U.N. Insists To Guide Climate Talks, Despite Setback

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 21 Jan 10;

OSLO/LONDON - The United Nations insisted Wednesday that it should keep guiding talks on a new climate pact despite near-failure at a summit last month when a few countries agreed a low-ambition "Copenhagen Accord."

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat, said negotiations in 2010 would be based on U.N. talks launched in 2007 about how to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol and on involving all nations in action.

The three-page Copenhagen Accord, championed by big emitters including the United States and China, could however be a valuable spur toward agreement at the next U.N. meeting in Mexico in November, de Boer said.

"I suppose in theory you could have a parallel structure but that strikes me as an incredibly inefficient exercise," he told a news conference webcast from Bonn of the prospects of also negotiating on the Copenhagen Accord.

The Copenhagen Accord seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of an annual $100 billion in aid from 2020 for developing nations.

But it omits setting cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2020 or 2050 to achieve the temperature goal.

De Boer left open, however, whether Mexico would result in a legally binding treaty as urged by many nations.

He spoke of "Mexico or later" for final texts meant to step up a drive to slow more heatwaves, floods, species extinctions, powerful storms and rising ocean levels.

MISSED DEADLINE

The failure of the U.N. negotiations to achieve a deal despite a deadline set for the end of 2009 after two years of talks launched in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 has cast doubt on the U.N.'s future role.

Big emitters such as China, the United States, Russia or India may simply prefer to negotiate in smaller groups such as the G20 or a "Major Economies Forum" of nations accounting for about 80 percent of world emissions.

Under U.N. rules a deal has to be adopted by unanimity. In Copenhagen, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Sudan blocked the conference from adopting the Copenhagen Accord.

"Copenhagen didn't produce the final cake but it left the countries with all the right ingredients to bake a new one in Mexico," de Boer said.

He said he had written to all nations asking them to say if they backed the Copenhagen Accord, and to give details of their plans for curbs on greenhouse emissions by 2020, by a January 31 deadline set in the accord. But he said that was flexible.

"I don't expect everyone to meet the deadline," he said. "You could describe it as a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it." Officials say few nations have so far submitted plans.

He also urged developed countries to start disbursing aid to developing nations under a plan to raise close to $30 billion from 2010-12, even though new mechanisms for guiding funds were not yet in place.

De Boer also played down worries that U.S. President Barack Obama would find it hard to persuade the Senate to pass climate capping laws after the Democrats lost a Senate seat to the Republicans, and with it a 60-40 majority that helps streamline decision-making.

"The change of one state from one party to another is not going to cause a landslide in the United States on the question of climate change," he said, saying that momentum for action had been building for years in the world's No. 2 emitter.

Analysts say failure by the United States to pass a climate bill this year may scupper U.N. negotiations to agree a new treaty to replace Kyoto from 2013.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

No guarantee of warming treaty this year: UN
Yahoo News 20 Jan 10;

PARIS (AFP) – World talks on climate change may not yield a legally-binding pact by year's end, UN pointman Yvo de Boer said on Wednesday in his first public assessment after last month's turbulent Copenhagen summit.

De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said he had taken stock among a number of countries after the Copenhagen meeting.

The mood among them was to forge an agreement this December on how to tackle climate change and then discuss further how to "package that outcome" as a treaty, he said in a webcast press conference from Bonn.

Last month's marathon talks yielded the "Copenhagen Accord," a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries that account for around 80 percent of world carbon emissions.

The accord was written by a couple of dozen leaders on the final day of the talks as the two-week meeting, hamstrung by textual wrangles and finger-pointing, faced collapse.

It disappointed many people who had expected Copenhagen to crown an arduous two-year process with a treaty to roll back the threat posed by greenhouse gases and provide funds for poor, vulnerable countries.

Mauled by the experience, the UN forum is due to resume in the coming months, culminating this year with a ministerial-level meeting in Mexico in December.

"My sense, having spoken to about 15 or 20 countries so far, is that generally people want to reach a conclusion on the (twin negotiating texts) in Mexico and then they will be in a position to decide on how they want to package that outcome in legal terms," De Boer said.

He also made clear that the Copenhagen Accord was not a substitute for the UNFCCC's negotiation template.

"It's a political tool that has broad support at the highest possible level and that we can very usefully deploy to resolve the remaining issues that we have in the negotiating process," he said.

The Copenhagen Accord set a broad goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but did not specify the staging points for achieving this goal or a year by which greenhouse-gas emissions should peak.

Instead, countries are being urged to identify what actions they intend to take, either as binding curbs on emissions or voluntary action. Twenty-eight billion dollars in aid have been pledged by rich countries for 2010-2012.

De Boer said he had asked countries to spell out by January 31 whether they intended to be "associated" with the Copenhagen Accord or what sort of measures they envisaged.

This was not a coercive deadline, but simply to help him write a report on the outcome of Copenhagen, he said.

"You can describe it as a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it," he said.

"If you fail to meet it, then you can still associate with the accord afterwards. In that sense, countries are not being asked to sign the accord, they are not being asked to take on a legally-binding target, they will not be bound to the action which they submit to the (UNFCCC) secretariat.

"It will be an indication of their intent and... (an) important tool to advance the negotiations."

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UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets

Copenhagen deal falters as just 20 countries of 192 sign up to declare their global warming strategies
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 20 Jan 10;

The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.

Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month's fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a "soft" deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. "I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].

"I see the accord as a living document that tracks actions that countries want to take," he told journalists in Bonn.

"It's a soft deadline. Countries are not being asked to sign the accord to take on legally binding targets, only to indicate their intention," he said.

The deadline was intended to be the first test of the "Copenhagen accord", the weak, three-page document that emerged at the end of the summit, and which fell far short of original expectations. It seeks to bind all countries to a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial times and proposes that $100bn a year be provided for poor countries to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change after 2020.

But with just 10 days to go, only 20 countries out of 192 have signed up, with many clearly unready or unwilling to put their name to the document. Countries which have signed so far include India, Russia, Mexico, Australia, France and Norway.

De Boer also endorsed the controversial idea of short-circuiting the traditional UN negotiating process of reaching agreement between all countries by consensus. Instead, he argued that a smaller group of countries could negotiate a climate agreement on behalf of the many.

"You cannot have 192 countries involved in discussing all the details. You cannot have all countries all of the time in one room. You do have to safeguard transparency by allowing countries to decide if they want to be represented by others, and that if a debate is advanced then the conclusion is brought back to the larger community", he said.

However, this more exclusive method of reaching agreement was criticised by some in Copenhagen after the host government, Denmark, convened a meeting of 26 world leaders in the last two days of the conference to try to reach agreement on behalf of everyone.

Critics argued that this was not only illegal, but undermined negotiations already taking place among the 192 countries and threatened the UN's multilateral and democratic process.

"The selected leaders were given a draft document that mainly represented the developed countries' positions, thereby marginalising the developing countries' views tabled at the two-year negotiations. The attempt by the Danish presidency to override the legitimate multilateral process was the reason why Copenhagen will be considered a disaster," said Martin Khor, director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for developing countries based in Geneva.

The US and Britain have argued since the conference that climate negotiations are best served by meetings of the world's largest polluters, such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa. These countries, which emit more than 80% of global emissions, signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit.

Brazil, India, China and South Africa, known as the "BASIC" group, meet next week in Delhi to agree a common position ahead of further UN climate talks.

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UN Panel "Regrets" Exaggeration Of Himalayan Thaw

PlanetArk 21 Jan 10;

OSLO - The U.N. panel of climate scientists expressed regret on Wednesday for exaggerating how quickly Himalayan glaciers are melting in a report that wrongly projected that they could all vanish by 2035.

Leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance," they said in a statement on the flaw in a paragraph of a 938-page scientific report.

They noted that the projection of a thaw by 2035 did not make it to the final summary for policymakers in its latest report in 2007. The summary projected a faster thaw in the coming years for glaciers from the Andes to the Alps.

India and some climate researchers have criticized the IPCC in recent days for over-stating the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers, whose seasonal thaw helps to supply water to nations including China and India.

A disappearance of the glaciers would badly disrupt flows in Asia that are vital for irrigation. The IPCC leaders said they were strongly committed to ensuring a high standard for the reports.

The offending paragraph says: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

On Monday, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that "glaciers are receding, but the report that glaciers will vanish by 2035 is not based on an iota of scientific evidence."

The IPCC statement said that the 2035 projection was based on "poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession" and that proper checks were not made.

The IPCC's core finding in 2007 was that it was more than 90 percent sure that mankind is the main cause of global warming, mainly by using fossil fuels.

UN climate panel admits Himalaya glacier data "poorly substantiated"
Yahoo News 20 Jan 10;

GENEVA (AFP) – The UN's climate science panel acknowledged on Wednesday that a grim prediction on the fate of Himalayan glaciers that featured in a benchmark report on global warming had been "poorly substantiated" and was a lapse in standards.

Charges that the reference was highly inaccurate or overblown have stoked pressure on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already assailed in a separate affair involving hacked email exchanges.

The new row focuses on a paragraph in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, a 938-page opus whose warning in 2007 that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.

The paragraph notably declared the probability of glaciers in the Himalayas "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."

The IPCC said in a statement that the paragraph "refers to poorly substantiated rates of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers."

"In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly," the panel admitted.

It added: "The Chair, Vice Chair and Co Chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.

"This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of 'the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source in an IPCC report'."

The statement noted that the reference was not repeated in an important "synthesis report" of the 2007 assessment, and stressed the IPCC's "strong commitment" to thorough, accurate review of scientific data.

The IPCC co-won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing climate change to the world's attention through a reputation for rigour, caution and fact-checking. Under this process, data are peer reviewed by other scientists and are then meant to be double-checked by editors.

In an exceptional move, the lapses came under public attack from four prominent glaciologists and hydrologists in a letter to the prestigious US journal Science.

They said the paragraph's mistakes derived from a report by green group WWF which picked up a news report based on an unpublished study, compounded by the accidental inversion of a date -- 2035 instead of 2350 -- in a Russian paper published in 1996.

"These errors could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected," according to the letter, which Science released on Wednesday, two days ahead of scheduled publication.

One of the letter's authors was Austrian specialist Georg Kaser, who contributed to a different section of the 2007 report.

He told AFP on Monday that the mistake was enormous and that he had notified IPCC colleagues of it months before publication.

Despite the controversy, the IPCC stood by the overall conclusions about glacier loss this century in major mountain ranges, including the Himalayas.

The report concluded that "widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century."

That would reduce "water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives," it added.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri on Tuesday defended the panel's overall work, a position shared by other scientists, who say the core conclusions about climate change are incontrovertible.

"Theoretically, let's say we slipped up on one number, I don't think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what's happening with the climate of this Earth," Pachauri said.

Skeptics have already attacked the panel over so-called "Climategate," entailing stolen email exchanges among IPCC experts which they say reflected attempts to skew the evidence for global warming.

The row came as the UN panel began the marathon process of drafting its Fifth Assessment Reports, inviting scientists to lead its work.

The reports, due out in 2013 and 2014, will focus on sea level changes, the influence of periodic climate patterns like the monsoon season and El Nino, and forge a more precise picture of the regional effects of climate change.

UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Jan 10;

WASHINGTON – Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world's most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful.

The errors are in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-affiliated body. All the mistakes appear in a subsection that suggests glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by the year 2035 — hundreds of years earlier than the data actually indicates. The year 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035.

The climate panel and even the scientist who publicized the errors said they are not significant in comparison to the entire report, nor were they intentional. And they do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever.

But the mistakes open the door for more attacks from climate change skeptics.

"The credibility of the IPCC depends on the thoroughness with which its procedures are adhered to," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told The Associated Press in an e-mail. "The procedures have been violated in this case. That must not be allowed to happen again because the credibility of climate change policy can only be based on credible science."

The incident follows a furor late last year over the release of stolen e-mails in which climate scientists talked about suppressing data and freezing out skeptics of global warming. And on top of that, an intense cold spell has some people questioning whether global warming exists.

In a statement, the climate change panel expressed regret over what it called "poorly substantiated estimates" about the Himalayan glaciers.

"The IPCC has established a reputation as a real gold standard in assessment; this is an unfortunate black mark," said Chris Field, a Stanford University professor who in 2008 took over as head of this part of the IPCC research. "None of the experts picked up on the fact that these were poorly substantiated numbers. From my perspective, that's an area where we have an opportunity to do much better."

Patrick Michaels, a global warming skeptic and scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called on the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to resign, adding: "I'd like to know how such an absurd statement made it through the review process. It is obviously wrong."

However, a number of scientists, including some critics of the IPCC, said the mistakes do not invalidate the main conclusion that global warming is without a doubt man-made and a threat.

The mistakes were found not by skeptics like Michaels, but by a few of the scientists themselves, including one who is an IPCC co-author.

The report in question is the second of four issued by the IPCC in 2007 on global warming. This 838-page document had chapters on each continent. The errors were in a half-page section of the Asia chapter. The section got it wrong as to how fast the thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, scientists said.

"It is a very shoddily written section," said Graham Cogley, a professor of geography and glaciers at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, who brought the error to everyone's attention. "It wasn't copy-edited properly."

Cogley, who wrote a letter about the problems to Science magazine that was published online Wednesday, cited these mistakes:

• The paragraph starts, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world." Cogley and Michael Zemp of the World Glacier Monitoring System said Himalayan glaciers are melting at about the same rate as other glaciers.

• It says that if the Earth continues to warm, the "likelihood of them disappearing by the 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high." Nowhere in peer-reviewed science literature is 2035 mentioned. However, there is a study from Russia that says glaciers could come close to disappearing by 2350. Probably the numbers in the date were transposed, Cogley said.

• The paragraph says: "Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035." Cogley said there are only 33,000 square kilometers of glaciers in the Himalayas.

• The entire paragraph is attributed to the World Wildlife Fund, when only one sentence came from the WWF, Cogley said. And further, the IPCC likes to brag that it is based on peer-reviewed science, not advocacy group reports. Cogley said the WWF cited the popular science press as its source.

• A table says that between 1845 and 1965, the Pindari Glacier shrank by 2,840 meters. Then comes a math mistake: It says that's a rate of 135.2 meters a year, when it really is only 23.5 meters a year.

Still, Cogley said: "I'm convinced that the great bulk of the work reported in the IPCC volumes was trustworthy and is trustworthy now as it was before the detection of this mistake." He credited Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon with telling him about the errors.

However, Colorado University environmental science and policy professor Roger Pielke Jr. said the errors point to a "systematic breakdown in IPCC procedures," and that means there could be more mistakes.

A number of scientists pointed out that at the end of the day, no one is disputing the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking.

"What is happening now is comparable with the Titanic sinking more slowly than expected," de Boer said in his e-mail. "But that does not alter the inevitable consequences, unless rigorous action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is taken."

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 20 Jan 10

abandoned fishing nets @ chek jawa
from sgbeachbum

Back to the sun
from The annotated budak and Soiled Associations and A Loaf for the Land.

Double delight: Launch of two new Singapore nature guidebooks
from wild shores of singapore

19-31 Jan: Singapore mosses and sponges on display at the Science Centre Singapore from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity

New Year, New Shore
from Nature's Wonders

Blue throat patches of the Chestnut-winged babbler
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Read more!

Marsiling trees: Some felled, others spared

Esther Ng, Today Online 20 Jan 10;

SINGAPORE - A rambutan, two soursop and three mango trees have been felled.

Still, residents of Blocks 109 and 116 in Marsiling Rise are relieved that the Sembawang Town Council (SBTC) did not chop down every tree there after placing notices of intent around the estate in November.

As reported by Today last month, a petition to save the trees was then started. It garnered 21 signatures and was sent to the town council.

The neem, drumstick, starfruit, jackfruit, jambu, chiku and another rambutan tree have been spared.

Still, retired doctor Praema Raghavan-Gilbert said: "The neem, the jambu and our bougainvillea have been drastically pruned." The mango tree, said the 60-year-old, had just borne its first fruits. Even the roots of "a beautiful flowering oleander" had been dug up.

One of the petition's signatories, she lives on the second floor of neighbouring Block 117.

Ground floor resident Roslee Hashim, 44, another signatory, said: "I bought this place because of the 'kampung' feel. I could sleep outside, keep an eye on my kids as they played because the trees gave me shade. Now, it's so hot."

But housewife Mardziyah Muhammad Noor, 50, was pleased with the area's new look.

A third-floor resident of Block 116, she said: "It's much brighter now and people can't hide in between the trees." Madam Mardziyah, who has three daughters, said a few households had been plagued by a Peeping Tom.

Others who had spoken out against the removal of the trees were not so much irked by some of them being removed but by the SBTC's top-down process.

"The town council could have consulted the residents' committee but we got to know about it when they placed up notices," said an RC member who declined to be named. "There was only one meeting with the town council and that was only after coverage from the media."

SBTC chairman and MP for Sembawang GRC Hawazi Daipi disagreed. "Our approach has always been to work with the residents' committee. We have always endeavoured to meet the aspirations of the residents as long as they fall within the by-laws of the town council," he said.

Common areas, however, must be kept common and not be converted into private areas, he added.

An SBTC spokesman told MediaCorp it planned to plant starfruit and chiku trees on the cleared plots and landscape the surrounding areas.

The town council is also "actively" looking into collating suggestions from residents on a soon-to-be set up website, Mr Hawazi said.

Read more!

Home's no place for wildlife in Singapore

Law penalises those who keep wildlife as pets; AVA assesses them case by case
Ang Yiying, Straits Times 20 Jan 10;

PET shop retail supervisor Justin Low 'lost' a member of his family last month - to the zoo.

It was a young Asian small-clawed otter, a female he had hand-raised for seven months. MuMu, as it had been named, was loved - even by the family's Jack Russell terrier - but Mr Low, 27, knew it was time to let the otter go.

The zoo was better placed to give MuMu supervised care, a community of other otters and a big outdoor play area.

Releasing MuMu into the wild was not a good option, he realised, as it was hand-raised and probably incapable of surviving there.

For the zoo, getting an otter from a member of the public is unusual, as are the common palm civet and the Malayan pangolin. It receives fewer than 100 donations of wild animals from the public a year, most of them snakes, monitor lizards and green iguanas.

Under 10 per cent of animals turned in by people were kept as pets, said the zoo's assistant director of zoology Biswajit Guha; most were found and handed over soon after because the donors did not know what to do with them.

Many of those who take the trouble to find out how to care for these animals and then do so - like Mr Low - may not be aware that it is against the law to keep wildlife as pets.

But Mr Goh Shih Yong, spokesman for the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), said that if a person comes forward voluntarily to give up the animal, it may exercise compassion. The AVA will consider how the person came to possess the animal and handle the matter case by case.

Mr Guha, explaining the pitfalls in keeping such exotic animals as pets, said they are meant to live in the wild and to learn survival from their parents and the pack.

Also, when these animals hit sexual maturity, they may become aggressive. They may also bring diseases and parasites from the wild to a domestic setting.

Mr Low said he did not think about breaching the animal-protection laws by taking the otter into his four-room HDB flat in Kallang, where he lives with his parents and brother.

He said: 'At that time, I didn't think about it. I just wanted to save it.'

His friend had found it weak and hungry on a grass patch outside Changi Airport's Terminal 3 last April; Mr Low believed it to have been abandoned in a botched smuggling bid.

He took it home, fed it low-lactose milk and put it in a box lined with towels.

His online research into otter care began almost immediately. He moved it into a big cage supplied it with squeaky toys, and gave it the run of the house when the family was home.

He bottle-fed it milk meant for kittens every three to four hours, and gradually introduced tinned cat food, and then dry cat food.

He even provided the otter with a 'pool' - a plastic container into which he put live fish, to sharpen its taste for hunting.

He had planned at first to look after it - with the help of his family and girlfriend - only until it was strong enough to be handed over to the zoo, but the otter stayed for seven months.

'After a few days, it bonded with us,' he said, adding that he kept it longer to minimise the stress it would undergo from a move to yet another new environment.

It turns out he did right.

Ms Lesley Wright, the webmaster for the World Conservation Union Otter Specialist Group, an international group of conservationists he was in touch with, told The Straits Times that since he was already raising the animal and it had bonded with him, it was better that it stayed with him for a while until it was more independent and better able to make the transition to the zoo.

The zoo said the donated otter, now about nine months old, is doing well in quarantine, after which it will be paired up to start a family of its own.

Mr Low said that it was hard for him and his family to let go emotionally: 'It's pretty sad. MuMu was like our kid.'

Penalties for keeping wildlife as pets
Straits Times 20 Jan 10;

KEEPING a wild animal as a pet is illegal in the eyes of the law. Under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act, an individual found keeping illegally imported wildlife may be fined up to $50,000 per species, up to a total of $500,000, and/or jailed up to two years.

An individual who kills, takes or keeps any wild animal or bird other than pest birds such as crows, mynahs and pigeons may be fined up to $1,000; the wild animal or bird will also be forfeited.

Despite the penalties, 13 cases of wildlife being kept as pets in homes came up last year, up from eight in 2007 and six in 2008.

The penalties for smuggling wild animals into or out of the country are no less stiff.

The law gives the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) and enforcement agencies, such as the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, the power to run investigations into this form of smuggling.

Anyone found guilty of smuggling protected wildlife can be fined $50,000 per species, up to a maximum of $500,000, and/or jailed up to two years.

The number of wildlife smuggling cases doubled from six in 2007 to 13 last year, with the most commonly smuggled animals being Asian arowana fish, reptiles and ornamental birds.

The AVA said one or two smuggling cases have come to light at the airport each year in the last few years.

The individuals involved were fined between $100 and $5,500.

ANG YIYING

Read more!

Don’t relocate orangutans for eco-tourism: Sabah

Mungutan Vanar, The Star 19 Jan 10;

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is not keen to relocate any orangutans to peninsular Malaysia for eco-tourism purposes.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said that not only was it dangerous to remove the environment-sensitive primates from their natural habitat, but local people were also against such a move to send away the state’s icon.

He was commenting on a proposal by Deputy Tourism Minister Datuk James Dawos Mamit to obtain orangutans from Sabah and Sarawak to set up an eco-tourism attraction similar to the Sepilok orangutan sanctuary in Sandakan and the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Kuching.

Masidi said that orangutans were not like some other animals that could be relocated from their habitat easily, and such movement could prove traumatic for them.

He said relocating an orangutan involved a lot technicalities and planning, saying they cannot be just caught and flown out to another location.

“The orangutans should stay where they are. Those who want to see orangutans will have to come to Sabah to see them,” Masidi said on Tuesday.

Mamit had told reporters in Kuching on Sunday that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had requested some orangutans be sent to peninsular Malaysia to promote eco-tourism.

Masidi said that there has been no official request made to the state government for the orangutans.

“If there is, we are willing to talk and explain our views,” he said.

There are about 11,000 orangutans left in Sabah, and the Sabah Wildlife Department is working towards rehabilitating orangutans affected by forest clearings for agricultural purposes over the years.

Come to Sabah to see our orang utans, says Masidi
New Straits Times 20 Jan 10;

KOTA KINABALU: Orang utans should be left in their natural habitat and it is for this reason that the Sabah government has set aside over 300,000ha of forest for wildlife to live and multiply.
This was the response from state Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun to a statement by newly appointed federal deputy Tourism Minister Datuk Dr James Dawos Mamit who said some orang utans from Sabah and Sarawak may be sent to the peninsula for eco-tourism purposes.

"I have never heard of this proposal. If it's true, there are so many aspects of the proposal that need to be considered.

"Transporting or relocating orang utans is not as easy as sending over our cats or dogs," he said when contacted.

Mamit was reported in The Borneo Post as saying that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had requested that some orang utans be sent to the peninsula for eco-tourism purposes.

Mamit, who was positive about the idea saying that it could be done, indicated the matter would be discussed with officials from both Sabah and Sarawak. There are an estimated 11,000 orang utans in Sabah, with some undergoing rehabilitation at three different locations statewide.

Orang utans in the wild are only found on Borneo island and in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Masidi said the people of Sabah would not want the primates to be taken away to the peninsula as the species is an icon they are proud of.

"The orang utans should stay where they are.

"Those who want to see the orang utans will have to come to Sabah to see them."

Read more!

Little Lizards Make Big Money For Indonesian Villagers

Heru Asprihanto, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;

JAKARTA - A tiny Indonesian lizard has become big business for impoverished villagers in Indonesia, where growing Asian demand for reptile-based traditional medicines has driven a boom in gecko farming.

Geckos -- the pale, soft-skinned lizard with a distinctive call -- are abundant in Indonesia and are believed by Chinese and Korean traditional medicine devotees to help cure cancer as well as skin and respiratory diseases.

In rural Banjarsawah village, on the eastern half of Java island, struggling farmers have discovered geckos make a surprisingly lucrative commodity.

Tohasyim, 32, a farmhand who earns 10,000 rupiah (about $1) a day feeding other people's cattle, now makes 1 million rupiah or about $110 a month hunting geckos in a local forest.

"I start hunting the geckos in the evening after I finish my job, feeding other people's cattle. I normally start hunting the geckos at 6 in the evening until 5 in the morning," said Tohasyim, who, like many Indonesians, has only one name.

The industry began four years ago when one villager, Abdurrahman, began drying geckos at home and selling them to an exporter.

Now, more than 100 hunters scour the forest nightly catching the skittering lizards and delivering them to Abdurrahman, 40, who delivers them to the exporter.

Most villagers in Banjarsawah are now involved in dried gecko production. Hunters venture into the forest in groups of four or five, wearing battery-powered head lamps and catching the lizards with their gloved hands.

About a dozen workers, mostly housewives, spend days stretching, drying, and packing the lizards. They often work from 7 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon in the dark woven bamboo house of the industry's owner. When demand is high, they work even longer. These workers earn about 20,000 rupiah per day.

"My job is stretching the geckos. I get 525,000 rupiah per month. I think this is enough to cover our day-to-day needs," said Hobiah, a farmer's wife who is pregnant with her second child and has been working in the industry for almost six months.

The high season for gecko hunting is during Indonesia's rainy period, from December to February.

Abdurrahman, a father of two, said he cannot disclose how much he earns from his gecko business, but he says he's happy with what he makes.

"On average, every three days we can get 5,000 to 10,000 geckos collected by hunters and we produce a maximum of 1,600 dried geckos in a day," he said.

He sells the geckos in pairs. One pair in good condition costs 4,000 rupiah, while a damaged pair missing the tails fetches 2,000 rupiah.

But gecko hunting has got environmentalists alarmed. R. Tri Prayudhi, a campaigner at East Java-based conservationist group ProFauna said that while the animals were not endangered, they played an important role in the ecological system and should remain in the wild.

"The gecko is a wild animal and should not be traded. The problem is that there is no protection for these animals in Indonesia. We have a principle that a wild animal belongs in nature," Prayudhi said.

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Rare bird's breeding ground found in Afghanistan

Michael Casey, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Jan 10;

BANGKOK – The first known breeding area of one of the world's rarest birds has been found in the remote and rugged Pamir Mountains in war-torn Afghanistan, a New York-based conservation group said Monday.

A researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society stumbled upon the small, olive-brown large-billed reed warbler in 2008 and taped its distinctive song — a recording experts now say is probably the first ever. He and colleagues later caught and released 20 of the birds, the largest number ever recorded, the group says.

At the time, however, Robert Timmins, who conducting a survey of aviary communities along the Wakhan and Pamir rivers, thought he was observing a more common warbler species.

But after a visit to a Natural History Museum in Tring in England to examine bird skins, Timmins realized he had something else on his hands.

Lars Svensson, a Swedish expert on the family of reed warblers and familiar with their songs, was the first to suggest that Timmins' tape was likely the first recording of the large-billed reed warbler.

"Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler," said Colin Poole, executive director of group's Asia Program. "This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan."

Researchers returned to the site of Timmins' first survey in 2009, armed with mist nets used to catch birds for examination. The research team broadcast the recording of the song, which brought in large-billed reed warblers from all directions, allowing the team to catch 20 of them for examination and to collect feathers for DNA.

Lab work comparing museum specimens with measurements, field images, and DNA confirmed the find: the first-known breeding population of large-billed reed warblers.

"This is great news from a little-known species from a remote part of the world and suggests that there may be more discoveries to be made here," said Mike Evans, an expert on birds in the region for BirdLife. He did not take part in the discovery.

Researchers are hoping the discovery sheds light on the bird, which U.K-based Birdlife International in 2007 called one of the world's rarest. The first specimen was discovered in India in 1867, with more than a century elapsing before a single bird was found in Thailand in 2006.

But the announcement of the discovery of a home to the large-billed reed warbler came the same day Taliban militants launched an assault the Afghan capital, underscoring the challenges of doing conservation work in the country.

The bird was discovered in the Pamir Mountains, a sparsely populated region near China that has been relatively peaceful. It is, however, difficult to access — part of the reason the breeding site is only now being discovered.

WCS is the only conservation group doing scientific studies in Afghanistan. It has been involved in helping set up the first national park, Band-e-Amir, in central Afghanistan as well as working with the government to create the first-ever list of protected species.

A preliminary paper on the finding appears in the most recent edition of BirdingASIA, the magazine of the Oriental Bird Club.

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Haiti's Environment Needs Long-Term Help: Experts

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;

OSLO - Long-term efforts to help Haiti recover from the earthquake will have to reverse environmental damage such as near-total deforestation that threatens food and water supplies for the Caribbean nation, experts say.

The focus is now on emergency aid -- Haitian officials estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the January 12 quake. But President Rene Preval urged donors on Monday also to remember the country's long-term needs.

Experts say deforestation in Haiti stretching back to the Duvalier dictatorships -- leaving the nation with less than 2 percent forest cover -- contributes to erosion that undermines food output by the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

"We need to work...to create mechanisms that reinforce better use of natural resources," said Asif Zaidi, Operations Manager of the post-conflict and disaster management branch of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Before the quake, UNEP had decided on a two-year project from 2010 to bolster Haiti's environment, from forests to coral reefs, spokesman Nick Nuttall said.

Among quick measures for donors could be to provide propane to encourage a shift from charcoal-burning stoves. That could be backed in the longer-term by reforestation and investments in renewable energies such as solar or wind power, Zaidi said.

"If you have forest cover, when heavy rain takes place it doesn't erode the land. It doesn't result in flash floods," he said. Hurricanes are more damaging in Haiti than in neighboring Dominican Republic, largely because of Haiti's lack of forests.

LAND RIGHTS

Another big problem is that Haiti has failed to develop strong governance, such as clear laws on land rights, after misrule under dictatorship from 1957 to 1986 by Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc."

"It is crucial that the priority of boosting agricultural production in the country is not forgotten in the rubble and chaos," the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization said in a statement. Most Haitians live in rural areas.

British-based risk consultancy Maplecroft lists Haiti as number two of 166 nations by their vulnerability to climate change, behind only Somalia and ahead of Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

"What stands out most for Haiti is resource security -- food security and water security," said Fiona Place, risk analyst at Maplecroft of the ranking that rates countries according to their vulnerability to natural hazards, from droughts to floods.

Years of weak government were also a shortcoming.

Donors have long sought to help Haiti. But a project to plant trees worldwide, for instance, has largely bypassed Haiti.

A U.N.-backed campaign registers 7.8 billion planted trees -- more than one for every person on the planet. But it lists just 140,000 in Haiti which has a population of 10 million.

And Haiti, like many poor nations, has missed out on projects for promoting carbon-cutting technologies in developing nations that have channeled big investments to China and India as part of the fight against global warming.

(Editing by Charles Dick)

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When our economic interests are at stake, the war on nature resumes

All this badger cull will prove is that our relations with the natural world have scarcely altered since the dark ages
George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk 18 Jan 10;

There's a story that almost all of us believe: that beyond a certain state of development, we relearn a respect for nature. It is true that some of the excesses of the early modern age – attempts by gamekeepers to kill all competing species, mass slaughter by white hunters in the colonies, the grubbing up of hedgerows and ancient woodlands – have lessened, though we still eat endangered fish and buy timber from clear-cut rainforest. It is also true that we give more money to conservation projects and spend more time watching wildlife films than we have ever done before. But as soon as we perceive that our economic interests are threatened, our war against nature resumes.

2010 is the International Year of ­Biodiversity. The Welsh assembly is celebrating the occasion by launching a project to exterminate the badger.

I won't pretend that this story ranks alongside the catastrophe in Haiti or the meltdown in Afghanistan, but it casts an interesting light on humanity's continuing impulse to conquer nature, and shows how, even when cloaked in the language of science, our relations with the natural world are still governed by irrationality and superstition.

Last week the Welsh rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, announced what her government calls "a proactive non-selective badger cull" in west Wales. What this means is the elimination of the species, beginning when the cubs emerge from their burrows in May. Badgers carry the bacterium which causes bovine tuberculosis. The purpose of the experiment is to discover whether the number of cows with the disease is reduced when the badger is exterminated. It it works, the method might be applied elsewhere. But even before the experiment begins, I can tell you that it's a waste of time and money.

In 2007, after nine years of research, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB sent its final report to the UK government. It discovered that "badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain". Rather than suppressing the disease, killing badgers appears to spread it.

The researchers had killed badgers across 30 areas, each of 100 square kilometres. They found that when the badgers were culled in response to local outbreaks of TB, the slaughter "increased, rather than reduced" the incidence of the disease in cattle: the level of infection rose by some 20%. When badgers were killed proactively (culled annually, regardless of whether cattle were infected), the incidence of TB inside the killing zone was reduced by 23% – but the incidence outside increased by 25%. The reason is that the killing changes the behaviour of the badgers: they travel more and mix more, either to escape the slaughter or to investigate the ecological space it opens up. The economic costs of proactive culling, the study found, were 40 times greater than the benefits.

But the old reflex dies hard. As the scientific group pointed out, "agricultural and veterinary leaders continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming ­scientific evidence to the contrary, that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of badger population control". It noted "considerable reluctance to accept and embrace ­scientific findings". The Welsh government shares this reluctance. In announcing her extermination policy last week, Elin Jones claimed that the cull would be conducted according to "the requirements outlined by the ­Independent Scientific Group". But the ISG couldn't have made itself clearer: badger culling of any kind won't work. Instead, governments should do more to control the way that cattle are kept, tested and moved. This was a message that farmers and the Welsh government didn't want to hear.

The policy Elin Jones announced last week is even worse than this suggests. Her culling experiment is actually testing two variables: exterminating badgers and better management of cattle. Yet there are no experimental controls (study areas in which one or both methods are not being tried), so there is no means of telling which of the two measures is working, or whether changes in the incidence of the disease have anything to do with the experiment. There's a scientific term for a study that simultaneously tests two variables while using no controls: worthless. The Welsh experiment has nothing to do with science and everything to do with appeasing farmers.

The Farmers' Union of Wales has been furiously demanding that time and money should be wasted in this fashion. It has lobbied the assembly government for a scheme that will damage its members' interests and alienate the people who buy their milk and butter and cheese. It appears to be impervious to evidence or reason: last week it announced that "badger culling works. Any talk about farming practices being a significant factor are unfounded."

But even if extermination did work, the effect could be sustained only by killing any badgers that re-entered the area: in other words, rendering the species extinct there. Were the same approach to be rolled out across a wider area (the policy the experiment is designed to test), the badger would have to become extinct not only across that zone, but also in all neighbouring zones. Because badgers will move into areas from which the species has been erased, the only logical outcome of this approach is to exterminate the badger throughout the United Kingdom. As this is politically unacceptable, the Welsh experiment is pointless as well as worthless.

This exercise in wilful stupidity betrays an ­approach to the natural world that has scarcely altered since the dark ages. We still act as if we have been granted dominion over it. Those with an economic interest seem to ­regard any species that might compete or conflict with them as a threat not only to their income but also to their power. They still treat the natural world as ­fungible: nothing is too precious, too great a source of wonder and delight to liquidate. There appears to be no point of regret beyond which we won't ­venture, no lesson in ecological collapse that we are prepared to learn. The ­Christian worldview, which places humankind at the apex of creation, is hard to shake, even in the most secular nation on earth.

All industries strive not only towards monopoly but also towards mono­culture: domination of the natural or cultural landscape. This is what George Orwell meant when he remarked that "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to ­something resembling a brain in a bottle". Industry, if left unchecked, tolerates no deviance. It seeks to shrink both the range of human experience and the wonders of the natural world until they fit into the container it has made for them.

We could lose badgers and – except for those of us who spend summer evenings watching them as they shuffle out of their setts – suffer few tangible losses. But the urge to destroy them springs from the same pathological instinct for power which would deprive us of almost everything.

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Fight to save one of the rarest plant species in the world

Simon Hancock, BBC News 19 Jan 10;

A botanist from Kew Gardens is fighting to save one of the rarest plant species in the world, the Bastard Gumwood tree.

The last tree of this species is found on the tiny South Atlantic island of St Helena, and it is dying.

To keep the Bastard Gumwood in existence, it needs to be pollinated so it will produce a fertile seed from which to grow new seedlings. Obtaining a pure seed from the tree is no easy task.

The tree ( Commidendrum rotundifolium ) is enclosed in netting to prevent insects cross-pollinating with its near neighbour, the False Gumwood.



But even then because there are no other individuals in existence, the tree must self-pollinate, which it stubbornly resists.

And so it needs some help.

Every day, botanist Phil Lambdon visits the site along with local conservationists. The team delicately uses small paint brushes to collect pollen grains, which they spread from one flower to another.

But the odds are still against the Bastard Gumwood.

"The tree just doesn't want to pollinate itself," said Dr Lambdon, the botanist visiting from Kew Gardens who is in charge of the effort.

"Only around 1 in 10,000 pollen grains have the small genetic mutation which will allow self-pollination to take place.

"It's like a needle in a haystack. The work is painstaking and very slow."

The only way of knowing whether the seeds produced are fertile is to plant them.

"99.99% will be infertile and not grow, but it's the only way of finding out," said Dr Lambdon.

"It's not called the Bastard Gumwood because of this, incidentally," he added.

In fact there are a number of species beginning with the word on the island - the Bastard Cabbage tree, the Bastard Bell flower and the Small Bastard Cabbage tree.

They were named in by botanist John Burchell who was on St Helena between 1806 and1810.

Some think he may have been simply reporting the names given to the species by the locals.

Whatever the truth behind the tree's name, the island hopes these efforts will be more successful than with the St Helena Olive, which was also only found here, but which died out in 2003.

"Many of the tourists who come to the island want to see the island's unique wildlife. Another extinction would be very bad publicity," said St Helena National Trust Director Jamie Roberts.

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