wildsingapore news: Apr 15, 2010

Best of our wild blogs: 15 Apr 10

Help stop cruel "Animal Liberation" - volunteers needed
from wild shores of singapore

Lots of new posts!
from Ecological observations in Singapore

Construction of massive Sentosa boardwalk, until Oct 10
from wild shores of singapore

折纸“地球日”特别活动 Reuse paper origami for Earth day
from PurpleMangrove

NSS Kids’ Fun with Migratory Birds and Wildlife at Ubin
from Fun with Nature

Petition to save Malaysia’s rainforests
from Planet of the Monyets

Mangrove Pitta breeding: 5. Faecal sac
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Phoenix canariensis: Canary Island Date Palm
from Flying Fish Friends

The Underwater Sydney Project
from Chai's Marine Life Blog

Putting the citizen into science

Not a scientist? Don't even have a science degree? Not a problem, scientists need your help.

Suzannah Lyons, ABC Net undated, appeared on google reader 15 Apr 10;

Mark McCallum will never forget the first time he was acknowledged in a scientific journal.

He printed the article out and said to his wife and eight-year-old son: "Look at that, Dad's on a scientific paper".

But McCallum isn't a professional scientist, he's an Aussie 'pea hunter'.

Through participating in a project called Galaxy Zoo, with thousands of other people around the globe, McCallum helped discover a group of rare galaxies that are forming stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way.

Because of the galaxies' size and shape they were dubbed the 'green peas'.

McCallum and his fellow Zooites are part of a growing number of ordinary people taking part in scientific research through so-called 'citizen science' projects.

For many their motivation is simple: you feel like you are contributing to real science, says McCallum.

And with an increasing number of projects available across a range of scientific disciplines there's never been a better time to join their ranks.

The rise of citizen science

Citizen science isn't new. Australian citizen scientists provided British naturalist John Gould with many of the specimens illustrated in his 1848 The Birds of Australia series.

One of the world's longest-running citizen science projects, the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count in the United States, started in 1900.

But the popularity and scope of citizen science projects has really taken off with the rise of the internet.

"Clearly in the last few years these sorts of opportunities have been greatly facilitated by social networks and [the] collaborative tools that we've seen with Web 2.0," says Dr Liz Lyon, director of UKOLN at the University of Bath, who has been leading research into open science environments.

With the way that citizen journalism has enriched reporting, Lyon thinks there's a lot that scientists could learn from citizen journalists.

Not only does citizen science raise public awareness of science it also exposes people to aspects of the way it's done, "perhaps in some ways demystifying it" she says.

It also allows scientists an alternative way to do some of the things they may want to do but can't fund.

"Certainly if we want to get a better idea of how our environment works to inform discussions about global warming, climate change and so on," says Lyon. "The more data we have… provided it's reasonable data, then I think that's going to help."

SETI@home: Is that ET calling?

One of the most well-known citizen science projects is SETI@home.

First launched in May 1999, SETI@home requires users to install a free program on their computer that downloads and analyses packages of radio telescope data via the internet.

Using the computer's leftover processing power, the program looks for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. Not known to occur naturally these signals could provide evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

For the project's director Dr David Anderson at the University of California, Berkley the continuing success of SETI@home lies in people's desire to understand their place in the universe.

"This leads directly to the question of whether life exists outside Earth," says Anderson. "Many people regard this as the most important unanswered (but potentially answerable) question."

Taking part in SETI@home allows people to have a say in what scientific research is done, he says.

"It makes them stakeholders in science, rather than observers."

The software that underpins SETI@home was extended to other science disciplines from climate change to cancer research with the launch of the BOINC project in 2002.

"These days there are about 60 BOINC-based projects doing research in a wide range of areas," says Anderson.

So not only can you take part in whatever project you like, there's also the opportunity to forms teams and compare your performance against other users, like in the Rosetta@home project on protein folding which encourages users to "solve puzzles for science".

Anderson is also working on another software development project, called Bossa, to provide support for volunteer thinking projects that use human intelligence not computer processing power.

Galaxy Zoo and the data deluge

With both computers and bandwidth now relatively cheap, a common problem in many areas of science is how to manage the flood of data being generated by research.

It was a problem faced by the scientists behind Galaxy Zoo, who had a million galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to look at and a PhD student who'd had enough.

Their solution was to put the project on the web and ask members of the public to decipher whether the images of galaxies they were looking at, often for the first time, were spiral or elliptic.

The response was unexpected.

"We forgot how the internet worked," says Dr Chris Lintott, University of Oxford astronomer and one of the Galaxy Zoo Zookeepers.

"We had the number of classifications we thought we'd get in five years, three days after launch."

One of their top participants, or 'Zooites', is Australian Joseph Cheng, who has classified over 1.2 million galaxies.

For Cheng part of the appeal in being involved in the project was getting to see the beauty of the universe and the satisfaction of being the first person to see these images.

"It's like a treasure box, it's all opened up to you," Cheng says.

The main difference between Galaxy Zoo and projects like SETI@home is that it relies on brain power.

'When you're asking people to do image recognition the most powerful computer in the room is the person looking at the screen, not the computer powering it," explains Lintott.

"While people have proved very adept at classifying galaxies, they've been excellent at finding the weird and the unusual things."

As well as the green pea galaxies, another Galaxy Zoo volunteer, Dutch schoolteacher Hanny Van Arkel, discovered a whole new class of astronomical object.

The success of the first Galaxy Zoo has allowed the Zookeepers to trust people more in the second iteration, and look more closely at some of the galaxies they are classifying.

They've also recently launched the Zooniverse, a platform that can support a range of other citizen science projects, and are hoping to add some non-astronomy projects to it later this year.

Operation animals change attitudes

If actually going out and collecting data in the field sounds more like the sort of science you want to be involved in, there are projects for that too.

Professor Chris Daniels, the director of the Barbara Hardy Centre for Sustainable Urban Environments at the University of South Australia, has been running surveys looking at the distribution and behaviour of particular animals and people's attitudes towards them since 2007 in partnership with ABC Local Radio Adelaide.

So far South Australians have told him how they feel about bluetongue lizards, possums and magpies, as well as provided good biological data on how these animals live in urban areas. And they're now in the planning stages of Operation Spider.

"People need a fair amount of information and guidance but they can be very good data collectors," says Daniels.

Recruiting members of the public to collect data has also had some benefits.

"[Prior to Operation Bluetongue] we couldn't actually do habitat utilisation, or food or dietary preferences or anything on bluetongues in people's backyards because you can't get permission to get into them," he says.

But Daniels says using citizen scientists also brings with it certain responsibilities.

"If you're going to do citizen science you have to give the results back to people."

So far they've published one book on their research and people's stories about the animals they observed, with two more in the pipeline.

ClimateWatch: local research contributes to global policy

The dearth of Australian data about how plants and animals are responding to climate change inspired not-for-profit organisation EarthWatch to create a citizen science project called ClimateWatch.

"The IPCC report from 2007 published the fact that there's something like 29,000 data sets in the world on the response of biological systems to climate," says Andy Donnelly, Earthwatch's science partnerships director.

"In Australia there's six, none of which were nationally significant."

Drawing on similar examples in the Northern Hemisphere, Earthwatch looked for ways the community could contribute broad data sets that could be supplement scientists' existing data.

The result is ClimateWatch, which asks the community to observe regional and national species which could be affected by climate change.

"Climate change is a kind of intangible problem, the science is very complex, it's often inaccessible," Donnelly says.

"This is a way you can do climate change science, contribute to that… when you're gardening, when you go on a bushwalk, when you go to work."

The ultimate aim of the project is that the community-generated data will be used at the highest policy level.

The devil is in the data

Not all research lends itself to the citizen science approach, however, particularly more technical areas of science. And some scientists may be reluctant to trust data collected by non-specialists, concedes Lyon.

"This is a valid point, we need to have mechanisms to ensure that the research that comes out of these sort of activities maintains a high standard and is validated," she says.

There are many ways projects ensure their data is robust and reproducible.

ClimateWatch has a system which is able to automatically detect outliers in the data which can then be referred to monitors on the ground to check what is really happening at a particular location.

Galaxy Zoo has designed interfaces specifically for the public and collects multiple classifications of each galaxy they're looking at to ensure the small number of incorrect classifications don't distort their data. This also allows them to build up a more nuanced picture of how prominent the shape of a galaxy is.

And Daniels's team from the University of South Australia provides background information for participants and mechanisms by which they can contact experts with their problems or queries. They also include particular questions in their surveys to test when they've hit the limit of people's knowledge to ensure they get reproducible results.

It is also important to remember that delivering robust data is not the only aim of citizen science projects, says Daniels.

"Citizen science in biology is a very powerful form or engagement and attitudinal change… regardless of the scientific quality of the data," he says.

Citizen science goes mobile

One of the most exciting prospects for citizen science is the emerging opportunities presented by increasing use of mobile devices and development of smart phone applications for many projects from classifying galaxies to tracking cassowaries.

With a Galaxy Zoo app just around the corner, Lintott is confident increased access and some friendly competition will only help the project.

"What do you do if the person next to you [on the train] gets a more interesting galaxy than you? I think you just have to keep classifying."

With many devices now boasting GPS capabilities you can not only record data on the go but also have your phone automatically log where you were when you recorded it.

Researchers in the United States are taking this idea one step further by trialling mobile devices equipped with environmental sensors.

In the future these sensors could be used to take a range of environmental measurements from pollutant readings and pollen counts, to the ambient temperature of the street corner you're standing on.

Not only could these everyday devices contribute to data sets for professional research they could also allow people to improve life in cities, whether by being more aware of their own readings or using a collection of them to plot clean air routes through a city.

Citizen science is not only changing the way we do and perceive science, it's also empowering people to make a difference, says Lyon.

Galaxy Zoo's Lintott agrees: "Anyone can make an actual contribution to what we know about the universe and I think that's quite an inspiring thought."

We'll leave the rest up to you.

A World Heritage Site in Singapore?

Government calls for study, observers weigh in with options
Leong Wee Keat, Today Online 15 Apr 10;

SINGAPORE - Cambodia has Angkor Wat, Malaysia boasts the town of Malacca as one and the Great Wall of China is one of the best well known - so why can't Singapore have a world heritage site too?

According to a tender that closes today, the Government is on the search for possible United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage Sites. It is looking to engage a contractor to undertake "a comprehensive study to assess the feasibility of selected heritage sites ... as possible World Heritage Sites and to recommend a suitable tentative list".

There are 890 sites around the world, but Singapore has none. Neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have three, five and seven sites, respectively.

Ministry of Communication, Information and the Arts (Mica) deputy secretary Sim Gim Guan said the study is aimed at exploring whether Singapore has potential sites and if there were benefits of nominating one for listing. If feasible, this would help develop a process for nomination, evaluation and selection of suitable cultural landmarks and districts of historical significance for a listing.

"The entire nomination process is rigorous, and we envisage the entire process, should we proceed, will take three to five years, based on the experience of some countries that have succeeded in World Heritage Site listing," said Mr Sim.

The move has been lauded by observers and conservation advocates who in turn, have suggested the Singapore Botanic Gardens (picture) - founded in 1859 - as the sole candidate that would meet Unesco's criteria.

The Botanic Gardens has strong connections with the history of global colonial economy in the past, given its links to Britain's Kew Gardens, said Associate Professor Johannes Widodo, a jury member of the Unesco Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation. "In addition, the Gardens have very important ecological value at present and in the future, not just for Singapore but also globally."

Singapore Heritage Society president Kevin Tan said that if the Gardens succeeded in being listed, perceptions of Singapore "being a very young city with no history and large green spaces, a bit of a concrete jungle," will change. Listing it "will showcase a very significant jewel in our midst".

But observers warned that the benefits of having a site need to be balanced against potential pitfalls, such as a surge in mass tourism, over-commercialisation, and erosion of dignity. Mr Tan Wee Cheng, who has visited 247 sites worldwide, launched a Facebook group to canvass support and raise awareness. Such pitfalls can be avoided with careful planning, and it is important "not to be overly ambitious," he said.

For the study, Mica requires that the contractor identify potential threats and evaluate the implications of future re-development plans within and in proximity to the heritage sites.

To make the list ...
Today Online 15 Apr 10;

On the World Heritage List are 689 cultural, 176 natural and 25 mixed properties. Sites must be of "outstanding universal value" and meet at least one of the 10 selection criteria, which include:

- To represent a masterpiece of human creative genius

- To exhibit an important interchange of human values on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town planning or landscape design

- To bear exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or civilisation

- To contain the most significant natural habitats for the conservation of biological diversity at its original site

The sites' authenticity and integrity, and how they are protected and managed, will also be considered by committee, according to its website.

Are there places in Singapore you think should become a World Heritage Site? Write to voices@mediacorp.com.sg.

Singapore to still consider use of nuclear energy

Straits Times 15 Apr 10;

MOVES for greater global efforts to tighten nuclear security would not affect Singapore's plans to consider the possible use of nuclear energy, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said in Washington.

A two-day summit on nuclear security there ended on Tuesday with 47 world leaders adopting a communique and work plan that would boost efforts to lock down or destroy vulnerable atomic materials.

The summit is part of United States President Barack Obama's broader plans to toughen the international regime against nuclear proliferation, and to eventually rid the world of atomic weapons.

Asked if these developments would in any way affect Singapore's plans to consider nuclear power as a source of energy supply, Mr Lee said: 'No, it doesn't. Many countries use nuclear power, and more wish to study the possibility. But there must be proper safeguards as to how the reactors work, how the materials are secured, and in fact what sort of materials to use because there are reactors which use highly enriched uranium which can be used to make bombs.

'So these are considerations which we have to take seriously. But they should not hinder the project.'

He stressed that a final decision had not been made, and that the Government was just beginning to study the long-term feasibility of nuclear power for Singapore.

Giving his impressions of the summit, he said Mr Obama deserved credit for bringing the issue of nuclear terrorism to global attention, and bringing world leaders together to discuss what could be done to mitigate the risks. During the summit, Mr Obama warned that terrorist groups were trying to get their hands on a nuclear weapon.

Mr Lee said during a plenary session with world leaders that Singapore took the issue seriously as it posed an 'existential threat' to a city-state.

Singapore, due to its status as a major transhipment hub, has been actively involved in multilateral efforts to curb shipments of illicit nuclear cargo.

However, second-tier ports must be involved in this effort as well, he said, or terrorists would simply exploit the weakest links in the global trading system.

He added: 'We are doing what we can in Singapore because we are a major port. But if we take it seriously and others don't, then doubtful containers would bypass Singapore.

'There are so many other places they could go. So the second-tier ports also must be brought into the net, and that's a challenge.'

CHUA CHIN HON

New Zealand territory declares new whale sanctuary

AFP Google News 14 Apr 10;

WELLINGTON — The South Pacific territory of Tokelau Wednesday declared a whale sanctuary in its waters, bringing to 11 the number of national and territorial sanctuaries in the region.

The political head or ulu of the New Zealand territory, Foua Toloa, announced the new sanctuary in Auckland at a meeting of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium.

The sanctuary will cover 290,000 square kilometres (112,000 square miles) of ocean around the three atolls of Tokelau, which lie roughly midway between New Zealand and Hawaii.

"Tokelau's decision to declare its exclusive economic zone a sanctuary for whales is based on our firm belief that we share a common responsibility in the Pacific for the protection of these species," Toloa said.

"Whales don't recognize national boundaries and Tokelau would be remiss if we failed to support our Pacific island neighbours in the quest to help recovery of the whales in our region."

Although a global moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in 1986, more than 30,000 have since been killed by Japan, Norway and Iceland, which have exploited loopholes in the rules set by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

The establishment of the Tokelau sanctuary will have no immediate impact on whaling, but conservationists say it strengthens the anti-whaling cause.

Whale sanctuaries, including the one set up in the Southern Ocean in 1994 which covers 50 million square kilometres of ocean surrounding Antarctica, may become more important due to growing strains on the moratorium.

Members of the IWC are discussing a proposal to end a stand-off between anti-whaling countries and the three hunt nations by allowing restricted commercial whaling.

Karen Sack, director of international ocean conservation for the US-based Pew Environment Group, welcomed the new Tokelau sanctuary.

"There is a stark contrast between the growing number of countries declaring their commitment to whale conservation by establishing sanctuaries, and the negotiations on the future of the IWC," Sack said.

"This international organisation should reinforce its own whale safe havens on the high seas, particularly in the Southern Ocean, to complement and enhance country protections."

The South Pacific Whale Research Consortium meets annually and was formed by independent scientists to investigate the status of humpback and other whale species in the South Pacific region.

Tokelau declares whale sanctuary in South Pacific
BBC 15 Apr 10;

The tiny New Zealand territory of Tokelau has declared a whaling sanctuary in its waters.

The new 290,000 sq km (112,000 sq mile) sanctuary brings the number in the South Pacific region to 11.

Tokelau's leader, Foua Toloa, said South Pacific countries had a "common responsibility" to protect its whales.

The sanctuary will have no immediate impact on whaling, but conservationists say it will strengthen the 1986 worldwide moratorium on whale hunting.

"Tokelau's decision to declare its exclusive economic zone a sanctuary for whales is based on our firm belief that we share a common responsibility in the Pacific for the protection of these species," Mr Toloa told a meeting of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium in New Zealand.

"Whales don't recognise national boundaries and Tokelau would be remiss if we failed to support our Pacific island neighbours in the quest to help recovery of the whales in our region."

Scott Baker, a US member of the consortium, said the establishment of the sanctuary sent "a very strong messages to the global community and particularly to the whaling nations that they are in a minority".

Commercial whaling has been frozen by an international moratorium since 1986, but some 3,000 whales are killed every year by Norway, Japan and Iceland under loopholes in the legislation.

Japan kills several hundred whales each year for what is termed scientific research. Most of its hunting takes place in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary in the Antarctic.

Tokelau's territory is just 12 sq km (4.7 sq miles) and lies halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand.

It has a population of 1,500 and has been administered from Wellington since 1926.

WWF-Malaysia urges PM to support Federal Laws for turtles in Memorandum

WWF-Malaysia 15 Apr 10;

15 April 2010, Selangor – WWF-Malaysia calls for better legal protection through Federal laws for Malaysia’s endangered turtles in a Memorandum to the Prime Minister handed over on 7 April 2010. The memorandum was presented by WWF-Malaysia’s CEO/ Executive Director, Dato’ Dr Dionysius Sharma to the PM’s Special Officer in Charge of Parliamentary Affairs at Perdana Putra, Putrajaya.

Essentially, the memorandum seeks to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to the plight of this national heritage. Continued trade and consumption of turtle eggs, habitat destruction and degradation, turtle poaching and mortality through accidental by-catch in fishing activities are direly impacting the species.

“The precarious situation facing turtles in Malaysia is compounded by the fact that the State laws governing turtles currently are very weak and ineffective. These laws have failed to provide any meaningful protection,” said Dato’ Dr Sharma.

The ‘Turtle Memorandum’ calls on the Federal Government to now enact comprehensive and holistic Federal laws that govern turtles.

“However, this call, from a legal standpoint poses difficulties as the jurisdiction over turtles belongs to the State according to the Federal Constitution. For the Federal government to enact such comprehensive laws, the Federal Constitution will need to be amended,” according to WWF-Malaysia’s Policy Coordinator, Ms Preetha Sankar.

She added that it is absolutely imperative that if turtles are to have a chance at survival, Federal intervention, mandate, resolve and resources must be expressed and facilitated through such Federal laws.

WWF-Malaysia has through the memorandum called on the Prime Minister to give this issue attention at the cabinet level and initiate various consultations and policy dialogues with relevant Ministries, State Excos, the Attorney General’s Chambers, scientists and NGOs alike.

This memorandum also contains opinions by renowned turtle scientists and legal experts. WWF-Malaysia intends to make this memorandum public very soon.

“We need to bring the battle to save our turtles to Parliament. We hope that our Prime Minister will initiate pivotal changes that will set the course right for these iconic species. It is still not too late,” added Dato’ Dr Sharma.

For sale: the rarest animals on earth

A flourishing illegal online trade in exotic animals is threatening the survival of many species. Sonia Van Gilder Cooke investigates just what creatures are for sale
Sonia Van Gilder Cooke, The Guardian 15 Apr 10;

From Burmese pythons to pygmy marmosets, there is a roaring illegal trade in animals online. A recent convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species found one rare species – the Kaiser's spotted newt (an orange and black salamander in the highland streams of Iran) – now numbers fewer than 1,000 adults in the wild because of internet trading.

So what can you find on the internet? In just one day, I discovered dealers who appear to be selling some of the rarest species on earth.

Ploughshare tortoise

Within a few hours, I was staring at an advert for one of the world's most endangered creatures. It read, "Very superb, jumbo size and most of all very rare". Only 200 mature ploughshare tortoises survive in the bamboo scrublands of north Madagascar; the rest, it seems, are online. And what would this pair of 30-year-old tortoises cost? £24,000, and a trip to Kuala Lumpur: there's no international shipping.

Burmese starred tortoise

It is against the law to remove the critically endangered Burmese starred tortoise from the forests of Myanmar, but I easily found an apparent seller in Bangkok, Thailand. The dealer's picture features 35 turtles in a laundry basket lined with newspaper and wilted lettuce. Ten years ago, a survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society found few specimens in the wild. They did, however, find a tortoise trader in every village. This seller was asking £320 in cash for each specimen.

Bosc's monitor lizard and ball python

One classified advert offered a "snake show" and "horse riding" along with Bosc's monitor lizards (£70) and ball pythons (£75). International law requires that these African species come with permits from their country of origin – conservationists worry that few wild-caught Bosc's survive to maturity in captivity and supplies are replenished from wild populations. The ad doesn't mention permits.

Elephant ivory

In 2008, eBay banned the sale of ivory, finding it impossible to ensure trade was legal. It's still available online, however. I called one dealer who seemed knowledgeable about the required permits; the same can't be said of many online sellers. Some nod to legality by claiming their ivory is antique; others don't bother. On Craigslist I found an "Endangered Species Ivory Neclace" [sic] in California ($120). The seller claims it's "circa 1980", but without a permit, there's no way to tell.

Hawksbill turtle

In Japan, artisans began carving hawksbill shells – the only true source of tortoiseshell – in the 1700s, but banned import of the critically endangered sea turtle in 1993. I found what appeared to be a tortoiseshell item on eBay: a "Brand New Takayama Ex-Takahashi Chikudo Model Shamisen Bekko Bachi Plectrum". It's a pic for a banjo-like Japanese instrument. The seller in New York promised a "natural material" of premium grade. Price $370, will ship worldwide.

Shahtoosh

It takes the wool from five dead Tibetan antelope to make one shawl. That means you could get about 30,000 luxury garments from the herd estimated to remain in north-western Tibet. It's illegal worldwide to sell the wool, but I found an online dealer in Kashmir claiming to sell shahtoosh shawls along with "fancy wicker baskets". Price unlisted.

Radiated tortoise

In the wild, the radiated tortoise spends its days munching cactus in the bushlands of southern Madagascar. "Sub zero", a dealer in Prai, Malaysia, has two that are two-and-a-half years into a life that can last for 100. This pair could outlive the population as a whole: scientists have predicted it is headed for collapse in the next half century because of habitat loss and the wildlife trade. Price £710 and £1,220, although Sub zero is offering a "mega discount".

Parrots and macaws

A Google search for pet birds turned up an eight-year old Tucuman Amazon (£450) in Canada. The seller claimed the bird is from the wild, which would make it illegal: after 20,000 Tucumans left Argentina in the 1980s to become pets, international trade in the species was banned in 1990.

Hunting for dugong, turtles 'cruel'

Tom Arup and Peter Ker, The Age 15 Apr 10;

THE RSPCA says indigenous hunting methods for dugongs and green sea turtles are inhumane and is urging the federal government to stamp out cruelty in hunting methods.

The RSPCA's concerns come as the opposition today will announce that a Coalition government would stop the poaching of dugongs and sea turtles, stamp out brutality in hunting and "end the commercial sale of dugong and turtle meat".

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt will also commit to reducing the take of dugongs and sea turtles by 90 per cent.

"The traditional owners, along with many individuals and groups, are among the strongest advocates of enforcement against poachers and against the brutality on dugongs and turtles as part of this illegal practice," Mr Hunt said.

Under the Native Title Act 1993, native title holders can legally hunt dugongs and green turtles for personal, domestic or non-commercial communal needs.

But RSPCA Queensland spokesman Michael Beatty said the RSPCA wanted state laws amended to remove the exemption for traditional hunting to ensure the humane killing of animals.

Mr Beatty said that, when hunted, green sea turtles often had their flippers cut off while they were still alive and were then left on beaches in the sun. He said live dugongs were often tied to wharves and had parts of their flesh cut off intermittently to keep the meat fresh.

"In this day and age with refrigeration and freezing, you don't need to be as cruel as that," Mr Beatty said.

Mr Beatty added he had received reports that dugong and turtle meat was being flown into Cairns airport from the Torres Straight and sold on a black market in town. He said the meat industry was being driven by illegal poaching.

A spokeswoman for the federal Environment Department said 13 offences had been recorded for illegal hunting of dugongs in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area since 2008.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority estimates there are 11,300 dugongs in the reef marine parks. The authority's Dr Mark Read said yesterday estimates suggested that an absolute maximum of 120 dugongs a year could be sustainably hunted throughout the reef.

The authority has several voluntary sustainable hunting agreements with traditional owners in the area - but has concerns that poachers not connected to traditional owners were hunting too many animals.

The park authority has also established an indigenous compliance officer who will work with traditional owners around Cairns to help stamp out poaching.

India announces new tracking system to protect tigers

Yahoo News 14 Apr 10;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India said Wednesday it would use a new tiger tracking system to crack down on "lazy" wildlife guards as it struggles to halt poaching that has drastically reduced the number of big cats.

India's endangered tiger population has plummeted to 1,350 -- just over a third of the 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002.

"Many field officers are too lazy" to patrol their wildlife sanctuary areas, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters in New Delhi as he announced the use of the new tracking software system.

"They make up data instead of surveying the field," Ramesh said, adding use of the tracking software should halt malpractice.

The software, known as M-STrIPES, will use a general packet radio service (GPRS) device to follow the movement of the tigers which will be fitted with radio collars.

The system was developed by the state-run Wildlife Institute of India and the Zoological Society of London.

Ramesh said forestry officers patrolling sanctuaries often gave inaccurate reports about the number of tigers to conceal their inefficiency in protecting them from poachers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, alarmed by the dwindling number of tigers, set up in 2008 a national wildlife crime prevention bureau, drawing experts from the police, environmental agencies and customs in a bid to end poaching.

The government has enlisted ex-soldiers to be part of a "tiger protection force" in state-run sanctuaries.

But despite the new force, poachers killed 32 tigers in 2009 and three this year, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

Experts said the porous border between India and Nepal acts as a smuggling corridor for poachers, who bribe poor forest dwellers to guide them through the dense jungles.

Tiger hunting is illegal worldwide and the trade in tiger parts is banned under a treaty binding 167 countries, including India.

But demand is driven by China, Thailand, Myanmar and other Asian nations where pelts, claws and bones are prized in traditional medicine, environmentalists say.

Ramesh said he will release a new tiger census report in November.

Wildlife still exposed to Exxon Valdez oil 20 years after disaster

Wiley-Blackwell EurekAlert 14 Apr 10;

Scientists in Alaska have discovered that lingering oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill is still being ingested by some wildlife more than 20 years after the disaster. The research, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, uses biomarkers to reveal long-term exposure to oil in harlequin ducks and demonstrates how consequences of oil spills are measured in decades rather than years.

The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground on the Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, covering 1,300 square miles. It is still regarded as one of the most devastating human-caused contamination events, and the effects on wildlife populations and communities have been debated by biologists, ecologists, and the oil industry ever since.

Now, using the biomarker CYP1A, which is induced upon exposure to crude oil, an international team led by Daniel Esler, from the Centre for Wildlife Ecology, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, has measured prolonged exposure to oil in local wildlife populations.

"One of the more remarkable and unanticipated findings of recent research is the length of time over which animals were exposed to residual oil," said Esler. "Our research has shown that oil remaining in the area, particularly in inter-tidal areas, was encountered and ingested by some near-shore animals."

The team focused their research on harlequin ducks as an example of such a species. Harlequins are marine birds that live in inter-tidal and shallow sub-tidal areas. Between 1990 and 2005 there were approximately 14,500 ducks in the Prince William Sound area.

"In addition to the higher likelihood of exposure due to their habitat, harlequin ducks have a number of characteristics that makes them particularly sensitive to oil pollution," said Esler. "Their diet consists of invertebrates that live in this area and have a limited ability to metabolize residual oil. Also, harlequin ducks have a life history strategy based on high survival rates, as well as a small body size when compared to other sea ducks."

"We found CYP1A levels were unequivocally higher in areas oiled by the Exxon Valdez spill than in nearby areas, a conclusion supported by multiple samples and two independent laboratories. We believe this shows harlequin ducks continued to be exposed to residual oil from the spill through at least 2009, twenty years after the event," concluded Esler. "We believe it is important to recognize that the duration of presence of residual oil and its associated effects are not limited to a few years after spills, but for some vulnerable species may occur over decades."

Australia arrests Chinese crewmen over reef ship

Talek Harris Yahoo News 14 Apr 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian authorities on Wednesday arrested and charged the master and officer on watch of the Chinese coal carrier which ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, damaging the famous marine park.

Australian Federal Police swooped on the men who were on board the Shen Neng 1, which rammed into a coral shoal at full speed on April 3 and spilled oil into the World Heritage listed reef.

"Investigations showed that the Shen Neng 1 failed to turn at a waypoint required by the intended course of the ship," police said in a statement.

The 47-year-old master has been charged with liability for a ship causing damage in the park, while the 44-year-old officer is charged with being in charge of the bulk carrier which ripped up part of a shoal and spilled oil.

The first man faces a fine of up to 55,000 dollars (51,000 US) and the second up to three years in prison and/or a 220,000 dollar fine, police said.

The men are in police custody and will appear in court on Thursday.

Australian officials have vowed to "throw the book" at those responsible for the grounding, which saw the Shen Neng 1 stranded for nine days on Douglas Shoal. The giant coal-carrier was refloated and towed away on Monday.

Heavy fuel oil leaking out of the giant ship, carrying 68,000 tonnes of coal to China, created a three-kilometre (two-mile) slick which was cleared with chemical dispersants.

The vessel also carved a kilometres-long gouge and plastered toxic paint from its hull over the delicate coral reef, which experts say could take 20 years to recover.

Officials revealed Wednesday that oil from the 230-metre (750-foot) Shen Neng 1 has washed up at a famed nature sanctuary, raising fears for birds and baby turtles.

Clean-up crews and environmental experts were helicoptered to North West Island, a breeding site for hundreds of thousands of seabirds and turtles, where small clumps of oil were found on a beach.

"It hasn't come ashore in large globules or carpets," Patrick Quirk, general manager of Marine Safety Queensland, told public broadcaster ABC.

"Our advice from the rangers on the island is that it's at the top of the tide line in patches, and that gives us some comfort."

Queensland's state transport minister Rachel Nolan said experts flying over the island had reported only a "very small amount" of oil.

A small oil slick, which officials said amounted to about five litres, was later removed from the nearby coral cay of Tryon Island and officials said they would continue to monitor other islands.

Conservationists describe North West Island as a globally important nesting site for seabirds and green and loggerhead turtles, which are currently hatching and travelling down the beach.

Darren Kindleysides, director of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said even small amounts of oil can affect wildlife.

"We're not talking about a supertanker going aground and releasing tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of oil," he said.

"But we are talking about oil reaching a coral cay which is globally important for seabird breeding and the nesting of green and loggerhead turtles.

"Unfortunately this is the time of year we have turtle hatchlings going down the beach... so that is a real concern."

Officials are probing claims ships ferrying Australia's booming resources exports to Asia are taking short-cuts through the world's biggest coral reef, which is already under pressure from rising sea temperatures and pollution.

Sustainable palm oil purchases hit record high

WWF 14 Apr 10;

More sustainably produced palm oil is being purchased than ever before, according to the latest figures from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

This is an encouraging turnaround that could point to a greater uptake of certified sustainable palm oil, WWF says. In the past, only a small percent of palm oil certified by the RSPO has been purchased, though the sales have been steadily increasing for the last several months.

The RSPO said Friday that in March 2010, a record 136,000 tonnes (or corresponding certificates) were purchased from palm oil producers, exceeding the 126,000 tonnes that were produced that same month.

"WWF sees this as an encouraging milestone on the journey to a marketplace where sustainable palm oil becomes the norm,” said Cherie Tan, WWF’s Leader for Palm Oil.

“A growing number of palm oil buyers are now working to ensure that the palm oil they purchase is sourced from sustainable plantations. This is a strong signal to RSPO member producers that there is a steady and growing market for sustainable palm oil and that they need to ensure that they certify all their land holdings as soon as possible."

Sales can exceed production in a particular month if buyers purchased volumes of oil or certificates that reflected earlier production, the RSPO said in statement. For example, March 2010 marked the last opportunity for growers to sell certificates covering oil produced in 2009. More certified oil is projected to enter the market in the months ahead.

In 2010's first quarter, the overall market uptake of sustainable palm oil was 95 percent, according to the RSPO. More than 1.8 million tonnes of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil have been produced since 2008, while close to 0.7 million tonnes were purchased by traders, consumer good manufacturers and retailers.

WWF released the Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard in October 2009 showing that the majority of European palm oil buyers were failing to buy certified sustainable palm oil, despite its availability and the previous commitments by many companies to purchase it.

The growing demand for palm oil is adding to the already severe pressure on remaining rainforest areas of the world.

The loss of forest in Indonesia is threatening the survival of species such as the orang-utan, the Sumatran tiger, rhino and elephant. Forest loss and the draining of peatlands for palm oil plantations is also contributing to climate change and displacing local people who rely on the forest for food and shelter.

Palm oil is one of the world's fastest expanding crop in Southeast Asia and is also rapidly expanding in West Africa, Papua New Guinea and South America.

It is because of threats like this that WWF worked with other NGOs and the palm oil industry to set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2003. Certified Sustainable Palm Oil has been available since November 2008 and provides assurance that valuable tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during the production of the palm oil.

Indonesian Palm Oil Exports To Grow Despite Sales Halt: Industry

Fitri Wulandari, PlanetArk 15 Apr 10;

Indonesian Palm Oil Exports To Grow Despite Sales Halt: Industry Photo: Beawiharta
Aerial view of a palm oil plantation in Pelalawan, Indonesia's Riau province November 9, 2009.
Photo: Beawiharta

A decision by top palm oil buyers to halt purchases from Indonesia is unlikely to affect palm oil exports from Southeast Asia's biggest economy given strong demand, an industry official said on Wednesday.

Unilever, the world's top palm oil buyer, which uses palm oil in such products as Dove soap and Ben & Jerry ice cream, canceled its annual 20 million pound ($32 million) contract with PT SMART, part of Indonesia's Sinar Mas group, in December.

It said it was up to Sinar Mas to prove that none of its plantations were contributing to the destruction of rain forests.

Another top palm oil buyer, Nestle, also stopped buying palm oil from Sinar Mas after Greenpeace released a report alleging the planter cleared rainforests.

Green groups say oil palm expansion at the expense of rainforests and peatlands releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and speeds up global warming.

"Everybody needs palm oil. If there is a moratorium to stop buying palm oil, there will be a shortage of palm oil supply in the world," Joko Supriyono, secretary general of Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI), told reporters.

"I think exports will not be affected because global demand for palm oil is also exceeding supply," Supriyono said.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association has maintained its forecast for Indonesia's palm oil exports to grow 16 percent to 18 million tonnes this year on strong demand from India and China.

Indonesia relies on overseas markets, mainly India and China, to buy about 70 percent of its palm oil output, which is estimated to hit 23 million tonnes this year.

"Our domestic consumption is also very slow to grow. So we don't have any choice but to export the excess production," Supriyono said.

Analysts have said top palm oil buyers halting supply contracts with Sinar Mas and other planters in the future could limit plantation expansion as global food and fuel demand grows.

Global palm oil consumption in April/September 2010 is forecast to rise to 23.98 million tonnes from 22.50 million tonnes in the same year-ago period, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World forecast last month.

(Editing by Sara Webb)

Locust plague hits eastern Australia

Yahoo News 14 Apr 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Swarms of locusts have infested a huge area of eastern Australia roughly the size of Spain after recent floods, ravaging farmland, a top official said Wednesday.

Chris Adriaansen, head of the Australian Plague Locust Commission, said the quick-breeding creatures had hit from Longreach in Queensland in the northeast to Melbourne and Adelaide -- about 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles).

"What we've got certainly is a very large and widespread infestation," he told AFP. "It's simply a reflection of the fact that we've had widespread rain across that entire area."

Adriaansen said some swarms covered areas as large as 300 square kilometres, and with about 10 locusts per square metre, "that's a lot of locusts."

Local media said the insects had already wiped out thousands of hectares (acres) of crops and were also damaging grazing areas and gardens in the key agricultural area.

"One farmer has about 400 hectares (1,000 acres) which will have to be resown," an agronomist in the town of Forbes, Graham Falconer, told public broadcaster ABC. "The locusts are doing considerable damage."

Adriaansen said the insects, which had destroyed some early planned cereal crops but mostly fed on pasture, were set to multiply in coming months as their offspring hatch.

"Come the middle of September through to October across that entire inland area... we expect there to be some very large infestations again," he said.

Swarms are expected in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, areas which last month were flooded after heavy rains broke almost a decade of drought.

Indonesian President's New Strategy on Illegal Logging is an Improvement, Say Indonesian Green Activists

Fidelis E. Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 14 Apr 10;

After deriding President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s call to go after the “mafia” involved in illegal logging last week, some environmentalists are now applauding his decision to assign the Judicial Mafia Eradication Task Force to help tackle the issue by targeting legal system flaws that block convictions.

“Illegal logging is a serious crime, meaning that it’s an organized crime,” said Rhino Subagyo, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law. “It has very complex elements, including corruption, money laundering and environmental disasters. It cannot be handled just by one institution, like the KPK [Corruption Eradication Commission], because they are only equipped to deal with corruption issues.”

In 2005, Yudhoyono issued a presidential instruction involving 12 ministries, the Attorney General’s Office, National Police, Army, State Intelligence Agency (BIN), governors and district heads. The instruction was meant to herald the start of a concerted campaign against illegal logging, but resulted in few convictions among hundreds of cases.

Critics took his April 7 announcement as a sign that his previous efforts to halt illegal logging had been a complete failure

“There’s nothing wrong with the instruction as it had a good purpose: To ensure his subordinates coordinated with each other to make sure the massive policy movement supported the action. But its implementation turned out to have little effect because too many conflicts of interest between sectors and ministries caused them to only halfheartedly [execute the instruction],” Rhino said.

One of the most visible examples of lack of coordination and conflict of interest, Rhino said, was when the police closed active investigations into 13 major pulp and paper companies in Riau that were allegedly committing serious violations.

“That is a blatant example of a dispute between the forestry ministry and police,” Rhino said.

Indonesia currently has about 10 percent of the world’s remaining rainforests, but officials estimate the country has lost over 10 million hectares to illegal logging. Indonesia Corruption Watch estimates state losses from the practice could be as high as Rp 30 trillion ($3.33 billion).

Hariadi Kartodiharjo, a forestry expert at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, said the missing link in addressing illegal logging lies in the justice system, where the Ministry of Forestry rarely wins cases.

“We already have the institutions who are in charge, but they don’t effectively work because there’s something wrong in the legal process, including at regional levels,” Hariadi said, adding that the country’s legal system has not revised its burden of proof requirements for environmental and forestry cases, making it difficult to obtain convictions against large-scale illegal logging enterprises.

“Illegal logging cases are treated like regular criminal acts, where they require eyewitnesses to really see that someone chopped down the trees. It’s obvious that there is a gap [in the law] between everyday rationality and legal rationality. You can’t eradicate illegal logging within the conventional system,” he said.

However, Hariadi said, the task force should not busy itself with policy matters, which are supposed to be the domain of the government, including permit issues, but should rather focus on aggressively targeting illegal logging’s major players.

“Just use intelligence data and information and aim at one big target, whether in Sumatra, Papua or Kalimantan, because many players in illegal logging are actually the [legitimate companies], considering that it’s actually an expensive business that only those with lots of money are able to join in,” he said.

Mas Achmad Santosa, a member of the anti-mafia task force, said the team was assigned to fight organized criminals operating in the forestry sector, meaning that they will be working in the context of legal enforcement.

“We will be there to help ministries to deal with the ‘bottleneck’ concerning plenty of failed illegal logging cases as a result of the legal process. Our job is to seize on any indications that those failures are being caused by case brokers,” Mas said.

Legitimate Companies to Blame for Much Illegal Logging: Expert
Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 14 Apr 10;

Successfully breaking up large-scale illegal logging operations will require authorities to re-examine their definition of the crime, an expert on environmental law said on Wednesday.

Law enforcement agencies must focus on legitimate companies that manipulate the law to gain unfair access to forests, rather than individuals chopping down a handful of trees to construct a house or groups of criminals working in the black market, said Rhino Subagyo, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law.

“Illegal logging operations cannot just be simply translated as people cutting down forests without permission, but must include also companies with permission that chop down trees outside their contracted areas. This can also be considered illegal logging,” Rhino said. “Basically, illegal logging is concerned with legal licenses to chop down trees.”

Furthermore, he said, there was still a lack of monitoring by the government, which allows companies to ignore the harvesting limits dictated by their permits. The result is widespread clear-cutting of forests.

“One of the biggest weaknesses is that we don’t normally do field work to verify and check on those legal companies to see whether they have done their activities in legal ways,” he said, adding that the government should adopt a new methodology to identify illegal logging.

Wirendro Sumargo, executive director of Forest Watch Indonesia, said there has been a shift in defining illegal logging since the massive expansion over the last decade of plantations, especially those devoted to palm oil.

“There has been huge movement over the last 10 years to change forest areas to palm oil plantations, and from what we have been monitoring, deforestation has a significant link to the land use changes,” Wirendro said. “The government should have paid more attention to this shift because they have claimed that the illegal logging rate has decreased. However, the deforestation rate is still high.”

That lack of monitoring, he said, allows many companies to harvest natural timber illegally by applying for permits to grow crops on lands they claim are deforested, but actually contain natural forests with high-quality trees.

Indonesian President orders examination of illegal loggers` light sentences
Antara 16 Apr 10;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the task force for eradication of judicial mafia to examine the light sentences passed by courts in illegal logging cases.

He issued the order at a limited cabinet meeting on forestry and environmental problems and revitalization of the defense industry here Friday.

At a press conference after the meeting, Informatics and Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring said, according to available data, out of a total of 92 illegal logging cases heard in courts recently, 49 ended with acquittals, 24 with jail sentences averaging only one year and 19 with jail sentences between one and two years.

"This will not have a deterrent effect. Therefore, the President has ordered the task force to examine the court verdicts to see why they were so mild," he said.

At the meeting, the President also asked National Police chief General Bambang Hendarso Danuri and Attorney General Hendarman Supandji about operations in the field against illegal loggers.

On the occasion, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan gave an expose on forest destruction.

Zulkifli said only 24 percent or 43 million of 130 million hectares of primary forests in the country still remained.

He said 40 million hectares were former production forests and half of them had been damaged or were in critical condition. The rest was no longer forested land, he said.

He said large-scale deforestation reached its peak in 2001-2002 following the euphoria of regional autonomy with the rate of destruction reaching 3.5 hectares per year.

To overcome the problem, he said, the government had no other choice but had to conduct a tree planting movement jointly with the people with a forestation target of at least 500,000 hectares a year and a special program for investors to restore industrial forests with a target of minimally 300,000 hectares a year.

He said the government was also planning to conduct replanting along catchment areas that had been deforested and were causing floods.

To slow deforestation, President Yudhoyono had ordered firm law enforcement against illegal loggers. He would also appeal to provincial governors and district heads to not easily issue a license for opening a forest for industrial or mining purposes.

He said by the end of 2010 at the latest, the economic zoning efforts in the provinces must be finished.

Development projects that must be oriented to environmental preservation would be discussed by the President and his cabinet ministers as well as provincial governors in Tampak Siring, Bali, on April 19-21, he said.(*)

No decision yet on REDD fund sharing mechanism

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 14 Apr 10;

The Finance Ministry has rejected the 2009 decree from the Forestry Ministry on distribution of financial benefits from REDD projects, leaving the fate of indigenous people uncertain.

The Finance Ministry has asked the Forestry Ministry to revise the existing decree on benefit sharing, which the former said was against the Constitution.

“We have sent a letter to the forestry ministry to revise the decree,” Singgih Riphat, head of the working group on fiscal policy for climate change at the Finance Ministry told a Copenhagen follow-up seminar on Indonesian forests on Tuesday.

He said the Finance Ministry should be involved in determining the allocation and benefits distribution mechanisms of the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scheme to forest stakeholders.

“We will formulate types of payment flows, groups entitled to payments and distribution,” he said.

Singgih said benefit sharing should take into account fairness between central government, provinces and regencies.

“We also need to consider the form of local community and indigenous people’s involvement in the REDD projects,” he said.

In his paper, Singgih urged the definitions of local communities and indigenous peoples should be made clear in relation to REDD projects.

The 2009 decree by Forestry Ministry says the government, community and project developers were the parties eligible to receive financial incentives from REDD projects.

If an REDD project was conducted in customary forest, the community would receive 70 percent of financial benefit while 20 percent would be given to the project developer with the remaining share to the government.

It says if the REDD project related to forest timber products in natural forest, then 60 percent of benefit sharing would be for the project developer and both government and local community would receive 20 percent each.

Singgih said that his office would send a second letter to remind the Forestry Ministry to do the revision.

The REDD schemes are expected to be an alternative to emission cuts from forestry, which contribute about 20 percent of global emissions.

Under the program, countries that protect their forests can receive financial incentives through carbon trading with rich nations.

Chairman of the climate change working group at the Forestry Ministry, Wandojo Siswanto said that the money from the REDD scheme might be pooled at the Finance Ministry.

“But it is not clear yet whether the money from REDD would be state revenue or not,” he said.

Director of the climate and energy unit at WWF Indonesia Fitrian Ardiyansah said that policy on REDD benefit sharing should be made at a higher level.

“It will be better if the allocation of REDD financial incentive was made at the level of government regulations to bind the governors or regencies,” he said.

Indonesia is the world’s third largest forested nation with 120 million hectares of forest.

But Wandojo said that the office had yet to calculate if the carbon trading scheme would give more profit than selling trees from forest areas.

Indonesia is the first developing nations declaring its readiness to host demonstration activities for the REDD scheme. REDD pilot projects funded by foreign countries are under way in the forests of Central Kalimantan, East Java and West Nusa Tenggara.

A number of local administrations, namely the Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra and Aceh have also set up working group on REDD to facilitate projects.

“But no cent of the money from the REDD pilot projects goes to the Aceh budget,” Wandojo said.

UK inquiry clears climate scientists in email row

Peter Griffiths, Reuters 14 Apr 10;

LONDON (Reuters) - An inquiry cleared British climate researchers of wrongdoing on Wednesday after their emails were hacked, leaked and held up by skeptics as evidence they had exaggerated the case for man-made global warming.

Former government adviser Ronald Oxburgh, who chaired the panel, said he had found no evidence of scientific malpractice or attempts to distort the facts to support the mainstream view that manmade CO2 emissions contribute to rising temperatures.

The affair stoked the global debate on climate change and put pressure on scientists and politicians to defend the case for spending trillions of dollars to cut emissions and help cope with rising temperatures.

Thousands of emails sent between scientists were published on the internet just before the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

Campaigners who doubt the scientific basis for saying global warming is manmade said the leaked messages showed that the research unit at East Anglia University had taken part in a conspiracy to distort or exaggerate the evidence.

The university, in eastern England, appointed Oxburgh to investigate the Climatic Research Unit's methods.

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice," Oxburgh's inquiry concluded. "Rather, we found a small group of dedicated, if slightly disorganized, researchers.

"We found them to be objective and dispassionate and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda."

Its strongest criticism was aimed at the unit's handling of statistics. It recommended that the researchers work more closely with professional statisticians in future.

Oxburgh's was the second of three inquiries into the episode to report its findings. Police are also investigating the leak.

Last month, a British parliamentary committee cleared the unit of manipulating the evidence, but criticized its handling of requests for information made by outsiders under freedom of information laws.

The third and most comprehensive inquiry, led by former civil servant Muir Russell, is due to end in May.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate change skeptics' thinktank, said the inquiry was "rushed and superficial."

"They want to restore the trust of the public and the credibility of the researchers and that is an honorable thing to do," he said. "But they should have done a proper job."

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

'No deliberate malpractice' in British climate row
Yahoo News 14 Apr 10;

LONDON (AFP) – A review of the work of one of the world's leading climate research centres, launched after a major scandal last year, concluded Wednesday there had been no deliberate scientific malpractice.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) became embroiled in a worldwide row after more than 1,000 emails were hacked from the university's server and posted online.

Sceptics claimed the messages showed evidence scientists were trying to exaggerate the case for global warming in the run-up to December's UN climate talks aimed at striking a new accord to tackle climate change.

An independent panel, led by Lord Ron Oxburgh, was asked by the university last month to look into claims that the CRU's data had been dishonestly selected or manipulated, and concluded Wednesday it had not.

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit, and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it," the panel said.

However, it added: "It is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians."

A parliamentary inquiry last month cleared the CRU scientists of wrongdoing, while a third investigation launched in December has yet to report back.

Companies get sold on green, consumers wary

Lisa Baertlein and Dana Ford, Reuters 14 Apr 10;

DANA POINT, California (Reuters) - U.S. corporations looking to slash costs during the recession found some savings in environmentally conscious business practices, but a higher price tag on green products is a barrier to many consumers.

Many companies discovered in the past few years that doing things like lowering energy bills and reducing waste not only saved money, but was good for the planet and for their image, executives at a conference on green efforts said.

"Even as recently as a year or two ago, sustainability was seen as a cost-plus program," said Matt Kistler, senior vice president of sustainability for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

"Sustainability is actually very good for the business," he told Reuters at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference in Southern California.

The world's biggest retailer earlier this year said it planned to eliminate 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses from its supply chain by the end of 2015 -- an effort it equated with taking more than 3.8 million cars off the road for one year.

Because of its size and reach, Wal-Mart is a leader in the move toward more sustainable business practices, which range from selling smaller package sizes to phasing out harmful chemicals.

When asked to give an example of how the move has saved Wal-Mart money, Kistler said spending on fleet logistics is down about $200 million annually after the company asked suppliers to reduce packaging, reworked its delivery routes and adopted technology that boosts fuel-efficiency.

Suzanne Long, head of the retail practice at global operations consulting firm SSA & Co, agreed that being environmentally friendly has financial benefits for companies.

"Our approach is that waste is waste. If it's bad for the environment, it's probably bad for your bottom line."

GREEN DREAM

China and the United States are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, which many scientists blame for global warming. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels like coal and oil are expected to rise this year and next as the economy recovers, according to the Energy Information Administration.

While many consumers say they care about the environment, few put their money where their mouth is -- largely because the benefits to them are not as clear as they are for business.

Survey data shows that people basically want change without changing, said Joel Makower, co-founder of Greener World Media: "They love the noun, hate the verb."

Part of the problem is that many green products cost more but don't work as well as the conventional version. A weak U.S. economic recovery and high unemployment also are keeping consumer spending in check.

"When you ask them to pay more for a green product, you're also asking them to cut something else out of their life," Wal-Mart Chairman Lee Scott said.

One exception is food for children. Scott said parents across the income spectrum are willing to pay a little bit more for things like organic apples, which also have become less expensive as more retailers offer organics.

Even so, the market for sustainable goods remains small, with just 10 percent of consumers saying they would pay more for sustainable products, said Adam Werbach, global chief executive of sustainability consultancy Saatchi & Saatchi S.

Just 1 to 2 percent of shoppers belong to what he calls the "green cult." That group will buy items regardless of whether they work less well, cost more money or are hard to find.

That's why Adam Lowry, co-founder of San Francisco-based household products maker Method, doesn't focus solely on his products' green attributes.

For example, Method is selling a new super-concentrated laundry detergent that comes in a water bottle-sized container and has enough product to wash 50 loads of clothes.

The company says its plant-based formula cleans in a new way and uses less water, oil, energy and plastic than typical concentrated detergents. But its advertising emphasizes convenience -- the package weighs far less than big jugs of detergent and users squirt the product into the machine with a pump, which is less messy than measuring liquid detergent.

"I want people to buy my brand just because it's awesome ... because then you're bringing somebody into the fold who is part of that group that you need to reach," Lowry said.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein and Dana Ford; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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