Rare bird thought extinct found off Papua New Guinea: charity

Yahoo News 8 Mar 08;

A rare bird not seen for nearly 80 years has reappeared in the South Pacific off Papua New Guinea, Britain's leading bird protection charity said Friday.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said an expert who travelled on a ship northeast of the islands photographed more than 30 Beck's petrels, including young birds, which suggests a breeding site nearby.

Israeli ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai's account appears in the latest Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, published Friday.

Only two records previously existed of the tube-nosed seabirds, both from the late 1920s when the ornithologist Rollo Beck collected two as he toured the region on a quest for museum specimens.

Shirihai said he may have seen the rare bird on a previous voyage in 2003 and returned last year to study them further. He said it marked the "rediscovery of the species".

The RSPB said hopes were raised that the bird was not extinct when a tour guide thought he had seen a Beck's petrel in the Coral Sea off northeast Australia in 2006.

But where the guide's photographic evidence was not conclusive, Shirihai's pictures "left no doubt", they added.

Protecting the species, which closely resembles the Tahiti petrel, could be difficult, given predators such as rats and cats at its breeding grounds, as well as widespread logging and land clearance for palm oil plantations.

Experts believe the birds may only visit nesting burrows at night, making conservation even more difficult.

"Even so, the discovery of this 'lost' bird is fantastic news and we congratulate those who spent so much time and effort in finding it," said Geoff Hilton, a senior RSPB biologist in a statement.

"It doesn't get much better than finding a species that was long thought extinct. Now we must use this discovery as a new spur to try to save the bird."

The Beck's petrel is classed by the BirdLife International umbrella group of conservation charities as critically endangered -- the highest level of threat. It has a dark brown back, head and throat and pale belly and flies low over seas with mainly straight wings.

It is slightly smaller and has narrower wings than the Tahiti petrel, which has been seen recently in the Bismarck Archipelago off north-east New Guinea, and the nearby Solomon Islands.

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Philippine breeding programme brings eagles back from the brink

Cecil Morella, Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

Chick Number 22 chirps in delight as a feeder thrusts a talon-shaped puppet through a hole in a blind and offers it a full-grown mashed quail complete with bones and feathers.

Still in its birthday suit of fluffy white down the 44-day-old Philippine eagle is already bigger than a rooster, weighing 3.55 kilograms (7.8 pounds).

The Philippine eagle which once ruled the skies over most of the Philippine islands is today close to extinction.

Chief breeder Domingo Tadena, 60, is hoping his 30 years of captive breeding here on the lower slopes of the country's tallest mountain will soon be crowned with the first successful release of the king predator into the wild.

"We now have enough breeding stock," he tells AFP.

"The goal is to eventually release all birds that are hatched here," the breeder said as he hand-fed the chick, the 22nd hatched at the Philippine Eagle Foundation.

Drawing on lessons learned from the condor and harpy eagle conservation programmes in the United States, the foundation's goal is to set free one captive-bred bird each year.

"In the next five years I am confident that we can do this," said Dennis Salvador, the foundation's director.

A test release ended in tragedy in 2005 when a two-year-old male named Kabayan was electrocuted on a power transmission wire on Mount Apo's foothills, just nine months after being freed with radio and satellite tracking equipment.

Standing one metre (3.28 feet) tall with a two-metre (6.56-feet) wingspan and weighing 7.5 kilograms (16.5 pounds), the eagle with the massive hooked beak and hackles spreading out like a crown behind its head is found only here on Mindanao island.

It pairs for life and the female lays one egg every two years. Each eagle needs 17 square kilometres (6.56 square miles) of tropical rainforest to survive.

With old growth tropical rainforest being cut down at the rate of 100 hectares (247 acres) a day, only about 500 breeding pairs remain as prey and nesting sites vanish and the bird itself is pursued by trophy hunters.

Similar eagles are also found in far smaller numbers in forests on Luzon, Samar and Leyte islands, though lack of funds has meant little research has been done on their genetic make-up.

-- Aim is to release one bird each year to the wild --

Salvador says that because their prey is different and the islands have been separated for eons, it is possible that the Mindanao eagle is genetically distinct from the eagles found on the three other major Philippine islands.

Launched in 1978, the centre made a breakthrough in 1992 with its first hatchling, a male called Pag-asa, which means hope.

Having been raised for a life in captivity, Pag-asa would not survive in the wild. Instead, he remains at the foundation and is the main draw for the quarter of a million visitors who come each year.

The process of getting captive-bred eagles to pair, mate and lay an egg to supply the release programme could take up to four years, said Tadena, adding that sometimes the bigger female ends up killing the smaller male.

Trained at the Peregrine Fund, a Boise, Idaho-based centre for birds of prey that is also a key benefactor of the eagle foundation here, Tadena said the newer hatchlings are now raised without human contact so they do not come to rely on people for food.

They are put in large enclosures strategically placed on mountain slopes, where trainers release rabbits to hone the birds' hunting skills and roll meat down chutes to supplement their diet.

"Kabayan was already honing its hunting skills and relying less on supplemental feeding," Tadena said of the bird that was electrocuted. "The bird would steal chicks from nests on the hollows of trees and track ground mice and snakes."

Salvador said the centre is refining its eagle release protocol, training the birds to avoid high-tension power lines.

Preparing a captive-bred eagle for release costs around 37,000 dollars -- excluding the monitoring costs that require satellite tracking equipment. Each bird must be monitored for at least three years in the wild.

In its early years the programme was caught in the crossfire of communist guerrillas and government forces, forcing the breeding centre to relocate.

"The rebels were angry because we fed the eagles chickens. They told us, 'Why do the animals get chicken when Filipinos are dying of hunger?'" Tadena said.

The centre also rescues stricken eagles in the wild and since 1998, has saved 15 wounded birds. Thirteen survived and three were eventually released back to the wild. One other bird is due for release within two months after being nursed back to health.

"A lot of our retrievals over the past 10 years involved birds with lead pellets in them," said Salvador.

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Hong Kong wild bird tests positive for H5N1

Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

A wild magpie robin in Hong Kong has tested positive for the H5N1 birdflu virus, the government said in a statement on Friday.

The bird was found and collected on February 29 near the Tai Po Kau nature reserve in the New Territories.

Scientists fear the H5N1 strain of avian influenza could mutate into a form that jumps easily from human to human, threatening an epidemic which could kill millions.

A 44-year old woman in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong died last month from H5N1, which she likely contracted from sick poultry in her backyard.

Hong Kong has now confirmed five cases of H5N1 infected wild birds this year including two cases which forced the temporary closure of the Mai Po nature reserve as well as aviaries in the popular Ocean Park themepark.

(Reporting by James Pomfret)

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Tourism boom darkens Taiwan's Sun Moon Lake

Ralph Jennings Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

Sun Moon Lake has been compared to a classical Chinese landscape painting with its crystal waters reflecting surrounding snow-capped mountains.

But a hotel building boom around the mountain resort in central Taiwan has locals and environmentalists worried the unspoilt beauty of the lake, which draws 3 million tourists a year, might be ruined.

"Sun Moon Lake is a very important international site, and such an important resource should be protected," said Liu Ming-lone, spokesman for the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation, a Taipei-based non-governmental organization.

Seven hotels are being planned and built on the lake shores, with some of them charging as much as $500 per night.

One 200-room hotel just opened, while two more hotels are under construction. Another four hotels are being planned, including a high-end 100-room hotel resort and a 400-room two-star hotel geared toward budget tourists from mainland China.

Prospects for a tourism deal with China, which does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, have spurred development as the region prepares to host millions of well-heeled Chinese visitors should tourism agreements be reached between Beijing and Taipei.

The lake is well-known in China where descriptions in literature and text books give the impression that its beauty is unmatched on the mainland. Legal barriers to Chinese citizens entering Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China regards as a renegade province, give the lake an extra mystique.

But some locals suspect the hordes of tourists in China eager to visit the lake might be disappointed as development has already caused water pollution and traffic congestion. Locals also complain about unregulated construction without a unified theme as well as breaches of building codes.

"We don't need to limit the number of people, but we need to limit the number of buildings," said Roger Chang, 28, a regular visitor to the lake.

One of the hotels under construction will be 30-storeys high, far above new lake area height restrictions of seven storeys.

"With such a beautiful lake, we need some sort of master planned design to make it work out," said Hu Shan-wen, owner of the 6-year-old Spa Home hotel on the lake shores.

Faced with a faltering economy and high unemployment, the Taiwan government is keen to ramp up tourism to stimulate the services sector. Some critics believe it's eagerness is overcoming any prudence over Sun Moon Lake development projects.

Local authorities promise to put a cap on lakeshore development after the hotels in the pipeline are built, although construction will be allowed to proceed in the surrounding mountains with easy vehicle access to the lake.

There's concern the already congested two-lane highway to the lake will further clog with traffic when the new hotels open up despite a new shoreline shuttle bus route around the lake.

"There's still space to develop, but we should add only a few more hotels as there are transportation limits," said Joe Tseng, general manager of The Lalu, the shoreline's most famous lodging.

POLLUTION

Locals are also concerned that the development boom will cause pollution that might muddy the lake's pristine waters.

Last year, lake pollution rose about 2 percent from 2006 and the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration fined four hotels for improper treatment of wastewater.

"Lake water quality is very important," said tourism official Tseng Kuo-chi. "Right now it's being maintained well but as tourist numbers go up, we're afraid the quality could go down."

Seeking to cope with new pressures, two public water treatment systems will open up next year, handling 95 percent of the lakeshore's sewage, local tourism officials said.

Last year, the government approved funds to landscape the tip of Lalu Island, a boat tour landmark that was once a hill considered sacred by the local Thao aboriginal group.

China and Taiwan want a deal to bring up to 1,000 Chinese tourists to Taiwan per day, but negotiations are stalled. Taiwan is in the throes of a March 22 election and negotiations could be restarted when the new president takes office in late May.

An influx of visitors from China could mean that profits from tourism might outweigh concern about environmental impacts.

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

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Invasion of the giant oysters in Germany

The Independent 8 Mar 08;

Since its introduction in the 1970s, the Pacific oyster has spread like a plague, killing mussels, threatening birds and now even tourism. Tony Paterson reports from Germany on another worrying sign of global warming

Professor Karsten Reise does not normally use the sort of emotive language found in Hollywood horror movies. He is a serious and highly informed marine biologist in his late fifties who has been researching the environment around Germany's North Sea island of Sylt for well over a decade.

But on a grey and sea mist-bound afternoon, the heavily bearded professor walked over to a shelf in his office at Sylt's Alfred-Wegener Polar and Marine Research Institute overlooking the island's tidal sand flats and removed what looked like some ghastly freak of nature.

The remains of the creature in question was a giant barnacle-covered shell almost three times the size of an adult male's hand, yet shaped in the unmistakable form of an oyster. "This is the monster I found on the sands out there about four years ago," Dr Reise said, waving his arm in the direction of the sea. "Since then, the oyster phenomenon has turned into a proper invasion," he added.

Giant oyster specimens are not the only factors that seem to have induced uncomfortable feelings of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer-style panic on Germany's northernmost island. Even the academic literature on the subject speaks unreservedly about an apparently unstoppable "invasion" by an "alien species" of the island's protected tidal sand flats.

Sylt's alien is the Crassostrea gigas, or Pacific oyster, which currently accounts for about 90 per cent of all oysters consumed globally.

The Pacific oyster was introduced to European coasts in the 1970s from Japan and British Columbia following the virtual collapse of the Continent's native oyster industry. The Pacific oyster was not introduced to Sylt, which boasted a formidable pre-war oyster industry, until 1986, and then only as a product that would be carefully farmed in an environment controlled partly by man.

"The Sylt oyster producers were granted a licence to fish farm, but back then all of the experts were convinced that the waters around the island were far too cold in winter to enable the oysters to survive without human intervention," Dr Reise said. But in the meantime, the experts have been proved hugely, even alarmingly, wrong.

The scale of Sylt's oyster invasion is massive. The Alfred Wegener Institute first noticed that something unusual was happening on the island's protected tidal sand flats back in 1995 –nine years after the Pacific oyster was introduced at a lone oyster farm on Sylt's northernmost tip. Handfuls of wild Pacific oysters were found that autumn nestling on an indigenous blue mussel bed that was exposed at low tide.

At that stage, the island's marine biologists were not unduly surprised. A few wild, or feral, oysters were expected as a natural byproduct of the local oyster farm. In 1995 the feral Pacific oyster population was about one oyster per square metre of tidal sand flat on Sylt. By 2004 the figure had leapt to nearly 500 per square metre. By 2007 the island's feral Pacific oyster count jumped to a staggering 2,000 per square metre. "What we are now experiencing is exponential growth of the wild oyster population," says Dr Reise. "We don't yet know where the process will end."

At low tide out on the wind and wave-beaten expanses of sandy mud and seaweed, evidence of the island's oyster invasion is everywhere. Pairs of oystercatchers and the occasional Brent goose spring into flight from sands that are covered for almost as far as the eye can see with a carpet of feral oysters that crunch underfoot. Unlike those consumed in posh restaurants, these are stuck together in vast clumps made up of scores of small oysters, with the odd native blue mussel and winkle nestling in between. "Six or seven years ago there was nothing here but sand," Dr Reise said.

Marine biologists are unanimous in their explanation for the causes of the Pacific oyster invasion. Sylt, which is on the same latitude as Newcastle, used to experience temperatures that were low enough to freeze the shallow salt waters surrounding it during winter. But the last harsh winter on Sylt was at the beginning of 1996. Since then, the island has experienced nothing but mild winters. "Cold winters can bring the spread of wild oysters to a halt, but warm winters enable the oyster larvae to flourish," said Dr Reise. "Their increase is a direct result of global warming."

During the warmer-than-average summer experienced in northern Europe during 2006, the sea temperature was greatly increased and the warm water appears to have encouraged an explosion in Pacific oyster larvae. In its wild form, the oyster has managed to spread as far north as Bergen in Norway.

The experts are not sure whether the current oyster explosion will have serious environmental consequences. During the early stages of the invasion, oysters were found almost exclusively on Sylt's indigenous blue mussel beds, raising fears that the rising oyster population would kill off the mussels.

Seabirds that normally rely on mussels as a food source have also been affected. Eider ducks, which used to visit Sylt on a regular basis in winter, have all but disappeared. The oystercatcher, a wading bird that lives all year on the island, also relies on mussels to survive, despite its name.

Even tourism is affected. Visitors who used to enjoy strolling across the sands in their bare feet now risk injury on the razor-sharp shells that cover the Pacific oyster beds.

Sylt's lone oyster farm, Dittmeyer's Oyster Company, has been farming its "Sylter Royal" Pacific oysters in one of the island's bays since 1986. Mr Dittmeyer insists that the sudden invasion of wild oysters on Sylt simply shows the island is catching up with much of the rest of northern Europe, where the Pacific oyster dominates. "It is happening everywhere," he said.

Mr Dittmeyer started his oyster farm on Sylt with Pacific oysters imported from Colchester. It was a case of history repeating itself. The Danish King Knut the Great did exactly the same during the 11th century, when he imported shiploads of oysters from England to what is now Germany's north-west coast.

As in much of the rest of Europe, the inhabitants of Sylt were able to harvest oysters from the seabed for the next 900 years, until industrial fishing and disease rendered them virtually extinct. Marine biologists such as Dr Reise say that today's explosion of the wild Pacific oyster population is just one of global warming's effects. Nobody has been able to predict its consequences. One of the factors that makes the spread of wild oysters almost impossible to control is the fact that the creatures have no natural predator – yet.

In his office, Dr Reise has another shell that sits next to his monster Pacific oyster. It is a black and grey speckled conch about the size of a large fist that houses a large sea slug or snail called the Rapana, which is found in Japanese waters. The creature is capable of boring through the shell of a Pacific oyster. "It was introduced in the Black Sea and has since spread to the Mediterranean," the professor said. "It could conceivably be introduced in the North Sea."

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Singapore's first green community club plugs into sunshine

Tania Tan, Straits Times 8 Mar 08;

SINGAPORE'S first green community club, which uses a series of mirrored tubes to reflect sunlight and illuminate its interior, will be officially christened tomorrow by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Anchorvale Community Club, the first community building to be awarded the Green Mark certificate, could pave the way for other eco-friendly recreation centres, according to officials.

The community club has been outfitted with light pipes on its third-floor roof. The pipes reflect sunlight to the second-floor reception area of the 3,800 sq m building.

On sunny days, the system eliminates the need for light bulbs, said Ms Foo Soon Leng, building division director of the People's Association. The club is still equipped with light bulbs for cloudy days.

The club was welcomed by academics, who have long pushed for greener public buildings.

'When people think sunlight and energy saving, they immediately think solar cells,' said Associate Professor Stephen Wittkopf of the National University of Singapore's department of architecture. 'But day lighting, if used well, can be another big advantage.

'Many developed countries, such as the United States and those in Europe, have green buildings. It's about time Singapore joined them.'

The improvement is one of several that will help the centre cut its power bill by at least $12,500 annually.

In addition to the light pipes, the club has installed motion sensor lights, and has turned down the air-conditioning.

'With the success of this centre, we are aiming for future community clubs to be Green Mark-certified as well,' said Ms Foo. At least four new centres are expected to be built in the next few years, she said.

Awarded by the Building and Construction Authority, the Green Mark is a rating system which measures the environmental impact of a building based on how energy- and water-efficient it is.

Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Lam Pin Min, who oversees the area, said: 'The committee overseeing the project needed little convincing to jump onto the green bandwagon, as most of us felt that was the right thing to do to help conserve energy and protect the environment.'

The Government has spent over $30 million to encourage developers and companies to use energy-efficient building designs. About two in 10 government buildings have already performed energy audits. Of these, eight have adopted energy-saving measures - shaving $2.6 million off their electricity bills annually.

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Receipts from green taxes falling, says study

Matthew Phan, Business Times 8 Mar 08;

DESPITE an increasing number of environmental taxes - accompanied by loud cries for more - receipts from green taxes as a percentage of GDP fell slightly in developed countries from 1996 to 2005, according to a study by KPMG.

'It is odd to see the apparent importance of environmental taxes in so many economies has actually fallen,' said Owi Kek Hean, head of tax services at KPMG Singapore.

While GDP growth across OECD countries was strong over the period, green taxes as a proportion of total tax revenue seem to be falling in importance, he said.

Receipts from taxes classified as environmental in the OECD fell from 2.72 per cent of GDP in 1996 to 2.52 per cent in 2005. And as a proportion of total tax revenue, they declined 0.45 of a percentage point.

Environmental tax receipts among the 13 European Union nations fell during 1999-2005 from 2.8 per cent to 2.6 per cent of GDP, and from 6.7 per cent to 6.4 per cent of total taxes.

Environmental taxes as a percentage of GDP fell in 18 of the 29 OECD countries, by as much as 3.35 percentage points in places like Greece, where it was previously as high as 5 per cent.

The US had the lowest proportion of environmental taxes - 0.89 per cent in 2005, 0.13 of a percentage point down from a decade earlier.

Turkey had the highest such taxes of any OECD country, at 5.49 per cent in 2005, up more than three percentage points from 1996.

KPMG said the trend suggests that linking taxation to environmental change is complex. Taxes aimed at improving the environment could have unintended consequences, it said.

For one, it is difficult to categorise activities as 'good' and 'bad', with the latter taxed.

Pollution is not the result of an attempt to harm the environment, but often a side effect of activities intended to enhance our enjoyment of it, like travel or keeping warm, said KPMG.

Also, the paradox of environmental taxes is that the more successful they are in changing people's behaviour, the less revenue they will raise, it pointed out.

In the UK, for example, the fall in receipts was largely due to a fall, in real terms, in duty from road fuel. The same was true for many other large European economies.

And governments now have other ways of influencing behaviour, such as regulations or emissions trading schemes, KPMG said.

Governments need to take a balanced approach, with taxes as part of a package that includes other, more direct measures, says the study, undertaken by KPMG's Tax Business School in the UK.

Mr Owi said the study in some ways validates the carrot rather than stick approach that Singapore has taken so far.

Singapore has tended to use awards or tax allowances, such as for energy efficient equipment, to encourage green behaviour.

KPMG's study also said 'reliefs can never hold as significant a place in the environmental tax armoury as charges'.

Environmentally-friendly alternatives do not exist for all harmful actions, so policy must aim to reduce such actions by negative incentives, rather than just encouraging substitutes by positive incentives, it said.

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Greening the festival scene: Cars and rubbish can make a festival an eco-disaster

The Independent 8 Mar 08;

Cars and rubbish can make a festival an eco-disaster. But now organisers are tackling their carbon footprint. Nick Hasted reports

Thom Yorke's statement at a press conference for Friends of the Earth last week that Radiohead won't be playing Glastonbury this year, because it lacks "a public transport infrastructure", has brought home an uncomfortable truth.

The churned, litter-embedded wasteland left behind the day after a typical rock festival already looks like a Friends of the Earth recruiting poster. But as the summer festival season grows more packed and varied, Yorke has identified a sea-change.

Travellers to the glorious West Country, where Glastonbury is one of many festivals this year, are getting used to the fact that their trip is environmentally damaging. Traditional rock fans at Reading and Leeds, meanwhile, are being encouraged to return their beer-cups for recycling, preferably before urinating in them to hurl at Funeral for a Friend.

Most festivals claim to be taking some sort of "green" stand this year. Glastonbury's Michael Eavis, though, doesn't need Yorke to see a starker choice. "The environmental impact of festivals is disastrous," he states bluntly. "To pretend they're green is ridiculous. You can recycle like mad, you can bring people on public transport, which we do. Overall, though, with generator-diesel and travel, the greenest thing to do is not to run the event. But if we want something like Glastonbury, if it's part of our culture, that's the price one has to pay. The spiritual high that people get across the nation, and the moral integrity of the crowd, outweighs the environmental impact. We've always minimised the damage. But if you switched off everything that created carbon, we'd be bored to tears."

Smaller, newer festivals have nevertheless done their best. "We started wanting to make as little carbon impact as possible," recalls Graeme Merrifield, organiser of Wychwood, now in its fourth year at Cheltenham Racecourse. "Festivals who call themselves green actually go to a greenfield site in the middle of nowhere. They have to bring infrastructure in, and there's no public transport – cars are easily festivals' biggest environmental cost. We have a very strong alliance with Friends of the Earth, to build sustainable plans. We're creating a small community of like-minded people. We have workshops about green issues; ideas people can put in their lives if they want. But being carbon-neutral is fanciful."

Chris Tarren, production manager for both Wychwood and Dorset's End of the Road festival, has detailed green policies for both: low-energy light-bulbs, lessening the power pumped by generators; daylight sensors on lighting; over 60 per cent of waste recycled on-site. Wychwood has a solar cinema. End of the Road's food is locally (where possible) and ethically sourced, with biodegradable cutlery. Its co-creator Sofia Hagberg, coming from Sweden's micro-recycling culture, ensures even cigarette butts are sifted out. "I believe every little thing counts," she says. "I was surprised at how well the site looked at the end. People take responsibility when they see we care."

"You can try to have a carbon-neutral festival," believes the Isle of Wight's John Giddings. "With wind turbines and waves, you've got things at your disposal that you don't get in downtown Fulham. There are going to be elements of wind-power in the festival. We're also negotiating to plant 50,000 trees, one for every festival-goer. We're just wondering where to fit them on the island...."

The latter policy sounds like a benign gesture that hasn't quite been thought through, something that exercises Tarren. "There's a serious lack of understanding," he says. "Everyone thinks it's all about this buzz-word the Government keeps coming out with, cutting your 'carbon footprint'. But people don't understand what that means, or how individual efforts might make a difference. Why are we promoting the fact that we're going to be as green as possible, when we're still creating carbon? If the Government helped with costs, instead of buzz-words... I'd love to use green generators. But the green tax puts fuel costs up 80 per cent."

The attractions of the smaller festivals, though – their human, approachable scale, and personal, not corporate priorities – are having wider benefits, as Andrew Haworth, the major promoter and Live Nation's new environmental officer, explains. "Smaller festivals are incredibly useful for trailing initiatives that we can then scale up and try on a much larger scale. I could, theoretically, ensure solar panels [were in place] all over Hyde Park for our Wireless festival. But if the weather's not right those four days, we have no power. We can't take those risks. It's also easier if festivals start from scratch. If you're trying to take a big established festival in a direction it hasn't followed previously, you have to take baby steps. You can't outrun audience expectations. But it makes moral and business sense to harness live music's energy at putting over what's possible – to reduce our environmental footprint."

Hearing Melvin Benn, who as managing director of Festival Nation promotes Reading, Leeds, Glastonbury, Download and Latitude, earnestly discuss a new form of recyclable wax paper for Reading's beer cups, shows how things are changing. Suffolk's Latitude is his eco-flagship for older, family audiences, and even the bars serving its local cider are made from sustainable timber. But where Latitude's patrons have reusable beer-cups worth £2, this would, he says, get them "nicked or thrown" at Reading or Leeds, where returning one nets you 10p. More than 90 per cent recycling was the result. Two bags of recyclable rubbish got you a beer.

As Benn accepts, responsible behaviour at rock festivals is a contradiction. "Teenagers are teenagers. My 18-year-old's environmentally conscious, but can I get him to turn the light off? Work within what the audience actually are, rather than pretend they'll automatically change. They need an endgame – a can of beer. Not just the promise that they'll feel good. On the other hand, I have 70,000 young people camping at Reading. Not one has a TV, record-player, hair-drier or lights. At home, they'd be burning electricity. At festivals, their carbon footprint is near-zero. And they're seeing 30 to 50 bands at one go."

"They're all changing as fast as they can," pressure group A Greener Festival's Ben Challis admits. "The guy who used to run Download was quite brutal about it. He got a £250,000 landfill bill, went green, then worked out that some people might want a green festival, and he could make money. Then he felt a warm glow. Now, it's up to the audiences to do more. Driving to a festival without thinking about lift-share now starts to feel irresponsible. What Thom Yorke is doing is great, but he's not quite right; the real carbon footprint is from the audience, not the band."

This remains the elephant in the room for fans. Glastonbury has always been green at heart. Reading, often indifferent but in walking distance from a train station, is greener. But, though there are beautiful city festivals such as Leicester's Summer Sundae, the point of most is to experience strange music in an inaccessible, probably West-Country setting far from normal life. End of the Road, for all its shuttle-buses and lift-shares, is aptly named. But, like Glastonbury, its heart-stopping beauty is worth more, I would contend, than the carbon-benefits of central London.

"Can it be justified?" Hagberg agonises. "Depends who you're asking. Mother Earth, probably not. The people who leave full of positive memories, in a more idealistic frame of mind? Maybe so."

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Costa Rica Aims to Be First Carbon-Neutral Country

Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News 7 Mar 08;

A small but growing number of countries are racing to become "carbon neutral" by reducing or offsetting their emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Roberto Dobles, the minister of environment and energy for Costa Rica, calls the race the "carbon-neutral World Cup."

His country recently became the first to make the green pledge.

"We realize that climate change is probably the major challenge facing humanity today, and it's everyone's responsibility to combat it," Dobles said in an interview at his office in San Jose.

The quest for carbon neutrality seeks to balance the amount of carbon dioxide a country releases by burning fossil fuels with the amount that it captures or offsets by, for example, planting trees. (See how global warming works.)

At a United Nations climate conference last month, the U.N.'s Environment Program launched a new online network of countries engaged in the carbon-neutral endeavor.

At the 154-nation talks, Monaco, the host country, became the fifth to commit to carbon neutrality, joining Norway, New Zealand, Iceland, and Costa Rica.

The smart money may be on Costa Rica to get there first, experts say, even though the small Central American country faces a host of problems, from illegal logging to overdevelopment fueled by tourism.

"There are advantages that Costa Rica offers to becoming carbon neutral," said Manuel Ramirez, Costa Rica director for the environmental nonprofit Conservation International.

For example, over 80 percent of Costa Rica's energy is already generated through renewable sources, such as water and wind.

And the country's rich tropical biosphere makes the environmental stakes especially high there.

Slightly smaller than West Virginia, Costa Rica is believed to house about 5 percent of the world's plant and animal species.

"Because Costa Rica is so biologically intense, we recognize that we have a special responsibility," said Dobles, the environment minister.

Green Luxury

Dobles predicts that greener business practices will ultimately lead to a greener bottom line, especially in the tourism industry.

"We have an opportunity to become the first carbon-neutral tourist destination," he said. "We want Costa Rica to be a guilt-free location to visit, and that will be good for business."

Some tourist areas of Costa Rica, particularly the northwest Guanacaste region, have suffered from overdevelopment in recent years (see a map of Costa Rica).

Many of the sleepy fishing villages that once dotted the country's Pacific coast have turned into sprawling beach resorts catering to thousands of mostly American tourists.

There are now three dozen nonstop flights from the United States to Guanacaste's provincial capital, Liberia.

Now the region is advertising itself as the next eco-friendly luxury hot spot, and several dozen high-end hotel chains are planning green resorts along the coast.

Ronald Sanabria, director of the Rainforest Alliance's sustainable tourism program in Costa Rica, says the country's carbon-neutral pledge is "courageous and forward-thinking."

"We have high hopes for this commitment."

But some observers worry that development is moving too fast for the region's infrastructure to handle and that regulations are not always followed.

"The current government knows mistakes were made in Guanacaste," said Jonathan Tourtellot, director of the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Many tourism companies have now begun measuring their carbon output and offsetting them through reforestation projects.

Oil Exploration

In addition to tourist development, deforestation has also taken a toll throughout the mountainous country, but the government has cracked down hard on illegal logging in recent years.

"Deforestation has halted mostly, or it is very low," said Ramirez, of Conservation International.

"The population has a stronger environmental awareness level than before."

As part of its quest for carbon neutrality, Costa Rica's government compensates landowners for planting and protecting trees on their property, since the trees help capture carbon, protect watersheds, and preserve scenic beauty.

The decade-old program is funded through a 3.5 percent tax on gasoline and pays about U.S. $15 million a year to around 8,000 property owners.

More than six million new trees were planted last year, surpassing a government target by more than a million trees, according to officials.

This year Costa Rica plans to plant seven million more, "almost two new trees for every person in the country," said Dobles, the environment minister.

The Costa Rican government also recently signed an agreement with the United States that results in one of the largest "debt-for-nature" swaps in history.

According to the agreement, the United States will forgive U.S. $26 million of Costa Rica's debt, freeing up that money for Costa Rica to invest in tropical forest conservation programs over the next 16 years.

Is "Carbon Neutral" a Cheat?

Some critics have dismissed carbon neutrality pledges such as Costa Rica's as publicity stunts, arguing that the only way to achieve climate neutrality is to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions completely.

The Costa Rican government has also come under strong criticism recently for its plans to begin exploring for oil in its territorial waters.

This is an apparent reversal of a 2002 declaration by then-President Abel Pacheco that Costa Rica would become an environmental leader and not a "petroleum or mining enclave."

"There's a lack of strong political will to stop oil exploration in the country," said Ramirez, of Conservation International.

"Current governmental officials … are under extreme pressure to explore oil-dependent mechanisms. The general population could go back to the old days where oil-dependent energy was not seen as a problem."

For his part, Dobles says that increasing demand for energy means Costa Rica needs oil in the short term before more environmentally friendly fuels become readily available.

Unless it discovers oil at home, Dobles said, Costa Rica will be forced to import heavy crude from Venezuela that is expensive to refine and generates more pollution than lighter grades of oil.

"If we had hydrogen as a source today, we'd go for hydrogen," he said. "But we don't."

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MIT tackles urban gridlock with foldable car idea

Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

Wouldn't it be nice to drive a car into town without worrying about finding a parking space?

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised just such a vehicle, a futuristic "City Car" that could even drive itself.

Once at your destination, the vehicle's computers would, at the press of a button, look for a parking spot behind others like itself, then fold roughly in half so you could stack it there as you would a shopping cart.

"We have reinvented urban mobility," said Bill Mitchell, a professor in architecture and director of the project at an MIT think tank in Cambridge, just outside Boston.

The vehicle hasn't yet been built. But a miniature mock-up version has gone on display at a campus museum, and there are plans to build a full-scale model this spring.

The dozen or so engineers and architects on Mitchell's team are confident their computer-generated work is on target.

They feel their golf cart-sized vehicle could provide a novel solution to the chronic traffic congestion afflicting cities across the United States, Europe and Asia -- not to mention pollution and energy use, since it would run on a rechargeable battery, the researchers say.

On the drawing board, their two-seater is roughly half the size of a typical compact automobile and a little smaller than the Smart car made by Daimler's Mercedes-Benz.

"It's a virtual computer on wheels," said Franco Vairani, designer of the vehicle's foldable frame, which he predicts will shrink the car to as little as an eighth the space needed to park the average car. While parked, it would hook up to an electricity grid for recharging, he added.

Hundreds could be stacked around a city and "you would just go and swipe your (credit) card and take the first one available and drive away," Vairani said, seated by his computerized drawing board.

People wouldn't have to worry about where to park their cars in town and automobiles would take up less urban space, leaving more room for parks and walkways, he added.

Peter Schmitt, a team engineer, says the car would have independently powered robotic wheels and be controlled using a computerized drive-by-wire system with a button or joystick.

Mitchell said he would like to bring the car to the manufacturing stage within the next three to four years.

But a key consultant for the project, Christopher Borroni-Bird, director of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at U.S. automaker General Motors Corp, said he doesn't think City Car is quite ready yet for the road.

"What we have is a very intriguing concept," Borroni-Bird told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It is certainly a very promising idea, but I don't want to say it is ready for production ... there's still a lot of work yet to take it from concept to production."

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Road to clean hydrogen in Singapore

BMW says its hydrogen cars are just the beginning of a green revolution
Christopher Tan, Straits Times 8 Mar 08;

IT RUNS on hydrogen (the most abundant stuff in the universe) and emits nothing much else but distilled water from its tailpipe. Yet, it drives just like any other BMW 7-series V12.

Sounds like a limousine the folks at Greenpeace might approve of. But, in reality, the BMW Hydrogen 7 is not exactly 'green'.

Not right now, anyway.

Yes, it is true that hydrogen is the world's most common element. But harnessing it and storing it in a double-walled highly insulated tank at minus 250 deg C so that it can power a Beemer for nearly 200km expends lots of energy. Energy provided mainly by fossil fuels.

BMW's head of hydrogen project infrastructure Michael Meurer says 80 to 90 per cent of the hydrogen used to power the group's fleet of 100 Hydrogen 7s is 'black hydrogen' (because of its non-green derivation).

But he is working hard with third parties to create renewable means (such as solar, wind and hydro) to make, freeze and store hydrogen. He does not say when this end can be realised, but back in 2000, BMW predicted that by 2020, half the cars it sells would be hydrogen-driven.

It is a long shot, but BMW's attempt is the only one that can make a clean break from the tyranny of oil. Well, that and Daimler's fuel-cell project.

BMW chose a hydrogen combustion platform, instead of a fuel-cell format, where hydrogen is used to make electricity to power motors in the car.

'Above all, a BMW must be a BMW,' says Mr Roland Krueger, head of BMW Asia. 'So it must have the driving characteristics of a BMW.'

Fuel-cell cars tend to drive like powerful golf buggies.

But unlike fuel-cell cars, hydrogen combustion engines still produce traces of undesirable by-products, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

The Hydrogen 7 rides well. Silent and smooth, it betrays just a hint of firmer damping - necessary because of the 200kg hydrogen tank in the rear. The car is 430kg heavier than the petrol-only 760Li, but packs merely 260bhp (versus the 760Li's 445bhp) and 300Nm (600Nm).

The power downgrade is presumably to tame the thirst of the hefty beast. Even so, the bi-fuel Hydrogen 7 will use about 14 litres of petrol per 100km in mixed cycle (more than the 445bhp 760Li). When using hydrogen, it will need over 50 litres of the stuff per 100km - despite hydrogen having a much higher energy content than petrol.

Even with hydrogen priced at a heavily subsidised 8 euros per kg (or 14.3 litres) in Germany, the Hydrogen 7 uses 29 euros per 100km in 'green' mode - 10 euros more than in petrol mode.

You might say saving the earth is never cheap. Then again, a fuel-cell car uses far less hydrogen.

Both the hydrogen combustion car and fuel-cell car have hefty price tags, estimated to be 10 times costlier than conventional models - and that's another hurdle to overcome before such cars can be sold commercially.

Just as BMW is showcasing five Hydrogen 7s here, two auto honchos at the ongoing Geneva Motor Show say hydrogen cars are far from commercial viability.

General Motors vice-chairman Bob Lutz and Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe said at separate interviews at the show that electric hybrids are better options, chiefly because they are affordable.

It is interesting to note that GM had been flip-flopping on this issue. In the 1990s, it had an up-and-running electric car programme but canned it. It then jumped on the fuel-cell bandwagon, only to have Mr Lutz say it is not viable now.

BMW, at least, has been consistent (or stubborn). But it must find clean and cheap ways to make hydrogen if it wants its dream to take off.

'This is just the beginning,' declares BMW Asia's Mr Krueger, pointing to a Hydrogen 7 purring in the driveway. 'Just the beginning.'

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Reef fish get lost as climate changes

Michael Perry, Reuters 6 Mar 08;

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Climate change might be causing reef fish to get lost, unable to return to breeding grounds from the open ocean, which could have profound implications for the survival of reef ecosystems, Australian scientists say.

Climate change-induced environmental stress, including warmer and more acidic seawater, could be hindering the development of the ear bones in young reef fish, which rely on sound for navigation, the marine experts said on Friday.

The scientists from the James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that fish with asymmetrical ear bones struggle to return to their home reef.

"In our opinion, ear bone asymmetry in the early life stages of reef fish interferes with their capacity to find and settle on coral reefs," fish ecologist Monica Gagliano said in a statement.

Fish at the end of their "ocean stage" after hatching navigate by homing-in on reef-associated sounds, such as the gurgling of fish and the snapping of crustaceans, said the scientists, whose study was published on Friday in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Vertebrate animals make sense of sounds by comparing differences in the acoustic signal between their two ears. To do this well, ear structures must be relatively symmetrical. Asymmetrical ear bones do not appear to make the fish deaf, but might interfere with the ability of the fish to hear effectively.

The scientists said ear bone asymmetry could be closely linked to rising sea surface temperature and acidity, caused by high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as well as localized stresses. Oceans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, acting as a giant sink for the greenhouse gas.

Fish ear bones, like fish skeletons and reef-building corals, are made from calcium carbonate. When seawater becomes more acidic, there is less calcium carbonate available for building calcium-based structures, including fish ear bones.

LOST AT SEA

The scientists studied damselfish, which are abundant on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and western Australia's Ningaloo Reef, and found that at hatching, 41 percent of a sample group of fish had symmetrical ear bones and 59 percent asymmetrical.

When the scientists examined the ear bones of fish returning from open ocean to settle on the reef a few weeks later, far fewer asymmetrical fish made their way back to the reef.

The scientists also found that those with asymmetrical ear bones that did make it to the reef took longer to do so than their symmetrical counterparts.

"There is a degree of asymmetry that is acceptable in the population, some is natural," said scientist Martial Depczynski.

"Not all the babies are created equal and not all of them are going to make it, even in pristine environments," said Depczynski.

But Depczynski said the already high mortality rate among reef fish hatchlings was likely to rise even higher if young fish could not navigate by sound.

The scientists said they suspected asymmetrical ear development might be responsible for a drop in the number of damselfish in recent years, but more study was needed.

"Five years ago we used to see them in the thousands, now they are not so plentiful," said Gagliano.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

Reef fish eavesdrop to find home
BBC News 7 Mar 08;

Coral reef fish spend weeks scouting out a new neighbourhood before they move in - just like human house buyers do, Edinburgh scientists have revealed.

The fish use their acute sense of hearing to eavesdrop on locations before deciding where to live.

Edinburgh University researchers studied shoals of fish near the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

They found damselfish, cardinalfish, emperors and blennies chose communities by the "reef noise" they give off.

They then choose one based on their needs - in much the same way that a human would choose a new neighbourhood based on local schools or work commitments.

Very young fish - those who have just developed as larvae in the open sea - choose locations with invertebrates such as shrimp, which give off a high frequency sound, and hide in holes snatching passing food.

As they grow older, scientists say the fish become "more aware" of the social groups and communities they would like to live in.

They are then drawn towards reefs populated with fish - which produce a lower pitched sound - where they can find shoal mates, forage for food and expand their territories.

The research shows that these natural "cues" are important for determining how communities are established.

Shipping, drilling, mining and active sonar are all adding to levels of noise pollution, but the impacts on community structure are not known.

Dr Steve Simpson, of Edinburgh University's school of biological sciences, said: "These findings show that hearing is crucial for the survival of fish.

"Reef noise includes the sounds of invertebrates and fish feeding, and so provides other fish with direct information about the residents on the reef."

The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) , the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (FSBI) and the British Ecological Society, has been published in the journals Coral Reefs, Animal Behaviour and Proceedings of the Royal Society.

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