Best of our wild blogs: 17 Nov 12

Sluggy on St. John's Island
from wild shores of singapore

REDD+ must consider biodiversity, forest livelihoods to have any chance of success from Mongabay.com news by Rhett Butler

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More areas come under PUB's Active Beautiful and Clean Waters programme

Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 12;

SINGAPORE: Three more vicinities are set to be transformed by next year under the PUB's Active Beautiful and Clean Waters programme.

Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said 20 different vicinities have already benefited from the programme which began in 2006.

The programme aims to transform canals and drains into streams and lakes, and serves as focal community points.

One of the projects that will be completed next year includes the Sungei Ulu Pandan project.

Mr Christopher De Souza, MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, said: "Would it be possible for the ministry to allow the residents and Sunset Way residents that fall within my ward to actually go very close to the water to learn about biodiversity, and to have river life extend to them proximately, and not just visually."

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan replied: "The whole idea of making it attractive and beautiful is to give access. The only caveat I would put is the issue of safety. So for instance if you would recall in the Bishan canal which was converted into a river because it's specially designed to be low-lying and people have access and can even walk across the river.

"However, during times of intense storms, the water can spread out very rapidly along the sides, that's why we've got various alarm systems and markings on the grounds in order to emphasise safety. We have to get a balance between access and public safety."

- CNA/de

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Australia creates world's largest marine reserves

Martin Parry AFP Yahoo News 16 Nov 12;

Australia Friday created the world's largest network of marine reserves, protecting a huge swathe of ocean environment despite claims it will devastate the fishing industry.

The announcement, after years of planning and consultation, will significantly expand the protection of creatures such as the blue whale, green turtle, critically endangered populations of grey nurse sharks, and dugongs.

The scale of the plan, which will cover more than 2.3 million square kilometres (890,000 square miles) in six marine regions, was first made public in June.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said of 80,000 submissions received, the vast majority supported the proposal.

"There are very few countries in the world that are as responsible for as much of the ocean as Australia is. And our oceans are under serious threat," he said.

"There are a range of actions that need to be taken to turn the corner on the health of our oceans. Establishing national parks in the ocean is a big part of that total picture."

Burke added that his decision was important for future generations.

"We need to appreciate that in the years to come we don't want people to only know the magnificence of their oceans through aquariums or by watching 'Finding Nemo'," he said, referring to the animated Disney film.

But fishermen are furious, claiming coastal communities would be ruined, thousands of jobs lost and the Aus$2 billion (US$2 billion) aquaculture industry seriously impacted.

The Australian Marine Alliance, which conducted a cost analysis, claimed 60 regional communities would be affected, 36,000 jobs lost and 70-80 trawler operators displaced, while the cost of seafood imports would soar.

Burke said he understood his decision would have an impact, but claimed it would only affect one percent of the commercial fishing industry nationally.

To compensate, he said businesses hurt by the changes would be able to access Aus$100 million in assistance.

"Even though the new marine reserves have been designed in a way to minimise impacts on industry and recreational users, the government recognises that there will be impacts on some fishers and we will support those impacted," he said.

The Commonwealth Fisheries Association criticised the amount of compensation on offer and Queensland's Fisheries Minister John McVeigh said the plan, which will lock up huge areas off the state's central and north coast, was "madness".

"The impact right across our fishing communities will be enormous," he said, warning of job losses.

"There will be a marked shift to imported seafood -- that will rape fragile reef and other marine environments overseas where there is no proper management."

While some limits will be placed on where energy companies can work, tracts of coast off Western Australia, where Shell and Woodside Petroleum recently won permits, will remain open to oil and gas exploration.

The Australian Conservation Foundation welcomed the initiative, saying it would "go down in Australian history as an economically and environmentally sustainable decision".

But the foundation's Paul Sinclair said more could still be done.

"Although the national marine reserve network is an achievement for Australians to celebrate, there is more work to be done to protect our coastal way of life," he said.

"While the reserve network bans oil and gas exploration in the Coral Sea and off Margaret River in Western Australia, protecting nearby beaches from oil spills, the northwest region, including the Kimberley coast, is still vulnerable."

Australia creates world's biggest marine parks
James Grubel PlanetArk 19 Nov 12;

Australia created the world's largest network of marine national parks on Friday, protecting an area of ocean the size of Western Europe in a move which will prevent oil and gas exploration and commercial fishing in the most sensitive areas.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said the decision would protect 2.3 million square kilometers (888,035 square miles) of ocean, including the tropical Coral Sea off the north Queensland coast and coral reefs off Australia's southwest, and help support endangered sea life.

"We don't want people to only know the magnificence of their oceans through aquariums or by watching 'Finding Nemo'," Burke told reporters.

The new reserves will be established from the Perth Canyon in the southwest to Kangaroo Island off the southern coast, and to the Coral Sea area which surrounds the Great Barrier Reef in the northeast.

The new marine reserves will limit commercial fishing and oil and gas exploration in the most sensitive areas, but won't prevent shipping, tourism or diving.

The decision has angered the commercial fishing industry, particularly from the northern Queensland state, while recreational fishing groups are also angered at the loss of access to some areas.

Burke said the new marine reserves would only affect around one percent of Australia's commercial fishing, and the government would spend A$100 million ($103.28 million) to compensate commercial fishers for the loss of access.

He said most recreational fishing would continue as normal, as the parks were hundreds of kilometers offshore and well out of range for recreational fishing.

But fishing supporters complained that they were being discriminated against.

"The government is discriminating against recreational fishers by allowing divers, tourist operators, container ships and even defense force activities into marine parks, but banning fishing families from catching a fish," recreational fishing foundation director Allan Hansard said.

Earlier this year, a United Nations report said Australia's world-famous Great Barrier Reef was under threat from industrial development and may be considered for listing as a world heritage site ?"in danger" within the next year.

($1 = 0.9683 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by James Grubel, editing by Elaine Lies)

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Best of our wild blogs: 16 Nov 12

Tiger on Terumbu Semakau
from wild shores of singapore

Random Gallery - Bigg's Brownie
from Butterflies of Singapore

rain, seagrass, a driftnet, 101 BBQ mesh squares and seacils @ labrador - 14Nov2012 from sgbeachbum

Great surprises on my first seagrass monitoring
from Peiyan.Photography

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Foam escape not a laughing matter

Straits Times Forum 16 Nov 12;

WHILE some may have found the 2km stretch of escaped foam in Choa Chu Kang amusing ("Fiery start, foamy end"; Wednesday), I thought it was alarming.

We should not take it lightly when 40 barrels of detergent- based concentrate, of 200-litre capacity each, send chemicals flowing into our waterway.

Chemical-based detergents contain several types of harmful chemicals such as phenols, phosphates, chlorine bleach, chemical fragrance, dioxane and sodium lauryl/laureth sulphate.

At high concentrations, they are not only environmentally harmful, but can also hurt people.

Although the article said the detergent is bio-degradable and water-soluble, these qualities do not make it safer.

The term bio-degradable is so widely used in marketing a product these days that it leads consumers to believe that anything bio-degradable is good.

Most people do not ask how long it takes for something to bio-degrade.

These are some unanswered questions pertaining to the foam escape:

What kind of detergent was it?

What were the chemicals and and their concentration levels?

Which was the company or factory responsible?

I also hope that no children were playing with the foam. Children, unlike adults, do not have the ability to detoxify toxins very effectively.

Roy Kee

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Most Ocean Species Remain Undiscovered

Tia Ghose LiveScience.com Yahoo News 15 Nov 12;

Up to a million species live in the seas, and two-thirds of those ocean-dwellers may still be undiscovered, according to a new study that also cataloged all of the known species that dwell beneath the waves.

The findings, published today (Nov. 15) in the journal Current Biology, suggest that the oceans remain a vast, uncharted territory. The new registry could help guide marine conservation efforts by giving scientists a universal way to describe the underwater creatures.

"If you want to understand life on Earth, then of course you need to know what life there is on Earth," said the study's lead author, Ward Appeltans, a member of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). "If you want to protect the ocean you need to know what you want to protect."

Appeltans began assembling a European list of sea life in 1999. In 2007, his team decided to expand the effort to encompass all of the world's marine species. [Images: Catalog of Strange Sea Creatures]

It was a massive undertaking. Appeltans and colleagues contacted more than 250 world experts on marine life to catalog all known species.

"When there's a child that's born you need to go to city hall and register the name of the baby, but when you create a new species the only thing you need to do is publish a paper in an official journal," Appeltans told OurAmazingPlanet.

As a result, many species names were duplicated.

"For every five species that were described, two were described before," he said.

So far, the team has cataloged 226,000 species, excluding marine bacteria. Another 65,000 are waiting to be described in museums and collections. By using a computer simulation, Appeltans and his team concluded that between 700,000 and 1 million species live in the sea.

Anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of sea life has not been discovered yet, by their estimate. Most of those hidden sea creatures are probably crustaceans, mollusks, worms and sea sponges, they said.

The new database, called the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), fulfills deep human curiosity, Appeltans said.

"It's in our nature that we want to know what exists on Earth," Appeltans said. "We want to know what's out there in our oceans."

But beyond human curiosity, an orderly system for categorizing marine life may also help scientists conserve endangered species or keep track of medicinal chemicals derived from ocean dwellers, he said.

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Seal cull will not revive Canada's cod stocks, say scientists

Open letter from marine scientists at Dalhousie University challenges claim that cull is needed to help fish stocks
Stephen Leahy guardian.co.uk 15 Nov 12;

Canada's multimillion dollar proposal to cull grey seals will not bring back the ravaged stocks of Atlantic cod it is intended to help, scientists have said.

In October, the Canadian Senate approved a controversial plan to kill 70,000 grey seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence under a bounty system next year, ostensibly to revive the cod stocks that the seals were eating.

But a group of marine scientists at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have said in a recent open letter: "There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest a cull of grey seals in Atlantic Canada would help depleted fish stocks recover.

"Seals are being used as a scapegoat, just like whales were once blamed for fishery declines," said Hal Whitehead, marine biologist at Dalhousie, told the Guardian. He called the proposed cull an abuse of the science. "I don't like the idea of slaughtering all these animals for no reason."

Canada's Atlantic cod stocks, once estimated at 1.5-2.5 billion fish of reproductive age, collapsed in the early 1990s from overfishing. Despite a nearly total ban on cod fishing for the past 20 years, stocks have not recovered.

That's not the case for grey seals. Similarly depleted by hunting, numbers stood at just a few thousand in the 1970s. Following the collapse of markets for seal fur, mainly due to bans by European countries, their numbers increased dramatically. Grey seals are now estimated at 300,000 to 400,000.

Canada's standing Senate committee on fisheries and oceans report declared last month that since there are more seals, and seals eat fish, they are "an important cause" in the lack of recovery of Atlantic cod, as well other groundfish like American plaice, winter skate and white hake.

The committee, after looking at reports by fishermen and the Department Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) studies estimating that cod represents 1-7% of seal diets, said it was "convinced" that predation by seals was a major reason cod stocks had not recovered.

The cull request was currently being reviewed, said a DFO spokeswoman. That seals are a factor in the lack of cod and groundfish recovery was "a logical conclusion given that an individual grey seals eat between 1 and 2 tonnes of fish every year", she told the Guardian.

But Sara Iverson, a researcher in physiological ecology at Dalhousie University, said cod madke up a very small part of the grey seal's diet. Iverson, who has studied their diets for 17 years, said they prefer fatty fish, while cod are lean with only 1% body fat.

There are all kinds of reasons why the cod have not bounced back, Whitehead said, adding that there has never been a complete ban with some local fisheries continuing, and there is a problem of bycatch.

However he said the leading theory amongst scientists was a species shift. When an abundant species like the cod suddenly declines, other species step into their ecological niche. "Northern shrimp have taken over and are now the big fishery in the region," he said.

John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, described the bounty system of payment to seal hunters a "nothing more than a subsidy for a dead industry

"The money could be put to better use by buying out sealing licences and creating sustainable employment for the sealers."

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U.S. drought persists despite rain; wheat struggles

Carey Gillam PlanetArk 16 Nov 12;

A storm system that brought cold, wet weather to much of the United States last week helped ease drought in many states, but some areas that were most in need of moisture were missed, according to a climatology report issued on Thursday.

The U.S. High Plains, which includes key farm states of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas, saw slight improvement last week due to good precipitation. But three quarters of both Kansas and Nebraska continued to suffer from extreme or exceptional drought.

In South Dakota, extreme or worse drought still covers nearly 55 percent of the state.

Roughly 58.83 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least "moderate" drought as of November 13, down from 59.48 percent a week earlier, according to Thursday's Drought Monitor, a weekly compilation of data gathered by federal and academic scientists.

The portion of the contiguous United States under "extreme" or "exceptional" drought - the two most dire classifications - improved to 18.30 percent from 19.36 percent.

The persistent drought has hindered growth of the new winter wheat crop in many U.S. Plains states. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week that wheat in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana has shown very poor emergence and is well behind the average pace.

Texas and Oklahoma, also key wheat growing states, continued to struggle with drought.

Overall, the new winter wheat crop is rated 36 percent good to excellent, below last year's rating at this time of 50 percent. Kansas wheat is rated 21 percent poor to very poor.

Wheat in Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, and Oklahoma is struggling with more than 30 percent of it in each of those states rated poor to very poor, according to USDA.

In Texas, the drought deepened as the state was largely missed by the rain storms that swept through the Plains and Midwest. In contrast, most of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and western Tennessee measured widespread "decent" precipitation, according to the Drought Monitor.

(Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

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Best of our wild blogs: 15 Nov 12

Surprises on Labrador
from wild shores of singapore

Volunteer opportunities as Field Assistants for Honours Field Projects. Dec 2012 – Mar 2013 from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

Orthoptera in the Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserves (Part 2): Suborder Ensifera from Raffles Museum News

Escaped the rain with special finds at Semakau
from wonderful creation

osprey @ SBWR - Nov2012
from sgbeachbum

Plant-Bird Relationship: 12. Agavaceae, Amaranthaceae, Araceae, Araliaceae and Avicenniaceae from Bird Ecology Study Group

Job: P/T Outreach Coordinator, “Mapping Nature, Mapping Memories In Tanglin Halt” (immediate) from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

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Mangroves under threat from shrimp farms - UN

* Intact mangroves worth more than fish farms
* Mangroves support sealife, slow climate change
* Around a fifth of mangroves lost since 1980
Alister Doyle Reuters 14 Nov 12;

OSLO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Valuable mangrove forests that protect coastlines, sustain sealife and help slow climate change are being wrecked by the spread of shrimp and fish farms, a U.N.-backed study showed on Wednesday.

About a fifth of mangroves worldwide have been lost since 1980, mostly because of clearance to make way for the farms which often get choked with waste, antibiotics and fertilisers, according to the study.

Intact mangroves were almost always more valuable than shrimp farms, said its authors, who drew on forestry and conservation expertise from several U.N. organisations.

Mangroves - trees and shrubs that grow in salty coastal sediment - can be found in 123 nations in the tropics and sub-tropics and cover an area slightly larger than Nepal. They are nurseries for wild fish stocks, sources of wood for building and serve as buffers to storm surges.

They absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning of fossil fuels, and store it in their roots. And their growth can help counteract the effects of rising sea levels as it elevates coastlines.

"There is an opportunity for many countries to go for restoration of mangroves," Hanneke Van Lavieren, lead author of the study at the U.N. University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNWEH), told Reuters.

"Mangroves can be seen as a key ecosystem for food security in the world," she said.

VALUABLE RESOURCE

Many of the shrimp farms are in southeast Asian nations. World production surged to about 2.8 million tonnes in 2008 from about 500,000 two decades earlier, mostly in China, Thailand and Indonesia.

The fish farmers are often encouraged by subsidies to expand, even though other lucrative businesses depend on mangroves for their own survival.

Wild prawns caught off Australia's Northern Territories and Queensland, for instance, rely on mangroves to grow and are one of the country's most valuable fisheries, earning almost $72 million a year, the report said.

Protecting almost 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of mangroves in Vietnam cost about $1 million but saved more than $7 million on dyke maintenance, it said.

Countries such as Australia and Brazil had been good at preserving their mangroves while nations including Indonesia, China and Vietnam had lost big tracts and projects to restore them needed more support.

Zafar Adeel, head of UNWEH, suggested that people could also choose to avoid buying shrimps raised in farms.

"We as consumers internationally play a big role," he said. "For the first time in human history about half the global population is living in coastal areas. The stresses are going to be higher." (Reporting By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Indonesia: Banks and funds put on notice on Asia Pulp and Paper deforestation

Banks and funds put on notice on Sumatra pulp mill investment risk
WWF 14 Nov 12;

Banks and other financial institutions have been asked for assurances they will not provide investment support to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) plans for additional pulping capacity in already massively deforested Sumatra.

A letter to financial institutions, signed by 60 environmental and social non-governmental organisations, highlights that APP’s record on keeping promises to investors is as bad as its record on keeping to a series of commitments to abandon its assault on native forests housing critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants.

“We believe that potential investors should be as concerned with APPs practices as the major companies no longer buying paper and packaging materials from the company,” said WWF International Forest Programme director Rod Taylor.

“If potential reputational risk is not enough, alarm bells should ring over the company’s default on nearly $US14 billion of debt in 2001 and the company’s current conduct in US courts over meeting obligations to some of its former investors.”

APP’s new mill would produce between 1.5 and 2.0 million tonnes per year of bleached hardwood pulp, making it the largest single pulp line in the world. Respected Sumatra NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest has estimated that APP and supplier companies have already pulped more than two million hectares of natural rainforests in Riau province Sumatra alone.

The letter highlights APP's failures to honor environmental covenants given during restructuring of some of its debt and to the continuing loss of major customers (such as Disney, Hasbro, Mattel, Unilever, Nestle, Danone, Xerox, Mondi) as a result of concerns about its deforestation practices, community conflict and business and reputational risks to buyers.

“Indonesia is a potentially promising place to conduct investment in pulp and paper, with its humid climate and year-long sunlight which enables pulp wood to mature much quicker compared to subtropical countries, unfortunately this is being brought into disrepute by the destructive practises of APP which continues to rely on natural forest clearing for its pulp supply,” said WWF Indonesia’s Conservation Director, Nazir Foead.

The letter to banks and other financial institutions

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Vietnam may evict bears from 'protected' park land

Mike Ives Associated Press Google News 14 Nov 12;

TAM DAO, Vietnam (AP) — Bears, some of them blinded or maimed, play behind tall green fences like children at school recess. Rescued from Asia's bear bile trade, they were brought to live in this lush national park, but now they may need saving once more.

The future of the bears' sanctuary has been in doubt since July, when a vice defense minister ordered the nonprofit group operating the $2 million center not to expand further and to find another location. U.S. politicians and officials in other countries are among those urging the military to back off.

The defense official wrote, without elaborating, that the Chat Dau Valley is of strategic military interest, but environmentalists allege that vested interests have urged an eviction. They point to documents showing that the daughter of the park's director is involved in a proposed ecotourism venture that wants to lease park land.

Conservation groups say the dispute in Tam Dao National Park is emblematic of conflicts brewing across Vietnam's protected areas. When developers want the land, they say, environmental safeguards disappear.

Vietnamese laws adhere to international environmental standards, but in practice are "minor considerations" in land-use and infrastructure-planning decisions, the World Bank said in a report last year.

Vietnam is among the most biologically diverse countries on earth, comprising less than 1 percent of the world's land but about 10 percent of its species. But the report noted that its protected areas are suffering from deforestation and habitat loss.

"It doesn't matter if the forests are protected by law or not," said Trinh Le Nguyen, executive director of People and Nature Reconciliation, one of Vietnam's few locally based conservation groups. If officials and community groups are not vocal enough, "then the private sector will try (to get) wealthier and wealthier."

Conservationists cite the example of northern Ba Be National Park, where pollution from ore mining is said to threaten a freshwater lake that has received accolades from an international environmental convention. Scientists and hundreds of residents have protested that the pollution is causing the lake's water quality to deteriorate, state media reported last year. A local Communist Party official also has called for a probe into what the state-run Vietnam News Agency calls "rampant deforestation" by loggers inside the park.

Elsewhere, a proposal to develop two hydropower plants in Cat Tien National Park in the south has triggered opposition because the dams would inundate forests.

"It took generations to establish and maintain our national parks," said former park director Tran Van Thanh, who is calling for the proposal to be scrapped. "It would be a waste if we have to surrender parts of our forests for economic development."

Vietnam first established protected lands in the 1960s, and the network has grown to include 30 national parks and scores of other protected areas spanning forests and wetlands. But experts say local development agendas often trump larger conservation goals as officials sell off protected territory for mines, hydropower dams and infrastructure or real estate projects.

Tensions between conservation and development have only increased over the last decade in Vietnam. Land developers have become wealthy, powerful and ambitious on the back of rapid economic growth. Protected areas are typically under the control of local officials, who receive little funding for conservation and view the areas as potential sources of revenue.

"Vietnam is at a real crossroads where it has to make some hard decisions about whether or not it values biodiversity conservation," said Pamela McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University who conducts research in Vietnam's protected areas. "The majority of folks working in the protected-area system are genuinely dedicated ... but they're facing really powerful interests."

Vietnam's poor enforcement of environmental laws is adding to international criticism of its ruling Communist Party, which is castigated for its human rights record and its handling of a sagging economy.

Ten conservation groups, several foreign embassies and U.S. politicians have written to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in recent weeks urging him to not close the Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre, which lies 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of the capital, Hanoi.

They were alarmed by Vice Defense Minister Do Ba Ty's July letter to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. He directed the center not to expand further and to find an alternate site in partnership with local officials. He wrote that the Chat Dau Valley is of "strategic importance to national defense."

"The expansion of the bear rescue center in this valley will have direct impact on military projects," the letter said, according to a copy given to the Associated Press by the sanctuary's nonprofit operator, Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Foundation. The letter did not explain why the land was of strategic importance.

Seven Democratic U.S. representatives urged Dung to protect the sanctuary in a Nov. 5 letter. "The claim that the land is an area of national defense significance is questionable," they said, noting that the bear center has operated since 2005 and the park has welcomed tourism since 1996. The lead signer was Rep. Sam Farr of California.

Animals Asia says an eviction would leave 104 rescued bears homeless and waste its $2 million investment, which was funded entirely by international foundations, corporations and private donors. It says after an initial trial period, the prime minister in 2008 approved its plan to build facilities on about 11 hectares (27 acres) inside the roughly 39,000-hectare park, and that the center has so far expanded to half those 11 hectares.

The group rescued bears that were being used to produce bear bile, which has historically been used in China and other Asian countries to treat fevers, pain, inflammation and other ailments. Bears are typically captured in forests and transported to farms, where the green bile is sucked from their gall bladders in a painful process that sometimes kills them.

In recent weeks, Animals Asia has waged a public relations campaign alleging park director Do Dinh Tien has a personal stake in an ecotourism venture proposed for the park by the Hanoi company Truong Giang Group.

Animals Asia's Vietnam director, Tuan Bendixsen, said he believes the ecotourism project would be built on the undeveloped half of the bear center's 11 hectares. Documents show the company in March sent a team of surveyors to evaluate that parcel and other park land for development.

"He wants to take half the land, and he can't get it, and that's why he's creating all this trouble for us," Bendixsen said of the park director.

In September 2011, Do Dinh Tien asked the agriculture ministry to approve separate plans by three companies, including Truong Giang, to develop ecotourism in Tam Dao's national park, according to documents given to the AP.

Documents show that days earlier, Truong Giang had asked Tien for permission to lease 48 hectares of land in Tam Dao for an "ecological tourism and entertainment project." Truong Giang's registration papers list Tien's daughter, Do Thi Ngan, as one of its four shareholders.

Ngan and officials at the agriculture and defense ministries declined to comment.

In an interview, Tien declined to discuss his daughter's relationship to the company, saying he has not yet discussed the matter with her. But he insisted he has never lobbied for the company's interests.

"From my perspective, the bear center can go ahead if it follows procedures," Tien said recently at park headquarters. "But I can't speak for the Ministry of Defense."

State media say the agriculture ministry is working with the central government to resolve the dispute. The prime minister has final say over the bear center's fate.

National Assembly Deputy Duong Trung Quoc was quoted by online newspaper Vietnamnet Wednesday as saying evicting the bear center could anger the international community.

"It would do harm to our country's image," he said.

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