Wildlife threatens many poor farmers' crops: WWF

Laura MacInnis, Reuters 14 May 08;

GENEVA (Reuters) - Elephants and other wildlife damage millions of dollars' worth of poor farmers' crops each year, which could be avoided with proper fencing and better land use, a leading environmental group said on Wednesday.

The Swiss-based WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, said wild elephants cost Namibian communal farmers $1 million a year, and up to a quarter of the household incomes of poor farming families in Nepal.

Indonesian palm oil companies and other agri-businesses can also lose significant income from elephant encroachment and efforts to keep them off farms, according to WWF.

"Governments could save human lives and millions of dollars in crop and income losses for the rural poor through better consideration of the needs of wildlife," it said in a report describing the competition between wild elephants and people for land, food and water in Nepal, Indonesia and Namibia.

The increasing human population and destruction of animal habitats by global warming mean people and wildlife were living closer together than ever before, often creating serious problems.

"When wildlife lose their natural habitats and have reduced access to natural food sources, they eat agricultural crops, livestock, and can destroy property and can injure or kill people," the WWF report found.

Many communities capture or kill animals in retaliation for such damage, threatening biodiversity in already vulnerable and impoverished areas, the conservation group said.

Namibian crop enterprises located near unfenced wildlife habitats can be "entirely economically unviable", the WWF said, recommending that farms be set up as far from such areas as possible. Governments should not offer incentives for farming in areas near wildlife zones, it said.

Farmers in Nepal experienced more crop damage when nearby forests are sparse, the study found. The WWF also concluded that in Riau, Indonesia, human deaths from elephants have been most frequent in heavily deforested areas.

In addition to reducing wildlife habitats, the WWF said declining forest cover in Riau would make it difficult for the region to capitalize on its carbon-rich peat swamp forests, an important future source of globally exchanged carbon credits.

"There are many land uses that do not attract wildlife and can act as buffers," the WWF said, noting that certain plants serve to deter wild elephants and other animals who would otherwise destroy agricultural crops.

It also called for increased cooperation between government divisions, the agricultural industry and the forestry sector to ensure that farmlands and human settlements are planned in a way that minimizes damage to wildlife, and vice versa.

(edited by Richard Meares)

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Mysterious Ailment Could Wipe Out U.S. Northeast Bats

Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 14 May 08;

This summer scientists hope to finally crack the case of the mysterious ailment afflicting bats in the U.S. Northeast—before time runs out for the animals and the local environment.

The emergence of pregnant females from their wintering grounds should provide vital clues to the extent and transmission mode of the affliction, known as white-nose syndrome.

First identified in February 2007 among hibernating bats in caves outside of Albany, New York, the ailment has became especially troubling this year, with signs of the illness spotted at more than two dozen caves and mines used by hibernating bats around New England and New York.
Mortality rates in affected hibernation sites can be as high as 80 to 100 percent, and tens of thousands of bats have been found dead.

Because a single bat may typically eat some 3,000 insects a night, experts say, the consequences could be dire for entire ecosystems.

"What we saw last year was kind of just one cave affected, and this year we have seen many hibernation sites in multiple states," said wildlife disease specialist Kimberli Miller at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

"It's hard to predict whether next year it will be in even more locations or whether it won't," she added. "It is definitely a big concern."

Winter Sleep Cut Short

The mysterious ailment gets its name from the white fungus that grows on bats' noses and often on other body parts. It has been seen in little brown, big brown, northern long-eared, and eastern pipistrelle bats so far.

Scientists are unsure how, or if, the disease is spread from bat to bat. The fungus may be the primary pathogen causing the syndrome. Or it may be that normally present fungi have been able to grow unchecked in animals weakened by illness.

"They've used up all of their fat stores, they are emaciated, and instead of having enough fat to make it through the winter—they didn't," Miller said.

"We don't know at this point if they weren't in healthy condition going into hibernation or if something occurred during hibernation," she said, noting that some bats even emerged from their winter slumbers when food is scarce — a clear sign of trouble.

The Lost Generation?

To find answers, National Wildlife Health Center scientists are performing necropsies on nearly a hundred bat carcasses, and many other labs are following suit and eagerly awaiting results.

"Labs have done that first level of analysis looking for known pathogens or obvious contaminants—[something in the] physiology that might indicate an infection of some sort," said Susi von Oettingen, an endangered-species biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Concord, New Hampshire.

"Many of these bats were malnourished, dehydrated, basically starving, [but] otherwise seem to look normal."

Meanwhile the bats that have emerged from hibernation this spring, especially pregnant females, offer a new opportunity to decode white-nose syndrome—or at least find out how devastating it has been over the winter.

"Most females [mate] in the fall [but utilize] delayed gestation. They emerge pregnant, and then the fetus starts to grow once they reach their summer habitat," von Oettingen said.

"The female bats that survived and emerged, are they going to have enough strength to have offspring?" she asked.

Because bats typically have only one pup a year, they are in a poor position to recover from population plunges.

Bat Barn Key Study Site

An otherwise unassuming barn in Peterborough, New Hampshire, is one of the key sites that may help experts answer their many questions about the affliction.

Independent bat expert Scott Reynolds, a teacher at St. Paul's School in nearby Concord, has studied and tagged little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) at the site for 15 years.

The barn is a maternity habitat. In summer it fills with female bats that have hibernated all winter in far-off caves or mines.

This winter, four bats from the Peterborough barn were found in hibernation sites, or hibernacula, in New York and Vermont where white-nose syndrome was reported.

But the vast majority of the bats in Reynolds's long-term study hibernate in areas unknown to humans. During some 14 years of banding the barn's bats, only a handful have ever been found in hibernacula.

"Because we've gone into every hibernacula that we know of in the Northeast, we presume that at least 2,000 [bats from the barn] are living at any one time and we can't find them. Huge populations are wintering somewhere that we don't know about," Reynolds said.

"Is white-nose syndrome localized at the [two dozen-odd] sites where it has been discovered? Or is it much more pervasive and these hibernation sites that we don't even know about yet are going to get wiped out?"

In early June, when Reynolds begins to revisit the little brown bats, the Peterborough barn and other oft-studied sites may provide some answers.

"If numbers are down a lot, it means that even these hidden hibernacula are under threat, and [the ailment] is even bigger than we think," he said.

The prospect is unnerving. Reynolds warned that the Northeast's bats are facing their gravest known threat.

"If this is transmissible, it could really wipe out the flying, nocturnal insectivores section of the ecosystem."

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Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

Linda Stewart Ball, Associated Press Yahoo News 14 May 08;

In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants" — crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

"They're itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."

The ants — formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens" — have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

"At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

But the ants also like to suck the sweet juices from plants, feed on such beneficial insects as ladybugs, and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken.

They also bite humans, though not with a stinger like fire ants.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA's Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven't caused any major problems there yet.

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants — which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season — appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

"The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good," said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.

It's not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.

At the same time, the ants aren't taking the bait usually left out in traps, according to exterminators, who want the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen restrictions on the use of more powerful pesticides.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

"It looked like someone had come along and poured coffee granules all around the perimeter of the rooms," said Lisa Calhoun, who paid exterminators $1,200 to treat an infestation of her parents' home in the Houston suburb of Pearland.

The Texas Department of Agriculture is working with A&M researchers and the EPA on how to stop the ants.

"This one seems to be like lava flowing and filling an entire area, getting bigger and bigger," said Ron Harrison, director of training for the big pest-control company Orkin Inc.

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US lists polar bear as threatened species

H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Yahoo News 15 May 08;

The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species Wednesday because of the loss of Arctic sea ice but also cautioned the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses, meaning, he said, that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

But Kempthorne said it would be "wholly inappropriate" to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

The Endangered Species Act "is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy," said Kempthorne, reflecting a view recently expressed by President Bush.

The department outlined a set of administrative actions and limits to how it planned to protect the bear with its new status so that it would not have wide-ranging adverse impact on economic activities from building power plants to oil and gas exploration.

"This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," said Kempthorne. He said he had consulted with the White House on the decision, but "at no time was there ever a suggestion that this was not my decision."

Kempthorne, at a news conference, was armed with slides and charts showing the dramatic decline in sea ice over the last 30 years and projections that the melting of ice — a key habitat for the bear — would continue and may even quicken.

He cited conclusions by department scientists that sea ice loss will likely result in two-thirds of the polar bears disappearing by mid-century. The bear population across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland doubled from about 12,000 to 25,000 since 1960, but he noted that scientists now predict a significant population decline. Studies last year by the U.S. Geological Survey suggested 15,000 bears would be lost in coming decades with those in the western Hudson Bay area of Alaska and Canada under the greatest stress.

But when asked how the bear will be afforded greater protection, Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had difficulty coming up with examples.

Better management of bear habitat on shore and making sure bears aren't threatened by people including hunters, more studies on bear population trends and their feeding habits were among the areas mentioned. "I don't want to prejudge recommendations for (bear) management," said Hall whose agency administers the Endangered Species Act.

Environmentalists were already mapping out plans to file lawsuits challenging the restrictive measures outlined by Kempthorne.

"They're trying to make this a threatened listing in name only with no change in today's impacts and that's not going to fly," said Jamie Rappaport Clark of Defenders of Wildlife and a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director.

Members of Congress also were skeptical.

The Bush administration "is forcing the polar bear to sink or swim," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of a House committee on global warming.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called it "a lifeline for our last remaining polar bears" but said the bear's survival won't be assured without limits on oil development in the same Arctic waters where the bears are found.

Despite the new listing, the announcement underscores the need to approve climate legislation that would limit the release of greenhouse gases and avert the future effects on climate change, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Environment Committee.

Scientists have blamed global warming for the disappearance of sea ice which is vital for the bear's survival.

Summer ice surrounding the North Pole declined an average of 10 percent per decade since 1979, with a loss of about 28,000 square miles per year, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Last year was the sharpest drop, as the amount of sea ice in September fell to 1.65 million square miles, or 23 percent below the previous low in 2005.

Kempthorne proposed 15 months ago to investigate whether the polar bear should be declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That triggered a year of studies into the threats facing the bear and its survival prospects.

A decision had been expected early this year, but the Interior Department said it needed more time to work out many of the details, prompting criticism from members of Congress and environmentalists. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing a decision and a federal court on April 29 set a May 15 deadline for a decision.

A species is declared "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act if it is found to be at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future. If it does not make progress toward recovery, it can be declared "endangered" meaning it is at risk of extinction and needs even greater protection.

US lists polar bears as threatened
Jitendra Joshi, Yahoo News 14 May 08;

The US government Wednesday listed polar bears as a threatened species owing to a drastic reduction in Arctic sea ice, but stood by its permission for oil and gas drilling in their frozen habitat.

The announcement by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne amounted to the government's first use of the Endangered Species Act to list a species as menaced because of a loss of habitat caused by global warming.

"While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," Kempthorne told a news conference.

"Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective," he said, echoing President George W. Bush's reasons for renouncing the Kyoto treaty on climate change.

The Interior Department said that under the ESA, a listing of "threatened" means that a species is at risk of becoming "endangered" within the foreseeable future. It is listed as endangered when it faces imminent extinction.

The polar bear now comes under federal protection, but officials were vague about what that would mean in practice, and were at pains to stress that it did not mean a halt to energy exploration in northern Alaska and offshore.

The Bush administration supports oil drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska, adamant that industry regulations already exist to protect species such as polar bears, whales, seals and walruses.

Kempthorne did detail greater steps to monitor polar bear populations in Alaska and outlying islands in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the US government this year has sold new leases for energy exploration.

Hunting of polar bears is already restricted under US law after their numbers fell as low as 12,000 in the 1960s, and Kempthorne said ice melting posed the greatest danger now, not energy production or indigenous peoples.

The iconic bears' population has rebounded to an estimated 20,000-25,000, two-thirds of them in Canada, but Kempthorne said they were "likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future" without preventive action.

The interior secretary displayed images showing Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest level ever recorded by satellite, 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.

Kempthorne said he was acting on advice from the scientific community and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and denied coming under any pressure from the White House to stop the listing.

"Today's decision is a tremendous victory for one of the world's most iconic and charismatic animals," said Carter Roberts, president of the US arm of the World Wildlife Fund.

"The other big winner today is sound science, which has clearly trumped politics, providing polar bears a new lease on life," he said.

But WWF and other environmental groups also stressed that the US government, which has resisted all legal efforts to parlay the ESA into a law against climate change, had to address the underlying cause: greenhouse gas emissions.

"Federal protection represents only the tip of the iceberg if Americans want to save the polar bear," said Betsy Loyless, senior vice president of the National Audubon Society.

"Listing the bear as threatened is not going to save it if we continue to melt (ice) and drill its habitat," she said.

A Canadian scientific panel last month urged Canada's government to act to safeguard the polar bear, which it recommended designating as a species "of special concern" but not one imminently threatened with extinction.

Kempthorne said the "special concern" category did not exist in US law and he had no option, given the scientific advice, to list polar bears as threatened.

But Edward Markey, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives select committee on global warming, said that at the same time, the US government was allowing Arctic oil and gas drilling to continue "unchecked."

"Essentially, the administration is giving a gift to Big Oil, and short shrift to the polar bear," he said.

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Staggering Amount of Food Wasted

LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 14 May 08;

While a global food crisis sharpens, a new report says a "staggering" amount of food is tossed out as garbage.

More than enough food is produced to feed the world, the report contends. It just doesn't all get where it's needed.

In the United States, as much as 30 percent of food, worth about $48.3 billion, is tossed out each year, according to the report by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

If a significant amount of that food can be saved, then international trade should allow some of it to get in the hands of the hungry, the researchers said today.

Wasted food means wasted water, too.

"As much as half of the water used to grow food globally may be lost or wasted," said David Molden, director of research at IWMI. "Curbing these losses and improving water productivity provides win-win opportunities for farmers, business, ecosystems and the global hungry. An effective water-saving strategy will first require that minimizing food wastage is placed firmly on the political agenda."

An estimated 1.2 billion people already live in areas where there is not enough water to meet demand, the report states. And rising demand means the problem is getting worse.

"Unless we change our practices, water will be a key constraint to food production in the future," said Pasquale Steduto of the FAO.

In poorer countries, a majority of uneaten food is lost before it has a chance to be consumed. Depending on the crop, an estimated 15-35 percent of food may be lost in the field. Another 10-15 percent is discarded during processing, transport and storage.

In richer countries, production is more efficient but waste is greater: People toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it. And many people overeat, the report notes.

In a recent article by LiveScience, researchers said new technologies can improve food production in the long-term, but the United Nations has made it clear that short-term solutions are needed to prevent unrest and starvation in many parts of the world.

The new report finds opportunities amid the current challenges.

"Improving water productivity and reducing the quantity of food that is wasted can enable us to provide a better diet for the poor and enough food for growing populations," said Jan Lundqvist of SIWI. "Reaching the target we propose, a 50 percent reduction of losses and wastage in the production and consumption chain, is a necessary and achievable goal."

The report is being presented today at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.

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Greenhouse gases highest for 800,000 years

Alister Doyle, Reuters 14 May 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Greenhouse gases are at higher levels in the atmosphere than at any time in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice on Wednesday that extends evidence that mankind is disrupting the climate.

Carbon dioxide and methane trapped in tiny bubbles of air in ancient ice down to 3,200 meters (10,500 ft) below the surface of Antarctica add 150,000 years of data to climate records stretching back 650,000 years from shallower ice drilling.

"We can firmly say that today's concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are 28 and 124 percent higher respectively than at any time during the last 800,000 years," said Thomas Stocker, an author of the report at the University of Berne.

Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of greenhouse gases were guided mainly by long-term shifts in the earth's orbit around the sun that have plunged the planet into ice ages and back again eight times in the past 800,000 years.

The U.N. Climate Panel last year blamed human activities, led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases, for modern global warming that may disrupt water and food supplies with ever more droughts, floods and heatwaves.

"The driving forces now are very much different from the driving forces in the past when there was only natural variation," Stocker told Reuters of the study in the journal Nature by scientists in Switzerland, France and Germany.

The experts, working on the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, drilled down almost to bedrock in Antarctica. They recovered layers of ice formed by compressed snow, which can be counted much like the rings on trees.

DEEPER ICE

Stocker said Chinese and Australian scientists were examining possibilities for drilling in parts of Antarctica with even deeper ice, in some places 4,500 meters thick, that could yield atmospheric records dating back 1.5 million years.

The study also found big natural shifts in carbon dioxide levels. "We find very conspicuous natural oscillations of carbon dioxide 770,000 years ago that bear the fingerprint of abrupt climate change during ice ages," Stocker said.

And the Nature report also set a new record low for carbon dioxide at 172 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere about 667,000 years ago, about 10 ppm below the previous known low and giving an ancient natural range of 172 to about 300 ppm.

The study suggested that the low might be a sign that the oceans once soaked up more carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide levels are now at about 380 ppm.

Taken together, the data "allow us to learn more eventually about the carbon cycle and its responses to climate change."

Temperatures in an ice age are about 5-6 Celsius (9 to 11 Fahrenheit) colder than now, already a mild period in earth's history. Climate change could add a "best guess" of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius this century, according to the U.N. panel.

The study also linked variations in methane to monsoons.

"The variations of methane concentration point to a strengthening of the monsoon system in the tropics in the most recent 400,000 years. These monsoon cycles have become stronger in the second half of this long time period," Stocker said.

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One Degree of Warming Having Major Impact, Study Finds

John Roach, National Geographic News 14 May 08;

Human-induced climate warming is already having a dramatic effect on Earth's plumbing, plants, and animals, according to an exhaustive analysis of data from around the world.

The report's individual findings are familiar and widely cited, such as cannibalistic polar bears, melting glaciers, and earlier-blooming plants.

But this is the first time the data have been compiled in a single study and directly linked to human activity, the report authors say.

The results underscore and extend the conclusions of a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found human-induced warming was "likely" to have effects on a wide array of Earth's systems.

Outside experts call the new paper a sweeping portrait of the consequences of anthropogenic warming, noting that it could further spur political advocacy.

In telephone interviews, two of the study's authors expressed particular concern at the amount of change that has occurred with just 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) of average warming.

Global average temperatures are expected to rise between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2 and 6 degrees Celsius) before the climate stabilizes over the next century, according to the IPCC.

Study co-author Terry Root, a biologist at Stanford University in California, said the new report is similar to findings presented by the IPCC since 2001—only now the alarm bell is ringing louder.

"We need to start paying attention to the bell," she said, "because if we don't there's going to be a lot of extinctions, I'm afraid."

Strong Links

The researchers analyzed published data on 829 physical systems—such as melting glaciers and warming waters—and 28,800 living plant and animal systems stretching back to 1970.

All of the systems have shown documented changes over the past few decades.

In 95 percent of the physical systems and 90 percent of the living systems, the changes are consistent with the predicted effects of a warming climate, according to the researchers.

The team then used statistical analyses to compare the trends to global and continental temperature changes and found a strong link.

"It is very unlikely for there to be any other reason for those linkages, other than the human influence on the temperature," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and lead author of the study.

At the continental scale, the link was strongest in North America, Asia, and Europe. Central and South America, Africa, and Australia lack sufficient data for a robust correlation, she noted.

Rosenzweig, Root, and colleagues from nine other institutions report their findings in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.

David Inouye is a biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park who has worked at the Rocky Mountain Research Laboratory in Colorado to document the earlier arrival of spring.

He was not involved with the new paper, which he said is a "major contribution" to making a connection between human-induced warming and observed changes.

Inouye has not yet made a direct link in his own work, but based on the findings of other researchers, he said, "I can assume there is a link there."

Call for Action?

Roger Pielke, Jr., is a political scientist and professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

He said via email that the new study would likely be "used promotionally to advocate for a greater pace of action of mitigation and/or adaptation" to climate change.

But whether such a strategy is effective, he added, is debatable.

"I would probably lean toward thinking that such use of these studies can have a numbing effect on the public."

Root, the Stanford University study co-author, said the message from the analysis is more of the same but worth noting because it highlights the need for adaptation to a warming world.

"Any time we can get people to notice that global warming is affecting us right now is good," she said.

"What we're doing is finding a lot more instances of it."

New study amplifies warning on climate change
Yahoo News 14 May 08;

A wide-scale study published Wednesday has strengthened warnings, spelt out last year by UN scientists, that climate change is already on the march.

The paper, published in Nature, goes beyond the scope taken by a landmark report issued by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2007.

In that document, the IPCC said man-made global warming was "likely" -- within a probability of 66-90 percent -- to have had a "discernible" effect on many physical and biological systems.

The new study, published in the British journal Nature, is written by many of the people who wrote the so-called Working Group I report, the first of a trio of major assessments released last year by the IPCC.

Its approach widens the net of data for making a fresh analysis.

It concludes "significant changes" are already occurring among natural systems on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica, and in most oceans.

"Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions," said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research.

"The warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale."

The analysis is based on a trawl of hundreds of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, on data stretching back to 1970s.

These investigations covered phenomena as varied as the earlier leafing of trees and plants; the movement of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere in response to warmer weather; the shrinkage of glaciers and melting of permafrost; and changes of bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia.

Critics of the IPCC report have variously argued that the perceptible warming that has occurred over the last three decades is due to natural causes, such as volcanic eruptions or changes in solar radiation, or to the effect of deforestation and other changes in land use.

The new paper rejects this, saying the changes in Earth's natural systems cannot be explained by such factors, and only man-made warming could be the culprit.

The Working Group I report forecast likely warming of 1.8-4.0 degrees Celsius (3.2-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 and a rise in sea levels of at least 18 centimetres (7.2 inches). Hunger, homelessness and water-borne disease are among the many risks that would be amplified as a result of climate change.

In a commentary, also published by Nature, climatologists Francis Zwiers and Gabriele Hegerl picked over the big dispute as to whether climate impacts could be pinned on human interference.

They placed a question mark over the shortness of the records put forward by Rosenzweig's team. Evidence stretching back far longer than a few decades was needed to get a solid perspective, they said.

But, they added, these objections are outweighed by "the sheer number of changes" that the paper lists.

Natural changes pinned to warming
Richard Black, BBC News 14 May 08;

Major changes in the Earth's natural systems are being driven by global warming, according to a vast analysis.

Glacier and permafrost melting, earlier spring-time, coastal erosion and animal migrations are among the observations laid at the door of man-made warming.

The research, in the journal Nature, involves many scientists who took part in last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

It links warming and natural impacts on a tighter regional scale.

Changes in the Earth's physical and biological systems since at least 1970 are seen in regions which are known to be warming, it concludes.

The researchers assembled a database including more than 29,500 records that documented changes seen across a wide range of natural phenomena, such as:

* the earlier arrival of migratory birds in Australia
* declining krill stocks around Antarctica
* earlier break-up of river ice in Mongolia
* genetic shift in the pitcher plant mosquito in North America
* declining productivity of Lake Tanganyika
* melting Patagonian ice-fields

"Since 1970, there's been about 0.5C, 0.6C of warming - that's the global average," said Cynthia Rosenzweig from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) in New York.

"And look at all the effects this relatively low amount of warming has had.

"It reveals the sensitivity to relatively low amounts of warming in many physical and biological systems," she told BBC News.

Deeper look

Dr Rosenzweig was one of the scientists who played a leading role in compiling the section of last year's IPCC report dealing with climate impacts.

This analysis uses more sets of data, and different techniques for attributing the root cause of the observed changes.

Francis Zwiers from Environment Canada and Gabriele Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh, who reviewed the work for Nature, commented: "(This) is the first (study) to formally link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change, predominantly from increasing greenhouse gases".

About 90% of the changes documented were consistent with rising temperatures at regional scales, the researchers found.

And in virtually all cases, global warming was the primary driver of change, as opposed to natural variability or other human impacts such as deforestation or water pollution.

Not all of the changes observed in nature are damaging to all creatures - for example, last week researchers showed that some British birds are able to handle the earlier arrival of spring pretty well.

But others, such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, will clearly have a detrimental effect on parts of the living world.

And phenomena such as the melting of mountain glaciers are likely to have major impacts on societies that depend on them for drinking water.

"This provides up-to-the-minute impetus that climate change is changing how the world works," said Dr Rosenzweig.

"We need to get our act together, both for adaptation to these changes that are happening now, and for mitigation to reduce long-term risk."

Giant study pinpoints changes from climate warming
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 14 May 08;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Human-generated climate change made flowers bloom sooner and autumn leaves fall later, turned some polar bears into cannibals and some birds into early breeders, a vast global study reported on Wednesday.

Hundreds of previous studies have noted these specific changes and most suggested a link to so-called anthropogenic global warming, but a new analysis published in the journal Nature correlated these earlier studies with changes in temperature, the study's lead author said.

There was a close relationship between temperature shifts between 1970 and 2004 and changes in plants, animals and the physical world, such as the retreat of glaciers and the water level in desert lakes, the study found.

"When you look at all of the glaciers and all of the snowpack and all of the birds laying eggs earlier and all of the plants having spring earlier across a continent, then we see we can detect anthropogenic signals," said Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

They worked to rule out observed changes that could have been caused by other factors besides anthropogenic climate change.

Building on research done to support findings reported in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rosenzweig and her co-authors brought together nearly 30,000 sets of data about biological and physical changes around the world, and then matched that up with a detailed database of global temperature change.

PENGUINS, POLAR BEARS AND POLLEN

"We overlay those two global datasets and then we do a spatial pattern analysis globally about the co-location of significant temperature trends and observed changes consistent with warming," Rosenzweig said in a telephone interview. "We see that those are strongly co-located."

The link between human-caused global warming -- generated by industrial and vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide to produce a temperature-boosting greenhouse effect -- and observed biological and physical changes is very strong, she said.

On a global scale, the correlation is more than 99 percent between the two factors; on a continental scale, she said, the correlation if very likely between 90 and 99 percent.

Going continent by continent, here are some observed changes in the natural world attributable to climate change, according to the study:

-- NORTH AMERICA: Earlier plant flowering of 89 species from American holly to sassafras; intraspecific predation, cannibalism and declining population of polar bears; earlier breeding and arrival dates of birds including robins and Canada geese.

-- EUROPE: Glacier melting in the Alps; changes in 19 countries of leaf-unfolding and flowering of such plants as hazel, lilac, apple, linden and birch; early pollen release in the Netherlands; long-term changes in fish communities in Upper Rhone River.

-- ASIA: Greater growth of Siberian pines in Mongolia; earlier break-up and thinning of river and lake ice in Mongolia; change in freeze depth of permafrost in Russia; earlier flowering of gingko in Japan.

-- SOUTH AMERICA: Glacier wastage in Peru; melting Patagonia ice fields contributing to sea-level rise.

-- AFRICA: Decreasing aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika.

-- AUSTRALIA: Early arrival of migratory birds including flycatchers and fantails; declining water levels in Western Victoria.

-- ANTARCTICA: 50 percent decline in population of emperor penguins on Antarctic Peninsula; retreating glaciers.

(Editing by David Wiessler)

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Pet Sterilization in the US Grows Controversial

Maryann Mott, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 13 May 08;

For some pet owners, spaying or neutering their animals is no longer a choice - it's the law.

Nearly 40 mandatory sterilization bills have been introduced this year alone in cities and counties nationwide, including Dallas, Texas and Palm Beach, Fla. So far, only a handful has passed.

During local hearings, the controversial proposals attract legions of animal enthusiasts who pack rooms to voice their strong opinions. The issue is also being argued online in chat rooms where spirited discussions fill electronic page after page after page.

Supporters believe these "fix it or ticket" laws will ultimately reduce the millions of animals abandoned and destroyed annually in shelters . But opponents say such measures often lack funding to subsidize the surgery and rely heavily on voluntary compliance, allowing for easy evasion of the law.

The Los Angeles model

Earlier this year the City of Los Angeles passed a universal spay-neuter ordinance requiring most cats and dogs over the age of 4 months to be altered. Pet owners who don't comply by October could face fines up to $500.

But animal control officers won't be knocking on doors and peaking under pets' legs to see if they've been fixed. Instead the law will largely be enforced when officers encounter nuisance animals. Ed Boks, general manager of Los Angeles Animal Services, says the public agency receives 600 complaints daily, mostly involving intact (unsterilized) dogs chasing kids, biting people and fighting with other dogs.

"There's little we can do," he explains. "We can write a leash law warning and try to educate people - that sort of thing - but we've been doing that for 34 years and it just doesn't solve many of the problems."

The new ordinance is a valuable tool in making city neighborhoods safer, he says, because altered dogs are less likely to cause problems to which his officers must respond. In many cases sterilization reduces canine aggression and roaming.

Other California cities may soon join Los Angeles. A statewide bill, which stalled last year in a Senate committee, is expected to be heard again in late June, says a spokesperson for the bill's author, Assembly member Lloyd Levine.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles has opened two low-cost spay-neuter clinics for financially strapped pet owners and plans to operate seven more by the end of the year. And Boks says he's flooded with calls from other cities interested in enacting a similar ordinance.

Quick recovery

Spaying and neutering is a fast, simple surgery that stops animals from reproducing. Spaying refers to the removal of a female's ovaries and uterus; neutering removes a male's testicles.

Puppies and kittens 4 months-old or less not only recover faster but experience virtually no pain or complications, says veterinarian Marvin Mackie, an early spay-neuter specialist who has performed 250,000 surgeries during his 32-year career.

"The youthful patients are truly resilient," he says. "Their anesthetics are metabolized more rapidly and they are up quicker than their [older] counterparts. They are pretty much totally unaware of their surgery."

An educational effort nationwide by public shelters and humane societies pushing people to alter their pets has largely paid off, particularly in the Northeast where there's now a puppy shortage. To fill the void, young dogs from overcrowded shelters in Southern states are transported to facilities in communities where they're in demand.

Most animal advocates agree spaying and neutering is one of the most effective tools in reducing the number of unwanted and stray animals in a community, but it's not a silver bullet. Other types of programs are also needed to stem the flow into shelters, such as animal training to stop frustrated owners from relinquishing unruly pets.

In some cities, feral and free-roaming cats are bigger problem for shelters than dogs, requiring humane workers to take a different approach in controlling populations including a popular yet controversial method called Trap-Neuter-Return.

Not a new idea

Forcing people to fix their pets is only now being hotly debated - and sometimes legally challenged - but it's not a new legislative idea. A handful of communities have quietly had such ordinances on the books for years, although it hasn't always produced desired results.

Since 1996, the northern California cities of San Mateo and Belmont, as well as unincorporated areas of San Mateo County, have required sterilization of most dogs or cats over six months of age.

The thinking at that time was if a few cities passed the ordinance, they'd see wonderful results such as increased pet licensing, which in turns boosts city revenue, as well as fewer animals entering shelters and euthanized, said Scott Delucchi, president of the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA, which provides animal control services for all 20 cities in San Mateo County.

But that never happened.

"There was no A causes B relationship that they could prove," he says.

In fact, in some cases, Delucchi says, the Pet Overpopulation Ordinance, as it's dubbed, had just the opposite effect. Consequently other cities weren't interested in passing the statute and the effort was largely dropped.

Subsidized surgeries

Fast forward to today. PHS/SPCA in San Mateo County isn't in favor of California's statewide spay-neuter bill (AB 1634) because it lacks a good enforcement component and doesn't subsidize spay-neuter, said Delucchi.

If the bill passes, he thinks irresponsible and ignorant owners - the root of pet overpopulation - will simply ignore it.

A better way is to provide low-cost or free surgeries to the community, he said, something PHS/SPCA has done since the 1970s. Back then, the shelter took in 45,000 unwanted dogs and cats. Today that number has plummeted to 9,000 animals, despite the area's increased human and pet population.

The organization also operates a spay-neuter mobile clinic that targets low-income neighborhoods, and last year fixed 1,000 cats and dogs countywide.

"We know we're reaching a lot of people who probably otherwise wouldn't be altering their animals," he said.

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Best of our wild blogs: 14 May 08

Want to go to Cyrene Reef? Now is your chance!
All the details are announced on the leafmonkey blog!










Heartfelt Responses for May Day Outreach
on the flying fish friends blog

Sand mining and sand dumping next to Labrador and near Cyrene Reef and Sentosa latest MPA notice on the wildfilms blog

Seagrass-Watch bulletin: Dugong feeding trails galore!
on the teamseagrass blog

When birds die, they get recycled!
on the bird ecology blog

Feast of termites under a lamp post
on the bird ecology blog

Cyrene snapping shrimp
video clip on the sgbeachbum blog

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34 rays die mysteriously at Canadian zoo

Yahoo News 13 May 08;

Authorities said Tuesday they suspect foul play in the recent deaths of dozens of rays at a zoo in western Canada.

Staff at the Calgary Zoo are "puzzled and shocked" by the sudden deaths of its rays, said spokeswoman Laurie Herron.

"It's really devastating for the staff that cared for the animals," she told AFP, calling the deaths "suspicious."

"We cannot find a reasonable explanation for why this happened," she said, adding that "activists' groups or individuals who have become more militant" may be responsible.

The deaths were "certainly not for lack of care," Herron said.

According to a zoo statement, keepers noticed the rays swimming erratically Sunday and observed that they seemed to be in "extreme distress."

Then started dying off. By Monday morning, 34 of the 43 cownose rays were dead.

A preliminary examination found that their gills were very irritated, but otherwise, the animals had seemed in good health.

The zoo's director of conservation Cathy Gaviller said there was no mechanical failure in the tank's life support system, and numerous water tests since the exhibit opened in February were normal.

The zoo sent food and water samples, as well as ray tissue samples to a lab for testing Monday to determine if there were toxins in the water.

"We're still waiting for the latest water chemistry results," Herron said.

The nine surviving rays, meanwhile, were transferred to a separate holding tank and "appear to be doing marginally better today," she said.

Canadian zoo investigates puzzling stingray deaths
Yahoo News 13 May 08;

Officials at the Calgary Zoo remained baffled on Tuesday as they tried to puzzle out just why 34 of their stingrays suddenly died.

The juvenile cownose stingrays, about the size of a dinner plate, were kept in a "petting" tank where visitors were able to touch them, a common feature in a number of North American zoos and aquariums, according to the zoo officials in the Western Canadian city.

On Sunday, within a few hours of opening, the normally voracious fish lost their appetites, became discolored and started dying, with 34 of the 43 rays quickly succumbing to an ailment or cause that has yet to be diagnosed.

"It was a very acute onset of something, a very sudden change," said Cathy Gaviller, director of conservation, research and education for the Calgary Zoo. "It was high mortality in a very short period of time."

The zoo, as yet, has no real idea of what happened to the rays, which are common in the waters off North America's east coast.

Water tests show there were no problems with the tank or its filtration system, though the zoo has also sent off samples for independent testing.

Gaviller said that because of the speed of the deaths, disease or parasites were unlikely causes, but nothing is being ruled out. However results from tissue and toxicology tests won't soon be ready.

"It's unfortunate that we have very few facts," she said. "But the No. 1 likelihood is that something in the water changed suddenly."

She added that there were no signs that a zoo visitor caused the rays' deaths.

The incident is the latest in a number of animal deaths at the zoo that have sparked criticism of the facility.

A hippopotamus being moved to Calgary from Denver, Colorado, died in October. As well, a baby gorilla died in August after other gorilla disrupted the mother's nursing routine.

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; editing by Rob Wilson)

Stingrays probably poisoned, says zoo
Eva Ferguson, Canwest News Service, Canada.com 15 May 08;

CALGARY --The Calgary Zoo has called in the police in the mysterious deaths of 39 cownose rays, now believed to have been poisoned by a visitor.

"This is a huge tank, so something substantial had to have been put in. We don't know if it was a powder or a liquid," said Laurie Herron, a spokeswoman for the zoo.

"But at this point we're thinking it was not accidental."

Tests from an independent local lab released yesterday found the water chemistry of the ray pool was within acceptable ranges. Levels of ammonia, dissolved oxygen, PH, salinity and other natural minerals were measured. Initial tests, however, can't identify possible toxins in the water.

Late Sunday, 26 of the 43 rays died, with other deaths following over the next few days, including one Tuesday evening and another four overnight. The rays were suffering from breathing problems and inflamed gills.

Only four now remain.

Zoo veterinarian Doug Whiteside, who performed the necropsies, said the dead rays had changed from their normal light-grey colour to having splotches of dark grey and yellow. The colour change is normally a reaction to some kind of stress.

The sudden death of so many rays makes it likely a poison was added to the water, said zoo spokeswoman Cathy Gavillier.

"It's disturbing to think of this as a possibility, but we have so far been unable to pinpoint any other cause that would provoke such an acute and severe reaction in the rays," Gavillier said.

Because the rays sickened and died so quickly, disease is an unlikely culprit, she said. Nor was there any mechanical failure in the life-support system.

The ray pool, which allows visitors to reach in and touch them as they swim, was introduced at the zoo in February.

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World tree planting drive sets goal of 7 billion

Alister Doyle, Reuters 13 May 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - A campaign to plant trees worldwide set a goal on Tuesday of seven billion by late 2009, just over one for each person on the planet, to help protect the environment and slow climate change.

The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), an organizer of the tree planting drive begun in late 2006 with an initial goal of a billion by the end of 2007, said governments, companies and individuals had already pushed the total above 2 billion.

It set a target on Tuesday of an extra five billion plantings by the time a U.N. climate conference in Denmark starts on November 30 next year that is meant to agree a new long-term treaty to combat climate change beyond the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.

"In 2006 we wondered if a billion tree target was too ambitious; it was not," said Achim Steiner, head of UNEP.

"The goal of two billion trees has also proven to be an underestimate. The goal of planting seven billion trees, equivalent to just over a tree per person alive on the planet, must therefore also be do-able," he said in a statement.

UNEP said that safeguarding and planting forests were among the most cost-effective ways to slow climate change, blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars.

Trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when burnt or when they rot. Deforestation accounts for over 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate.

The campaign registers pledges of plantings on the Internet but does not check that all seedlings or saplings are actually planted or survive.

"Regional and national governments organized the most massive plantings, with Ethiopia leading the count at 700 million, followed by Turkey (400 million), Mexico (250 million), and Kenya (100 million)," it said.

Millions of individuals have also taken part, including schoolchildren or religious groups. "It has given expression to the frustrations but also the hopes of millions of people around the world," Steiner said.

One U.N. official said that seven billion trees would, as they grow, soak up roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Russia in a year. Russia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the United States and China.

Among projects, mangroves were planted in Indonesia after the devastating 2004 tsunami to help protect coastline. And the Replant New Orleans initiative sponsored plantings of fruit trees to help communities recover after Hurricane Katrina.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Two billion trees planted in UN campaign
Yahoo News 13 May 08;

More than two billion trees were planted around the world as part of the UN's campaign to combat climate change, the world body's environment programme (UNEP) said Tuesday in a statement.

The Nairobi-based agency said the tree planting campaign, inspired by Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai, will help mitigate the effects of pollution and environmental deterioration.

The campaign launched in 2006 saw two billion trees planted, double the original target, with Ethiopia leading the count at 700 million, Turkey at 400 million, Mexico at 250 million and Kenya at 100 million trees.

The campaign set a new target of seven billion by late 2009, when governments gather in Copenhagen for a crucial climate change conference.

"The goal of planting seven billion trees -- equivalent to just over a tree per person alive on the planet -- must therefore also be do-able given the campaign's extraordinary track record and the self-evident worldwide support," UNEP chief Achim Steiner said in a statement.

"It is a defining issue of our era that can only be tackled through individual and collective action. I am convinced that the new target will be met -- one tree at a time," he added.

Heads of state participated in the campaign, as did corporations, cities, faiths and communities, but individuals accounted for over half of all participants, UNEP said.

Experts say that trees are the most cost-effective way of containing carbon that accumulates the heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change.

"Trees and forests play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide," UNEP said.

"Deforestation, in turn, accounts for over 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate, rivaling the emissions from other sources."

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U.S. Major Importer of Illegal Asian Timber, Study Says

Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News 13 May 08;

Vietnam has become a hub for processing Asia's illegally logged timber, much of which is sold in the United States as outdoor furniture, conservationists say.

In a report released in March, the U.K.-based nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesian partner Telapak warned that the illegal timber trade is threatening some of the last intact forests in Southeast Asia, especially in Laos.

"Despite wide awareness of the problem of illegal logging and a series of political commitments to tackle the issue, demand for cut-price wood products is still fuelling the illegal destruction of some of the worlds most significant remaining tropical forests," said Julian Newman, head of the EIA's forest campaign program.

It is currently legal in the United States to import illegally sourced wood products. But legislation now under consideration in the U.S. Congress would ban imports of wood products derived from illegally harvested timber.

Endangered Species at Greater Risk

EIA estimates that the illegal logging business, which the agency says is orchestrated by cross-border criminal syndicates working with corrupt officials, costs developing countries some 10 billion to 15 billion U.S. dollars a year.

A rise in timber prices has prompted some wood-producing countries, such as Indonesia, to clamp down on illegal logging.

Other countries, such as China and Vietnam, have taken measures to sharply reduce all logging of their own forests, while importing timber from neighboring countries for their growing timber-processing industries.

Around 60 percent of the trade in tropical timber moves between the countries of southern and eastern Asia, according to EIA.

"One of the biggest shifts in the timber industry in Asia over the last decade or so has been the emergence of a huge wood-processing industry in China and Vietnam," said Newman.

The Mekong region—which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and China—has some of the most valuable and vulnerable tree species sought by the international timber trade, including rosewood, keruing, teak, and yellow balau.

Mekong forests are also home to a range of endangered animals, including the clouded leopard, tiger, and Malayan sun bear.

Many of the remaining forests in the region have been so heavily logged that they are now of critically low quality. In Laos, for example, only around 10 percent of forests remain commercially viable, according to the report.

Undercover Investigations

In Vietnam logging is restricted to 5.3 million cubic feet (150,000 cubic meters) from forests grown for timber production.

To satisfy its demand for raw products, Vietnam is exploiting the forests of neighboring Laos despite Laotian laws, which ban the export of logs and cut timber, the EIA report claims.

In the Vietnamese port of Vinh, undercover investigators found piles of huge logs from Laos awaiting sale.

At one border crossing 45 trucks carrying logs were seen lining up on the Laos side waiting to cross into Vietnam.

The agencies estimate that at least 17.7 million cubic feet (500,000 cubic meters) of logs move illegally from Laos to Vietnam every year.

"This trade is organized by informal networks involving timber brokers and government and military officials on both sides of the border," Newman said.

"The losers are the rural communities [in Laos] who traditionally rely on forests for their livelihood."

According to the Laotian government, forest cover in the country has declined from 70 percent in the 1970s to 40 percent today.

Large volumes of timber from Laos also go to China's burgeoning wood-processing industry, researchers say.

Jeff Hayward is the verification manager of the SmartWood Program for the Rainforest Alliance in Washington, D.C.

"The EIA study illustrates the ways and means for illicit timber to end up in the workshops of Vietnam, resulting in consumers [in Europe and the United States] unwittingly buying furniture that comes at the cost of forests in Laos and Cambodia," he said.

New Legislation

Vietnam's furniture exports reached U.S. $2.4 billion in 2007, a ten-fold increase since 2000.

The United States is by far the largest market for Vietnamese wooden furniture, accounting for almost 40 percent of the exports.

"Illegal logging and trade are rife, but most businesses don't ask hard questions about the source of the wood they buy, because they simply don't have to do so," said Andrea Johnson, the forest campaigns coordinator for EIA in Washington, D.C.

"Until consumer markets like the U.S. change their no-questions-asked policy, irreplaceable forests from Indonesia to Vietnam to Honduras to the Congo are going to continue to end up as dining room tables and porch swings."

The U.S. legislation being considered prohibits the import or trade of illegally sourced timber and wood products.

The bill has broad political support and is backed by virtually all major environmental organizations and the U.S. timber industry.

Illegal logging costs U.S. companies as much as a billion U.S. dollars a year in lost exports and reduces prices for timber products, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.

"This law will send a major signal to the global timber sector that the world's largest consumer market is closing its doors to illegal wood," Johnson said.

"Companies who source on the up-and-up and conduct strong due diligence will now be rewarded with market share rather than undercut by cheaper illegal products."

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