Indonesia: 100 lawyers prepared to tackle industrial pollution in Sukoharjo

Ganug Nugroho Adi The Jakarta Post 12 Mar 18;

The Indonesian Advocates Association (Peradi) in Surakarta, Central Java, has prepared 100 lawyers to file both criminal and civil lawsuits against textile company PT Rayon Utama Makmur (RUM) over alleged environmental pollution.

The lawyers are calling on the police to immediately investigate the pollution, which affects communities living near the textile factory’s site in Sukoharjo regency.

Previously, the Semarang Legal Aid Institute (LBH) reportedly supported three environmental activists detained by the Central Java Police over their protests against pollution allegedly committed by PT RUM. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) and the Surakarta Muhammadiyah University’s (UMS) legal division have also conveyed their readiness to give legal assistance to the activists.

As previously reported, Muhammad “Lis” Hisbun Payu, Kelvin Ferdiansyah Subekti and Sutarno were arrested by the police over their alleged involvement in the destruction of assets belonging to PT RUM during a rally on Feb.23.

“We prepared 100 lawyers to file a lawsuit against PT RUM. We have data support from Walhi and UMS’ investigation team,” said Peradi Surakarta chairman Badrus Zaman on Monday.

He said there were two procedures the lawyers could use to submit their lawsuits, namely via a class action or via Walhi. “In principle, we want to ask the government to share responsibilities in the management of environment that has been affected by industrial pollution,” said Badrus.

Sukoharjo residents have launched a string of protests against environmental pollution caused by PT RUM. In some rallies, they called on Sukoharjo regent Wardoyo to close down the textile factory. (ebf)

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Indonesia: Jakarta Bay pollution a threat to future`s generation

Muhammad Razi Rahman/A. Saragi Antara 12 Mar 18;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Pollution of the Jakarta Bay has caused great concern for people aware of the extent of damage it could cause to the public health especially of the future`s generation.

More hazardous is pollution by plastic garbage, which is not easily degraded or decomposed. It would take tens even hundreds of years for plastic to be decomposed as against only days for banana peels, an expert has said.

Comprehensive planning, therefore, is necessary to clean the Jakarta Bay especially from plastic garbage to protect the ecology from disaster in the future .

Former Minister of Environment Emil Salim addressing expert discussion at the Jakarta Convention Hall earlier this month called for serious commitment to bringing to reality a vision that in 2030 the sea water in the Jakarta Bay could be used as a source for fresh water fit for human and industrial consumption.

Emil cited a number of steps that could be taken for that purpose including construction of offshore reservoirs and by cleaning the 13 rivers emptying into the bay in addition to effective treatment of garbage especially plastic garbage.

He said Indonesia is the second largest producer of plastic garbage in the world after China.

He expressed appreciation for the program announced two years earlier by the Minister of the Environment and Forestry banning the use of plastic bags for merchandise by hypermarkets and supermarkets.

Plastic garbage could be recycled to be economically valuable or as a source of income instead of throwing it into the rivers or the sea, he said.

Emil called for the organization of a movement of communities mainly the grass roots to clean the Jakarta Bay from waste, mainly plastic garbage.

Expert staff of the Marine and Fisheries Minister for Ecology and Sea Resources Aryo Hanggono said the government has a commitment to cleaning the sea including the Jakarta Bay from plastic garbage.

Currently, a draft presidential decree is being prepared to regulate the cleaning of the sea from plastic garbage. The regulation calls for coordinated action between the central government and regional administrations in cleaning the sea and rivers or lakes with target of reducing plastic garbage by 70% in 2025.

Aryo cited a comparison that banana peel would entirely be decomposed in two weeks, but plastic bags could take 10-20 years to be decomposed and plastic bottles could even take hundreds of years.

He said a number of studies said that unless concrete steps are taken, in 2025 the Indonesian waters would be a pool of garbage and fish at a ratio of one to three. In 2050 , garbage could exceed the fish stock in volume, he added.

Therefore, he calls on the Jakarta city administration tobe more serious in cleaning the Jakarta Bay from garbage.

A public movement should be organized to carry out the program to discourage the use of plastic bags such as for merchandise by using paper bags instead.

Buying and recycling plastic garbage such as used plastic bottles from the people could also help reduce plastic garbage thrown into the rivers or the sea.

Jakarta`s vice governor Sandiaga Uno said that the sea in the Thousand Islands in the Jakarta Bay needs serious addressing or pollution could cause a disaster for the future generation.

Sandiaga said the burden of preserving the environment has been put only on the government while the largest contributor to the pollution is the private sector. He called on the business sector to take part in preserving a healthy environment in the capital city.

Director General of Garbage, Waste and Dangerous Poisonous Materials of the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry Rosa Vivien Ratnawati warned of serious health hazard caused by environmental pollution.

Rosa said those responsible for environmental pollution could face criminal charge.

The authorities supervising garbage treatment , the Environment and Forestry Minister, Governors, and Regents could face criminal charges for negligence that causes loss of life, she said.

She said the government is preparing a draft regulation on garbage treatment, facilities and infrastructure to support implementation of the regulation .

Meanwhile, non governmental organizations (NGO) Yayasan Keanekaragaman Hayati Indonesia also warned of the serious problem caused by plastic garbage, poisoning the aquatic creatures, which are partly for human consumption.

Executive Director of the foundation MS Sembiring said plastic garbage could cause big dent in the sea ecosystem, polluting the sea, poisoning the aquatic creatures and damaging the ridge of rock.

The garbage is brought to the sea mainly through rivers from Jakarta and other cities upstream. He said there are 13 rivers in Jakarta emptying into the Jakarta Bay. Sembiring said Jakarta and nearby areas produce around 7,000 tons of garbage per day.

Based on data from the Directorate General of Control of Pollution and Environmental Damage and Forestry, households are the largest contributors to pollution in the Jakarta Bay.

Therefore it is urgent that serious action should begin as early as possible to prevent the threat from more devastating to living things in the sea.

(AS/a014)
(T.SYS/B/H-ASG/A014)
Editor: Heru Purwanto

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Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists

A study reveals highest microplastic pollution levels ever recorded in a river in Manchester, UK and shows that billions of particles flooded into the sea from rivers in the area in just one year
Damian Carrington The Guardian 12 Mar 18;

The number of tiny plastic pieces polluting the world’s oceans is vastly greater than thought, new research indicates.

The work reveals the highest microplastic pollution yet discovered anywhere in the world in a river near Manchester in the UK. It also shows that the major floods in the area in 2015-16 flushed more than 40bn pieces of microplastic into the sea.

The surge of such a vast amount of microplastic from one small river catchment in a single event led the scientists to conclude that the current estimate for the number of particles in the ocean – five trillion – is a major underestimate.

Microplastics include broken-down plastic waste, synthetic fibres and beads found in personal hygiene products. They are known to harm marine life, which mistake them for food, and can be consumed by humans too via seafood, tap water or other food. The risk to people is still not known, but there are concerns that microplastics can accumulate toxic chemicals and that the tiniest could enter the bloodstream.

“Given their pervasive and persistent nature, microplastics have become a global environmental concern and a potential risk to human populations,” said Rachel Hurley from the University of Manchester and colleagues in their report, published in Nature Geoscience.

The team analysed sediments in 10 rivers within about 20km of Manchester and all but one of the 40 sites showed microplastic contamination. After the winter floods of 2015-16, they took new samples and found that 70% of the microplastics had been swept away, a total of 43bn particles or 850kg. Of those, about 17bn would float in sea water.

“This is a small to medium sized catchment in the north of England, it is one flood event, it is just one year – there is no way that [5tn global] estimate is right,” said Hurley. The researchers said total microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans “must be far higher”.

The worst hotspot, on the River Tame, had more than 500,000 microplastic particles per square metre in the top 10cm of river bed. This is the worst concentration ever reported and 50% more than the previous record, in beach sediments from South Korea. But Hurley said there may well be worse places yet to me measured: “We don’t have much data for huge rivers in the global south, which may have so much more plastic in.”

“There is so much effort going into the marine side of the microplastic problem but this research shows it is really originating upstream in river catchments,” she said. “We need to control those sources to even begin to clean up the oceans.”

About a third of microplastics found by the team before the flooding were microbeads, tiny spheres used in personal care products and banned in the UK in January. This high proportion surprised the scientists, who said the beads may well also derive from industrial uses, which are not covered by the ban.

Erik van Sebille, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and and not part of the research team, said the work does support a much higher estimate of global microplastic pollution in the oceans: “I’m not surprised by that conclusion. In 2015, we found that is not on the surface anymore. The problem is that we don’t know where that 99% of plastic is. Is it on beaches, the seafloor, in marine organisms? Before we can start thinking about cleaning up the plastic, we’ll first need to know how it’s distributed.”

Anne Marie Mahon, at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Ireland and also not part of the research team, said: “I am actually glad to see the estimate going up a bit, just to show there is this huge contribution coming from the freshwater system.” However, she cautioned that not all the microplastics shown in the study to be flushed out by the floods necessarily entered the sea – some may have been washed over the floodplain instead.

“It is very difficult to tell how this plastic may be affecting us,” Hurley said. “But they definitely do enter our bodies. The missing gap is we need to know if we are getting contaminants inside us as a result of plastic particles.”

The smallest particles that could be analysed in the new research were 63 microns, roughly the width of a human hair. But much smaller plastic particles will exist, and Hurley said: “It is the really small stuff we get worried about, as they can get through the membranes in the gut and in the bloodstream – that is the real fear.”

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Best of our wild blogs: 12 Mar 18

17-18 Mar: Meet Singapore Marine Scientists!
Celebrating Singapore Shores!

Butterfly of the Month - March 2018
Butterflies of Singapore

Buff & Brown with a Dark side(d)
Winging It

NSS Kids’ Fun with Frogs at Tampines Eco-Green
Fun with Nature by Fun with Nature

Fun with Otters at Marina Bay
Fun with Nature by Fun with Nature

Keel-bellied Whip Snake (Dryophiops rubescens) @ Pulau Ubin
Monday Morgue

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Climate change needs better storytelling to address severe threats

Benjamin P Horton Channel NewsAsia 11 Mar 18;

The World Economic Forum says extreme weather events are the most likely and most severe threat facing humanity in 2018 yet climate change doesn’t get the attention it needs, says one expert from the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

SINGAPORE: The story about climate change arguably got its first big public hit more than ten years ago with Al Gore’s documentary about global warming An Inconvenient Truth.

But maintaining public attention and keeping the heat on climate change action have been tough.

People are hungry for news about the risk of climate change but boring, technical jargon is alienating them, said the United Nations top environment official Erik Solheim in December 2017.

People need to be excited and inspired to take action and change their behaviour, he added.

Yet “the language of environmentalists has been boring, so uninspiring ... If we just speak a technical language, with many acronyms and politically-correct phrases, no one will listen,” he said in an interview during a Bonn conference on landscapes.

Perhaps the consequences of human-driven climate change seem abstract, technical or too far away in the future.

Do these in turn cause readers to look at climate change news, shrug and then move on to other stories?

There’s a strong case to be made about the importance of communicating the priority we need to place on climate change.

Recent extreme weather pattern are giving us a glimpse into the catastrophe we might find ourselves in if we fail to act.

EXTREME WEATHER IN EARLY JANUARY

The start of 2018 has been marked by extreme weather with widespread impact on public safety, transport, energy and health around the world.

A major winter storm hit the United States Atlantic coast in early January, battering coastal areas with heavy snow, blizzards and strong winds and a drop in temperatures.

Boston suffered coastal flooding after it saw the highest ever recorded tide since 1921.

Flash flooding and deadly mudslides took place in southern California because of intense rain, in areas where protective vegetation have been destroyed by devastating wildfires in late 2017.

In Asia, central and eastern China saw heavy rain and snow in Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces in early January, with monthly maximum rainfall levels broken in 92 counties.

In the southern hemisphere, Cape Town is running out of water, because reliable winter rains have vanished — a phenomenon one meteorologist calls a once-in-628-years weather event.

Australia was gripped by intense heat, with the weather station in Sydney reaching 47.3°C on Jan 7, the hottest in 80 years.

Flash floods, strong winds and hailstones in Singapore coupled with a bout of freakish cool weather, the longest cold spell experienced here in at least a decade showed we were not immune.

GLOBAL WARMING A KEY CULPRIT

These extreme weather events were both signals of a dangerous, human-made shift in Earth’s climate as much as they were a natural stretch of bad luck.

Monsoon surges that bring cool weather partially explains what transpired in Singapore.

Natural climate cycles, especially the interplay between upper atmospheric conditions over polar regions and mid-latitude conditions over the oceans and on land, were primary forces driving the extreme weather globally.

But natural cycles by themselves don’t explain the recent number of record-breaking extreme weather events.

The reality is that the forces undergirding is global warming – and it’s all coming to a head.

HOTTER, WITH RISING SEA LEVELS

The Earth is getting warmer, with significantly more moisture in the atmosphere. Decades of data show that a long-term build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is trapping heat and warming up lands, oceans, and the atmosphere.

17 of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year global temperature record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998.

The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record globally and here in Singapore, which had a mean annual temperature of 28.4°C.

2016 was an El Niño year, and mainland Southeast Asia encountered its warmest monthly mean surface air temperatures in April 2016 since record-keeping began.

Apart from surpassing national temperature records in mainland Southeast Asia, this event disrupted crop production, imposed societal distress and resulted in peak energy consumption.

El Niño might have exacerbated the situation, but the temperatures would never have happened without the human-made shift in Earth’s climate.

Some models have predicted that the warming of the Earth’s climate could increase the average strength of hurricanes and typhoons.

Scientists are confident that rising sea levels are leading to higher storm surges and more floods - and the mean sea level in the Strait of Singapore has increased at the rate of 1.2mm to 1.7mm each year in the period 1975 to 2009.

By the end of the century, the average world temperature could increase by 5 °C, depending in part on how much carbon we emit between now and then.

The latest climate models concluded with high confidence that with continued warming projected for the rest of this century, Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia will experience more frequent, record-breaking hot Aprils, just like the extreme weather event of 2016.

MOST LIKELY AND MOST SEVERE THREAT

The Global Risks Report 2018 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) states that extreme weather events are the most likely and most severe threat facing humanity in 2018 – because scientists expect the frequency of extreme weather events to increase substantially.

The trend towards more frequent extreme weather events only underscores how important it is that we enhance our ability to predict and manage them. So what can we do?

The solution has been clear for more than two decades: Governments must take aggressive action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The extreme weather lends greater urgency to climate change initiatives like those under the Paris Agreement.

An essential key to meeting the challenge of extreme weather is critical environmental intelligence.

Just like the intelligence of the security world, intelligence in the environmental arena combines data, analysis, modelling, and assessment.

The smart approach to extreme weather is to attack all the risk factors, by designing crops that can survive drought, buildings that can resist floods and high winds, policies that discourage people from building in dangerous places - and of course, by shifting our economy to greener energy sources and reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions.

Singapore has taken steps to reduce the impact of extreme weather events by improving drainage to reduce flood-prone areas, developing weather-proof technologies, and cooling the island by growing urban green spaces such as rooftop gardens.

Where climate change poses a real danger, we cannot take the attitude that it’s someone else’s job to sort out.

Indeed, the biggest challenge we must guard against in this battle against climate change is people tuning out to the message about global warming.

Erik Solheim mentioned this when he said:

For this to happen, we have to speak in a different language that is simpler and breaks down the science to explain to people what climate change really means for them, in their daily lives, here and now.

As individuals, we should seize everyday opportunities to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We can recycle, reuse and reduce. Whenever we can, we should use public transport and walk.

Quite literally, small steps can lead to large-scale change when we, citizens of the earth, act together.

Professor Benjamin P Horton is principal investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University.

Source: CNA/sl

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On our love affair with Malaysian mangroves

DR. A. ALDRIE AMIR New Straits Times 11 Mar 18;

No matter how sturdy they seem to be, or how eerie they may appear, mangrove forests deserve vigilant attention and tender loving care.

Caring for mangroves is a simple, straightforward love affair. Just by setting them free from vicious anthropogenic disturbances, they in return shall unconditionally defend and serve us to the best of their ability. As a matter of fact, they have been doing this for a very long time.

Mangrove forests provide multiple ecosystem services and benefits to humans and nature. Their full functions and roles are still way beyond our understanding. But a miniscule portion of their gifts have been identified by scientists, and many more aspects are yet to be discovered. Some of their documented functions are as a regulator of various natural cycles and processes. For instance, mangroves are identified as the most efficient tropical habitat to capture and fix atmospheric carbon in the pursuit to mitigate the increase in temperature and to adapt to global climate change. They are also able to efficiently absorb and sustain water and precipitation.

Mangroves are instrumental as a natural defense from hazardous, life-threatening disasters such as, you may still remember, the tsunami, and other coastal catastrophes. Mangrove forests are the key habitat in the life cycle of a vast number of marine creatures. They are the breeding and spawning grounds for fishes and other marine animals, a sanctuary for birds and marine mammals, and a connecting habitat between terrestrial and marine environments. Mangroves act as a sponge to absorb pollutants from being flushed into the seas, and as a natural buffer protecting people and human settlements from severe wind and typhoons. Simply put, mangroves act as a

protector from disturbances both landward and seaward.

For many generations, mangroves have sustained the livelihoods of coastal communities and sparked the birth of many civilisations in the tropics and subtropics. Human dependency on this resource is immense and again, beyond human realisation. A majority of local coastal communities in Malaysia associate their survival with the status of mangroves within their vicinity, both socially and economically. But how far would they go to uphold this love affair environmentally?

Being the third-largest mangrove-holding nation in the world, Malaysia has the advantage and is in the position to set an exemplary act and lead the way for the best mangrove management practice, impactful mangrove research, solid mangrove protection, and sustainable mangrove conservation. Malaysia and Southeast Asia are the centre for mangrove species distribution in the Indo-West Pacific ecological region. We host the highest diversity of mangrove plant species and boast 45 per cent of the world’s total mangrove forest area.

Unfortunately, in the past 60 years, Malaysia alone lost half of its precious mangroves due to multiple anthropogenic factors. Due to that, the coastline of Peninsular Malaysia is currently threatened by severe erosion, particularly on the western and southern ends. Our coastal land is in dire straits, but do Malaysians in general realise this?

Malaysian mangroves, especially the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve in Perak, have been a reference site for studies on forest management and mangrove ecology by researchers from all over the world since the beginning of the last century. The protection and sustainable management of Matang mangroves started in 1901, and at one point, it was recognised as the best managed mangrove forest in the world. Indeed, that was a great recognition and a great achievement for Malaysia, but besides Matang, how about the rest of the mangroves in the country?

Malaysian scientists like Dr Ong Jin Eong, Dr Gong Wooi Khoon, Dr. A. Sasekumar, Dr. Chan Hung Tuck and Dr Chong Ving Ching are globally known figures for their significant contributions to the main body of knowledge on mangrove ecology for the last 40 years. They have recorded so many novel findings and published hundreds

of scientific reports and articles concerning Malaysian mangroves. Google these names and you will realise where Malaysia stands in the scientific world of mangroves. However, locally, their knowledge and contributions seem not to have been properly recognised or appreciated.

It occurs to me that the more scientific evidence we acquire, the more mangroves are being lost year in, year out. These scientists’ hard work and knowledge gains should be applied and utilised for the benefit of our mangroves, and this again actually puts Malaysia at the advantage to being a key global reference.

With the little knowledge on the characteristics and values of mangroves, it is very clear that this habitat is worthy to be fully protected and conserved. Partial protection and patchy exploitation resulted in the fragmentation of mangrove habitats, thus limiting their ability and lowering their efficiency in providing the many ecosystem services they naturally do.

Therefore, mangroves must be treated as a valuable inheritance. Here is a simple analogy: Being lucky, you inherit your great grandparents’ wealth in the form of high valued lands and properties. What would you do with these gifts? First, being smart, you would keep them as a fixed deposit or an insurance security for your kids and their kids to enjoy, as the value and benefits would surely increase with time.

Or secondly, being less smart, you dispose of and sell them piece by piece for some inconsiderable short term gains.

As a lucky nation, which option would Malaysia opt for?

Dr. A. Aldrie Amir is a Senior Lecturer and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He is also the coordinator of the Malaysian Mangrove Research Alliance and Network (MyMangrove)

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Indonesia: Hi-tech conservationists fight wildlife crime

Harry PEARL AFP Yahoo News 11 Mar 18;

From cutting-edge DNA barcoding to smartphone apps that can identify illegal wildlife sales, conservationists are turning to hi-tech tools in their battle against Indonesia's animal traffickers.

Spread across more than 17,000 islands, the Southeast Asian nation's dense tropical rainforests boast some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, from scaly pangolins to the endangered orangutan.

But that enormous array of flora and fauna means Indonesia is also on the frontline of an illicit global trade estimated to be worth as much as $23 billion a year -- a shadowy operation bringing some species to the brink of extinction.

To tackle the problem, conservationists have begun using a slew of new gadgets to protect the archipelago's rare and threatened wildlife.

"Without a doubt (technology) is probably one of the largest resources that will help the good guys get the bad guys," Matthew Pritchett, from anti-trafficking group Freeland Foundation, told AFP.

"The criminals that are behind the illegal wildlife trade are large organised syndicates that are extremely sophisticated."

To keep pace with these vast trafficking groups, activists are now deploying the kind of technology once reserved for combating drug cartels and crime lords.

For instance, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which works with Indonesian authorities to halt wildlife crime, uses similar computer software to map criminal networks and extract data from seized electronic devices.

- Hunting hotspots -

Conservation group International Animal Rescue Indonesia (IAR) is examining crime scene evidence with the help of DNA barcoding -- a taxonomic method that relies on short genetic sequences to identify species.

Tissue samples from confiscated animals can be cross-referenced with a database of stored genetic codes, helping to unambiguously differentiate between species and sub-species -- not all of which may be endangered.

For instance, IAR is building a barcode database for different species of slow loris, a cute but venomous primate being hunted to extinction for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

"If we have animals with a known origin and we have animals that appear, for example, in Jakarta, we can then compare the genetic samples," Christine Rattel, IAR programme advisor, told AFP.

"We can then track down the hunting hotspots and what the trading routes are."

Despite a raft of laws aimed at protecting Indonesia's wildlife, forest rangers and police are under-resourced and lack specialised scientific knowledge, experts say.

Detection is often left to NGOs that scan wildlife markets and social media for threatened species, carry out investigations in the field and then notify police.

"What a lot of people don't realise is that law enforcement officers are not biologists," Pritchett said.

"There might be some of them that specialise, but when it comes down to it we are talking about something like 25,000 to 30,000 species across the world that are protected from international trade."

- Few prosecutions -

This is a gap that the Freeland Foundation wanted to plug when it developed its smartphone identification app WildScan.

Law enforcement officials and members of the public can swipe and click through questions and photos to determine whether they have a protected species in front of them.

If it turns out they do, they can then photograph and report it to authorities across Southeast Asia using the app.

Pritchett said reports generated through the app -- which has a database of some 700 species and 2,000 photos -- have already resulted in authorities taking action in Indonesia and Thailand.

Still, despite the best efforts of conservationists and huge advances in technology, many experts believe the battle is being lost.

Outdated laws, scarce enforcement resources and low prosecution rates remain key challenges in halting the trade, according to a 2015 report by development agency USAID.

Above all, there is a lack of political will to tackle the lucrative black market, said Ian Singleton, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), which uses drones to keep track of orangutans and illegal forest clearing that threatens their habitat.

"Without government will, no amount of technology will ever change anything," he said.

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Indonesia: Sumatran tiger kills a man in Riau

Agence France-Presse Jakarta Post 11 Mar 18;

A Indonesian man has been mauled to death by a Sumatran tiger in a remote village, authorities said Sunday, the second deadly attack this year.

Yusri Effendi, 34, was found with fatal wounds to his neck by workmates and local villagers in Riau province on Sumatra island on Saturday evening, the local conservation agency said.

The victim was working on a building to lure the edible-nest swiftlet in Tanjung Simpang village when the tiger began lurking around the construction site.

Several hours after first seeing the big cat, Effendi and his three workmates -- thinking the coast was clear -- made a dash for safety, only to come face-to-face with the animal a short distance away.

Effendi's colleagues, who all survived the incident, told authorities they scattered to evade the animal, but the victim was not so lucky.

A search party found the victim unconscious at the edge of a river a short time later, authorities said.

"[When] they opened his clothes they saw a gaping wound on his neck," the Riau conservation agency said in a statement.

Human-animal conflicts are common across the vast Indonesian archipelago, especially in areas where the clearing of rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations is destroying animals' habitats and bringing them into closer contact with people.

Earlier this month, locals from Hatupangan village in North Sumatra disemboweled a Sumatran tiger and then hung the big cat from a ceiling after it attacked a pair of villagers.

Sumatran tigers are considered critically endangered by protection group the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with 400 to 500 remaining in the wild.

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Indonesia: 3-meter-high corpse flower blooms in Sinabung

Nurni Sulaiman The Jakarta Post 11 Mar 18;

A tall corpse flower, also known as titan arum, bloomed near Mount Sinabung in Tiga Nderket district in Karo regency, and attracted locals who came to look at the flower and take pictures. The last known occasion that such a flower bloomed in the area was in December 2016, locals said.

“People could come and see the flower closer because it could be reached by a motorcycle; even for a city car, it could be reached safely,” said local resident Sadrah Peranginangin.

In the past five years, locals noticed the plant had bloomed in the area at least five times, said Sarimin Purba, the secretary of Gunung Merlawan village.

On March 2, a local saw the flower, which at the time was only 1 meter high. Sadrah said over the weekend it had grown to about 3 m.

A visitor from Brastagi, Sugeng Nuryono, said besides looking at the flower, the 60 or so families living in the village nearby were also friendly and had interesting stories. “If you want to see the flower blooming, just coordinate with the local people,” said Sugeng.

It can take up to three years for the flower to grow from a seed to tall flower, which could reach up to 6 m in height. (evi)

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Mar 18

“Singapore got wildlife meh?”
ELSA@NUS Law

10-18 Mar: "Our Home, Their Home” at Seletar Mall
Sisters' Island Marine Park

17-18 Mar: FREE screening of 'Ubin Sayang' at Sentosa
wild shores of singapore

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Malaysia: Elephant calf takes casual stroll down Sabah road, surprising motorists

POLIANA RONNIE SIDOM New Straits Times 10 Mar 18;

TELUPID: Motorists along Jalan Telupid-Tongod here yesterday were pleasantly surprised to see an elephant calf wandering along the middle of the road.

It is believed that the baby elephant was somehow separated from its herd near the forested area between Kampung Gambaron and the Tawai forest reserve at 10am.

Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) director Augustine Tuuga said the calf was lost for about two hours, before being rescued by SWD staff who were present in the area to monitor wildlife.

The team eventually reunited the young elephant with its group nearby, Augustine said when contacted today.

Pictures and a video of the calf aimlessly strolling along the road have emerged on social media.

The video shows some motorists slowing down their cars while near the calf, as it playfully nudged several passing vehicles.

It was previously reported that at least 20 elephants from two herds have been regularly trespassing various human-inhabited areas here since early this year, including Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Telupid and the local police station.

As of two days ago, the SWD has translocated seven elephants from the area to the Deramakot and Imbak forest reserves.

On elephants still roaming near human settlements, Augustine said that the SWD field team will assess whether or not more of the pachyderms need to be captured and translocated.

“The (elephants) still seem to be trying to enter the villages, but have been stopped by our staff members in the area.

“The group of elephants is in and around the Tawai forest reserve at the moment,” he added.

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India lost 40% of its mangroves in the last century. And it’s putting communities at risk

Soumya Sarkar The Hindu 10 Mar 18;

The first line of defence against cyclones and rising seas, mangroves also succour coastal communities
The sight of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, straddling India and Bangladesh, is humbling. This biodiversity hotspot is home to 180 species of trees and plants growing within its marshy boundaries, the Gangetic dolphin, estuarine crocodiles, river terrapins, hawksbill turtles, horseshoe crabs and of course the iconic Bengal tiger.

The tides in this 10,000 sq.km. swamp are so dramatic that about a third of the land disappears and reappears every day. It has been happening for centuries, but the changes have become more extreme in the past few decades.

In this delta of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers, the sea is rising more dramatically than in other parts of the world, research shows. Known as the biggest carbon sink in South Asia, these mangrove forests are recognised as a world heritage site.

Environmental services

However, the story of the Sundarbans, which means ‘beautiful forest’ in Bengali, is not limited to its incredible variety of flora and fauna. There are as many as 4.5 million people in two countries — India and Bangladesh — who depend on this tidal forest for their survival.

The same holds true for the other mangrove forests along India’s 7,500 km coastline. Mangroves have long been taken for granted, and it’s time we changed that. They provide ecosystem services that were valued at $194,000 per hectare a year in a research 2014 paper published in Global Environmental Change.

Mangroves provide excellent nesting and breeding habitats for fish and shellfish, migratory birds and sea turtles, underlining their importance to coastal fishing communities. An estimated 80% of the global fish catch relies on mangrove forests either directly or indirectly, a 2008 paper in the Journal of Sea Research claims.

It is also often forgotten that mangroves form the first line of defence for coastal communities. After the December 2004 tsunami, there was a slew of global research on methods to devise some protection from such natural disasters.

Several scientists and economists concluded that mangrove forests would be the best biological barriers to soften the blow caused by tsunamis and cyclones. They found that mangroves stabilise shorelines by slowing erosion and provide natural barriers protecting coastal communities from increased storm surges, flooding and hurricanes.

We must remember that over a fifth of India’s population lives on the coast, and there are more than 20 big cities, including Mumbai, Chennai, Puducherry, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kochi, that are on the sea shore. These populations are clustered within 10 km of the coast. Robust mangrove forests can protect these areas, which are vulnerable both to sea level rise and to the more intense and frequent weather events caused by climate change.

Only in breach

Mangroves are also great carbon sinks. They isolate carbon at two to four times the rate of tropical forests like the Amazon and store three to five times more carbon per equivalent area than tropical forests.

One of the major obstacles to the growth of mangroves is rapid and largely unregulated coastal development. Although India has framed laws to protect its coastline, they are honoured mostly in the breach. For instance, Mumbai has less than 45 sq.km. of mangrove forests left. This is all that remains after almost 70% was lost to land reclamation and other developmental projects. India has lost 40% of its mangrove area in the last century, mainly due to agriculture, aquaculture, tourism, urban development and overexploitation, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science have found.

The State of Forest Report 2017, released last month by the Forest Survey of India, says that the mangrove cover in the country is increasing only marginally in the past two decades and now covers some 4,921 sq.km. It is clear that much more needs to be done.

We must ensure that we are not found lacking in providing more effective governance and better ways to rehabilitate degraded mangroves. We must also build awareness among local communities if we are to conserve, protect and restore these invaluable ecosystems.

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