Indonesia: Endangered Sumatran Tigers Face New Threat Online

Ismira Lutfia Jakarta Globe 31 Jul 12;

Activists from HarimauKita, a Sumatran tiger conservation forum, have sounded the alarm about the illegal trade in tiger parts now being conducted online, including through social media sites.

Hariyo T. Wibisono, head of monitoring at HarimauKita, said on Sunday that it was important for people to be aware of the illegal trade and to fight it.

“Our focus is to make people aware of how widespread the trade in tiger parts has become online,” he said at a campaign event at National Monument (Monas) Park in Central Jakarta.

“We want them to report to us if they find any indications of it on social networking sites or Internet forums.”

Hariyo said HarimauKita would then forward the reports to the Forestry Ministry, whose jobs he said it was to coordinate with law enforcement agencies in tracking down the traders.

“Our function as a civil society organization is just to monitor the illegal wildlife trade over the Internet,” he added.

HarimauKita’s campaign at Monas was held to mark Global Tiger Day, first celebrated on July 29, 2010.

H.A. Wahyudi, the group’s executive director, said the day was an opportunity to increase public interest and participation in the task of conserving wild tiger populations worldwide.

He said the threat against tigers was particularly high because of online trading, which allowed traders to interact with a wide range of buyers without having to meet them in person.

“We need to narrow down the space in which these people can operate, and for that we need greater public participation to fight the illegal trade in Sumatran tiger parts through the Internet,” he said.

He added that hundreds of HarimauKita volunteers, grouped under the TigerHeart Network, had compiled a list of hundreds of websites dealing in tiger parts since 2010.

“We’ve also identified several sites that have frequently been used as portals to buy and sell tiger parts,” Wahyudi said. “In fact, some perpetrators have even been arrested.”

He said it was also important for the government to participate in the campaign by shutting down sites dealing in the illegal trade.

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Indonesia seizes 85 endangered pangolins

AFP Yahoo News 31 Jul 12;

Indonesian police have intercepted 85 endangered pangolins, most of them alive despite being stuffed into sacks by suspected smugglers, an official said Tuesday.

The animals, also known as scaly anteaters and prized mostly in China and Vietnam as food and medicine, were packed in 14 sacks when they were seized at a bus station in the city of Medan in North Sumatra province on Saturday, said Yoris Marzuki, chief detective of the local police.

"About 80 percent were still alive. We suspect that they were being smuggled abroad via Malaysia to Hong Kong or mainland China," he told AFP.

He said police had acted on a tip-off but that no arrests had been made.

"We are still investigating the case," he said, adding that police were working with the natural resources conservation agency to release the animals back to the wild.

The pangolin, which eats termites and ants, is protected under the UN's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and trading in it and its products is illegal.

Conservation groups say smuggling of the animal is rampant and they are frequently poached from the wild, mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia, exacerbating the threat of extinction from rapid deforestation.

They are transported through southeast Asia, mostly ending up in China and Vietnam, where pangolin flesh is a delicacy and its scales -- the only mammal known to have them -- are ground into a powder for supposed medicinal purposes.

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Hong Kong to return over 100 rare reptiles to Philippines

AFP Yahoo News 1 Aug 12;

Scores of endangered reptiles including turtles and a python that were smuggled into Hong Kong will be returned to their native Philippines on Wednesday, officials said.

A 22-year-old man is serving a six-week prison sentence for smuggling the 105 reptiles into the city packed in plastic containers inside his checked-in luggage on June 14, the officials said.

The 39 Philippine pond turtles, 46 Southeast Asian box turtles, 19 Mindanao water monitor lizards and one reticulated python required specialist care before they could be shipped home.

"It was difficult for them to breathe," Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden head of fauna conservation Gary Ades said.

"Many of the animals when they arrived were underweight and dehydrated and so they required treatment," Ades said, adding most of them had recovered.

Trade in the reptiles is restricted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), although it is legal to keep them as pets in Hong Kong.

"By returning these reptiles to their native range, we can sustain populations in the wild," Kadoorie Farm conservation officer Paul Crow said.

Hong Kong endangered species protection officer Alfred Wong said the reptiles most likely would have entered the pet market.

Customs officials arrested the same man in February for smuggling 36 live turtles from the Philippines into Hong Kong. He was fined HK$8,000 ($1,000) for that offence.

Trafficking in pond turtles is punishable by a six-year prison term and a million-peso ($23,000) fine in the Philippines, but authorities say they lack resources to properly enforce the law.

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World's Northernmost Coral Reef Discovered in Japan

Crystal Gammon LiveScience.com Yahoo News 31 Jul 12;

When you think of coral reefs, you probably picture scuba divers gliding through warm, crystal-clear waters. And for the most part, you'd be right: more than 90 percent of the world's coral reefs are located in the tropics.

Now researchers in Japan have found what is — so far — the world's northernmost coral reef. Located off the coast of Tsushima Island at 34 degrees north latitude, the newly discovered reef is far different from other coral reefs and is 217 miles (350 kilometers) north of most others in the region.

"Coral reefs have been believed to develop under warm-water settings — at least 18 degrees Celsius [64 degrees Fahrenheit] in winter. This setting is 13 degrees Celsius in winter [55 degrees Fahrenheit], which is unbelievably low," Hiroya Yamano, a researcher at Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies, told OurAmazingPlanet. "The species, and thus seascape, is completely different from normal reefs."

Unfriendly waters

A team led by Yamano found a similar reef off the coast of Japan's Iki Island in 2001, and until now, that reef was the planet's northernmost. The newfound Tsushima Island reef is 43 miles (70 km) north of the Iki Island reef. [Images: Dazzling World of Coral, Unveiled]

Yamano's team tracked down this reef after poring over old manuscripts and interviewing local residents. Their sleuthing paid off, and they eventually found the 4,300-year old reef in one of Tsushima's murky inner bays.

"The water in this bay is basically turbid" — cloudy with lots of suspended particles — "and water temperatures are low, especially in winter," Yamano said.

Both of those qualities make life difficult for most corals. But this reef is composed of a genus of corals called Favia, a massive brown coral type. Most reefs are made up of corals from the genus Acropora, which can be a variety of colors and grow in branching or platelike polyps. Favia species tend to tolerate cold, turbid waters better than Acropora do, Yamano said.

So why did this reef start building itself in such an unfriendly environment? The team isn't sure, but Yamano thinks the Tsushima Warm Current, a stream of warm water flowing along the northwestern coast of Japan, probably helped transport coral larvae northward into the turbid inner bays of Iki and Tsushima islands. Yamano thinks there may be many more undiscovered reefs in similar settings throughout the region.

Changing species, changing climate?

Reefs like this one might help researchers measure ecosystem changes in warming oceans.

Although the Tsushima and Iki reefs both formed in very cold waters and predominantly house Favia coral species, Acropora corals have begun settling near the reefs over the last 20 years. Comparing coral species in older parts of the reef to newly arrived corals might help scientists determine how climate change and warming waters are affecting these reef ecosystems, Yamano said.

His team's findings were published online July 12 in the journal Geology.

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Lost habitat not easily replaced

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions
Science Alert 1 Aug 12;

With up to a billion hectares of wilderness likely to be cleared to feed the world in the coming half century and an area the size of China devoured by cities, leading environmental scientists are urging caution over the extent to which lost ecosystems can be replaced or restored.

In a major scientific article, a team including Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) has advised governments worldwide to think twice before assuming an environment lost to development can easily be replaced elsewhere.

“There’s been a lot of talk among policymakers about ‘offsets’, meaning that if you damage or lose the environment in one place you compensate by restoring or protecting an equivalent area somewhere else,” explains Professor Richard Hobbs of CEED and The University of Western Australia.

Currently there are more than 64 such programs under way around the world and policy support for the solution is gathering steam, “But the science to date suggests it is very hard to replace a lost environment in another locality so there is no net loss of species,” he adds.

Also “When habitat is re-created on a highly degraded site through revegetation, the revegetated site rarely resembles the target ecosystem,” the paper states.

“Current conservation policies talk glibly about offsets and seem to promise much – but it isn’t clear they really appreciate how difficult and expensive it can be to translocate a whole ecosystem with all its species and their relationships. Or even to restore one that has been damaged to full vitality. You can’t simply go and plonk species somewhere else and feel you have conserved them,” says Prof. Hobbs.

Lead author Dr Martine Maron from The University of Queensland says “In some cases, we are trying to use offsets to replace centuries-old trees. For some species, the long wait before newly-planted trees can provide food or nesting hollows for fauna means that offsetting is a very high-risk strategy.”

Professor Hobbs says the purpose of the article was to inject a bit of realism into the current conservation policy debate about how much was genuinely achievable with ‘offsets’.

Prof. Hobbs says there are outstanding examples where environments have been very well protected or restored, instancing Perth’s famous King’s Park native bushland, and the jarrah forest restoration work of aluminium producer Alcoa on WA’s Darling Escarpment. “But these kinds of restoration are very expensive and, even then, it isn’t always clear that you have fully restored everything.”

At a less costly level, promising work has been undertaken to restore native vegetation in the Gondwanalink project across WA’s Great Southern region, by reconnecting islands of bush, use of carbon offsets and sandalwood plantations to regenerate land once cleared for agriculture. “This is a much lower budget project, and appears to be working well in the woodland areas – it is the heathlands, with their remarkable biodiversity, that are the real challenge,” he says

The team’s work brings together the issues of how you measure biodiversity, how long it takes to re-establish and the risks of not achieving the goal.

“Confidence in the ability of restoration to deliver genuine biodiversity offsets is undermined by the problems of defining and measuring the biodiversity values that are lost and gained, considerable uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of restoration techniques, and long time-lags,” the scientists say.

“The rapidly-increasing reach of biodiversity offsetting into many areas of environmental policy— including threatened species protection, environmental impact assessment and protected area investment—makes closer collaboration between policy makers and restoration scientists and practitioners an urgent priority.”

The paper ‘Faustian bargains? Restoration realities in the context of biodiversity offset policies’ by Martine Maron, Richard J. Hobbs, Atte Moilanen, Jeffrey W. Matthews, Kimberly Christie, Toby A. Gardner, David A. Keith, David B. Lindenmayer and Clive A. McAlpine appears in Biological Conservation 155 2012 (Elsevier).

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Century of Drought May Be Ahead

Jesse Emspak iveScience.com Yahoo News 31 Jul 12;

Western forests could be facing a 100-year drought, turning to scrubland by the end of the century – and taking their ability to soak up carbon with them, according to a new study.

The new research, published in Nature Geoscience July 29, suggests the western evergreen forests, which cover an area from southern Canada to northern Mexico, took up a lot less carbon from the atmosphere during the drought that lasted from 2000-2004. That's normal, and expected. The question is what happens after that.

Christopher Schwalm and his colleagues at Northern Arizona University's School of Earth Science and Environmental Sustainability think that there is a good chance the drought could be the new normal. If that happens, a big carbon sink will be lost.

Drought of 2000

The group calculated that during the drought of 2000-2004, the amount of carbon the western forests took up dropped by between 30 million and 298 million metric tons per year. Ordinarily they would take up between 177 million and 623 million metric tons. By comparison, a 2011 study from the U.S. Forest Service estimated the global sink from forests is between 2 billion and 2.8 billion metric tons per year. [Images Reveal Forests' True Colors]

There's a lot of uncertainty in those measurements, but even assuming the smallest loss and the highest carbon uptake — which is unlikely — it still means a non-trivial dent in the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

A lengthy drought will cause a big dieback of the evergreen forests that are familiar to hikers and skiers, bringing in vegetation that will likely more resemble a desert scrubland. Those kinds of plants take up carbon, but not as well as forests do.

Climate change is the likely culprit for such a long drought, or "megadrought" that lasts decades, say the researchers. As the climate warms, many areas that were dry become drier, and some that were wet become wetter. Not only have the last three decades contained some of the hottest years on record, the amount of rainfall in western North America might drop – a lot.

The result is that where mountainous forests previously recovered from long drought events — such as the one in the 12th century that may have resulted in the abandonment of the ancient towns of the southwest — that might not happen again in the future. Or at least, not on a time scale that's helpful to humans. [The Worst Droughts in US History]

If people don't cut back emissions or mitigate the die-off somehow, the result will probably be an increase in the rate of carbon-dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere, leading to greater warming, Schwalm told LiveScience.

Schwalm and his team used several sources of data to get their estimates, such as Fluxnet, a network of sensors run by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What's to come

The idea was to gather all of the best estimates for the carbon flux — the rate at which carbon enters and leaves the atmosphere — in the region in question. For example, the Department of Agriculture measures crop yields, and knowing that gives a good estimate of how much carbon (in the form of food) was sequestered by agricultural land. In the forests, the Fluxnet sensor towers measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in a forest, which can then be compared with other locations.

The study also looked at the severe the turn-of-the-century drought using the "Palmer Drought Severity Index," which measures precipitation, runoff and other factors. Taking a five-year average, and using indicators such as tree-ring data, Schwalm found that this most recent drought of 2000-2004 was as bad as any since about the year 1200.

That doesn't bode well; there is a real possibility given current trends that this drought could be one of those that lasts decades, or even a century, he said.

Even that wouldn't be so bad for the forest, but he noted that it's important that the kind of forests that exist change after each of these drought cycles. The evergreen species we see now in the four corners region are probably different from those that were there 1,500 years ago.

There are several mitigation strategies, such as "industrial forestry" – using specially bred trees, for instance, to re-forest the areas where diebacks occur. And there will be some adaptation on the part of the plants. But there are limits in terms of how "plastic" or amenable to changing these plants will be. "A lot of species are a lot more plastic than we give them credit for," Schwalm said. "But at a certain point the plasticity fails."

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Best of our wild blogs: 31 Jul 12

Mantlepieces
from The annotated budak

KTPH - 3 more dragonfly species recorded
from Everyday Nature

Fledgling Olive-backed Sunbird and Noni flowers
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Clean Coast Index Report 2011 - Part 4
from MNS Marine Group, Selangor Branch

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Singapore still has undiscovered marine species, says scientist

Grace Chua Straits Times 31 Jul 12;

SINGAPORE'S biodiversity has been studied only piecemeal till now, and there are still new species to be discovered, said visiting Australian scientist Peter Davie.

Mr Davie, of the public Queensland Museum, has been visiting the Republic for 25 years, first stopping over in 1987.

Here, he is helping local scientists with crustacean research, identifying and comparing crabs from around the region to determine if they are separate species or the same, which has implications for harvesting commercial crabs, for instance.

He was in town last week to give a talk on the challenges and delights of studying marine biodiversity in Australia.

Marine life here had been studied a bit at a time till Singapore started its comprehensive marine biodiversity survey in 2010, said the 57-year-old senior curator. A comprehensive survey establishes a baseline of what is out there, and can sometimes unearth new species, he said.

That Singapore is even doing such a survey is a "drastic change" from a quarter-century ago.

"When I first came here, there was a lot of interest in exploring the science but not much interest in trying to conserve," Mr Davie said. "There was a feeling that Singapore was a small island that had already been exploited and there was not much left to protect... That was the attitude back then."

Today, there is more appreciation for nature, and a stronger conservation ethic and push to create marine parks and terrestrial protection areas, he said. And species thought extinct here have been rediscovered in the past few years, such as the Neptune's Cup, a giant cup-like sponge found off Singapore's southern coast.

The museum veteran of 34 years grew up in Brisbane, snorkelling around coastal estuaries looking at fish. He got his start as a tree-hugger trying to save local mangroves with the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

He said: "We went to the museum and said, 'hey, we've found all these (mangrove) crabs - what are they?' And I ended up getting a job there." He was just 23.

The museum is an apolitical outfit, not a conservation group. It provides information to industry and government to help manage and conserve the environment. It has not shied away from thorny issues, though.

Because Australia requires new developments to do public environmental impact studies, scientists doing one such study on mining giant Rio Tinto's A$900 million (S$1.17 billion) new mine found a previously unknown freshwater crab, which Mr Davie confirmed was likely to be a new species.

But conservation need not curb economic growth, he said. Now, the firm has pledged to safeguard the creek where the new crab was found.

"It might not be a huge impact on the company's bottom line if it has to divert from a small area," Mr Davie pointed out. But firms need to know what the environmental issues are to be able to address them.

In fact, protecting the environment can have economic benefits: The Great Barrier Reef is worth A$2billion in Queensland tourism every year.

In Australia, taxonomists, who help identify and classify species, are starting to help prevent invasive species like zebra mussels from spreading, and catch smugglers of endangered South-east Asian fish species.

These are avenues that such research can take in Singapore, Mr Davie suggested. And there is room for Singapore to conserve its natural environment to set an example in the region, he added.

"It's a great thing for Singapore to say, we are valuing the natural environment. And also, you're a country that can actually afford the luxury of spending a bit on your environment," he said.

"In the end, if we don't look after our habitats and our environment, we as a species aren't going to be sustainable ourselves."

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Water is an issue of life & death for Singapore: PUB chief

S Ramesh Channel NewsAsia 30 Jul 12;

SINGAPORE: Singapore's second water agreement with Malaysia expires in 2061 but the Republic will be able to meet its water requirements independently ahead of this expiry date of the agreement "if need be", said Chew Men Leong, the chief executive of the national water agency PUB.

He made the point in a recent interview with wire agency Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for PUB also stressed that Singapore will be abiding by the 2061 agreement till it expires.

The first water agreement with Malaysia expired on 31 August 2011.

Mr Chew added that Singapore spent S$600 million to S$800 million a year since 2006 on water infrastructure to boost its supply.

And he said the Republic has made progress to the point that it is now much more confident in terms of water security and sustainability.

Mr Chew however added that his main worry is climate change and how that lowers water levels at reservoirs.

Changing weather patterns also led to heavy rainfalls and flash floods that added stress to Singapore's drainage systems, where parts of the Orchard Road shopping belt were affected over the past two years.

PUB is also working on reducing water consumption, Mr Chew said, through measures ranging from mandatory dual-flushing systems for toilets and automatic faucets in all public restrooms.

All this, because water is an issue of "life and death here" and that's always been the message, the PUB chief emphasised.

- CNA/ck

Singapore to meet water target before deadline
Today Online 30 Jul 12;

SINGAPORE - Singapore will be able to meet its water requirements independently ahead of the 2061 expiration of a century-long supply agreement with Malaysia "if need be", the head of the city-state's water utility said.

Desalination and recycling plants produce 40 per cent of the 380 million British gallons of water companies in Singapore and its 5.2 million population use daily, Mr Chew Men Leong, chief executive of PUB, said in an interview on July 27. A downtown dam adds a further 10 per cent, with the remaining coming from its reservoirs and imports from Malaysia.

"We have made progress to the point that we are now much more confident in terms of water security and sustainability," said Mr Chew, 44, a former naval chief who joined the utility about a year ago. "If you're asking me this question about when will we ever get self-sufficiency, I will put it this way that we can be self-sufficient if need be."

Singapore, which relied on Malaysia for its water needs, spent S$600 million to S$800 million a year since 2006 on new technologies to boost its supply. The push to develop the industry has drawn businesses including General Electric and Siemens to invest, and created local water companies such as Hyflux that have expanded overseas.

"What they are looking to do is create a virtual market for the water business which is much larger than Singapore," said Mr Glen Daigger, chief technology officer of CH2M Hill, an Colorado-based industry consulting firm. "By becoming a thought leader for water in Asia, then they really create a market which is orders of magnitude bigger than Singapore itself."

Chew said his main worry is climate change and how that lowers water levels at reservoirs. Changing weather patterns also led to heavy rainfalls and flash floods that added stress to its drainage systems, where parts of the Orchard Road shopping belt were affected over the past two years.

PUB is also working on reducing water consumption, he said, with measures ranging from mandatory dual-flushing systems for toilets and automatic faucets in all public restrooms.

The average usage per person is now 153.4 litres a day, down from 165 litres nine years ago, he said. That's expected to fall to 147 litres by the end of the decade and 140 litres in the following 10 years, he said.

"Here, water is an issue of life and death," Mr Chew said. "That's always been the message." BLOOMBERG

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Bidadari to retain its greenery and heritage

HDB's call for masterplan proposals reveals vision for the new town
Grace Chua Straits Times 31 Jul 12;

THE upcoming Bidadari housing estate will have a regional park, retain its hilly and lush landscape, and celebrate its history and heritage, said the Housing Board.

The estate, which sits on a 93ha former cemetery site, will "creatively incorporate" historical elements.

These will complement the existing Bidadari Memorial Garden, which holds the tombstones of 21 prominent early citizens.

The board's vision for Singapore's newest town since Punggol was unveiled in documents calling for development proposals which were obtained by The Straits Times.

The board said Bidadari town will be very pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly and have seamless connections between transport nodes and places of attraction.

All in, the HDB wants the estate - about a quarter of Clementi town in terms of land area - to be a "distinctive and sustainable tranquil urban oasis".

Bidadari ceased burials in 1972 and was exhumed through the early 2000s. It is currently a rolling expanse of greenery frequented by joggers.

Some 12,000 private and HDB homes will be developed on the site bounded by Bartley Road, Upper Serangoon Road, Sennett Estate and Mount Vernon Road.

Infrastructure work like site preparation and earthworks will start at the end of this year. The first HDB build-to-order launch could take place as early as 2015, with flats completed in 2018.

The HDB is asking planners and consultants for expressions of interest to develop the estate's masterplan. Up to five will be invited to tender for the project.

Besides the proposals for master planning and urban design of the new estate, the HDB is seeking a team to design, construct and maintain one public housing project within the estate.

The call for expressions of interest closes on Aug 6. A tender for the masterplan is likely to be awarded in November and the plan completed next February.

Commenting on the documents, MP Lee Bee Wah, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development, said she was pleased that the undulating terrain of Bidadari is to be retained.

"We can make this estate different from others, rather than replicate HDB townships all over again," she said, urging planners not to overlook transport requirements too.

The area is served by three MRT stations: Bartley, Woodleigh and Potong Pasir.

Environment consultant Eugene Tay said: "It's good that the proposal brief includes retaining the existing greenery and past heritage of the area, and also requirements for sustainability studies and planning."

He suggested setting quantitative environmental targets, similar to the Building and Construction Authority's Green Mark scheme for parks or districts.

As a cemetery, Bidadari was the resting place for notable personalities like doctor and reformist Lim Boon Keng and lawyer and civic leader Song Ong Siang. In the Urban Redevelopment Authority's Master Plan 2008, the area that may one day be a regional park includes the current Mount Vernon columbarium.

Ms Olivia Choong, 33, a publicist and resident of Sennett Estate in the area, is excited about the HDB town coming up next door.

"I think it's nice to have new neighbours. We'll enjoy the amenities there too," she said.

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Malaysia: 400 anti-Aedes mosquitoes let loose in Puchong

Hasini Kannan New Straits Times 31 Jul 12'

EXPERIMENTAL: Bid to cut down dengue cases

SUBANG JAYA: SUBANG Jaya Municipal Council yesterday released another 400 Toxorhynchites mosquitoes at Kampung Sri Aman, Puchong, yesterday.

The third phase was launched by council vice-president Abdullah Marjunid following the success of the first and second phases on Oct 29 of last year and Jan 17.

Toxorhynchites, a larger mosquito species, can restrict the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes responsible for spreading dengue. The larvae of Toxorhynchites prey on the larvae of other mosquitoes.
It is among the few kinds of mosquitoes that do not consume blood.

Last year saw 27 dengue cases being reported and 15 cases have been recorded this year. The council chose Kampung Sri Aman as it has a high number of recent dengue cases.

In November last year, 60 mosquito larvae trapping devices (MLTDs) were installed at Jalan Bistari 1, Jalan Bistari 2, Jalan Bistari 3, Jalan Aman 1, Jalan Aman 2 and Jalan Taqwa.

The council in a statement said the experiment had indicated showed a high number of Aedes breeding spots at the location.

Bug-eat-bug world
Yeo Yi Shuen The Star 31 Jul 12;

THE Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and CIMB have joined forces to reduce the threat of dengue in Kampung Seri Aman, Puchong, using Toxorhynchites mosquitoes.

They recently carried out the third phase of a project that helped prevent the Aedes mosquitoes from breeding.

Cannibalistic by nature, the Toxorhynchites species is known as the “elephant mosquito” and one of the few species that does not consume blood and only eats plant nectar.

The Toxorhynchites mosquitoes, in blue, metallic green or black, are released to breed and produce larvae which will eat the larvae of the Aedes mosquitoes.

Larvae of the Toxorhynchites mosquitoes are 1.2cm to 1.8cm long and are are four or five times bigger than normal mozzies.

Kampung Seri Aman was chosen for this project because 27 cases of dengue fever were recorded last year.

MPSJ deputy president Abdullah Marjunid said the project would not endanger the public and there were no side-effects.

“A Toxorhynchites mosquito is sitting on my arm but it does not bite as the mosquitoes feed on plants. We are safe,” he said.

MPSJ health director Dr Roslan Mohamed Hussin said the project was now at a testing stage.

“During the first phase of the project, we did not see any pupae of the Toxorhynchites mosquito. However, at the second stage, we found a few.

“Hopefully, this means that the mosquitoes are adapting to their surroundings and we hope that the third phase will have even better results,” added Dr Roslan.

Some 400 adult Toxorhynchites mosquitoes and 100 of its pupae were released.

Since the project started in October last year, there has been a noticable decrease in the number of dengue cases in the area.

“Last year, there were 27 cases. So far, this year there have been less than 15 cases.

“If this project proves to be successful, we may conduct this in other areas as well,” said Dr Roslan.

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Malaysia: Barcode for trees to curb illegal logging

Natalie Heng The Star 31 Jul 12;

DNA profiling for trees will, one day, be used to curb illegal logging.

DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC acid, otherwise known as DNA, is nature’s barcode. It is inherent in nearly every cell in every organism, and could just be our answer to curbing illegal timber trade.

It might sound like science fiction or something out of an alternative CSI episode where investigators track down trees instead of killers, but DNA fingerprinting for trees based on technologies routinely used in criminal forensics holds much promise in the field of international enforcement.

In fact, these tools are prime candidates for putting a spanner on illegal logging – an industry which has devastating consequences for biodiversity, ecosystems and national economies alike.

To understand how this is possible, you need to think of DNA as a code. Genes in specific sequences translate into a variety of proteins which do most of the work in cells (structure, function, and regulation of the body’s tissues and organs, for example).

A good analogy put forward by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is to think of genes as instructions in a cooking recipe. The instructions “collaborate” in the cookery process to culminate in a dish. Genes are expressed in a similarly collaborative fashion, but result in developmental processes which culminate in a body, be it human, fly or tree.

Dr Lee Soon Leong specialises in the DNA found in trees. He wades through peat swamps and treks through isolated forests to expand his collection of tree DNA samples, which he studies at the genetics laboratory at Forestry Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM).

In this leafy hub of scientific activity hidden away from the dusty streets of Kepong, Kuala Lumpur, Lee heads the genetics laboratory. In recent years, his team has been engaged in research which has important implications for prosecutors trying to bring illegally logged timber cases to court.

To understand this work, however, we first need to understand a highly interesting and useful feature of DNA – some sequences are highly conservative, whilst others are more variable.

Chloroplast genes which code for proteins involved in photosynthesis, for example, perform an important function that green plants cannot do without – allowing green plants to use energy from sunlight to synthesise food out of carbon dioxide and water. The DNA in these gene sequences are therefore highly conservative, and are likely to be very consistent between individuals of the same plant species.

Not all DNA sequences actually code for genes, however, and within these intergenic regions, harmless mutations which do not pose any disadvantage will often occur, and be passed on to subsequent generations. In this way, sequence changes can clock up along these segments, so the DNA profiles of specific intergenic regions in a distantly related group of trees will be increasingly more divergent from those of their founding population. This feature makes DNA profiling the perfect tool for shedding light on the murky routes of illegal timber trade, which is often obscured by log laundering.

Dodgy paperwork is just one of the methods companies use to disguise the origin and species of timber, effectively “legalising” logs that have come from an illegal source.

When you consider how advanced the world has become – increasingly powerful and advanced technologies being made to members of the public through smartphones, for example – it is surprising just how rudimentary our global timber trade tracking system is. The main checks that occur rely on an examination of externally applied, and easily manipulated, marks such as ink, metal bands and tags. These are cross-checked against paper documents, which can be falsified.

It is hard to blame customs officials. After all, a block of wood is, to the average person, a block of wood. Shipments of processed logs all pretty much look the same when you’re not trained in wood anatomy, which is currently the standard method used in log identification.

Even then, a timber package suspicious enough to warrant checking is subject to some disadvantages – important timber tree species are not necessarily visually distinguishable from similar species in the sawn form. All these are serious problems when it comes to the mislabelling of trade-restricted or endangered species of wood for laundering purposes.

The barcode of life

Illegal loggers might be able to mess with the paper system but they cannot mess with DNA. It is a unique property inherent in trees, and present in almost every cell within a solid wood product. It is the differences in variability across the genome that has allowed scientists like Lee to play detective, taking unknown wood samples, and tracing their origins using specific DNA sequences or “DNA markers”. Highly conservative DNA markers that are consistent within a species can be used as “barcodes” for species identification, he explains.

Since their project began in 2010, Lee’s team has amassed barcodes for half of Malaysia’s 408 commercially valuable timber species. The database of barcodes can be used for rapid identification of wood species used in heavy construction and furniture manufacturing. There is also potential implication in conservation as the barcodes can be used to assess plant biodiversity.

Whilst the highly conservative barcodes can be used for timber species identification, intergenic markers can be used to track geographical origins. Closely related trees located within the same timber concession might share common marker sequences, but the further you go, the more variation you will find within those markers. This effectively enables scientists to calculate the statistical probability of an unknown wood sample coming from a specific region, or population of trees.

But first, a database of intergenic DNA markers must be compiled from samples covering the species’ geographical range. This is exact what Lee’s team has done for cengal (Neobalanocarpus heimii), a valuable timber species which reportedly fetches up to RM10,000 per tonne, and ramin melawis (Gonystylus bancanus), a rare and endangered species which is trade-restricted and found only within dwindling lowland freshwater and peat swamp forests. Work is also currently under way to create databases for kempas (Koompassia mallaccensis) and dark red meranti (Shorea platyclados).

Being able to make geographical distinctions with regards to the place of origin of the timber has ground-breaking implications. It means that a DNA sample extracted from any piece of wood, be it a shipment going through customs or a piece of furniture, can be used to cross-check the source that is stated in the paperwork.

To take things a step further, stretches of DNA known as “microsatellites” are also variable, so these can act like individual fingerprints with only two samples from the same tree providing a perfect match.

Proving that misdeclared logs have not originated from a legal timber concession remains one of the timber world’s biggest challenges.

Section 15 of the National Forestry Act 1984 prohibits the taking of forest produce from permanent reserved forest or state land forest without a licence but it has yet to be the basis for any prosecution, partly due to the difficulties involved in producing evidence strong enough to stand up in court.

Lee says the primary application for his research is to furnish enforcement agencies with the necessary tools to do their job.

Microsatellite markers, for example, should be good enough to prove beyond doubt that there has been a chain-of-custody breach along the life cycle of a wood product, especially if the DNA can be matched to a specific tree stump.

Aside from helping with the prosecution of illegal loggers, there is a bigger picture his work is helping to build.

The data his team are generating can be used for fundamental sciences and furthering our understanding about the evolutionary genetics of tropical plants, and can also be used to identify biodiversity hubs and come up with more effective conservation strategies.

“Safeguarding our forests and figuring out how best to conserve them is important,” says Lee. “Because the forest doesn’t just belong to existing generations, but also to future generations.”

Due diligence through DNA
The Star 31 Jul 12;

THE lack of practicable control mechanisms to identify the origins of timber and wood products means that every year, an undetermined amount of illegally logged timber makes it onto the mainstream market.

Up to 50% of the wood exported from South-East Asia, the Amazon, central Africa and Russia is suspected to have come from illegal sources, according to the European Union’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan. This is equivalent to US$15bil (RM45bil) worth of losses in revenue and assets every year for some of the poorest countries in the world.

It is acknowledged that illegal deforestation is not just the responsibility of suppliers, but also consumer countries. Next year, a new piece of legislation will come into force, effectively banning the world’s largest single market, the European Union, from importing any illegally-sourced timber.

This has left timber supply countries, including Malaysia, which currently exports about RM2.29bil worth of timber products to the EU annually, scrambling to finalise the EU-Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA). Supporting this is the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, to help relevant countries set up a legality assurance system so that they can comply with the new regulation.

It is in this context that technologies such as DNA fingerprinting and stable-isotyping, a technology with similar uses, are emerging to take centrestage, as they might just be the solutions the world is looking for when it comes to the due diligence required for the issuance of FLEGT timber export licences.

In line with this, Biodiversity International has launched a new facility, based in Kuala Lumpur, to promote the identification of timber species and their origins. Scientific co-ordinator for the facility, Marius Ekue, says that by the end of the three-year project, they aim to have a functional international database featuring genetic and stable isotopes for 20 major commercial species of timber.

“We also expect to have an international agreement on standards for using genetic and stable isotopes markers for timber species identification and tracking, so certification bodies and other service providers can start incorporating genetic and stable isotope fingerprinting into their evaluation criteria.”

One big advantage of DNA and stable isotopes, says Ekue, is that such markers can also be used with processed wood.

“Such tools are already being used for major food commodities. There is no reason why it should not work for wood and wood products.”

The ultimate goal is to eliminate the possibility of falsifying accompanying chain-of-custody documents, by introducing a new and effective weapon in the fight against timber laundering. Aside from recent DNA database profiling work done at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, there are a number of international projects geared towards similar objectives.

There is also potential for co-operation with existing databases, such as the Barcode of Life, which is an international collaboration between scientists to create a single, open access database containing barcodes for as many species as possible.

In the mean time, however, the facility will serve to bridge these individual efforts by co-ordinating a series of workshops aimed at helping various quarters reach agreements on knowledge-sharing so they can work together. A regional workshop for the Asia-Pacific region will be held in China next month.

This year, Ghana became the first country to conclude its EU-Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Two countries are currently undergoing the ratification process while seven more are still in negotiations. Malaysia, one of the first countries to begin negotiations, hopes to finalise its agreement by the end of the year.

It might be a while before the science is translated into a viable system offering DNA-based timber tracking services but at least the wheels have been set in motion, promising a better chance at curbing the global illegal timber trade. – By Natalie Heng
Applications of a tree DNA database

> Pre-purchase diligence – Buyers can test provenance of sawn timber before buying contracts are signed.

> Raw material testing – This can be done at checkpoints along product supply chains.

> Wood product quality control

> Sampling and factory inspections – Checks can be made during the manufacturing process, especially for at-risk species in regions where fraud is prevalent, or management processes are weak.

> Customs control at point of import – Inspections can be made if the legality of the timber shipment is suspect.

> Border testing by importers – This can be done to confirm the species and the origins of the timber.

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