Native Fig Species as a Keystone Resource for the Singapore Urban Environment
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'Gang of eight' countries at the heart of surge in elephant slaughters must deliver plans with goals for the next 12 months
Damian Carrington The Guardian 6 Mar 13;
The "gang of eight" nations at the heart of an unprecedented surge in African elephant killing must be hit with heavy trade sanctions, according to the world's top illegal ivory official. The countries, including Kenya, Thailand and China, could be banned from all wildlife trade, including hugely lucrative orchid and crocodile skin exports.
Tom Milliken, who runs the official global project that tracks illegal ivory, said every report his group, the Elephant Trade Information System, had made since it started in 1998 had identified the eight nations as the major players in the trade, but to no effect. "There has been no discernible impact from previous Cites measures," he said at the 178-nation summit of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Bangkok. "Unless Cites scales up and takes this seriously, we are not going to win this thing." This Cites meeting should be the time sanctions should be used, he said.
Tom de Meulenaer, a senior Cites official, said the body's ruling committee had finally lost patience over the issue, and if the eight countries did not produce hard action plans for the next 12 months, it was "not unlikely" that sanctions would be implemented. Milliken said: "Can you imagine the effect on Thailand, Vietnam and China? The orchid and crocodile skin trades alone are massive."
It was revealed on Wednesday that the slaughter of elephants for their ivory has doubled in a decade, while ivory seizures have tripled to an all-time high, according to a new report from Cites, the UN environment programme and others. There were 17 large-scale seizures – hundreds of tusks each – in 2011, the last full year for which data is available, when previously eight seizures was considered a very bad year.
The report examined 60 sites in Africa, representing about 40% of the half million or so elephants remaining and recorded 17,000 deaths in 2011. "That is above the capacity of the elephant population to replace itself," said Julian Blanc, who heads the monitoring of illegal killing of elephants project.
The so-called gang of eight includes the source countries Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, countries through which ivory is smuggled, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, and destination countries, Thailand and China. A particular problem is Thailand's legal domestic market in ivory, which allows illegal African ivory to be laundered.
Yingluck Shinawatra, the Thai prime minister, opened the Cites conference by pledging to outlaw the domestic market at some point. But Ben Janse van Rensburg, chief of enforcement at Cites, cast doubt on the pledge on Wednesday: "If there is any phasing out of their domestic market, it is likely to be a very long process."
Cites is run by a standing committee of 20 nations which has demanded the gang of eight deliver action plans with concrete goals and timelines for the next 12 months. If these are not delivered or adhered to, Cites can ban its 178 member nations from importing any wildlife products from offending nations. Last week, it imposed this penalty on Guinea, for persistent violation of a ban on the export of great apes.
Cites is seeking stronger powers to sanction at the Bangkok summit. It is also seeking funding to pay for anti-poaching and smuggling measures: a fund set up in August 2012 aiming to raise $100m has so far received only $640,000.
The task faced by law enforcement authorities is formidable, said Milliken. The scale of seizures, for example 6.3 tonnes in Malaysia in November, showed the illegal trade was the work of major organised crime syndicates. "They are operating with relative impunity and with little fear of prosecution," he said. Van Rensburg said the criminal "kingpins" needed to be targeted, that tougher penalties were needed and that officers need to also "follow the money" using money laundering laws.
Milliken said the lack of a system for reporting ivory stockpiles, from which tusks were disappearing every year, meant it was very hard to track illegal activity: "Did someone just mow down a herd of elephants, or did someone just open a door?" He also criticised the lack of mandatory forensic testing of seized ivory to determine where it had come from. "It is very disappointing to know that 40, 50, 70 tonnes of ivory can be seized, but we have no idea of where it is from."
IUCN 6 Mar 13;
Bangkok, 6 March 2013— Populations of elephants in Africa continue to be under severe threat as the illegal trade in ivory grows - with double the numbers of elephants killed and triple the amounts of ivory seized, over the last decade.
According to a new report entitled “Elephants in the Dust – The African Elephant Crisis”, increasing poaching levels, as well as loss of habitat are threatening the survival of African elephant populations in Central Africa as well as previously secure populations in West, Southern and Eastern Africa.
The report - produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network (TRAFFIC) - says that systematic monitoring of large-scale seizures of ivory destined for Asia is indicative of the involvement of criminal networks, which are increasingly active and entrenched in the trafficking of ivory between Africa and Asia.
At sites monitored through the CITES-led Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme alone, which hold approximately 40% of the total elephant population in Africa, an estimated 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011. Initial data from 2012 shows that the situation did not improve. However, overall figures may be much higher.
These threats compound the most important long-term threat to the species’ survival – increasing loss of habitat as a result of rapid human population growth and large-scale land conversion for agriculture, which provides for international markets.
"CITES must re-engage on illegal wildlife crime with a renewed sense of purpose, commitment, creativity, cooperation and energy involving range states and transit countries to consuming nations of products such as ivory," says Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director.
"The surge in the killing of elephants in Africa and the illegal taking of other listed species globally threatens not only wildlife populations but the livelihoods of millions who depend on tourism for a living and the lives of those wardens and wildlife staff who are attempting to stem the illegal tide."
“This report provides clear evidence that adequate human and financial resources, the sharing of know-how, raising public awareness in consumer countries, and strong law enforcement must all be in place if we are to curb the disturbing rise in poaching and illegal trade," says John Scanlon, Secretary-General of CITES.
The report recommends critical actions, including improved law-enforcement across the entire illegal ivory supply chain and strengthened national legislative frameworks. Training of enforcement officers in the use of tracking, intelligence networks and innovative techniques, such as forensic analysis, is urgently needed.
“Urgent action is needed to address the growing challenges elephant populations are facing, but it will only happen if there is adequate political will to do so,” says Dr Holly Dublin, Chair of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group.
Better international collaboration across range states, transit countries and consumer markets - through the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, CITES, INTERPOL, the World Customs Organization, the World Bank and other international actors – is needed in order to enhance law enforcement - from the field to the judiciary - to deter criminal activities and combat illegal trade.
These efforts include the need to fight collusive corruption, identifying syndicates and reducing demand.
“Organized criminal networks are cashing in on the elephant poaching crisis, trafficking ivory in unprecedented volumes and operating with relative impunity and with little fear of prosecution,” says Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s ivory trade expert.
Elephants are also threatened by the increasing loss of habitat in around 29 per cent of their range as a result of rapid human population growth and agricultural expansion.
Currently, some models suggest this figure may increase to 63 per cent by 2050, a major additional threat to the survival of the elephant in the long-term.
Other key findings from the report
• Large-scale seizures of ivory (consignments of over 800 kg) destined for Asia have more than doubled since 2009 and reached an all-time high in 2011.
• Large movements of ivory that comprise the tusks of hundreds of elephants in a single shipment are indicative of the increasingly active grip of highly organized criminal networks on Africa’s illicit ivory trade.
• These criminal networks operate with relative impunity as there is almost no evidence of successful arrests, prosecutions or convictions.
• Globally, illegal ivory trade activity has more than doubled since 2007, and is now over three times larger than it was in 1998.
• The prevalence of unregulated domestic ivory markets in many African cities, coupled with the growing number of Asian nationals residing in Africa also facilitates the illegal trade in ivory out of Africa.
• Poaching is spreading primarily as a result of weak governance and rising demand for illegal ivory in the rapidly growing economies of Asia, particularly China, which is the world’s largest destination markets.
• The high levels of poaching are, in some cases, facilitated by conflicts that, through lawlessness and ensuing abundance of small arms, provide optimal conditions for the illegal killing of elephants.
The report - released in Bangkok, at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CITES convention - combines information from sources including the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) African Elephant Specialist Group, MIKE and the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of CITES.
African forest elephants decline by 62% in 10 years
BBC News 5 Mar 13;
Forest elephant numbers have decreased by 62% across Central Africa over the last 10 years, according to a study.
The analysis confirmed fears that African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are heading for extinction, possibly within the next decade.
Conservationists said "effective, rapid, multi-level action is imperative" in order to save the elephants.
They are concerned the forest elephants are being killed for their ivory.
Results of the study, undertaken by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and several other conservation organisations, are published in the scientific journal PLoS One.
Over 60 co-authors contributed to the study, which was led by Dr Fiona Maisels, a WCS conservation scientist from the School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, and Dr Samantha Strindberg, also a WCS conservation scientist.
"Although we were expecting to see these results, we were horrified that the decline over the period of a mere decade was over 60%," Dr Maisels told BBC Nature.
Findings also indicated that large areas where the elephants ranged just 10 years ago now have very few elephants remaining.
Data drive
Scientists surveyed forests in Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Gabon and the Republic of Congo.
Dr Maisels said survey teams spent "91,600 person-days... walking over 8,000 miles (12,875km)" to compile the largest amount of African forest elephant data ever collected.
"For elephants, we can get a standardised measure of their abundance using their dung piles. There were 11,000 dung piles in our dataset," said Dr Maisels.
She said the teams also recorded important "human signs" such as snares and bullet casings during the field missions from 2002 to 2011.
The results confirmed what scientists already suspected.
"Forest elephants were increasingly uncommon in places with high human density, high levels of infrastructure such as roads, high hunting intensity, and poor governance - indicated by levels of corruption and absence of law enforcement," commented Dr Maisels.
"We were also shocked to see that huge parts of the reasonably intact African forests have lost most of their elephants."
The bigger picture
Conservationists suggest that almost one-third of the land where African forest elephants were living 10 years ago has become dangerous for animals, since poachers can access these areas using road networks meant for logging.
The paper has been released to coincide with the 2013 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), taking place in Bangkok from 3-14 March.
Dr Maisels explained that research from Cites' Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme, has shown that the increase in poaching levels across Africa strongly correlates with trends in consumer demand in the Far East.
Thailand's prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has already agreed at this year's Cites convention that she will amend Thai laws to ban the legal trade in ivory.
Now conservationists are calling for immediate action in order to protect the remaining forest elephant populations.
"The WCS is advising that Cites review the enforcement gaps and needs - at all points in the trade chain from the field to the marketplace - that have led to the failure of the current ivory trade regulation system," Dr Maisels said.
"Reducing chronic corruption and improving poor law enforcement, which facilitate poaching and trade, are crucial. It is also vital to improve control of import and sales of wildlife goods by the recipient and transit countries of illegal ivory, especially in Asia," she continued.
"The recipient nations, with the international community, should invest heavily in public education and outreach to inform consumers of the ramifications of the ivory trade," Dr Maisels concluded.
WWF 6 Mar 13;
Forty years ago the international community decided to combat the critical issue of trading endangered species globally.
In Washington the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora (CITES) was born with the objective to protect wild plants and animals from the risk of extinction.
To do this plants and animals can be proposed for listing on the convention`s appendices I, II and III. Successful listing either ban trade, limit it if harvesting is done within sustainable levels or help conserve them.
The increased level of threat facing many of our marine species due to unsustainable fishing is being discussed here in Bangkok during the 16th Conference of the Parties of CITES. It is a chance for the 178 countries that are members of the convention to demonstrate that it can fulfil its core objective for five species of sharks, two species of manta ray and one species of sawfish.
Sharks and rays are grouped together because of their anatomical similarity having skeletons of cartilage rather than bone. They are especially vulnerable to overfishing. Compared to most fish species, they take a long time to reach an age where they can reproductive and have relatively few offspring in their lifetimes.
Some species such as hammerhead sharks and manta rays aggregate in large numbers at certain times of the year making themselves even more vulnerable to being fished.
Because of their role as apex predators, they are the tigers of the sea, their extinction from the ocean would have profound and devastating ecological consequences.
The market for shark and ray products is first and foremost a luxury one. The fins, in the case of certain shark species, are used in shark fin soup. It`s a status symbol to include sharks fin as a standard menu item in Chinese celebratory banquets. Hammerhead shark fin is a particular favourite and has been recorded as costing as much as $135/kg in Hong Kong.
The gill plates, in the case of manta rays, are used in China for a tonic soup that has become fashionable because of its perceived medicinal properties, even though it is not in the traditional Chinese pharmacopoeia. This is a recent trend and has caused the demise of some population of manta ray to decrease by up to 86% in the last six to eight years.
Over the years a few shark species have been listed by CITES including the whale and basking sharks, and great white shark, which has limited international trade to sustainable levels and helped reduce the threat of overfishing.
Nevertheless, recent meetings have failed to adopt proposals to list more commercially important species.
In 2000 proposals relating to the three largest hammerhead shark species and the oceanic whitetip shark, both of which are valued for their fins, and the porbeagle shark, which is valued for both fins and meat failed to be adopted.
Hammerheads, whitetip and porbeagle sharks are up for debate again, sponsored on this occasion by a range of countries across the Americas, Europe and Africa.
Meanwhile, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador are proposing that manta rays also be added to limit trade.
It should be remembered that the core objective of CITES is to protect wild fauna and flora from over-exploitation through international trade. It is time that the convention fulfilled this mandate with respect to these uniquely vulnerable and iconic species.
5 Shark Species May Gain Protection Boost from New Findings
Two new studies make clear the global threat to sharks as well as some of the challenges conservationists face, just in time for an international meeting this week that could decide the fate of several of the iconic species
Tara Haelle Scientific American 6 Mar 13;
As 177 nations gather in Bangkok this week to deliberate trade restrictions on potentially endangered animals, new research reveals how important these deliberations are to the long-term survival of five species of sharks.
A study published March 1 in Marine Policy reported new, higher estimates for the numbers of sharks killed yearly: approximately 100 million sharks. Meanwhile another study published February 20 in PLoS ONE, describing the migratory patterns of the highly threatened oceanic whitetip shark, reveals why international cooperation may be the last option available to preventing this shark's extinction.
Among the 71 proposals being considered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in Bangkok March 3–14 are four involving marine species. The proposals would move the oceanic whitetip shark, the porbeagle shark, all three species of hammerheads and all species of manta rays to an Appendix II listing, which requires anyone wishing to trade them to first procure a permit. The whitetip, porbeagle and scalloped hammerhead all had proposals considered at the last CITES meeting in 2010 but each narrowly missed the two thirds majority needed for adoption.
But shark researchers and conservation specialists hope that the new research showing just how threatened these sharks are might be enough this year for these sharks to join the only three other sharks listed on Appendix II: the whale shark, the basking shark and the great white.
“CITES is going to be a dialogue between nations that want to protect their sharks and the financial interests that want to see maximum yield and maximum sustainable yield,” says Rick MacPherson, the conservation programs director at the Coral Reef Alliance. Those nations wanting to protect sharks include an unusually high 37 countries this year. “However, the number for maximum sustainable yields are probably overestimated,” he adds.
That unsustainable level of shark fishing is exactly what the new Marine Policy paper shows. Annual shark mortality was previously estimated at 73 million, but this study added reported catch at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and estimates of unreported landings and finned sharks for an estimated range of 63 million to 273 million sharks killed each year.
Barriers to protection
Sharks face a triple threat: “They are really migratory, have a really low reproductive capacity and are subjected to heavy fishing driven by a demand for international trade,” says Elizabeth Wilson, the manager of the Global Shark Conservation Campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts, who partly funded both new studies. On top of that, few regulations and “fragmented governance”—the patchwork policies across all the countries’ waters where sharks roam—impede meaningful shark protection strategies.
“Just the fact that they migrate between political jurisdictions complicates things,” says David Shiffman, a graduate student in ecosystem science and policy at the University of Miami. “Even if one or two countries are responsible with fisheries management, if the animal doesn’t spend all its time there, then it can still be severely overfished.” In the oceanic whitetip study, Demian Chapman, of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, S.U.N.Y. and colleagues attached pop-up satellite tags to 11 oceanic whitetips off Cat Island in the Bahamas in May 2011. All but one tag reported data for up to 245 days and revealed that the sharks spent about 68 percent of their time in the Bahamas’s Exclusive Economic Zone, where long-lining and commercial trade of sharks is outlawed. The rest of that time they roamed more than 16,000 square kilometers of ocean, traveling nearly 2,000 kilometers from the safe Bahamian waters.
These findings mean two things: shark sanctuaries work (all the tagged sharks eventually returned to the Bahamas)—but that they are insufficient to protect open-water sharks. “Once you get into the open ocean, there are relatively few and sometimes no rules governing what you can and can’t take out of the water,” Shiffman says. One in six shark and ray species are classified as “threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but one in three species of open-ocean sharks are threatened.
Then there are sharks’ life histories. These predators may be fishes, but biologically they resemble mammals more than other fishes. “Sharks management is such a conundrum for fisheries management organizations because they’re so used to fish, and sharks don’t lend themselves to traditional fisheries management policies,” MacPherson says. Unlike most fishes, sharks are slow to sexually mature, physically mate instead of spawning, have long gestation periods and produce few litters of pups. Consider the oceanic whitetip and the swordfish: Oceanic whitetips (pdf) take four to seven years to reach maturity, gestate for nine to twelve months and have litters of five to six pups every two years. Swordfish reach maturity in two to three years and produce up to 1.5 million eggs when they spawn multiple times a year, with gestations lasting about 2.5 days.
But like whales, swordfish and tuna, sharks have become big industry tickets, especially because the demand for fins began rising in the 1970s. Sharks have gone from being accidental bycatch to targets for their fins, meat, cartilage and liver oil—but regulations have not kept pace with fishing, MacPherson says. The large fins of oceanic whitetips fetch about $90 per kilogram; hammerhead fins, also large for their size, bring in $110 to $220 per kilogram. Like other pelagic fishes (those that live in the open sea or in surface waters), many sharks travel far and wide. Just a couple of sharks can pay for a day’s worth of fishing. Like whales, however, sharks cannot recover quickly from overfishing. (Fishes that can recover relatively quickly are those that grow quickly and reproduce by spawning, such as mahi-mahi, Shiffman says.) Taken together, sharks are “the fishes that are most likely to go extinct within the next few decades,” Shiffman says.
What a CITES listing would mean
A listing on CITES Appendix II might help stanch the rapid population declines of oceanic whitetips, scalloped hammerheads and porbeagles—all three have declined 90 to 99 percent since the 1950s. “For sharks and rays, it would make a world of difference,” Pew’s Wilson says. “The Appendix II listing would require countries to ensure that their exports were legal and sustainable,” she says. Fishermen might catch these sharks in open international waters but they cannot sell them without a permit. Trade without permits can lead to heavy penalties, or even sanctions on a country.
Several regional fisheries management organizations already have protections in place for the oceanic whitetip, but they are difficult to enforce. “The truth is, these regional fisheries management organizations don’t have the teeth and don’t monitor trade like CITES,” says Stony Brook’s Chapman, senior author of the PLoS oceanic whitetip study. “Countries like the U.S., Australia and New Zealand invest a lot of money in monitoring catch, doing stock assessment and enforcing regulations. Many developing countries can’t do that, but they do have customs and police. They do have the ability to say you can’t export that or you can only export that if it’s sustainable.”
The Marine Policy paper makes plain that current shark fishing levels are not sustainable. Annual shark exploitation rates range from 6.4 to 7.9 percent, the paper reported, but shark rebound rates average 4.9 percent a year. A CITES listing would mean permits could not be issued unless fishermen could show they had changed their practices to fish the sharks more sustainably. “That should help the population of a heavily exploited species to recover,” Shiffman says. And recovery means preservation of some of the ocean’s most important species.
“Hammerheads and manta rays in particular are very iconic animals,” Shiffman says. “They’re culturally significant and very important in terms of ecotourism.” Shark-related tourism added $800 million to the Bahamian economy alone over the past 20 years, according to Pew. The predators also are important to the health of entire marine ecosystems. “Oceanic sharks do a pretty good job of maintaining strong tuna stocks by culling the small and genetically weaker ones, similar to the role of the lion in the Serengeti,” MacPherson says.
The bottom line, as was true with whales and still is with bluefin tuna and other threatened fishes, is that ensuring shark species’ survival also ensures the survival of multiple fisheries. “Pro-shark protection or pro-whale protection is not anti-fishing,” MacPherson says. “If we want fishing for all the benefits it derives, whether it’s sustenance or it’s economic, if we want that for the future, we have to be willing to change our practices.”
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NSS Kids’ Fun with Forest Butterflies
from Fun with Nature by Fun with Nature - NSS Kids Blog
Gearing up for climate change
Straits Times 6 Mar 13;
Warming seas’ effect on trade
WASHINGTON - The quickest way to get goods from Asia to the United States' East Coast in 2050 might well be straight across the Arctic, where a warming climate is expected to open new sea routes through what is now impenetrable ice.
Most shipping traffic between these two centres now goes through the Suez or Panama canals, and that is likely to continue even as melting Arctic sea ice makes the far north more accessible, according to a new study out on Monday.
But increasingly warm temperatures also could make the North-west Passage, north of Canada, an economically viable shipping route.
Now, it is passable only at the end of most summers.
Warmer temperatures could also open up a highly seasonal route directly over the North Pole by mid-century, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus.
The across-the-pole route, which had never before been considered, would be available only to light ice-breakers capable of ploughing through ice 1.2m thick.
The Northern Sea Route, which mostly hugs Russia's northern coastline and is now a primary Arctic shipping route, would continue to be viable, according to geography professor Laurence Smith at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Last September, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said that Arctic sea ice had melted to its lowest recorded level.
The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth because of the so-called albeido effect, where sun-reflecting light-coloured ice is frequently replaced by sun-absorbing dark-coloured water. The more ice melts, the warmer things get.
Melting ice could make these Arctic routes more viable, Dr Smith said.
Using projections of global warming and Arctic ice loss, he said that by 2050, the North-west Passage will be sufficiently navigable to make the trip from the North American east coast to the Bering Strait in 15 days, compared to 23 days for the Northern Sea Route - about a 30 per cent reduction in the time taken.
This is never likely to be a year-round proposition since winter sea ice will always recur, Dr Smith added.
A large Russian tanker, the Ob River, capable of carrying 150,000 cubic metres of gas, made a pioneering voyage in November and December last year across the Northern Sea Route, becoming the first ship of its kind to sail across the Arctic.
"The round trip of the vessel from Asia to Europe and back has confirmed the technical and commercial viability of the Northern Sea Route for the global liquefied natural gas business," the Russian energy giant Gazprom said in a press release.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, observed in a post on his Facebook page last November that it was hard to predict how the Ob River's voyage would affect ports like Singapore in the long term.
However, Singapore should not be too badly affected by the new Arctic shipping routes, said Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide during a visit to the city-state last November.
Container ships carrying goods that need to arrive at a specific time will still take the traditional route through Egypt's Suez Canal, which is more reliable and brings trade closer to Singapore, said Mr Eide.
And he suggested that Singapore can benefit by using its shipping expertise to develop ports along the Northern Sea Route.
REUTERS
UK: Prepare for floods, drought
LONDON - Britain should do more to prepare for climate change after extreme weather last year brought both drought and floods, according to the Environment Agency.
The United Kingdom had floods in one out of every five days last year while one in four days was in drought, the agency said in an online report.
Some rivers went from their lowest levels to their highest on record within a four-month period. England had record rain last year and 7,950 properties flooded across the country. Yet the United Kingdom can expect "severe, short-term drought" every 10 years, the agency said.
Part of the flooding problem is due to previous policies, said the BBC. For decades, farmers were paid to drain boggy land to improve it for grazing. This caused water to rush off the fields into rivers, whereas previously it would have been held in the bogs, flowing into the rivers throughout the year. In addition, many flood plains have been built on.
Agency chairman Chris Smith said that England needs to learn how to save water when it is raining and disperse it from populated areas when it floods, according to London's Daily Telegraph.
This means cutting red tape to encourage landowners to build small-scale water storage reservoirs on farms, golf clubs, sports stadiums and racecourses to survive dry spells.
At the same time, water companies must be encouraged to take water from rivers only when levels are high and to store the reserves in reservoirs.
Planners must be nudged to build green spaces and ditches to store water in towns and cities and stop it from building up in roads. Homes can help by fitting water meters and saving water.
BLOOMBERG
More extreme Aussie weather
SYDNEY - Climate change was a major driving force behind extreme weather events that alternately scorched and soaked large sections of Australia in recent months, according to a report just issued by the country's Climate Commission.
A four-month heatwave during the Australian summer culminated in January in bush fires that tore through the eastern and south-eastern coasts of the country.
Torrential rains and flooding followed in the more densely populated states of New South Wales and Queensland, leaving at least six people dead and causing roughly US$2.43 billion (S$3 billion) in damage.
Scientists have long been hesitant to link individual weather events directly to climate change. Australian scientists in particular have been cautious about linking the two, partly because of the country's naturally occurring cycles of drought and floods, which are already extreme compared with much of the rest of the world.
But the Climate Commission report argues that the frequency and ferocity of recent extreme weather events indicate an acceleration that is unlikely to abate unless serious steps are taken to prevent further changes to the planet's environment.
"I think one of the best ways of thinking about it is imagining the baseline has shifted," commission leader Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. At least 123 weather records fell during the 90-day period examined, including milestones such as the hottest summer on record.
NEW YORK TIMES
Obama picks EPA, energy chiefs
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has named Ms Gina McCarthy, an experienced clean air regulator, to take charge at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Professor Ernest Moniz, a physicist and strong advocate for natural gas and nuclear power as cleaner alternatives to coal, to run the Department of Energy.
But Mr Obama still must confront refashioning the American way of producing and consuming energy, hurdles that stymied climate and energy policy in his first term.
Mr Obama has embraced unconventional natural gas production, which has brought lower energy prices and reduced emissions as utilities switch from coal to natural gas to produce electricity.
But hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, presents difficult environmental issues, including the possibility of groundwater contamination and the unregulated release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Mr Obama has also pursued offshore drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean, despite environmental risks.
And the administration appears inclined to approve a pipeline to carry heavy crude oil from tar sand formations in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas. But a State Department environmental impact report notes that extracting, shipping and refining the Canadian oil would produce more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of oil.
NEW YORK TIMES
The threat of extinction is growing for African forest elephants, according to a study released at the Cites summit in Bangkok
Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk 5 Mar 13;
The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory-trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade.
"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant," said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.
There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total elephant population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.
Prof Lee White, head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, once home to the largest forest elephant population, said: "A rainforest without elephants is a barren place. They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the forest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees – elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."
Forest elephants have suffered particularly badly because they range across central Africa, which has been left lawless in large areas by war, and where poachers have ready access to guns. Furthermore, the tusks of forest elephants are longer, straighter and harder than savannah elephants, making them particularly sought after. "A lot of carvers prefer forest elephant tusks," said WCS's vice president, Elizabeth Bennett.
Although deforestation is taking place, loss of habitat is not the principal problem for the elephants, according to another of the scientific team, John Hart of the Lukuru Foundation. "Historically, elephants ranged right across the forests of this vast region of over 2m sq km, but they now cower in just a quarter of that area. Although the forest cover remains, it is empty of elephants, demonstrating that this is not a habitat degradation issue. This is almost entirely due to poaching."
The new study, published in the journal Plos One, took nine years to complete and the team spent over 90,000 person-days in the field, walking over 13,000 km and taking 11,000 samples. They found the population fell by 62% between 2002 and 2011 and was now less than 10% of its potential size.
Last month, Gabon announced the death of about 11,000 forest elephants in the Minkébé national park between 2004 and 2012. Gabon's president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, says: "Our elephants are under siege because of an illegal international market that has driven ivory prices in the region up significantly. I call upon the international community to join us in this fight. If we do not reverse the tide fast the African elephant will be exterminated."
The 178-nation summit of the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) began in Bangkok on Monday and has already seen the eight countries identified as key to the ivory trade threatened with trade sanctions if they do not tackle failures in protection against poaching in Africa and failures in seizing illegal ivory along trade routes to China. The nations, including the states which most ivory passes through – Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam – and where most ivory is bought – China and Thailand - must come up with concrete action plans or face a ban on millions of dollars of trade in animals and plants, including crocodile skins and orchids.
The Thai prime minister opened the Cites summit by pledging to outlaw Thailand's domestic ivory trade which is currently legal. But she was criticised for failing to set a deadline.
Proposals to the Cites summit supporting and opposing more "one-off" sales of ivory will not succeed, the Guardian has been told. A previous "one-off" sale in 2008 was criticised by some as driving up demand, but defended by others as providing funds for elephant protection.
Cutting the demand for ivory, as well as fighting poaching, is seen as crucial, with African elephant deaths running at 25,000 a year. Bennett said better education programmes in China would be a vital part of the action plans: "A lot of people don't actually know that you have to kill elephants to get ivory."
Latest Green Jobs in Singapore [25 Feb - 3 Mar 2013]
from Green Business Times
Triple Tours March 10!
from a.t.Bukit Brown. Heritage. Habitat. History.
Biodiversity for kids during the March school holidays
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
SP/Marsel Rombe Saan Jakarta Globe 4 Mar 13;
Indonesians should prepare for an early onset of the dry season and start conserving water, a Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) official said on Monday.
Head of BMKG Mulyono Prabowo said that the dry season would not arrive at the same time in every area in the country, but it would come more quickly this year than in previous years.
“With this type of rainfall, Java will soon enter the dry season,” he said on Monday.
Prabowo said Indonesia should implement water management, especially for the agriculture sector. He urged farmers to anticipate a limited water supply and city dwellers to start preserving the limited resource.
Previously the agency predicted the dry season would arrive in Indonesia in April, however some areas started to experience the dry season as early as February. The dry season is expected to hit many more locales this month.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said even though the dry season would come early this year, it did not pose serious danger.
“To welcome the early dry season, BNPB has arranged a contingency plan to anticipate forest fires. We have updated all the high risk areas and coordinated the plan with the other institutions,” he said, adding than BNPB has allocated Rp 250 billion ($25.8 million) for potential disasters.
Last year, nine of the 10 districts and cities across West Nusa Tenggara suffered an inordinately harsh dry season that extended from March through November and forced residents in some areas to travel several kilometers a day just to fetch water.
Also in 2012, the unusually intense dry season affected the production of rice in Klaten, a key rice-producing district in Central Java.
Djoko Sarjono, head of the Klaten chapter of the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI), said last October that besides not being able to reach the surplus rice production target of 125 million tons, the existing production was lacking in quality due to low water supplies.
The drought reduced the volume of water in rivers, lakes, wells and reservoirs in 2012. The water shortages dried irrigation channels that are used to hydrate more than 127,000 hectares of paddy fields, turning the farmland into parched tracts and causing thousands of farmers to suffer financial losses.
Forest fires also raged across Kalimantan, Java and other areas of Indonesia in 2012.
The grisly trade in wild animals is underpinned by slaughter, smuggling and money-laundering. It's time to get serious
John E Scanlon, secretary-general of CITES guardian.co.uk 1 Mar 13;
Illegal trade in wildlife has now reached a scale that poses an immediate risk to wildlife and to people. Over the past five years, we have seen a dramatic spike in the poaching and illegal trade in elephants and rhinos. In 2011 an estimated 25,000 elephants were poached across Africa and in South Africa alone 668 rhinos were lost to poachers in 2012.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was born 40 years ago on 3 March, 1973 in Washington DC. It sets the global controls for trade in wildlife, and the 177 countries that have joined CITES will meet from Monday in Bangkok, Thailand to take stock of of the situation, step up enforcement efforts and send clear political signals on putting a stop to illegal wildlife trade.
Today's wildlife crime increasing involves organised crime syndicates, and in some cases rebel militia. These criminals operate across national borders and through international shipment routes; have significant financial support; understand and utilise new technologies, and are often well-armed. They do not hesitate to use violence or threats of violence against those who try to stand in their way, and constantly adapt their tactics to avoid detection and prosecution.
In doing so, they exploit people in some of the poorest countries of the world, corrupt officials and kill and injure wildlife officers.
This poses a serious threat to the stability and economy of these countries, robs them of their natural resources and cultural heritage, and undermines good governance and the rule of law. These criminals are laundering their ill-gotten gains and in some instances, use them to finance armed conflicts and other criminal activities, with the UN Security Council recently linking the Lord's Resistance Army to the illicit trade in ivory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They must be stopped.
Wildlife crime can be attractive to criminal gangs due to the lower risk of detection and prosecution, and it often carries relatively low penalties. Wildlife officers serving in the frontline are being outgunned and they need support from police, and sometimes the military, as well as the international community.
It is time to treat wildlife crime as serious crime and to deploy the techniques used to combat illicit trade in narcotics, such as undercover operations and "controlled deliveries" – meaning contraband is not seized but tracked to its destination.
This will enable the masterminds in this illegal trade to be identified, prosecuted and convicted. Bringing this destructive activity to an end will require harsh penalties, including making sure these criminals do not profit from their crimes. These enforcement measures need to be coupled with well-targeted public awareness campaigns to help suppress demand for illegal goods.
While the challenges we face today are real and serious they should not overshadow our conservation successes through ensuring legal, sustainable and traceable trade in some species - such as with the African cherry, the Latin American vicuna, crocodiles and the Queen conch, where their survival in the wild was assured when their bark, wool, skins and meat, respectively, became legally and sustainably managed, with tangible benefits for local communities.
The recovery of the African elephant and the rhino over recent decades - and in particular the white rhino, has also been a great conservation success. White rhino population numbers in Africa have risen from about 2,000 in 1973 to over 19,000 in 2012, with South Africa having conserved more than 90% of this total. But these successes are now under grave threat, which serves to demonstrate that we cannot take anything for granted.
With a combination of conservation measures, strong enforcement, public awareness and adequate resources we can reverse the current alarming trends. This is why CITES is working with Interpol, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation to support source, transit and destination countries in combatting this serious crime.
We know the way, now we need the collective will. The CITES World Wildlife Conference opening next week in Bangkok is when we must come together to turn the tables on wildlife crime.
Common palm civet seen at UTown NUS
from Life of a common palm civet in Singapore
Sighted!
from a.t.Bukit Brown. Heritage. Habitat. History.
Final call for area affected by 8 lane highway in Bukit Brown
from Rojak Librarian
PUB drinking water quality report 2011
from Water Quality in Singapore
Why we do it
from Gamefish And Aquatic Rehabiliation Society
Last chance to see the Raffles Museum Public Gallery!
from wild shores of singapore
Blacktip Reef Shark
from Monday Morgue
By Geh Min For The Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
THE heated debate over the Population White Paper arose partly from unease over a future projected population of 6.9 million.
But a more important underlying issue needs to be aired too: What is Singapore to its citizens, including its leaders? Is it home, hotel or a corporation like an economic entity?
Without a shared sense of home, we will not achieve social cohesion in our compact city-state.
It will then not matter whether we have five, six or seven million people. Life will be stressful and even intolerable.
Our founding fathers had a vision to link people and place - Home Ownership for Everyone.
But have we expanded this sense of ownership beyond our own doorsteps? We have some way still to go, given the recurrent apathy and anti-social behaviour such as littering.
Increasing signs of the Not In My Backyard (Nimby) syndrome and road rage imply the expanded sense of ownership is selfishly rather than socially motivated.
Still, more educated and articulate Singaporeans with a strong sense of national identity are speaking up. They want to make a difference and can be frustrated by the lack of avenues for doing so.
The debates over Chek Jawa, the Railway Corridor and Bukit Brown exemplify this trend, and should be viewed positively, as a sign of growing nationhood.
Social and spatial justice
IN A country as land-scarce as ours, spatial justice is as important as social justice in creating a level playing field in jobs and educational opportunities.
The Government's public housing policy, for example, strives for spatial justice. The People's Action Party's early policy of acquiring land at low rates to be redeveloped for low-cost housing put vast tracts of land - and housing units - within reach of the masses, serving spatial justice.
Beyond housing is a need to equitably allocate land for transport and other essential amenities for industry and investment, and for nature and recreation. Maintaining a good balance is challenging.
In Singapore, the state is by far the biggest land owner, thanks to the Land Acquisition Act, which gives the state wide powers of acquisition. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is both the arbiter and implementer of land use: the trustee that acts for the people.
How should the URA determine use of land?
Property and environmental lawyer Joseph Chun argues that the concept of the Public Trust Doctrine might be useful here. He said: "When applied to the state, it draws a distinction between ordinary land generally owned by the state as a corporate entity as though it were a private landowner; and public trust land held by the state as the sovereign as though it were a trustee for specific purposes in the common interest of the public."
This distinction - the state as corporate landowner and as trustee landowner - is crucial. To be fair to the Government, it has indeed been a wise steward in maintaining this difficult balance. Environmentalists such as myself will argue that one failure is the disproportionate number of private golf courses allowed here - they consume huge land tracts when only a small minority benefit.
But can a future government continue to be a wise steward for our increasingly scarce land? There is no systematic use of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) to measure the impact of any development plan. Nor is there requisite information about what most Singaporeans want when it comes to land use.
Particularly worrying is the proposal in the White Paper to build infrastructure and amenities well in advance of a 6.9 million population. The notion of building "ahead of demand" might sound appealing to those jostling for space on crowded trains today.
But do we really need to set aside valuable land and taxpayers' money to provide for this hypothetical increase?
When land becomes scarcer and population density increases further, how will the state maintain the precarious balance between land use for the public good and private developments and amenities affordable only for the affluent? Even expanding our roads and highways could be a form of spatial injustice as cars are one of the least efficient and most inequitable forms of transport in a land-challenged country.
Consider, for example, the lack of proper housing amenities for foreign workers. These construction workers, cleaners and domestic workers contribute enormously to making Singapore "clean and green" and creating a "quality living environment". Yet, until recently, little thought seems to have been given to providing them with decent housing or recreational amenities.
A sense of continuity
WHEN physical landscapes change, something is lost irrevocably. A sense of continuity is essential to general well-being.
A rapidly changing society like Singapore needs to conserve as much of its natural and man-made heritage as possible, to preserve shared memories and to keep familiar landmarks.
For instance, the strong reactions over landmarks such as the Railway Line and Bukit Brown suggest that Singaporeans have a growing need for visible and palpable connections to a shared past.
A rapidly changing landscape might be a developer's dream and provide entertainment for transients and tourists, but it is a stressful nightmare for those who choose to make Singapore home.
Mr Chan Chun Sing, the Acting Minister for Social and Family Development, said recently that while "it is important to preserve Singapore's heritage, this has to be balanced against the need for redevelopment" as this "adds new buildings and new areas, which in turn allows future generations to create new memories".
He noted that since previous generations gave up some of their memories for us to be where we are today, "it is also incumbent on us to pay it forward".
But memories are not a commodity to be bartered or traded. The value of heritage is that subsequent generations can add fresh layers to treasured memories to enrich the narrative further - not trade old memories for new ones.
Heritage and national values cannot be transmitted by textbooks and political rhetoric alone. A society is defined as much by what we choose to preserve or destroy as by what we create.
A society that places no visible value on continuity will create future generations who are adrift on market forces rather than one anchored by a shared nationhood to country and fellow countrymen.
How will such a place produce people who are prepared to invest emotionally, to stay long term, to start a family and to make sacrifices to defend their country? It would be much easier to trade one country for another.
Singapore has evolved from a nation by chance to nationhood by choice. Let us not deteriorate into a city-state of convenience: a hotel rather than a home.
stopinion@sph.com.sg
The writer is a consultant ophthalmologist and immediate past president of the Nature Society.
Related links
Reclaiming the Public Trust in Singapore by Joseph Chun
Associate Member, Exco, Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918737
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