Mangrove Loss in Jakarta May Result in Flooding

Jakarta Globe 15 Jan 09;

Destruction of Jakarta’s mangrove population might be the cause of massive floods in the city’s coastal areas, environmental activists said on Wednesday.

Slamet Daryoni, the executive director of the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, or Walhi, said that in 20 years the city's mangrove areas had been reduced from 1,400 hectares to just 45 hectares, a mere dot in Jakarta’s total area of 661 square kilometers.

“Originally, most of the Jakarta Bay area was covered with mangroves,” he said. “Now, almost all of the mangrove areas have had to make way for housing, commercial and industrial areas."

Research by the Bandung Institute of Technology, or ITB, in 2002 warned that the disappearance of mangroves would increase flooding danger, but the warning seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“Not until there was a massive development project around the Jakarta Bay area in the 1980s did Jakarta begin to experience massive floods like the ones we see today,” Slamet said.

“Jakarta must evaluate such projects and rethink its master plan.”

Mangroves offer a natural buffer to rising sea levels, protecting surrounding areas from floods.

Pollution and poor waste management have also been a blight on the mangrove population, with new trees dying within weeks of their planting, said Hendra Michael Aquan, coordinator of a volunteer group that seeks to safeguard Jakarta’s remaining wetlands.

“Because of the plastic and liquid waste, efforts to reintroduce mangroves into the area have been fruitless.”

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US Navy Allowed to Kill Whales in Hawaii During Sonar Training

Environment News Service 12 Jan 09;

WASHINGTON, DC, January 12, 2009 (ENS) - The federal government today issued authorization to the U.S. Navy to impact whales and dolphins while conducting sonar training exercises around the main Hawaiian Islands for the next five years. The letter of authorization and accompanying rules allow for injury or death of up to 10 animals of each of 11 species over the five years covered by the regulations.

The Navy requested authorization under the Marine Mammal Protection Act because the mid-frequency sound generated by tactical active sonar, and the sound and pressure generated by detonating explosives, may affect the behavior of some marine mammals or cause what the Navy calls "a temporary loss of their hearing."

Mid-frequency sonar can emit continuous sound well above 235 decibels, an intensity roughly comparable to a rocket at blastoff across hundreds of miles of ocean to reveal objects, such as submarines, underwater.

NOAA's Fisheries Service, which issued the authorization says serious injury or death to marine mammals is not expected as a result of the exercises. But the agency acknowledges that exposure to sonar has been associated with the stranding of some marine mammals, and some injury or death could occur.

The Fisheries Service has determined that these effects would have "a negligible effect on the species or stocks involved."

Protective measures outlined by NOAA require the Navy to establish marine mammal safety zones around each vessel using sonar and shut down sonar operations if marine mammals are seen within designated safety zones.

The Navy must use exclusion zones to ensure that explosives are not detonated when animals are detected within a certain distance.

The Navy must implement a stranding response plan that includes a training shutdown provision in certain circumstances and a memorandum of agreement to allow the Navy to contribute in-kind services to NOAA's Fisheries Service if the agency has to conduct a stranding response and investigation.

The regulations establish an area of extra caution in the Maui Basin because of its high density of humpback whales. The Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary covers the four island area of Maui; Penguin Bank; and extends off the north shore of Kauai, the north and south shores of Oahu, and the north Kona and Kohala coasts of the Big Island.

Hawaii is the only place in the United States where humpbacks breed, calve, and nurse their young. Approximately 4,000-5,000 whales migrate to the Hawaiian Islands each winter. Although the population of humpbacks is increasing, these whales remain endangered.

NOAA Fisheries Service said in a statement today that these measures "should minimize the potential for injury or death and significantly reduce the number of marine mammals exposed to levels of sound likely to cause temporary loss of hearing."

But environmentalists disagree.

"The role of the National Marine Fisheries Service is to protect the health and welfare of marine mammals and they are abdicating their duty with this authorization," said Taryn Kiekow, marine mammal staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The nonprofit organization has fought a series of legal battles against the Navy's use of sonar due to its adverse effects on whales and dolphins.

"They are recycling protections for sensitive marine mammal species and habitat near Hawaii that courts have repeatedly found inadequate," Keikow said.

The Navy has been conducting training exercises, including the use of mid-frequency sonar, in the Hawaiian Islands for more than 40 years.

Exercises range from large multi-national, month-long training exercises using multiple submarines, ships, and aircraft conducted every other year, known as Pacific Rim Training Exercises, to two- to three-day exercises to test the readiness of battle groups, known as Undersea Warfare Exercises, and shorter exercises that last less than a day.

NOAA's Fisheries Service and the Navy have developed a monitoring plan to use independent, experienced aerial and vessel-based marine mammal observers as well as Navy watch standers, passive acoustic monitoring, and tagging to better understand how marine mammals respond to various levels of sound and to assess the effectiveness of mitigation measures.

The implementation of this monitoring plan is included as a requirement of the regulations and the letter of authorization.

The letter of authorization, which is required for the Navy to legally conduct sonar activities, is issued annually, provided the Navy abides by the terms and conditions of the letter, submits the required annual reports, and shows their activities do not result in more numerous effects or more severe harm to marine mammals than were originally analyzed or authorized.

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Where should the elephants go?

Amirtharaj Christy Williams, BBC News 14 Jan 09;

There are no winners when elephants and humans compete for the same resources, says Christy Williams. But, he argues, intelligent buying by western consumers, and informed policies from governments in areas where elephants occur, could reduce the problem.

As night fell over the southern islands, I worked fast to fix a collar around an elephant's neck.

She had just sent me on an undignified flight through the air with a swish of her trunk - and this when she had been almost fully sedated.

To avoid a second hit, I crouched under the belly of a big camp tusker standing alongside her. An experienced veteran vital to our task of tranquillising and collaring wild elephants, this large male remained unruffled.

But I was still disconcerted and nervous with the angry trumpeting of her family herd from just beyond the surrounding bushes.

This lot was being kept at bay by another camp tusker and his mahout who used mock charges and shouting to dissuade the distressed elephants.

By the time we finished, it was pitch black. Exhausted, we hit the sack.

That was November 2006.

We were in an illegal coffee plantation inside the Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia. My WWF colleagues and Indonesian government partners had summoned me because villagers were threatening to kill the small "problem" herd.

The BBS herd had already suffered at the hands of humans, and their number was down from more than 30 in the year 2000 to six by June 2006.

Our solution was to create an early-warning system involving a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar fixed on one of the elephants in this herd.

The GPS location data from the transmitter on the collar - beamed via satellite to a website - enabled us to follow the herd and warn villagers ahead of the approaching elephants.

Tough choices

In the more than 15 years I have been involved in elephant conservation and research, the storyline of the Asian elephant is depressingly similar.

The country, the people, the language or the retribution are different, but the cause for elephant-human conflict remains the same - humans displacing elephants from their natural habitat.

Twelve years ago, I trekked to a remote village in the Garo Hills in north-east India to investigate the death of a two-month old human infant, killed by an elephant.

A bull elephant had entered the village - a cluster of bamboo huts on stilts - in search of food.

During the commotion a couple rushed out in panic and left their sleeping infant inside their tiny hut. Before they could turn back, the elephant had pushed the hut down, crushing the baby to death.

It broke my heart to see the mother's raw pain and her tired and resigned eyes as she narrated the incident.

She asked why I was there and I told her I was doing a survey of elephants and elephant-human conflict.

With a sudden fire in her eyes, she said that if people like me were so interested in conserving elephants, we should take the elephants with us and tie them in our backyards.

That comment stayed in my mind; but the significance of the words came to haunt me when I was doing my PhD fieldwork on elephants in Rajaji National Park four years later.

In 1998, I lived in a small field camp, and elephants would sometimes come to our camp and sniff about for the pinches of cooking salt we would strategically leave for them under a tree.

One night, a herd of pachyderms smashed my kitchen, took a bag of salt and spread it around the field camp.

For the next two months, elephants visited every night looking for salt in the soil around the camp.

It was a nightmarish experience. And I was living in a solid concrete building!

Imagine the psychological impact of elephant raids on villagers living in fragile mud and bamboo huts.

Being at the receiving end certainly helped me have a deeper understanding of what this conflict really meant.

Understanding the threats

In India, Nepal and Bangladesh, humans encroach on elephant habitats, which are further fragmented by roads, canals, dams, mines.

Across South East Asia, forest loss has been largely fuelled by legal (and illegal) conversion of elephant habitat to oil palm and other plantation crops including acacia, rubber, coffee and tea.

All these factors combine to worsen human-animal conflicts, and it is vital that any solutions we seek are based on our understanding of the behaviour of these intelligent animals.

Findings of studies across India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia reveal some general patterns that might help us to avoid the worst conflicts.

Generally, elephants need about 200 sq km of forest home range.

A female elephant will almost always live and die inside the home range where she was born. Males disperse from their family groups when about 10 years and eventually find their own home range.

In large forest areas where all the elephant home ranges are contained within forested habitat, there is very little conflict.

As more humans move into forested habitats, elephant-human conflicts are born.

The encroachers, lacking technical help and access to effective and humane mitigation methods, retaliate by throwing burning tyres, shooting at the beasts with sharpened nails, even by laying out foods laced with killer pesticides.

In 2001, more than 15 elephants were killed in one incident near the Nameri Tiger Reserve when elephants ate pumpkins laced with Dimecron, a pesticide that is banned in Assam, but easily available nonetheless.

But more wholesale damage is caused by sanctioned habitat clearing at the hands of short-sighted government officials who encourage large areas to be set aside for monoculture cash-crop plantations or infrastructural and development projects.

Elephants are virtually led to the slaughter by the very governments mandated to protect them.

In India, we have seen this with the collusion of corrupt officials and academics writing fake Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) designed to serve the interest of a small group of politicians, industrialists or contractors who profit from the untruths.

"Mitigation" measures most often ignore elephant behaviour or ecology, since the teams that conduct the EIAs lack the expertise to deal with such delicate issues.

The brunt of the resulting conflict is borne by local communities and the beleaguered giants who stand no chance against the destructive power of humans.

No winners

Two months ago, I received word that the herd in BBS whose matriarch we had collared had killed a human mother and child in an illegal settlement within the park.

They were the only two who had not moved from the settlement despite being warned by our field team.

A few days later, I was sent images of two elephants that were killed in retaliation.

As an elephant biologist, I was filled with utter despair for the fate of the pachyderms.

As a father of two young children, I was wracked by the human tragedy that had unfolded, and remembered my own time in that dark forest building, as marauding elephants milled around me.

A dreadful realisation struck me - there are no winners when elephants and humans clash. Everyone loses.

What can we do?

Today, our receipts can be almost as important as our vote.

To ensure elephant habitat isn't needlessly destroyed, buy Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified timber and certified coffee; and if you aren't sure whether a product has been sustainably sourced or not, then ask.

Amirtharaj Christy Williams is a biologist with WWF's Asian elephant and rhino programme

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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New Survey Finds More than 600 Asian Elephants

livescience.com Yahoo News 14 Jan 09;

A new survey of dung has revealed a population of hundreds of endangered Asian elephants living in a Malaysian park. The animals could be the largest-known set of these pachyderms in Southeast Asia.

The researchers counted dung piles to estimate that there are 631 Asian elephants living in Taman Negara National Park - a 4,343 square kilometer (1,676 square mile) protected area in the center of Peninsular Malaysia. This result confirms the largest-known population of elephants remaining in this part of the world, according to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Malaysia's Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP), which partnered to study the elephants.

Asian elephants are endangered due to habitat loss and poaching; between 30,000 and 50,000 may remain in 13 Asian countries. The Asian elephant is listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and has seen a drastic reduction in total population across its range as a result of illegal poaching, increased human-wildlife conflict and other threats.

Elephants: the big picture

There are two distinct species of living elephants, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). The difference:

• African elephant: weighs 8,000 to 14,000 pounds, deeply wrinkled skin, trunk tip with two finger-like projections
  
• Asian elephant: weighs 6,000 to 12,000 pounds, lightly wrinkled skin, trunk tip with one finger-like projection

The African elephants are further subdivided into two subspecies:

• Savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana africana): larger than forest elephants and sport tusks that curve outwards.
  
• Forest elephant (Loxodonta africana cyclotis): smaller in size, have downward-pointing tusks that are relatively straight and more oval-shaped ears than the savanna subspecies.

There are about half a million African elephants in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Counting dung piles

Counts of elephant dung piles to estimate population size are a scientifically proven technique that produces accurate figures. There were no previous scientific population surveys for Asian elephants in Taman Negara National Park, the researchers said.

"The surveys reveal the importance of Taman Negara in protecting wildlife especially those species that need large home ranges. DWNP will continue to safeguard this national park, which is the crown jewel of Malaysia's protected areas system. The numbers of elephants is testament to the importance of the park in protecting wildlife," said Dato' Rasid, director-general of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks.

Researchers were unsure of how many elephants lived in the park before this survey, although there were good reasons to think that the population was substantial, said Melvin Gumal, director of the WCS's conservation programs in Malaysia.

The park, which contains one of the world's oldest rainforests, dating back 130 million years, also supports tigers, leopards, dholes, numerous monkey species and 350 types of birds.

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Mystery of the British penguins that are marching towards oblivion

Lewis Smith, Times Online 14 Jan 09;

An endangered species of penguin is mysteriously disappearing from a remote British island in the South Atlantic at a rate of 100 birds every day. About two million northern rockhopper penguins have vanished from Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, part of the British overseas territory of St Helena, in half a century.

The once huge penguin populations on the islands have dwindled so dramatically that they are now threatened with extinction, and the British Government was accused yesterday of contributing to the decline.

A 90 per cent slump has been observed in both areas but on Tristan it took 130 years whereas it took just 45 years on Gough, where northern rockhopper penguins, Eudyptes moseleyi, have vanished at a rate of 100 a day.

The islands, which lie 230 miles apart, are the penguin's stronghold, with more than 80 per cent of the world population being found there. The remaining population is on two French-administered islands, St Paul and Amsterdam in the Indian Ocean, and are declining just as rapidly.

Southern rockhopper penguins, Eudyptes chrysocome, which are found on the Falklands and in South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, are also in decline but they are found in greater numbers than their sister species.

Trevor Glass, the conservation officer on Tristan da Cunha, carries out frequent counts of the penguins and has been alarmed at the fall.

“Rockies are one of Tristan's most charismatic birds and a bird we are used to seeing in good numbers on all the islands,” he said. “These unexplained declines are really worrying and we'll do everything we can to understand what is going on.”

Climate change and overfishing are among the possible causes but ornithologists are baffled by the fall and are anxious for a research project to be conducted to identify whatever is killing the penguins.

There is concern among environmentalists, however, that the British Government “cannot be bothered” to put any great effort or resources into wildlife conservation on the overseas territories. A meeting is being held today between ministers from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Department for International Development to try to reach agreement.

Preparatory meetings held between civil servants to try to reach an accord are thought to have been inconclusive.

“They are completely disinterested,” Sarah Sanders, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' (RSPB) overseas territories officer, said. “It's ridiculous and embarrassing. We are meant to be world leaders in biodiversity conservation and we can't even decide who is responsible for the overseas territories.”

She said it appeared that the inertia was partly driven by embarrassment within Whitehall and Westminster that they still had to take responsibility for the remnants of Britain's Empire.

British overseas territories boast several species of wildlife found nowhere else in the world and are home to 32 species of birds at risk of extinction.

Richard Cuthbert, of the RSPB, was one of the authors of a report published in the journal Bird Conservation International on northern rockhopper penguins, one of four species of penguin listed as endangered.

He concluded: “The declines on Gough since the 1950s are equivalent to losing 100 birds every day for the last 50 years. With more than half the world's penguins facing varying degrees of extinction, it is imperative that we establish the exact reason why the northern rockhopper penguin is sliding towards oblivion.”

The northern rockhopper population on Gough is estimated at 32,000 to 65,000 pairs. On Tristan it is 40,000 to 50,000 pairs.

Geoff Hilton, a conservation biologist who has studied the rockhopper penguins, added: “Millions of pairs have disappeared. We really don't understand the causes, but we suspect that a major change is taking place in the marine ecosystem.”

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To feed more poor, Philippines scientists to alter rice

Yahoo News 14 Jan 09;

MANILA (AFP) – A team of scientists in the Philippines has launched an ambitious project to alter the way rice grows and greatly increase yields of the crop, a daily staple for almost half the world's people.

With prices soaring and population increasing, experts say increasing the yield -- the amount of rice that can be produced from a fixed amount of land -- will be crucial to feeding the planet's poor in the years to come.

"This is a long-term, complex project that will take a decade or more to complete," said John Sheehy, the scientist leading the work at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

"The result of this strategic research has the potential to benefit billions of poor people," he said.

Sheehy said up to 50 percent more rice could be produced, while using less water and fertiliser, by altering the way the plant turns sunlight into the energy it needs to grow.

Rice uses a relatively inefficient form of photosynthesis, the process of turning light into the "fuel" for growth, known as C3.

Sheehy's team hopes to turn rice into a plant that uses the C4 variety of photosynthesis, like that of maize and sorghum, which is 50 percent more efficient.

That would mean more rice grown with fewer resources -- which would help to ease the soaring price of the crop, selling last year for more than 1,000 dollars per tonne.

"The benefits of such an improvement in the face of increasing world population, increasing food prices, and decreasing natural resources would be immense," Sheehy said.

The IRRI was instrumental in developing the modern variety of high-yield rice in Asia in the 1960s, credited with keeping countless numbers alive and providing the foundation for the region's economic transformation.

Now it says yields will have to be increased again in the face of rising prices, less available water and land, and the growing number of mouths to feed around the world.

It plans to use "modern molecular tools" to develop a more efficient and higher-yielding form of rice.

The institute said the project involves molecular biologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists and mathematicians, and that it has received an 11 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Alaska Seeks To Block U.S. Protections For Belugas

Yereth Rosen, PlanetArk 15 Jan 09;

ANCHORAGE - Five months after suing to keep polar bears off the U.S. threatened species list, Alaska's government said Wednesday it plans to issue a similar challenge to block federal protections for a struggling population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet, a mature oil-producing basin.

Former vice presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin said the energy-rich state believes the Endangered Species Act protections for belugas announced in October by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are unwarranted.

"The State of Alaska has worked cooperatively with the federal government to protect and conserve beluga whales in Cook Inlet," the Republican governor said in a news release announcing that a 60-day notice of intent to sue had been sent to NOAA. "This listing decision didn't take those efforts into account as required by law."

Beluga whales swimming in Cook Inlet, a glacier-fed saltwater channel running from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska, numbered as high as 1,300 three decades ago, but has dropped to about 375 since then, according to NOAA.

Alaska's announcement it would challenge the endangered listing drew ire from environmental groups.

"Once again Governor Palin has demonstrated either a complete lack of understanding or lack of concern over the plight of endangered species," Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Wednesday.

Federal scientists believe overhunting by the area's Alaska Native population caused the decline in the beluga population.

But Alaska officials say the whales are recovering due to some recent controls on hunting, said Doug Vincent-Lang, an official at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

"The main threat has been addressed," he said.

The state and several municipal governments and business groups argue that an endangered listing will hamper business in Alaska's most densely populated region.

Among the affected activities would be offshore oil and gas operations in the mature Cook Inlet basin, they argue. Major Cook Inlet oil and gas operators are Unocal, Marathon Oil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron.

The decision to pursue a lawsuit challenging the beluga listing follows an August lawsuit filed by the Palin administration that seeks to overturn the threatened listing for the polar bear.

The state of Alaska is arguing that listing polar bears as a threatened species will hurt Alaskan oil and gas exploration, fisheries and tourism.

(Editing by Christian Wiessner)

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Government makes decision on gray wolf protection

Matthew Brown And John Flesher, Associated Press Yahoo News 14 Jan 09;

BILLINGS, Mont. – The Bush administration on Wednesday announced plans to remove gray wolves in the western Great Lakes and northern Rocky Mountains regions from the federal endangered species list.

But wolves in Wyoming will remain under federal jurisdiction because that state has not done enough to assure their survival, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said.

Previous attempts by the federal government to remove wolves in both regions from the endangered list and return management authority to the states have been overruled by courts.

In the northern Rockies, the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to address the courts' concerns by excluding Wyoming, where officials had sought a "predator zone" covering almost 90 percent of the state where the animals could be shot on sight. Federal officials said Wyoming law would have to change before wolves there could be taken off the list, and Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg said Wednesday that it was "probable" that the state would challenge the latest federal plan in court.

In the western Great Lakes region, the federal government made no policy changes. The Fish and Wildlife Service disagreed with the judge's ruling and restated its case.

The wolves will be removed from the endangered species list 30 days after the decision is published in the Federal Register, which officials said could happen within the next two weeks. A small population of Mexican Gray wolves in the Southwest was not affected by Wednesday's announcement.

The decision could be reversed by President-elect Barack Obama's administration, said Rowan Gould, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said the matter would be reviewed but offered no other details.

"President-elect Obama will review all eleventh-hour regulations and will address them once he is president," Shapiro said.

"We would hope ... the next administration would not turn around and go a different direction, but of course that certainly is their choice and opportunity," Scarlett said.

Scarlett also said that the decision was based on science independently of policy considerations and that it was a watershed moment for a species first listed as endangered in 1974.

"Returning this essential part of our national heritage to so much of our natural landscape ranks among our greatest conservation achievements," Scarlett said.

David Mech, a leading wolf expert and senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, supported the assertion that the wolf population had rebounded.

"I'm satisfied, and most wolf biologists I know are satisfied, that wolf populations in both regions have been biologically recovered for the last five years," Mech said.

But environmental and animal rights groups, deriding the move as a last-minute effort by the Bush administration to strip protections, promised Wednesday to return to court with another round of lawsuits.

About 1,500 wolves in the Northern Rockies were taken off the list in February 2008. But a federal judge nullified the move in July, saying state management plans could not guarantee their recovery was sustainable.

The northern Rocky Mountain wolf segment includes all of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon, and a small part of north-central Utah.

Idaho and Montana already have crafted plans for public hunts to keep wolf populations in check. There were no immediate plans for hunts in the western Great Lakes.

"We're the people that have to live with it," said Eric Svenson of Reed Point, Mont., where officials said wolves have killed two dozen sheep and goats on the Svenson Ranch.

"Maybe hunting will keep their population in check," Svenson said.

Last September, a federal judge sided with animal-rights groups that accused the government of misapplying the law in when it lifted protections for about 4,000 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2007.

Gray wolves previously were listed as endangered in the lower 48 states, except in Minnesota, where they were listed as threatened.

___

Associated Press writer John Flesher reported from Traverse City, Mich.

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African harbour cities at risk from rising sea-levels: scientists

Yahoo News 14 Jan 09;

CAPE TOWN (AFP) – Africa's harbour cities of Cape Town, Lagos and Alexandria are under threat from rising sea levels which could displace millions and cause massive economic losses, scientists said Wednesday.

Speaking at an international climate change conference in Cape Town, Geoff Brundrit of the Global Ocean Observing System in Africa said even a slight increase in sea levels could wreak havoc on some countries.

"Disaster risk is high when the chance of occurrence of a hazard is high, when the vulnerability to damage from that hazard is high and when the capacity to cope with the consequences of the occurrence is low," he said.

Brundrit told AFP that many African countries had "no resilience" to increasingly damaging storms as a result of the changing climate, and were often hit by the next before properly recovering from the last.

This, he said, made countries on the continent extremely vulnerable.

Lagos, in Nigeria, is Africa's most densely populated city with a population of more than 15 million people living between a lake and the sea.

With people crammed into every available space often right up to the shoreline, storms already flood low-lying streets. Rising sea levels could swallow tracts of land, Brundrit said.

"Where will the people go?" said Brundrit, who said the state government was "more concerned with the development of Lagos" than with managing the risks.

According to Brundrit, "adaptation through protection will be difficult and expensive" across Africa's coast and immediate assessment needs to be done and policies put in place.

"If you are really going to take cognisance of sea-level rise, put buffer zones along the coast where you restrict development," he said.

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Fishermen join forces against EU rules

Four millions anglers have united to fight EU rules that will impose quotas on recreational fishermen limiting the number of fish they may catch.

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 14 Jan 09;

The newly formed Angling Trust will represent more people than the membership of all the main political parties combined, the Anglican church and the National Trust.

The lobby group has been set up to fight for one of the UK's most popular sports by protecting the environment and ancient fishing rights.

Its most immediate fight is against EU proposals for recreational fishermen to register their boat as a fishing vessel and record their catch as part of the UK's annual quota for certain species.

The new body will replace current organisations representing sea, coarse and game fishing and has already gained the support of many celebrity anglers including broadcaster Jeremy Paxman.

The agenda includes controlling sand and gravel extraction from rivers and the seabed, preventing pollution and campaigning to stop farmed fish being allowed to escape into the wild.

It will also press for increased funding to get young people interested in fishing as a way of controlling anti-social behaviour.

Mark Lloyd, head of the new body, said it was needed because the pastime was represented by fragmented groups when what was needed was one powerful voice.

Mr Lloyd said the trust has already had meetings with the fishing minister to discuss the matter.

He said: "This is a barmy proposal that does not take into account the UK's specific circumstances. In Europe there are a lot of anglers fishing commercially but in the UK we do it for fun. It is a rule that is being brought in because it is appropriate for the Continent but it's not appropriate for the UK."

Anglers unite to become powerful conservation alliance
New organisation aims to represent interests of some of Britain's 2.7m anglers concerned with declining fish stocks and pollution

John Vidal and Graham Mole, guardian.co.uk 14 Jan 09;

Anglers have united to set up what could become one of the biggest conservation bodies in Europe, with the political muscle to rival the National Trust, the RSPB and Friends of the Earth.

The new Anglers' Trust, formed after six existing smaller fishing groups agreed to disband, hopes to sign up one in five of Britain's 2.7m regular anglers, who are divided roughly equally between sea and inland water enthusiasts.

"Anglers are not the usual woolly liberals you get in the WWF or the National Trust. They range across urban and rural areas and both working and upper class. Together they are very powerful," said Mark Lloyd, chief executive of the new organisation.

"We are very concerned about declining fish stocks, river pollution, and industrial developments. There's no point fishing if there's no fish, so half the work will be campaigning. The environment is massive for anglers, but all the existing organisations were quite small, so we'll be able to represent all anglers much more efficiently and effectively at national and international level."

The trust which includes coarse, game and river anglers is expected to lobby government and corporations to try to reverse the damage caused by over-fishing, as well as control sand and gravel extraction, prosecute polluters and reduce the volume of water taken from rivers. They also plan to campaign to stop farmed fish being allowed to escape into the wild. Anglers have long been regarded as the eyes and ears of the water environment: alerting the authorities about damage to British waters and frequently prosecuting polluters. A separate arm of the trust, known as Fish Legal, will continue the work of the Anglers Conservation Association (ACA) which claims compensation from polluters and which, remarkably, has barely lost a legal case in the last 50 years.

Angling now rivals football as Britan's most popular pastime. The Environment Agency said last week that it had sold a record 1.3m fishing licences last year and this is forecast to rise by 26,000 this year.

A separate survey by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency found the number of sea anglers, who don't need licences, is around 1.4 million. In addition there are believed to be hundreds of thousands of people who only fish occasionally.

Mat Crocker, head of fisheries at the Environment Agency, said: "Angling is one of the most popular participator sports in the world – and is a cheap, healthy and environmentally friendly pastime that everyone can enjoy. It brings huge social and community benefits as well as contributing to the conservation and biodiversity of our waterways.

"Improved river quality over the past decade has helped boost fish stocks for the sport – for example, salmon numbers in England and Wales have increased by 40,000 in the last ten years."

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Top 7 alternative energies listed

Catherine Brahic, New Scientist 14 Jan 09;

The US could replace all its cars and trucks with electric cars powered by wind turbines taking up less than 3 square kilometres – in theory, at least. That's the conclusion of a detailed study ranking 11 types of non-fossil fuels according to their total ecological footprint and their benefit to human health.

The study, carried out by Mark Jacobson of the atmosphere and energy programme at Stanford University, found wind power to be by far the most desirable source of energy. Biofuels from corn and plant waste came right at the bottom of the list, along with nuclear power and "clean" coal.

Watch a video of Jacobson discussing his findings.

The energy sources that Jacobson found most promising were, in descending order:
• Wind
• Concentrated solar power (mirrors heating a tower of water)
• Geothermal energy
• Tidal energy
• Solar panels
• Wave energy
• Hydroelectric dams

To compare the fuels, Jacobson calculated the impacts each would have if it alone powered the entire US fleet of cars and trucks.

He considered not just the quantities of greenhouse gases that would be emitted, but also the impact the fuels would have on the ecosystem – taking up land and polluting water, for instance. Also considered were the fuel's impact on pollution and therefore human health, the availability of necessary resources, and the energy form's reliability.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most," says Jacobson.

"Some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," he says. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply, and land use than current fossil fuels."
Biofuel concerns

Jacobson says it would take 30 times more space to grow enough corn to power the US fleet than would be needed to erect enough wind turbines, while bioethanol would produce more greenhouse gases than wind power.

Biofuels have received a considerable amount of political backing in recent years with the US and Europe setting targets to phase in their use and gradually replace oil.

Energy and wildlife experts have expressed concerns about biofuels and the EU last year appeared to reconsider its position.

Nuclear is another energy source whose merits have been debated by European and US leaders alike in the past 12 months. "It results in 25 times more carbon and air pollution than wind," says Jacobson. Half of those emissions are caused by the time it takes to plan and build a nuclear power plant – time during which fossil fuels have to be burnt for energy.

"Clean" coal – the process of burning coal then capturing the emitted carbon dioxide and storing it underground – is another political favourite. Jacobson's calculations show that building and using enough clean coal power plants would emit up to 110 times more carbon than building and using wind turbines only.
Focused efforts

"The philosophy that we should try a little bit of everything is wrong," says Jacobson. "We need to focus on the technologies that provide the best benefit. We know which these are."

Jacobson acknowledges that politicians are calling for a massive jobs programme to pull the economy out of recession, but says investment in renewable energy is one way to do that.

"Putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles, and transmission lines would not only create jobs but also reduce costs due to healthcare, crop damage, and climate damage – as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power," he says.

Jacobson presented his results to the chairman of the Senate energy and Natural Resources Committee in October last year. They are published in Energy and Environmental Science this month (DOI: 10.1039/b809990c).

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UK home wind turbines fail to deliver as promised, warns British study

Yahoo News 13 Jan 09;

LONDON (AFP) – Home wind turbines are only generating a fraction of electricity promised by the manufacturers while some even fail to yield enough energy to run the turbine's electronics, a British study warned on Tuesday.

The survey conducted by consultant engineers Encraft said contrary to claims that micro turbines can suffice for a household's 30 percent electricity needs, on an average they only generate 214 watts hours per day, including when the turbine is switched off for maintenance or developed a snag.

Sufficient power just to light up four low energy light bulbs for a day or less than a five per cent of electricity a household requires.

Engineers however found that wind turbines installed on buildings in exposed positions or high up away generated significant amounts of energy.

Matthew Rhodes, Encraft's managing director said that turbines if put up in the right place can achieve the desired results.

"Sadly, an average semi-detached house, like the areas where most people live, where there are obstructions like trees and buildings, are poor locations," he told the Guardian.

The "vast majority" of customers had been poorly advised. "There's a risk they will go off the whole agenda," he added.

The study was funded by the British Wind Energy Association and the government which inspected turbines in four rural, 10 suburban and 12 urban sites for a year.

Reacting to the report Alex Murley of the British Wind Energy Association said. sited correctly, small and micro wind turbines have the capability to provide more than 10% of Britain's electricity needs.

"Although this may be the first trial to look at micro-wind turbines within urban environments, low samples sizes, extremely poor sighting and patchy data renders the trial unrepresentative of the wider sector.

Clearly micro-wind turbines do not work everywhere, but the UK is the windiest country in Europe, and there are literally millions of excellent sites waiting for sensible application of this successful technology," he added.

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