Reign of old king coal is not necessarily over

Despite its flaws, coal is still the cheapest, most widespread fossil fuel
Grace Chua, Straits Times 19 Mar 10;

IS BURNING coal for energy a step backwards from going green?

Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim raised that concern in Parliament recently, noting that other countries were moving away from coal because of its environmental impact.

Coal is often thought of as a dirty fuel, releasing excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other pollutants when burnt. Yet Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran, responding to Ms Lim's question, emphasised that technologies for burning coal were becoming cleaner.

'Precisely because the technology is evolving, I don't think it is necessarily a step back to consider this as a possible option for ourselves,' he said.

In January, the Economic Strategies Committee had recommended importing coal as an energy source to boost Singapore's energy security.

The recommendation seemed to clash with the country's target of trimming its carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 by 16 per cent below the level it would have been if no steps had been taken to cut CO2.

As it is, coal is responsible for a significant share of man-made carbon dioxide emissions around the world. International Atomic Energy Agency figures show that burning coal emits nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as burning natural gas, which Singapore currently relies on for most of its power. (Only about 20 per cent of Singapore's electricity comes from fuel oil.)

Burning coal for energy produces between 790g and 1,017g of carbon dioxide and equivalents per kilowatt hour (kwh), compared to 362g to 575g per kwh for gas. These figures do not include emissions from transporting the fuels.

But in terms of energy security, however, importing coal for electricity makes sense. It is the cheapest and most widespread fossil fuel, with nearby sources in Indonesia, Australia and China.

And as the Economic Strategies Committee report put it, 'advances in combustion technologies are reducing the environmental impact' of coal.

The report did not elaborate on the technologies, but generator technology that converts water to steam under high pressure - supercritical steam generation - is more efficient than ordinary power generation and saves on fuel use, whether it be gas or coal.

In addition, Tuas Power's upcoming coal and biomass-fired power plant on Jurong Island will use technology that burns low-ash, low-sulphur coal at lower temperatures than normal, which will reduce the amount of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emitted.

However, even such technology is still not able to reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide released. For this reason, 'carbon capture storage technology is still being developed and we may explore the viability of its application in the future', said a Tuas Power spokesman.

But scholars say carbon capture is an expensive, energy-intensive process, and there is no proven way to store carbon dioxide with no leakage or ill effects.

'Carbon capture and storage, the way it is promoted now, is mainly a myth,' said Energy Studies Institute researcher Hooman Peimani.

He explained that waste carbon dioxide injected into the ground or water will eventually leak back into the atmosphere.

Other ideas on the table include using carbon dioxide to grow algae that can then be turned into biofuel, putting carbon dioxide into cement for building, and using enzymes to turn carbon dioxide into bicarbonate. But all these ideas are still in the realm of speculation.

Others, like Energy Studies Institute scholar Michael Quah, believe coal should not be ignored just because carbon capture and storage has not been proven to work. On the contrary, Dr Quah said, that provides more incentive for Singapore to do research into better technology.

'I believe this is one area where we could truly take the lead,' he said.

Instead of capturing all carbon dioxide emissions from coal, Dr Quah argued, Singapore should work on reducing coal emissions so that they are on a par with those from natural gas - the so-called natural-gas parity.

The cost of doing this would be far less than full-blown carbon capture and sequestration, and would not use technologies still being evaluated, he explained. That would in turn buy Singapore some time to increase energy efficiency and eventually transition to renewable energy over the long run, impelled by the price of carbon.

The energy landscape must be viewed as a whole, Dr Quah urged, rather than piecemeal, fuel by fuel.

But in all the discussion of clean coal technology, one thing has perhaps been overlooked: the very process of extracting coal and other fossil fuels is polluting. Their polluting impact does not derive solely from the carbon dioxide released when they are burnt for use.

Coal mining, for example, itself releases the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, and can contaminate water sources with acid runoff and heavy metals. In Indonesia's coal-rich South Kalimantan, for instance, strip mining causes erosion and land degradation.

So to truly assess fuel sources as a whole, one must look at their impact throughout their life cycle, from extraction or production to burning.

By that consideration, natural gas can be as destructive as coal. It is extracted from natural gas fields, or as a by-product from oil fields or coal beds.

In the United States, oil and gas companies using the deep-drilling technique to extract gas, called hydraulic fracturing or fracking, have come under government scrutiny for the toxic chemicals used: They can pollute groundwater.

As Dr Peimani put it: 'The effort should be made globally to decrease, and eventually phase out fossil energy as the main source of energy, not to switch to more pollutive types of fossil energy.'

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Indonesian gas glitch could be solved by May

Maintenance of gasfields results in supply shortfall here
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 19 Mar 10;

(SINGAPORE) Singapore's latest Indonesian gas glitch - involving a shortfall in supplies from West Natuna since last month - is expected to be resolved around May, BT understands from sources. It is due to maintenance of the gasfields there by the operator.

It follows close on the heels of last year's problems of 'buckling' or warping along certain points of a 23-km stretch of the gas pipeline transporting Sumatran gas imported by Gas Supply Pte Ltd into Singapore.

This also saw 'some reduction, although no stoppage' of gas supplies during the six to eight months of repairs until Q3 2009, the sources add.

The two pipelines together bring in a contracted 690 million standard cubic feet of gas daily (mscfd) from Indonesia, or about 72 per cent of Singapore's total piped gas imports of 955 mscfd, with the remainder coming from Malaysia.

The latest Indonesian gas supply hiccup involves importer Sembcorp Gas which had contracted to bring in 325-340 mscfd from the West Natuna field.

The field operator, understood to be ConocoPhillips, is currently carrying out routine maintenance work at the field, and there has consequently been some supply shortfall to Singapore - said to be 'small' by sources - as a result of switching wells.

'The operator is understood to be deploying another production platform to address the issue, with the work expected to be completed by May,' one source said.

The latest gas issue first surfaced when BT reported earlier this month that the generating companies here - which usually run as much as 80 per cent natural gas to power their more-efficient gas turbines - had recently resorted to using more fuel oil instead to run steam turbines.

This saw their fuel oil usage rising to 27-30 per cent of their total fuel mix, compared to just about 20 per cent previously.

SembGas on its website said that it supplies its Natuna gas not only to gencos like PowerSeraya and Tuas Power but also petrochemical customers including ExxonMobil and Ellba Eastern. Some of the petrochemical plants also run their own in-house gas-fired cogeneration plants to supply not just power, but also other utilities like steam and cooling water.

Separately, there was an isolated incident of traces of mercury, a toxic metal, found in Natuna gas last June. While the low mercury levels detected posed no real danger to public health, the regulator Energy Market Authority is getting a consultant to look at identifying measures to mitigate this.

Mercury, which is found organically-bound in natural gas from the gasfield, can potentially damage plant and equipment, or affect workers exposed to it during maintenance operations.

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Southeast Asian Cat With Flat Head and Webbed Feet Losing Habitat

Jeanna Bryner, livescience.com 18 Mar 10;

A tiny flat-headed cat with webbed feet has lost much of its historical rain-forest habitat in South-East Asia, a new study finds.

Called Prionailurus planiceps, the flat-headed cat weighs as little as 3.5 pounds (1.59 kg) and has webbed feet thought to be a unique adaptation allowing the animal to hunt fish and crabs along lowland river banks and flooded peat forests.

The wild cat is one of the world's least known feline species, found only in tropical rain forests in southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, parts of Indonesia including Sumatra and Borneo. In 2008 the animal was listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Until now, there have been no studies of the cats in the wild, so little is known about its historical and current range, what makes a suitable home for the animal, and what can be done to ensure its survival.In fact, nobody even knows how many of the cats remain in the wild.

"At the current stage, we cannot even do any guesstimates, because we have no idea in which densities the species occurs," said study researcher Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany. "I hope that with further field research in ten years we might be able to provide the first estimations."

To make some headway, an international team of scientists collected historical and recent records along with other scattered information on the cat, finding the animal spends its time mainly in lowland or coastal swampy forests close to freshwater sources.

"With this information we developed a computer model to predict its historical and current distribution," Wilting said.

The team also used the model to determine factors needed to make an area a sufficient home for the cat. With that information, they identified 19 key spots throughout the cat's distribution range that were considered suitable habitat and important for the long-term survival of the rare species. These localities included: Toh Daeng Peat Swamp in Thailand, the Way Kambas National Park and the Hutan Lunang Nature Reserve in Sumatra, and Borneo's Maludam National Park and the Samusam Wildlife Sanctuary.

They found a link between freshwater sources and the occurrence of flat-headed cats, with more than 70 percent of the records (sightings and photographs) occurring less than 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) away from a major river or lake. Precipitation during the driest month and altitude were also important habitat factors.

Nearly 70 percent of the area which historically provided good habitats for the flat-headed cat has been converted into plantations, creating a landscape in which the cats are unable to live, the models showed. The remaining cat-friendly land is highly fragmented and 16 percent is fully protected according to the criteria of the IUCN.

Most large national parks in South-East Asia are located at higher elevations, where the flat-headed cat, with its restriction to lowland and coastal swampy forests, rarely occurs.

"For me the most important message of our paper is not that we predicted the extent of habitat loss, much more important is that we predicted localities where we most likely still find stable populations of this threatened species," Wilting told LiveScience. "Only with this information we can do the next step and work on the protection of these areas."

Wilting and colleagues detail their findings in a recent issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

Flat-headed cat is now endangered
Matt Walker, BBC News 19 Mar 10;

One of the smallest and most enigmatic species of cat is now threatened with extinction.

According to a new study, habitat loss and deforestation are endangering the survival of Asia's flat-headed cat, a diminutive and little studied species.

Over 70% of the cat's habitat has been converted to plantations, and just 16% of its range is now protected.

The cat, which has webbed feet to help hunt crabs and fish, lives among wetland habitats in southeast Asia.

Details on the decline of the cat's range are published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The flat-headed cat is among the least known of all wild cat species, having never been intensively studied in its natural habitat.

Weighing just 1.5 to 2kg, the cat is thought to be nocturnal, adapted to hunting small prey in shallow water and along muddy shores.

Now restricted to a handful of tropical rainforests within Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, nothing is known about the size of each cat's home range or the density of the remaining population.

So in an attempt to estimate how the species is faring, a team of scientists gathered together all known information about where the cat is thought to live, including sightings, pictures taken by camera traps and dead specimens.

The team, led by Mr Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany gathered 107 records overall, which they then used to create a computer model that predicts the cat's historical and current distribution.

That confirmed that flat-headed cats like to live near large bodies of water such as rivers and lakes.

They also prefer coastal and lowland areas.

Crucially for the species's survival though, the researchers found that just 16% of its historical range is fully protected according to criteria laid down by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Other areas are also protected, but these are large national parks, which in southeast Asia tend to be located at higher elevations where the flat-headed cat is not thought to roam.

Around 70% of its former range may already have been converted to plantations to grow crops such as palm oil.

Also, two-thirds of all the locations the cat has been recorded in are now surrounded by areas in which high densities of people live.

The cat's scarcity is underlined by the fact that it has been photographed just 17 times by camera traps.

In comparison, other felids in the region, such as tigers, leopard cats, marbled cats and Asian golden cats are regularly photographed this way.

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Wild elephants occupy part of village for two weeks

Antara 19 Mar 10;

Bengkalis (ANTARA News) - A herd of hungry wild elephants have been occupying two residential areas of Petani village, Bengkalis, Riau, over the past two weeks forcing tens of families to flee their homes.

Petani village residents said the elephants were still in their part of the village on Thursday but their number had dropped from initially 45 to a few.

"For the past two weeks we have been staying in the homes of people in another part of our village located far from where the elephants are," one of the displaced inhabitants of Petani village , Raya (45), said.

He said he and his fellow villagers had made no effort to drive the animals away because they were afraid it would make the giant mammals only more aggressive and attack them.

Petani village head Riantono admitted he could not do much for his people but had appealed to them to be alert to the danger the wild beasts posed, especially at night.

He said he had also asked his people to watch out in the afternoon because the animals could come at any time and tear apart their houses to find food.

"As village head I do not know what I have to do. I can only make appeals. We cannot kill them because, if we do, we will get into trouble with the law," he said.

Local environment activists meanwhile said no concrete actions had been taken so far by the authorities to prevent conflicts between humans and elephants in Bengkalis.

"The problem has so far been only talked about while no concrete actions have been taken by the government or agencies concerned," Simamora, the chief of the Care for Nature and Environment Community Movement, said.

He said, if the problem remained unsolved, it was not impossible the local people would fight the elephants in their own way , and then fatalities could happen on either side.Many people had already been killed in clashes with the animals.(*)

Riau Villagers’ Hands Tied as Herd Of Elephants Refuses to Leave
Budi Otmansyah Jakarta Globe 19 Mar 10;

Pekanbaru. For the past two weeks, residents of Petani village in Bengkalis district have been woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sounds of an elephant herd invasion.

Riantomo, the head of the village, said residents had been forced to evacuate out of fear, moving into the homes of their relatives.

“We don’t know what we have to do. We are prohibited from disturbing elephants because they are protected. But in the meantime we are always disturbed,” Riantomo said.

He said the daily invasion usually occurred at about 2 a.m., with elephants roaming around the homes. Some of the residents have tried shooing them away using torches and wood, but the herd of elephants seems reluctant to leave.

“We have shooed the elephants away repeatedly, but they still come back here. As the village head I do not know what I have to do. I can only make appeals. We cannot kill them because, if we do, we will get into trouble with the law,” he said.

The head of Riau’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BBKSDA), Trisnu Danisworo, said that as a temporary solution a team had been assigned to the village to keep elephants away from homes and plantations and to prevent conflicts between elephants and humans.

“The elephant conflict in Petani village is an old problem. It is because that area is a track for elephants. For now, we can just shoo them out of residential areas,” he said.

A longer-term solution for Petani village’s dilemma, he said, was to ensure that residential and plantation developments in the future do not encroach on the elephants’ habitat.

“The conversion of land into plantations in that area must be stopped,” he said.

The forests on Riau are dis­appearing, and this has seen the province’s elephant population plunge from more than 1,500 in the 1980s to 350 today.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said the elephant attacks occurred because more and more people were cutting down trees.

“The movements of the elephants are actually very ordered. They will always walk along the same paths and eat at the same places over and over again. They will even litter at the same spots,” Darori said, adding that the local administration had failed to discipline companies or officials who cut down trees on land that is known to be vital for the elephants’ survival.

Local environment activists said no concrete actions had been taken so far to prevent conflicts between humans and elephants in Bengkalis.

“The problem has so far been only talked about while no concrete actions have been taken by the government or agencies concerned,” said Simamora, chief of the Care for Nature and Environment Community Movement.

He said that with no solutions it was likely the locals would fight the elephants in their own way, and then fatalities could happen on either side. Many people have already been killed in clashes with the animals.

Additional reporting from Antara

Petani village residents threaten to kill invading elephants
Antara 20 Mar 10;

Bengkalis (ANTARA News) - Petani village residents in Mandau subdistrict, Bengaklis district, Riau province, are threatening to kill the wild elephants that have been disturbing their lives for weeks if the authorities fail to take action.

"We are now at the end of our patience with these animals. They have damaged our homes and often threaten our safety. So, if the government does not provide a way out soon, we will drive them away or catch them ourselves and kill them. if necessary," Fahri (46), Petani village resident said Saturday.

A similar statement was made by another Petani resident, Karman (60), who said he saw his house being destroyed by wild elephants while he could do nothing to stop it.

"There must be a choice : elephants or humans. If the animals are really protected by the state, then the state must also guarantee the safety of the people who live near their habitat. The government should not wait until there are casualties," Karman said.

In response to the villagers` sentiments, the chairman of the Benkalis branch of the Nature and Environment Community Care Movement (Gempal), H. Simamora,
admitted the authorities had not been handling the recurring problem of wild elephant incursions into human settlements seriourly.

The problem was often discussed in meetings and touched on in familiarization efforts but no concrete followup action was ever taken in the field.

In the recurring conflicts between wild elephants and humans many animals and humans had already been harmed or killed and it was time for the authorities to take real action, if the protected animal was to be saved from extinction.

One of the ways the authorities should pursue, he said, was to set up more elephant training centers in the wild or expand existing ones. To accomplish this, regional authorities should not wait until they receive the needed funds from the central government but use their own financial resources.

"If they wait for financial aid from the central government, it will never happen," he said.

Petani villagers had been terrorized by wild elephant herds repeatedly since early March 2010. A number of houses in the village were ruined by the huge beasts that were apparently looking for food. (*)

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Meet the beetles: taxonomists and new species

Behind the scenes with the Natural History Museum's unsung heroes, who collect and classify new species of animals and insects
Patrick Barkham, The Guardian 18 Mar 10;

Like most young men, Henry Walter Bates sought adventure. Unlike most, he was also obsessed with beetles. So in 1848, aged 23, he set sail from Liverpool on the trading ship Mischief, bound for Brazil. During 11 years in "savage solitudes", the naturalist fell ill with malaria, yellow fever and dysentery; he was horribly lonely but, despite physical pain and mental anguish, he kept on collecting rainforest species never before seen by European eyes. When he left South America, never to return, he shipped to the Natural History Museum more than 8,000 different species – mostly insects – that were previously unknown to science.

The Victorians' wonder at the miracles of nature, and their hunger to conquer foreign lands, has long made species hunting seem an anachronistic endeavour. Theirs was an age of never-to-be-repeated mapping of the world's plants and animals, a time of The Origin of Species and the feting of explorer-scientists such as Bates, Alfred Russel Wallace and Darwin. The discovery and naming of things has never quite captured the public imagination in the same way since.

Yet now, barely a week passes without the breathless announcement of a dramatic new find, from the Sundaland clouded leopard (a species of big cat filmed for the first time in Borneo) to a flesh-eating pitcher plant so large it can devour rats, which was found by a young British species hunter during an expedition to the Philippines.

Suddenly, species hunters and taxonomists can hardly go to work without being followed by a camera crew. Following on from the success of last year's Lost Land of the Volcano, about species hunters in Papua New Guinea, comes a new BBC series, Museum of Life. Filmed over 18 months, Jimmy Doherty (of Jimmy's Farm fame) examines the pioneering work of some of the 300 scientists tending to, and augmenting, the the Natural History Museum's collection of 70 million animals, plants, fossils and minerals.

We are, it seems, experiencing "a second wave of exploration that almost matches the Victorians", says George McGavin, an academic who headed up the Lost Land of the Volcano expedition. So what is driving this? Even now, the vast majority of life on earth remains undocumented by science. Scientists estimate there are between eight and 10 million species but, from bacteria to blue whales, we have so far only "described" – ie classified – 1.5m of them. At best, we have named one in six of every type of living thing. Last summer, a mysterious new insect was even found in the Natural History Museum gardens in London. Species hunting scientists are desperate to document the diversity of the world before we destroy it.

Going behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum is a rare treat; this is a working museum as magical as anything in fiction. Dust motes sail across crepuscular alcoves, where curators hunch over miniscule specimens on a gloomy mezzanine floor that looks unchanged from Bates's day. The smell of naphthalene – mothballs – is overpowering. Maxwell Barclay, head curator of coleoptera and hemiptera (beetles, to non-scientists) has travelled to Bolivia, Thailand, Taiwan and Peru. Unlike Bates, he collects intensively for just three weeks. Transporting finds is not a problem: thousands of beetles will pack into a small suitcase.

Barclay picks up a test tube, swimming with a sinister tangle of dead beetles. "That's what we call insect stew," he says. Specimens are brought to the museum like this, pickled in alcohol, dried, labelled, pinned inside old mahogany drawers and, finally, identified – possibly adding to the 400,000 beetles already described. Barclay grabs a tray of dung beetles collected from Kruger national park in South Africa. They have shiny shells of iridescent green and dark maroon, and are still being sorted into species and groups. He points to another, different insect, a reddish brown blob that could perch on the head of a drawing pin. He knows it is a type of leafhopper "that just happened to fly into one of the dung beetle traps", but suspects it "is unknown to science".

The world of the species hunter is endearingly low-tech. In 1848, Bates slung a shotgun over one shoulder and bags for the birds he was collecting over the other. Today's species hunters don't carry guns, but Alex Monro, a botanist at the museum, still wraps his specimens in bundles of newspaper and soaks them in alcohol, before putting them in plastic bags. "It's very retro. We regularly use mules to transport them," says Monro, who has been species hunting in La Amistad – a steep, inaccessible world-heritage site spanning Costa Rica and Panama. In Bolivia, Barclay caught beetles by hanging a sheet behind a UV lamp, laying another on the ground, and sitting through the night, picking fallen bugs from the sheet one by one. In this way, 25,000 specimens were collected in three-and-a-half weeks – from which, so far, they have found 25 new species.

"The work is physically quite hard, the conditions are uncomfortable and the walking is a real killer, so you have to be motivated – but I'm not an obsessive," says Monro, an expert in the nettle family of flowering plants. "The buzz that I'm addicted to is being somewhere where you see and collect things for the first time ever – that's a tremendous sense of discovery."

But aren't species hunters also motivated by the desire to be the first to give new species a scientific name? Doesn't rivalry drive them on? "For some people, yes," Barclay admits. "There are rogue taxonomists, just like there are rogues in every field. But most seriously believe we have a duty to understand the diversity of the planet."

Another species hunter reveals he was dismayed to receive a paper to peer-review that described a species he had also found, but had not yet got round to describing – the equivalent of a journalist being scooped on a story. "The fastest is the best – it's like Darwin, the strongest will survive," says the museum's butterfly curator, Blanca Huertas, of the rush to get species described. This can take a long time: collectors need to gather more than one specimen to properly describe a species because individuals may simply be freak mutations, and there is always the risk of describing an already recognised species.

Why does it matter whether we know about an obscure beetle living in Papua New Guinea? In part, it's because we need fungi and bacteria for all our antibiotics, while thousands more useful chemicals and remedies lie undiscovered in nature – although species hunters at the Natural History Museum do not get involved in this "bio-prospecting", according to Monro. The scientists find, classify and describe; it is up to governments what use their discoveries are put to.

But the authorities are often suspicious, says Barclay, and do not always understand that scientists are not seeking to get rich by finding magic cures, but simply documenting biodiversity, the most valuable thing of all. Beetles are often crucial cogs in ecosystems, while even butterflies have a function. "Butterflies are biological indicators," says Huertas. "They are great indicators of the quality of the environment. In the UK, butterflies are one of the best-studied groups, and so can help us understand why the climate is changing because the populations are moving and changing."

"To me," says Barclay, "just knowing there are thousands of organisms being destroyed and not attempting to document them is ridiculous. Understanding what makes the universe tick is part of our stewardship of the planet." Discoveries beget discoveries: "Charles Darwin was interested in collecting beetles because he thought beetles were pretty. Being wealthy, he funds a trip to collect a bunch of stuff, goes home, thinks about it, and comes up with a theory that changes human existence. Just because he likes beetles. If you choose to live in complete ignorance of the world around us, we're not going to make these discoveries."

McGavin, though, fears the current fascination with finding new species masks the damage we are doing to the planet's biodiversity. "Although it's a second wave of exploration that almost matches the Victorians, this could well be a short-lived renaissance. The bad side to this [species hunting] is that it gives the impression that everything is fine. The real story is habitat loss. In 50 years' time, this [species exploration] won't happen any more."

Controversially, McGavin argues it is not necessary to identify all the species of the world. "We probably don't need to describe everything, and the chances of us doing that are virtually nil because stuff is being lost at such an alarming rate." He says that to save the biodiversity of the planet, we must protect hotspots such as the rainforests in the Papua New Guinea and the Amazon, where most species reside.

"The priority, the absolute imperative, is to preserve habitat – particularly tropical rainforests – because that, apart from the oceans, is where we know most species live," McGavin says. "If we don't, by 2050 and perhaps even earlier, we're going to lose at least half the species on earth – an extinction event which is almost unbelievably fast, dwarfs anything that happened in the past, and is entirely due to us."

Read more!

Cambodia Protects Floodplain Grasslands Sheltering Rare Birds

Environment News Service 18 Mar 10;

NEW YORK, New York, March 18, 2010 (ENS) - The Cambodian government has decided to protect six of the largest remaining stretches of lowland grasslands in Southeast Asia. The six sites, one in Siem Reap province and five in Kampong Thom province, encompass about 77,000 acres (31,160 hectares).

The sites are located in and around Cambodia's Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake. They contain unique seasonally flooded grasslands that form a refuge for many globally threatened birds.

The grasslands are a fishing, grazing, and deep water rice farming resource for local communities. While most of the sites have been partially protected by a provincial conservation order, they remained vulnerable to land-clearing and dam-building activities associated with large-scale commercial rice production.

The new designations empower staff from Cambodia's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to prevent these activities.

The designation of the protected areas is the result of work done over the past four years by the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at New York's Bronx Zoo, in collaboration with Cambodia's Forestry and Fisheries Administration, local governments and community stakeholders.

As part of that effort, WCS has sourced funds and provided technical advice and management support.

Other partners include the Centre d'Etude et de Developpement Agricole Cambodgien, the Sam Veasna Center, BirdLife International in Indochina, the Angkor Center for Conservation of Biodiversity, and the University of East Anglia.

"Recognizing the importance of these sites as part of Cambodia's unique natural heritage shows the national government's great commitment to the conservation of some of the country's valued landscapes," said WCS President and CEO Dr. Steven Sanderson.

Among the species that will benefit from the designation is the Critically Endangered Bengal florican, Eupodotis bengalensis, the world's largest and rarest bustard. The global population of this ground-nesting bird, distinguished by dramatic high jump displays during mating, is estimated at less than 1,300. More than half the world's Bengal floricans live in Cambodia.

"Traditionally the grasslands around the Great Lake have been communally owned, and a unique agricultural ecology has evolved over the centuries that has provided a niche for the Bengal florican," said Jonathan Eames, program manager with BirdLife in Indochina.

The Tonle Sap grasslands, so important for breeding Bengal floricans, have declined by 60 percent since the late 1990s, with the intensification of rice cultivation playing a major role in this loss.

While florican habitat benefits from the traditional low-intensity agricultural practices such as seasonal burning, plowing, planting, and harvesting, illegal commercial rice farming destroys its habitat, forcing floricans into ever-shrinking areas.

The loss of grassland habitat in the Tonle Sap floodplain led to the 2006 designation of 310 square kilometers of land as Integrated Farming and Biodiversity Areas, where large scale habitat conversion is forbidden but extensive traditional use is encouraged.

The conservation groups praised the Cambodian government for the new declaration, which is the strongest step Cambodia has taken to date to protect the habitat of floricans and other bird species living in the protected areas, including Sarus cranes, storks, ibises and rare eagles.

In 2006, the first comprehensive survey for Bengal florican and other grassland bird species was jointly conducted by BirdLife and the Wildlife Conservation Society in the provinces surrounding the Tonle Sap lake. Information gained during the survey was used as a foundation for defining areas to be conserved.

A crude estimate, to be refined, put the Cambodian Bengal Florican population at between 700 and 900 individuals.

Researchers found that the disappearance of grassland habitat in Kampong Thom and Siem Reap provinces was a key reason behind the decline in Bengal floricans. They said the floricans have been disappearing because of large-scale changes in agricultural techniques that have occurred throughout Southeast Asia.

The collaborative project to protect the grasslands of Tonle Sap has been supported by grants from: Fondation Ensemble; the IUCN Netherlands Ecosystem Grants Program; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Wildlife Without Borders � Critically Endangered Animal Conservation Fund; the UNDP/GEF-funded Tonle Sap Conservation Project; and WCS Trustee Eleanor Briggs.

Funding was also provided by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, administered through BirdLife International in Indochina. This Fund is a joint initiative of l'Agence Fran�aise de Developpement, Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank.

Richard Salter, international team leader for the Tonle Sap Conservation Project, has pointed out that establishing a set of common rules and an effective monitoring system for the sanctuary is a work in progress. He believes that problems of hunting and poaching are declining as local residents see the natural and economic value of preserving the area both as a biosphere and as a tourist destination.

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South Korea's massive river restoration project will harm globally threatened bird species

South Korea Green Growth To Hurt Environment: Report
Jon Herskovitz, PlanetArk 19 Mar 10;

A massive river restoration project at the center of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's green growth strategy will harm globally threatened bird species and destroy critical habitat, a conservation group's report said.

Lee's government intends to spend 22.2 trillion won ($19.68 billion) to dredge, dam and beautify four major rivers with golf courses and bike trails in a plan that is supposed to increase the supply and quality of fresh water and prevent flooding.

"(It) will impact 50 bird species negatively, causing further declines in several sensitive waterbird species that are ecologically dependent on shallow rivers, flood-plain wetlands and estuaries," the conservation group Birds Korea said in a report released on Thursday.

The group, which has conducted some of the most extensive studies of waterfowl in the country, said the further damming and deepening of rivers through dredging will lead to the decline of feeding grounds and biodiversity.

"We have lost almost all of the natural stretches. This project is going to kill off what little remains," Nial Moores, director of Birds Korea, told Reuters.

Among the species threatened with habitat loss and population declines are several listed globally as critically endangered -- including the spoon-billed sandpiper -- and others South Korea lists as "national natural monuments."

The group called on the government to halt the project and conduct an extensive environmental impact study. Construction started last November.

A South Korean environment ministry official said the government is doing all it can to prevent and minimize any harm the project could cause to wildlife.

"There are some regions where construction is inevitable, and for these places, we are building new alternative habitats and environments for wildlife," said Yeo Soo-ho.

Critics said the project is more about local politics, aimed at creating jobs in rural areas that will provide crucial votes for Lee's conservative camp in South's Korea's next presidential election in 2012, when construction is due to end.

Lee, a former CEO of Hyundai construction, has been campaigning globally to show his country as an environmental industry leader. He has touted the four rivers project, saying it will reshape Asia's fourth-largest economy.

South Korea has few supplies of fresh water and two of its major rivers flow from rival North Korea, which has built dams along the waterways that can severely alter water flow.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

Massive South Korea river project faces mounting criticism
Yahoo News 23 Mar 10;

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called Tuesday for a campaign to promote his multi-billion dollar river development project, to counter criticism it could spark severe environmental damage.

The massive Four Rivers Project is aimed at "resuscitating lives, restoring dying ecosystems and securing clean water", Lee was quoted as telling his cabinet.

"When an election season comes, there may occur politically-motivated attacks against government's key policies," he said. "Each ministry must actively respond."

Local elections will be held on June 2.

Under the 19-billion-dollar project, launched last November, the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers will be dredged, given new banks and equipped with dams along a total length of some 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles).

The government says less water will be wasted, floods and droughts will be controlled and water quality improved, while the economy of local provinces will be helped and tens of thousands of jobs will be created.

But critics say that apart from environmental damage the project, due to completed in 2012, will gobble up funds for welfare, education and provincial development.

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Storms Threaten Butterflies' Winter Rest In Mexico

Patrick Rucker, PlanetArk 19 Mar 10;

Dense clouds of migrating monarch butterflies used to snap branches and cast shadows across the forests of central Mexico, but severe weather is posing a new threat to the annual phenomenon.

The yearly 2,000-mile journey, which takes four generations of butterflies to complete, starts in Canada and ends in the Mexican state of Michoacan, which normally enjoys mild weather from November to March.

Millions of the insects swarm to these arid hills each year, their orange-and-black wings creating a flickering fog of color that mesmerizes locals and tourists.

"When I first saw the monarchs in their sanctuary, I thought it was more of a plague than something beautiful," said David Bernal, a guide at the Piedra Herrada resting place two hours drive west of the capital, of a childhood visit.

"I was afraid. There were so many, they clouded our path."

A loss of forests and food sources has for years thinned the number of monarchs coming to Mexico. But scientists fear that a new pattern of punishing winter storms may mark the start of an irreversible decline of the transcontinental migration.

In early February, normally one of Mexico's driest months, 15 inches of precipitation fell on hilly central regions, battering monarch reserves with snow, sleet and freezing rain.

Fewer butterflies arrived this year than ever before, and as many as half of them are thought to have perished in February. The snowstorms that recently buried U.S. cities like Philadelphia and Washington began as unseasonable Mexican rains when warm winter air became loaded with ocean moisture.

'VANISHINGLY SMALL'

"Populations are only so resilient," said Chip Taylor, a University of Kansas entomologist who has studied the migrations for two decades.

"Will butterflies come back? Yes, but the numbers will be so vanishingly small that it may mean the end of this spectacular phenomenon," Taylor added.

The monarchs' transcontinental to and fro is woven through local myth since past generations saw the butterflies as returning ancestral souls. Today, the monarch is a proud local emblem that inspires taxi companies and soccer teams.

In three of the past 10 winters, at least half the monarch butterflies arriving in Mexico died due to the topsy turvy weather that many scientists link to climate change. Mexico will host a global climate change summit in November that aims to set binding international goals for reducing carbon pollution.

Even before strange weather became commonplace, the monarch was imperiled due to a loss of food and habitat.

As they sail across the Great Plains, monarchs survive on milkweed that is being crowded out by large-scale farming.

Meanwhile, illegal loggers clear protected land of oyamel fir trees whose slender needles are a favorite roosting place.

President Felipe Calderon, a Michoacan native, once vowed to use the army to halt logging, but Mexican forest set aside for monarchs is still being picked apart by "tree theft and mafia-style logging," said U.S. researcher Lincoln Brower of Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

Brower, 78, has studied monarch butterflies since the 1950s. He was one of the first people to see the Mexican overwinter sites after they were identified by scientists in 1975, a sight he said caused him to "practically fall on the ground."

"Now I may outlive the monarchs," he said.

(Editing by Catherine Bremer and Will Dunham)

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China and India called on by scientists to collaborate on conservation

Biodiversity knows no 'national boundaries' and nations must protect species from rising consumption, dams and industry
Jonathan Watts, guardian.co.uk 18 Mar 10;

China and India could together decide the future of the global environment, a team of senior scientists warn today in a call for closer collaboration on conservation by the world's two most populous nations.

Writing in the journal Science, the eight coauthors — including zoologists from both nations — warn of the security and biodiversity threat posed by rising consumption, dam construction and industrial emissions.

The ecological footprint of the two fast-emerging Asian economies has already spread beyond their borders and with future economic growth rates likely to continue at 8% for several years, the experts say the pressure on borders, resources and biodiversity could reach dangerous levels.

"The degree to which China and India consume natural resources within their boundaries and beyond will largely determine future environmental, social and economic outcomes," say the co-authors headed by Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The report notes that the two countries import 9m of crude oil a year and 64% of all the roundwood pine produced in Asia, adding to the problems of global deforestation and warming.

The impacts are becoming more obvious in the strategically sensitive Himalayan border area, where the authors say large numbers of troops are damaging the environment. Resources in the mountain region are so scarce, they note, that soldiers sometimes eat rare plants.

Melting glaciers that supply meltwater for half the world's population and the constriction of rivers by hundreds of dams are also major problems, they say.

With the demand for energy in both nations growing, they predict a further rise in construction of hydroelectric plants and exploitation of other Himalayan resources, with alarming implications for regional security.

"The synergistic effects of decreasing water resources, loss of biodiversity, increased pollution and climate change may have negative social and economic consequences and, even worse, escalate conflicts within and between the two countries," they warn.

Despite their growing global importance, China and India have conducted little joint research and engaged in only modest collaboration to mitigate the impact of their rapid development. There have been small signs of progress in recent years, including agreements to jointly monitor glaciers and study the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. But the authors say much more collaboration is necessary.

"More earnest cooperation between the world's two most populous countries will be vital for mitigating biodiversity loss, global warming and deforestation," the authors say.

They suggest turning disputed territory into trans-boundary protected areas, fostering scientific collaboration, working with the United Nations to manage natural resources and encouraging regional forums, such as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), to focus more on the environment.

One of the authors — Zhang Yaping, the president of the Kunming Institute of Zoology — said it was rare for biodversity protection to span the two nations.

"We should certainly strengthen cooperation in this field," he said. "China and India have done a lot of conservation work inside their own nations. What we need now is a joint effort. There should be no national boundaries in biodiversity protection."

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No trade reprieve for polar bears

Anne Chaon Yahoo News 18 Mar 10;

DOHA (AFP) – Polar bears, the global mascot in the fight against climate change, were denied a reprieve Thursday when a UN body shot down a US proposal to ban cross-border trade in the animals or their parts.

In a vote at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meeting in Doha through March 25, the measure fell far short of the required two-thirds majority.

The United States had called for a "precautionary approach," noting the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the animal as "vulnerable," with their numbers down by 30 percent in the past 45 years.

"The current level of trade has a detrimental impact ... and may further stimulate the international market in countries that allow it, such as Russia," said Jane Lyder, head of the US delegation at the Doha talks.

Recent data showed that as many as 700 of the bears may be killed illegally each year, especially in Russia, she told journalists.

But opponents of the ban argued that the main threat facing the snow-white carnivore, the largest of the bear family, is climate change, not poaching or over-exploitation.

There are currently 20,000 to 25,000 in the wild across Canada, Greenland, Russia, Alaska and Norway, and about 600 are legally harvested each year by indigenous peoples, especially the Inuit.

Only Canada -- home to 65 percent of the global population -- allows exports, which are limited to about 300 specimens a year.

They are killed mainly for their fur, teeth and bones, or sought as hunting trophies.

Several states invoked the rights of aboriginal peoples for whom hunting the bears is a way of life and an economic lifeline.

"Polar bears are a valuable source of food, and an important contribution to our livelihood," said an Inuit member of the Canadian delegation.

"We have a lot to lose if polar bear trade doesn't exist any more," he told journalists.

The polar bear has been registered since 1975 in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which allows controlled trade.

Inclusion in Appendix I, as requested by the United States, would have totally banned exports.

In 2008, Washington listed polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, ending importation to the US of trophies killed by sports hunters. Greenland imposed a total ban on exports the same year.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) decried the outcome in Doha as a "death knell" for the bears.

"This is a missed opportunity, a final chance to respond to threats" facing the bear, said Jeff Flocken, director of conservation group the Global Fund for Animal Welfare.

Other environmental groups, however, said hunting for export is limited and well-managed, and that the ban would not boost the animal's chances for survival.

"The polar bear does not meet any of the biological criteria for inclusion in Appendix I. Trade is not a significant threat to the species," said TRAFFIC, an NGO that monitors wildlife trade.

Several NGOs said the drive to uplist the animal was largely "emotional."

The final tally was 48 votes in favour of the Appendix I listing, 62 against and 11 abstentions, according to IFAW.

The 175-nation CITES will vote on dozens of measures affecting trade in tuna, ivory, sharks and coral, among other plants and animals.

Polar Bear, Bluefin Tuna Trade Bans Rejected
Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 19 Mar 10;

Polar Bear, Bluefin Tuna Trade Bans Rejected Photo: Issei Kato
One-year-old polar bear Ikor plays at Sapporo Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo, northern Japan, January 18, 2010. The male cubs were born on December 9, 2008.
Photo: Issei Kato

Proposed international trade bans on polar bears and Atlantic bluefin tuna failed to pass on Thursday at a 175-nation meeting aimed at protecting endangered species.

The United States favored both bans and was disappointed in the vote, but held out hope for passage of a resolution that would make climate change a factor in future decisions by the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as CITES.

The meeting of CITES in Doha, Qatar, will consider the climate change resolution along with trade protection for about 40 species -- including sharks, coral and elephants -- during its two-week conference ending on March 25.

Polar bears are under pressure from the melting of their icy Arctic habitat, and are listed by the United States as a threatened species for that reason. The primary exporter of polar bears is Canada, which has recently scaled back the number of hunting permits for the bear.

While CITES uses trade restrictions to protect species at risk, Tom Strickland, assistant U.S. Interior secretary, said that climate change will have to be taken into account and that polar bears are the first species to need this consideration.

"The polar bear was the first canary in the coal mine," Strickland said of the climate change impact on the animal.

"I think we're going to find at every CITES meeting from here on out that we'll be looking at species and their vulnerability in terms of the effect that climate change has had on them, whether it's drought or rising sea levels" or other ecosystem changes, he said.

"CATASTROPHIC DECLINE"

Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the CITES vote is not the end of the story for the bear.

"The ironic thing is that all the countries of the conference acknowledge that global warming is posing a huge challenge for this species," Wetzler said. "When you have a species threatened by global warming, it only makes sense to reduce all the other stresses, including hunting."

Strickland blamed the failure to pass a trade ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna on pressure from commercial interests in Japan and inaction by other regulatory bodies, notably the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

"The science is compelling, the statistics are dramatic, that this species is in a catastrophic decline," Strickland said at a telephone news briefing from Washington.

Stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna, prized as a delicacy in Japan, have plunged more than 80 percent since 1970, according to CITES. Japan imports about 80 percent of the catch.

A single fish can weigh up to 1,430 pounds (650 kg) and fetch more than $100,000. The fish is found in the north Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico.

"The abject failure of governments here at CITES to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna spells disaster for its future and sets the species on a pathway to extinction," said Greenpeace International Oceans Campaigner Oliver Knowles.

France, Italy and Spain catch most of the tuna consumed by the global market.

In 2009, a quota of 19,950 tons of tuna was set by ICCAT, but many fish are caught live in nets, transferred to farms and fattened before slaughter.

"The market for this fish is just too lucrative and the pressure from fishing interests too great, for enough governments to support a truly sustainable future for the fish," said Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

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UN wildlife body rejects bluefin trade ban

Anne Chaon Yahoo News 18 Mar 10;

DOHA (AFP) – Lobbied aggressively by Japan, delegates at a UN wildlife trade meeting on Thursday massively rejected a ban on cross-border commerce in Atlantic bluefin tuna, a sushi mainstay.

The controversial proposal was crushed with 68 votes against, 20 in favour and 30 abstentions at a meeting in Doha of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

To pass, the measure needed the support of two-thirds of the nations present.

Industrial-scale harvesting on the high-seas has caused bluefin stocks to plummet by up to 80 percent in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, the two regions which would have been affected by the ban.

Atlantic bluefin tuna: the sushi king The reason is not hard to find: a single 220-kilo (485-pound) fish can fetch 160,000 dollars (120,000 euros) at auction in Japan, which consumes three-quarters of all the bluefin caught in the world, mainly as sushi and sashimi.

At those prices, the incentive to overfish -- and cheat on poorly enforced quotas -- is overwhelming, say experts.

Japan lobbied fiercely in Doha and elsewhere to block the proposal, put forward by Monaco with the backing of the United States and European Union, announcing before the vote the support of China and South Korea.

"I am happy. We are satisfied with the result," said Masonori Miyahara, the head of Japan's delegation and the country's top fisheries official.

But the European Commission warned that rejecting the ban threatened the species with extinction.

"If action is not taken, there is a very serious danger that the bluefin will no longer exist," said the EU's Environmental Commissioner Janez Potoznik in Brussels.

Anticipating a possible defeat at the Doha meeting, Monaco was set to table amendments to its proposal, while Europe -- backed by Norway -- was poised to call for the formation of a working group to hammer out a compromise.

Related article: French tuna fishermen fear for livelihood

But in a procedural move, Libya short-circuited the debate and called for an up-or-down vote on the original proposition.

"It will not be CITES that is the ruin of professional (fisheries), it will be Nature that lays down the sanction, and it will be beyond appeal," was the reaction from Patrick van Klaveren, head of the Monaco delegation.

Meanwhile, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned that another expensive delicacy, caviar, had pushed sturgeon into the most threatened creature on the planet.

"Eighty-five percent of sturgeon, one of the oldest families of fishes in existence, valued around the world for their precious roe, are at risk of extinction, making them the most threatened group of animals on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species," it said in a report on the conference sidelines.

"Four species are now possibly extinct," the IUCN said. "Beluga sturgeon populations have been decimated," hunted to obtain the world's priciest caviar.

In addition to Caspian Sea species, sturgeon in other areas of Asia and Europe were also found to be either "critically endangered" or "possibly extinct," the report said.

In the debate over bluefin tuna, environmental groups and experts slammed Thursday's vote.

"The abject failure of governments here to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna spells disaster for its future and sets the species on a pathway to extinction," said Oliver Knowles of Greenpeace International.

Most scientists say bluefin populations in the two zones affected would need at least five years to begin a robust recovery.

"This is very disappointing and very irresponsible," said Sue Lieberman, policy director for the Pew Environment Group in Washington.

She said bluefin's fate was now in the hands of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the inter-governmental group responsible for managing bluefin stocks.

"This is the very body that drove the species to the disastrous state it is in now" by failing to enforce its own quotas."

Van Kaveren recalled that in 1992 a proposed Atlantic bluefin ban was withdrawn from CITES after promises from ICCAT of stricter oversight.

"The result is that the reproductive capacity has dropped from 200,000 to 60,000 in 20 years, tunas are half as small, and illegal fishing has tripled," he said.

Miyahara -- a former ICCAT president -- acknowledged these shortcomings, but said things could improve.

"We have heavy homework with ICCAT now. We made the commitment to ensure the recovery of the stock with specific measures and restrictions," he told AFP.

Last November, ICCAT agreed to cut its catch for bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean regions by 40 percent, from 22,000 tonnes in 2009 to 13,500 in 2010.

Bluefin Tuna Trade Ban Fails To Pass
Regan Doherty, PlanetArk 19 Mar 10;

Bluefin Tuna Trade Ban Fails To Pass Photo: Tony Gentile
Freshly-harvested Bluefin tunas are uploaded from a ''tuna farm'', off the Calabrian coast in southern Italy November 20, 2009.
Photo: Tony Gentile

Efforts to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna suffered a blow on Thursday when dozens of countries voted against a trade ban, drawing condemnation from environmental groups.

At the 175-nation meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, 68 countries, opposed a proposal from Monaco for a trade ban, while 20 governments voted in favor and 30 abstained, the environmental organization WWF said.

Stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna, prized as a delicacy in Japan, have plunged more than 80 percent since 1970, according to CITES. Japan imports about 80 percent of the catch.

A single fish can weigh up to 650 kg (1,433 lb) and fetch more than $100,000. The fish is found in the north Atlantic and also in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico.

"The abject failure of governments here at CITES to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna spells disaster for its future and sets the species on a pathway to extinction," said Greenpeace International Oceans Campaigner Oliver Knowles.

France, Italy and Spain catch most of the tuna consumed by the global market.

In 2009, a quota of 19,950 metric tons of tuna was set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, but many fish are caught live in nets, transferred to farms and fattened before slaughter.

"The market for this fish is just too lucrative and the pressure from fishing interests too great, for enough governments to support a truly sustainable future for the fish," said Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group.

France had said it would support a total ban on global trade in bluefin tuna, but only after an 18-month delay.

The French farm and environment ministries said on Thursday, given the failure to agree on a ban, they would press for tuna to be added to the CITES list of threatened species.

The CITES conference will vote on about 40 proposals for regulating trade in species including sharks, coral, elephants and polar bears.

(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)


Japan, detractors trade barbs on eve of tuna debate
Anne Chaon Yahoo News 17 Mar 10;

DOHA (AFP) – Japan threw down the gauntlet Wednesday ahead of a key debate over bluefin tuna, saying that if the species were truly facing extinction its defenders should seek a halt to all fishing rather than just cross-border commerce.

Monaco, meanwhile, also worked the corridors at the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, seeking votes for its proposed trade ban on bluefin caught in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

When the issue comes to a vote next week, the future of a species and a multi-billion-dollar business could hang in the balance.

Japan, which buys three-quarters of the global catch of bluefin, is campaigning fiercely to prevent catches from these two fisheries from falling under CITES' Appendix I, which outlaws all international commerce.

Up to now, this status has been primarily reserved for iconic fauna such as big cats, primates and elephants rather than a mainstream commercial species.

In an interview with AFP, top Japanese negotiator Masanori Miyahara described the proposed ban as unworkable and unfair, and took aim at supporters of the moratorium.

"We are very serious about bluefin tuna," he said.

"If they are really concerned about the future of the bluefin tuna, let's stop the fishing -- that's the best way," Miyahara said.

For Monaco, Appendix I is a lifeline without which the species will slip towards extinction.

"We have gotten to the point where the collapse of stocks in the wild is inevitable," said Patrick Van Klaveren, the principality's top negotiator in Doha.

Scientists agree that bluefin stocks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean have crashed, with populations declining by up to 80 percent from only three or four decades ago.

"Let's leave the species alone for five or 10 years to give it a chance to avoid certain catastrophe," said Van Klaveren.

Miyahara sniped at the United States and the European Union, saying they backed a ban knowing that under CITES rules they could still harvest the species in their domestic waters for consumption at home.

"They are saying Appendix I is okay because their fishermen will continue the fishing and sale for the domestic market," he said. "That is unfair."

Tokyo acknowledges that bluefin are in trouble, but says the solution lies with enforcing existing quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the inter-governmental fishery group responsible for tuna stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.

Japan is pressing for support from neighbours South Korea and China to thwart the two-thirds vote needed from delegates. It has also been campaigning hard with African countries, say sources.

If no agreement is reached on Thursday -- a near certainty -- CITES will form a working group to hash out the issue behind closed doors, and perhaps craft a compromise proposal.

Europe, which remains divided internally, "risks getting into some very complicated discussion," said Laurent Stefanini, head of the French delegation.

Australia has called for an Appendix II listing for Atlantic bluefin, which would allow cross-border trade to continue, but under more stringent monitoring and rules.

Environmental groups retort that this would simply serve as a cover for business as usual, and point out that ICCAT has failed over three decades to enforce its own quotas.

Miyahara insisted Japan could do without the prized delicacy, which sells for up to 170,000 dollars (125,000 euros) a fish in Toyko, and 25 dollars a morsel in high-end restaurants.

"If bluefin doesn't come to the Japanese market, no problem, we can give it up!" he said.

The species only accounts for three percent of the "high quality tuna" consumed in Japan, he added.

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Caviar Hunters Push Sturgeon To "Extinction's Edge"

Guy Faulconbridge, PlanetArk 19 Mar 10;

After more than 200 million years, sturgeon are losing a battle for survival to poachers who have hunted the queens of caviar to the verge of extinction, a leading environmental group said on Thursday.

Stocks of sturgeon, known in Russia as the "Czar fish", have collapsed since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as poachers and criminal gangs spirit the delicate eggs from the Caspian Sea to gourmet diners across Europe, Asia and the United States.

Shady traders routinely visit offices in Moscow to sell illegal black caviar, even though Russia has banned exports since 2002 and only allows sales of about 9 tonnes of wild black caviar on the home market each year.

The Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said on Thursday that 85 percent of sturgeon were at a very high risk of extinction in the wild. It classified 17 of the 27 sturgeon species as critically endangered.

"This is the last chance. There is no time left. These fish are at death's door," said Professor Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University in New York.

"Sturgeon are just one step away from being extinct in the wild," Pikitch told Reuters from Doha where the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species met this week.

JOINT STUDY

Most of the sturgeon left in the wild spawn in the rivers that flow into the Caspian, a region dominated by Iran and Russia.

The Russian tsars created a monopoly for the sale of caviar and the Soviet authorities kept tight control over the business.

In the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, the sturgeon was left largely at the mercy of rampant poaching and rising pollution.

"The situation with sturgeon is simply catastrophic," said Alexander Savelyev, a spokesman for Russia's Federal Fishery Agency. "The sturgeon is on the edge of extinction."

"We are proposing revolutionary measures, including strict state control over caviar sales," he said.

The statements follow a joint study by U.S. and Kazakh scientists of the Ural River which flows into the Caspian and where tens of thousands of sturgeon once spawned.

It showed fishing catches are four to five times higher than levels that would allow the Beluga sturgeon to simply survive at today's vastly reduced population levels.

Some species, such as the Beluga sturgeon which produces highly prized, delicate grey caviar, have seen a 93 percent decline in catches, according to researchers.

The Beluga can grow to more than 5 meters (16 ft) long, weigh up to a tonne (2200 lb) and sometimes live for more than 100 years. Caviar can make up about one ninth of a mature female's body weight.

Illegal black caviar sells in Moscow markets for about $635 per lb ($1,400 a kilogram) and was advertised for sale on some European internet sites for about $2,250 a lb ($5,000 per kg).

Russia is pushing Caspian nations such as Iran -- which dominates the market for black caviar -- to agree later this month to a 10-year ban on sturgeon fishing to save the sturgeon.

"Sturgeon have survived dramatic change over the past 250 million years only to face the serious threat of becoming extinct as a direct result of human activities," said Mohammad Pourkazemi, chairman of the IUCN's Sturgeon Specialist Group.

"Illegal catch, over-fishing, the breaking up of the migratory routes and pollution are the key elements that have driven almost all species to the brink of extinction," he said in a statement

(Editing by Michael Stott and Philippa Fletcher)

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