Asia's abalone fever feared wiping out the gourmet mollusc in South Africa

Wendell Roelf PlanetArk 27 Mar 14;

In broad daylight, groups of poachers hidden among the rocks of a South African marine conservation area wade slowly into the icy, shark-infested waters of the Atlantic Ocean in search of 'white gold'.

Foot soldiers of a global criminal network stretching from the southernmost tip of Africa to the other side of the globe, they are scouring the rocks for abalone to meet insatiable demand from Asia for the gourmet mollusc.

The hunt is driving the species to the edge of extinction, but fears of being caught - either by coastguards or great white sharks - are relegated to the back of poachers' minds by the glittering prizes on offer.

"We didn't get much now but we will go out again tonight with the boat," said veteran poacher Stephan, emerging warily from the water as fisheries' inspectors in speed boats could be seen whizzing about looking for boats further out to sea.

Destined for trendy restaurants in Hong Kong and China, abalone - dubbed "white gold" after its pearly flesh - can fetch up to 4,500 rand ($420) a kg on the South African black market, and nearly three times that in Asia, experts say.

Also found in abundance in cold waters off New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the west coast of the United States, abalone from South Africa is considered to be among the best.

The divers may only get 300 rand per kg but in impoverished coastal villages such as Hout Bay, blighted by sky-high unemployment, that is still good money.

Caught on both sides of South Africa's coastline, abalone, or "perlemoen" as it is called locally, is sold for cash or exchanged for methamphetamines, helping fuel South Africa's already serious drug problem.

"Tonight we expect a good haul of between 50 and 60 kg, maybe 100 if we're lucky," Stephan said, shivering after two hours underwater in a battered wetsuit. Like others interviewed for this story, he asked to be identified only by his first name.

Moving from their iron and wood shacks on the steep slopes of Hout Bay's Hangberg, 20 km (13 miles) east of Cape Town, the poachers trek over a snake-infested ridge, carrying heavy scuba-diving gear before reaching their destination at Seal Island.

With mobile phones sealed in condoms to keep out the water, they scan the ocean for patrol vessels and sharks before sliding into the deep.

Only a limited number of fisheries are licensed to harvest a highly circumscribed amount of abalone in South Africa, and the penalties for breaking the law are harsh.

Under no illusion about the dangers of jail or how depleted stocks could hurt fishing villages, another poacher, Leon, echoes the line from almost all the fishermen: it is simply a question of survival.

"We are just ordinary fishermen struggling to survive, to put food in the pot, to pay school fees, to make a living," he said, sitting among piles of empty abalone shells strewn across the beach.

"FAST AND FURIOUS"

On land the silky abalone are "shucked" from their shells before being dried in sheds or suburban garages. They can also be frozen prior to being smuggled out of the country in shipping containers.

Customs officers have intercepted consignments concealed as duvet covers, plastic pellets or sardines. Some shipments are organized by notorious Chinese 'Triad' gangsters.

"Triads do play a role, but in our experience it is mainly wealthy Asian businessmen who hide illegal activities behind legitimate businesses," said Lise Potgieter, a member of the South African police's elite Hawks detective unit.

One of the alleged kingpins, a Chinese national named Ran Wei, had a successful South African crayfish-exporting business before skipping the country in 2010 when associates - including a lawyer and police officers - were nabbed.

An Interpol arrest warrant is out for Wei, the principal suspect in a case being described as the biggest of its kind in South Africa's history.

Better crime intelligence and a dollop of luck, such as finding a discarded pie receipt in a Porsche Cayenne, has helped authorities close in on previously untouchable syndicate bosses.

In the case of the pie receipt, officers were able to identify a bakery in Hermanus - a poaching hot-spot - whose video footage helped identify a top get-away driver, nicknamed "Fast and Furious" because of his ability to evade capture.

Police estimate that one syndicate will have up to 30 members, from divers to carriers and buyers. More than 100 suspects have been arrested over the past three years.

Those held face charges of racketeering, money laundering and poaching, offences that carry jail terms of up to 25 years. For the first time, foreign assets such as companies are also being targeted, investigators say.

"We are cutting off the head of the snake, but there are many snakes in this dirty business," Potgieter told Reuters.

The scale of the plunder is mind-boggling.

In one case, a syndicate poached 55 tons in five months, storing the abalone at a disused chicken battery along South Africa's west coast. The premises were raided after a tip-off to police who caught three suspects.

Another group slipped through 10 shipping containers of contraband before authorities intercepted two more en route to Hong Kong. The contents of one of the seized containers were estimated at $3.5 million, police said.

EXTINCTION THREAT

Abalone is mainly fished commercially in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Oman and South Africa, where 300 commercial license holders can take no more than 150 tons a year between them.

However, wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC estimates the illegal 2012 harvest at 1,700 tons - way more than the local population of the mollusc, which takes nearly a decade to reach maturity, can support.

Government officials say the situation is so desperate they may have to impose a blanket ban on all abalone fishing - both recreational and commercial - to stave off looming extinction.

"We have reached commercial collapse already and if we continue on this path the abalone could become extinct in the wild soon," said Bernard Liedemann, a senior fisheries official involved in the fight against poaching since the 1990s.

($1 = 10.7042 South African rand)

(Editing by Ed Cropley and Sonya Hepinstall)

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Extracting carbon from nature can aid climate but will be costly: U.N.

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 27 Mar 14;

A little-known technology that may be able to take the equivalent of China's greenhouse gas emissions out of the carbon cycle could be the radical policy shift needed to slow climate change this century, a draft U.N. report shows.

Using the technology, power plants would burn biomass - wood, wood pellets, or plant waste like from sugar cane - to generate electricity while the carbon dioxide in the biomass is extracted, piped away and buried deep underground.

Among techniques, a chemical process can strip carbon dioxide from the flue gases from combustion.

The process - called bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) - would make the power plants not only carbon-neutral but actively a part of extracting carbon dioxide from a natural cycle of plant growth and decay.

The technology could be twinned in coming decades with planting forests that absorb carbon as they grow, according to the study obtained by Reuters.

It would be a big shift from efforts to fight global warming mainly by cutting emissions of greenhouse gases from mankind's use of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars, but may be necessary given the failure so far to cut rising emissions.

"BECCS forms an essential component of the response strategy for climate change in the majority of scenarios in the literature" to keep temperatures low, according to a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, grouping leading scientists, is the main guide for almost 200 governments that have promised to work out a deal by the end of 2015 to slow warming to avert more floods, heatwaves, more powerful storms, droughts and rising seas.

The leaked report is Chapter 6 in a mammoth study due in mid-April in Berlin about solving climate change. It has details of BECCS not included in a draft summary.

SUNLIGHT

In theory, BECCS could extract between 3.0 and above 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air a year, it says, and seems more promising than technologies such as blocking sunlight or building machines to extract carbon from the air.

China, the top carbon producer ahead of the United States, emitted 9.86 billion tonnes in 2012, according to the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

BECCS, also known as bio-CCS, would cost from $60 to $250 a tonne of carbon dioxide eliminated, the IPCC says.

"BECCS faces large challenges in financing and currently no such plants have been built and tested at scale," it says.

Archer Daniels Midland Co has a facility in Illinois, partly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, to inject 333,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the ground from a plant producing ethanol from corn.

"Bio-CCS technology is becoming increasingly recognised as a credible option," said Brad Page, head of the Australia-based Global CCS Institute, but added it was only a partial fix. Like all other experts interviewed, he had not seen the draft.

The IPCC is meeting this week in Japan to approve another report about the risks of climate change, from food and water shortages to a slowdown in economic growth.

Most carbon capture and storage focuses on fossil fuels. Saskatchewan Power's Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant in Canada, due to start this year as the first commercial project of its type, will capture a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Apart from the high costs of BECCS, "the area you need is vast," said Joris Koornneef, an expert at sustainable energy consultancy Ecofys in the Netherlands.

He estimated that it would require 350 million hectares (864 million acres) - bigger than India - to be producing biomass for BECCS to make enough to suck 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air, which would risk taking land from food crops.

Erwin Jackson, deputy head of The Climate Institute, an independent research group in Australia, said governments and companies should do more to research BECCS technologies. "At the moment we're ignoring them and that's risky," he said.

The IPCC says it is at least 95 percent probable that climate change is mainly man-made, rather than caused by natural swings, but opinion polls show voters in many nations are unconvinced.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Mar 14

Over a Decade of Celebrating Singapore Waters!
from The Hantu Bloggers

Collaborating to Save the Reefs of Pulau Hantu
from Challenge

Blooming after Prolonged Drought
from Mountain and Sea

#17 Bishan Park
from My Nature Experiences

Butterflies Galore! : Yellow Flash
from Butterflies of Singapore

The Professor Who Helped Raise SGD$46m to Establish the New Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum from Raffles Museum News

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Little fuss over loss of golf club land

Rachel Scully The Straits Times AsiaOne 26 Mar 14;

SINGAPORE - One month after the Government's keenly watched move to take back some golf course land for homes and other uses, there has been little public reaction.

Many Singaporeans seem to agree that the move is a step in the right direction - or they simply cannot be bothered to make a fuss.

Last month, the Law Ministry said Keppel Club will not be able to renew its lease when it expires in 2021. Orchid Country Club in Yishun will face a similar fate come 2030, and Marina Bay Golf Course will lose its greens when its lease runs out in 2024.

The three sites occupy about 220ha in total, equivalent to a third the size of Ang Mo Kio town. They have been zoned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) for residential and commercial uses, although residential use includes more than just homes.

"Land zoned for residential (needs) will not be used for housing alone," said a URA spokesman.

"The land is usually planned to include other amenities and local services - such as parks and schools that will benefit future residents in the area."

The lack of an outcry over the land use decision may signal that golf, once the business world's sport de rigueur, could be losing its lustre here, observers say.

Associate Professor Sing Tien Foo of the department of real estate at the National University of Singapore (NUS) cited the relatively small numbers of people playing golf today.

"The latest land use decisions affect only an exclusive group of club members," he said.

There are about 36,360 golfers with registered handicaps here, according to data from the Singapore Golf Association.

He also suggested that Singaporeans are pleased to see the land being put to more productive uses. There are 17 golf clubs and public courses in Singapore occupying about 1,500ha, making up 2 per cent of Singapore's total land area. This does not include the five driving ranges that take up another 31ha (see box).

"The intention of converting golf course land at Keppel Club into housing areas may attract higher economic values," he said.

Of the 308 people who responded to an online survey by The Straits Times, more than half wanted the golf course land to be converted into public spaces and parks.

"We must protect Singapore's natural greenery and history and by removing all these golf courses for other uses, it will only make Singapore more of an urban jungle that has lost its history," wrote one respondent.

Minister of State for Trade and Industry Teo Ser Luck, an avid sportsman, believes that another reason for the absence of an uproar is the availability of other options for golfers.

He told The Straits Times that the various government agencies "had also been engaging the different clubs, so the constant communication and early notification" helps with planning purposes.

Another active sportsman, Member of Parliament Baey Yam Keng, said the golfers affected by last month's announcement may hold memberships at other clubs or go golfing overseas, and would not find the decision as drastic.

Meanwhile, other sports have been gaining traction with businessmen.

These include cycling, running and tougher sporting activities such as triathlons and marathons.

Mr Baey, the former managing director of public relations company Hill and Knowlton, said he has noticed that C-level executives are picking up a flurry of other sporting activities.

"Other than cycling and running, there are those who are also into dragon boating and other extreme sports," he said.

"While playing a nine- or 18-hole golf game still remains a viable option for bonding and networking, it is time consuming, and that is why I didn't pick up golf," he added with a laugh.

Mr Baey also noted that some politicians are cutting down on golfing sessions, but declined to mention names.

Sociologist Daniel Goh of NUS said that "new business and professional elites here are more likely to take up marathon running and cycling than golfing".

Golf is on the rise in China, but "has been on the decline in the Anglo-American world", he said.

Instead, more professionals here are opting for fitness and wellness regimes, using gyms and spas and doing yoga, noted Mr Goh.

Financial institutions have also contributed to this trend by sponsoring non-golfing events here.

For instance, Standard Chartered Bank has been the title sponsor of a marathon in Singapore since 2002. Last year, 54,000 runners signed up for the event.

OCBC Bank has been the title sponsor of a cycling event now in its sixth year. Ms Koh Ching Ching, OCBC's head of group corporate communications, said cycling encourages teamwork and bonding, and this resonates with the bank's corporate values of people and teamwork.

"It is also a sport that anyone can take up - from toddlers to seniors and from novice riders to serious ones," she added.

Cost-wise, owning a golf and country club membership seems to be losing its lustre among young middle-class Singaporeans.

"The high housing prices have got the attention of younger Singaporeans, who have placed the dream of owning a condo in a higher order of priority than a country club," said Prof Sing. "Higher certificate of entitlement prices have also put pressure on them to set more realistic targets in their dream to acquire the five Cs."

While being members of a club indicates a level of societal status, the tangible nature of owning a condominium home and car will be prioritised before that, he said.

Mr Teo has also noticed the shift of interest in the younger generation.

He said: "Country clubs may be sought after for the gym, pool and other family-friendly activities rather than golfing facilities.

"Golf could become their preference for getting a country club membership at a later stage in their lives when it will be used as a platform for networking."

The 'swing' places

Singapore has 17 golf clubs and public courses occupying 1,500 ha. But this excludes the following five driving ranges.

ASIAN GOLF ACADEMY (4.44 ha)

Sin Ming Avenue. This range is bounded by the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park and is within walking distance of Sin Ming Industrial Estate.

PLAYGOLF GAME CENTRE (2.86 ha)

This driving range in Toa Payoh is surrounded by the Central Expressway and Toa Payoh East Road. The site is also opposite the Toa Payoh Industrial Park.

FAIRWAY CLUB AT 60 FAIRWAYS DRIVE (18.95 ha)

Close to Bukit Timah Saddle Club and The Grandstand. The range is off the Eng Neo exit of the Pan-Island Expressway.

PUNGGOL EAST DRIVING RANGE (3.73 ha)

In the north-east, near Punggol Waterway. It is also accessible via the Punggol LRT, and the closest station is Riviera.

HOMETEAMS BUKIT BATOK GOLF DRIVING RANGE (1.29 ha)

Close to Bukit Batok Driving Centre, Swiss Cottage Secondary School and St Anthony's Primary School. It is part of the amenities offered by the HomeTeamNS club that includes an adventure centre and bowling alley.

Sources: OneMap.SG, Singapore Land Authority

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Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand: These Snail Beauties Are On the Brink of Extinction

Tanya Lewis LiveScience.com Yahoo News 26 Mar 14;

They look like ethereal little beings from another planet, but they're actually newly discovered species of snails. And unfortunately, some of them are already going extinct.

A team of biologists catalogued 31 species of the snail genus Plectostoma from Malaysia, Sumatra and Thailand, 10 of which were new to science. But the snails live on limestone hills mined by cement companies, which threaten to destroy the snails and their habitat along with them.

Dressed in shells of neon orange, lilac and crimson, the snails dazzle the eyes. "They flaunt all shell-coiling rules, by having very irregularly coiled and ornamented shells, making them look like microjewelry," said study researcher Thor-Seng Liew of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands. [Photos: Gorgeous Neon Malaysian Snails]

Liew and his colleagues imaged the shells using a micro-CT scanner, a device that produces 3D X-rays of tiny objects.

The snails live only on limestone hills, which are rare in Southeast Asia, so each snail colony is isolated from the others. As a result, many of the species are endemic to a single hill.

This narrow habitat means that when mining companies quarry the hills for cement, they can destroy entire species of snail. The species Plectostoma sciaphilum already went extinct when its hill was mined around 2003. At least six other snail species face similar threats; for instance, P. tenggekensis, one of the species found in the study, may be gone by the end of 2014, the researchers said.

To raise awareness about these exquisite invertebrates, the researchers named some of the new species after conservationists and politicians who have supported preservation of the hills these snails call home (for example, Plectostoma whitteni was named after Tony Whitten, a former senior biodiversity specialist for the World Bank and the current regional director for Asia-Pacific Fauna & Flora International).

All of the species are described today (March 25) in the journal ZooKeys.

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Malaysia: The Malaysia Nature Society regrets plans to delist Ramsar sites in Johor

New Straits Times 26 Mar 14;

JOHOR BARU: The Malaysia Nature Society has expressed regret over the state government's plan to de-gazette two Ramsar wetlands here.

Its Johor branch chairman Vincent Chow said the delisting would mean the Ramsar sites would be vulnerable to continuous degradation and destruction, adding that the country stands to lose one of the biggest mangrove reserves if the state government gave up its commitment to environmental conservation.

He said the state had fought hard to get the listing about a decade ago.

"Man has to learn to co-exist with nature, not to destroy it for individual gains. Coastal mangrove vegetation takes hundreds of years to stabilise or settle down. Once a mangrove reserve is degraded or destroyed, it will never recover.

"Our future generation may not be able to see mangrove reserves like what we are seeing now. I hope the state government will exercise caution before making any decision which will have a negative long term impact on the environment."

Chow was responding to an NST article that the two Johor wetlands, which were accorded Ramsar status in 2003, will soon lose their listing.

The Ramsar listing is an international list of important wetlands that come under the Ramsar Convention, which champions conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.

The irony is that the degazettement is not due to the Ramsar Bureau having decided that the wetlands were no longer worthy. Instead, it is the Johor government which is seeking to degazette them on its own initiative.

State Health and Envoronment Executive committee chairman Ayub Rahmat said only the Pulau Kukup and Tanjung Piai sites were officially gazetted in 2003, adding that the Sungai Pulai site was never gazetted as a wetland.

It was learnt that the state government was finalising discussions on the de-gazetting exercise, which would also involve environmental bodies such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, which is responsible for protecting endangered wildlife and the environment.

The two Ramsar sites in Johor, Pulau Kukup and Tanjung Piai, were gazetted about a decade ago under the administration of former menteri besar, Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman, due to their rich and unique biodiversity, as well as their unspoilt mangrove plants and extensive mudflats.

However, coastal erosion and development has taken a toll on the ecology of the environmental golden triangle in southwest Johor.

The state government also planned to reduce the size of the Sungai Pulai wetlands.

The wetlands in Sungai Pulai and its estuary, especially near Pulau Merambong, are a sanctuary for marine creatures, such as seahorses and dugongs.

Chow said the Sungai Pulai wetlands is a breeding ground for many marine species, including those from the Straits of Malacca, as the wetlands is well-sheltered from erosion and waves.

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Malaysia: No cause for haze alarm, says weatherman

patrick lee The Star 26 Mar 14;

PETALING JAYA: Haze from Sumatran fires will not reach peninsular Malaysia, with the Malaysian Meteorological Depart­ment owing it to winds blowing from the country’s northeast.

“The forest fires will not affect us in any way because the winds will blow towards Sumatra, and thus there’s no need for concern at the moment,” said National weather centre director Muham­mad Helmi Abdullah.

He added that a change in wind patterns would only occur in mid-May, and that there was a “very remote possibility” that winds would blow haze towards Malay­sia.

Muhammad Helmi said Malay­sia would also experience rain as it moved towards an inter-monsoonal period expected to occur by the end of next month.

“There will be frequent rains, and it can be quite heavy over the west coast states.

“It will cause the haze – if any – to clear up and fires in our areas to be drastically reduced,” he said.

A report by the Jakarta Post on Monday said at least 416 fires were recorded in peatland and forest areas across Sumatra. Most of these were in Riau, totalling 294 hotspots.

The peninsula has also been experiencing instances of haze along its west coast, with some forest areas catching fire due to months-long dry weather.

Muhammad Helmi said that cloud seeding could not be carried out until this Friday as the weather was not suitable for it.

Previously, he told The Star that there might be a “temporary break” in seeding-conducive weather this week.

“Conditions won’t be favourable (until Friday), so chances of us seeing showers or rainclouds are not very high,” he said yesterday.

Water rationing in Selangor to remain until further notice
The Star 26 Mar 14;

KUALA LUMPUR: The water rationing in stage one and three in Selangor, and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya will continue until March 31 or longer.

Syabas assistant general manager Priscilla Alfred, said there had been no increase of water flow in Sungai Selangor due to the hot weather and absence of rainfall for the past few days.

“However, Syabas is still waiting for further decision from the Selangor state government on the water rationing,” she said in a statement here yesterday.

She said the water rationing in all affected areas in stage one and three would be continued according to schedule.

She added that hopefully, consumers would take a serious view of the water situation in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.

The rationing for stage one and three in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya were implemented on Feb 27 and March 10.

The first stage of the water rationing plan was implemented following the closure of the Cheras Batu 11 and Bukit Tampoi water treatment plants due to the ammonia contamination in Sungai Langat involving several places in Hulu Langat, Kuala Langat and Sepang.

She said Syabas was informed by the operator of the plant, Puncak Niaga (M) Sdn Bhd, that the Cheras Batu 11 treatment plant which had begun operations since March 17, had stopped operations since 2pm on Monday.

“This follows the increase in ammonia level at the Cheras Batu 11 treatment plant since Monday due to reduced rainfall in the last four days.

“The ammonia reading was at 4.2 parts per million (ppm), which is above the level permitted by the Health Ministry,” Priscilla said.

Stage three of the water rationing plan had been carried out in Gombak, Petaling, Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Selangor, Hulu Selangor, Klang and Shah Alam following the reduction of raw water released from the Sungai Selangor Dam and the Klang Gates Dam as was decided by the Selangor state government. — Bernama

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Indonesia: Number of hotspots in Riau increases

Antara 25 Mar 14;


Map document of hotspot by BNPB. (bnpb.go.id)

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The number of forest fire hotspots in Riau Province increased to 45 on Monday, from 10 the previous day, according to data received from the Haze Disaster Mitigation Task Force.

Drought and the use of fires to clear land have caused more hotspots to emerge, Sugarin, head of the Pekanbaru Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), said here on Tuesday.

Of the 45 hotspots, 27 were found in Rokan Hilir, seven in Dumai city, six in the Meranti Islands district, three in Siak and three in Bengkalis, according to the task force, which is based in Roesmin Nujardin Air Force Base.

Meanwhile, the Terra and Aqua satellites on Tuesday detected a total of 187 hotspots across Sumatra, including 163 in Riau.

Of the 163 hotspots, Rokan Hilir had 35; Pelalawan, six; Meranti Islands, 69; and Indragiri Hilir, four. Dumai city and Siak District had 29 and 17 hotspots, respectively.

The NOAA-18 satellite, however, reported only five hotspots in Riau on March 24.

"Drought and cyclone Gillian absorbed the water vapor, thus reducing the possibility of rain. Rains are predicted to start on March 28," stated Sugarin.

The National Disaster Mitigation Board (BNPB) said almost 90 percent of the forest and plantation fires in the Riau province had been extinguished.

"This morning, we received no report of new hotspots. But hotspots are not solely in the form of fires. They can also be found underground," BNPBs chief Syamsul Maarif noted on March 18.

Syamsul said a number of fires were still burning in the Siak district, where peat land is up to 5 meters deep.

It is believed that hotspots are still to be found beneath the peat land. Efforts to fight the fires are underway by sowing salt to create cloud seeds and induce rains and by showering water from planes.

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F012 (f001/INE )

EDITED BY INE

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El Nino likely in 2014, says Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Colin Packham PlanetArk 26 Mar 14;

Climate models show an increased chance of a 2014 El Nino weather event, said Australia's bureau of meteorology, leading to possible droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia and floods in South America, which could hit key rice, wheat and sugar crops.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said an El Nino could occur during the southern hemisphere winter, May-July, with Australian cattle and grain farmers already struggling with drought which has cut production.

The last El Nino in 2009/10 was categorized weak to moderate. The most severe El Nino was in 1998 when freak weather killed more than 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars in damage to crops, infrastructure and mines in Australia and other parts of Asia.

"The latest climate model survey by the shows that the tropical Pacific is very likely to warm in the coming months, with most models showing sea surface temperatures reaching El Nino thresholds during the southern hemisphere winter," the BOM said in an emailed statement.

Australia's outlook echoes similar forecasts from other weather bureaus in Japan and the United States, which each said an El Nino was increasingly like.

(Reporting by Colin Packham)

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China says polluting industry still growing too fast, heavy smog alert for Beijing

David Stanway PlanetArk 26 Mar 14;

China's energy-hungry, high-polluting industries continued to grow too fast in 2013, putting "huge pressures" on the environment and causing air quality to worsen, the country's pollution agency said on Tuesday.

Premier Li Keqiang "declared war" on pollution in a major policy address this month, but China has long struggled to strike a balance between protecting the environment and keeping up economic growth.

China is still too slow in reforming its resource-intensive economy, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement on its website (www.mep.gov.cn).

"The pace of restructuring and upgrading industries has slowed, the mode of development remains crude, and emissions of atmospheric pollutants have long exceeded environmental capacity," it said.

Rapid urbanisation brought dust from new housing and road building, while more traffic increased emissions. Slower wind speeds than usual in northern China were an additional contributing factor last year.

Only three out of 74 Chinese cities fully complied with state pollution standards in 2013, the ministry said earlier this month.

Separately, the official Xinhua news agency said that the meteorological office had issued another heavy smog alert for Beijing, its neighbouring city of Tianjin and for the province of Hebei.

The smog is expected to last until Friday, when it will be dispersed by a cold front, the report said.

Beijing's mayor promised in January to spend 15 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) on improving air quality this year as part of an "all-out effort" to tackle pollution, though similar pledges in the past have brought little improvement.

Pollution is an increasing concern for China's leaders, keen to forestall potential unrest as affluent city dwellers turn against the growth-at-all-costs economic model that has tainted much of the country's air, water and soil.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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Best of our wild blogs: 25 Mar 14

Massive Malaysian reclamation off Western Catchment has begun?
from wild shores of singapore

March is month of Durian Flowers and Little Piggies
from Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs

Von Schrenck’s Bittern confronts a mudskipper
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Exisle
from The annotated budak

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PUB team to study use of groundwater

The Straits Times AsiaOne 25 Mar 14;

SINGAPORE - Singapore has ramped up efforts to study extracting its underground water for use.

National water agency PUB has formed a team of international experts to advise it, and will dig its first exploratory monitoring wells in the next few months.

It is interested in the subterranean Jurong rock formation in western Singapore, which could hold water-bearing layers of rock called aquifers.

Even if Singapore is unable to extract substantial water from them regularly, such aquifers could act as "water banks" for drought periods, said PUB chief technology officer Harry Seah.

While there is "no timeline" for when this water could contribute to Singapore's supply, the exploratory efforts will help to prepare the country, he said.

"We are building up our expertise in the field... and if groundwater does become feasible, we will have a ready team to manage the groundwater resource," he said.

The PUB plans to install 20 to 30 monitoring wells in western Singapore and then monitor the flow of water through them for six to 12 months.

These wells will be about 5cm wide and 10m to 20m deep. Their locations are being worked out, but likely options include green verges alongside roads and other public areas.

The answers sought include where rainwater goes after it seeps into the ground.

"For example, we want to know how much of it goes vertically down into aquifers, and how much horizontal movement there is instead," said Mr Seah.

This information will be useful when Singapore looks into how much water is available, how much of it can be extracted safely and the rate of extraction that would allow rainfall here to naturally replace the removed water.

To speed up the study process, PUB has asked six experts around the world for help. They include: Lord Ronald Oxburgh, a noted geologist and geophysicist; Professor Ken Howard, president of the International Association of Hydrogeologists and an expert in urban groundwater management; and Mr Roy Herndon, chief hydrogeologist at the Orange County Water District in California, which has been extracting groundwater for decades.

Although he played down suggestions by reporters that underground water could be Singapore's fifth tap - after imports from Malaysia, used water and treated seawater and rainwater - Mr Seah said that there is always urgency for the PUB to explore new ideas.

The PUB studied underground water in eastern Singapore's old alluvium geology in the 1990s, but the data from the technology and method used then did not give the agency "adequate confidence" that extracting the water would be sustainable or safe.

"As Singapore progresses, the water demand will keep growing," he said. "If we continue with business as usual, the energy needed will grow much faster as we ramp up desalination and Newater (used water) to meet demand. It's not sustainable."

While the PUB has embarked on research to reduce the energy needed for water treatment, "groundwater is freshwater", said Mr Seah.

"If we have abundant rainwater, we can inject some into the ground, increase our storage... extract the water to meet our demand and give us more buffer for drought."

PUB to monitor groundwater in western, southern Singapore
Monica Kotwani Channel NewsAsia 25 Mar 14;

ORANGE COUNTY, California: Singapore's national water agency, PUB, will embark on a second stage of collecting groundwater data in western and southern Singapore.

This is part of a feasibility study into extracting groundwater, or possibly using porous rocks as underground reservoirs.

PUB said this while visiting this year's Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize winners, the Orange County Water District, which has been tapping and studying its groundwater resource for decades.

In California, PUB is studying how Orange County Water District has been managing its groundwater since the 1930s.

Over the next few months, PUB will drill between 20 and 30 wells at various parts of a 200-million-year-old area in Singapore known as the Jurong Formation.

The monitoring wells measure about five centimetres wide, and will be drilled to different depths of between 10 and 20 metres.

Each well will have narrow openings at different levels to collect information such as whether water flows vertically or horizontally, as well as water quality -- whether it is fresh or brackish water.

The idea is to study the feasibility of extracting groundwater as another water source, or using the porous rock underground as storage space for water collected on the surface.

Harry Seah, chief technology officer at PUB, said: "We are a very small, tiny island and we are densely populated, and water demand will grow over time. And we need to develop ways and means to increase the amount of water that can come out of 710 sq km of land.

“So if I can't go horizontally, I must go vertically. That's why this groundwater thing is a study that we are looking into, in a way, to address whether I can increase storage within the 710 sq kilometres. So imagine you have a multi-layered storage, and it's nature's -- it's free. And it’s the same concept that they are doing here in Orange County.”

Compared with Orange County, which has been working with groundwater for decades, Singapore's own journey with groundwater is still at its infancy. PUB said this is where an international panel with its expertise comes in.

PUB said the panel will guide them on the conduct of the study, and look into concerns such as land subsidence due to over-pumping of groundwater, and seawater intrusion.

The panel is made up of six experts, including the Water District's chief hydro-geologist Roy Herndon.

Mr Herndon said: "Given that Singapore is an island and if the data indicate that there are some significant groundwater resources that may be developed in the future, in the long run, seawater intrusion I believe would be something that will be a key part of Singapore's groundwater understanding."

Orange County injects half the used water it recycles underground to prevent seawater from contaminating its groundwater.

The other half is transported to basins, where it seeps into the ground to be extracted after some time.

- CNA/gn

PUB forms team to study groundwater use
Feng Zengkun The Straits Times AsiaOne 27 Mar 14;

ORANGE COUNTY, California - Singapore has ramped up efforts to study whether and how the country's underground water can be extracted for use.

National water agency PUB has formed a team of international experts to advise it, and will dig its first exploratory monitoring wells in the next few months.

It is interested in the subterranean Jurong rock formation in western Singapore, which could hold water-bearing layers of rock called aquifers.

Even if Singapore is unable to extract substantial water from them regularly, such aquifers could act as "water banks" for drought periods, said PUB chief technology officer Harry Seah.

While there is no timeline for when this water could contribute to Singapore's supply, the exploratory efforts will help to prepare the country, he said.

"We are building up our expertise in the field... and if groundwater does become feasible, we will have a ready team to manage the groundwater resource."

The PUB plans to install 20 to 30 monitoring wells in western Singapore and monitor the flow of water through them for six to 12 months. These wells will be about 5cm wide and 10m to 20m deep. Their locations are being worked out, but likely options include green verges alongside roads and other public areas.

Among other things, they will help find out where rainwater goes after it seeps into the ground.

"For example, we want to know how much of it goes vertically down into aquifers, and how much horizontal movement there is instead," said Mr Seah.

This information will be useful when Singapore looks into how much water is available, how much of it can be safely extracted, and how fast it can be extracted such that rainfall can naturally replace the removed water.

To speed up the learning process, PUB has asked six experts around the world for help. They include: Lord Ronald Oxburgh, a noted geologist and geophysicist; Professor Ken Howard, president of the International Association of Hydrogeologists and an expert in urban groundwater management; and Mr Roy Herndon, chief hydrogeologist at the Orange County Water District in California, which has been extracting groundwater for decades.

Although he played down suggestions by reporters that underground water could be Singapore's fifth tap - after imports from Malaysia, recycled used water and treated seawater and rainwater - Mr Seah added that there is always urgency for the PUB to explore new ideas.

The PUB studied underground water in eastern Singapore in the 1990s, but the data from the technology used then did not give the agency "adequate confidence" that extracting the water would be sustainable or safe.

"As Singapore progresses, the water demand will keep growing. If we continue with business as usual, the energy needed will grow much faster as we ramp up desalination and Newater to meet demand. It's not sustainable," said Mr Seah.

While the PUB has embarked on research to reduce the energy needed for water treatment, "groundwater is freshwater", he added. "If we have abundant rainwater, we can inject some into the ground, increase our storage... extract the water to meet our demand and give us more buffer for drought."

LKY Water Prize winner to help S"pore extract groundwater
Feng Zengkun The Straits Times AsiaOne 27 Mar 14;

SINGAPORE will have the benefit of learning from the best if it wants to extract underground water to add to its supply.

The Orange County Water District (OCWD) in California was awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize last month for its pioneering work in groundwater management and water re-use.

The district manages a large underground basin that supplies about 70 per cent of water for 2.4 million people in arid southern California.

The OCWD's chief hydrogeologist Roy Herndon, who oversees the basin's water quality among other things, is one of six experts the PUB has tapped to help Singapore on its own groundwater journey.

He said that since Singapore is an island, it will have to study how to prevent seawater intrusion, where the seawater contaminates the underground water. Orange County uses hydraulic barriers.

Parts of California have experienced land subsidence, where extracting groundwater caused the ground to compress and sink.

"In Orange County, that has not been a problem," said Mr Herndon. "We minimised the risk by not allowing groundwater levels to go too low in the basin."

The Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize award ceremony and banquet will be held on June 2, during the Singapore International Water Week from June 1 to 5.

The OCWD will receive $300,000, a certificate and a gold medallion.

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