Four tons of pangolin scales and tortoise shells smuggled from Indonesia to Vietnam

Pangolin scales, tortoise shells smuggled into Hai Phong
thanhniennews.com 25 Aug 09;

Customs officers in the northern port city of Hai Phong have found around four tons of pangolin scales and tortoise shells smuggled from Indonesia.

The city customs on Monday counted 51 sacks containing two tons of tortoise shells in one container whose waybill declared that the sacks contained dried tuna stomach.

A separate container whose waybill stated the contests as dried seaweed was full of mostly pangolin scales.

The smuggled animal parts were believed to be shipped-on to another country.

Mai The Huyen, head of Hai Phong Customs, said the goods arrived at Hai Phong Port last Wednesday and were checked on Saturday as customs officers found unclear details in the waybill, which lists Hoa Vuong Investment and Commerce Company in Hanoi as the receiver.

Sacks containing the smuggled goods were marked differently for recognition.

Earlier on Friday, the city customs officers found more than two tons of elephant tusks in a container stated as carrying shells from Tanzania and also to be received by Hoa Vuong Company.

The two cases are being investigated.

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Poachers threaten spider tortoise

Matt Walker, BBC News 28 Aug 09;

Poachers are threatening the survival of the northern Madagascar spider tortoise, which only lives along a narrow strip of the island's coast.

The animal has disappeared from swathes of its habitat, taken by collectors to supply the exotic pet trade.

Wild numbers of the tortoise may have already fallen by 90%, say scientists who have just surveyed its population.

The problem continues to worsen due to political instability in the country, which makes it easier for smugglers.

The Madagascar spider tortoise is one of the smaller species of tortoise, and is distinguished by the intricate spider web patterning on the shells of adults. Hence its scientific name Pyxis arachnoides .

It occurs as three distinct subspecies, each of which has a slightly different shell shape and lives in a different part of the coastal spiny forests within southwest Madagascar.

However, the tortoise's appearance is also its downfall.

A new survey suggests that the northern Madagascar spiny tortoise ( P. a. brygooi ) is now extinct across 50% of its former historical range, with huge numbers being collected to supply the international trade in exotic pets.

Trade in the species is banned, but thousands of the animals are still being smuggled out of the country illegally, says Ryan Walker, a senior wildlife biologist at Nautilus Ecology based in Greetham, Rutland, UK.

Walker, who is also a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, conducted a survey in March covering all the whole range where the tortoise was once thought to live.

Together with biologists from the Open University in the UK, the IUCN specialist group and the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, Walker searched 60 sites in detail for wild spider tortoises, recording their occurrence and population density.

He presented the results this month to the Turtle Survival Alliance Meeting in St Louis, US and is also submitting them to the journal Herpetologica.



"The most striking aspect of the survey was that huge areas of suitable habitat were completely devoid of tortoises. A sure sign that the collectors had been in to collect them for either local consumption as food or collection for black market to supply the pet trade," says Walker.

He estimates that two million wild northern spider tortoises remain.

"That sounds quite a lot. But 35% occur in a very small area of forest and are susceptible to being wiped out pretty quickly by collectors."

"The remaining animals are in very isolated and fragmented populations with very low numbers of tortoises, which are unlikely to recover into healthy populations," Walker says.

"As an educated and conservative guess I would say that the global population of northern tortoises have probably decreased by greater than 90% since human induced pressure has been placed on the animals."

Some local communities hunt the tortoise for food. But the greatest threat comes from organised gangs visiting the area and collecting spider tortoises for illegal export.

A single spider tortoise can reach US$1000 each on the pet and exotic reptile market, prices that drive the unsustainable trade.

The northern subspecies is probably facing greater threats than the other two subspecies from poaching, by local populations as a food source and also by gangs for export to support the illegal pet trade in the animal.

The other two subspecies don't tend to end up as readily on the pet market and the tribes further south won't eat them, however they are suffering from an alarming rate of habitat destruction, says Walker.

He also says the threat to the tortoises from poaching is currently greater due to the current political turmoil in Madagascar brought about by the political coup in January.

Disorganisation at government level has meant that it is easier to get endangered species out of the country with false paperwork or blank permits that are easier to get hold of, he explains.

SPIDER TORTOISE SUBSPECIES
# The northern subspecies has a ridged plastral lobe, the hinge at the front of the tortoise's shell under and into which it can tuck its head and front legs. It lives up to 10km inland along a narrow 600km strip of coastline.
# The mid subspecies lives further south, separated by river systems, and has a semi-ridged pastral lobe.
# The southern sub species has a completely mobile lobe, allowing the animal to retract its head and limbs and then close up the flap at the front, an adaptation that may help it conserve water in its drier southerly habitat.

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UK river team's piranha shock

BBC News 28 Aug 09;

A "killer" fish native to South America has been found in a Devon river.

The Environment Agency said its staff were amazed to find a dead piranha in the East Okement tributary of the River Torridge.

The piranha, which has razor-sharp teeth, is generally considered to be the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world.

The 35cm (14in) fish was spotted by Bob Collett, Dave Hoskin and Eddie Stevens during a sampling trip on the river.

Among the species the team would have expected to find in the river were salmon, brown trout, bullheads, stone loach and minnow.

"What we actually discovered was something we would not expect to find in our wildest dreams - we could hardly believe our eyes," Mr Stevens said.

"After completing 20m of the survey, a large tail emerged from the undercut bank on the far side of the river.

"Our first thought was that a sea trout had become lodged in amongst the rocks and debris collected under the bank, but when it was removed from the river we were speechless to find it was a piranha."

Tests carried out on the dead piranha revealed it had been eating sweet corn, which proved it must have been kept as a pet.

The Environment Agency said the average size of a piranha was 15 to 20cm (6in to 8in), making the fish found on the East Okement an exceptional size.

A shoal of piranha fish is said to be able to strip the flesh of large animals within minutes. They have also been known to attack humans.

In the wild, piranhas are found in the Amazon basin, in the Orinoco and the rivers of the Guyanas.

The Environment Agency said it believed the piranha was alive when it was put in the river, possibly because it had become too big for its tank.

Spokesman Paul Gainey said: "Whilst piranhas can't survive the colder climates of the UK, this latest find highlights a real issue - that releasing unwanted exotic pets or plants into rivers can have serious consequences for native wildlife.

"Rather than dumping things in the wild, we would urge people to seek advice about what to do with exotic species."

Read more!

Dangerous citrus pest found in California

Michelle Rindels, Associated Press Yahoo News 28 Aug 09;

LOS ANGELES – A pest that can carry a fatal citrus disease has been found in Los Angeles County, stoking fears that California's $1.6 billion citrus industry could be hit by a potentially devastating threat.

Officials at the California Department of Food and Agriculture confirmed this week they found an Asian citrus psyllid in a trap in a homeowner's citrus tree in the Echo Park neighborhood, farther north in the state than ever before.

The discovery came shortly after officials confirmed the aphid-like insect had been found in Orange County. It had been confined to the state's southernmost San Diego and Imperial counties.

"This pest can travel, and it can do so quickly and easily," said Ted Batkin, president of the California-based Citrus Research Board.

He has called the pest and the vicious disease it can carry the greatest threat in the citrus industry's modern history.

Psyllids in Orange County tested negative for huanglongbing, also known as citrus greening disease, which spoils the flavor of the fruit and ultimately kills the tree. But fears are swirling that California could face the same fate as Florida, where the psyllid was first detected in 1998 and citrus greening was discovered in 2005.

Since then, CDFA said, the disease has spread to all the state's 30 citrus-producing counties and is laying waste to Florida's $9.3 billion citrus industry, which is largely based on orange juice production.

The pest has not yet reached California's central valley, where about three-fourths of the state's citrus production takes place. But Batkin worries the psyllid will close in on L.A. County's northern neighbor, Ventura County.

"We're about as concerned as we can be," Batkin said.

Ventura County is a center for orange and lemon growing and home to Santa Paula, a city that calls itself the Citrus Capital of the World and hosted its 42nd annual citrus festival in July.

Steve Lyle, spokesman for the CDFA, said the agency plans to continue its trapping efforts and will impose quarantines in at least parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties. During a quarantine, officials restrict the movement of plant materials out of the quarantine zone.

"We're doing all we can to pinpoint the full extent of the problem and protect our state's vital citrus industry," CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura said in a statement.

___

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — About 2 million acres of North Dakota cropland — or roughly 10 percent — did not get planted this year because of flooding caused by spring snowmelt and heavy rains, according to federal Farm Service Agency estimates.

The agency that administers federal farm programs says 2 million acres of unseeded land would be the third-highest amount in state records that go back 15 years, behind 3.9 million acres in 1999 and 2.1 million in 2001.

The number of unplanted acres is too small to affect crop prices nationwide and likely has already been factored into government production estimates based on farmer surveys closely watched by the commodity markets.

But 2 million acres would be a big blow to farmers in North Dakota and the state's economy.

"It's the difference between having a crop to sell at market vs. a smaller payment on your ... crop insurance," said Aaron Krauter, state FSA director. "Every producer out there, they want a crop to sell."

George Balsdon has been farming near Osnabrock in that county since the 1940s.

"This is the wettest I've ever seen," said Balsdon, 77. He and his sons were able to seed only about half of their 8,000 acres of wheat and canola last spring. "We just got going (with planting) and we got a 3-inch rain. Then we just got going again and we got a 2-inch rain.

"We didn't get half the farm in," he said. "A lot of neighbors didn't get anything in."

The FSA estimates show corn took the biggest hit from flooding in North Dakota, with about 588,000 acres going unseeded, followed by wheat with 488,000 acres unplanted and soybeans with 355,000 unseeded acres.

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Turning the brown back to green: reforestation in Mongolia

Japanese NGO has been working hard to reforest Inner Mongolian desert
Grace Chua, Straits Times 29 Aug 09;

GANQIKA TOWN (INNER MONGOLIA): For decades, the desert sands of Inner Mongolia have crept south, swallowing whole villages and turning six million hectares of grassland into barren waste each year.

But even as northern China confronts its worst drought in 60 years, with five million people lacking access to water, one small fraction of the desert is getting a little bit greener.

The scrubby, 1,800ha area in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, about 700km north-east of Beijing, has help from a Japanese non-profit organisation named Green Network.

It operates in tandem with Chinese and Japanese universities, and corporate sponsors like electronics giant Hitachi and United States outdoor apparel brand Timberland, which sends volunteers from its Japan and Asia-Pacific offices, including Singapore.

In 2000, Green Network began planting trees and shrubs in Inner Mongolia's Horqin desert - an area 56 times the size of Singapore.

Their roots grip the soil and rows of tall pines and poplars serve as windbreaks.

It also works with local communities to water, prune and maintain the reforested areas, and educates them on sustainable agricultural practices.

Traditionally, people in the area herded sheep and goats. But over the past six decades, overpopulation, overgrazing and agriculture have taxed the land; Inner Mongolia's population has quadrupled to about 24 million, and the number of sheep, cows and goats has shot up to match.

These animals munch the grass down to its roots, faster than it can grow back.

The sun and wind then strip the top layers of exposed soil, speeding up water loss and leaving the earth less fertile.

Local Green Network staff member Tana, 25, an ethnic Mongolian, remembers how the shifting dunes crept up to the edge of her parents' house in the far north-west.

'When I was small, the sands came up to the back of the house and almost covered the whole house, so we had to move,' she said.

Sandstorms are common in spring. The haze causes breathing problems, grounds air traffic and even reaches as far as Japan and Korea.

Last month, a Japanese study using Nasa space agency satellites found that dust storms from China's north-western Taklimakan Desert circled the globe in 13 days.

Yet when Green Network first tried to explain to villagers what they did, they were scoffed at, says the organisation's co-founder and vice-president Yoshio Kitaura, 39.

So the group took a 'show, not tell' tack, and the strategy has worked.

For example, to demonstrate the importance of letting the land recover before it is grazed again, Green Network workers planted brush on a patch of land and divided the area with a fence.

Half of the land was used for grazing; the other half was untouched.

Two years later, Mr Kitaura, who with his enthusiasm and wild hair resembles a younger version of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, stands before the field and sweeps his arms wide.

'Look at this,' he says in Japanese, sweeping his arms in a gesture towards the pristine half, which is green and lush. On the other half, ankle-high brush struggles to take root.

'Now, the locals ask us to come in and help green their land,' he says.

The organisation is also winning over local workers young and old, such as Miss Tu Xingbo, 25, who joined a month ago.

Miss Tu took a pay cut from her previous job as a salesgirl as she felt tree planting was more meaningful work.

'Previously, nothing grew, and my parents' herds of cows and horses were halved,' she says. 'Now the grassland is back.'

To date, Japanese and local employees of Green Network have planted about 3.9 million native trees such as poplars and pines, as well as sea buck-thorn and other shrubs.

Though only half the trees manage to grow in the harsh climate, the surviving plants help to lessen the intensity of sandstorms.

Green Network is part of a larger reforestation drive in China.

Other initiatives to plant trees include the country's Great Green Wall programme, started in 1978; Maple Leaf, a Canadian company which grows seedlings for landscaping and reforestation projects; and OISCA, a Japanese non-governmental organisation.

China's most ambitious project, the government-run Great Green Wall, aims to plant trees over a 4,500km, 36,000 sq km strip by the 2070s, but it has run into glitches such as overfarming and pollution.

And threats to reforestation remain, such as the underlying problems of overgrazing and overconsumption, as well as logging in other parts of northern China and urban development.

The future of the land is in question, Mr Kitaura says.

'Hopefully, the local people will understand that sustainably grazed land is better for their herds, and continue the greening.'

caiwj@sph.com.sg

GIVING NATURE A HAND

Green Network officer Takashi Otaki pruning poplar trees to help them grow so they can be better windbreaks.

KEEPING THE DESERT OUT STARK CONTRAST

Green Network founder Yoshio Kitaura showing the contrast between still green grassland (in the background) and land in the final stages of desertification near Tongliao. The non-profit organisation has been planting trees and shrubs in Inner Mongolia's Horqin desert since 2000.

GOING NATIVE

A Green Network member planting pine saplings that will also serve as windbreaks. About 3.9 million native trees, such as poplars and pines, have been planted in the desert of Inner Mongolia. Though only half of the trees survive the harsh climate, those that survive help to lessen the intensity of sandstorms.

In Singapore
Straits Times 29 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE has boosted its green cover from 36 per cent in 1987 to 47 per cent in 2007. But it has not always been a garden city.

In the 1840s, there were 600 plantations growing gambier, a leaf used medicinally and as an ingredient in chewed betel nuts.

Primary forests were cleared to grow more of the cash crop, and by 1883, just 7 per cent of the island was still forested.

Up till the 1950s, the business district was treeless.

The first government tree-planting campaign took place in 1963, and since the Garden City programme was launched in 1967, over 1.3 million trees have been planted.

Today, the National Parks Board plants 50,000 to 60,000 trees each year. These trees:

# Take in carbon dioxide from the air.

# Are aesthetically pleasing.

# Provide shade and help lower ambient temperatures.

Singapore's trees are a small addition to efforts like the United Nations Environment Programme's Billion Tree Campaign.

The campaign aims to get governments, companies and individuals around the world to plant seven billion trees by the end of this year.

Read more!

Scientists Find 'Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch'

ScienceDaily 28 Aug 09;

Scientists have just completed an unprecedented journey into the vast and little-explored "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch."

On the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), researchers got the first detailed view of plastic debris floating in a remote ocean region.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

The Scripps research vessel (R/V) New Horizon left its San Diego homeport on August 2, 2009, for the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, located some 1,000 miles off California's coast, and returned on August 21, 2009.

Scientists surveyed plastic distribution and abundance, taking samples for analysis in the lab and assessing the impacts of debris on marine life.

Before this research, little was known about the size of the "garbage patch" and the threats it poses to marine life and the gyre's biological environment.

The expedition was led by a team of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) graduate students, with support from University of California Ship Funds, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Project Kaisei.

"SEAPLEX was an important education experience for the graduate students, and contributed to a better understanding of an important problem in the oceans," said Linda Goad, program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences. "We hope that SEAPLEX will result in increased awareness of a growing issue."

After transiting for six days aboard the research vessel, the researchers reached their first intensive sampling site on August 9th.

Team members began 24-hour sampling periods using a variety of tow nets to collect debris at several ocean depths.

"We targeted the highest plastic-containing areas so we could begin to understand the scope of the problem," said Miriam Goldstein of SIO, chief scientist of the expedition. "We also studied everything from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small midwater fish."

The scientists found that at numerous areas in the gyre, flecks of plastic were abundant and easily spotted against the deep blue seawater.

Among the assortment of items retrieved were plastic bottles with a variety of biological inhabitants. The scientists also collected jellyfish called by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella).

On August 11th, the researchers encountered a large net entwined with plastic and various marine organisms; they also recovered several plastic bottles covered with ocean animals, including large barnacles.

The next day, Pete Davison, an SIO graduate student studying mid-water fish, collected several species in the gyre, including the pearleye (Benthalbella dentata), a predatory fish with eyes that look upward so it can see prey swimming above, and lanternfish (Tarletonbeania crenularis), which migrate from as deep as 700 meters down to the ocean surface each day.

By the end of the expedition, the researchers were intrigued by the gyre, but had seen their fill of its trash.

"Finding so much plastic there was shocking," said Goldstein. "How could there be this much plastic floating in a random patch of ocean--a thousand miles from land?"
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.

Pacific Ocean garbage patch worries researchers
Michelle Rindels, Associated Press Yahoo News 28 Aug 09;

LOS ANGELES – A tawny stuffed puppy bobs in cold sea water, his four stiff legs tangled in the green net of some nameless fisherman.

It's one of the bigger pieces of trash in a sprawling mass of garbage-littered water, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where most of the plastic looks like snowy confetti against the deep blue of the north Pacific Ocean.

Most of the trash has broken into bite-sized plastic bits, and scientists want to know whether it's sickening or killing the small fish, plankton and birds that ingest it.

During their August fact-finding expedition, a group of University of California scientists found much more debris than they expected. The team announced their observations at a San Diego press conference Thursday.

"It's pretty shocking — it's unusual to find exactly what you're looking for," said Miriam Goldstein, who led fellow researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego on the three-week voyage.

While scientists have documented trash's harmful effects for coastal marine life, there's little research on garbage patches, which were first explored extensively by self-trained ocean researcher Charles Moore just a decade ago. There's also scant research on the marine life at the bottom of the food chain that inhabit the patch.

But even the weather-beaten, sunbleached plastic flakes that are smaller than a thumbnail can be alarming.

"They're the right size to be interacting with the food chain out there," Goldstein said.

The team also netted occasional water bottles with barnacles clinging to the side. Some of the trash had labels written in Chinese and English, hints of the long journeys garbage takes to arrive mid-ocean.

Plastic sea trash doesn't biodegrade and often floats at the surface. Bottlecaps, bags and wrappers that end up in the ocean from the wind or through overflowing sewage systems can then drift thousands of miles.

The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has the scientists worried about how it might harm the sea creatures there.

A study released earlier this month estimated that thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, and some of that has ended up in the swirling currents of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, told the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society last week that plastic actually does decompose, releasing potentially toxic chemicals that can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals and marine life.

The Scripps team hopes the samples they gathered during the trip nail down answers to questions of the trash's environmental impact. Does eating plastic poison plankton? Is the ecosystem in trouble when new sea creatures hitchhike on the side of a water bottle?

Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year.

The scientists hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger.

"We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Only humans are to blame for ocean debris, Goldstein said. In a blog entry posted a day before the science ship arrived in Newport, Ore., she wrote the research showed her the consequences of humanity's footprint on nature.

"Seeing that influence just floating out here in the middle of nowhere makes our power painfully obvious, and the consequences of the industrial age plain," she wrote. "It's not a pretty sight."

___

On the Net:

• Scripps Institution of Oceanography, http://www.sio.ucsd.edu/

Plastics patch found across 1,700 miles of Pacific
Steve Gorman, Reuters 28 Aug 09;

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ocean scientists recently back from a voyage to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" said on Thursday they had found plastic debris strewn across a 1,700-mile (2,700-km) long stretch of open sea.

The research team from the three-week Seaplex expedition said more work remains to be done to determine the full extent of the trash vortex, how it affects marine life and how it might safely be removed from the ocean.

Cleanup will be difficult because the "vast majority of things we saw were small, about the size of your thumbnail or smaller," Miriam Goldstein, the expedition's chief scientist, told reporters at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

"We found a lot of particles that were about the size of the animals that are living out there, so that would certainly present a challenge to removing those particles," she said.

The 172-foot (52-meter) research vessel New Horizon returned to shore last Friday from a trip to the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, a giant eddy-like expanse of sea about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States.

Debris winds up concentrated there by circular, clockwise ocean currents that form an oblong-shaped "convergence zone."

"Our human footprint is now apparent in even one of the most remote places on the planet," said Doug Woodring, director of Project Kaisei, which co-sponsored the Seaplex study.

He joined the New Horizon crew, and his group's ship returns from its own expedition next week. That boat, the Kaisei, has been experimenting with possible debris-skimming cleanup methods, he said.

The existence of the vast, remote debris field, widely referred to as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," was first publicized by ocean activist Charles Moore, who discovered the area by accident in 1997.

He has said some of his samples from the area contained six times more plastic by weight than zooplankton. But the exact scope of the phenomenon remains unclear.

TWICE THE CALIFORNIA COASTLINE

Goldstein said the crew of the New Horizon hauled up plastic debris in 100 consecutive surface samples taken across 1,700 miles of the ship's cruise track -- roughly twice the length of the California coastline but just a fraction of the gyre. Relatively little sampling was done beneath the surface.

"We can't necessarily say very much about the extent of the area covered by marine debris," she said.

Scientists will spend months studying samples to determine what harm the plastic may be doing to marine life, much of it tiny, jelly-like organisms classified as zooplankton.

Many such creatures found there are not well known to science, Goldstein said.

During one glassy-calm day at sea, she recalled, the water was littered with plastic specks, "like little flecks of confetti or snow, just floating on the surface, and beneath them you could see these really interesting critters just going about their business."

"So it was, I thought, a very striking combination of a cool, basic science discovery, and then this undeniable sign of human impact," she said.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Todd Eastham)

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Fears grow over giant oil slick off north-west coast

Marian Wilkinson, Sydney Morning Herald 29 Aug 09;

THE state-owned Thai energy company PTTEP has failed to stop a major oil leak from its wellhead off the north-west Australian coast despite a week-long emergency response that has seen 16,000 litres of chemical dispersant dropped on the huge slick.

After flying over the West Atlas oil rig spill in the Timor Sea yesterday, the Greens senator Rachel Siewert said people had been seriously misled about the size and extent of the spill.

"The spill is far bigger than we have been told, and closer to the coast than expected," she said.

"There is a film of oil around the rig, and from horizon to horizon. From east to west it stretches 180 kilometres at a minimum. Urgent action is needed to stop the flow''.

But stopping the leak could still take weeks, according to the Federal Government and PTTEP.

Technical problems delayed by two days the company's plans to bring a new oil rig from Singapore to drill a "relief well" near the leaking one in the hope it would stem the flow.

A spokesman for PTTEP said the new rig left Singapore on Thursday. But it will take well over two weeks to arrive at the site, 250 kilometres off the coast in the Timor Sea and up to four weeks to drill the second well.

Throughout this week the company reported that the oil slick stretched eight nautical miles from its disabled West Atlas drilling rig, which is an area known to be rich in marine life.

The federal Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, who is responsible for the safety of offshore petroleum rigs, said he wanted the leaking well repaired as fast as possible but was worried by the safety risks involved. Departmental officials have been in talks with other companies, including the energy giant Woodside, which have offered the use of drills and equipment.

However, there were doubts whether these would be compatible with the operations at the wellhead. "We do not want to put lives, facilities or the environment at further risk. Therefore this work must be done with due diligence", a spokesman for Mr Ferguson said. "Discussions are continuing on a number of options in parallel with the mobilisation of the West Triton drilling rig.

"It is inappropriate to speculate on those options until they are fully and properly assessed."

After inspecting the slick, Senator Siewert said last night the company "should be compelled to take up Woodside's offer of a closer rig, which would enable the spill to be stopped much sooner".

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said last night he was writing to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, calling on him to intervene and take up Woodside's offer.

The company said it had flown equipment from Singapore to Darwin to try to flood the wellhead platform and the rig to reduce the threat of fire. It is expected to be on site in days.

Inspectors from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority have begun interviewing company employees but the head of the authority, Simon Schubach, said inspectors were still unable to inspect the rig and nearby platform because they remained "hazardous".

About 69 employees were evacuated from the West Atlas rig on at 5.30am on August 21 after an uncontrolled release of crude oil and methane gas from the Montara wellhead platform where the West Atlas rig was operating.

Mr Schubach said the investigation could be protracted but would look at any breaches of the law. A parallel investigation will also be undertaken by the federal Environment Department.

Australia Sprays Oil Slick Amid Wildlife Fears
PlanetArk 28 Aug 09;

Aircraft sprayed chemicals to break up a large oil slick off Australia's northwestern coast on Sunday as environmentalists expressed fears for rare wildlife from oil gushing into the sea from an uncapped well.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said the slick from the West Atlas offshore drilling rig had lengthened overnight from an estimated 8 nautical miles (15 km) on Saturday.

The first sortie of chemical dispersant sprayed on Sunday from a C-130 Hercules aircraft appeared to have started to break up the slick, a spokeswoman said. However, the clean-up cannot be completed until the well is capped, which experts say may take days.

"The indications are that the application of the dispersant has been successful," said AMSA spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins. "We are certainly prepared for an ongoing operation."

Rig operator PTTEP Australasia, a unit of Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production PCL PTTE.BK, has flown in a team of experts to try and determine how to cap the well, which first began to leak oil and gas on Friday.

An air exclusion zone had been set up and ships have been advised to stay more than 20 nautical miles away from the rig, which is currently considered too dangerous to board.

Environmental group WWF called on Sunday for changes to preparations for such disasters, pointing out it took three days for the first dispersant to be sprayed, although the region is considered a critical area for biodiversity.

"From a global scale this is one of the most important places on the planet for ocean wildlife," Gilly Llewelyn, WWF Australia's director of conservation, told Reuters.

Among the animals affected were three endangered species of turtles, plus sea snakes, she said. Even a pygmy blue whale has been monitored there in what seemed to be an "oceanic highway" linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Many of those animals breathe air and periodically need to surface, and could surface in the middle of the slick, she said.

"It seems to be one of these critical migration routes -- an oceanic super highway," she said.

A national clean-up plan has been activated to deal with the spill, which occurred at the Montara development, a project due to come on stream later this year. The West Atlas drilling unit is owned by Norway's SeaDrill Ltd (SDRL.OL), but operated by PTTEP Australasia.

The location has been given as about 250 km (155 miles) off the far north Kimberley coast of Western Australia state, and 150 km south-east of Ashmore Reef, a small Australian offshore possession.

Australia's official overseer for the petroleum industry, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority, was investigating the incident.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

Read more!

Himalayan nations to hold first climate talks

Claire Cozens AFP Google News 28 Aug 09;

KATHMANDU — South Asian ministers will gather in Nepal next week for talks on the threat that climate change poses to the Himalayas and to the 1.3 billion people dependent on water flowing from the mountains.

Experts say the Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate and with months to go before a key summit in Copenhagen, mountain nations are hoping to highlight the myriad of problems facing the region.

Climate change campaigners refer to the Himalayas as the "third pole" and say the melting glaciers are the biggest potential contributors to rising sea levels after the north and south poles.

But until now Himalayan governments have not come together to lobby for ambitious emission reduction targets at December's Copenhagen summit, which aims to seal a new international climate change accord.

"Nepal's message needs to be heard, and the message of the mountains needs to be heard," said World Bank water and climate expert Claudia Sadoff, who is helping Nepal's government organise the August 31-September 1 conference.

"The Himalayas have their own very real set of challenges, but there are also a lot of adaptation and mitigation opportunities in the mountains."

Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, a lifeline for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream.

But temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade for the last 30 years, and the effects are already being felt.

In Nepal and Bhutan, the melting glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating communities downstream.

Low-lying Bangladesh has always been prone to flooding, but leading environment scientist Atiq Rahman said the speed at which the Himalayan glaciers were melting meant floods were now "more frequent and more vigorous".

Last year Nepal suffered its driest winter in 40 years, bringing the first widespread forest fires the country has experienced and destroying crops that depend on the winter rains.

Campaigners say that while the effects of climate change on low-lying South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives are now well known, there is little international awareness of the vulnerability of the Himalayan region.

"The general impression is that the Himalayas are huge, impregnable, pristine spaces no one can hurt. But the fact is that they are melting," said Tariq Aziz, leader of the WWF's Living Himalayas initiative.

"The Himalayas are not just mountains. They are a source of sustenance for millions and their most valuable commodity is water."

Nepal's government, which has invited environment ministers from across South Asia to attend the talks, said it hoped to "take a regional voice on climate change to Copenhagen".

"The glaciers are melting and the temperatures are rising in the Himalayas," said environment secretary Uday Raj Sharma.

"This will ultimately affect people's livelihoods not only in Nepal but also downstream."

Some observers have expressed concern that India, which opposes binding carbon emission cuts, will drown out the voices of smaller countries such as Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh at the Copenhagen talks.

New Delhi does not plan to send anyone from the national government to next week's conference in Nepal, an absence that will inevitably weaken any message that comes out of the talks.

India's environment secretary Jairam Ramesh recently expressed scepticism as to whether the melting of the Himalayan glaciers is caused by climate change, saying more research was needed.

But campaigners say the world cannot afford to wait for concrete evidence before acting to mitigate the effects of the melting glaciers.

They say poor mountain states such as Nepal and Bhutan need urgent international assistance to adapt to the changes and to build early warning systems necessary to prevent devastation from flooding or drought.

"There is still debate on the magnitude of the effects of climate change but the consensus is that already, man-made emissions have created temperature increases," said Simon Lucas, climate change adviser to Britain's Department for International Development in Nepal.

"We already know it is the poorest people who will be worst affected, and the number of people impacted in South Asia will be simply enormous."

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Activists seek tough UN climate pact in 100 days

Alister Doyle, Reuters 28 Aug 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Activists launched what they called the world's biggest campaign to combat global warming on Friday, urging governments to agree a tough U.N. climate pact at talks in Copenhagen starting in 100 days' time.

Environmental organizations, trade unions, religious groups, scientists, anti-poverty campaigners and others representing tens of millions of people teamed up to put pressure for curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

"Time is running out," said Kumi Naidoo, chair of the Global Campaign for Climate Action of the "TckTckTck" campaign, meant to refer to the sound of a clock ticking as the U.N. meeting draws closer.

TckTckTck would include actions such as rallies or online advertisements to show, for instance, how people in developing nations are already suffering from global warming and how a shift to green jobs could help recovery from recession.

Friday is exactly 100 days from the December 7 start of the two-week meeting in Denmark due to agree a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to rein in changes such as more droughts, floods, rising sea levels, a spread of disease and heatwaves.

"We are deeply anxious that the negotiations are not where they need to be," Naidoo told Reuters in a telephone interview from South Africa. TckTckTck calls itself in a statement "the biggest ever climate change campaign."

Naidoo urged a "massive push by ordinary men, women and young people in the remaining 100 days." Two negotiating sessions remain before Copenhagen, in Bangkok and Barcelona.

TICKING

He said Friday was the official launch of the campaign, which has already staged some events such as installing a loud ticking noise in a hotel in Bonn where climate negotiators from 180 nations met in June.

Participants include environmental groups Greenpeace and WWF, Christian Aid, Oxfam, the World Conference of Religions for Peace, the Union of Concerned Scientists, an international umbrella group for trade unions, the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF and a group run by ex-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"The outlook is looking bleak -- but it doesn't have to be," Greenpeace wrote in a report on the state of the U.N. talks.

It said negotiators were deadlocked over whether developed nations would adopt strong 2020 targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and whether they would also provide billions of dollars to help developing nations.

(Editing by Charles Dick)

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Leave population out of climate talks, Indian minister says

Jairam Ramesh claims there is a move among western countries to bring India's rapidly growing population into climate change negotiations
Randeep Ramesh, guardian.co.uk 28 Aug 09;

Western nations are trying to use India's "profligate reproductive behaviour" to force Delhi to accept legally binding emission reduction targets, India's environment minister said today.

Speaking at a conference in the Indian capital, organised by Delhi's Centre for Science and Environment, Jairam Ramesh said there was a "move in western countries to bring population into climate change [negotiations]. Influential American thinktanks are asking why should we reward profligate reproductive behaviour? Why should we reward India which is adding 14 million people every year?"

Ramesh's speech comes as the 100 day countdown begins to the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, which will agree on a successor to the Kyoto agreement, due to expire in 2012. Developing nations such as India and China were not constrained by the Kyoto agreement, and western nations now argue that these rapidly growing economies should sign up to legally binding emission targets.

India's population of over 1 billion means that while it is the world's fifth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, its per capita emissions are just one-twentieth of the United States. However, its population is rising quickly and the United Nations predicts India will have 1.7 billion people by 2050 – while China will by then have a population of 1.4 billion.

It is understood that American diplomats had raised the issue of overpopulation with the Indian delegation during talks when US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, visited New Delhi earlier this year.

Ramesh said that at "today's state of development" India could not and should not accept "legally binding reduction targets". The minister added that the Indian government saw per capita emissions rising from one tonne of carbon dioxide to "three or four" by 2030.

"For us this is about survival. We need to put electricity into people's homes and do it cleanly. You in the west need to live with only one car rather than three. For you it is about luxury. For us survival."

The Indian government – along with 37 other developing nations – has argued that rich nations such as the US should set a goal of cutting emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020.

"Once developed countries have shown demonstrable proof of their seriousness then India can think of going to next stage. At a time when every (rich) country is in violation of the Kyoto protocol obligation to ask China and India to take on legal targets smacks of hypocrisy."

Finance is one of the key sticking points, as poorer nations demand huge amounts of cash to buy technologies and adapt their nations to climate change. Richer nations have proved reluctant to commit. One recent estimate, highlighted by Pakistan's chief Copenhagen negotiator, Farrukh Iqbal Khan, who has worked closely with Indian counterparts, put the cost at £265bn a year.

Asked what he might say to the UK climate change minister, Ed Miliband, who arrives next week, Ramesh said pointed out that the only leader to come up with a "concrete offer (of money)" was Gordon Brown. "He said earlier this year that there should be a fund of $100bn (£60bn). We don't know if that is every year or what. But it is an offer on the table."

Ramesh, who has just returned from Beijing, said that India and China had agreed to "coordinate all actions" before multilateral meetings. He said that the only difference was that a Chinese thinktank had called for Beijing to "peak emissions" by 2030. Ramesh said the Chinese chief negotiator on climate change had assured him that this was "thinktank policy not government policy".

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Booming Middle-Class Diet May Stress Asia's Water Needs

James Owen, National Geographic News 28 Aug 09;

The beefed-up diets of Asia's expanding middle class could lead to chronic food shortages for the water-stressed region, scientists said at a global water conference in Sweden last week.

Asia's growing economy and appetite for meat will require a radical overhaul of farmland irrigation to feed a population expected to swell to 1.4 billion by 2050, experts warned at Stockholm's World Water Week.

The threat was highlighted in a study by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which estimate that Asian demand for food and livestock fodder will double in 40 years.

At current crop yields, East Asia would need 47 percent more irrigated farmland and to find 70 percent more water, the study found.

South Asia would have to expand its irrigated crop areas by 30 percent and increase water use by 57 percent. Given existing agriculture pressure on water resources and territory, that's an impossible scenario, the study authors said. In South Asia, for example, 94 percent of suitable land is already being farmed.

Instead the scientists urge modernization of existing large-scale irrigation systems, most of which were installed in the 1970s and '80s.

That would mean replacing current antiquated systems with more efficient, reliable, and flexible technologies, according to FAO irrigation expert Thierry Falcon.

Unregulated Irrigation

It's estimated that India, the world's largest consumer of underground water, has 19 million unregulated groundwater pumps.

Groundwater in northern India is receding by as much as a foot (0.3 meter) a year due to rampant water extraction, most of it for crop irrigation, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature.

More than 26 cubic miles (109 cubic kilometres) of groundwater were drained from the region between 2002 and 2008, according to the satellite image-based study led by scientists with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Governments' inability to regulate this practice is giving rise to scary scenarios of groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest," said Tushaar Shah of IWMI.

Thirsty Beef

In China, the country's per capita "water footprint" for food production has almost doubled since 1985, said Junguo Liu of the Beijing Forestry University. A switch from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet is behind the change, Liu said.

It takes about 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) of water to grow a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice or wheat, but a kilogram of beef takes 445 cubic feet (12.6 cubic meters) of water to produce, the researcher said.

"Changes in food consumption are the major cause of worsening water scarcity in China," Lui said.

Total water requirements for food production in China are predicted to rise by 40 to 50 percent in the next 30 years, he added.

"Where do you get such a big amount of water? It is a really big question and a big challenge … ."

"If other developing countries follow China toward a Western diet, the global water shortage becomes even more serious," Liu said.

Climate Change

The recent IWMI study didn't factor in possible climate change impacts on Asia's water supplies, so the paper's pessimistic projections may in fact prove overly optimistic, the authors stated.

Climate modelling forecasts presented in Stockholm by the Asian Development Bank suggest production of irrigated wheat and rice could drop across the region by 21 percent and 16 percent respectively by 2050.

"That's pretty troubling, as it's obviously going to have a big impact on food prices as we look into the future," said the bank's climate change specialist David McCauley.

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Nepal villagers on climate change frontline

Claire Cozens Yahoo News 28 Aug 09;

BHATTEGAUN, Nepal (AFP) – Three years ago Naina Shahi's husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighbouring India, leaving her to bring up their three children alone.

The dry winters and unpredictable monsoons Nepal has experienced in recent years had hit crop production on the couple's land plot in the foothills of the Himalayas, forcing them to look for other ways to feed their family.

For the past two years, their crop has failed entirely and Shahi now buys rice on credit from a local shopkeeper while she waits for her husband to return to their village with his earnings.

"My husband stopped farming because this place is not good for growing crops. We needed to earn money to feed the children," Shahi, 35, told AFP in the remote village of Bhattegaun in mid-western Nepal.

"There is not enough rainfall for the crops to grow well and we have to walk for two or three hours every day to get water."

International aid agency Oxfam says Nepal's changing weather patterns are threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of desperately poor communities already struggling to produce enough food to survive.

In a new report released Friday, 100 days before a conference in Copenhagen aimed at sealing an international accord on fighting climate change, Oxfam warns of the potentially devastating effects on people in the Himalayan nation.

"The majority of Nepal's population are poor farmers reliant on rainfall and occupying small parcels of land that can barely produce enough food for the family," it said.

"They often live in areas most at risk to floods and landslides and are more reliant on local natural resources such as forests and water.

"Even small changes to rainfall patterns can have devastating consequences on their crops," said the report, based on interviews conducted in rural communities across Nepal in February and March this year.

Almost a third of Nepal's 28 million people live below the poverty line and the UN's World Food Programme said recently there had been a "sharp and sustained decline in food security" in recent years.

It blamed a rise in food prices and a series of unusually dry winters.

This year Nepal's winter rains failed altogether, leading to severe water shortages and power cuts of up to 18 hours a day in the capital as hydro-electric projects struggled to meet demand.

There is no firm scientific evidence linking the winter droughts to climate change, and rapid population growth and a lack of development during the 10-year civil war have contributed to Nepal's rising food shortages.

But low winter rainfall and the late onset of the monsoons are in line with what climate change scientists have predicted for the region, and Oxfam says Nepal must act now to help its citizens adapt.

"There is no time to waste and nothing to lose," country director Wayne Gum told AFP.

"The government needs to do more to support local communities. Even if we're wrong about climate change -- and I don't think we are -- people will always benefit from better water management systems."

The residents of Bhattegaun, a settlement of around 150 mud huts deep in the forest, know little about the science behind climate change.

But they say changing weather patterns are already forcing them to change their way of life.

"These days, the weather is getting much hotter and the rains don't fall when they are supposed to," said 59-year-old Ram Bahadur Himal.

"Landslides washed away our last plot of land so we moved here and settled in the forest. We ploughed the land, but since we moved here, there has been no regular rainfall."

Most men of working age have left to seek casual work, leaving the back-breaking tasks of fetching water and firewood to the women.

Padam Bahadur Sunar works in India for between five and eight months of the year, earning up to 25,000 rupees (330 dollars) a month which he sends home to feed his parents and eight siblings.

The 31-year-old recently got married, but he will soon be forced to leave his new bride behind when he returns to his work as a driver on Indian construction sites.

"There has been less rainfall over the years and there is no irrigation for the farmland," he said. "Without going to India I wouldn't be able to feed my family."

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