Best of our wild blogs: 8 Jul 10

Two subspecies of Coppersmith Barbet
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Raffles Museum Treasures: Common wolf snake
from Lazy Lizard's Tales

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AVA aims to make Singapore fish food supply more sustainable

Victoria Jen Channel NewsAsia 7 Jul 10;

SINGAPORE: Singapore's efforts to make its food supply more resilient has received a boost with the success of its only deep-sea net-cage farm.

Located off Pulau Semakau, Barramundi Asia, Singapore's biggest commercial fish farm, is about a half-an-hour boat ride from the city.

The farm enjoyed its first harvest last October, and now produces 500 tonnes of barramundi, also known as Asian sea bass.

One of the secrets of its success lies in the water.

Joep Kleine Staarman, managing director, Barramundi Asia Farm & Nursery, says: "Fish farming in Southeast Asia is mainly done in Indonesia and Malaysia. But Singapore actually has very good water quality. Having a fish farm so close to Singapore brings the fish very fresh to the market."

Singapore is a safe haven for fish farming as it isn't prone to natural disasters like typhoons or tsunamis.

And with help from Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, AVA, Barramundi Asia aims to further boost its output by six folds within a few years.

Mr Staarman says: "Next year 2011, it'll be 1000. And we'll go on to 2012-2013 to 2000 tonnes. And we want to grow to 3,000 tonnes."

The farm's ultimate ambition is to account for more than 80 per cent of local food fish production.

As part of AVA's efforts to make Singapore's food supply more sustainable, there are now more than 100 licensed floating fish farms in the country's coastal waters.

Tan Poh Hong, CEO, Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore, says: "There's a selective breeding programme which was started about five years ago, where we look for the best breeds, the blue stocks, and these are able to grow much faster at 15 per cent. We are looking right now into selecting breeds that can grow faster, even up to 30 per cent, so when you can grow faster, you can have better productivity."

Currently, Singapore's main sources of food fish are neighbouring countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. - CNA/jm

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Demand for more eco-friendly utensils rise

Zhao Quan Yin, Hoe Yeen Nie Channel NewsAsia 7 Jul 10;

SINGAPORE : The growing awareness of eco-issues has led to an increase in demand for utensils made from recycled paper, with one local supplier seeing a sharp increase in import volumes over the past year.

The bulk of demand comes from eateries, with one saying it is happy to go green even if the utensils made from recycled paper cost 10 per cent more than plastic.

However, prices of utensils made from recycled paper have been coming down.

One importer, Pacific CAM Trading Enterprise, said the rise in global demand has led to better technology and cheaper products.

It now imports 300 crates of eco-friendly utensils from Taiwan, up from just 20 crates last year.

Currently, Singapore imports all utensils that are made from recycled paper, with 95 per cent brought in from Taiwan.

- CNA/al

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Jane Goodall: Urgent Action Needed to Save Chimps

Charles Q. Choi livescience.com 7 Jul 10;

Reflecting on a half-century of pioneering research on chimpanzees, legendary scientist Jane Goodall has called for urgent action to save our closest living relatives from extinction in the wild.

"The survival of chimpanzees requires a dramatic change to how we think about the natural world, as well as advances in science and technology," Goodall wrote in an opinion article published in the July 8 issue of the journal Nature.

In the years since Goodall first set foot in what is now Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park on July 14, 1960, she made a series of groundbreaking discoveries about chimps. She helped discover how they could make tools, how they could hug, kiss and tickle each other, and how they also had a darker side to their natures, engaging in infanticide, cannibalism and war. These stunning findings not only revolutionized our ideas regarding our closest living relatives, but also made us rethink how unique humans really are when compared with the rest of the animal kingdom.

However, as knowledge about chimpanzees grew over the years, so have threats to their existence, Goodall noted. While there were more than 1 million chimpanzees in Africa in 1900, now fewer than 300,000 remain in the wild, and some conservationists fear they will become extinct in the wild within 30 years.

Several years after she first landed in Gombe, deforestation on a huge scale transformed the 13.5 square miles (35 square kilometers) of wilderness Goodall explored into an island of forest surrounded by bare land. In addition to this loss of habitat, chimps are also vulnerable to human diseases such as polio and the flu. Compounding these threats, chimp numbers have declined because of illegal bushmeat hunting,

These threats aren't unique to Gombe; they also threaten chimpanzees in other parts of Africa.

"I am finding the same sorts of problems in Senegal," said primatologist Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames who, like many researchers of chimps, cites Goodall as one of their heroes. "One of the biggest threats they face is large-scale mining - something that stems mainly from the so-called developed world's great need for things like automobile parts."

Seeking to make a difference

For more than 15 years, Jane Goodall's institute has worked to improve the lives of people who live near chimpanzees. Addressing the problems of these villagers - such as poverty, drought and erosion caused by unsustainable farming methods, and a lack of basic needs such as clean water, health care and education - can in turn help them in aiding the endangered apes.

"We need to give people, particularly those who live alongside our closest relatives, good reasons to preserve them," Goodall wrote in the opinion piece.

"We must work together with people that live alongside chimps," Pruetz said, agreeing with Goodall and her colleague Lilian Pintea. "We are asking them to give up a lot in some respects, compared to the typical rate of consumption we Westerners exhibit, and these same people are often considered to be stressed for resources themselves."

Basic research also highlights the importance of chimps in the ecosystems that people themselves rely on.

"Part of the scientific research we do at Fongoli [in Senegal] is studying the chimps' diet and specifically their dispersal of important plants in the area," Pruetz said. "For example, seeds of a very important vine species for chimps and humans - humans gather the fruit and sell it to markets in the capitol, and it is one of the few ways that women can bring in cash on their own - germinate more quickly and successfully once they pass through the chimp gut. People are quick to recognize the value that chimps have in terms of ecosystem health in this way, and hunters and other people who spend a lot of time out 'in the bush' are quick to point this out."

Technology and conservation

Satellite imagery, in combination with remote sensing data and decades of aerial photos, is yielding valuable insights into chimpanzee life to better figure out how to protect them. For instance, vegetation maps helped show that chimpanzees are more likely to hunt successfully in woodland and semi-deciduous forest than in evergreen forest, helping focus efforts to conserve prime chimp habitats.

These projects can also help benefit people as well - for example, restoring habitats on steep slopes helped prevent soil erosion that was muddying water quality.

Recent satellite pictures suggest that deforestation is finally beginning to slow at Gombe, though Goodall still stresses the need to protect our closest primate kin.

"There is no time to waste," Goodall said. "Yet the marvelous advances in science and conservation practices over the past five decades gives me hope."

"If she has hope, then I think I can too. And it is very difficult at times!" Pruetz told Our Amazing Planet. "It takes a lot of funds to do the things that need to be done - improving the conditions of people living alongside apes."

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Europe bans illegal timber to protect forests

Yann Ollivier Yahoo News 7 Jul 10;

STRASBOURG (AFP) – The European Union on Wednesday barred the import and sale of illegally harvested timber in a bid to fight climate change and deforestation from the Amazon to Asia.

The European Parliament voted 644-25 to outlaw illegal timber or products made from such wood, which makes up around one-fifth of all timber imports into the European Union, and punish unscrupulous dealers.

"With this, we are sending a signal to the world that the EU will no longer serve as a market for illegally harvested timber," said European Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik.

Green member of the European Parliament Satu Hassi, who negotiated a deal with the 27 EU member states, called the legislation an "internationally important breakthrough."

The European Council must now formally approve the ban and it will take two years for the rules to take effect, as governments must draw up their own penalties to impose on lawbreakers.

The European legislation, which comes two years after the United States passed a similar law, closes a loophole in the industry. For it is currently not against the law to sell timber in the EU that was cut down illegally in its country of origin.

"Those who have been making a profit from illegal logging and destroying forests around the world have finally been given a good slap in the face," said Anke Schulmeister, EU forest policy officer at environmental group WWF.

More than half of logging activities take place in vulnerable regions such as the Amazon Basin, central Africa, southeast Asia and Russia, according to the European Union.

Illegally harvested timber represents 20 to 40 percent of global production of industrial wood, or 350 million to 650 million cubic metres (460 million to 850 million cubic yards), according to the UN.

The environmental group WWF estimated that in 2006 the EU imported around 30 million cubic metres of timber and wooden products made from illegal logging, mostly from Russia, China and Indonesia.

Under the new EU rules, importers will have to seek sufficient guarantees that the timber they are bringing in is legally harvested.

Traders such as furniture sellers must then make sure that the origin of the wood used to make their products is traceable.

While the legislation covers the 27-nation EU, it will be up to individual member states to set penalties for wrongdoers.

In drafting fines, governments can take into account the impact of the damage done by illegal logging to the environment, the value of the timber and the tax revenue that was lost.

It will also be up to individual governments to decide whether to "make the worst offences crimes," Hassi said.

The new rules will be implemented in 2012 to give national governments time to draft their own sets of sanctions and fines, she said.

Environmental groups have welcomed Europe's move to combat illegal logging, saying it would help curb climate change. Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EU.

"We think that although the law is not perfect it is an important step forward," said Greenpeace EU forest policy director Sebastien Risso.

But they were disappointed the law was not coming into force immediately, he added.

"Greenpeace is altogether happy with the decision but we will remain vigilant because the adoption of the legislation is not the end point, it is the beginning."

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Bolivia wildfire threatens world's largest wetland

Yahoo News 7 Jul 10;

ASUNCION (AFP) – A huge wildfire in Bolivia threatened Wednesday parts of the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland which is a popular tourist attraction and home to thousands of species of plants and animals.

The environmental group Guyra Paraguay warned that the uncontrolled blaze was approaching the The Three Giants Biological Station, an important research center in the wetland, which is bounded by vast arid forests and savannahs.

"The fire is moving towards the Rio Negro area to the border between Paraguay and Bolivia," the group said. "It is 15 kilometers (9.4 miles) wide and is now just 26 kilometers north of The Three Giants in the Pantanal."

A similar fire emanating from Bolivia last year struck the Paraguayan part of the Pantanal, a vast natural area of nearly 200,000 square kilometers (75,000 square miles), which also extends into Bolivia and Brazil.

A local police officer in the small Pantanal border town of Bahia Negra, Roberto Segovia, told AFP the glow of the current fire was visible from Paraguay already.

The blaze raged amid a prolonged drought which has brought misery to farmers in northern Paraguay.

The Pantanal is considered one of world's richest area of biodiversity, home to caimans, jaguars, giant otters, tapirs and other animals, and is visited by an estimated 200,000 tourists a year.

Last year, environmentalists established a group called "SOS Pantanal" in Brazil, hoping to slow the creeping development in the region for farming or pasture land.

At the current rate, the Brazilian Pantanal will disappear in 45 years, according to a 2006 report by Conservation International.

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Haiti Most At Risk From Natural Disasters: Survey

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 8 Jul 10;

Haiti and Mozambique are the nations most at risk economically from natural disasters, according to a ranking on Thursday that says some rich countries such as Italy and the United States also face high risks.

British-based business consultancy Maplecroft said the index aimed to show the economic impact from 1980 to 2010 of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, landslides, epidemics, tsunamis and extreme heat and cold.

Haiti, hit by a January 12 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, topped the index of about 200 nations. Even without the quake, the Caribbean nation would have ranked near the top because of exposure to hurricanes, it said.

Mozambique, which has suffered severe flooding such as in 2000 when at least 800 people were killed and economic losses totaled more than $400 million, was second ahead of Honduras, Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Some industrialized nations were also among those facing high risk -- led by Italy in 19th place largely because of earthquakes and a 2003 heatwave, Maplecroft said.

The United States was in 30th place after big economic losses from hurricanes such as Katrina in 2005. China, where the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 killed almost 90,000 people, was in 26th.

"Katrina cost the U.S. $45 billion, whilst the Chinese government estimated the cost of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 at $123 billion," Maplecroft environmental analyst Anna Moss said in a statement. As a percentage of gross domestic product, developing countries are most exposed.

The U.N. panel of climate scientists says that global warming, caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels, will mean desertification, floods, heatwaves, more powerful storms and mudslides.

She told Reuters that the index was based on an international EM-DAT disaster database based in Belgium, along with economic losses as a percentage of gross domestic product, with additional factors of deaths and frequency of disasters.

"Businesses ... need to be aware of the potential impacts," Moss said, to help disaster preparedness, protect staff and investments.

Countries facing a low frequency of natural disasters, and low economic risks, included Iraq, Kuwait and Finland.

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Germany Could Kick Fossil Fuel Habit By 2050: Study

Erik Kirschbaum PlanetArk 8 Jul 10;

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Germany could derive all of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050 and become the world's first major industrial nation to kick the fossil fuel habit, the Federal Environment Agency said on Wednesday.

Germany is already a global leader in renewable energy and exports green technology around the world.

It gets 16 percent of its electricity from wind, solar and other renewable sources -- triple the five percent level it had 15 years ago.

"A complete conversion to renewable energy by 2050 is possible from a technical and ecological point of view," said Jochen Flasbarth, president of the Federal Environment Agency as he presented a new study to journalists on Wednesday.

"It's a very realistic target based on technology that already exists -- it's not a pie-in-the-sky prediction," he added, saying the timetable could even be accelerated with new technology breakthroughs and a greater public acceptance.

Thanks to its Renewable Energy Act, Germany is the world leader in photovoltaics with half of the installed capacity. It expects to add more than 5,000 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity this year to a total of 14,000 megawatts.

Germany is also the world's second-biggest wind power producer after the United States. Some 300,000 renewable energy jobs have been created in Germany in the last decade.

The government has set goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 to 2020, and by 80 to 85 percent by 2050. That goal could be achieved if Germany switches completely to renewable sources by 2050, Flasbarth said.

About 40 percent of Germany's greenhouse gases come from electricity production, in particular coal-fired power plants.

Flasbarth said the Environment Agency's study found that switching to green electricity by 2050 would have economic advantages, especially for the vital export-oriented manufacturing industry. It would also create tens of thousands of jobs.

"The costs of a complete switch to renewables are a lot less than the costs to future generations that climate change will cause," he said.

Last month a report by the UK's Center for Alternative Technology said Britain could eliminate all its carbon emissions by 2030 by overhauling its power supply.

(Editing by Maria Golovnina)

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