Orangutan survival and the shopping trolley

BBC News 22 Feb 10;

The challenge of saving the orangutan - man's closest relative - from extinction is trickling down to the weekly shop.

Many of the biscuits, margarines, breads, crisps and even bars of soap that consumers pick off supermarket shelves contain an ingredient that is feeding a growth industry that conservationists say is killing the orangutans.

The mystery ingredient in the mix is palm oil - the cheapest source of vegetable oil available - and one that rarely appears on the label of most products.

Palm oil is grown on land that was once home to the vast rainforests of Borneo, and the natural habitat of the orangutan.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that the population has declined by 50% in recent decades and the Indonesian government admits that 50,000 orangutans have died as a result of de-forestation.

A BBC Panorama investigation into clear-cutting in Indonesian Borneo - the island it shares with Malaysia - found that the thirst for land on which to plant palm plantations is encroaching on areas that the Indonesian government has deemed to be off-limits.

'Nuisance'

The orangutans, displaced as the trees of old-growth forests are burned and at times killed by workers who see them as a nuisance in the logging process, are not the only victims of the runaway growth in palm oil - scientists say there is a wider environmental price being paid.

Greenpeace has identified the draining of ancient peat lands to make way for palm oil as a global threat, saying it had lead to massive amounts of trapped methane and carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

As a result, Indonesia is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only America and China.



Using GPS technology and satellite imaging, the BBC team pinpointed exact locations where palm oil giant the Duta Palma Group is logging on both high conservation lands and deep peat lands - both are illegal.

Shailendra Yashwant, Greenpeace director for Southeast Asia, said this illegal logging is widespread and includes major suppliers to the UK's food and household product market.

"We want the Indonesian government to immediately announce a moratorium on further deforestation…beginning with peat lands."

Willie Smits, a former advisor to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry turned environmental campaigner, said of the findings: "This is criminal, this should not take place. It means there is no hope left for the most endangered sub-species of the orang-utan in west Kalamantan."

He said the wider environmental issue of greenhouse gases can no longer be overlooked by both manufacturers and everyday consumers.

"This is not just a matter for Indonesia to decide, this is a matter for the world."

'Greenwash'

The palm industry - valued at £5bn ($7.7bn) for Indonesia - is the country's third biggest export earner.

Many of the big manufacturers who buy that oil via European wholesalers say that while they are starting to find oil from sustainable sources, they are not yet in a position to trace the origin of all of the oil they use.

Currently, only 3% of the world's palm oil is certified sustainable, meaning it comes from plantations that pass an environmental and social impact test.

Many have joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) scheme set up to promote certification of where palm oil originates.

Others have set ambitious goals to use sustainable oil by 2015 or earlier, but Greenpeace's Shailendra Yashwant said the RSPO amounts to a "greenwash" because those commitments are unenforceable on the ground.

Bulk oil from a variety of plantations - including that of Duta Palma Group that the BBC found to be illegally clear-cutting - is mixed together and shipped around the world and sold on to manufacturers behind everyday products.

Duta Palma declined to comment on the BBC's evidence of illegal deforestation.

Consumer pressure

Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told Panorama the time is right for consumers to put pressure on manufacturers, demanding to know which of their products contain palm oil and assurances that it comes from a sustainable source.

Current labelling laws allow manufacturers to list palm oil as 'vegetable' oil, without singling out the palm oil content.

Many manufacturers, including industry giants Unilever and Proctor and Gamble, say their recipes can change and the amounts and types of oils they use can vary from week to week, making more detailed labels unworkable.

However, Sainsbury's supermarkets had earlier taken the decision to not only single out palm oil on the ingredients lists of their own-brand products, but to state directly that it is from a sustainable source.

Recently Unilever, the UK's largest user of palm oil in products that range from Dove soap to Pot Noodles, Knorr soups and Flora, terminated a large contract with a supplier called Sinar Mas, because of reports it was destroying high conservation value forests.

Unilever has told Panorama that while it may have used oil from Duta Palma in the past, it intends to overcome its supply system problems so that it no longer uses oil from the producer.

Secretary Benn said: "I think it's really about what consumers can do because the most powerful message that can be sent to companies is from their consumers about what it is they want to buy," he told reporter Raphael Rowe, citing the demand for free range eggs in the UK as an example of consumer influence.

Mr Benn said the participation by UK retailers and manufacturers in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a step towards ensuring that palm oil is traceable and therefore increases the chances that it can be certified sustainable.

Panorama: Dying for a Biscuit, BBC One, Monday, 22 February at 2030GMT.

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Breakneck development blamed for Madeira flood toll

Levi Fernandes Yahoo News 22 Feb 10;

LISBON (AFP) – Three decades of breakneck development and rogue urban planning are to blame for the heavy toll from weekend flash floods on Portugal's tourist island of Madeira, environmentalists said Monday.

Portugal was in mourning after torrents of muddy water swamped the mountainous Atlantic island on Saturday, killing 42 people and injuring scores more as the flooding demolished houses and overturned cars.

But for green groups and construction experts, Madeira was left vulnerable to a flood disaster by careless development.

"What happened in Madeira is a textbook example of the dangers of bad urban planning," agreed Ricardo Ribeiro, head of a Portuguese association of public safety technicians.

The Portuguese island, which lies 500 kilometres (300 miles) off the Moroccan coast, has undergone a spectacular modernisation in the past 30 years, largely thanks to European Union funds to channelled to poor, outlying regions.

Tourists from northern Europe flock each year to its capital Funchal, now a small city of 100,000 people boasting waterfront luxury hotels and holiday resorts and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

To cater for the tourism boom, a four-lane highway now runs a ring around the island of 57 by 22 kilometres, while critics says dozens of road tunnels have turned Madeira into a concrete "Swiss cheese."

Green groups have long accused the island's president since 1978, Alberto Joao Jardim, of promoting sprawl with little regard for environmental safety.

For Helder Spinola of the Quercus green group, "heavy rains are not the only explanation for the disaster."

"Planning mistakes made the situation worse," he charged.

Hundreds of buildings have sprung up on land prone to flooding, he says, while the concreting-over of much of Madeira's coast now prevents water from seeping into the soil, making the flood risk worse.

Building roads, high-rise hotels and infrastructure near Madeira's waterways has "waterproofed the soil with concrete and tarmac," he says, a problem particularly acute in the south where most of its 250,000 inhabitants live.

None of the three main rivers that cross Madeira are able to run freely into the surrounding soil, he says.

On Saturday, "these waterways became water cannons sweeping away bridges and buildings," said Portuguese far-left politician Francisco Louca.

Joao Carlos Silva, an opposition Socialist lawmaker in the Madeira regional assembly, also took aim at the "chaotic urbanisation" in and around Funchal, claiming to have repeatedly warned the authorities of the flood risk.

Maderia's regional authorities declined to comment on the accusations, dismissed as "ridiculous" by Funchal's mayor Miguel Albuquerque who said the disaster was caused by "an exceptional weather phenomenon."

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Climate Change Melts Antarctic Ice Shelves: USGS

Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 23 Feb 10;

WASHINGTON - Climate change is melting the floating ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula, giving scientists a preview of what could happen if other ice shelves around the southern continent disappear, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Monday.

The ice has retreated so far from the land mass that Charcot Island, which has long been connected to the peninsula by an ice bridge, emerged as a real island again last year, a USGS scientist said.

"This is the first time since people have been observing the area, since the 1800s, that that ice shelf has not hitched together Charcot Island and the peninsula," scientist Jane Ferrigno said in a telephone interview.

The Antarctic Peninsula extends further northward than the rest of the roughly circular ice-covered continent, and it is warmer than the rest of Antarctica. But even in the peninsula's coldest, southern part, ice shelves are vanishing.

Research by the USGS was the first to show that every ice front on the southern section of the peninsula has been retreating from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes since 1990.

A study of the phenomenon by the USGS in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey and assistance from the Scott Polar Research Institute and Germany's Bundesamt fur Kartographie and Geodasie was posted at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2600-c/ in February; a statement was released on Monday.

ICE SHELVES ACT AS GLACIER DAMS

Ice shelves act as dams to keep land-based glaciers from flowing unimpeded into the sea; when ice shelves melt, glaciers can move more quickly into ocean waters.

If all the land-based ice in Antarctica melted, scientists have estimated sea levels worldwide could rise from 213 to 240 feet, according to the study. If just the ice in West Antarctica melted, there would be a sea level rise of about 20 feet, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands.

The land-based ice on the Antarctic peninsula is not enough to fuel a major rise in sea level, Ferrigno said. However, the dramatic disappearance of ice shelves there could give a clue of what could happen when glaciers are free to flow seaward.

This is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth's glacier ice, Ferrigno said.

Unlike Antarctic land-based ice, the ice that covers much of the Arctic Ocean would not contribute to sea level rise if it all melted, in much the way that a melting ice cube in a glass of water would not make the glass overflow.

But both the Arctic and Antarctic have major impact on weather in the temperate parts of the world.

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Climate meeting in April aims at reviving UN process

Yahoo News 22 Feb 10;

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Talks will take place in April under the UN flag for planning the next steps in the effort toward a global treaty on climate change, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Lykke Friis said Monday.

The April 9-11 meeting will take place in Bonn gathering senior officials of signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said Friis, whose country currently chairs the negotiating process.

The date was set at a meeting of the UNFCCC bureau, tasked with drawing up a calendar of meetings for 2010 in the aftermath of the controversial climate summit in Copenhagen in December, the Danish news agency Ritzau said.

Negotiators will be asked to sketch out a work programme for the end of the year, it said.

The December meeting yielded a last-minute compromise deal brokered by around two dozen countries but it failed to get official backing from the entire forum.

The so-called Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pledges nearly 30 billion dollars in aid to poor countries in total by 2012.

But it does not spell out the means for achieving the 2C (3.6 F) objective, and the emissions pledges made under it are only voluntary.

Green groups and scientists say the document falls far short of what is necessary for tackling the problem posed by greenhouse gases.

The document did not gain approval at a UNFCCC plenary session and so far has not been officially endorsed by major developing emitters which helped craft it.

As a result, there is confusion as to how the accord fits into the highly complex two-track, 194-nation process. Some negotiators privately say the deal has little future other than as a benchmark of political will.

The April meeting adds to the two other scheduled dates in the UNFCCC calendar this year.

One meeting will take at the level of senior officials in Bonn from May 31-June 11. The next, likewise starting at the official level but ending at ministerial level, will take place in Mexico from November 29-December 10.

Bonn to host extra U.N. climate talks, treaty unsure
Reuters 22 Feb 10;

OSLO (Reuters) - Germany will host an extra session of U.N. climate talks in April but it is too early to say if the world will agree a new treaty this year after falling short at a summit in Copenhagen in December, Denmark said on Monday.

"The negotiations are picking up speed again after Copenhagen," Danish Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis, who presides over the U.N. negotiations, told Reuters by telephone.

She said that 11 representatives of key nations decided at a one-day meeting at the headquarters of the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat to add an extra session of senior officials from 194 nations in the Germany city from April 9-11.

"There was a positive and constructive atmosphere and all parties were eager to move forward with the negotiations," she said of the first formal meeting since Copenhagen.

Until now, the calendar had been limited to a session of officials in Bonn from May 31-June 11 and ministerial talks in Cancun, Mexico from November 29-December 10. That was a sharp slowdown from the five preparatory talks last year before Copenhagen.

Friis said she was unsure if U.N. talks would end this year with a new U.N. treaty to combat global warming and succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. "We are working for an agreement in Cancun but it's too early to say," she said.

TREATY

Last year, many nations had hoped that the Copenhagen summit would agree a legally binding treaty to slow rising emissions of greenhouse gases blamed by the U.N.'s panel of climate experts for floods, droughts, mudslides, heatwaves and rising seas.

The summit ended with the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which seeks to limit a rise in temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times. It also promised $10 billion a year in aid from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.

The April meeting, of senior government officials, would be preceded by one-day preparatory talks among key groups of nations. The April talks would also decide if more U.N. meetings were needed before Cancun.

Many nations have become gloomy about Mexico, partly because U.S. carbon-capping legislation seems stalled in the Senate. President Barack Obama wants to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, or 4 percent below 1990 levels.

In Nusa Dua, Indonesia, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme said developing nations could be able to apply within three months for some of the $30 billion in climate aid promised by rich nations for 2010-12 under the Copenhagen Accord.

Rules for disbusing aid are unclear in the Accord and Achim Steiner said that one developing nation recently asked him if there was a phone number to ring to ask about the cash.

"If, in three months' time, there still isn't a phone number then I expect that part of the accord to be in trouble, but I expect there to be one," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a major U.N. environment conference in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali.

(With extra reporting by David Fogarty in Singapore and Sunanda Creagh in Nusa Dua, Indonesia; editing by Jon Boyle)

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Best of our wild blogs: 22 Feb 10

Connecting with Nature Week for kids - March holiday specials
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!

ReefFriends Reef Survey Training @ Pulau Hantu
from Colourful Clouds

新加坡红树林消逝中--裕廊湖
from PurpleMangrove

Crocodile at Sungei Buloh!
from wild shores of singapore

Unexpected Encounters Part 2
from Black Dillenia

Crows predating chicks
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Monday Morgue: 22nd February 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

Juvenile Malaysian Night Heron taking on adult plumage
from Bird Ecology Study Group

White-browed Shrike Babbler ‘hopping’ backwards
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Where two worlds collide: visiting Tabin Wildlife Reserve
from Mongabay.com news

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Why the U.S. military goes out of its way to protect ecosystems on its sites

A Base for War Training, and Species Preservation
Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times 21 Feb 10;

“There is a strong understanding now that land is a limited resource, and that even our military is part of a larger ecosystem. If that degrades, it is harder for us to do our mission.”

FORT STEWART, Ga. — Under crystalline winter skies, a light infantry unit headed for Iraq was practicing precision long-range shooting through a pall of smoke. But the fire generating the haze had nothing to do with the training exercise.

Staff members at the Army post had set the blaze on behalf of the red-cockaded woodpecker, an imperiled eight-inch-long bird that requires frequent conflagrations to preserve its pine habitat.

Even as it conducts round-the-clock exercises to support two wars, Fort Stewart spends as much as $3 million a year on wildlife management, diligently grooming its 279,000 acres to accommodate five endangered species that live here. Last year, the wildlife staff even built about 100 artificial cavities and installed them 25 feet high in large pines so the woodpeckers did not have to toil for six months carving the nests themselves.

The military has not always been so enthusiastic about saving endangered plants and animals, arguing that doing so would hinder its battle preparedness.

But post commanders have gradually realized that working to help species rebound is in their best interest, if only because the more the endangered plants and animals thrive, the fewer restrictions are put on training exercises to avoid destroying habitat.

In the early years of the administration of President George W. Bush, the military lobbied Congress for limited exemptions from federal protection rules.

Today, herculean efforts to save threatened species are unfolding at dozens of military sites across the nation, from Eglin, Fla., where the Air Force has restored and reconnected streams for the Okaloosa darter, to San Clemente Island, Calif., where the Navy has helped bring the loggerhead shrike back from the brink of extinction.

“Ten years ago, you would have had three- or four-star generals stomping up and down” if the Pentagon ordered such measures, said Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety and occupational health. “Now they just ask, ‘How do I get it done?’ ”

As the owner of some 30 million relatively pristine acres that are often critical habitat for plants and animals, the military is laboring to fulfill its remaining obligations under federal laws like the Endangered Species Act without curbing its training exercises.

But its work also reflects a new dedication to protecting the natural environment, said L. Peter Boice, the Pentagon’s deputy director of natural resources.

“There is a strong understanding now that land is a limited resource, and that even our military is part of a larger ecosystem,” he said. “If that degrades, it is harder for us to do our mission.”

From 2004 to 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, the Department of Defense spent $300 million to protect endangered species — more than it spent in the previous 10 years combined, Pentagon figures show.

Now the military plans to broaden those efforts, reaching beyond the 420 officially endangered or threatened species on its land and restoring ecosystems for more than 500 others that are considered at risk. Training post commanders on environmental responsibilities is now routine as well.

The military began scooping up wide-open and largely untouched rural expanses in the late 1930s and early 1940s as the country prepared for World War II. But decade by decade, suburban sprawl has brought development literally up to the back fences of installations, turning them into de facto havens for many threatened animals and plants.

Preserving those species can require frustrating adjustments. At certain times each year, for example, the Marines are able to use only a fraction of the beachfront at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to practice amphibious landings out of concern for nesting shorebirds like the coastal California gnatcatcher.

In some cases, colliding priorities have not been reconciled. The Navy still relies heavily on midfrequency sonar, for example, riling environmentalists who say it disrupts activity by whales and dolphins off the California coast.

Still, for every clash there is an instance of intense efforts to keep an animal safe. At Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif., for example, the Marines built a desert tortoise research and rearing center in 2005 to help the soft-shelled babies avoid predation by ravens.

Such efforts have won over some of the Pentagon’s toughest environmental critics. “Over all, the military has done a great job, and I know they are spending boatloads of money,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “When they decide we are going to protect something, they just do it.”

Of course, it took years for the Army to hit on a workable strategy for the woodpecker — a lesson that is informing its conservation work today. The bird first caused a minicrisis at Southern installations like Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart in 1990, when troops were preparing for the war to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

To protect the woodpeckers, tanks were prohibited from going into some parts of the forest where the birds had nests. But that strategy helped no one: the bird population did not increase, and the tanks had less room for their maneuvers.

Slowly, the military realized (and was able to convince others) that it was not enough to protect the trees the birds were in; it had to create as much hospitable habitat as possible.

“As the Army realized what that habitat looked like, open and sunny, they realized that was good for soldier training as well,” said Tim Beaty, a civilian who supervises the wildlife staff at Fort Stewart.

Fort Stewart has long used controlled burning in its busiest training areas to prevent live ammunition from causing unplanned fires. Local species gravitated toward those scorched open areas.

So the post began systematically burning its entire land area, 500 acres to 1,000 acres at a time. After each burn, it planted longleaf pines and native wire grass, flora that dominated the area before European settlers arrived centuries ago. The woodpecker population rebounded.

Tanks are now allowed to drive right up next to some of the woodpecker colonies. Cameras placed in their nests by Mr. Beaty’s team had shown that the birds were indifferent to live-fire exercises.

Yet the success gave the Pentagon a new concern: without additional pristine habitat for species near its installations, “uncomfortable tradeoffs” could jeopardize training in years to come, said Janice W. Larkin, outreach coordinator for the Defense Department’s Sustainable Ranges Initiative.

So to limit pressures from encroaching development, the military began getting Congress to pay for preservation purchases in the 2005 fiscal year. By the 2009 fiscal year, the budget had grown to $56 million.

The Pentagon does not want to own those lands but organize multiparty partnerships. Fort Stewart, for example, has formed a partnership with the Georgia Land Trust, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the county government to try to preserve 100,000 acres on the edge of the post. Right next door, the Marine Corps’ Townsend Range is working with the Nature Conservancy to protect another 15,000 acres of critical watershed on the Altamaha River.

Although the installations’ goal is to prevent development from inching too close, the land will be a haven for threatened species ranging from a rare kind of mint to the gopher tortoise, which lives in sandy underground burrows. The Army wants to prevent the tortoise from being officially listed as endangered, which it says could seriously impede training on the post.

Alison McGee, a biologist with the Nature Conservancy in Georgia, said the Pentagon’s commitment allowed local groups to be more ambitious in rebuilding the natural ecosystem.

“It’s the military,” she said. “They make it possible to work at a really large scale.”

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Think before giving shark's fin

IT IS that time of the year again when companies exchange greeting cards and buy hampers and presents for their business partners.
The New Paper 18 Feb 10;

IT IS that time of the year again when companies exchange greeting cards and buy hampers and presents for their business partners.

To show one's sincerity in giving a present to someone, one has to know what the receiver likes or not like.

We don't give pork to our Muslim friends because pork is taboo to them, and neither do we give cigars to people who do not smoke.

Why do companies then take the risk of offending their business partners by giving something as controversial as shark's fin products when there is cruelty involved in harvesting them?

There is also the negative ecological impact of a declining shark population.

The act of giving 'luxury' items like shark's fin products may in fact be looked upon not as an act of generosity but as an irresponsible and short-sighted act leading to the irreversible destruction of the ocean ecosystem.

A bad business decision, I must say.

A growing number of people, including myself, detest the unwelcome gift of a can of shark's fin in a Chinese New Year hamper.

The marketing message written on a typical can may hint that the (shark's fin) company is against killing sharks for only their fins .

However, nothing is mentioned about capping the catches to a sustainable level such that the company does not contribute to the collapse of the ocean ecosystem, expected with a fast declining population of top-level predators such as the shark.

Indeed, more often than not, the receiver would have felt a lot more appreciative if a little more thought was exercised before the decision to purchase shark's fin was made.

READER EDWIN LIM YEE PHING

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Temasek Poly, BCA in green tie-up

Olivia Ho, Business Times 20 Feb 10;

TEMASEK Polytechnic and the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) have signed an agreement under which the polytechnic will help with BCA's Green Mark Scheme.

The scheme aims to drive the construction industry towards more environmentally friendly buildings, by reworking existing buildings based on internationally recognised best practices.

Lecturers from Temasek Poly will be trained by BCA as Green Mark assessors.

'This collaboration underlines BCA's commitment to build a competent core of green building professionals,' said Lam Siew Wah, BCA's deputy CEO for industry and corporate development.

He signed the agreement yesterday with Lay-Tan Siok Lie, deputy principal and director of Temasek Engineering School.

Temasek Poly is pleased to make a 'significant contribution to Singapore's emerging green building industry', Ms Lay-Tan said.

Temasek Poly's students will also benefit, she said. 'They will be able to experience and learn from real-life projects with BCA - realising Temasek Poly's aim of bringing education to life, and life to education.'

Both parties hope the partnership will widen Temasek Poly's expertise in green building and environmental sustainability, while helping BCA achieve Green Mark certification of at least 80 per cent of Singapore's buildings by 2030.

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Four Tigers Discovered in Jakarta Home During Forestry Ministry Raid

Ulma Haryanto, Jakarta Globe 21 Feb 10;

Wildlife officials found a full-grown female tiger and three cubs along with other exotic animals during a raid on a house in Pondok Cabe Ilir, South Tang­erang, the second such discovery this month.

The big cats were seized along with a dozen rare cockatoos, two Timor deer and four birds of paradise, Awriya Ibrahim, director of forest protection at the Ministry of Forestry, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

“We are very surprised by the findings. Further raids are planned and we have eight more people on our suspicious persons list,” he said.

The commander of the Forest Police Rapid Reaction Unit, A Riadh Sambati, said the homeowner, Henry Yukio Sujatim, was not in during the raid. “We are going to call him on Tuesday to come to our office. He could be sentenced to jail or fined because of this.”

For the time being, the animals are being cared for by the Natural Resources Agency in Gadog, Puncak. The tigers’ species is yet to be identified.

This month, officials discovered a two adult tigers that had been raised by Jakarta resident Kusbanu Hadisumarto over the past 25 years, along with three cubs.

The animals were thought to be Sumatran tigers, an endangered species that numbers only 400 in the wild.

Kusbanu, the father of actress Unique Priscilla, claimed the tigers were Bengal and came from the Taman Safari Indonesia wildlife park, prompting calls for an investigation of the park by the Ministry of Forestry.

According to the 1990 Law on Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation, those found guilty of trafficking protected animals within Indonesia or abroad face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of Rp 100 million ($8,500).

In January, the Forestry Ministry revealed a controversial initiative to allow the rich to “adopt” captive tigers to help curb illegal hunting and trade. Under the plan, a pair of tigers could be “leased” for Rp 1 billion.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said the scheme would pair male and female tigers to increase their chances of breeding. The ministry has received complaints about the program from at least 12 environmental organizations.

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Infrastructure at turtle sanctuaries will be improved

The Star 21 Feb 10;

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Turtle Sanctuary Advisory Board will improve infrastructure at turtle sanctuary centres to encourage hatching of turtle eggs.

Its chairman Datuk Mazlan Ngah said this was necessary to prevent the turtles from becoming extinct.

"We fear that this will happen if man continues to kill and consume the turtles," Mazlan who is also Terengganu State Secretary told Bernama here Sunday.

The five turtle sanctuaries in Terengganu are at Pulau Perhentian, Rantau Abang, Dungun, Ma'daerah and Kemaman.

He hoped that the improved infrastructure would increase the turtle population particularly the leatherback as only one had landed to lay eggs at Rantau Abang last year. - Bernama

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Monkeys, butterflies, turtles… how the pet trade's greed is emptying south-east Asia's forests

Whole species disappear from the wild as millions of animals are illegally exported round the world in a business with profit margins that rival the drugs trade
David Adam, The Observer 21 Feb 10;

Countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral.

The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – empty forest syndrome – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

"There's lots of forest where there are just no big animals left," says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. "There are some forests where you don't even hear birds."

Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price. Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.

Vincent Nijman, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University who has investigated the trade, said: "We see species that are in fashion traded in great numbers until they are wiped out and people can't get them any more. So another one comes in, and then that is wiped out, and then another comes in."

He added: "In Asia, everybody knows the value of wildlife, so people go into the forest and, whatever they encounter, they know it has a value and that there is someone they can sell it to."

Nijman's research offers the first glimpse of the size of this widespread trade. While most people are aware of illegal sales of rhino horn and ivory, he says it is the scale of the movement of lesser-known species that is most disturbing.

He analysed 53,000 records of imports and exports from countries under Cites, the international convention that regulates the sale of wildlife. Most common species are not listed under Cites, so do not appear in the records. Trade in the most endangered, such as rhino and tiger, is banned. Nijman looked at species considered vulnerable enough that trade is allowed, but controlled. "I'm not against the wildlife trade at all. I think it is a very important economic driver for a large part of the region and a lot of people are dependent on it," he said. "But it has to be done in such a way that you don't finish it all this year. It's not like oil, where you drill it out and then it's gone. If you organise and regulate it properly, it should go on for ever."

Cites records between 1998 and 2007 showed that of more than 35 million animals exported during that period, some 30 million were taken from the wild. The EU and Japan were among the most significant importers.

For some mammal species, the proportion sourced from the wild dropped significantly over the decade, and traders were forced to rely increasingly on captive-bred animals. Official trade in birds virtually disappeared by 2007, probably because of bird flu restrictions.

The bulk of seahorses traded were in the form of dried specimens for Chinese medicine. "The moment you look into the wildlife trade in south-east Asia, China is the biggest challenge, because they can use everything and they will use everything."

Trade in the Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater, illustrates the problem. Officially, countries do not allow their commercial sale and agreed a zero quota under Cites in 2000, though regular seizures show widespread trade, for medicine and meat. "The countries closest to China get emptied [of pangolin] first. Vietnam and Laos have been drained. Myanmar has been drained and they are working south, so now Indonesia is being emptied of pangolins," Shepherd says. "Prices are very high and in the next few years we will see pangolins being sucked out of Africa to supply the demand."

Nijman says his analysis of the Cites records, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, inevitably underestimates the scale of the trade. "There is always an unknown quantity of Cites-listed species that are traded without being reported, and on top of that, probably much larger, is the trade in non-Cites species, which are the species that we think are still common enough to be traded without controls."

One of these is the tokay gecko. "Every­one who has been to Indonesia or Malaysia will know them because they are the ones that sit in your hotel room. You have them everywhere." Although not listed by Cites, Indonesia has set a limit of 45,000 of the lizards exported each year as pets. Nijman says the true number traded is much higher, perhaps into the millions. "We can't say whether a million tokay geckos being traded a year, or two million, is too many. Perhaps there are so many it is OK. But you would think that if they set the quota at 45,000 then a million is too much."

Such geckos can be typically bought in rural villages for a few cents each, and sold for $10 – a profit margin that rivals the drugs trade. "It's a great business. No wonder organised crime gets involved and starts running things," Shepherd says. "In Malaysia if you get caught selling drugs you get the death penalty. For wildlife crime the maximum fine is about $5,000."

The situation is acute in south-east Asia, but the trade, both legal and illegal, is global, often using the internet and courier delivery. For $4,000, an illegal trader based in Indonesia will send a three-year-old ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar, one of the most endangered animals in the world.

Other species sell for as much as $20,000, though Nijman and Shepherd do not want to advertise which ones. "People do know about the rhinos and the tigers, but the vast majority of this trade is in stuff that they didn't know existed," said Shepherd. "A handful of people are getting very rich and most people are getting screwed out of their natural resources."
THE WILDLIFE MARKET

130,000 butterflies, mostly from Malaysia to US, EU and Canada (such as the Birdwing)

16 million seahorses, mostly from Thailand to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China

73,000 exotic fish, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia to Hong Kong (such as the Napoleon Wrasse)

17 million reptiles, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, to Singapore, EU and Japan; includes 1.3 million softshell turtles, 1.8 million cobras, 8.1 million monitor lizards, 400,000 crocodiles

400,000 mammals, mostly from China and Malaysia to the EU and Singapore; includes 270,000 macaques, 91,000 leopard cats

1 million birds, mainly from China, Vietnam and Malaysia, to the EU, Japan and Malaysia (such as leiothrix babblers)

18 million pieces of coral and 2,000 tonnes of live coral, mainly from Indonesia to the US and EU

* CITES TRADE DATA 1998-2007, INCLUDING THOSE WILD AND CAPTIVE-BRED

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Kuching Wetlands RAMSAR listing safe for now

Doreena Naeg & Marilyn Ten, The Borneo Post 21 Feb 10;

THE status of the Kuching Wetlands National Park as a RAMSAR site is safe — at least for now.

The construction of the flood mitigation channel is not detrimental to the site so long as mitigation efforts are successfully made.

According to a well-placed source, the RAMSAR listing will only be removed if the site no longer fulfils at least one of the nine criteria required for its designation as a Wetland of International Importance.

Therefore, the State Forestry Department has to seek the co-operation of the contractors in minimising the impact of the construction taking place in the area on the ecosystem. This is essential to ensure sustainability of the wetlands’ rich biodiversity and maintain its value as an international tourism product.

The source also revealed at the time of the global listing, the authorities concerned had already noted (in the listing document) the proposed construction of the channel.

However, the scale of the impact stemming from the construction was not known at that time. The State Forestry Department has made plans to minimise this. Mangrove restoration in the area is in the works.

Forest Department Sarawak forester Hamden Mohammad said: “There are definite plans to restore the mangrove forest through replanting trees at the site where they have been demolished.”

However, he pointed out mangrove trees might not be suitable as the soil structure might have changed drastically due to the on-going construction.

“We will look at alternative species to restore the eco-balance but first, a soil study is imperative to determine the kind of trees to be planted,” he added.

Restoration will be done once the construction of the channel is completed.

Environmentalists and conservationists are concerned over the Park’s eco-imbalance consequential of the flood mitigation channel construction that could lead to the removal of the RAMSAR listing.

Pointed out conservationist, Rebecca D’Cruz, who is Malaysian Nature Society chairman and also very familiar with the Park: “The biggest problem is the impact caused by the clearing for and construction of the flood bypass channel which is massive in comparison to the size of the Park.”

There had already been enough damage to warrant an assessment of the impact it had had on the ecological character of the site, she said.

However, according to her, there is still hope in that while the construction work is underway, its impact can still be minimised.

“We appeal to the authorities concerned to do whatever it takes to reduce the damage already done to the Park and mitigate any further damage.”

Currently, the area required for the channel has been cleared and what’s left is a huge empty area. The current rainy season is not helping either — the soil is being washed into the river each time it rains, further deteriorating the situation within the Park.

That is just the start and when the construction proper begins, D’Cruz envisages more damage will follow.

“Heavy machinery will have to be brought in and more areas cleared for roads — and all these will result in more devastation.”

What she and other environmentalists would like to see is the relevant authorities monitoring the construction works to ensure the contractors are following NREB guidelines in land clearing as well as doing their utmost to reduce soil erosion.

If this is not being followed through, she fears the Park could lose its value as a RAMSAR site. The Park, after all, was designated by the state government on the ground of its value for biodiversity.

“It is only four years that the site has been designated to the List of Wetlands of International Importance (RAMSAR List) but in that time, we have managed to do this amount of damage to the site,” she noted.

There are about 2,000 sites on the List and very few have ever been removed.

“The last thing we want is the negative international attention this development would bring.”

According to D’Cruz, before the clearing of the land, a study on the environmental impact would have been done and its findings made known to the relevant authorities so that mitigation measures could have been discussed and implemented.

“I’m interested to know the content of the report, the predicted impacts of the project and the mitigation measures proposed because all we can see now is the extensive damage caused by the land clearing activities,” she said.

Estimates are that about one third of the Park (about 2,000 hectares) has been impacted.

On the site’s economic value, D’Cruz said being one of the popular tourist attractions in Kuching area, it sustains the livelihood of residents in nearby regions.

“The site is mainly used for tourism that benefits the nearby villages. Tourists by the dozens visit the site when the weather permits. And if the eco-balance is tipped, the tourism sector will feel the pinch.”

The site’s uniqueness lies in its locality. Within easy reach from the city, it provides an excellent sanctuary for those who want to get away from the hassle and bustle of the city. Besides its low maintenance, except for upkeep of the existing infrastructure, the place can be virtually left on its own — which is the very beauty of the area.

Pointed out D’Cruz: “We talk about promoting tourism and new tourism products and here, we have a product with all the natural attributes to attract global attention.”

The Kuching Wetlands National Park is the state’s first RAMSAR Site. There are six such sites nationwide — Tasek Bera, Pahang (1994), Pulau Kukup, Sungai Pulai and Tanjung Piai in Johor (2003), Kuching Wetlands National Park, Sarawak (2005), and the Lower Kinabatangan-Segama Wetlands, Sabah (2008), covering a total area of 134,158 hectares.

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