Bird killings in the UK 'deeply troubling'

BBC News 18 Nov 08;

The number of birds of prey killed illegally in Scotland is "deeply troubling", a conservation group has said.

Crimes against the birds remain at "worryingly high" levels, according to the latest report from RSPB Scotland.

It comes days after it emerged that a white-tailed eagle was found poisoned near the Glenogil estate in Angus in May. The charity said such crimes were damaging Scotland's raptor populations.

The Birds of Prey Persecution 2007 study showed that crimes against the birds had dropped since the previous year but remained high.

There were 69 allegations or reports of poisoning in 2007, compared with 98 in 2006.

Of these, 37 were confirmed as pesticide or poison abuse killing or threatening raptors, down on 42 the year before.

It was the worst year on record for red kite poisoning, with 12 birds dying.



Carbofuran, an agricultural pesticide which has been banned since December 2001, was used in 30 out of the 37 confirmed cases.

There were also 78 reports of other types of persecution, such as nest destruction, traps and shooting incidents, down on 85 in 2006.

Of these, 17 were confirmed incidents, while 30 were classed as probable cases of persecution.

In the remaining 31 cases there was either insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the claim.

The RSPB said that because raptors are long lived, breed slowly and produce few young, the effects of illegal killing can have a damaging effect on their population levels.

Stuart Housden, director of RSPB Scotland, said: "These figures are deeply troubling, especially when we know that wildlife crime takes place in remote areas, where it is relatively easy to conceal evidence of wrong-doing.

"These confirmed cases must represent a tip of an iceberg.

"Whilst we know that many land managers behave responsibly, it is important that they stand up and provide information to the police on criminal activity against wildlife that comes to their attention.

"Sweeping these issues under the carpet is not acceptable. Only in this way will this problem be stamped out once and for all."

'International reputation'

Many of the raptors are killed by people trying to protect grouse populations on country estates, who perceive the birds as a threat.

The RSPB stressed that it happens only on a small minority of estates.

The charity welcomed steps taken by the Scottish Government to improve standards of investigation and prosecution, together with responsible landowners.

It called for adequate public resources to investigate and prosecute incidents to be put in place in line with recommendations of recent official public reports.

Mr Housden said: "We welcome the action taken by the Scottish Government to secure improvements in the way cases of wildlife crime are investigated and prosecuted.

"This recognises the seriousness of the issue and the damage that is being done to our international reputation, as well as important Scottish industries, such as wildlife tourism.

"It is important however that ministers continue to lead from the front on this issue."

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U.S. Won't Kill Wild Horses -- For Now

Maryann Mott, National Geographic News 18 Nov 08;

Thousands of wild horses in U.S. care will not be put down, and the government will have another year to explore possible solutions, U.S. officials said Monday.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will round up fewer wild horses and try to shuffle funds within the agency to prevent killing the animals.

About 30,000 horses removed from western rangelands are currently being cared for by BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program.

A federal report released last week by the Government Accountability Office—the watchdog agency for the U.S. Congress—suggested that thousands of horses kept in government holding facilities may have to be killed as upkeep costs escalate and adoptions dwindle.

(Related: "Horses Suffer, Owners Struggle With Soaring Feed Prices" [September 8, 2008].)

BLM Deputy Director Henri Bisson said maintaining the wild horse and burro program for another year will give the agency, Congress, ranchers, and animal advocates time to come up with alternatives and let "cooler heads prevail.

"Let's focus on doing something positive before we have to look at last resort tools," Bisson said at the BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting in Reno, Nevada.

"We're not making any decisions today. We're not making any decisions next week."

Bisson said the agency needs to find U.S. $15 million to $20 million elsewhere in its budget to sustain the wild horse program throughout 2009.

Government roundups will also now be limited to about 5,000 horses annually, mostly of animals facing severe hardship because of conditions such as drought.

Back to the Drawing Board

Dozens of wild horse advocates attended Monday night's meeting in hopes of persuading the BLM not to euthanize the horses.

Willis Lamm of Least Resistance Training Concepts, a nonprofit that provides free mentoring assistance for wild horse adopters, attended the meeting.

"The theory [advocated in] the room was these guys need to get their act together and go back to the drawing board and figure out how to market the horses that they do have," he said.

The government may not have to act at all, though, if the agency takes up Madeleine Pickens—wife of billionaire T-Bone Pickens—on her reported offer to adopt all the horses being cared for by the government.

If her bid is successful, the horses would be transferred to private refuges.

"We welcome the offer and the interest," said BLM spokesperson Tom Gorey.

Slaughterhouse Fear

About 33,000 mustangs, often called wild horses, roam the dusty open plains of ten western states, with about half of the population in Nevada.

With few predators, wild horse herds nearly double every five years. To make room for livestock and farming operations on public lands, government-hired cowboys round up about 10,000 mustangs annually.

Horses are then put into holding facilities to be adopted or sold, or to live out the remainder of their lives. Some animals can live for 15 years in pens.

The 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act calls wild horses "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West."

The legislation ensures that "wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death."

Though the law does allow for euthanasia to achieve "appropriate management levels," public and congressional reaction to the large-scale slaughter of thousands of healthy horses has led the BLM to avoid using these options—despite its recent budget troubles, the GAO report said.

To quell such concerns, Congress gave BLM an alternative to euthanasia in 2004 by allowing the agency to sell horses "without limitation," for example at auctions or livestock sales if the animals have been unsuccessfully offered for adoption three times or are at least ten years of age.

The agency, however, continued to impose sale limitations on buyers, in part, because it feared horses sold for low prices might be resold to slaughterhouses, the report said.

The report also cited job loss as a reason.

"Various BLM officials at different levels of responsibility also told us that the agency has not complied with these provisions," the report said.

Doing so would cause draw negative reaction from the public and Congress and cause an "immediate threat" to the careers of BLM officials involved, it added.

Alternatives

Other alternatives to selling horses exist, the report pointed out.

One would be providing private individuals or organizations with financial incentives, such as tax breaks, to care for unwanted wild horses. (Learn how you can support wild animals through adoptions in Green Guide.)

Another possibility is releasing mustangs on public and private lands outside of areas where they were originally caught, although this would require a legislative change to the horse and burro act.

BLM spokesperson Gorey agreed with the report's findings.

"The GAO report correctly depicts the difficult situation that the BLM finds itself in with regard to maintaining unadopted or unsold animals in holding facilities," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related articles

U.S. to Kill Wild Horses as Upkeep Costs Rise?
Maryann Mott, National Geographic News 14 Nov 08;

Read more!

Will Detroit's cash crisis kill the electric car?

Kevin Krolicki and Nichola Groom, Reuters 18 Nov 08;

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Call it an economic and environmental murder mystery in the making: Will a cash-strapped Detroit kill the electric car -- again?

Stung by an association with gas-guzzling SUVs and pushed to the brink of failure by plunging sales, U.S. automakers have been touting efforts to roll out more fuel-efficient small cars, gas-saving technology and gas-free electric vehicles.

The star of that marketing show has been the Chevy Volt, a rechargeable car that General Motors Corp is designing to run 40 miles on battery power, meaning some commuters would never need to fill up with gas.

But with its cash dwindling and U.S. auto sales crashing to 25-year lows, GM has joined Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC in seeking $25 billion in federal handouts, which are under consideration this week by the U.S. Congress.

That has critics concerned that a meltdown for Detroit could delay the rollout of green cars like the Volt. Others see a chance to prod GM and rivals to move faster as a condition of providing funding the industry says it needs to survive.

Because plug-ins like the Volt can be recharged from a cleaner-burning electric grid, proponents see them as the best way in the near term to reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from traffic on America's roads.

GM has said it is protecting its investment in the Volt ahead of the vehicle's planned 2010 launch even as it scrambles to slash $15 billion in costs elsewhere.

EV1

"I think right now we're in what I call a serious Act Two moment with oil prices down and money tight," said Chris Paine, whose 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" chronicled GM's controversial decision to scrap an earlier electric car marketed in California as the Saturn EV1.

Paine, who has been working on a Volt-centered sequel, said U.S. automakers would have been better able to weather the current crisis if they had listened to critics who blasted them for turning away from electric cars earlier this decade.

"This may turn out to be the biggest blunder ever for these companies," he said.

GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner showcased the automaker's commitment to return to making a mass-market electric car at the Los Angeles auto show two years ago.

That reversal by GM combined with an open approach to the Volt's development won over many of the automaker's harshest critics. GM has built on that good will by featuring the Volt in full-page newspaper and TV advertisements, two years before the vehicle will go on sale in limited numbers.

"I think it's somewhat ironic but also encouraging that GM was the first back into the fray," said Chelsea Sexton, who helped market the EV1 in California and has become an advocate for plug-in cars. "There's a humility there that people respond to. Detroit has been knocked down but it's not out."

But with Wagoner due in Washington this week to testify on the proposed bailout for U.S. automakers, GM dropped plans to make an announcement on the Volt's battery supplier at the Los Angeles auto show this week, people briefed on the automaker's plans have said.

Jacob Grose, an analyst with Lux Research who follows the alternative power and energy storage industry, said projects like the Volt could risk delays in the current economic climate.

"GM has pretty much bet the farm on the Chevy Volt and plug-in hybrids and certainly any major economic disruption to the company -- any kind of bankruptcy filing or anything like that -- for even the most high priority launch as this is would clearly be, would push it back a couple of years," he said.

SHOW STEALERS

Nissan-Renault chief Carlos Ghosn is expected to use his keynote speech at the L.A. auto show to highlight Nissan's push toward more environmentally friendly cars, including plug-ins.

Hyundai Motor Co, meanwhile, will be showing off a prototype of its first hybrid for the U.S. market, using lithium-ion batteries from the same LG Chem factory sources have said has been selected to supply the Volt.

Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal, said Detroit automakers realize they have no alternative to pressing ahead with investment that promises to drive gains in fuel economy.

"The industry understands where the market is headed and that the greatest interest is in the vehicles with the best fuel efficiency," said Cogan, who presented the Green Car of the year award to GM's hybrid Chevy Tahoe last year.

Others are less certain Detroit can stay the course without a bailout tied directly to saving initiatives like the Volt.

Lyle Dennis, a New York neurologist who has emerged as the Volt's unofficial first fan and runs the GM-Volt.com Web site (http://gm-volt.com/), has organized a letter-writing campaign to urge lawmakers to help save GM -- and by extension the Volt.

"It just seems to me this could easily be the end of the Volt. There are certainly no guarantees," said Dennis. "I'm no fan of bailouts in general. But I don't see another way."

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, meanwhile, are urging Congress to tie any aid to the automakers to requirements that they make cleaner vehicles and drop a legal challenge to California's new vehicle emissions standards.

"I think the temptation may be for the auto industry to say we can't accept any new requirements," said Eli Hopson of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "While that may get them through the next few months, I don't think it will get them through the next couple of years."

Paine said he remains uncertain of how his film will end, or even what it will be titled. He has tentatively called his follow-up "Revenge of the Electric Car" but realizes there may be a darker ending by 2010, when the film and the Volt are due.

"That's when will find out if it's really the revenge or the curse of the electric car," he said.

(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki and Nichola Groom; Editing by Eddie Evans)

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Making paper emits three times more carbon than global aviation

Don't print this post
Making paper emits three times more carbon than global aviation. The only answer is to consume less
Tony Juniper, guardian.co.uk 17 Nov 08;

Of all the natural resources we use every day, paper is one that hardly provokes a second thought. The thin films of tree fibres touch nearly every facet of our lives. From the napkins around paper coffee cups to our morning newspaper, the junk mail and the bedtime book, paper is everywhere. We use more and more of it, and its impact on the environment is huge.

Paper manufacture consumes vast quantities of water. Chemicals are used to boost fast-growing monoculture plantations, and pulp mills discharge huge quantities of chemicals. In terms of energy consumption in its production, paper equals steel.

Combine this with deforestation and emissions from landfill and we find that the pulp and paper industry contributes around 10% of global carbon emissions – that's about three times global aviation emissions.

Some argue that paper consumption must grow in proportion to the size of the economy, but this is a highly simplistic view. Much of the paper we consume provides little or no economic or social value.

For example, research by Xerox revealed that office workers bin 45% of everything they print each day. And it's not just in offices that we waste huge quantities of paper. In the USA, ForestEthics calculated that the annual carbon emissions from junk mail alone were equivalent to those from more than 9m cars. This finding led top Nasa climate scientist James Hansen to back the call for a national Do Not Mail registry.

While we are increasingly aware of the emissions from our cars, how many people are cutting down on paper? How many companies correctly account for their paper footprint in their CRS reports?

ClimateforIdeas.org discovered that carbon audits carried out by the paper industry fails to take into account the true carbon emissions from deforestation associated with paper production.

The more global paper demand grows, the more land is needed to grow it. This sits alongside other demands for land, for urbanisation, agriculture and nature protection.

The more paper we use, the more these other pressures will be exacerbated. Indeed, for developing nations to follow patterns of paper consumption now prevailing in western countries, more than double the land that is already covered in monoculture plantations for paper production would be needed.

Many paper plantations are already highly contentious, especially in developing nations. This is because they have limited ecological value, use toxic chemicals and fertilisers and have devastating consequences on local livelihoods.

In common with other resources, it seems that the case for increased consumption in developing countries is very clear, and thus the case for reductions in the high-consuming countries is logically the other side of the equation. One way to characterise the choices that emerge is to weigh the necessity of there being enough school books in Uganda compared to our need for more and more junk mail to go straight in our bulging bins in the west. Stop Junk Mail is useful site help you reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, if you'd like to reduce your own paper footprint.

If there is to any chance for the sustainable management of natural resources, at the same time as providing all the world's people with their needs, then the developed world needs to lead by example in ensuring that more equitable patterns of consumption emerge.

One campaign that is dealing head-on with the issue is Shrink. This coalition is asking individuals to consume less paper and is inviting pledges from British industry to set targets to reduce their paper use by 50%. The French government is also now active on this subject. This month it will hold a workshop in conjunction with my former colleagues at Amis de la Terre to discuss how to achieve that reduction.

If Sarkozy has identified this as a problem for France, then he must see it as a problem for Europe. It would therefore be a very positive step if he were to use the tail end of his EU presidency to press for a reduced consumption target across all member states.

Reducing consumption to sustainable levels is the key and this is a challenge we all have to embrace.

Start by not printing this post, or indeed anything else, unless it's absolutely necessary. And fill your printer with recycled paper.

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Amazon to scrap plastic packaging for recyclable cardboard boxes

Amazon, the online retailer, has promised to end the frustration that ruins many parents' Christmas day: packaging rage.

Harry Wallop, The Telegraph 18 Nov 08;

It has pledged to stop sending toys, computers and other goods out in difficult-to-open plastic boxes.

The shopping website has joined leading manufacturers, including toy company Mattel and software giant Microsoft, to come up with a solution it says is both eco and customer-friendly.

Called "frustration free packaging", the company aims to replace plastic wrapping with a simple, recyclable cardboard box.

Amazon has started the scheme in the United States after complaints from customers of cuts and bruises from existing packages.

It said that it would come over to the UK if the project was successful in America. "Every initiative that works in the US makes its way across the Atlantic," said a spokesman.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said: "I shouldn't have to start each Christmas morning with needle-nose pliers and wire cutters. But that is what I do, I arm myself, and it still takes me 10 minutes to open each package."

Waste Watch, a British refuse charity, welcomed the move. Spokesman Mike Webster said: "Amazon has to be applauded for this, and we would call on the rest of the industry to follow their lead.

"Every Christmas we produce an extra three million tonnes of waste, and this could impact significantly on that. But we need manufacturers to think about this too - it really comes back to the product design stage, and that needs to be re-thought."

Read more!

Rainforest nations want coordinated carbon effort

Svetlana Kovalyova, Reuters 18 Nov 08;

MILAN (Reuters) - Rainforest nations will lobby the United Nations to set up a single body to coordinate the use of carbon credit trading to stop deforestation at a conference next month in Poland, an official from the countries said on Tuesday.

"A new body should be built to coordinate initiatives (on cutting emissions from deforestation) that are going around now," Federica Bietta, Deputy Director of New York-based Coalition for Rainforest Nations, which represents about 40 countries, told Reuters on the margins of a deforestation conference in Milan.

The Coalition and other supporters of the United Nations'-backed scheme, called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, hope to include it into a successor of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change after 2012.

"There is money floating around... but countries don't know where to put it. There are various ideas, often not coordinated and that is very confusing," Bietta said.

She said the Coalition would propose the creation of such a body at a conference in Poznan, Poland, in December which has been convened as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The conference is expected to help craft a global agreement by December 2009 on carbon-capping mechanisms to succeed Kyoto.

Bietta said the coordinating body should be linked to UNFCCC, other U.N. agencies and the World Bank, and should help developed and developing countries to ensure transparency of funds allocation.

LITTLE REDD BOOK

The proposed new body would lead REDD initiatives in the next three or four years, until a new carbon market -- estimated by various analysts in a range between $10 billion and $30 billion a year -- kicked in, Bietta said.

"The new body is needed to fill the gap between now and 2012," she said.

Already, 20 key proposed projects to cut carbon emissions from deforestations and degradation feature in The Little REDD Book that will be presented in Poznan (www.littleREDDbook.org).

Deforestation contributes about 20 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions with forests disappearing at a rate of about 13 million hectares -- about the size of Greece -- a year.

The European Commission has been cautious about forest credit trade, saying new cheap offsets would flood the existing carbon market and send prices at the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) tumbling.

Peter Zapfel from Environment Directorate General at the European Commission told the conference the potential forest credit market under the REDD scheme would cover 6 gigatonnes of annual carbon emissions, three times bigger than emissions covered by the ETS.

The Commission's alternative proposal to REDD is to set up a Global Forest Carbon Mechanism where part of the EU's carbon trade proceeds would be used to reward developing countries for reducing deforestation.

Zapfel said the EU's council of ministers and parliament were likely to back the Commission's proposal.

(Editing by James Jukwey)

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Geoengineering 'no substitute' for climate targets, UK minister warns

UK climate minister Joan Ruddock wary of reliance on radical technology that could be used by some as an excuse to avoid meeting targets to reduce carbon emissions

James Randerson, guardian.co.uk 18 Nov 08;

Research into drastic solutions to climate change such as cloud seeding, sun shades in space and ocean fertilisation risks hampering global climate negotiations by giving some countries an excuse for not agreeing to short-term emissions reductions, a UK government minister warned today.

The remarks by Joan Ruddock, a minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, appear to be a thinly veiled dig at the Bush administration, whose delegation attempted to insert a section into last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on developing technology to block sunlight and cool the planet. The proposed text referred to it as an "important insurance" against the impacts of climate change.

Speaking to MPs on the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills select committee, Ruddock was defending the government's unwillingness to fund research into so-called geoengineering – large-scale, untested interventions that either soak up carbon dioxide or prevent sunlight warming the planet

"The concern is that people who don't want to enter into agreements that mean they have to reduce their emissions might see this as a means of doing nothing, of being able to say, 'science will provide, there will be a way out'," she said, "it could be used politically in that way which would be extremely unfortunate."

She added that funding research on such projects would deflect engineers away from more pressing solutions to climate change such as carbon capture and storage – extracting carbon dioxide from the emissions put out by fossil fuel power stations and injecting it underground.

The science minister Lord Drayson added that many of the proposals – such as launching huge mirrors into space, adding particles into the atmosphere to deflect light or seeding algal blooms in the ocean using iron fertiliser – were extremely costly and had risks that were poorly understood. "Some of the projects that are being postulated under geoengineering do strike one as being in the realm of science fiction," he said.

But Steve Rayner, professor of science and civilisation at the Said Business School in Oxford, pointed out that not all options were expensive. Some such as iron fertilisation would be within reach of wealthy individuals - he called them, "a 'Greenfinger' rather than 'Goldfinger'."

Currently, the research councils – which decide how public science funding is spent – do not fund any projects into geoengineering directly, although the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has allocated £3m for an "ideas factory" into potential projects next year.

According to Dr Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, who wrote the Natural Environment Research Council's submission to the select committee hearing, around £50m of the government's research spend is peripherally related to geo-engineering.

The select committee's chair, the liberal democrat MP Phil Willis, said he was disappointed with the government's position of adopting only a "watching brief" over the emerging field. "That seems to me a very very negative way of actually facing up to the challenge of the future," he said. "It's a very pessimistic view of emerging science and Britain's place within that emerging science community."

He said government should support many different avenues to tackling climate change. "There have to be plethora of solutions. Some of which we do not know whether they will work, but that is the whole purpose of science."

But the chief scientific advisor to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Prof Bob Watson, said that funding should be focussed on the most immediate solutions. "I think the question is whether [geoengineering] is the highest priority at the moment given scarce resources.

"First [priority] is actually putting investment into current technologies and pre-commercial technologies such as carbon capture and storage," he said, "Clearly I think this is something which has to be move quickly. I would call it an Apollo-type programme... we need to go in parallel and try multiple approaches simultaneously." He advocated that the EU, US and Japan work together on research into CCS.

Some scientists and engineers will also be disappointed with the government's dismissal of the field. In the introduction to a collection of scientific papers published by the Royal Society in September on the topic Prof Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Prof Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge wrote: "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing... There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

Read more!

British lawmakers pass landmark climate change bill

Yahoo News 18 Nov 08;

LONDON (AFP) – Lawmakers gave final approval Tuesday to a bill committing Britain to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 -- the first country to have such a legally binding framework on climate change.

Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said the bill, which must now be signed into law by the queen, "makes Britain a world leader on climate policy".

"It's the first legislation of its kind in the world. It will tie this and future governments into legally binding emission targets -- an 80 percent cut by 2050, with five-year carbon budgets along the way," he said.

"It sends a clear message before European and global climate talks that serious action is possible."

Britain originally intended to cut emissions by 60 percent on 1990 levels by 2050, but changed this to 80 percent last month on the recommendation of a government-appointed committee.

The committee said the cuts would cost about one to two percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and were "challenging but feasible".

Under the bill's other measures, an independent committee on climate change will be created to advise the government on new carbon budgets, which will cap Britain's pollution over five-year periods.

The government is then obliged to report to parliament on how it plans to meet these limits, which include all industries, including international shipping and aviation to and from Britain.

The legislation also contains powers to establish emissions trading schemes, measures on biofuels, powers to reduce household waste and to require retailers to reduce the use of plastic bags.

Ministers are also obliged to report every five years on the risks climate change poses to Britain, and say how it intends to address these.

Climate change minister Joan Ruddock said she had recently spoken to officials in the US Congress and they had praised the way British lawmakers worked together on such an important issue.

The bulk of the bill was passed last month by 463 votes to three.

Ruddock said she hoped the election of Barack Obama as new president would lead to changes in the US policy on emissions.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 18 Nov 08

Rare sand dollars and other surprises
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Sad state of Labrador
on the annotated budak blog

Asian Emerald Cuckoo: Confirmed record for Singapore
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Flowering umbrella tree and birds
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Stars without five arms at Pasir Ris
on the wonderful creation blog

Thoughts on the D’Kranji Farm Resort
on AsiaIsGreen

Ubin Lodge is now open!
and other updates including safe cycling on Ubin on the Pulau Ubin Stories blog

Read more!

Scientists try to revive Japan's biggest coral reef

AFP 16 Nov 08;

TOKYO (AFP) — Scientists are in an unprecedented project to restore Japan's largest coral reef by planting thousands of baby corals growing on tiny ceramic beds.

Corals in Sekisei Lagoon stretching between the Okinawan islands of Ishigaki and Iriomote have plunged by 80 percent over the past two decades due to rising water temperatures and damage by coral-eating starfish.

"No projects in the world have ever restored a coral reef artificially... but we aim to restore the lagoon in some 10 years," said Mineo Okamoto, associate professor at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

The isles of Okinotori, 1,700km south of Tokyo

In a joint project with Japan's environment ministry, scientists will plant some 6,000 baby corals in the seabed in December over a 600 square-metre (6,450 square-foot) district.

The corals are 18 months old and grow on round ceramic beds that measure four centimetres (1.6 inches) in diameter and have single legs for planting.
It follows the implantation of 5,300 baby corals in 2006. Only one-third of them have survived, with many dying off or damaged by dead and collapsed corals stirred up in the sea by typhoons, Okamoto said.

"We have learned lessons from the previous planting regarding what are the best places to plant and other conditions for survival. We'll make a fresh try," he said.

The attempt is the world's only large-scale project to restore a coral reef artificially, rather than trying to clean the environment for corals or nipping off branches of living corals for transplanting elsewhere, Okamoto said.

If experiments are successful, the Japanese team wants to try the method in other countries, Okamoto said, adding preparations in Indonesia have already being made.

"Corals are marine creatures but are functioning like seaweed in southern seas as they engage in photosynthesis to disperse oxygen," Okamoto noted.

"They invite plankton and then plankton-feeding fish, creating an ecosystem and fishing ground," he said.

Related articles

Japanese experts develop breakthrough method to help restore precious coral reefs
Channel NewsAsia 9 Feb 06

Read more!

Continents of garbage adrift in oceans

As much as 10 per cent of plastics produced end up inside giant marine vortexes
Alex Roslin, Canwest News Service 17 Nov 08;

Scientists are growing alarmed about massive floating dumps that are believed to be building up in centres of nearly all of the world's oceans.

The best-known patch, known by some as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, consists of an estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic debris that has accumulated inside a circular vortex of currents known as the North Pacific gyre. Environmentalists call it the Pacific Trash Vortex.

It is estimated to be anywhere from 700,000 square kilometres -- an area larger than Alberta -- up to 15 million square kilometres (the size of two Australias), depending on how it is measured. Plastic from the vortex is increasingly washing up on Hawaiian atolls and being found in the guts of seabirds and fish.

An estimated 100,000 marine mammals die each year from eating or being entangled in debris -- mostly plastic -- in the North Pacific alone. Hence the vortex's other nickname: the Plastic Killing Fields.

Plastic in the sea doesn't biodegrade like other garbage. Instead, it slowly breaks up into tinier and tinier pieces that float on the ocean surface or sink to the sea bottom and can take years to reach the ocean gyres.

These vortexes are increasingly seen as environmental disaster zones. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals; it also soaks up other dangerous substances already present in the ocean, like carcinogenic PCBs and DDT.

Eighty per cent of the plastic in the ocean gyres is believed to come from the land, while the remainder is litter from cargo ships, cruise boats and other vessels.

Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at England's University of Plymouth, is one of the few scientists studying plastic in oceans.

In a 2004 study, Thompson found microscopic pieces of plastic in the water that had been scooped up with plankton samples in the North Atlantic starting in the 1960s, but there was four times as much plastic in recent samples, coinciding with a 25-fold increase in plastic production worldwide between 1960 and 2000.

Even more alarming, the water samples were from an area of the Atlantic north of Britain that isn't even in the gyre. No one has studied the amount of plastic in the Atlantic gyre itself.

Ocean currents and winds are slowly bringing debris -- estimated to be 10 per cent of the world's plastic production -- to the centre of five major ocean gyres in the North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific and the Indian Oceans, said Marieta Francis, executive director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, based in Long Beach, Calif.

But despite the ever-growing plastic blobs in other oceans, the Pacific gyre is the only one that has been studied.

The Algalita foundation's founder, a yachter named Charles Moore, chanced upon the Pacific Garbage Patch during a 1997 boat race.

"Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic," he told the U.S. News and World Report.

The vortex was in the North Pacific gyre, where a high-pressure zone forces debris into a central area that has low currents and winds.

Read more!

Coastal protection in the Gulf of Thailand

Swimming against the tide
Sombat Raksakul, Bangkok Post 16 Nov 08;

Residents of coastal areas want to protect their shorelines against erosion, and they say the government is going about it the wrong way.

The fertile muddy coast along the upper Gulf of Thailand is a fisherman's paradise. Neither trawlers nor modern fishing equipment are needed to make big catches due to a combination of delta marshes and mangrove forest that provide an abundant supply of food for marine life.

But soon the marshes and the forests could be gone, washed away by the waves. Much of the coastline of the capital and its adjacent provinces is suffering serious erosion. For decades, the seaside provinces have been experiencing extensive losses of shoreline each year.

Bangkok, Samut Songkhram, Samut Sakhon, Samut Prakan and Chachoengsao provinces are suffering severe erosion according to Master Plan on Coastal Erosion Management for the Upper Gulf of Thailand, published in September by the Thammasat University Research and Consultancy Institute, which studied the coastline covering 100km of shoreline from the mouth of the Mae Klong river in Samut Songkhram to the mouth of the Bang Pakong river in Chachoengsao. Some 2,667 hectares of this coastline was washed away in the 54 years from 1952 to 2006. The problem is severe and the rate of erosion is increasing. Local communities are suffering economic damage estimated at more than 100 million baht a year, according to the institute's report.

Among the worst affected areas are Bang Khun Thian district, the site of Bangkok's fastest-disappearing coastline, and its neighbouring district, Phra Samut Chedi in Samut Prakan province.

Located in the Chao Phraya river delta, these two districts are at greater risk than most coastal areas due to land subsidence caused by excessive commercial use of groundwater over many years.

Analysis of the Thammasat University research shows that Ban Khun Samut Chin in Phra Samut Chedi is hit by strong waves all the year round and loses roughly 28m of coast a year.

For decades, people in the village have been forced to move inland, abandoning parts of their community and farmland to the encroaching seas, said Samon Khengsamut, Ban Khun Samut Chin's headwoman, who has been fighting coastal erosion for 30 years.

With a slow response from government agencies, residents have had to try to combat the erosion themselves. They have built small seawalls of soil, and some residents have tried strengthening their seawalls with rocks and old tyres.

The problem for state officials is that coastal erosion mostly occurs on private land, not public or state-owned land, and this has made them reluctant to take responsibility for the problem, said Assoc Prof Uruya Weesakul, Thammasat University's research project manager.

"By pouring huge sums of state money into solving problems on private land, the authorities think they risk allegations of corruption," Assoc Prof Uruya explained.

But as the erosion becomes worse and is more publicised, someone has to take responsibility.

Without public participation, the officials, in their bureaucratic way, have instigated mammoth and expensive shore protection schemes such as placing submerged off-shore breakwaters in ecologically and socially sensitive areas, which inevitably created conflict with local people.

The reasoning behind such plans seems to be "because they think the big hard structures are strong, have longer life spans and are low-maintenance", said Mr Uruya.

But what is convenient for officials may not be so for local people. Moreover, such hard structures are not suitable for muddy beaches. That is why the residents at Ban Khun Samut Chin opposed the sandbag-seawall project proposed by Samut Prakan's administrators.

"For many years, we sought help from them. But they only came around recently and offered a project that we don't want," Ms Samon said bitterly.

"Residents prefer breakwaters," said the 52-year-old community leader, referring to the design of a team of engineers and coastal experts from Chulalongkorn University.

That team, lead by Assoc Prof Thanawat Jarupongsakul, a lecturer on climatology at the science faculty's Unit for Disaster and Land Information Studies, is experimenting with the construction of an off-shore breakwater for the village's muddy beach. The barrier consists of around 500 concrete pillars arranged in a zigzag pattern, with the aim of dissipating the force of the waves _ preventing them from damaging the beach _ and trapping sediment in the spaces behind the breakwater to help build-up the beach.

In order to avoid conflict with local people, in the first stage of the experiment, the team hired 10 locals to help with gathering information and monitoring the accumulation of sediment.

"The breakwater not only protects existing areas but it also brings more mud to the beach for aquaculture, which many people can use to earn money farming prawns and mussels," Ms Samon said.

Bang Khun Thian is facing similar problems, with a reported a loss of more than 160 hectares along its 5km shoreline.

In response to the problem, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration officials proposed a 316 million baht project to construct breakwaters and groynes. And again, local residents disagreed with the officials' plans. Living with, and earning their living from the sensitive coastal ecology, Bang Khun Thian residents have learned from the mistakes of other coastal communities, and say the groynes would do more harm than good.

"The groynes, breakwaters and sandbag walls may work on sandy beaches, but they are not the right solution to the problems in this area," said Suthin Onfung, chairman of Bang Khun Thian's community organisation council. Mr Suthin said residents were afraid of using groynes, and a sandbag-wall would have an immense effect on the fragile muddy beach.

In the neighbouring provinces of Samut Prakan and Samut Sakhon, said the 58-year-old community leader, local officials protect their coastlines with sandbag walls, but the bags break up and the sand from them could cause damage to the sensitive ecology, particularly on mud beaches that are a vital habitat and nursing ground for marine life.

In an attempt to stop the BMA project, a group of Bang Khun Thian residents recently petitioned His Majesty the King. They demanded that City Hall review its plans, and they proposed the construction of breakwaters made of bamboo.

"The idea of the bamboo wall comes from the local knowledge of our ancestors, and is appropriate for the ecology of a mud beach," said Mr Suthin.

Locals are in the process of surveying locations along the shoreline, and the planned construction and budget estimates for the bamboo breakwater, they say, are expected to be completed within four months, before proposing the project to His Majesty for consideration.

In addition to the breakwater, residents of communities in Bang Khun Thian, led by Seksai Chindachom, 40, are planning social and ecological conservation projects. Firstly, they say they are planning to establish a learning centre to promote tourism and raise public awareness of the issues.

Bang Khun Thian Aquaculture Centre is described as a "nature-learning centre", and residents are looking for a site in the area for a new building for seminars and meetings. Mr Seksai said the group would also encourage villagers to open their homes to tourists.

This eco-tourism project, he said, would be promoted in six seaside villages in tambon Thakham of Bang Khun Thian, which would not only create income for local people but also encourage them to realise the importance of the conservation of their coast.

Nature's greatest threat
Study says human activity - not climate change - is the cause of coastal erosion.

Sombat Raksakul, Bangkok Post 16 Nov 08;

Every year, coastal erosion causes misery to millions living in the upper Gulf of Thailand - Bangkok, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram and Chachoengsao. Politicians, the authorities and environmentalists alike commonly attribute the problem to climate change. But according to a study by Thammasat University Research and Consultancy Institute, they are wrong.

Many reports on coastal erosion blame climate change, but this is partly because records on the impact of global warming on climate change and sea levels are not systematic and partly because state agencies and academics work separately, and lack information on climate models. Assoc Prof Uruya Weesakul, the research project study's manager, however, thinks there is no evidence to link erosion with climate change.

In the Master Plan on Coastal Erosion Management for the Upper Gulf of Thailand, published in September, the research team found that global climate change is not a cause of coastal erosion.

The coastal expert said the results of the research point to human activity causing coastal erosion. For example, the excessive commercial use of groundwater in Bangkok and its neighbouring provinces over the years has caused land subsidence - one of the principle causes of coastal erosion.

Contrary to popular belief, the report says, in reality climate change has had only a limited effect on coastal erosion.

"The rise in sea levels is small when compared with the rate of subsidence. Sea levels are predicted to rise in the long term, but analysis of 50 years' data shows that the effect of land subsidence in the upper Gulf of Thailand is a key factor," says the report, which studied the area from the mouth of the Mae Khlong river in Samut Songkhram province, to the mouth of the Bang Pakong river in Chachoengsao province and 100km of coastline that has suffered severe coastal erosion.

Although the rate of subsidence in Bangkok has reduced since the Groundwater Department in 2006 implemented its plan for the reduced use of groundwater, the rate is rising in Samut Sakhon where a number of factories moved from neighbouring provinces and are now pumping increasing amounts of groundwater, the report says.

The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry appointed the Thammasat University team, led by Assoc Prof Uruya, to research coastal erosion in the upper Gulf of Thailand. The one-year project finished in September, and the results are now on the table of the chief of the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources.

"It is true that climate change has caused temperature changes over the past few years," said Assoc Prof Uruya, dean of the engineering faculty, "but the results indicate that other factors are the real culprits behind the erosion, including land subsidence, high waves in monsoon season, loss of sediment from rivers and changes of land use, mainly the loss of mangroves and the excavation of soil for aquatic farming."

One finding - the impact of two dams, Bhumibol, constructed in 1964, and Sirikit, constructed in 1974 - is the most surprising. Both dams have long disrupted the natural flow of water, but they also interrupt the flow of sediment to downstream areas, causing disaster for the shoreline of the upper Gulf of Thailand. Fortunately, the research team did not suggest the demolition of the dams to increase sediment supply, only suggesting solutions such as using breakwaters to trap sediment.

In the study's comprehensive report, apart from the background and causes of coastal erosion, there is also an evaluation of coastal protection structures, classified in four main sections - bamboo breakwaters; revetments, concrete seawalls and dykes; concrete breakwaters; and sandbag breakwaters. The report explains the strengths and weaknesses of each structure, for example sandbag breakwaters are hard structures that can effectively protect shorelines almost completely, but they cannot trap sediment, which is an important function for the process of coastal rehabilitation.

The report also aims to assess the changes to our coastline and provide efficient measures to protect it, taking into account environmental and aesthetic considerations. The target of the study is to propose measures to rehabilitate the eroded areas, and these areas will be made coastal ecosystem conservation areas.

Like other contemporary studies, the research team's report also emphasises the importance of public participation, which would help government agencies avoid conflicts with local communities.

But if the results of the one-year study say that climate change has nothing to do with erosion, why does it seem to be getting worse?

The problem is that more people now live and work near the coast - urban areas have spread, despite the risk of erosion, the coastal expert said, adding the rapid coastal population growth is mainly a reflection of population growth, increased investment in infrastructure. "Coastal erosion, in fact, is no worse today than it was in the last century," Assoc Prof Uruya concluded. "It's Bangkok that's sinking, not the sea level rising".

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