue that there's no need to pass laws controlling emissions.
Gernot Wagner, economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, believes the United States and other countries still need to cement progress with legislation to cap emissions.
"Key is to set an absolute cap on emissions to reorient the U.S. and global economy toward a low-carbon, high-efficiency development path and climate safety," he said.
Said Dan Weiss, who directs climate strategy at the Center for American Progress think-tank, reflected the cautious optimism among activists: "It's definitely too soon to break out the champagne but it's definitely cause to think about where the champagne is," he said.
(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Alan Elsner and Simon Denyer)
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