Rare “Yangtze Mermaids” released in nature reserve

WWF 23 Apr 11;

Shishou, China – Two finless porpoises were released into the Tian-e-zhou Oxbow nature reserve today, marking the first step in the conservation of this rare species. The Yangtze finless porpoise, also known as the “Yangtze Mermaid”, lives exclusively in the Yangtze River and its neighbouring rivers and lakes.

The two finless porpoises – one born in captivity in 2005 and the other injured in a severe snow storm in 2008 – will be tagged for intense monitoring and research by the Institute of Hydrobiology, the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Nature Reserve, an area of wetland in the Yangtze basin near Shishou city and a sanctuary for the Yangtze river dolphin.

“After the release, we will keep monitoring the behaviour, acoustic status and health condition of the finless porpoises and acquiring their growth data, ultimately helping them adapt to the wild environment,” said Li Min Wang, Deputy Director of Conservation Operations at WWF-China.

Soft release
To prepare the finless porpoises for their eventual release into the wild, slated to be in a few months time, the pair have experienced a “soft release” into a 10,000m2 area of the nature reserve surrounded by a temporary fence. They will be trained in catching live fish, learn how to protect themselves against predators and live in a simulated wild Yangtze environment.

There were an estimated 1800 finless porpoise swimming in the Yangtze in 2006, a figure that has since declined at an average annual rate of 5% and has moved them from “endangered” to “critically endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
While this is the first time for such intense monitoring of captive-bred finless porpoises it’s hoped that it will pave the way for similar repopulation efforts in the future.

“If soft releases are proven to be successful, we will have a better chance to save the Yangtze finless porpoise and other freshwater dolphins worldwide which are under great threats at the moment too,” said Dr. Li Lifeng, Director of WWF International Freshwater Programme.

Yangtze finless porpoise conservation
The Yangtze finless porpoise is the only identified freshwater subspecies of Phocoenidae in the world. This small cetacean is only found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and some of its adjacent rivers and lakes.

Since 1992, WWF, Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Nature Reserve and the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Hydrobiology in Hubei Province have carried out a series of conservation programs by leveraging all the beneficial conditions in the oxbow. Meanwhile, HSBC has offered a great deal of support to conservation projects in the area since 2002.

As of 2010, the population of finless porpoise in the nature reserve exceeded 30, with two to five calves born every year.

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Huge sperm whale washes up on Sydney beach

Yahoo News 28 Apr 11;

SYDNEY (AFP) – A dead 10-metre (32-feet) sperm whale has washed up on a Sydney beach, with rescuers struggling Thursday to remove it as the animal's blood runs into the water, attracting sharks.

The carcass, believed to weigh up to 12 tonnes, beached on a rock platform at Newport on Sydney's Northern Beaches and is proving difficult to shift.

Reports said it was badly decomposed and missing its tail, making it impossible to tow out to sea.

Northern Beaches area manager for National Parks and Wildlife Service, Chris Grudnoff, said it was hard to know what to do.

"The tide's wrong, the mass size of the mammal makes this situation difficult and there was a choppy southerly blowing which made getting a boat in impossible," Grudnoff told the local Manly Daily newspaper.

"We haven't had that much experience in Sydney with large dead whales. It's a whole new ball game so we are waiting for advice from a marine expert before we make a decision as to how we will move it."

A local council official said the solution may be to cut the whale into smaller pieces and drag them off the rocks.

In the meantime, the beach has been shut as blood from the whale drips into the water, attracting sharks.

It was not known how the whale died, although a wildlife official said it looked like the tail had been been taken off by sharks based on teeth marks, with bites also on its head and dorsal fin.

Whale beachings are relatively common in Australia, though they usually occur in the summer months of December around the far southern island state of Tasmania. Such events are less common in Sydney.

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Boom and bust signals ecosystem collapse

Richard Black BBC News 28 Apr 11;

An experiment in a US lake suggests that ecosystem collapses could be predicted, given the right monitoring.

Researchers changed the structure of the food web in Peter Lake, in Wisconsin, by adding predatory fish. Within three years, the fish had taken over, producing a decline in tiny water plants and an explosion in water fleas.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say the change was preceded by signals that could be used to predict similar collapses elsewhere.

In particular, rapid swings in the density of plants and fleas indicated the food web was unstable and about to change.

The idea that such early warning signals ought to exist is not new - but the researchers say this is the first time it has been demonstrated experimentally.

"For a long time, ecologists thought these changes couldn't be predicted," said research leader Stephen Carpenter from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US.

"But we've now shown that they can be foreseen. The early warning is clear; it is a strong signal."
Peter and Paul

The Peter Lake food web contained four key components. Insects such as fleas ate tiny water-borne plants, small fish such as golden shiners ate the fleas, and much bigger largemouth bass ate the little fish.

Beginning in 2008, the researchers began to add more bass, and more than a thousand hatched the following year.

Sensing the threat from these predators, the golden shiners began to spend more time in the shallows or sheltering under floating logs.

Larger fleas moved in, eating the floating plants (phytoplankton).

But the changes were anything but smooth, with wildly varying numbers of fleas and phytoplankton seen at different times.

Eventually, by late 2010, the ecosystem appeared to have finalised its transition from one stable state to another.

This second state, dominated by fleas and largemouth bass, is similar to the situation that had existed for years in neighbouring Lake Paul.

This lake showed no major changes during the three years, indicating that the changes seen in Peter really were caused by the addition of bass.
Banks collapse

Many natural systems appear capable of existing in more than one stable state.

Until 20 years ago, the Grand Banks off Canada's east coast were dominated by cod - so many as to prevent the growth of other species.

Overfishing caused the cod population to collapse.

Other species have since taken their prime position, some of which predate on juvenile cod - perhaps meaning that the prized fish will never return to their former dominance.

The new research suggests it might be possible to detect signals of such a coming crash before it happened.

"Early warning signs help you prepare for, and hopefully prevent, the worst case scenario," said Jonathan Cole from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies near New York, another of the scientists involved.

"We are surrounded by problems caused by ecological regime shifts - water supply shortages, fishery declines, unproductive rangeland - and our study shows that there is promise in identifying these changes before they reach their tipping point."

The principle may have been proved, but the application would still appear to be some way away.

Monitoring any ecosystem with the intensity used at Peter Lake will be expensive, although the ever growing fleet of Earth observation satellites could help in some cases.

Even more problematic is knowing which early warning signs apply in which ecosystem.

Early Warning Signal for Ecosystem Collapse: Fluctuations Before the Fall
ScienceDaily 28 Apr 11;

Researchers eavesdropping on complex signals emanating from a remote Wisconsin lake have detected what they say is an unmistakable warning -- a death knell -- of the impending collapse of the lake's aquatic ecosystem. Researchers have found that models used to assess catastrophic changes in economic and medical systems can also predict environmental collapse. Stock market crashes, epileptic seizures, and ecological breakdowns are all preceded by a measurable increase in variance—be it fluctuations in brain waves, the Dow Jones index, or, in the case of the Wisconsin lake, chlorophyll.

The finding, reported April 29 in the journal Science by a team of researchers led by Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the first experimental evidence that radical change in an ecosystem can be detected in advance, possibly in time to prevent ecological catastrophe.

"For a long time, ecologists thought these changes couldn't be predicted," says Carpenter, a UW-Madison professor of zoology and one of the world's foremost ecologists. "But we've now shown that they can be foreseen. The early warning is clear. It is a strong signal."

The implications of the National Science Foundation-supported study are big, says Carpenter. They suggest that, with the right kind of monitoring, it may be possible to track the vital signs of any ecosystem and intervene in time to prevent what is often irreversible damage to the environment.

"With more work, this could revolutionize ecosystem management," Carpenter avers. "The concept has now been validated in a field experiment and the fact that it worked in this lake opens the door to testing it in rangelands, forests and marine ecosystems."

Ecosystems often change in radical ways. Lakes, forests, rangelands, coral reefs and many other ecosystems are often transformed by such things as overfishing, insect pests, chemical changes in the environment, overgrazing and shifting climate.

For humans, ecosystem change can impact economies and livelihoods such as when forests succumb to an insect pest, rangelands to overgrazing, or fisheries to overexploitation.

A vivid example of a collapsed resource is the Atlantic cod fishery. Once the most abundant and sought-after fish in the North Atlantic, cod stocks collapsed in the 1990s due to overfishing, causing widespread economic hardship in New England and Canada. Now, the ability to detect when an ecosystem is approaching the tipping point could help prevent such calamities.

In the new study, the Wisconsin researchers, collaborating with groups from the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., focused their attention on Peter and Paul lakes, two isolated and undeveloped lakes in northern Wisconsin. Peter is a six-acre lake whose biota were manipulated for the study and nearby Paul served as a control.

The group led by Carpenter experimentally manipulated Peter Lake during a three-year period by gradually adding predatory largemouth bass to the lake, which was previously dominated by small fish that consumed water fleas, a type of zooplankton. The purpose, Carpenter notes, was to destabilize the lake's food web to the point where it would become an ecosystem dominated by large predators. In the process, the researchers expected to see a relatively rapid cascading change in the lake's biological community, one that would affect all of its plants and animals in significant ways.

"We started adding these big ferocious fish and almost immediately this instills fear in the other fish," Carpenter explains. "The small fish begin to sense there is trouble and they stop going into the open water and instead hang around the shore and structure, things like sunken logs. They become risk averse."

The biological upshot, according to the Wisconsin lake expert, is that the lake became "water flea heaven." The system becomes one where the phytoplankton, the preferred food of the lake's water fleas, becomes highly variable.

"The phytoplankton get hammered and at some point the system snaps into a new mode," says Carpenter.

Throughout the lake's three-year manipulation, all its chemical, biological and physical vital signs were continuously monitored to track even the smallest changes that would announce what ecologists call a "regime shift," where an ecosystem undergoes radical and rapid change from one type to another. It was in these massive sets of data that Carpenter and his colleagues were able to detect the signals of the ecosystem's impending collapse.

Ecologists first discovered the signals in computer simulations of spruce budworm outbreaks. Every few decades the insect's populations explode, causing widespread deforestation in boreal forests in Canada. Computer models of a virtual outbreak, however, seemed to undergo odd blips just before an outbreak.

The problem was solved by William "Buz" Brock, a UW-Madison professor of economics who for decades has worked on the mathematical connections of economics and ecology. Brock used a branch of applied mathematics known as bifurcation theory to show that the odd behavior was in fact an early warning of catastrophic change. In short, he devised a way to sense the transformation of an ecosystem by detecting subtle changes in the system's natural patterns of variability.

The upshot of the Peter Lake field experiment, says Carpenter, is a validated statistical early warning system for ecosystem collapse. The catch, however, is that for the early warning system to work, intense and continuous monitoring of an ecosystem's chemistry, physical properties and biota are required.

Such an approach may not be practical for every threatened ecosystem, says Carpenter, but he also cites the price of doing nothing: "These regime shifts tend to be hard to reverse. It is like a runaway train once it gets going and the costs -- both ecological and economic -- are high."

In addition to Carpenter and Brock, authors of the new Science report include Jonathan Cole of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; Michael Pace, James Coloso and David Seekell of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; James Hodgson of St. Norbert College; and Ryan Batt, Tim Cline, James Kitchell, Laura Smith and Brian Weidel of UW-Madison.

Journal Reference:

S. R. Carpenter, J. J. Cole, M. L. Pace, R. Batt, W. A. Brock, T. Cline, J. Coloso, J. R. Hodgson, J. F. Kitchell, D. A. Seekell, L. Smith, and B. Weidel. Early Warnings of Regime Shifts: A Whole-Ecosystem Experiment. Science, 28 April 2011 DOI: 10.1126/science.1203672

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Global warming threat amid nuclear doubts: IEA

Yahoo News 28 Apr 11;

HONG KONG (AFP) – A global warming target could be missed three times over if countries fail to promote clean energy, the International Energy Agency warned Thursday, amid a possible slowdown in atomic power growth.

Nuclear fuel does not emit carbon dioxide, making it a serious option for "clean energy" proponents over fossil fuels, but governments around the world have turned more cautious on it in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan.

The IEA's deputy head Richard Jones however cautioned that global warming could accelerate much faster and lead to catastrophic consequences if the international community fails to adopt a more aggressive clean energy policy.

"We are not on the pathway to limit global temperatures," he told the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong, referring to an international goal to restrict warming to two degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

The target was set by countries at the Cancun meeting in December 2010.

"If you miss it by 0.1 degree Celsius nobody cares but the problem is it looks like we are on track for more than six degrees Celsius (rise)," he said.

"That is serious. We really don't know what will happen," said the deputy head of the Paris-based agency, set up to monitor energy use.

In its annual report last year, the IEA projected that 360 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity would be added worldwide by 2035, on top of the 390 gigawatts already in use.

However fears over the use of nuclear power could see the IEA halve its projection to 180 gigawatts, its chief economist Fatih Birol told AFP earlier this month.

Jones said the earlier projection would be "overly optimistic in today's environment", and that the IEA will re-evaluate the statistic, but declined to give any figures.

Germany has announced the temporary shutdown of its seven oldest nuclear reactors while it conducts a safety probe in light of Japan's atomic emergency, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that crippled the power station.

Switzerland suspended plans to replace its ageing atomic plants, while in France -- where nuclear makes up 75 percent of electricity production -- environmental groups have called for a referendum on the future use of atomic power.

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Recession Briefly Axed Greenhouse Gases In 2009

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 28 Apr 11;

Recession drove industrialized nations' greenhouse gas emissions down 5.6 percent in 2009 but analysts said the plunge may be a brief, misleading sign of progress in slowing climate change.

Emissions by about 40 nations fell to the equivalent of 16.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2009 from 17.4 billion in 2008, and were a record 11.6 percent below the benchmark year of 1990, a Reuters compilation showed.

The 2009 data comprises all industrialized nations except Canada, the only one which has not yet submitted 2009 numbers to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat this month. The official data are used to judge compliance with U.N. treaties.

But experts said the recession-induced fall in 2009, and a likely rebound in 2010, meant governments could not relax in achieving long-term curbs meant to avert more floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

"As economies rebound demand will increase and emissions will likely increase again," said Jennifer Morgan of the Washington-based World Resources Institute. "This is no time for governments to be 'backing off'" from curbing global warming.

"There is a risk of complacency" among governments after the 2009 emissions' fall, said Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project based at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia.

He cautioned the decline was misleading since it was caused by the financial crisis and recession, and not "by sustainable long-term emission reduction strategies or a switch to non-polluting energies" needed to ensure long-term cuts.

"NOT ENOUGH"

"The fall ... is not long-term. It's not enough," echoed Marlene Moses, U.N. ambassador for the Pacific island state of Nauru. Nauru is set to take over from Grenada as chair of the Alliance of Small Island States in late 2011.

Emissions fell in every industrialized country in 2009. U.S. emissions fell 6.1 percent, European Union emissions were down 7.2 percent and Russia's were down 3.2 percent from 2008.

And the falls generally outstripped the depth of recession.

Rich nations' overall gross domestic product contracted by 3.4 percent in 2009, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Its membership overlaps with industrialized states in U.N. climate treaties.

Canadell noted the global financial crisis coincided with high oil prices, making energy-intensive sectors particularly vulnerable to the downturn.

The Global Carbon Project, which groups research institutes, estimates global carbon dioxide emissions rebounded 3 percent in 2010 after a 1.3 percent fall in 2009. Growth continued in many emerging nations such as China and India.

Some early official data for 2010 shows a rebound.

Emissions under the EU's emissions trading scheme -- covering 11,000 factories and power plants and 40 percent of EU emissions -- rose by 3.5 percent in 2010.

A scenario by the U.N. panel of climate scientists in 2007 said industrialized nations would have to cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change.

The United Nations says current pledges fall far short.

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Major Polluters Say 2011 Climate Deal "Not Doable"

Pete Harrison PlanetArk 28 Apr 11;

The world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters do not expect a legally-binding deal to tackle climate change at talks in South Africa in December, two leading climate envoys said on Wednesday.

U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern and European climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard played down the chance of a breakthrough after a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF), an informal group of 17 countries including the world's top polluters, China and the United States.

"From what I've heard in these last two days, the conclusion must be that it is highly unlikely that the world will see a legally binding deal done in Durban," Hedegaard told reporters.

"Not that they do not think it's important -- but there is just this feeling that it's simply not doable for Durban."

It is not the first time doubts have been raised over the chance of an ambitious agreement in Durban, following on from modest progress in Cancun, Mexico last year, and Copenhagen the year before.

But the poorest nations, which are most vulnerable to climate change, are still clinging to the hope of moving beyond the existing voluntary accord.

"I think that there are different views about the sort of degree of necessity or not of a legally binding agreement," said Stern. "Our view in the U.S. is that it is not a necessary thing to happen right away."

Last year's Cancun meeting is widely regarded as having saved the often fraught negotiations from collapse.

Nations agreed curbs on the loss of tropical forests, schemes to transfer clean technology to poorer nations and help them adapt to climate change impacts, and a goal for rich countries to provide $100 billion a year in aid from 2020.

But it side-stepped tougher issues, such as whether to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol, the current agreement to limit greenhouse gases which expires next year.

Hedegaard said the EU would push for the Durban talks to make progress on tackling the emissions from ships and planes.

"It is not enough for Durban just to implement what was agreed in Cancun," she said. "Inclusion of shipping and aviation -- these kind of topics we will also push for."

Hedegaard said she would prefer the issue of shipping emissions to be tackled by the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization (IMO), but would not wait forever.

"Since 1997, IMO has had this task, without delivering, and that's why we are very clearly signaling we are losing patience," she said.

(Editing by Sophie Hares)

No binding climate deal at Durban, warn US, EU
Yahoo News 27 Apr 11;

BRUSSELS (AFP) – There will be no binding deal on emissions at this year's UN climate summit as the South African hosts and other economic powers are simply "not ready," the United States and Europe said on Wednesday.

"It is not a necessary thing to have right away," top US climate official Todd Stern said after European Union counterpart Connie Hedegaard admitted hopes of a breakthrough pact in Durban are already dead.

"The good news is that there is a general recognition of the necessity of a legally-binding agreement," EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard said.

"The bad news is no legally-binding agreement deal will be done in Durban."

The pair spoke after a two-day meeting of the so-called Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), a gathering of the world's 17 largest economies aimed at advancing efforts to cut greenhouse emissions, increase the supply of clean energy and mitigate global warming.

Stern said discussion focused on whether the UN summit would even articulate the goal of a legally-binding agreement "in the coming years."

"In a nutshell, our view is it would have to include all the major players -- China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa," he said, underlining that powerful states such as these are "not ready to have international, legally-binding obligations."

"I'm not even criticising that," he added, noting that China's rise, both as a major economic power and emitter, has also seen Beijing become one of the world's top developers of clean energy.

With US ratification also "a big hill to climb," a reminder that Washington did not pass the existing UN Kyoto Protocol, Stern argued that much can still be achieved even when agreements are not legally-binding.

He cited commercial international relations from post-World War II through to the 1995 formation of the World Trade Organization, insisting the WTO's predecessor "GATT wasn't legally-binding."

The key issue for participants ahead of Durban is how to bring timid agreements reached in Cancun, Mexico last December "to life," Stern said, especially getting a 'green fund' for investing in renewable energies "from paper to money flowing."

The UN climate process almost collapsed in a more ambitious effort 12 months earlier in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Stern stressed that it was too early to tell if a retreat from nuclear energy following the post-quake accident in Japan would make states less likely to commit to ambitious emissions-reduction demands.

He hinted, though, that shipping and aviation, major sectoral polluters along with farming on a global scale, were likely to be given more time to negotiate their own deals.

The International Maritime Organisation and the International Civil Aviation Organisation "are the right venues" for tackling the reliance on so-called bunker fuels, he said, although nations would seek to integrate these industries in the "relatively near term."

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Best of our wild blogs: 28 Apr 11

4 May (Wed): Talk on the Singapore Wild Marine Mammal Survey (SWiMMS) from wild shores of singapore

Should we ban or allow kayaking in mangroves?
from kayaking asia

Orgy on our reefs: Coral spawning 2011
from wild shores of singapore

marvellous katydid @ Sg Buloh 23Apr2011
from sgbeachbum

Lineated Barbet feeding chick
from Bird Ecology Study Group

The Tiny Boxer Mantis
from Macro Photography in Singapore

Butterfly Portraits - Fluffy Tit
from Butterflies of Singapore

Checking out the water quality at Singapore's iconic (but mostly forgotten) landmark: Chinese Garden from Water Quality in Singapore

A Decade of Biodiversity Conservation and Discoveries in Singapore from Raffles Museum News

Visiting Chek Jawa with 2 of my school friends on 23 Apr 2011
from Soaring c-eagle

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Eagles nest on executive condo site

Developer CDL will do biodiversity study on land before starting construction
Grace Chua Straits Times 28 Apr 11;

The white-bellied sea eagles were spotted last week by Choa Chu Kang resident Boris Chan and his family, after which he posted some photographs of them taken by his 10-year-old son on Facebook. It is not a rare species, says the Nature Society. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF BORIS CHAN

A PAIR of eagles have built a nest in a tree in Choa Chu Kang Drive, on a site slated for building an executive condominium.

Pictures of the breeding pair of white-bellied sea eagles, posted on Facebook, have raised a flutter on citizen journalism website Stomp, with a number of netizens asking what will become of the eagles when the piling starts.

The birds were spotted last week by Choa Chu Kang resident Boris Chan, 47, and his family, after which the software engineer posted some photographs of them taken by his 10-year-old son on social networking site Facebook.

The 189,335 sq ft patch of land, which is mostly grass, between the Al-Khair Mosque and the upcoming Mi Casa condominium project, was awarded to property developer City Developments Limited (CDL) last month.

Legal transfer of the plot is still in progress, a CDL spokesman said, so the land is at the moment still owned by the Housing Board.

As to the question of what - if anything - can be done about the birds, Dr Wee Yeow Chin, who coordinates the bird ecology study group for the Nature Society here, said that as it is a common species, it would depend on how passionate one is about birds.

'The loss of one nest is no big deal, because a high percentage of nests fail naturally, as a result of the work of predators, for example,' he said.

He added that passionate bird-watchers would obviously ask for the housing development to be delayed until the chicks fledge and leave the nest, which would take about four months.

'But this is not a rare species,' he said.

The Nature Society, a non-profit group dedicated to the appreciation, conservation, study and enjoyment of the natural heritage here and in the surrounding region, said the white-bellied sea eagle tends to return to the same nest year after year during breeding seasons.

Online resources say the eagle, which appears on Singapore's $10,000 bill, stands at about 1m tall and is one of the largest raptors in South-east Asian skies.

On its part, CDL said it usually engages independent consultants to conduct biodiversity studies of building sites rich in plant and animal life, so it can be mindful of the species that may need conservation or relocation ahead of its development projects, said its spokesman.

For example, it did so for the upcoming Tree House condominium project in Chestnut Drive, which sits between the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Zhenghua Park; it will do the same for the Choa Chu Kang Drive land parcel.

The property developer said via e-mail: 'In consultation with relevant experts and animal conservation groups, we will explore the best alternative for the nesting eagles on the site.'

Mr Chan said: 'We've seen the eagles for many years in the sky. We just didn't know where the nest was.

'I just hope something can be done to protect them.'

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Sharing Nature’s Wealth Can Help End Poverty: Expert

Fidelis E. Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 27 Apr 11;

Better management of natural resources could be the key to poverty alleviation, but will require government support to develop, experts and officials said on Wednesday.

Pavan Sukhdev, former special adviser and head of the United Nations Green Economy Initiative, said the current poverty alleviation paradigm was not hitting its target.

“Most developing countries are actually thinking in terms of improving the lives of the poor, but all they’re doing is improving the lives of the rich,” he said at Business for the Environment (B4E) summit in Jakarta.

“So they’re improving opportunities for making profit. And most developing countries’ governments think that by improving the lives of the rich, somehow a trickle-down [effect] will happen. But I can tell you in my country of India, I don’t see any trickle-down, so I wonder why governments in Asia still believe in trickle-down and still make it easy for the rich.”

Sukhdev said one of the real keys to poverty alleviation was to ensure that the poor benefited just as much as the rich from a country’s natural resources.

“We should make sure that what the poor get from the nature, which is free, doesn’t stop, which means they’re able to have access to the forests or to harvest timber or to get fuel for their cooking or to get the benefits of water and soil from the forests,” he said.

“These benefits should not stop even if they’re free and even if they add to GDP, because these parts of nature are part of the daily sustenance of the poor.”

Managing these resources better would also help create much-needed jobs, Sukhdev said.

“That’s why I think the green economy will be good for poverty [alleviation] and should be tried here,” he said.

“The whole idea is to improve the lives of the poor, not to improve the profits of the rich.”

He also said the government needed to be more involved in the stewardship of natural resources, rather than delegate the task to the private sector.

“Private companies will only invest in making a profit, that’s their job,” Sukhdev said.

“We’re talking about public benefits that are the wealth of the nation. These are not privately owned things. You don’t own the air or the ocean.”

Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta, speaking at the same event, agreed that better management of natural resources, or the green economy, was necessary for the full attainment of sustainable development.

“The green economy should be managed in the context of development that is pro-poor, pro-jobs, pro-growth and pro-environment,” he said.

“Hence the green economy needs to be translated as an inclusive policy that aims for resource efficiency, poverty eradication, job creation and ensured sustainable economic growth.

“In this regard, Indonesia has adopted the green economy concept into its long-term national development plan for 2005-2025, which includes the goal of a ‘green and everlasting Indonesia.’ ”

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WWF warns of massive forest loss

UPI 27 Apr 11;

JAKARTA, April 27 (UPI) -- More than 568 million acres of forest worldwide will disappear by 2050 if no action is taken, a new WWF report warns.

The report calls on governments and businesses to unite around a goal of zero net deforestation and forest degradation, or ZNDD, by 2020 as a global benchmark to avoid dangerous climate change and reduce biodiversity losses.

"We are squandering forests now by failing to sort out vital policy issues such as governance and economic incentives to keep forests standing," said Rod Taylor, WWF International Forests director, in a statement.

The two goals of ZNDD and meeting global demand for materials and energy pose both challenges and business opportunities for the forest products sector, the "Living Forests" report notes.

"Forest products are renewable and, when sourced from well-managed natural forests and plantations, tend to have a lower footprint than alternatives like steel, concrete and plastic based on fossil sources," it states.

The loss of natural or semi-natural forest now stands at 32 million acres a year, WWF says.

Maintaining near zero forest loss in the longer term will require responses to rising pressures on forests due to demand for food, materials and fuel for a growing population, which WWF says is expected to hit 9 billion people by 2050.

WWF released a portion of the report Wednesday to coincide with the opening of the Business 4 Environment Global Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia.

"The need for a careful balance between development and environmental stewardship is increasingly obvious, as is the need to involve the private sector in attaining that balance," said Suryo Sulisto, chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, speaking on the sidelines of the summit.

Indonesia, for its part, aims to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020 but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that with international climate aid, emissions could be reduced by 42 percent.

Resource-rich Indonesia is one of the world's largest suppliers of coal, palm oil and timber. It boasts the world's third-largest tropical forest but has the second-highest deforestation rate in the world after Brazil.

Continued deforestation and rising carbon emissions plague the country as it struggles to balance environmental preservation with economic growth that topped 6 percent last year.

Indonesia ranks as the fifth largest carbon emitter in the world, with deforestation and forest degradation accounting for more than 80 percent of its emissions.

World to lose forest area 27 times as big as Austria
Yahoo News 27 Apr 11;

VIENNA (AFP) – The world stands to lose 230 million hectares of forest by 2050 with drastic consequences for the climate, biodiversity and the global economy, the WWF wildlife campaign group said on Wednesday.

"Those responsible -- policy-makers and industry -- are sawing away at the branch we're all sitting on," WWF's head of forests, Philipp Goeltenboth, said in a statement, noting that the area projected to be lost is 27 times the size of Austria.

The current rate of deforestation is 35 football fields per minute worldwide, according to the organisation.

Its new WWF Living Forests report advocates a "Zero Net Deforestation and Forest Degradation (ZNDD)" by 2020.

ZNDD is defined as "no net forest loss through deforestation and no net decline in forest quality through degradation," WWF said.

Nevertheless, that does not mean WWF was in favour of no forest clearing anywhere, under any circumstances.

ZNDD recognised, for example, peoples' right to clear some forests for agriculture, or the value in occasionally "trading off" degraded forests "to free up other land to restore important biological corridors, provided that biodiversity values and net quantity and quality of forests are maintained."

"Achieving ZNDD will stem the depletion of forest-­based biodiversity and ecosystem services, and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions," it said.

Governments, business must unite in joint action to stop forest loss
WWF 27 Apr 11;

Policymakers and business leaders must quickly back a bold target to stop forest loss as part of efforts to conserve biodiversity and fight climate change, according to a new WWF report.

The first chapter of WWF’s Living Forests Report, released today, examines the drivers of deforestation and identifies the opportunities to shift from business as usual to a new model of sustainability, which can benefit government, business and communities.

Based on a new global analysis showing that more than 230 million hectares of forest will disappear by 2050 if no action is taken, the report proposes that policymakers and businesses unite around a goal of zero net deforestation and forest degradation (ZNDD) by 2020 as a groundbreaking global benchmark to avoid dangerous climate change and curb biodiversity loss.

“We are squandering forests now by failing to sort out vital policy issues such as governance and economic incentives to keep forests standing,” said Rod Taylor, WWF International Forests Director.

Business and governments need forests

The first chapter of the report comes as business and political leaders meet this week in Jakarta, Indonesia, for the Business 4 Environment Global Summit (B4E). The conference will be addressed by His Excellency Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of the Republic of Indonesia.

“The dual imperatives of ZNDD and meeting global demand for materials and energy pose both challenges and business opportunities for the forest products sector,” the report states. “Forest products are renewable and, when sourced from well-managed natural forests and plantations, tend to have a lower footprint than alternatives like steel, concrete and plastic based on fossil sources.”

On the first day of the conference, businesses from the forestry, mining and palm oil sectors operating on the nearby island of Borneo will meet as part of WWF’s Heart of Borneo Green Business Network.

At the summit, WWF will call on forestry companies to join the organization’s Global Forest & Trade Network, and also on other business sectors to support our goal in achieving certification of 75% of key global commodities in the region by 2020. More than 40% of the island’s forests are under concession to the private sector, with around 23% (6 million hectares) under management by the forestry industry.

Carrefour, a leading retailer in Indonesia is answering this call by endorsing WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN). Today, the group’s two biggest suppliers for tissue paper in Indonesia, PT Graha Kerindo Utama and PT Graha Cemerlang Paper Utama are pledging to implement sustainable business under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

"Our ambition is both simple and strong: to become the preferred retailer. This can only be achieved by managing our retail business in a responsible and sustainable manner," said RM Adji Srihandoyo, the Corporate Affair Director PT CARREFOUR

Heart of Borneo – a model for collaboration

More businesses than ever before are working toward sustainable forest management, and governments are strengthening land use criteria and developing groundbreaking economic and fiscal incentives on the island, one of the most forest-rich places on the planet.

On the ground, WWF and its local partners are developing pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility of these approaches.

“In the Heart of Borneo, tangible examples of how these systems work are emerging. WWF-Indonesia acknowledges that sustainability does not occur overnight. We call on the business sector to join with us as we make the first steps on the road to a green economy and low carbon future, not just in Borneo, but in Sumatra and Papua as well – step by step,” said Dr. Efransjah, WWF-Indonesia CEO.

Right now on the island of Borneo in a 220,000km2 area designated for conservation and sustainable development called the Heart of Borneo, these are the ideas being put into practice.

ZNDD no barrier to sustainable forest-based business

Zero net deforestation and forest degradation by 2020 means no overall loss of forest area or forest quality, so a new monoculture plantation does not offset the loss of primary natural forest. The target requires the loss of natural or semi-natural forest to be reduced to near zero, down from the current 13 million hectares a year, and held at that level indefinitely.

To understand what this would mean in practice, WWF developed the Living Forests Model with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which forms the basis for the Living Forests Report.

The Living Forests Model projects that by “doing nothing” we could lose more than 230 million hectares between now and 2050.

“The Living Forests Model shows that conserving our forests is possible – and urgent. But it won’t be easy,” said Taylor.

Making a difference now and towards 2050

“Better governance and economic incentives will enable sound stewardship of forests and more productive use of already- degraded land,” Taylor said. “This would ensure enough farming land, timber plantations and well-managed forests to meet current global demand for wood and food without further forest loss.”

The report concludes that maintaining near zero forest loss in the longer term will require responses to rising pressures on forests due to demand for food, materials and fuel for a growing population, expected to hit 9 billion people by 2050.

“In the short term, halting deforestation is all about better governance,” said Taylor, “But as we get out towards 2050 and the population passes 9 billion, we will need to cut over-consumption and waste of food and energy, and boost productivity of farms and forestry to keep forest loss at near zero.”

More to come

Held in partnership with WWF, Global Initiatives and the Government of Indonesia, the B4E Summit hopes “to generate collaborative solutions to address the most urgent environmental and climate issues facing the world today.”

Additional chapters of the Living Forest Report will be released throughout the year to form a comprehensive analysis of the choices and decisions that must be made to secure a forested future for people and nature.

WWF Seeking Ambitious Curbs on Deforestation
Fidelis E. Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 28 Apr 11;

The World Wildlife Fund unveiled on Tuesday its plan for halting deforestation rates worldwide and maintaining forest cover.

The group’s goal of Zero Net Deforestation and Forest Degradation by 2020 would require the loss of natural or secondary forest to be trimmed to near zero, down from the current 13 million hectares a year worldwide, and held at that level indefinitely.

Rod Taylor, the WWF international forest director, said the Living Forests Model, developed by WWF and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, was aimed at finding ways to attain that goal.

“The Living Forests Model projects that by ‘doing nothing,’ we could lose more than 230 million hectares between now and 2050,” he said at the launch of the ZNDD on Tuesday.

“The Living Forests Model shows that conserving our forests is possible — and urgent. But it won’t be easy.”

Taylor said that better governance and economic incentives would enable sound stewardship of forests and more productive use of already degraded land.

“This would ensure enough farming land, timber plantations and well-managed forests to meet current global demand for wood and food without further forest loss,” he said.

“In the short term, halting deforestation is all about better governance. But as we get out toward 2050 and the population passes nine billion, we will need to cut overconsumption and waste of food and energy, and boost productivity of farms and forestry to keep forest loss at near zero.”

WWF says the Living Forests Model explores various global land-use scenarios for forests. It also calculates the effect of forces such as population growth and consumer demand, and describes possible consequences on key issues such as food production, climate change, biodiversity, commodity prices and economic development.

Nazir Foead, policy director at WWF Indonesia, said the Forestry Ministry had implemented a similar model with its “land swap” program, where a development project that required the clearing or exploitation of forests would have to make up for the loss by providing a replacement forest area.

However, the program treats monoculture estates, such as oil palm plantations, as forest area. Under the ZNDD, Nazir said, this would not happen because forest quality was just as important as forest area.

He also said the ZNDD would allow for development in areas with low ecological, conservation or cultural value, rather than in primary forests or peatlands.

“Under the ZNDD, total forest area doesn’t decline because there’s always a replacement,” Nazir said. 

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Four Sumatran elephants found dead in Bengkulu

Antara 27 Apr 11;

Bengkulu (ANTARA News) - Four Sumatran elephants (elephas maximus Sumatrae) have been found dead within one month in an oil palm plantation area of PT Alno in Putri Hijau, North Bengkulu district, an environmental activist said.

"We obtained the information from a ProFauna activist who stayed around the Sablat Elephant Training Center. Based on the information, the four elephants were found dead in the Alno plantation area," Representative of ProFauna Bengkulu Radius Nursidi said here on Wednesday.

He said that the four elephants were believed to have died of poison, but the result of the autopsy had not yet been officially published.

Radius said that human-elephant conflict which caused the death of the animal almost occurred every year.

He said that in the period of 2004-2011, there were 14 elephants who were found dead but the causes of their death were not known.(*)
(A014/HAJM/A014)

Editor: Ruslan Burhani

Bengkulu`s BKSDA urged to probe four Sumatran elephant deaths
Antara 28 Apr 11;

Bengkulu (ANTARA News) - ProFauna, an animal protection charity in Indonesia, has urged Bengkulu`s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) to investigate the death of four Sumatran elephants at an oil palm plantation owned by PT Alno in North Bengkulu.

"The BKSDA and police must investigate this case because elephant deaths happen almost every year but the perpetrators are never punished," Bengkulu ProFauna spokesman Radius Nursidi said here Thursday.

He said four Sumateran elephants were found dead at an oil palm plantation in the past month. Although the results of an official autopsy were not yet known, it was strongly believed the animals were poisoned to death.

The fact that elephant deaths by unnatural causes occurred almost every year indicated that the government was not seriously handling wildlife conservation, he said.

According to data collected by ProFauna, seven elephants were found dead in the same region in the period 2004-2007. In 2009 there were two such cases and in 2010 one.

Overall, a total of 14 elephants had died by unnatural causes within seven years from 2004 to 2011.

"Ironically, none of the cases was processed legally. This is something that needs to be explained by the BKSDA and police," he said.

PoroFauna also urged BKSDA to close the road used by PT Alno Agro Utama to transport oil palm fruits because this road was possibly used by elephant hunters to enter the animals` habitat.
(Uu.KR-FNY/HAJM/A014)

Editor: Priyambodo RH

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Recent Deadly Storms Fueled By Lingering La Niña

Brett Israel LiveScience.com Yahoo News 28 Apr 11;

For the second day in a row, deadly storms hammered Arkansas and the rest of the South. A lingering La Niña pattern may be behind the steady march of storms across the region in recent days.

Monday's storms killed 10 people in Arkansas and another round of storms on Tuesday killed another person. The bad weather spilled into the rest of Dixie Alley and four people were killed in Mississippi over the past two days. The latest round of intense storms are unloading today (April 27) on Arkansas as the storm system slowly marches eastward, during what is a potentially record-breaking month for tornadoes.

"Fortunately, it does look like the last round for a couple of days," said Chris Buonanno, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Little Rock, Ark.

Across the country, this spring's severe weather seems to be rapidly reloading between storms. That could be due to a La Niña pattern that has persisted over the last few months, said Grady Dixon, a climatologist and meteorologist at Mississippi State University in Starkville. This opposite phase of El Niño features abnormally cool equatorial waters in the central Pacific Ocean.

Along with creating dry weather in the Southwest and contributing to the historic wildfires in Texas, La Niña tends to guide the jet stream north through the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes, trapping cold air on the northern side and the warm, humid air needed for thunderstorms on the southern side.

That means that the South stays wet because cold fronts that would normally dry out the atmosphere are blocked, Dixon said. So the hits keep coming, one after the other as the storm slowly moves east.

In Arkansas, a cold frontal boundary should sweep through today (April 27), drying out the atmosphere and stopping the storms for a time, Buonanno told OurAmazingPlanet.

Not all La Niña events are associated with highly active severe weather seasons, Dixon said, but some years with similar La Niña characteristics are also historic tornado years, including 1974, 1999 ? which saw an EF-5 tornado devastate Moore, Okla. ? and 2008. (The EF5 tornado is in the strongest category of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds of over 200 mph.)

When all the damage is analyzed, April 2011 could set a record for the number of tornadoes in the month. April has also had a spike in killer tornadoes. The tornado season is only two months old, but the death toll from this year's tornadoes — 45 as of April 25 — has already matched the death toll from all of last year, but is well below that of other historic tornado years.

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