Proyecto Asis - Conservation Programs

2010-01-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

Measuring at 14 centimeters (5.5 inches), a new spider discovered in the sand dunes of Israel is the largest of its kind in all of the Middle East. How it avoided detection until now in one of the world' longest inhabited—and explored—regions is likely due, at least in part, to the species' entire habitat consisting of only three square kilometers.

Dwelling in the Sands of Samar in the southern Arava region of Israel, the spider, called Cerbalus aravensis, is already greatly endangered due to development plans. Rezoning for agriculture and sand quarries has already reduced the spiders' dunes by more than half: from seven square kilometers to three.

"The discovery of this new spider illustrates our obligation to preserve the dune," says Dr. Shanas from the University of Haifa, who headed the team of scientists.

The habitat is under direct threat as the Israel Land Administration is moving ahead to renew mining projects in the Sands of Samar. Shanas says that the spider may not be the only species hiding from science for millennia among the dunes and that they should be preserved for their biological richness.

"The new discovery shows how much we still have to investigate, and that there are likely to be many more species that are unknown to us. If we do not preserve the few habitats that remain for these species, they will become extinct before we can even discover them," Dr. Shanas concludes.

Little is known about the spider's biology, but researchers say it is nocturnal and active during the hottest months. The species lives in an underground den covered over by a door of glued together sand particles.

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

2010-01-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

Balikpapan Bay in East Kalimantan is home to an incredible variety of ecosystems: in the shallow bay waters endangered dugong feed on sea grasses and salt water crocodiles sleep; along the bay proboscis monkeys leap among mangroves thirty meters tall and Irrawaddy dolphins roam; beyond the mangroves lies the Sungai Wain Protection forest; here, the Sunda clouded leopard hunts, sun bears climb into the canopy searching for fruits and nuts, and a reintroduced population of orangutans makes their nests; but this wilderness, along with all of its myriad inhabitants, are threatened by a plan to build a bridge and road connecting the towns of Penajam and Balikpapan.

The bridge, known as Pulau Balang, would span the bay, splicing through Balang Island, cutting off the mangroves from the rainforest, and running the entire length of the western edge of the protected forest. While the direct impacts would be severe—deforestation for the road, splitting the mangrove from the rainforest, damage to the reef—researchers say that providing people easy access to the mangrove and forests will inevitably destroy them.

"The most serious threats are the indirect ones, notably opening an uncontrollable access to the whole area," Stanislav Lhota, a primatologist with the University of South Bohemia, told mongabay.com.

Map showing proposed road and bridge and shorter alternative (larger image at the end of the article). Image courtesy of Stanislav Lhota.

The project "will open access for settlements, farming, illegal logging, more land speculation, subsequent forest fires, poaching of wildlife, illegal logging. In effect it will cause the destruction of the mangrove area and all wildlife there, but also (slow but certain) destruction of the western side of the Sungai Wain forest," Dr. Gabriella Fredriksson says. Fredriksson, an expert on sun bears, has worked on managing and conserving the Sungai Wain Protection Forest for over a decade.

"The destruction of the mangroves will also impact the fragile marine wildlife in the [Balikpapan] bay and fisheries due to destruction of fish breeding areas," adds Dr. Danielle Kreb of the local NGO RASI, who has studied the marine mammals in Balikpapan Bay for several years and noticed that the Irrawaddy dolphins’ core habitat is in the vicinity of Pulau Balang.

Despite the clear environmental impact outlined by conservationists, the provincial and federal governments support the project. Local governments, however, have signalled over the past couple months that they oppose the project, especially since there is an alternative plan that would threaten none of the ecosystems, and in addition provide a far shorter route between Penajam to Balikpapan.

A lost wilderness?

Sungai Wain protected forest. Photo by: Marian Bartos.

If the Pulau Bridge project goes ahead, Balikpapan Bay will be forever changed. The already shallow bay will face erosion and sedimentation from construction work on the surrounding hills, making the bay less accessible for large boats and leading to more frequent flooding of the coastal villages. Species in the bay, such as dugongs, crocodiles, and green sea turtles—already affected by sedimentation—would likely face further impacts from pollution.

The mangroves—an ecosystem that has faced heavy losses worldwide—would be severely impacted as well. The green corridors allowing species to move between the mangrove ecosystem and the Sungai Wain protection forest will be altogether broken.

"Fauna such as proboscis monkeys and many other species cannot survive in long term in mangroves alone," Lhota explains. "They need regular access to the neighboring forest where they find numerous key resources. Mangroves alone are rather inhospitable environment with only limited food sources. If they are isolated from other forests, they may apparently survive but they will gradually turn into a lifeless stand of Rhizophora trees."

The eventual loss of the mangroves also threatens the local fishing trade since fish require the mangrove forest for breeding: the mangrove stand in question is the last place for fish in the bay to breed.

"East Kalimantan only has a small mangrove area left, because much of the mangrove area [has] already [been] converted to shrimp ponds and industry. And on Balikpapan, [this] is [the] last mangrove forest," says Ade Fadli of BEBSiC, a local conservation group.

The road connecting the bridge to Balikpapan would next pass along the western edge of the Sungai Wain forest reserve, the last major stand of dipterocarp trees along the south and central coast. While the direct impact of road building to the forest reserve would likely be minimal, the road would open the reserve to "illegal logging, land clearance, and above all, forest fires," according to Lhota.

Fire is the most significant threat to the forest. While tropical forests rarely burn under natural conditions, human impacts in Indonesia has left a scar of burning across Kalimantan. Sungai Wain contains the last unburnt primary forest in the area; in 1998 devastating fires spilled across the region, but only burnt a part of Sungai Wain.

"The [Sungai Wain] forest, which was burned only once, regenerates well but becomes highly prone to subsequent fires due to the decrease in humidity and huge quantities of highly flammable dead wood," Lhota explains. "If it burns a second time, it can no longer regenerate easily. With the current tendency of governments to consider such forest as 'lost forever', it is likely to be doomed to further encroachment and conversion."

Home to over 100 mammal species and over 250 bird species, the loss of the forest would devastate tropical species, including a population of reintroduced orangutans.

In addition, the forest is as a catchment source of clean water for the state-owned oil company Pertamina, and the Kariangau Baru industrial area. The loss of the forest would endanger the water needs of these industries, which uses it for cooling in refineries and drinking for employees.

The Sungai Wain forest "is the last watershed covered with forest and hence supplying freshwater on an ongoing basis. The water from this reserve has been used for the oil industry and its workers/households (which make up almost 20 percent of the population in Balikpapan) since 1945," Fredriksson explains.

According to Lhota, Balikpapan Bay has huge ecotourism and education potential which has largely gone untapped.

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

Gone: a look at extinction over the past decade

2010-01-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

Amphibian Armageddon: The past few decades have been particularly perilous for amphibians. Devastated by a still-mysterious disease, the chytrid fungus, and hit by climate change, habitat loss, and pollution, the particularly-sensitive family of amphibians is in the midst of an extinction crisis.

The Kihansi spray toads mating in captivity. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.

The Kihansi spray toad vanished from its home in the middle of the decade. Living adjacent to a waterfall and gorge in Tanzania, the toad survived on only two hectares of land, but when the World Bank built a dam in the area, the flow of the waterfall was changed and the toad could no longer thrive in the altered habitat. Surveys found fewer and fewer toads until they found none.

Like many amphibians that vanish from the wild, a population of Kihansi spray toads still survives in captivity in the United States. Reintroduction would only be possible if their native habitat can be made to support the toads again.

The Panamanian golden frog—a beautiful black and gold species—also likely vanished from the wild during the last years of the decade. A national symbol in Panama, the frog was devastated by the chytrid fungus and habitat destruction. Like the Kihansi spray toad, the Panamanian golden frog survives in captivity, but its future is hardly secure.

These are but a small representation: researchers estimate that more than 120 species of amphibians have likely gone extinct since 1980. With climate change scenarios growing increasingly dire, rampant deforestation, continuing pollution, and no cure yet to the chytrid fungus, it's unlikely the 2010s will be any better for amphibians.

The Panamanian golden frog with green infant. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.

The Vanished Forgotten: While extinctions of mammals, birds, and amphibians garner the most media attention (in that order), invertebrates and plants are vanishing just as frequently.

Sometime between the end of the 1990s and during the beginning of this decade, the last Aldabra banded snail succumbed to desiccation. Little-known, this snail was endemic to the Aldabra atoll. Since the snail hibernates during dry periods, less rainfall over the Aldabra atoll due to global warming likely spelled its doom.

Another invertebrate lost to climate change is the European land leech. A survey between 2000-2005 found only a single living European land leech. The researchers believe that a rise of 3 degrees Celsius during the summertime has doomed the leech, which is adapted specifically to the cold.

Climate-sensitive species from polar bears to pikas to frogs to coral reefs are facing an uphill battle to survive in our warmer world. Extinctions due to climate change will likely become even more common in the next decade.

Illustration of the St. Helena olive. Drawing by: John Charles Meliss (1875).

Invertebrates are not the only little-known and often overlooked species. Plant extinctions—or discoveries for that matter—rarely make the news. In December 2003, the last St. Helena olive died in captivity. Prior to this, the species had vanished from the wild in 1994.

Endemic to St. Helena Island, the St. Helena olive perished from deforestation and the introduction of alien species like goats. No one knows how many plants have vanished during 2000-2009, but with high rates of rainforest destruction in many nations, it is likely that a large number of plants—many unknown to science—were lost in the last ten years.

Goodbye and maybe hope?: The last known wild Spix's macaw disappeared from Brazil in 2000. This beautiful macaw was battered by habitat loss and trapping for the pet trade. It is possible some wild macaws still remain, but more surveys are necessary. Still, even if no wild Spix's macaws remain, the species has a chance.

A small population of Spix's macaws survive in captivity and there has been recent success at reproduction, especially at Al Wabra Wildlife Preserve which has bred 21 birds since 2004. In addition, Al Wabra has purchased Spix's macaw habitat in Brazil for possible future reintroduction.

Spix's Macaw probably has the most hope of surviving the next ten years of any of these twelve. For the unfortunate others, this decade was their last stand.

List of (likely) extinct species, 2000-2009:

Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer)
Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius)
'Alala (Corvus hawaiiensis)
Poo-uli (Melamprosops phaeosoma)
Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica)
Western black rhinocerous (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica)
Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis)
Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki)
Aldabra banded snail (Rachistia aldabrae)
The European land leech (Xerobdella lecomtei)

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

Ten beloved species threatened by global warming

2009-12-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has released a list of ten species that are likely to be among the hardest hit by climate change, including beloved species such as the leatherback sea turtle, the koala, the emperor penguin, the clownfish, and the beluga whale. The timing of the list coincides with the negotiations by world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference to come up with an international agreement to combat climate change.

"Humans are not the only ones whose fate is at stake here in Copenhagen – some of our favourite species are also taking the fall for our CO2 emissions," report co-author Wendy Foden said in a press release. "This report should act as a wake-up call to governments to make real commitments to cut CO2 emissions if we are to avoid a drastically changed natural world. We simply don’t have the time for drawn-out political wrangling. We need strong commitments and we need them now."

The report also highlights the plight of the staghorn coral, salmon, ringed seal, arctic fox, and the quiver tree. The report doesn't include the polar bear since most people are already aware of the threat climate change poses to the world's largest bear.

The ringed-seal. Photo by: Kit M. Kovacs and Christian Lydersen.

Much like the polar bear, the ringed seal is threatened by ice melt in the Arctic. Ringed seals require ice for breeding and rearing young. In the spring they need at least six weeks of stable ice in the spring to milk their newborn cubs.

Below the ice, beluga whales are seen as indirectly threatened by warmer seas. A warmer Arctic is likely to bring more humans and more ships which will negatively impact the beluga whale through noise, pollution, and collisions with ships. Global warming could also bring the beluga whale in greater contact with its natural hunter, the killer whale. Beluga whales are currently listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List.

Also in the Arctic, climate change is putting pressure on Arctic fox. With warming temperatures the fox's tundra habitat is being invaded by new plants, eventually the tundra could be replaced by boreal forests, putting the Arctic fox in direct competition with its larger cousin, the red fox, with drastic consequence, since there is evidence of the red fox killing both young and adult Arctic foxes.

On the other end of the world, in the frigid Antarctic, emperor penguins are threatened by the loss of stable sea ice platforms for young chicks and moulting adults. A rise in 2 degrees Celsius would likely impact 40 percent of emperor penguin's total population. Conservationists also fear that the penguin's food source, Antarctic krill, will be diminished by warmer temperatures.

The clownfish. Photo courtesy of the IUCN.

North of the Antarctic, on the endemic-rich continent of Australia, koalas are also suffering from the heat. Rising CO2 levels have caused Eucalyptus leaves, the koala's only food, to decline in nutrients. Increased incidences of bushfires and droughts are also likely to hurt koala populations.

Ocean species are hardly immune from climate change. Corals, such as staghorn corals, are particularly susceptible. Rising temperatures are known to cause a phenomenon of coral bleaching, which can lead to increased propensity incidence of disease and even mass-mortality in coral reefs. In addition, ocean acidification, caused by higher concentrations of CO2 in the ocean, can weaken coral skeletons.

Bright orange with white-stripes, the ocean's famous clownfish are threatened by the widespread coral reef decline. Dependent on the sea-anemones which are found in biodiversity-rich coral reefs, clownfish would likely not survive in a world without anemones. In addition, ocean acidification has been shown to upset clownfish's ability to navigate, especially among juveniles.

The Arctic fox. Photo by: Örvar Atli Þorgeirsson.

The world's largest marine turtle is also threatened by climate change. Since the leatherback marine turtle's sex is determined by the temperature of the sand in which their mothers' lay the eggs, warmer temperatures are likely to increase the number of male leatherback turtles, upsetting the natural balance. Rising sea levels may also wash away important—and increasingly rare—nesting beach for the turtle. The leatherback is already listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List.

Salmon's ability to move from the ocean to freshwater rivers en masse has made them sensitive to even small environmental changes, let alone massive habitat upheaval from global warming. Warmer temperatures in the ocean and in freshwater ecosystems may upset the important timing of the salmon's migration, as well, warm freshwater can act as a barrier to migrating salmon, forcing them to migrate further and expend more energy. Less snow in the winter may also decrease the flow of important salmon rivers.

Even desert species are feeling the heat. Although the quiver tree inhabits some of the Africa's driest and hottest habitats, it is threatened by increasing drought. This large, slow-growing tree is undergoing sever drought-stress in parts of its range. Conservationists fear that the trees in the drought zones will not be able to migrate to other ranges, leaving remaining populations genetically deficient.

"Ordinary people are not powerless to stop these tragic losses," Simon Stuart, Chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission, said in a press release. "They can cut down on their own CO2 emissions and voice their support for strong action by their Governments to change the dire climate prognosis we are currently facing."

Beluga whale. Photo by: Bill Liao.

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

Changing drivers of deforestation provide new opportunities for conservation

2009-12-16T12:31:00.000-08:00

Tropical deforestation claimed roughly 13 million hectares of forest per year during the first half of this decade, about the same rate of loss as the 1990s. But while the overall numbers have remained relatively constant, they mask a transition of great significance: a shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation and geographic consolidation of where deforestation occurs. These changes have important implications for efforts to protect the world's remaining tropical forests in that environmental lobby groups now have identifiable targets that may be more responsive to pressure on environmental concerns than tens of millions of impoverished rural farmers. In other words, activists have more leverage than ever to impact corporate behavior as it relates to deforestation.

According to research by Tom Rudel of Rutgers University, from the 1960s through the 1980s, a large proportion of deforestation was the result of government policies promoting rural development, including agricultural loans and road construction. These initiatives, particularly in Brazil and Indonesia, drove large-scale deforestation by small landholders. Today, economic stability, an increasingly global financial market, and a worldwide commodity boom are conspiring to create a ripe environment for development by the private sector. While centrally planned development projects and poverty alleviation programs were once the engines of road construction and colonization schemes, the political impetus today for large infrastructure projects comes from industry interests seeking to facilitate access to international markets. Surging demand for grain, driven by the thirst for biofuels and rising standards of living in developing countries, are fueling the trend.

Since the 1990s deforestation has become increasingly concentrated. Recently published research by Matt Hansen of South Dakota State University suggests an even more dramatic shift in recent years. His work, which is based off of high resolution satellite imagery, shows that Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 61 percent of tropical deforestation between 2000 and 2005, rather than the 43 percent reported by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Although many are dismayed by what they see as greater capacity to destroy forests, the recent shift from poverty-driven deforestation to industry-driven deforestation may offer new opportunities for rainforest conservation in that it is easier for pressure groups to target corporations and enterprises rather than tens of millions of poor farmers who are simply trying to put food on the table for their families.

A good example can be seen in Greenpeace's Slaughtering the Amazon report released this past June. The report linked some of the world's most prominent brands — Nike, Toyota, Prada, and others — to destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The fallout from the report was immediate. Some of the world's largest beef and leather buyers suspended contracts with suppliers associated with Amazon forest clearing. The Brazilian government announced a crackdown and fines, raided the offices of powerful cattle companies, and called for a review of loan programs. Government ministers joined the private sector in demanding new chain-of-custody controls for suppliers to ensure that cattle products were not contributing to deforestation. The largest cattle producers and traders soon responded with a moratorium on Amazon deforestation and a promise to implement improved supply-chain tracking mechanisms. The Brazilian cattle industry may now be on the cusp of transitioning from being the world's largest single driver of deforestation to a critical component in helping slow climate change.

To be effective, green NGOs should be careful to avoid "blackwashing" or using the same tactics corporations use to blatantly misrepresent environmental realities. Lying to the public undermines the credibility of activist groups and undermines support for protecting the environment, doing long-term damage to the cause.

But while the shift in Brazil and some other parts of the world would seem to herald a shift towards greater concern over environmental performance among the largest drivers of deforestation, difficulties remain. Some markets — notably India and China but even in the U.S. and Europe in some cases — there is less consumer preference for environmentally-friendly goods. Further, "greenwashing," or the misrepresentation of the environmental qualities of a product, also presents challenges for efforts to meaningfully reduce industry's impact on the planet. Finally, industrial activities can often create a strong economic impetus for infrastructure development that further promotes forest clearing.

However an emerging emphasis on the values that ecosystems afford humanity may take some pressure off forests by creating opportunities for corporations to profit from protecting — rather than destroying — wildlands. For example, the proposed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism could provide incentives for traditional forest destroyers to embrace forests as valuable assets. The net result could be enterprise-driven preservation of wild lands. Of course, the key to the success of this effort is ensuring that rural populations and forest dwellers share in the proceeds. Without their partnership, deforestation is not going to disappear.

For a more nuanced discussion of this concept, take a look at New strategies for conserving tropical forests, a paper I wrote with Dr. William Laurance last year.

Taken from:
mongabay.com

FORCES BEHIND FOREST LOSS

2009-12-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

As the first seven sections of this site have described, tropical rainforests are incredibly rich ecosystems that play a fundamental role in the basic functioning of the planet. Rainforests are home to probably 50 percent of the world's species, making them an extensive library of biological and genetic resources. In addition, rainforests help maintain the climate by regulating atmospheric gases and stabilizing rainfall, protect against desertification, and provide numerous other ecological functions.

However, these precious systems are among the most threatened on the planet. Although the precise area is debated, each day at least 80,000 acres (32,300 ha) of forest disappear from Earth. At least another 80,000 acres (32,300 ha) of forest are degraded. Along with them, the planet loses as many as several hundred species to extinction, the vast majority of which have never been documented by science. As these forests fall, more carbon is added to the atmosphere, climactic conditions are further altered, and more topsoil is lost to erosion.

Despite increased awareness of the importance of these forests, deforestation rates have not slowed. Analysis of figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) shows that tropical deforestation rates increased 8.5 percent from 2000-2005 when compared with the 1990s, while loss of primary forests may have expanded by 25 percent over the same period. Nigeria and Vietnam's rate of primary forest loss has doubled since the 1990s, while Peru's rate has tripled.

Overall, FAO estimates that 10.4 million hectares of tropical forest were permanently destroyed each year in the period from 2000 to 2005, an increase since the 1990-2000 period, when around 10.16 million hectares of forest were lost. Among primary forests, annual deforestation rose to 6.26 million hectares from 5.41 million hectares in the same period. On a broader scale, FAO data shows that primary forests are being replaced by less biodiverse plantations and secondary forests. Due to a significant increase in plantation forests, forest cover has generally been expanding in North America, Europe, and China while diminishing in the tropics. Industrial logging, conversion for agriculture (commercial and subsistence), and forest fires—often purposely set by people—are responsible for the bulk of global deforestation today.

Taken from:
mongabay

Deforestation emissions should be shared between producer and consumer.

2009-12-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Under the Kyoto Protocol the nation that produces carbon emission takes responsibility for them, but what about when the country is producing carbon-intensive goods for consumer demand beyond its borders? For example while China is now the world's highest carbon emitter, 50 percent of its growth over the last year was due to producing goods for wealthy countries like the EU and the United States which have, in a sense, outsourced their manufacturing emissions to China. A new study in Environmental Research Letters presents a possible model for making certain that both producer and consumer share responsibility for emissions in an area so far neglected by studies of this kind: deforestation and land-use change.

It's not just China that is seeing emissions rise due to demand from other nations: deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil accounts for 75 percent of that nation's emissions, but most of the products produced on deforested land, such as soy and beef, are exported to other countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Pastureland and transition forest in Mato Grosso, Brazil (April 2009). Since 2003 Brazil has set aside 523,592 square kilometers of protected areas, accounting for 74 percent of the total land area protected worldwide during that period. Photo by Rhett Butler.

"Brazil has some of the highest emissions from deforestation in the world and its exports of both soybeans and beef have grown dramatically in the last two decades," David Zaks, lead author and graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and Global Environment (SAGE) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison told Mongabay.com.

Brazil's high annual deforestation rates are currently supporting a massive agricultural industry that exports most of its product abroad: Brazil is the world's largest exporter of both beef and soybeans. Between 1990 and 2006, exports of beef increased by 500 percent. The soy boom, which began in the 1990s, did not cause as much direct deforestation, but pushed cattle farmers and small-land holders deeper into the forest.

From 1990-2006, EU countries and Asian countries were the primary importers of Brazil's soy, while importers of Brazil's beef came from around the world, including Eastern Europe, the EU, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and other South American nations. Yet so far none of these nations have had to pay a cent for the environmental damage, including high carbon emissions, caused by the deforestation of the Amazon.

Zaks and his team have proposed a model to change this. According to their study when a product is exported half of the emissions should be the responsibility of the producing country and half of the importing country and its consumers.

"There is no 'right way' to proportion emissions between consumer and producer, but we did not think that assigning the burden of emissions to either Brazil OR the importing country would be logical," explains Zaks. "If emissions are assigned only to the importing country, there is a reduced incentive to decrease deforestation in the exporting country."

He adds that the study "chose to split them 50/50 as more of an illustrative example than a definitive answer."

The reasons behind sharing responsibility between producer and consumer is not just one of 'fairness', but rather the study argues that a model of shared emission responsibility will provide better incentives for reducing global deforestation. The model would give an economic advantage for countries which are able to produce agricultural goods not dependent on recent deforestation. The agricultural industry's focus would be forced to shift, according to the paper, from deforestation of more land (extensification) to intensifying yields on already available land (intensification). This change would not only benefit the Amazon, but also the forests of Southeast Asia, where currently there is little economic incentive for agriculture crops, such as oil palm, to increase their yields.

"If agricultural commodities could be produced in another location, or use methods that have lower total carbon emissions, then demand would shift to those who could supply products with smaller carbon footprints," Zaks says. "Of course this assumes that the price of carbon is greater than the potential profit of increasing production on newly deforested land. We provide a methodology to 'internalize externalities' in the hope that the full cost of products will eventually be accounted for in the price."

Another part of the study's model would ensure that both consumers and the producing company would take responsibility for the long-term consequences of deforestation.

"If the emissions from deforestation are allocated to just the first year of production then the products that are produced in subsequent years do not have to pay for the carbon embodied in their products, and they are 'free-riding'. If the carbon emissions from deforestation are spread out over a longer time horizon, there is a limited disincentive to stop deforesting," explains Zaks.

Forest clearing in Mato Grosso. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Therefore the study picked a middle-of-the-road timeline—twenty years—and decided that the cost during that period should decline as it moves further away from the initial deforestation.

"The '20 year decline allocation' is a hybrid approach that assigns some of the responsibility of the carbon emissions from deforestation to the few years directly after deforestation at a higher rate than later years. This way, both the problems in the two other approaches are alleviated," he says.

Using the 20 year decline allocation model, the study found that between 1990 and 2006 soybean exports from the Amazon were responsible for 128 TgCO2e (128 million metric tons equivalent of carbon dioxide—roughly the annual emissions from electricity generation in Florida or Pennsylvania) while cattle exports were responsible for 120 TgCO2e. Cattle was responsible for less export emissions, since more cattle was consumed locally. According to the study, the EU—the biggest importer of Brazil's beef—imported a total of 61.8 percent of embodied (or indirect) emissions from 1990-2006 according to the study. The EU also imported 31.2 percent of embodied emissions from soy production in the Amazon. The cost of such percentages is not calculable as there is no set market price yet on carbon.

Of course, a carbon scheme such as this does pose difficult problems. One of these, especially when related to agricultural products, is how would adding a carbon tax on food affect the poor? Already the UN estimates that one billion people are going hungry.

"If this scheme were to be implemented, safety measures would have to be put in place to protect those who are food insecure," says Zaks, but he adds that a carbon tax might eventually help bring down grain prices. "If prices increased on high-carbon items (livestock, grain grown for livestock), demand for those items would decrease, which would subsequently increase the supply of those grains and decrease their price (and increase availability to the poor). Of course, those are untested assumptions and an economic model would need to be used to test that case."

Cattle herd in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Greenhouse gas emissions are, of course, not the only negative environmental impact from deforestation: biodiversity loss, decline of waterways due to a surfeit of nutrients, and local climate shifts such as rainfall decline have all been shown to follow clearcutting of rainforests. Zaks sees potential for adding these environmental impacts into the model at a later point, but more accounting of their impact needs to be done.

Of the ecosystem services provided by rainforests, "at this point, carbon emissions are the best quantified and also are closest to becoming widely monetized. There are some payment schemes that consider 'baskets' of ecosystem services, partly because the responses of other services are hard to measure. There are a lot of great research questions to be asked on how to incentivize reducing the impact of agricultural production on ecosystem services, and this paper just scratches the surface," Zaks says.

The study concludes that the importance of this model is self-evident: "while many mechanisms have been proposed to decrease rates of deforestation in the Amazon, very few of them include the ultimate drivers of deforestation: consumers of agricultural products."

Taken from:
www.mongabay.com

Guyana expedition finds biodiversity trove in area slated for oil and gas development

2009-11-30T11:48:00.000-08:00

An expedition deep into Guyana's rainforest interior to find the endangered giant river otter—and collect their scat for genetic analysis—uncovered much more than even this endangered charismatic species.

"Visiting the Rewa Head felt like we were walking in the footsteps of Wallace and Bates, seeing South America with its natural density of wild animals as it would have appeared 150 years ago," expedition member Robert Pickles said to Mongabay.com.

A PhD student with the University of Kent and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Pickles is currently studying the genetics of the giant river otter in hopes to save this species from habitat loss. While the expedition, which also included tapir expert Niall McCann and local naturalist and tour operator Ashley Holland, found the necessary scat-samples that Pickles sought, they also took data on the biodiversity of one of the Guyana's Shield's most untouched regions hoping to draw attention to a little-known area threatened by big logging and oil companies.

Robert Pickles holding a red fire snake (Chironius scurrulus). Photo courtesy of Robert Pickles.

In just six weeks the expedition recorded an astounding variety of life: 158 species of birds, 22 species of medium to large mammals, and half of Guyana's known endangered species. "Including," Pickles says, "all the felids with several captures of puma in the camera traps, the presence of the mighty Harpy and crested eagles, the extremely elusive bush dog, abundant tapir and then just below the Falls is an important breeding ground for the giant South American river turtle."

Due to the difficulty of reaching Rewa Head, the ecosystem was been little touched by past or present hunters, leaving the animals largely unafraid of Pickles and other expedition members.

"It was quite remarkable the number of game species such as paca and currassow that could be seen and approached with ease. We also encountered four tapir during the expedition […] they were entirely nonchalant about our presence and would quite placidly paddle just next to the boat as we drifted downstream," he says.

Most surprising, according to Pickles, was the number—and size—of the world's largest snake found by the expedition in Rewa Head.

Location of the Rewa Head and extent surveyed by this expedition in red. Map courtesy of Robert Pickles.

"I really have to say something about the anacondas up there though. We encountered 6 during our expedition, four of which were estimated as being over 16 feet. To verify our size estimates we caught a large snake basking on the river bank and measured her length with a rope. She turned out to be 18 feet 2 inches in length with a maximum girth of 27 inches. It was quite incredible to see so many very large snakes. Why do they get so large here whereas in the Venezuelan Llanos they rarely record them over 16 feet?" Pickles said, perhaps describing a future research project for an intrepid herpetologist.

This pristine wilderness—still free from the impacts of the modern world—may not remain so for long. Both a massive logging concession and an even larger oil drilling concession overlap the wilderness.

US-owned company, Simon and Shock International, currently has a license to extract timber from 400,000 hectares.

"The company has stated its environmental principles and has listed a range of measures to mitigate degradation of the concession," Pickles says. "But the unfortunate fact is that no matter how green your intentions are, it can be very difficult to prevent the creep of hunting into a forest once you’ve put a road in there."

The oil-drilling concession, covering an astounding 78 million hectares, poses similar threats according to Pickles.

"Drilling has yet to begin though the company has been prospecting around the village of Rewa. The concern with this is that environmental safeguards are put in place and stringently adhered to. Oil extraction can be achieved with minimal environmental impact provided the company is diligent, but there is also concern as to whether the development of roads will lead to hunting encroachment above Corona Falls," he says, adding that indigenous groups in the area see these future developments as a mixed blessing, providing possible jobs on the one hand but encroachment on their lands on the other.

Camera trap photos from the expedition caught a large number of species, including the tayra Eira Barbara from the weasel family (above) and the ocelot Leopardus pardalis (below). Photos by: Rob Pickles, Niall McCann, Ashley Holland.

Pickles says that the situation facing Rewa Head provides a perfect example of why the REDD program (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation) should be employed even in countries where currently deforestation rates are relatively low and forest cover remains high.

"While it is obviously extremely important to tackle deforestation in the frontline countries where this threat is occurring, which is what REDD initially set out to do, it is equally as important that nations with large tracts of pristine forest and a less severe deforestation threat do not get marginalized, but receive due recompense for not taking the ‘economically rational’ path and fully exploiting those natural resources," explains Pickles. "Guyana is in an incredibly fortunate position in that it still retains 76 percent of its forest cover which constitutes some of the most carbon-rich forests of South America. As such, and with a president keen to offer his nation’s forests as part of the world’s carbon sink, Guyana should be embraced by the international community."

If the Guyana forests are not valued by the wider-world they will likely be lost, and Rewa Head, an ecosystem that time forgot, will vanish along with all of its richness.

Employing the concept of 'shifting baselines'—where humans lose their knowledge of a healthy ecosystem through generations of degradation and destruction—Pickles says that Rewa Head, with its abundant wildlife and incredible biodiversity, has the capacity to teach us what all of the Amazon was once like, if only we make the effort to save it.

"We forget what 'natural' and 'pristine' really mean and now think of places like the Rewa Head as being exceptional," Pickles explains. "Whereas in reality this would have been the state of much of tropical South America, but the degradation has been going on for so long now that we are in danger of forgetting what it is supposed to be like."

In a November 2009 interview Mongabay spoke with Robert Pickles about his six-week expedition to Rewa Head in Guyana, including the status of the giant river otter in the area, the abundance and diversity of other species, the threat of development to Rewa Head, and the possibility of saving this pristine place.

Taken from:
www.mongabay.com

Deforestation emissions should be shared between producer and consumer, argues study

2009-11-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

How rainforest shamans treat disease

2009-11-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long documented the extensive use of medicinal plants by indigenous shamans in places around the world, including the Amazon. But few have reported on the actual process by which traditional healers diagnose and treat disease. A new paper, published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, moves beyond the cataloging of plant use to examine the diseases and conditions treated in two indigenous villages deep in the rainforests of Suriname.

The research, which based on data on more than 20,000 patient visits to traditional clinics over a four-year period, finds that shamans in the Trio tribe have a complex understanding of disease concepts, one that is comparable to Western medical science. Trio medicine men recognize at least 75 distinct disease conditions—ranging from common ailments like fever [këike] to specific and rare medical conditions like Bell's palsy [ehpijanejan] and distinguish between old (endemic) and new (introduced since contact with the outside world) illnesses. In an interview with mongabay.com, Lead author Christopher Herndon, currently a reproductive medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco, says the findings are a testament to the under-appreciated healing prowess of indigenous shaman.

Taken from

Mongabay

Costa Rica proposes to downgrade Las Baulas National Park, threatening leatherback sea turtles

2009-11-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

"This new law introduced by President Arias will be the death of the Costa Rican National Park System and the protection it provides to your environmental national treasures. The world has looked-up to Costa Rica as an example of how to shape an ecotouristic economy; yet this action by the Arias administration will open Pandora’s box to the elimination and attacks on all the other national parks," marine biologist Frank Paladino of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne stated in a letter.

Leatherback sea turtle laying eggs on a beach in Suriname. Photo by Tiffany Roufs.

The law if passed would reduce protected area along the beaches where leatherbacks nest from 120 meters to 50. It would further allow a wide-variety of development, including condominiums and tourist facilities. Conservationists say that such developments would bring a flood of people, vehicles, and domestic animals that will harm the leatherback habitat.

"[The Leatherback sea turtle] Pacific population is in great trouble due mainly to beach disturbance. They have declined by about 98 percent since the early 1980s. Former large nesting populations in Mexico are a tiny fraction of earlier numbers. In the west Pacific, the leatherback turtle’s largest population has apparently gone extinct in the last few years," explains President and co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, Carl Safina. "These creatures, and the world, need Costa Rica to do what it can to protect the remaining Pacific leatherbacks and promote their recovery. And so little is required. All that is needed is darkness on the beach at night and protection of nests. The beach at Las Baulas Park that is currently without houses should remain so, and the Park should be reaffirmed by Costa Rica’s Congress."

On hatching sea turtles head toward the lightest area on the horizon, which in a natural environment is the ocean. Electric lights often lead turtle hatchlings astray, sometimes causing heavy mortality among baby sea turtles.

The government has stated that its reasoning for downgrading the park is that it is too expensive to purchase the land set aside for the park. Yet conservationists attest that the government estimates for purchasing park land are grossly inflated and that the Costa Rican government has several means at its disposal to acquire the land.

Leatherback sea turtle returning to the ocean after laying eggs on a beach in Suriname. Photo by Tiffany Roufs.

"I think the important thing here is that it would be very easy to acquire the land within Las Baulas park if the government had a one dollar a night tax on hotel rooms and one dollar a day tax on rental cars. That would raise at least 10 million a year, a conservative estimate, and a 30-year bond could be done to raise 300 million that could be used to reimburse all landowners in all parks and have an endowment for the parks into the future. What is missing is the political will in the government," offered Jim Spotila, president of Leatherback Trust.

In addition, conservationists say that the President's proposal to downgrade the park violates numerous agreements it has signed including Peace with Nature; the International Sea Turtle Convention; the Convention on Biological Diversity Biological; as well as the Convention for the Protection of Flora, Fauna and Natural Scenic Beauty of the Americas.

Taken from:
Mongabay

World's first video of the elusive and endangered bay cat

2009-11-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

Rare, elusive, and endangered by habitat loss, the bay cat is one of the world's least studied wild cats. Several specimens of the cat were collected in the 19th and 20th Century, but a living cat wasn't even photographed until 1998. Now, researchers in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, have managed to capture the first film of the bay cat (Catopuma temminckii). Lasting seven seconds, the video (see below) shows the distinctly reddish-brown cat in its habitat.

For three years Andrew Hearn and Jo Ross of the Global Canopy Programme have been surveying Borneo's wild cats with camera trapping; these include the Sunda clouded leopard, the marbled cat, the flat-headed cat, the leopard cat, and the bay cat, which is the only species of the five that is wholly endemic to Borneo. As well as recording the first video of the bay cat, they also took the first photos of the animal in Sabah.

Due to habitat loss and deforestation—largely from the spread of palm oil plantations and logging—the bay cat is currently listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List and its population is in decline. If deforestation rates continue as expected, researchers have estimated that the already small population of bay cats will fall another 20 percent over the next decade.

The bay cat is not alone in its plight. Four of Borneo's five wild cats are classified by the IUCN as threatened with extinction due to continued deforestation.

"No other place has a higher percentage of threatened wild cats!" Jim Sanderson, an expert on the world's small cats, says. Pointing out that 80 percent of Borneo's cats face extinction, Sanderson adds that "not one of these wild cats poses a direct threat to humans."

So little is known about the bay cat that even its diet remains largely a mystery.
yright the Global Canopy Programme:

Researchers suspect there are less than 2,500 mature bay cats left in the wild. The species is endemic to Borneo and rampant deforestation is the main threat. Copyright: Global Canopy Programme. Photo by: Jo Ross and Andrew Hearn

Taken from

Mongabay.com

Emotional call for palm oil industry to address environmental problems

2009-10-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

During what was at times an emotional speech, Sabah's Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Environment, Datuk Masidi Manjun, called on the palm oil industry to stop polluting rivers and work with NGOs to save orangutans and other wildlife. He delivered the speech on the first day of an Orangutan Conservation Colloquium held in early October in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.

"As a member of the state government I say to you the state government is completely dependent on palm oil, yes, but the future generations are also dependent on the [oil palm] planters to ensure that they inherit a world much better than what we were given," he said to a conference room filled with conservationists, primatologists, government officials, and representatives of the palm oil industry.

While Masidi said that the palm oil industry is "not solely to be blamed", he added that they are "one of the culprits".

Oil palm plantations along the Kinabatangan River. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.
"I myself have had a couple of sessions with the planters. They promised to do this and do that, but suddenly it's clear to me it's all been lip-service […] I went into the plantations myself to check and I know some of the mills have not done their job by letting pollutants out into the river."

A study by the Department of Environment found that twenty-nine oil palm mills on Sabah's Kinabatangan River were dumping pollution into the river. The river ecosystem is home to orangutans, Bornean pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, the storm's stork, and many other species. Fifty years ago the Kinabatangan River was clear. Today, after decades of clear-cut logging and then the palm oil industry, it is coffee-colored.

"It doesn't cost much money. With all the profit that we are taking from the soil, I think that it doesn't really hurt the company to spend a bit of money […] to make sure that we don't pollute the river," Masidi said. "I mean 'who are we'? I am throwing you this question because this is a very, very important question to ask. […] If we can't even control pollution in the river then obviously something is wrong with us. Yes, we can take all the profit, all the money we want, but after that what will we do?"

Masidi expressed his view that he didn't want to enforce compliance through state and federal law.

Oil palm seed. Palm oil is used widely in processed foods. By virtue of its high yield, palm oil is a cheaper substitute than other vegetable oils. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
"I would rather believe that planters are responsible enough to self regulate, self police. Why? Because, all of us are relations. Why? Because we are human beings and only human being can really put aside their emotion, their need to take more, to leave aside something for the future generations to enjoy."

He warned that a time would come when pressure from abroad would force change on oil palm plantations and that "it makes sense" to beginning complying with progressive requirements now, such as those laid out by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

"There are planters who already comply," Masidi added. "And that shows it can be done. It can be done. You can make money and at the same time be socially responsible. It can be done."

Masidi said the same attitude of socially responsibility should be brought to the issue of orangutan conservation: "let's be magnamimous to the orangutan, they may be the man of the forest, and we are man of the town, but we are all 'orangs'."

Sabah's orangutan population has declined by approximately half in fifty years, from an estimated 22,000 to 11,000. In addition, sixty-five percent of Sabah's orangutans live outside of protected areas. Masidi did not back away from saying that this widespread decline was due in part to the rise of palm oil plantations over land that once held forest.

Male orangutan feeding on fruit tree overlooking the Kinabatangan River. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.
"[The] orangutan is living in a fragmented forest and the reason they are fragmented is because of planters. It's okay, you by all means plant, but you have to give them a good opportunity to survive. You see orangutans and other animals, they need to cross from one jungle to another," Masidi said, adding that such fragmentation was affecting more than just the orangutans. The Bornean pygmy rhinos, he said, "are not multiplying because they have been cut off, we didn't provide corridors for them to walk from place to place to find a mate."

In order to save orangutans—and other species—Masidi urged the palm oil industry and government to work willingly with local and international NGOs present at the meeting. Both sides are wary of each other. Many in the palm oil industry feel they have been unfairly singled out by environmental NGOs for deforestation and species loss. While the conservation community is frustrated by the palm oil industry consistently attempting to paint itself as 'sustainable', while not following through on environmental promises.

"To me, personally, I enjoy working with NGOs,” Masidi expounded. "I urge all departments, government bodies, not to treat NGOs as enemies but rather as friends who give you council from time to time. I think we need to tell ourselves that we are not exactly the experts on everything that we think we know. […] And I urge all of you not to be too defensive of what they [the NGOs] are going to say over the next few days, but in fact to take their words quite seriously, and ask ourselves are we moving in the right direction to conserve the orangutan?"

In the end Masidi urged the colloquium that it was time to put aside past differences and work together to create a society that would conserve rivers and wildlife.

Orphaned orangutan at Sepilok near the Kinabatangan River. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
"I say to you and I plead to you, look, […] why don't we leave aside a legacy that the future generations can enjoy. The best legacy I can think of is to make sure we look after the pristine region of Sabah."

The Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Environment concluded his speech: "The message is clear. Time is now. Get things done. Enough of talking," and then he added, "after we talk for the next two days, of course."

Following two days of intensive meetings between conservationists, the palm industry, and government officials, the colloquium adopted a resolution which included the acquisition of land for creating wildlife corridors of at least 100 meters along all major rivers and to connect fragmented forests. The resolution was handed off to Masidi on the last day. He promised to move quickly on it.

Taken from

www.mongabay.com

Palm oil industry pledges wildlife corridors to save orangutans

2009-10-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

In an unlikely—and perhaps tenuous—alliance, conservationists and the palm oil industry met this week to draw up plans to save Asia's last great ape, the orangutan. As if to underscore the colloquium's importance, delegates on arriving in the Malaysian State of Sabah found the capital covered in a thick and strange fog caused by the burning of rainforests and peat lands in neighboring Kalimantan. After two days of intensive meetings the colloquium adopted a resolution which included the acquisition of land for creating wildlife buffer zones of at least 100 meters along all major rivers, in addition to corridors for connecting forests. Researchers said such corridors were essential if orangutans were to have a future in Sabah.

Taken from:
www.mongabay.com

Palm oil both a leading threat to orangutans and a key source of jobs in Sumatra

2009-10-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

Of the world's two species of orangutan, a great ape that shares 96 percent of man's genetic makeup, the Sumatran orangutan is considerably more endangered than its cousin in Borneo. Today there are believed to be fewer than 7,000 Sumatran orangutans in the wild, a consequence of the wildlife trade, hunting, and accelerating destruction of their native forest habitat by loggers, small-scale farmers, and agribusiness.

Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra is one of the last strongholds for the species, serving as a refuge among paper pulp concessions and rubber and oil palm plantations. While orangutans are relatively well protected in areas around tourist centers, they are affected by poorly regulated interactions with tourists, which have increased the risk of disease and resulted in high mortality rates among infants near tourist centers like Bukit Lawang. Further, orangutans that range outside the park or live in remote areas or on its margins face conflicts with developers, including loggers, who may or may not know about the existence of the park, and plantation workers, who may kill any orangutans they encounter in the fields.

Working to improve the fate of orangutans that find their way into plantations and unprotected community areas is the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC), a local NGO that collaborates with the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS). Founded by Panut Hadisiswoyo, OIC runs outreach and education programs to help local people better co-exist with orangutans and the park. Its "OrangUvan," a bus equipped with a library and a mobile cinema, regularly visits villages to make children and adults aware of conservation efforts and the importance of protecting forests. OIC also operates tree nurseries and replanting programs to help restore livelihoods where unsustainable logging and environmental degradation have pushed villagers to illegally cut timber from the national park. Further, OIC is preparing the next generation of conservationists and ecotourism guides, running how-to workshops on surveying forest conditions and orangutan density, boat handling, nature photography, composting and organic farming, and responsible nature guiding (that doesn't harm orangutans or the environment). In conjunction with the Orang Utan Republik Foundation, OIC runs a scholarship program for Indonesian University students that aims to help enable them become key members of the conservation movement in Sumatra and inspire others to care for nature and their environment.

OIC is also working to engage the palm oil industry, a challenge since oil palm expansion is both a leading driver of deforestation and an important source of jobs in the region. While many large palm oil companies are eager to shed the perception that they are a threat to orangutans, plantation developers continue to drive destruction of important orangutan habitat, especially in unprotected areas. Deforestation, as well as drainage of carbon-dense peatlands, is also a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, undermining claims that palm oil is necessarily a "green" source of fuel and vegetable oil. Indeed, palm oil produced on newly deforested lands is actually the opposite—a larger source of carbon dioxide than conventional fossil fuels. But demonizing all palm oil is neither productive nor fair. Oil palm is the world’s highest yielding oilseed, generating substantially more vegetable oil per unit of land than soy, rapeseed/canola, or corn. Further, the crop has become an important source of income in much of rural Sumatra, while serving as an inexpensive foodstuff for local people and the world.

Is there a way to balance palm oil production and environmental aims? Some environment groups are advocating a ban on all palm oil, but given rising demand for edible oils, especially in China and India, this is an unlikely solution. Other groups, including SOS and OIC, are hopeful that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a multi-stakeholder body devising a certification standard that aims to improve the environmental performance of palm oil production, could be the path forward, provided the scheme is credible. But credibility is elusive when RSPO members (whom are not necessarily certified palm oil producers; they are only required to pay a membership fee to be part of RSPO) are found to be attempting to game the system, breaking rules and refusing third-party compliance monitoring. Such practices risk turning RSPO into little more than another greenwashing initiative, a concern that has already turned away some potential supporters, including a few major buyers of palm oil who are now seeking other vegetable oil options. Still, OIC believes that in the end a credible RSPO will be better for orangutans and better for business than the alternative—continued destruction of tropical forests and peatlands.

In a series of interviews conducted in Medan and Bukit Lawang (Sumatra) and via e-mail, Panut Hadisiswoyo and David Dellatore of OIC, and Helen Buckland, UK Director of the Sumatran Orangutan Society, talked about their efforts to save the world's rarest orangutan species as well as the "palm oil paradox."

(a) Protected and unprotected forests in 1990 for the main island of Sumatra and the smaller island of Siberut, including adjacent unprotected land lying within 10 km of protected area (PA) boundaries and the wider unprotected landscape, and showing the spatial distribution of the 1264 sample cells (25 km2). (b) Remaining forests in 2000, deforestation and logging trails occurring during the period 1990–2000 (UTM projection, WGS84). Protected areas (PAs) protecting mangroves or created after 2000 are not shown. MAPS available at sumatranforest.org

Taken from
www.mongabay.com

Prince Charles making progress in effort to save rainforests

2009-09-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Prince Charles of Great Britain has emerged as one of the world’s highest-profile promoters of a scheme that could finally put an end to destruction of tropical rainforests.

The Prince’s Rainforest Project, launched in 2007, is promoting awareness of the role deforestation plays in climate change—it accounts for nearly a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. The project also publicizes the multitude of benefits tropical forests provide, including maintenance of rainfall, biodiversity, and sustainable livelihoods for millions of people. But the initiative goes beyond merely raising awareness. Prince Charles is using his considerable influence to bring political and business leaders together to devise and support a plan to provide emergency funding to save rainforests. The money would provide a financing bridge for tropical countries to begin taking steps necessary to reduce deforestation— a prelude to a broader U.N.-backed mechanism (known as REDD for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which would compensate developing countries for their progress in protecting their forests.

“If deforestation can be stopped in its tracks, then we will be able to buy ourselves some much-needed time to build the low carbon economies on which our futures depend,” Prince Charles states on his web site. “I have endeavored to create a global public, private and NGO partnership to discover an innovative means of halting tropical deforestation. Success would literally transform the situation for our children and grandchildren and for every species on the planet.”

The “emergency package” would provide potentially billions of dollars a year and provide what it is hoped will be a bridge to a fully functioning REDD scheme. Such interim funding would likely come through commitments from developed nations, with money potentially raised through auctioning of carbon emission permits in national cap-and-trade systems, a levy on the catastrophe risk component of insurance premiums, or surcharges on emissions-generating products including commodities and aviation fuel. Additional financing might come in the form of a “rainforest bond,” a fixed income security that would provide upfront cash for rainforest conservation initiatives and low-carbon development; in return such bonds would offer investors a fixed rate of return together with the repayment of the principal on maturity some 15-years after issue. Governments of developed country would guarantee the bonds, which would be repaid from a portion of the revenue generated in future carbon markets as well as returns from clean development investments.

The Prince’s Rainforest Project, which has pitched the concept to insurers, pension funds, and private equity firms, has found strong institutional interest in the proposal. Political support also appears to be growing—heads of state and other government leaders formed a working group to study the concept after meeting with Prince Charles on the eve of the G20 summit in April. But broader support for the idea of saving rainforests is also critical. Thus the Project has launched a mass market advertising campaign—centered around an animated frog and celebrities—to engage the general public.

Juniper is one of Britain’ best-knowenvironmentalists and Special Adviser Trained as an ornithologist, Juniper served as the executive director of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) from 2003-2008 before becoming an independent adviser on sustainability and the environment. In that capacity he works with the Cambridge University Program for Sustainability Leadership to help companies improve their environmental performance. Juniper also writes extensively, publishing several books and numerous articles. He writes a weekly column for the Sunday Times and is editor-in-chief of National Geographic’s new Green Magazine.

Taken from
www.mongabay.com

Employing dogs to save endangered species and places.

2009-09-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

For millennia dogs have been helpers to humans: they have herded and protected livestock, pulled sleds, hunted game, led the blind, located people after disasters, and sniffed out drugs. Now a new occupation can be added: conservation aide.

Working Dogs for Conservation (WDC) was co-founded by Megan Parker in 2000: the idea, to use dogs' impeccable scent capabilities for conservation initiatives, appears so logical and useful when Parker talks about it, one is surprised it took environmentalists so long to realize the potential of dogs.

"Our mission is to benefit science and conservation by working with detection dogs. We help save wildlife by supporting conservation efforts to gather information on rare species in an accurate and non-invasive way," explains Parker. "We train dogs to detect rare samples and they excel at finding trained target odors from endangered species scats to invasive weeds on a huge landscape."

WDC has worked on a wide variety of projects across all regions of the United States. For example, they worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on The Carnivore Connectivity Project where the dogs located scats of wolves, cougars, black and grizlly bears along the Idaho-Montana border.

"Thanks to our team of dogs, we’re proud to report that this work led to the protection of critical wildlife corridors by closing more than 40 miles of roads and preventing a development in a sensitive area," says Parker.

The group has also helped survey the comeback of moose in the Adirondacks and located threatened plants in Oregon and invasive snails in Hawaii, among many other projects.

Parker says for each of these projects the dog's nose is key: "canids have evolved as amazing scenting machines. Their noses, and the vast majority of their brains, are built to detect and discriminate small quantities of odor, picking out single scents among the millions of other scents in the environment. Dogs have been selectively bred for thousands of years to serve myriad human purposes, yet most dogs retain the architecture and ability to scent incredibly well."

WDC has even worked overseas: detecting snakes in the tropics of Guam, locating wild dog and cheetah scat in Kenya, and working with the Andean Cat Project in Argentina to find one of the world's rarest felines.

"We have really learned from our mistakes while working internationally, where the work periods are typically short and the work intense in unfamiliar territory where we have to find dogs and train handlers, which is different from how we usually work," Parker says. Despite such challenges, Parker believes that the program could easily be implemented in other countries.

Taken from:
Mongabay

Oil company in Ecuador transforms indigenous community into commercial poachers, threatening wildlife in a protected area

2009-09-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

The documentary Crude opened this weekend in New York, while the film shows the direct impact of the oil industry on indigenous groups a new study proves that the presence of oil companies can have subtler, but still major impacts, on indigenous groups and the ecosystems in which they live.

In Ecuador's Yasuni National Park—comprising 982,000 hectares of what the researchers call "one of the most species diverse forests in the world"—the presence of an oil company has disrupted the lives of the Waorani and the Kichwa peoples, and the rich abundance of wildlife living within the forest. By building a 149 kilometer (92 mile) road through the protected forest and providing subsidies to the local tribes, the oil company Maxus Ecuador Inc. transformed some members of the tribes from semi-nomadic subsistence hunters into commercial poachers.

"We’ve found that a road in a forest can bring huge social changes to local groups and the ways in which they utilize wildlife resources," said Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researcher Esteban Suárez, lead author of the study. "Communities existing inside and around the park are changing their customs to a lifestyle of commercial hunting, the first stage in a potential overexploitation of wildlife."

According to the new study by the WCS and the IDEAS-Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, the creation of the single road allowed tribe members to transport game to a market where it is sold illegally. In addition, the subsidies and free access to the road, all provided by the oil company, make the transportation of the meat—and thereby the wild meat market itself—economically viable.

Although sale of wild meat and products in Ecuador is illegal, the researchers report that "local authorities and park rangers know about the market, [but] they lack the resources and political will to stop the illegal trade of wildlife in Pompeya, primarily to avoid conflicts with the local indigenous population."

Some communities of the Waorani tribe even abandoned their traditional semi-nomadic life and built settled villages along the road for easy transport of their game. They took up firearms (instead of the traditional blowguns), which became more prevalent following the arrival of the oil company.

"These changes," the authors explain, "are amplified by patronizing relationships in which large companies buy their right to operate in the area by providing local communities with resources, money or infrastructure without consideration of the social and ecological impact of these 'compensation plans'".

The study published in Animal Conservation found that the wild meat market appeared shortly after the road was constructed in early 1990s and free travel was given to the indigenous tribes. Between 2005 and 2007, 11,000 kilograms (24,000 pounds) of wild meat were sold at the Pompeya market every year. The amount of meat sold every day doubled between 2005 and 2007, from 150 kilograms (330 pounds) to 300 kilograms (661 pounds).

"While the magnitude of the wildlife trade occurring at Pompeya is still limited, its emergence and continuous growth are symptomatic of the dramatic changes that the area is experiencing under the influence of the oil industry and the absence of effective management and control strategies," the authors write.

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

New gecko discovered on bizarre and beautiful Socotra island

2009-09-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

Lying in the Indian Ocean half way between Somalia and Yemen, the strange island archipelagos of Socotra offer a bewildering array of life found no where else on Earth. Thirty seven percent of its plant species, ninety percent of its reptiles, and ninety-five percent of its snail species are endemic.

Now biologists can add a new species to this list. Italian researchers unraveled the mystery of a gecko named Hemidactylus inintellectus (photo below). Inintellectus translates to 'misunderstood', since the gecko, which is common on the island, was consistently confused with other species.

"This new discovery raises the number of reptile species of Socotra to 26, with 23 species endemic of the island. And this is not a mere matter of numbers: when a species has no name it doesn’t exist, and it can’t be protected. That’s why biodiversity assessments are such an essential tool for conservation policies," writes one of the researchers, herpetologist Fabio Pupin of the University of Pavia.

According to Pupin, Socotra is a reptile's paradise (there are no amphibians on the island): "[Reptiles] are everywhere, from the high mountains of Haggeher to the desert lowland of the south coast, basking on tree branches as on nearly every rock around—and Socotra is a rocky place indeed! And even underground: there are, in fact, five worm-like reptiles, suited to a completely ctonian life."

The new species of gecko prefers rocky areas and is nocturnal.

Taken from: www.mongabay.com

Snow leopard in Afghanistan.

2009-09-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

Using camera traps, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has captured the elusive and rare snow leopard on film in Afghanistan for a second time. The feline was caught on film in the Sast Valley in Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor.

The snow leopard is currently listed as Endangered by the IUCN. The cat is also listed as protected under Afghanistan's new endangered species list, which outlaws hunting it. The IUCN estimates that only 100-200 snow leopards still survive in Afghanistan.

Researchers with WCS are conducting wildlife surveys in the remote region of the Wakhan Corridor with the goal to establish a new protected area. The region also contains the Pallas’s cat Otocolobus manul and the Altai weasel Mustela altaica, both are classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN.

Other notable mammals include the Marco Polo sheep Ovis ammon polii, Siberian ibex Capra ibex sibirica, brown bear Ursus arctos, wolf Canis lupus, red fox Vulpes vulpes, Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx,) , stone marten or beech marten Martes foina, stoat Mustela erminea, long-tailed marmot Marmota caudate, and the Tolai hare Lepus tolai.

Afghanistan announced its first national park, Band-e-Amir, on Earth Day (April 22nd) of this year.

World's rarest duck flies closer to extinction's edge

2009-09-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Madagascar pochard, the world's rarest duck, was already thought to be extinct once. After a last sighting in 1991 the species was thought to have vanished until nine adults and four hatchlings were discovered in 2006. However, conservationists have begun to fear that the species will never recover after a survey this year found only six females.

In addition, the survey conducted by the Durrell Wildlife Trust, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), and The Peregrine Fund (TPF) found that no young of the Critically Endangered species had survived from the previous year.

"The window of opportunity to save the species from extinction is incredibly small, and we must all muster the energy and resources necessary to stop another species from becoming extinct," said Durrell’s Project Leader, Dr. Glyn Young.

A new recovery plan has been established to hold remaining ducks in secure conditions in a facility set to be finished in 2010. In addition, scientists are looking at potential lakes for reintroduction of the species.

"The original plan was to take the first batch of eggs in 2010 but, following the expedition, discussions are underway to see if the timetable can be brought forward to this year’s breeding season, which would see the team return to the lake in October," WWT’s Aviculture Manager, Nigel Jarrett, said. "Once we have secured eggs from the wild, WWT’s and Durrell’s extensive experience of rearing endangered wildfowl, at Slimbridge and Jersey, will be used to breed the birds at a purpose-built facility in Madagascar. This will act as a 'safety net', greatly reducing the immediate risk of extinction. Within three years, the hope is to at least double the total numbers of pochards. In time, these will be released into the wild on suitable sites."

Taken from:
www.mongabay.com

Rehabilitation not enough to solve orangutan crisis in Indonesia

2009-08-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

A baby orangutan ambles across the grass at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation’s Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Central Kalimantan, in the heart of Indonesian Borneo. The ape pauses, picks up a stick and makes his way over to a plastic log, lined with small holes. Breaking the stick in two, he pokes one end into a hole in an effort to extract honey that has been deposited by a conservation worker. His expression shows the tool’s use has been fruitful.

But he is not alone. To his right another orangutan has turned half a coconut shell into a helmet, two others wrestle on the lawn, and another youngster scales a papaya tree. There are dozens of orangutans, all of which are about the same age. Just outside the compound, dozens of younger orangutans are getting climbing lessons from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) staff, while still younger orangutans are being fed milk from bottles in a nearby nursery. Still more orangutans—teenagers and adults—can be found on “Orangutan Island” beyond the center’s main grounds. Meanwhile several recently wild orangutans sit in cages. This is a waiting game. BOS hopes to eventually release all of these orangutans back into their natural habitat—the majestic rainforests and swampy peatlands of Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. But for many, this is a fate that may never be realized.

Kalimantan, 2009

The goal of the BOS project is reintroduction, but many of these apes may be destined for a life in captivity. The reason? Suitable habitat in Borneo and Sumatra, the two islands that are home to the world's entire population of wild orangutans, is increasingly scarce. Economic returns from converting verdant rainforests into furniture, paper, woodchips, and oil palm plantations have rapidly diminished the availability of sites for reintroduction, while dramatically boosting the number of orangutans in need of rescue.

So the orangutans must wait. But they are the lucky ones. For every orangutan housed in the center, half a dozen or more may have fallen victim to deforestation or the pet trade, or met their end at the blade of a machete or the blunt end of a iron bar—estimates range from 1,500-5,000 per year. Perhaps worse, some reintroduced orangutans have managed to win taste of freedom only to see their new home destroyed by loggers and oil palm developers.
Orangutan rehabilitation centers originally emerged as a response to the pet trade. Until very recently in much of the world (and even today in parts of Asia and the Middle East), there has been demand for orangutans as circus performers, entertainers for TV shows, occupants of zoos, and surrogate children for childless families. Before much was known about orangutan ecology, the first rehabilitation center was set up in the1960s by conservationist Barbara Harrison, who feared the species might be on the verge of extinction in the wild due to overcollection for the pet trade. Thus centers—including Ketambe and Bohorok in Sumatra’s Gunung Leuser National Park; Sepilok in Sabah, Malaysia; Camp Leakey in Central Kalimantan’s Tanjung Putting National Park; Semenggok in Sarawak, Malaysia; and Wanariset in East Kalimantan, among others—emerged as a way to care for confiscated orangutans in the hope of eventually reintroducing them to the wild. But caring for orangutans is difficult and costly. While baby orangutans score high for their cuteness factor, an adult orangutan, especially a full-grown male, is orders of magnitude stronger than a human and has substantial dietary requirements.

Sumatra, 2009

Sumatra, 2009.

But while the flow of orangutans from the pet trade was relatively manageable, the rise of palm oil has changed the situation, greatly increasing the number of orangutans in need of care. Michelle Desilets, former director of BOS-UK and now executive director of the Orangutan Land Trust, says she started to see the shift about five years ago.

"Originally the great majority of our rescues were confiscations of privately (illegally) owned orangutans. Often these were held by senior police officers, the military or government officials, making it a challenge to successfully confiscate them,” she said.

"About five years ago, our rescue teams began to be informed of wandering wild orangutans in human settlements, and despite immediate response, the teams often found the orangutans to be dead on arrival, due to human/wildlife conflict. Why, suddenly, were there so many cases of wild orangutans being injured or killed by humans? It had to do with the conversion of their forest habitat for the cultivation of oil palm.”

Desilets says the wild orangutans, left in ever smaller fragments of forest, face starvation as their food sources are depleted, forcing them to venture into newly established plantations where they feed on the young shoots of palms, thereby destroying the trees before they produce any oil seeds.

“As a result, they are considered an agricultural pest. Plantation managers often offer a bounty on the head of these orangutans, and the $10-$20 reward is a strong incentive for a migrant worker.”

Desilets says that since workers usually do not carry guns, orangutans are brutally killed using whatever tools are at hand.

“Our teams have found orangutans beaten to death with wooden planks and iron bars, butchered by machetes, beaten unconscious and buried alive, and doused with petrol and set alight,” she said. “Since 2004 more and more orangutans in our centers have been rescued from areas within or near oil palm plantations, and over 90 percent of the infants up to three years of age come from these areas."

Taken from:

mongabay.com

Gorillas orphaned by bushmeat trade set free on island

2009-08-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project has set free six young gorillas on an island outside of Loango National Park in Gabon. The release marks a new stage in the rehabilitation of the gorillas.

The six western lowland gorillas, ranging from two to seven years of age, were orphaned when their respective parents were killed for bushmeat.

Before the release the gorillas underwent a three year 'rehab program' on another island with their keepers. For younger gorillas, still capable of being released into the wild, the program is meant to provide them with the essential skills needed to survive. Such skills are usually taught to baby gorillas by their parents in the first six to eight years of their life. The island provides a refuge from poachers and other predators where the gorillas are able to acclimate to the wild in safety.

The Fernan-Vz Gorilla Project and its parent program Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) point out that reintroduction of the gorillas into the wild is one part of the global strategy for saving the world’s great apes, as outlined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

"We have to find ways to restore value to Africa’s forests, and reintroduction places focus on the African wildlife in the African forests," said Doug Cress, executive director of the Pan African Sancuary Alliance, which has worked closely with the Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project. "It’s no good for any of us to aspire to having the world’s largest captive population of chimpanzees or gorillas – even if we are saving lives. That is not conservation and it is not sending messages that can be translated into environmental action."

A subspecies of the western gorilla, western lowland gorillas are classified as Critically-Endangered by the IUCN. The current global population is estimated between 150,000 and 200,000 individuals.

Hopes for the species were boosted in 2006 and 2007 when the Wildlife Conservation Society discovered around 125,000 gorillas living in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Taken from:
www.mongabay.com

Camera traps capture snow leopards in Afghanistan

2009-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

It has been estimated that Afghanistan only has 100 snow leopards left, however photos from camera traps placed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) show that there may be hope for snow leopards in the war-torn nation after all.

Working in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, WCS set up five camera traps. Four of the five camera traps took photos of snow leopards, including 22 images in total.

WCS, along with funding from USAID, hopes to work with the Afghan government to establish the Wakhan Corridor as a protected area. In April, Afghanistan’s first National Park was announced in Band-e-Amir.

The snow leopard is protected under Afghanistan’s new endangered species list, which debuted on June 3rd. Globally the species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and, besides Afghanistan, may be found in Nepal, Bhutan, China, India, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and less than a hundred individuals in Uzbekistan.

Taken from:

www.mongabay.com

SHARE: ShareThis | submit | Borneo orangutan release in jeopardy over fate of coal mining concession

2009-07-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

A plan to release orangutans in a 250,000-hectare (618,000-acre) tract of forest in the Heart of Borneo has been disrupted by uncertainty around BHP Billiton's decision to pull out of a coal mining project in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, reports the Independent and conservation groups familiar with the situation.

BHP Billiton had provided funds to help establish the forest reserve in Central Kalimantan and offered conservationists mapping support and use of helicopters to deposit orangutans into otherwise inaccessible areas. The two-year program would have reintroduced scores of orangutans but the first scheduled airlift of 48 orangutans for July 20 was canceled after BHP warned it could no longer guarantee the safety of reintroduced orangutans. Last month BHP said it would pull out of the area for unspecified "strategic reasons", leaving the fate of its concessions in the hands of the Indonesian government. BHP fears that the concessions could go to companies that would take fewer environmental precautions, thereby imperiling the orangutans.

Kalimantan, 2006

"BHP said it can't be part of a release if it can't be sure the orangutans will be safe," said a source who requested anonymity. The source noted that BHP may reinstate the airlift once it gets assurances that the orangutans will not be immediately at risk.

A working group has been created to help address the concerns. The group hopes to encourage new regulations in the Heart of Borneo whereby mining concessions handed back to the central government would be removed from the mining registry and made available for sustainable uses that benefit or protect biodiversity. The BHP concession area serves as the most important watershed in all of Borneo, feeding three major river systems, as well as providing a potential refuge for endangered orangutans.

Kalimantan, 2009

In recent years, expansion of oil palm plantations across Borneo and Sumatra has replaced logging and the wildlife trade as the biggest threat to remaining populations. Rehabilitation facilities rescue orangutans as they are displaced by development in hopes of eventually reintroducing them into the wild. But conservationists report difficulty in locating secure sites for reintroduction.

The Heart of Borneo initiative may help. The initiative, which has some support from Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, the governments that share Borneo, aims to protect 220,000 square kilometers of ecosystems across central Borneo, including key orangutan habitat. Still the plan faces strong opposition from development interests, including mining, logging, and plantation companies.

Precedent for BHP's warming

BHP Billiton's warning for the well-being of wildlife after it pulls out of its Borneo concessions is grounded in experience. Its departure from a remote forest area in Bakhuis Mountains of Suriname last year was followed by large-scale poaching for commercial bushmeat markets. The carnage destroyed the one of the world's most prolific camera-trapping projects for monitoring wildlife. A biologist working in the area called it a tragedy.

"This was the most tragic loss of a pristine habitat and wildlife I have ever witnessed," said the scientist, who asked not to be named. "I will forever remember the Bakhuis as the Lost Eden."

BHP Billiton and WWF, a conservation group that has worked with the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei to develop the Heart of Borneo initiative, were not willing to comment on this report.

With the clearing of forests, baby orangutans are marooned

(06/25/2009) The orangutans at the Nyaru Menteng center, run by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), are mainly “oil palm orphans” whose forest habitats were destroyed — and parents killed — by the swiftly spreading oil palm industry in Indonesia. BOS hopes to eventually release all of these orangutans back into their natural habitat — the majestic rainforests and swampy peat lands of central Kalimantan. But for many, this is a fate that may never be realized, and instead they may be relegated to a life in captivity. The reason? Suitable habitat in Borneo and Sumatra — the two islands that are home to the world's entire population of wild orangutans — is being deforested so rapidly that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find locations for reintroduction.

Taken from:
mongabay.com