Best of our wild blogs: 22 Feb 10

Connecting with Nature Week for kids - March holiday specials
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

ReefFriends Reef Survey Training @ Pulau Hantu
from Colourful Clouds

新加坡红树林消逝中--裕廊湖
from PurpleMangrove

Crocodile at Sungei Buloh!
from wild shores of singapore

Unexpected Encounters Part 2
from Black Dillenia

Crows predating chicks
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Monday Morgue: 22nd February 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

Juvenile Malaysian Night Heron taking on adult plumage
from Bird Ecology Study Group

White-browed Shrike Babbler ‘hopping’ backwards
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Where two worlds collide: visiting Tabin Wildlife Reserve
from Mongabay.com news

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Why the U.S. military goes out of its way to protect ecosystems on its sites

A Base for War Training, and Species Preservation
Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times 21 Feb 10;

“There is a strong understanding now that land is a limited resource, and that even our military is part of a larger ecosystem. If that degrades, it is harder for us to do our mission.”

FORT STEWART, Ga. — Under crystalline winter skies, a light infantry unit headed for Iraq was practicing precision long-range shooting through a pall of smoke. But the fire generating the haze had nothing to do with the training exercise.

Staff members at the Army post had set the blaze on behalf of the red-cockaded woodpecker, an imperiled eight-inch-long bird that requires frequent conflagrations to preserve its pine habitat.

Even as it conducts round-the-clock exercises to support two wars, Fort Stewart spends as much as $3 million a year on wildlife management, diligently grooming its 279,000 acres to accommodate five endangered species that live here. Last year, the wildlife staff even built about 100 artificial cavities and installed them 25 feet high in large pines so the woodpeckers did not have to toil for six months carving the nests themselves.

The military has not always been so enthusiastic about saving endangered plants and animals, arguing that doing so would hinder its battle preparedness.

But post commanders have gradually realized that working to help species rebound is in their best interest, if only because the more the endangered plants and animals thrive, the fewer restrictions are put on training exercises to avoid destroying habitat.

In the early years of the administration of President George W. Bush, the military lobbied Congress for limited exemptions from federal protection rules.

Today, herculean efforts to save threatened species are unfolding at dozens of military sites across the nation, from Eglin, Fla., where the Air Force has restored and reconnected streams for the Okaloosa darter, to San Clemente Island, Calif., where the Navy has helped bring the loggerhead shrike back from the brink of extinction.

“Ten years ago, you would have had three- or four-star generals stomping up and down” if the Pentagon ordered such measures, said Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety and occupational health. “Now they just ask, ‘How do I get it done?’ ”

As the owner of some 30 million relatively pristine acres that are often critical habitat for plants and animals, the military is laboring to fulfill its remaining obligations under federal laws like the Endangered Species Act without curbing its training exercises.

But its work also reflects a new dedication to protecting the natural environment, said L. Peter Boice, the Pentagon’s deputy director of natural resources.

“There is a strong understanding now that land is a limited resource, and that even our military is part of a larger ecosystem,” he said. “If that degrades, it is harder for us to do our mission.”

From 2004 to 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, the Department of Defense spent $300 million to protect endangered species — more than it spent in the previous 10 years combined, Pentagon figures show.

Now the military plans to broaden those efforts, reaching beyond the 420 officially endangered or threatened species on its land and restoring ecosystems for more than 500 others that are considered at risk. Training post commanders on environmental responsibilities is now routine as well.

The military began scooping up wide-open and largely untouched rural expanses in the late 1930s and early 1940s as the country prepared for World War II. But decade by decade, suburban sprawl has brought development literally up to the back fences of installations, turning them into de facto havens for many threatened animals and plants.

Preserving those species can require frustrating adjustments. At certain times each year, for example, the Marines are able to use only a fraction of the beachfront at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to practice amphibious landings out of concern for nesting shorebirds like the coastal California gnatcatcher.

In some cases, colliding priorities have not been reconciled. The Navy still relies heavily on midfrequency sonar, for example, riling environmentalists who say it disrupts activity by whales and dolphins off the California coast.

Still, for every clash there is an instance of intense efforts to keep an animal safe. At Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif., for example, the Marines built a desert tortoise research and rearing center in 2005 to help the soft-shelled babies avoid predation by ravens.

Such efforts have won over some of the Pentagon’s toughest environmental critics. “Over all, the military has done a great job, and I know they are spending boatloads of money,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “When they decide we are going to protect something, they just do it.”

Of course, it took years for the Army to hit on a workable strategy for the woodpecker — a lesson that is informing its conservation work today. The bird first caused a minicrisis at Southern installations like Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart in 1990, when troops were preparing for the war to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

To protect the woodpeckers, tanks were prohibited from going into some parts of the forest where the birds had nests. But that strategy helped no one: the bird population did not increase, and the tanks had less room for their maneuvers.

Slowly, the military realized (and was able to convince others) that it was not enough to protect the trees the birds were in; it had to create as much hospitable habitat as possible.

“As the Army realized what that habitat looked like, open and sunny, they realized that was good for soldier training as well,” said Tim Beaty, a civilian who supervises the wildlife staff at Fort Stewart.

Fort Stewart has long used controlled burning in its busiest training areas to prevent live ammunition from causing unplanned fires. Local species gravitated toward those scorched open areas.

So the post began systematically burning its entire land area, 500 acres to 1,000 acres at a time. After each burn, it planted longleaf pines and native wire grass, flora that dominated the area before European settlers arrived centuries ago. The woodpecker population rebounded.

Tanks are now allowed to drive right up next to some of the woodpecker colonies. Cameras placed in their nests by Mr. Beaty’s team had shown that the birds were indifferent to live-fire exercises.

Yet the success gave the Pentagon a new concern: without additional pristine habitat for species near its installations, “uncomfortable tradeoffs” could jeopardize training in years to come, said Janice W. Larkin, outreach coordinator for the Defense Department’s Sustainable Ranges Initiative.

So to limit pressures from encroaching development, the military began getting Congress to pay for preservation purchases in the 2005 fiscal year. By the 2009 fiscal year, the budget had grown to $56 million.

The Pentagon does not want to own those lands but organize multiparty partnerships. Fort Stewart, for example, has formed a partnership with the Georgia Land Trust, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the county government to try to preserve 100,000 acres on the edge of the post. Right next door, the Marine Corps’ Townsend Range is working with the Nature Conservancy to protect another 15,000 acres of critical watershed on the Altamaha River.

Although the installations’ goal is to prevent development from inching too close, the land will be a haven for threatened species ranging from a rare kind of mint to the gopher tortoise, which lives in sandy underground burrows. The Army wants to prevent the tortoise from being officially listed as endangered, which it says could seriously impede training on the post.

Alison McGee, a biologist with the Nature Conservancy in Georgia, said the Pentagon’s commitment allowed local groups to be more ambitious in rebuilding the natural ecosystem.

“It’s the military,” she said. “They make it possible to work at a really large scale.”

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Think before giving shark's fin

IT IS that time of the year again when companies exchange greeting cards and buy hampers and presents for their business partners.
The New Paper 18 Feb 10;

IT IS that time of the year again when companies exchange greeting cards and buy hampers and presents for their business partners.

To show one's sincerity in giving a present to someone, one has to know what the receiver likes or not like.

We don't give pork to our Muslim friends because pork is taboo to them, and neither do we give cigars to people who do not smoke.

Why do companies then take the risk of offending their business partners by giving something as controversial as shark's fin products when there is cruelty involved in harvesting them?

There is also the negative ecological impact of a declining shark population.

The act of giving 'luxury' items like shark's fin products may in fact be looked upon not as an act of generosity but as an irresponsible and short-sighted act leading to the irreversible destruction of the ocean ecosystem.

A bad business decision, I must say.

A growing number of people, including myself, detest the unwelcome gift of a can of shark's fin in a Chinese New Year hamper.

The marketing message written on a typical can may hint that the (shark's fin) company is against killing sharks for only their fins .

However, nothing is mentioned about capping the catches to a sustainable level such that the company does not contribute to the collapse of the ocean ecosystem, expected with a fast declining population of top-level predators such as the shark.

Indeed, more often than not, the receiver would have felt a lot more appreciative if a little more thought was exercised before the decision to purchase shark's fin was made.

READER EDWIN LIM YEE PHING

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Temasek Poly, BCA in green tie-up

Olivia Ho, Business Times 20 Feb 10;

TEMASEK Polytechnic and the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) have signed an agreement under which the polytechnic will help with BCA's Green Mark Scheme.

The scheme aims to drive the construction industry towards more environmentally friendly buildings, by reworking existing buildings based on internationally recognised best practices.

Lecturers from Temasek Poly will be trained by BCA as Green Mark assessors.

'This collaboration underlines BCA's commitment to build a competent core of green building professionals,' said Lam Siew Wah, BCA's deputy CEO for industry and corporate development.

He signed the agreement yesterday with Lay-Tan Siok Lie, deputy principal and director of Temasek Engineering School.

Temasek Poly is pleased to make a 'significant contribution to Singapore's emerging green building industry', Ms Lay-Tan said.

Temasek Poly's students will also benefit, she said. 'They will be able to experience and learn from real-life projects with BCA - realising Temasek Poly's aim of bringing education to life, and life to education.'

Both parties hope the partnership will widen Temasek Poly's expertise in green building and environmental sustainability, while helping BCA achieve Green Mark certification of at least 80 per cent of Singapore's buildings by 2030.

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Four Tigers Discovered in Jakarta Home During Forestry Ministry Raid

Ulma Haryanto, Jakarta Globe 21 Feb 10;

Wildlife officials found a full-grown female tiger and three cubs along with other exotic animals during a raid on a house in Pondok Cabe Ilir, South Tang­erang, the second such discovery this month.

The big cats were seized along with a dozen rare cockatoos, two Timor deer and four birds of paradise, Awriya Ibrahim, director of forest protection at the Ministry of Forestry, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

“We are very surprised by the findings. Further raids are planned and we have eight more people on our suspicious persons list,” he said.

The commander of the Forest Police Rapid Reaction Unit, A Riadh Sambati, said the homeowner, Henry Yukio Sujatim, was not in during the raid. “We are going to call him on Tuesday to come to our office. He could be sentenced to jail or fined because of this.”

For the time being, the animals are being cared for by the Natural Resources Agency in Gadog, Puncak. The tigers’ species is yet to be identified.

This month, officials discovered a two adult tigers that had been raised by Jakarta resident Kusbanu Hadisumarto over the past 25 years, along with three cubs.

The animals were thought to be Sumatran tigers, an endangered species that numbers only 400 in the wild.

Kusbanu, the father of actress Unique Priscilla, claimed the tigers were Bengal and came from the Taman Safari Indonesia wildlife park, prompting calls for an investigation of the park by the Ministry of Forestry.

According to the 1990 Law on Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation, those found guilty of trafficking protected animals within Indonesia or abroad face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of Rp 100 million ($8,500).

In January, the Forestry Ministry revealed a controversial initiative to allow the rich to “adopt” captive tigers to help curb illegal hunting and trade. Under the plan, a pair of tigers could be “leased” for Rp 1 billion.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said the scheme would pair male and female tigers to increase their chances of breeding. The ministry has received complaints about the program from at least 12 environmental organizations.

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Infrastructure at turtle sanctuaries will be improved

The Star 21 Feb 10;

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Turtle Sanctuary Advisory Board will improve infrastructure at turtle sanctuary centres to encourage hatching of turtle eggs.

Its chairman Datuk Mazlan Ngah said this was necessary to prevent the turtles from becoming extinct.

"We fear that this will happen if man continues to kill and consume the turtles," Mazlan who is also Terengganu State Secretary told Bernama here Sunday.

The five turtle sanctuaries in Terengganu are at Pulau Perhentian, Rantau Abang, Dungun, Ma'daerah and Kemaman.

He hoped that the improved infrastructure would increase the turtle population particularly the leatherback as only one had landed to lay eggs at Rantau Abang last year. - Bernama

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Monkeys, butterflies, turtles… how the pet trade's greed is emptying south-east Asia's forests

Whole species disappear from the wild as millions of animals are illegally exported round the world in a business with profit margins that rival the drugs trade
David Adam, The Observer 21 Feb 10;

Countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral.

The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – empty forest syndrome – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

"There's lots of forest where there are just no big animals left," says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. "There are some forests where you don't even hear birds."

Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price. Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.

Vincent Nijman, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University who has investigated the trade, said: "We see species that are in fashion traded in great numbers until they are wiped out and people can't get them any more. So another one comes in, and then that is wiped out, and then another comes in."

He added: "In Asia, everybody knows the value of wildlife, so people go into the forest and, whatever they encounter, they know it has a value and that there is someone they can sell it to."

Nijman's research offers the first glimpse of the size of this widespread trade. While most people are aware of illegal sales of rhino horn and ivory, he says it is the scale of the movement of lesser-known species that is most disturbing.

He analysed 53,000 records of imports and exports from countries under Cites, the international convention that regulates the sale of wildlife. Most common species are not listed under Cites, so do not appear in the records. Trade in the most endangered, such as rhino and tiger, is banned. Nijman looked at species considered vulnerable enough that trade is allowed, but controlled. "I'm not against the wildlife trade at all. I think it is a very important economic driver for a large part of the region and a lot of people are dependent on it," he said. "But it has to be done in such a way that you don't finish it all this year. It's not like oil, where you drill it out and then it's gone. If you organise and regulate it properly, it should go on for ever."

Cites records between 1998 and 2007 showed that of more than 35 million animals exported during that period, some 30 million were taken from the wild. The EU and Japan were among the most significant importers.

For some mammal species, the proportion sourced from the wild dropped significantly over the decade, and traders were forced to rely increasingly on captive-bred animals. Official trade in birds virtually disappeared by 2007, probably because of bird flu restrictions.

The bulk of seahorses traded were in the form of dried specimens for Chinese medicine. "The moment you look into the wildlife trade in south-east Asia, China is the biggest challenge, because they can use everything and they will use everything."

Trade in the Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater, illustrates the problem. Officially, countries do not allow their commercial sale and agreed a zero quota under Cites in 2000, though regular seizures show widespread trade, for medicine and meat. "The countries closest to China get emptied [of pangolin] first. Vietnam and Laos have been drained. Myanmar has been drained and they are working south, so now Indonesia is being emptied of pangolins," Shepherd says. "Prices are very high and in the next few years we will see pangolins being sucked out of Africa to supply the demand."

Nijman says his analysis of the Cites records, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, inevitably underestimates the scale of the trade. "There is always an unknown quantity of Cites-listed species that are traded without being reported, and on top of that, probably much larger, is the trade in non-Cites species, which are the species that we think are still common enough to be traded without controls."

One of these is the tokay gecko. "Every­one who has been to Indonesia or Malaysia will know them because they are the ones that sit in your hotel room. You have them everywhere." Although not listed by Cites, Indonesia has set a limit of 45,000 of the lizards exported each year as pets. Nijman says the true number traded is much higher, perhaps into the millions. "We can't say whether a million tokay geckos being traded a year, or two million, is too many. Perhaps there are so many it is OK. But you would think that if they set the quota at 45,000 then a million is too much."

Such geckos can be typically bought in rural villages for a few cents each, and sold for $10 – a profit margin that rivals the drugs trade. "It's a great business. No wonder organised crime gets involved and starts running things," Shepherd says. "In Malaysia if you get caught selling drugs you get the death penalty. For wildlife crime the maximum fine is about $5,000."

The situation is acute in south-east Asia, but the trade, both legal and illegal, is global, often using the internet and courier delivery. For $4,000, an illegal trader based in Indonesia will send a three-year-old ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar, one of the most endangered animals in the world.

Other species sell for as much as $20,000, though Nijman and Shepherd do not want to advertise which ones. "People do know about the rhinos and the tigers, but the vast majority of this trade is in stuff that they didn't know existed," said Shepherd. "A handful of people are getting very rich and most people are getting screwed out of their natural resources."
THE WILDLIFE MARKET

130,000 butterflies, mostly from Malaysia to US, EU and Canada (such as the Birdwing)

16 million seahorses, mostly from Thailand to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China

73,000 exotic fish, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia to Hong Kong (such as the Napoleon Wrasse)

17 million reptiles, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, to Singapore, EU and Japan; includes 1.3 million softshell turtles, 1.8 million cobras, 8.1 million monitor lizards, 400,000 crocodiles

400,000 mammals, mostly from China and Malaysia to the EU and Singapore; includes 270,000 macaques, 91,000 leopard cats

1 million birds, mainly from China, Vietnam and Malaysia, to the EU, Japan and Malaysia (such as leiothrix babblers)

18 million pieces of coral and 2,000 tonnes of live coral, mainly from Indonesia to the US and EU

* CITES TRADE DATA 1998-2007, INCLUDING THOSE WILD AND CAPTIVE-BRED

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Kuching Wetlands RAMSAR listing safe for now

Doreena Naeg & Marilyn Ten, The Borneo Post 21 Feb 10;

THE status of the Kuching Wetlands National Park as a RAMSAR site is safe — at least for now.

The construction of the flood mitigation channel is not detrimental to the site so long as mitigation efforts are successfully made.

According to a well-placed source, the RAMSAR listing will only be removed if the site no longer fulfils at least one of the nine criteria required for its designation as a Wetland of International Importance.

Therefore, the State Forestry Department has to seek the co-operation of the contractors in minimising the impact of the construction taking place in the area on the ecosystem. This is essential to ensure sustainability of the wetlands’ rich biodiversity and maintain its value as an international tourism product.

The source also revealed at the time of the global listing, the authorities concerned had already noted (in the listing document) the proposed construction of the channel.

However, the scale of the impact stemming from the construction was not known at that time. The State Forestry Department has made plans to minimise this. Mangrove restoration in the area is in the works.

Forest Department Sarawak forester Hamden Mohammad said: “There are definite plans to restore the mangrove forest through replanting trees at the site where they have been demolished.”

However, he pointed out mangrove trees might not be suitable as the soil structure might have changed drastically due to the on-going construction.

“We will look at alternative species to restore the eco-balance but first, a soil study is imperative to determine the kind of trees to be planted,” he added.

Restoration will be done once the construction of the channel is completed.

Environmentalists and conservationists are concerned over the Park’s eco-imbalance consequential of the flood mitigation channel construction that could lead to the removal of the RAMSAR listing.

Pointed out conservationist, Rebecca D’Cruz, who is Malaysian Nature Society chairman and also very familiar with the Park: “The biggest problem is the impact caused by the clearing for and construction of the flood bypass channel which is massive in comparison to the size of the Park.”

There had already been enough damage to warrant an assessment of the impact it had had on the ecological character of the site, she said.

However, according to her, there is still hope in that while the construction work is underway, its impact can still be minimised.

“We appeal to the authorities concerned to do whatever it takes to reduce the damage already done to the Park and mitigate any further damage.”

Currently, the area required for the channel has been cleared and what’s left is a huge empty area. The current rainy season is not helping either — the soil is being washed into the river each time it rains, further deteriorating the situation within the Park.

That is just the start and when the construction proper begins, D’Cruz envisages more damage will follow.

“Heavy machinery will have to be brought in and more areas cleared for roads — and all these will result in more devastation.”

What she and other environmentalists would like to see is the relevant authorities monitoring the construction works to ensure the contractors are following NREB guidelines in land clearing as well as doing their utmost to reduce soil erosion.

If this is not being followed through, she fears the Park could lose its value as a RAMSAR site. The Park, after all, was designated by the state government on the ground of its value for biodiversity.

“It is only four years that the site has been designated to the List of Wetlands of International Importance (RAMSAR List) but in that time, we have managed to do this amount of damage to the site,” she noted.

There are about 2,000 sites on the List and very few have ever been removed.

“The last thing we want is the negative international attention this development would bring.”

According to D’Cruz, before the clearing of the land, a study on the environmental impact would have been done and its findings made known to the relevant authorities so that mitigation measures could have been discussed and implemented.

“I’m interested to know the content of the report, the predicted impacts of the project and the mitigation measures proposed because all we can see now is the extensive damage caused by the land clearing activities,” she said.

Estimates are that about one third of the Park (about 2,000 hectares) has been impacted.

On the site’s economic value, D’Cruz said being one of the popular tourist attractions in Kuching area, it sustains the livelihood of residents in nearby regions.

“The site is mainly used for tourism that benefits the nearby villages. Tourists by the dozens visit the site when the weather permits. And if the eco-balance is tipped, the tourism sector will feel the pinch.”

The site’s uniqueness lies in its locality. Within easy reach from the city, it provides an excellent sanctuary for those who want to get away from the hassle and bustle of the city. Besides its low maintenance, except for upkeep of the existing infrastructure, the place can be virtually left on its own — which is the very beauty of the area.

Pointed out D’Cruz: “We talk about promoting tourism and new tourism products and here, we have a product with all the natural attributes to attract global attention.”

The Kuching Wetlands National Park is the state’s first RAMSAR Site. There are six such sites nationwide — Tasek Bera, Pahang (1994), Pulau Kukup, Sungai Pulai and Tanjung Piai in Johor (2003), Kuching Wetlands National Park, Sarawak (2005), and the Lower Kinabatangan-Segama Wetlands, Sabah (2008), covering a total area of 134,158 hectares.

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Dry spell in Sabah to go on for another two to three months

The Star 22 Feb 10;

KOTA KINABALU: The dry spell in the state that has triggered numerous farm and bush fires is expected to last for another two to three months.

Sabah Meteorological Department director Abdul Malik Tusin said the dry spell was a result of the tail end of the north-east monsoon that usually begins in November and ends by March.

“I expect this dry conditions to continue until April,” he said, adding that the monsoon always brought heavy rains in December and January, causing Sabah to be hit by severe flooding.

“This month, we have recorded only 0.4mm of rainfall as compared to 210mm in January,” he said.

He said the dry spell was also caused by the El Nino phenomenon that is being felt globally since June last year.

Malik urged the public to heed warnings issued by the Sabah Forestry and the Department of Environment to stop any form of open burning and other activities that could cause the spread of forest or bush fires.

Since late last week, thousands of hectares of farmlands and forests have been destroyed by fire.Kuala Penyu and Beaufort districts in Sabah west coast were among the worst hit where an estimated 2,428ha of farmland cultivated with rubber, oil palm and pineapples have been destroyed or still burning since last week.

Fires have also swept through some 100ha within the 12,000ha Binsulok Forest Reserve.

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Indonesia aims to be world's breadbasket

Jerome Rivet (AFP) Google News 21 Feb 10;

JAKARTA — Following Brazil's trail, Indonesia is encouraging foreign and local investors to lease huge swathes of fertile countryside and help make the country a major food producer.

"Feed Indonesia, then feed the world," was the recent call from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after the government announced plans to fast-track development of vast agricultural estates in remote areas like Papua and Borneo.

Between now and 2030 Indonesia expects to become one of the world's biggest producers of rice, maize, sugar, coffee, shrimp, meats and palm oil, senior agriculture ministry official Hilman Manan said.

The world's fourth most populous country, with 235 million people, Indonesia has been self-sufficient in rice since 2008 and is already the top producer of palm oil.

"If everything goes well, Indonesia should be able to be self-sufficient in five years. And then it can start to feed the world," said Sony Heru Priyanto, an expert at Satya Wacana Christian University.

The first area targeted for development is 1.6 million hectares (3.95 million acres) in the southeast of the largely undeveloped province of Papua, around the town of Merauke.

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate will, the government hopes, create thousands of jobs and turn an impoverished and neglected corner of the Indonesian archipelago into a hive of activity.

"We chose Merauke because it's the ideal place for food crop cultivation, such as rice, corn, soybean and sugar cane. Merauke district has 4.5 million hectares of land; 2.5 million hectares are ideal for cultivation," Manan said.

"The area is flat and has a good climate. Its soil is appropriate for those crops. Sumatra is already congested with other plantations, such as palm oil, and Kalimantan is already full of mining areas and many plantation areas also."

He said Merauke's population of some 175,000 people could rocket to 800,000 if the plan takes off.

Foreigners will be able to control a maximum of 49 percent of any investing company, and will be offered incentives like tax breaks and reductions in customs and excise duties.

"In order to avoid any forms of monopolies or land grabbing, we're limiting each company to a maximum of 10,000 hectares of land," Manan said, stressing that the government was selling land use rights, not the land itself.

He said interest had come from Japan, South Korea and the Middle East.

But analysts said the region's biggest advantage -- expanses of "empty" land -- was also the main obstacle: the project will require up to five billion dollars in infrastructure investments, from a new port to roads and runways.

And there is opposition from small-scale farmers who say their traditional livelihoods could be threatened by the large-scale commercialization of agriculture.

"We reject the concept of the food estate. For us, food estates are another kind of land grabbing scheme. It's like going back to the era of feudalism," Indonesian Farmers Union official Kartini Samon said.

"The regular farmers' land will be taken by big companies and the farmers will be left with nothing," she said.

Such worries are well known in other countries with similar schemes, such as Brazil and Madagascar, where there is deep suspicion about food and bio-fuel companies monopolising agricultural land.

There are also fears for the rights of indigenous Papuans, an ethnic-Melanesian minority who have long complained that their traditional lands are being unjustly exploited by outsiders.

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Unilever drops major palm-oil producer

BBC documentary shows Indonesian company clearing protected rainforest
Martin Hickman, The Independent 22 Feb 10;

The household goods giant Unilever has distanced itself from a major palm-oil producer after a BBC documentary filmed its staff clearing protected rainforest to make way for plantations producing the widely-used ingredient. In its second blacklisting of a palm-oil producer in three months, Unilever said it would avoid buying supplies originating from the Indonesian company Duta Palma, ensuring they did not end up in best-selling brands such as Dove soap and Flora margarine.

The move – disclosed in an edition of BBC1's Panorama tonight – comes two months after Unilever halted its contract with another Indonesia company, PT Smart, following allegations by Greenpeace that it too was destroying rainforests. Duta Palma made no comment about the BBC's evidence. Following the suspension of its Unilever contract, PT Smart admitted to "minor mistakes" and introduced stricter environmental controls.

The disclosures pose fresh questions about the effectiveness of Indonesian laws protecting wildlife-rich jungles and the industry's attempt to clean up its image. Both Duta Palma and PT Smart are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the body founded to protect the jungle and convince shoppers they can consume palm-oil products with a clear conscience.

Unilever, the world's biggest user of palm oil and a founder member of the RSPO, is one of the few companies that has bought segregated sustainable supplies. Some 97 per cent of palm oil is mixed together in refineries, making it hard for any company to state that its supply has not come from newly-deforested land.

As The Independent reported last year, half of best-selling foods such as Kit Kat and Hovis contain palm oil, but environmental groups and the British government are alarmed at the widespread damage its production causes in South-east Asia.

Of particular concern is the destruction of peat-rich land that releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases and the loss of habitat for endangered creatures such as the orangutan and snow leopard. Despite claims by the industry that its operators obey national laws protecting pristine jungle, the BBC found heavy machinery knocking down trees in a protected area of Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of the island of Borneo. "This is clear evidence of illegal logging," Mr Rowe said in the programme, to be broadcast at 8.30pm tonight.

Willie Smits, the eminent primatologist and former environmental adviser to the Indonesian government, said: "The area is classified as high conservation-value forest. It's virgin forest. Under Indonesian law, you cannot convert this high-quality forest to an oil palm plantation... This is criminal; this should not take place. It means there is no hope left for the most endangered sub-species of the orangutan in west Kalimantan."

The Indonesian government said that it would look into the footage and that it was getting tough with illegal logging.

Unilever Stops Buying Palm Oil From Indonesian Planter
Niluksi Koswanage, PlanetArk 25 Feb 10;

KUALA LUMPUR - Consumer goods giant Unilever has told dealers not to source palm oil from Indonesian planter Duta Palma on concerns over rainforest destruction, an Indonesian industry official said on Wednesday.

Unilever, the world's top palm oil buyer, blacklisted Duta Palma just two months after it halted a $33 million supply contract with Indonesia's largest producer, PT SMART

Green campaigners and consumers have turned up the heat on European firms such as Unilever, saying these companies' palm oil suppliers are responsible for deforestation and peatland clearance that can speed up climate change.

"It is Unilever's decision," Derom Bangun, vice-chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Board, told Reuters by telephone.

"Unilever did not have a supply contract with Duta Palma to begin with. They are safeguarding their supply mechanisms by asking their traders not to buy palm oil from this company after that BBC report."

The BBC documentary aired this week showed footage of Duta Palma staff clearing rainforests for oil palm estates that produce the vegetable oil used in Unilever products such as Dove soap and Stork margarine.

The documentary also cited Unilever as saying it would stop buying palm oil from Duta Palma.

Officials from Duta Palma and Unilever were not immediately available for comment.

Unilever said last year that an independent audit of palm oil suppliers in early 2009 had highlighted areas of concern to be addressed on an individual basis.

Industry watchers say Unilever's latest action could make it difficult for buyers and planters to work together in the main industry body aimed at improving palm oil's green standard, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil (RSPO).

Duta Palma and Unilever are both members of RSPO.

"It creates a lot of suspicion between the two groups," said an RSPO official in Malaysia, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

"But it highlights the difficulty of trying to stay green, especially when the Indonesian government is handing out concessions to develop oil palms."

Indonesia's Agriculture Minister Suswono said last year that Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, would still expand estates despite concerns that expansion would contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

Unilever consumes around 1.3 million metric tons of palm oil each year and has pledged to buy only from certified sustainable plantations from 2015. Indonesia and Malaysia account for at least 80 percent of the world's palm oil supply.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Jatropha in Indonesia: From hot to rot for wonder crop

Nick Perry, Jakarta Post 21 Feb 10;

It was dubbed a "miracle" crop by scientists the world over.

In 2007, biofuel enthusiasts were selling it as the answer to the looming energy crisis and human dependence on fossil fuels. As a tough, drought-resistant weed thriving on marginal land and a vast producer of useable oils, jatropha curcus seemed too good to be true.

And in many ways, perhaps it was. Although producing biodiesels from jatropha does not require sacrificing food crops - unlike corn-based ethanol or oil from soybeans - problems with inconsistent yields, production and land allocation saw support for the hardy little plant falter.

With investment and interest drying up, newspaper reports began referring to jatropha as the "wonder to blunder" crop, delaying its progress even further.

Nowhere was this transition from hero to villain more evident than in Indonesia, the nation touted by experts in 2006 as the most likely to grow and produce jatropha-based biodiesels commercially on a large, global scale.

Tony Wood, president director of the P*yry Forestry Industry, said a combination of bad headlines and a lack of investment interest had seen enthusiasm for jatropha crash in 2009, with most major projects in Indonesia put on hold.

"Where previously a range of consultants had been running all over the country looking for potential jatropha areas," Wood said, "suddenly these same people found themselves back on the job market."

At a biofuels convention last year, Wood said Indonesia was the largest potential market for renewable resources in Southeast Asia, but "while people have the ideas and great technology, there is still something missing".

Although admitting that large-scale operations have little chance of developing in the future, Wood stands by his earlier statement that Indonesia is ideal for small-scale jatropha production.

"Jatropha fits the Indonesian model of many small-scale producers quite well and should not be given up on," he said. "Small to medium-sized operations producing biodiesel for local consumption makes much more sense and it is this model that I think we may see in the future."

In 2006, nobody would have believed that growth estimates for the jatropha market in Indonesia would have dropped off so suddenly a few years down the track. A year earlier, Indonesia - Southeast Asia's biggest oil producer and user - was facing renewed pressure from the international community to reduce its carbon footprint and make attempts to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

With global oil prices skyrocketing, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was forced to cut the oil subsidy in October 2005, sparking protests nationwide.

Indonesian scientists working in the biofuels industry immediately recognized the possibilities jatropha had in store for the archipelago. With 22 million hectares of unused, marginal and critical land, varied climate, massive labor market and diverse investment channels, the potential for Indonesia was enormous.

For Yudhoyono, the chance to invest in a renewable "green" energy could not have come at a better time.

The government announced plans to spend US$22 billion by 2010 to promote biofuels, with presidential regulations promising the inclusion of biofuels in the primary energy sector by 2025. Research into jatropha skyrocketed, as did unprecedented interest from the business sector, which dreamed of the profits to be made from cashing in on this wonder crop and developing an export market for its products.

With expectations for jatropha at an all-time high, and with the international biofuels sector looking toward Indonesia, support was needed at home. To generate publicity for the campaign, National Geographic Indonesia collaborated with Mitsubishi to power a car from East Nusa Tenggara to Jakarta entirely on jatropha-based biodiesel.

"In 2006, the government research institute *BPPT* had ambitious plans for jatropha," Prof. Dr. Erliza Hambali, director of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Bioenergy Research Center, said at a conference last year. "They estimated that by 2010 there would be around 1.5 million hectares of Indonesian land cultivated for jatropha."

Government officials and business investors were fascinated by jatropha's unique ability to adapt to its environment, with very little assistance, and produce 30 to 40 percent oil content from its seeds. Virtually the entire plant is used, with the oil processed for biofuels, the trunk manufactured for fertilizer and the by-product forming glycerine for organic soaps.

However, by April 2008, only 120,000 hectares of land had been cultivated for jatropha across Indonesia. With global oil prices dropping significantly in 2009, and with the onset of the financial crisis, business groups and the government lost interest, or at least the economic desire, to continue pushing for the advancement of alternative fuel sources.

As Brazil, Europe and the Philippines surged ahead in biofuel development throughout 2009, Indonesia was left with a sector lacking the profits, structure and political will to survive.

Instead, those interested in continuing the development of jatropha were left struggling against bureaucratic, convoluted land-ownership laws, among other problems.

While land may be abundant in Indonesia, the procedure behind gaining the rights and certification to develop biofuels is incredibly long and complicated, often dragging into years.

"One of the major problems facing the expansion of the jatropha market is land availability", Erliza said. "Sure, there is a lot of empty land in Indonesia, but much of it is already owned and certified, even if it is unused."

A key ongoing problem is the lack of clear vision from the government over their promotion of renewable energies, according to Maxensius Tri Sambodo, an economic researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). While the government has agreed biofuels can improve economic stability, create jobs and reduce poverty and dependence on fossil fuels, it remains reluctant to fully support the industry after the initial setbacks.

Biofuel campaigners argue the direction of government policy still favors fossil fuels. The Yudhoyono administration has given more than Rp 120 trillion in subsidies to the fossil fuels industry in recent years, but left the biofuels sector waiting for promised funding.

"Price is the key," Maxensius said. "The government still provides subsidies for fossil fuels. Studies also show that there is lack of coordination between central and local governments in promoting biofuels."

By far the biggest obstacle standing in the way of jatropha development in Indonesia is inconsistent yields. While Air New Zealand and Continental Airlines have powered test flights run entirely on jatropha biofuels, and thousands of homes across Belgium are powered on jatropha purchased from Thailand, Indonesian scientists have been battling uneven ripening times and variations in seeds and oil content.

"What it all boils down to I think is that while jatropha remains a strong potential crop for Indonesia," Wood said, "right now few people are achieving even close to the yields required to make projects economically attractive on a large scale. I believe that this will come as some good work is being done, but it will take time."

The presence of an already well-established and highly lucrative palm oil industry bringing in big dollars has made it difficult to convince farmers in Indonesia to harvest jatropha.

With low profits, a virtually nonexistent export market and scarce infrastructure for producing the biofuel, rural Indonesia's confidence in the product is not high.

The government is currently dealing with the commercial side of jatropha, Wood said, so that companies investing now should find a stable situation by the time plantations start producing even yields.

Dr. Endang Warsiki, coordinator of the Research Center for Jatropha Research and Development in Indonesia, said the focus right now is on ongoing collaborative research with the government and with laboratories in Japan and Singapore.

"Indonesia has been a research partner in jatropha from the beginning," Endang said. "Currently, our goal *is* to get high yields. The funding mostly comes from the government."

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Electric bikes on a roll in China

Joelle Garrus Yahoo News 20 Feb 10;

TIANJIN, China (AFP) – Chinese commuters in their millions are turning to electric bicycles -- hailed as the environmentally-friendly future of personal transport in the country's teeming cities.

Up to 120 million e-bikes are estimated to be on the roads in China, making them already the top alternative to cars and public transport, according to recent figures published by local media.

"This is the future -- it's practical, it's clean and it's economical," said manufacturer Shi Zhongdong, whose company also exports electric bikes to Asia and Europe.

The bikes have been hailed as an ecologically-sound alternative in a country which is the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, with their rechargeable batteries leaving a smaller carbon footprint than cars.

But some have expressed concerns about the pollution created by cheaper lead batteries, calling for better recycling and a quick shift to cleaner, though more expensive, lithium-ion battery technology.

More than 1,000 companies are already in the e-bike business in China, with many of them clustered in the eastern coastal provinces such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which both border Shanghai.

Another 1,000 firms are producing e-bikes on an ad hoc basis, Shi told AFP during a visit to his Hanma Electric Bicycles factory in the port city of Tianjin, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Beijing.

"The business has exploded since 2006," Shi says, while admitting that the company took a hit last year due to the financial crisis.

Some e-bikes can reach speeds of more than 35 kilometres an hour (21 miles per hour), and a few manufacturers boast their models can last up to 50 kilometres on a single battery charge.

Battery chargers are simply plugged into an electricity socket at home. Most e-bikes also have pedals, except for the bigger, scooter-like models.

Shi was an electrical engineer who worked for a state-owned firm for most of his career, but as he turned 55 and retirement was beckoning he founded Hanma in 1999, investing about 500,000 yuan (75,000 dollars) of his own money.

He is wary of giving exact production figures, but says Hanma is churning out between 50,000 and 100,000 e-bikes a year.

In his company's icy, old-fashioned workshops, several models are lined up: from electric bikes with "green" lithium batteries, made especially for export, to some that look more like mini-scooters.

They are everywhere in the streets of Beijing -- no licence plates, no driver's licences needed. Enthusiasts say they are a godsend in a city where the number of scooter and motorcycle drivers is restricted.

"I get around traffic jams so easily," said one Beijinger before speeding off from an intersection in the capital, where more than four million vehicles are clogging the roads and polluting the already thick air.

But not everyone is on the e-bike bandwagon -- "real" cyclists have complained bitterly that their once peaceful lanes are now clogged with irresponsible, uncontrollable speedsters.

In December, authorities tried to re-impose a maximum speed limit of 20 kilometres (12 miles) per hour on e-bike riders, along with licence rules, but the plan caused such a public and industry uproar that it was suspended.

"The rules will never go through. Hundreds of factories would be forced to shut down. And what would those who already own e-bikes do?" Shi says.

In a report released last June, the Asian Development Bank said e-bikes could become "perhaps the most environmentally sustainable motorised mode available" in China.

But it called for the replacement of lead acid batteries and better regulations on the allowable weight and speed to keep accidents at a minimum.

Shi says nearly a third of his production goes abroad -- to Asia, notably India, to the European Union and even to the United States.

"There is a big future for electric bikes in Europe, where people are very concerned about saving the environment," he said, explaining that the models with safer but more costly lithium batteries are shipped to EU nations.

Shi says he sells the export models for 400 dollars, as opposed to just 240 dollars for those sold in China. But the bikes can sell for a whopping 1,200 dollars in France and Germany.

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Marine Reserves in the Spotlight: Meeting Both Conservation and Fisheries Goals

ScienceDaily 21 Feb 10;

Marine reserves are known to be effective conservation tools when they are placed and designed properly. This week, a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is dedicated to the latest science on marine reserves, with a focus on where and how reserves can most effectively help to meet both conservation and fisheries goals.

"There is plenty of new evidence to show that if reserves are designed well, they can benefit both fish and fishermen," explains Steven Gaines, newly appointed Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara and a guest editor of the PNAS special issue. "An enormous amount of research has already been done on marine reserves, helping to facilitate their use and development around the world, and yet many lingering questions remain. Papers in this special issue help answer many of those questions."

Several scientists with papers in the issue will be discussing their findings Sunday, February 21, at a press briefing at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

Each paper in the special issue describes a different yet interrelated aspect of reserves and the societies in which they function. One global study, for example, identifies large stretches of coastal ocean where marine reserves can play a major role in reducing cumulative impacts on marine ecosystems. In some cases, fishing is responsible for as much as 90 percent of the overall damage to the ecosystem. These areas include the South China Sea, East China Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, North Sea, and Norwegian Sea, as well as much of the Coral Triangle. When fishing is the most significant threat to a particular ecosystem, marine reserves can serve as powerful tools for improving the overall condition of the ocean.

"It was surprising to see how much marine reserves could improve overall ocean health in many places around the world, but also humbling how much still needs to be done," says Ben Halpern, an associate research biologist at UCSB and lead author of this study. "Marine reserves and other marine protected areas are an important piece of the puzzle in addressing marine resource management comprehensively, but they are only part of the solution."

Another global study -- the first of its kind -- examined the social determinants of success in 56 coral reef marine reserves, representing every major reef region in the world. The results suggest a clear link between reserve performance and proximity to a human population center. However, the overall effect of having humans nearby -- beneficial or detrimental -- varied by region. In the Indian Ocean, for example, reserves near a human population performed better than their more remote counterparts. In the Caribbean, however, reserves near a population center fared relatively poorly.

"Success also has to do with cooperation by the local communities," explains Joshua Cinner, Senior Research Fellow at James Cook University in Australia and a co-author on this study. "In areas where people work together to invest in their resources, we saw less poaching inside marine reserves. This was really about having processes that allow people to be consulted about the reserves and engage in research and management activities. Our study found that, to get high levels of compliance with reserve rules, managers need to foster the conditions that enable participation in reserve activities, rather than just focusing on patrols."

Detailed spatial information on where fish spawn and spend their lives can help in the design of effective reserve networks. To that end, another study looks at what ecologists call "sources" and "sinks." Source areas are very productive spawning grounds that are well connected to other areas by ocean currents. Larvae hatched there are swept to the sink areas, where they seed populations that might otherwise dwindle to unsustainable levels. The study suggests that, if fishing is prevented in source areas and instead concentrated in sink areas, fisheries could realize a significant gain in value -- greater than 10 percent according to model simulations.

"If you care about both conservation and fisheries, regardless of the relative value you place on each, better information about dispersal will help you achieve both goals," explains Andrew Rassweiler, a biologist at UC Santa Barbara and a co-author on this study. "Because managers have to be selective when placing reserves, information on sources and sinks will help them get the best results with the least disruption to fishing."

"What you'd really like to do is close the source to fishing and only fish in the sink area," adds Christopher Costello, an economist at the Bren School and lead author on this paper. "It turns out you get a much higher economic value and much better conservation when you do that. But if you don't know where the sources and sinks are, you can't do that, so that is where the information comes in."

Finally, another study presents findings from the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, home to a network of marine protected areas first established by the California Department of Fish and Game in 2003. The authors found that, after only five years, fished species were significantly larger and more abundant inside no-take reserves than they were outside.

"We're at the point where we can actually begin to assess network benefits, including increases in the size and number of fish across the entire network," says Jennifer Caselle, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. "Based on what we know so far, it seems the whole really can be more than the sum of its parts when networks are designed with larval and adult movements in mind."

Many scientists point to networks as a key strategy for getting the most out of reserves. In fact, the special issue and press conference coincide roughly with the implementation of a comprehensive network of marine reserves in Southern California mandated by the California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). The MLPA network (of which Southern California represents the third of five stages) is the first in the United States to be designed from the ground up as a network rather than a patchwork of independent reserves.

The scientists emphasize that the coupling of new marine reserve network science with appropriate public process is the key.

"If the public and stakeholder process and networks are well designed and implemented, it will work, even in an area like California with tens of millions of users," says Gaines. "These networks can benefit both fish and fishermen. It's not a choice."

Participation 'important for healthy marine parks'
ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, EurekAlert 21 Feb 10;

The involvement of locals is a key ingredient in the success of marine parks which protect coral reefs and fish stocks.

The largest-scale study to date of how coastal communities influence successful outcomes in marine reserves has found that human population pressure was a critical factor in whether or not a reserve succeeded in protecting marine resources – but so too was local involvement in research and management.

The team looked at how successful coral reef marine reserves were at conserving fish stocks. They studied 56 marine reserves from 19 different countries throughout Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean.

"About ¾ of the marine reserves we studied showed a positive difference in the amount of fish inside compared to outside – so most reserves we studied were working" says Dr Josh Cinner of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University

"However, the differences weren't always large. The most successful reserves showed really big differences of 14 times the amount of fish inside compared to outside, but that wasn't always the case.

"What we were most interested in, was understanding what made some reserves more successful than others. One of the best predictors of how 'successful' a marine reserve was, is actually the size of the human communities around the reserve – but interestingly, this varied in different regions.

"In the Indian Ocean, for example, where reserves are government-controlled and moderate in size (around six square kilometres on average), having lots of people nearby had a positive effect. But this could be because marine resources outside the reserve are heavily degraded, accentuating the healthier state of those inside the reserve.

"In the Caribbean, we found the opposite. Large human populations near reserves led to poor performance of the reserve – which may be due to low compliance or poor enforcement in marine parks near population centers," Dr Cinner said.

The other key ingredient for a successful marine reserve was the level of poaching in the reserve. But importantly, the team found that compliance with reserve rules was not just related to the level of enforcement, but also to a range of social, political, and economic factors which enabled people to co-operate better in protecting their marine resources. Reserves worked best where there was a formal consultation processes about reserve rules, where local people were able to participate in monitoring the reserve, and when ongoing training for community members was provided so that they could better understand the science and policy.

"It was clear that this type of local involvement was a very important factor in building the local support necessary to make reserves successful. Park agencies need to foster conditions that enable people to work together to protect their local environment, voluntarily, rather than focusing purely on regulations and patrols.

"Enforcement will almost always be an important part of a successful reserve, but there is a lot of ocean out there to patrol and many of the places we studied were poor, developing countries which don't have the luxury of being able to invest in lots of patrol boats.

The team's report appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in a paper entitled "Marine reserves as linked social–ecological systems" by Richard Pollnac, Patrick Christie, Joshua E. Cinner, Tracey Dalton, Tim M. Daw, Graham E. Forrester, Nicholas A. J. Graham, and Timothy R. McClanahan.

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Damage to threatened Gulf of California habitats can be reversed

Protecting vulnerable reproduction sites key to long-term health of fish populations
University of California - San Diego EurekAlert 21 Feb 10;

Once described by Jacques Cousteau as the "world's aquarium," the marine ecosystems of the Gulf of California are under threat. Destructive new fishing methods are depleting the sea's habitats, creating areas that are ghosts of their former existences (see Scripps explorations story "Threatened Gulf").

But, as Octavio Aburto-Oropeza of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will describe during a presentation at the 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in San Diego, habitat conservation can revitalize once-depleted marine ecosystems (session: 8:30-10 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 21, Room 6D, San Diego Convention Center).

One recently emerging threat is a highly destructive fishing method called "hookah" diving in which fishermen use crude oxygen piping to walk along the seafloor for long periods. The technique is typically conducted at night when fish are resting, allowing the hookah fishermen to spear or grab large numbers of vulnerable fish and invertebrates.

Aburto-Oropeza's findings on reversing the effects of such threats are part of a series of research studies headed by the newly launched Gulf of California Program based at Scripps Oceanography.

"In these studies, whether reefs or mangroves, we are trying to show that the destruction on the coast and overexploitation in other areas are diminishing the biomass (the amount of organisms in an ecosystem) in several areas," said Aburto-Oropeza. "With lower biomass, the large predators, the keys to a robust marine ecosystem, are missing and that causes disruption down the marine food web."

But there is hope to counteract such damage, says Aburto-Oropeza.

One successful example is Cabo Pulmo, a little-known protected area near the southern tip of the Baja peninsula that is thriving and a living example of the benefits of protected marine areas. Restricted of fishing since 1995, Cabo Pulmo features a robust mix of sea life and flourishing fish populations. Other successes include Coronado Island inside the Loreto marine park and Los Islotes inside Espiritu Santo marine park.

"Different sites recover in different ways, but they all have increased in biomass, especially top predators," said Aburto-Oropeza.

"The common thing is that they have reduced or eliminated fishing activity."

Beyond simply shielding certain locations, Aburto-Oropeza's presentation will cover new research that reveals the strategic importance of protecting areas that are key for fish species populations. In particular, these include important sites such as fish "spawning aggregation" areas, where fish converge in large numbers to reproduce at select times of the year, and sensitive nursery habitats that are vital to ensuring healthy ecosystems.

"For some species these spawning aggregation events occur two to four times per year, and can represent 100 percent of the replenishment of their populations," said Aburto-Oropeza.

Aburto-Oropeza and others recently calculated the economic value of mangroves at roughly $37,500 per hectare per year. An ongoing study has shown that a fish species called gulf corvina provided 3,500 tons of landings in 2009 in one community, a volume worth $3 million.

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These studies have been supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Pew Foundation, International Community Foundation and Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza.

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Will coral reefs disappear?

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, EurekAlert 21 Feb 10;

This is the title of an upcoming symposium at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference in San Diego, California. And it's a topic that should not be taken lightly.

NSERC-funded researcher Dr. Simon Donner, an assistant professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, will be talking about the vulnerability of coral reefs to climate change due to higher ocean temperatures.

Dr. Donner studies coral bleaching. Corals get most of their energy from microscopic algae that live in their tissue. These algae are colourful and are what gives corals their vivid hue. When environmental factors go out of the range that corals are used to (such as warming water), the symbiosis between the coral and the algae breaks down and corals effectively expel the algae and turn white. The coral is then deprived of its source of energy, and dies.

Dr. Donner studies the frequency of coral bleaching events, their consequences and the link to unusually warm oceans. He says that mass coral bleaching events were thought to be extremely rare as far back as 30 years ago.

At the AAAS conference he will be talking about the predicted occurrence of bleaching events under different climate scenarios and, according to

Dr. Donner, it doesn't look good.

"Even if we froze emissions today, the planet still has some warming left in it. That's enough to make bleaching dangerously frequent in reefs worldwide," he says.

Given the hundreds of millions of people living in the tropics who depend on coral reefs for food, income, tourism and shoreline protection, the loss of reefs is a serious issue.

"Obviously, there's an aesthetic concern because people see Finding Nemo and they're worried about what's going to happen to the world's coral reefs, but the key thing is that there are hundreds of millions of people who depend on them for their livelihood," says Dr. Donner.

However, the outlook isn't completely bleak. Dr. Donner says that no one is predicting that coral reefs will go extinct; they will continue to survive, but only in certain habitats, such as shaded areas. The reality is a general loss of coral cover and a breakdown of the physical structure of reefs.

In order to see what the future of reefs might be, Dr. Donner is pursuing fieldwork in the central equatorial Pacific, because the islands and reefs in that area are affected by repeated El Nino events. Because of this, they've experienced higher year-to-year temperature variability than other areas on the planet. Dr. Donner is studying the corals in these areas to understand how the reefs are biologically different, and how that has allowed them to persist through warm water events that would kill coral in other areas of the planet.

"It's a natural model for the future," he says.

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Acidified landscape around ocean vents foretells grim future for coral reefs

Underwater vents allow scientists to assess the acidic effect of carbon dioxide on ocean life
Robin McKie, The Observer 21 Feb 10;

Huge vents covering the sea-floor – among the strangest and most spectacular sights in nature – pour carbon dioxide and other gases into the deep waters of the oceans.

Last week, as researchers reported that they had now discovered more than 50,000 underwater volcanic springs, they also revealed a new use for them – as laboratories for measuring the impact of ocean acidification on marine life.

The seas are slowly being made more acidic by the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from factories and cars being pumped into the atmosphere and then dissolved in the sea. The likely impact of this acidification worries scientists, because they have found that predicting the exact course of future damage is a tricky process.

That is where the undersea vents come in, says Dr Jason Hall-Spencer of the University of Plymouth. "Seawater around these vents becomes much more acidic than normal sea­water because of the carbon dioxide that is being bubbled into it," he told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California, last week. "Indeed, it reaches a level that we believe will be matched by the acidity of oceans in three or four decades. That is why they are so important."

As part of his research, Hall-Spencer has scuba-dived into waters around vents and used submersibles to study those in deeper waters. In both cases the impact was dramatic, he told the conference.

"The sea floor is often very colourful. There are corals, pink algae and sea urchins. But I have found that these are wiped out when the water becomes more acidic and are replaced by sea grasses and foreign, invasive algae.

"There is a complete ecological flip. The seabed loses all its richness and variety. And that is what is likely to happen in the next few decades across the world's oceans."

Hall-Spencer also noted that in acidic seawater a type of algae known as coralline algae – which act as the glue holding coral reefs together – are destroyed.

"When coralline algae are destroyed, coral reefs fall apart," he said. "So we can see that coral islands like the ­Maldives face a particularly worrying future. ­Rising sea levels threaten to drown them, while acidic waters will cause them to disintegrate.

"It is a very worrying combination."

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Marine Spatial Planning: A More Balanced Approach to Ocean Management

ScienceDaily 20 Feb 10;

The old balkanized approach to ocean management, in which different resources and activities are governed by different laws and administered by different agencies, has failed to protect ocean ecosystems or reduce conflicts between ocean users, a panel of international scientists says, and should be replaced with a more balanced approach using marine spatial planning.

The panel, organized by scientists from Duke University, made its case at a symposium at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 20, at this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) in San Diego.

Marine spatial planning begins with the creation of detailed, comprehensive maps of a marine area, identifying where and how it is used by humans and what natural resources and habitats exist within it.

Coastal communities can then use this information to set economic, environmental and social goals for that area, and allocate space within it for different uses, including fishing, shipping, recreation, conservation, oil and gas development, or renewable energy production.

"By building comprehensive maps and bringing people together to plan the future of an ocean space, we can minimize conflicts and look for ways to maximize benefits," says Larry Crowder, director of the Duke Center for Marine Conservation. "The result is a fairer and more effective approach to how our oceans are used -- ensuring that diverse human uses are supported while healthy marine ecosystems are maintained for all our benefit."

The use of marine spatial planning has gained momentum nationwide in recent years; there are now active programs in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Oregon.

In June 2009, President Obama directed 22 U.S. federal agencies with ocean-related programs to develop "a framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning" that addresses conservation, economic activities, user conflicts and sustainable use of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources. A draft of the framework was released in December. That month, Scientific American magazine chose marine spatial planning as one of "20 World Changing Ideas."

The AAAS meeting is the largest general science conference of the year. Being invited to present or moderate a symposium at AAAS is widely viewed as a measure of a researcher's high stature in his or her field.

The AAAS symposium on marine spatial planning included presentations by:

* Larry Crowder, Stephen Toth Professor of Marine Biology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. He'll discuss the science and management of coupled social-ecological systems,and explain why effective ocean management requires us to consider all elements of an ecosystem -- its physical, biological, chemical and geological attributes, as well as the composition and location of human communities that rely on it for livelihoods or essential services. Coupled social-ecological systems provide a useful and relatively new framework for incorporating these disparate elements into decision-making.

* Kevin St. Martin, associate professor of geography at Rutgers University. St. Martin will discuss innovative new techniques he's developing to map the spatial impacts of ocean users. Understanding the links between coastal communities and their activities in specific marine zones is central to a full understanding of the ecology of ocean ecosystems, he will explain. Being able to visualize these linkages is essential if we want to incorporate human factors into marine spatial planning.

* Fanny Douvere, coordinator of the World Heritage Marine Programme at UNESCO's World Heritage Centre in France. She will present evidence illustrating that a regional, future-oriented approach is central to the success of marine spatial planning. She'll review efforts now under way to incorporate good practices for marine spatial planning into ocean management practices and policies at the national and regional levels.

* Mary Turnipseed, a PhD student in ecology at Duke. She'll discuss how an old legal concept, the public trust doctrine, can gain new use as a tool for achieving sustainable ocean governance. The doctrine identifies governments as trustees of certain natural resources on citizens' behalf. Historically, it's enabled ecosystem protection at the state level, but hasn't yet been extended to natural resources strictly under federal jurisdiction, such as those in ocean waters from three to 200 nautical miles from U.S. shores. She will explore arguments for including federal public trust duties in a new national ocean policy.

* Jo Foden, a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia, U.K. Foden will summarize recent progress in Europe toward monitoring and assessing how marine spatial planning supports national and regional ocean management goals. She will review current assessment methods being used at local, national, international and global scales, and show how more explicit goals, greater consistency in terminology and a clearer approach to assessment could help consolidate these efforts and simplify future applications.

* Andrew Rosenberg, senior vice president for science and knowledge at Conservation International. He will describe the use of marine spatial planning in Massachusetts and how a diverse coalition of ocean stakeholders has provided critical, ongoing support for it. A professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire, he will relate the Massachusetts initiative to national efforts to develop a framework for marine spatial planning through the President's Ocean Policy Taskforce.

Morgan Gopnik, currently a PhD candidate in marine science and conservation at Duke, moderated the symposium. She served for seven years as director of the Ocean Studies Board at the National Academy for Sciences, before being appointed senior advisor to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, where she oversaw the writing of the commission's final report to Congress and the White House. She subsequently served as senior vice president for programs at The Ocean Conservancy. In addition to pursing a PhD at Duke, Gopnik is an independent consultant on ocean management issues to foundations, association and nonprofit organizations.

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Scientists see early warning to damaging El Nino

Yahoo News 21 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Weather experts say they have a tip that could give up to 14 months' warning before the onset of an El Nino, the weather anomaly that whacks countries around the Pacific and affects southern Africa and even Europe.

At present, scientists are unable to give little more than a few months' notice that an El Nino is in the offing, which is often too late for farmers, fishermen and others to prepare for weather disruption.

El Nino occurs every two to seven years, when the trade winds that circulate surface water in the tropical Pacific start to weaken.

A mass of warm water builds in the western Pacific and eventually rides over to the eastern side of the ocean.

The outcome is a major shift in rainfall, bringing floods and mudslides to usually arid countries in western south America and drought in the western Pacific, as well as a change in nutrient-rich ocean currents that lure fish.

El Nino is ushered out by a cold phase, La Nina, which usually occurs the following year.

Meteorologists led by Takeshi Izumo of the Research Institute for Global Change in Yokohama, Japan, believe the world can gain a precious early warning from a similar event that occurs in the Indian Ocean.

This oscillation, first identified in 1999, occurs roughly every two years.

Analysis of weather records from 1981 to 2009 found that when the so-called Indian Ocean Dipole was in a "negative" phase -- with the waters warm in the west and cold in the east -- an El Nino event in Pacific followed more than a year later.

The driver for this pendulum appears to be a pattern in atmospheric circulation linking the two oceans, Izumo believes.

The paper is published online on Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience.

In a commentary, Peter Webster and Carlos Hoyos, earth scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, said that work was needed to delve into the past.

The 1981-2009 period did indeed show a "strong two-year rhythm" in which the Dipole swung along with El Nino.

Other research, based on sea temperatures from 1890-2008, suggests the Indian Ocean pendulum may vary from decade to decade, the pair cautioned.

Indian Ocean Clues To Predicting El Nino: Study
Tan Ee Lyn, PlanetArk 24 Feb 10;

HONG KONG - Tracking Indian Ocean climate patterns could improve early-warning systems for the El Nino phenomenon, helping save lives and billions of dollars lost each year to the severe weather it causes.

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, researchers in Japan and France said their new forecast model could predict an El Nino 14 months ahead of time, several months earlier than with current methods.

"It is important because...this helps to improve El Nino forecasts. It can save a lot of money for agriculture," lead researcher Takeshi Izumo at the Research Institute for Global Change in Yokohama, Japan, said by telephone.

The El Nino phenomenon is a climate pattern that occurs periodically over the Pacific Ocean and is well known for the havoc it wreaks such as floods, droughts and other forms of severe weather.

Developing countries heavily dependent on agriculture and fishing are most badly affected, though the 1997-1998 El Nino cost the United States an estimated $25 billion according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Izumo and his colleagues found that the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the equivalent of an El Nino in the Indian Ocean, had a role in causing the phenomenon.

"IOD strongly influences the triggering of El Nino (the following year). In this study, we did a simple forecast model, we included the IOD index and we can have a very good forecast for the El Nino in the next year," Izumo said.

"In a way we found a missing piece of the puzzle for triggering an El Nino. We showed here that in addition to the usual causal factor, which is that of warm water volume recharge, there is the IOD which is a very important causal factor for El Nino development," he added.

Accurate and early prediction of the El Nino can help better mitigate the destruction caused by the phenomenon.

"Because of the overwhelming consequences of El Nino on global weather, ecosystems, and its strong socioeconomic and ecological consequences, El Nino forecasting is important for disaster prevention and impact management, and helps to reduce El Nino-related losses," Izumo said.

During the 1997 El Nino, one of the strongest recorded, Indonesia suffered a large number of fires, partly caused by drought, he said. Better forecasting could have helped reduce the number of fires through prevention measures.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Tropical storms to be more intense but less frequent: climate study

Yahoo News 22 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Tropical cyclones may become less frequent this century but pack a stronger punch as a result of global warming, a paper published on Sunday said.

The study is an overview of work into one of the scariest yet also one of the least understood aspects of climate change.

Known in the Atlantic as hurricanes and in eastern Asia as typhoons, tropical storms are driven by the raw fuel of warm seas, which raises the question about what may happen when temperatures rise as a result of greenhouse gases.

Tom Knutson and colleagues from the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) looked at peer-reviewed investigations that have appeared over the past four years, when the issue began to hit the headlines.

Their benchmark for warming is the "A1B" scenario, a middle-of-the-road computer simulation which predicts a global average surface temperature rise of 2.8 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the 21st century.

"It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged," says the paper.

But storms could have more powerful winds -- an increase of between two and 11 percent -- and dump more water, it warns.

Rainfall could increase by 20 percent within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the eye of the storm.

In addition, some storm basins will "more likely than not" see a big increase in the frequency of high-impact storms.

The overview calls for an effort to fill in some big gaps in knowledge, including the variability of cyclones in the past and how global warming will affect storm behaviour in specific regions.

It is published online by Nature Geoscience, a journal of Britain's Nature Publishing Group.

The findings broadly concur with those of the UN's panel of climate scientists, which in a 2007 report said it was "likely" that tropical cyclones would become more intense this century, with heavier rainfall and stronger wind speeds.

However, the panel said it was less confident in concluding whether the number of cyclones would decrease.

Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Feb 10;

WASHINGTON – Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there's not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun.

Since just before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, dueling scientific papers have clashed about whether global warming is worsening hurricanes and will do so in the future. The new study seems to split the difference. A special World Meteorological Organization panel of 10 experts in both hurricanes and climate change — including leading scientists from both sides — came up with a consensus, which is published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"We've really come a long way in the last two years about our knowledge of the hurricane and climate issue," said study co-author Chris Landsea, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration top hurricane researcher. The technical term for these storms are tropical cyclones; in the Atlantic they get called hurricanes, elsewhere typhoons.

The study offers projections for tropical cyclones worldwide by the end of this century, and some experts said the bad news outweighs the good. Overall strength of storms as measured in wind speed would rise by 2 to 11 percent, but there would be between 6 and 34 percent fewer storms in number. Essentially, there would be fewer weak and moderate storms and more of the big damaging ones, which also are projected to be stronger due to warming.

An 11 percent increase in wind speed translates to roughly a 60 percent increase in damage, said study co-author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.

The storms also would carry more rain, another indicator of damage, said lead author Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist at NOAA.

Knutson said the new study, which looks at worldwide projections, doesn't make clear whether global warming will lead to more or less hurricane damage on balance. But he pointed to a study he co-authored last month that looked at just the Atlantic hurricane basin and predicted that global warming would trigger a 28 percent increase in damage near the U.S. despite fewer storms.

That study suggests category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes — those with winds more than 130 mph — would nearly double by the end of the century. On average, a category 4 or stronger hurricane hits the United States about once every seven years, mostly in Florida or Texas. Recent category 4 or 5 storms include 2004's Charley and 1992's Andrew, but not Katrina which made landfall as a strong category 3.

Outside experts praised the work.

The study does a good job of summarizing the current understanding of storms and warming, said Chunzai Wang, a researcher with NOAA who had no role in the study.

James Lee Witt, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the study "should be a stern and stark warning that America needs to be better prepared and protected from the devastation that these kinds of hurricanes produce."

The issue of hurricanes and global warming splashed onto front pages in the summer of 2005 when MIT's Emanuel published a paper in Nature saying hurricane destruction has increased since the mid-1970s because of global warming, adding it would only get worse.

Several weeks later Hurricane Katrina struck, killing 1,500 people and the 2005 hurricane season was the busiest on record with 28 named storms and seven major hurricanes. But then other scientists led by Landsea disputed the conclusions that storms were already increasing in number or intensity.

Now Landsea and Emanuel are co-authors on the same paper with Knutson.

In 2007, the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was "more likely than not" that man-made greenhouse gases had already altered storm activity, but the authors of the new paper said more recent evidence muddies the issue.

"The evidence is not strong enough that we could make some kind of statement" along those lines, Knutson said. It doesn't mean the IPCC report was wrong; it was just based on science done by 2006 and recent research has changed a bit, said Knutson and the other researchers.

Lately, the IPCC series of reports on warming has been criticized for errors. Emanuel said the international climate panel gave "an accurate summary of science that existed at that point."

Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Feb 10;

WASHINGTON – Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there's not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun.

Since just before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, dueling scientific papers have clashed about whether global warming is worsening hurricanes and will do so in the future. The new study seems to split the difference. A special World Meteorological Organization panel of 10 experts in both hurricanes and climate change — including leading scientists from both sides — came up with a consensus, which is published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"We've really come a long way in the last two years about our knowledge of the hurricane and climate issue," said study co-author Chris Landsea, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration top hurricane researcher. The technical term for these storms are tropical cyclones; in the Atlantic they get called hurricanes, elsewhere typhoons.

The study offers projections for tropical cyclones worldwide by the end of this century, and some experts said the bad news outweighs the good. Overall strength of storms as measured in wind speed would rise by 2 to 11 percent, but there would be between 6 and 34 percent fewer storms in number. Essentially, there would be fewer weak and moderate storms and more of the big damaging ones, which also are projected to be stronger due to warming.

An 11 percent increase in wind speed translates to roughly a 60 percent increase in damage, said study co-author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.

The storms also would carry more rain, another indicator of damage, said lead author Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist at NOAA.

Knutson said the new study, which looks at worldwide projections, doesn't make clear whether global warming will lead to more or less hurricane damage on balance. But he pointed to a study he co-authored last month that looked at just the Atlantic hurricane basin and predicted that global warming would trigger a 28 percent increase in damage near the U.S. despite fewer storms.

That study suggests category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes — those with winds more than 130 mph — would nearly double by the end of the century. On average, a category 4 or stronger hurricane hits the United States about once every seven years, mostly in Florida or Texas. Recent category 4 or 5 storms include 2004's Charley and 1992's Andrew, but not Katrina which made landfall as a strong category 3.

Outside experts praised the work.

The study does a good job of summarizing the current understanding of storms and warming, said Chunzai Wang, a researcher with NOAA who had no role in the study.

James Lee Witt, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the study "should be a stern and stark warning that America needs to be better prepared and protected from the devastation that these kinds of hurricanes produce."

The issue of hurricanes and global warming splashed onto front pages in the summer of 2005 when MIT's Emanuel published a paper in Nature saying hurricane destruction has increased since the mid-1970s because of global warming, adding it would only get worse.

Several weeks later Hurricane Katrina struck, killing 1,500 people and the 2005 hurricane season was the busiest on record with 28 named storms and seven major hurricanes. But then other scientists led by Landsea disputed the conclusions that storms were already increasing in number or intensity.

Now Landsea and Emanuel are co-authors on the same paper with Knutson.

In 2007, the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was "more likely than not" that man-made greenhouse gases had already altered storm activity, but the authors of the new paper said more recent evidence muddies the issue.

"The evidence is not strong enough that we could make some kind of statement" along those lines, Knutson said. It doesn't mean the IPCC report was wrong; it was just based on science done by 2006 and recent research has changed a bit, said Knutson and the other researchers.

Lately, the IPCC series of reports on warming has been criticized for errors. Emanuel said the international climate panel gave "an accurate summary of science that existed at that point."

Read more!