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20 Nov 2009: Emergency Rainforest Fund
Created by Prince Charles and 35 Nations

Britain’s Prince Charles has struck an agreement with 35 nations to contribute $22 billion to $36 billion to reduce the destruction of tropical forests by 25 percent by 2015. The Prince of Wales said the U.S. has agreed to contribute $275 million to the rainforest protection fund, which will pay countries such as Indonesia and Brazil to preserve forests rather than felling them for timber or agricultural use. Ed Miliband, the U.K.’s energy and climate change secretary, said a global mechanism for paying countries to protect tropical forests is on the agenda at next month’s Copenhagen climate summit and is “closer than it’s ever been” to being codified in an international treaty. Deforestation is responsible for nearly 20 percent of global carbon emissions, and various nations and conservation groups are working to develop programs known as REDD — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Conservationists said that the Prince of Wales’ effort must ensure the funds are not squandered through local corruption or questionable forest protection schemes. The conservationists cited the example of Norway’s pledging $250 million to slow deforestation in Guyana. Since the Guyanese government claimed an artificially high rate of previous deforestation, it can receive payments while actually doing little or nothing to slow current forest loss.
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19 Nov 2009: Kenya Evicts Squatters
From Beleaguered Mau Forest

The Kenyan government has begun evicting an estimated 30,000 families that have squatted illegally in the vital Mau forest and caused major environmental damage to the one-million-acre woodland. The Mau forest, located in the Rift valley, is Kenya’s largest water catchment area, the source of at least a dozen rivers that feed Lake Victoria, the Masai Mara nature reserve, and the tea fields of Kericho. Over the last 20 years, however, squatters and officials in the government of ex-President Daniel Arap Moi moved into the Mau and have destroyed roughly a quarter of the forest by clearing the land for timber production and agriculture. The forest destruction has created large-scale soil erosion and caused aquifer levels to fall, exacerbating a recent drought that caused many rivers to run dry. Prime Minister Raila Odinga has made clearing the Mau of squatters and restoring the forest the nation’s top environmental priority. Already, officials report, 3,500 squatters have moved out of the forest after being served with eviction notices.
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13 Nov 2009: Clearing of Brazilian Amazon
Fell 45 Percent in Last Year, Officials Say

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 45 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, the largest annual reduction since Brazil started tracking rainforest destruction in 1988, government officials reported. Using satellite images from the National Institute for Space Research, Brazilian officials calculated that about 2,700 square miles of forest were removed during that span. About 5,000 square miles had been cleared during the previous 12-month period. Government officials said the amount of deforestation has been falling since 2004, when a record 10,425 square miles were removed. “The new deforestation data represents an extraordinary and significant reduction for Brazil,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement. The use of satellite technology and more aggressive government enforcement have helped slow deforestation of the critical rainforest, officials said. But according to Paulo Gustavo, environmental policy director of Conservation International, the biggest factor in the most recent data was the falling prices of beef, soy and other products that require the clearing of forest. Deforestation causes 75 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the National Inventory of Greenhouse Gases.
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30 Oct 2009: Canadian Actions Preserve
20 Percent of Its Vast Boreal Forest

With the addition of a new forest reserve in Manitoba, Canada has now set aside 250 million acres of its vast boreal forest as parks or preserves, prohibiting logging, mining or oil drilling in these areas. The protected areas, more than twice the size of California, represent roughly one-fifth of Canada’s 1.3 billion acres of boreal forests, which scientists say contain 22 percent of the stored carbon on the Earth’s land surface. Gary Doer, the outgoing premier of Manitoba, announced a $10 million fund that will support efforts by indigenous leaders to designate 10.8 million acres of boreal forest in eastern Manitoba as a Unesco world heritage site. Environmental leaders say that protecting the boreal, or northern, forest is one of the best defenses against a warming climate. “There is so much carbon sequestered in it already that if it escaped it would pose a whole new, very grave threat,” said Steve Kallick, director of the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign. The boreal forest, located primarily in Canada and Russia, consists of swamps, peatlands, and forests that are made up of five primary tree species — spruce, fir, pine, birch, and aspen.
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22 Oct 2009: Bark Beetle Infestation
Spreads in Monarch Butterfly Reserve

The world’s largest reserve for migrating Monarch butterflies, located in the Mexican highlands, is suffering from an infestation of bark beetles similar to outbreaks that have killed millions of acres of evergreens in the U.S. and Canada. In an effort to stem the spread of the infestation, Mexican officials have cut down 9,000 fir trees and buried them or shipped them out of the reserve. So far, the infestation has affected only a small portion of the 33,000-acre core mountaintop wintering grounds, but the outbreaks are occurring in widespread patches, which could indicate a spread of the disease. Mexican officials say the beetles have always existed in the reserve, but that a recent drought has weakened the fir trees and made them more susceptible to the tiny pests, which destroy the bark and kill the firs. Similar bark beetle outbreaks in the U.S. and Canada have primarily been attributed to warmer temperatures, which do not kill off the beetles in winter. The fir trees in the monarch reserve, located 60 miles northwest of Mexico City, provide shelter to the butterflies in cool weather on their southerly migration.
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21 Oct 2009: Space Agencies and Google
To Monitor Deforestation From Satellites

Space agencies from Europe, the U.S., and several other nations are joining forces with Google Earth and a conservation organization to annually monitor deforestation rates around the globe using satellite imagery. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a global partnership of 80 governments and more than 50 organizations, is launching pilot projects in Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Guyana, Indonesia, Mexico, and Tanzania to inventory forests and track rates of deforestation. Such annual monitoring — which until recently has been carried out every five years — will be instrumental in helping support programs in which governments, conservation groups, and investors pay to preserve tropical forests, GEO officials said. An international mechanism for preserving forests using carbon credits is expected to be approved at the Copenhagen climate conference in December. “The only way to measure forests efficiently is from space,” said Jose Achache, director of GEO. “Investors will want some sort of guarantee that... forests will remain there and remain in good condition.” Google Earth, which already is involved in using satellite technology to monitor deforestation, will participate in the GEO effort, Achache said.
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02 Oct 2009: Loss of World’s Large Predators
Causing Alarming Rise in ‘Mesopredators’

The decline of the world’s large, or “apex,” predators is leading to an increase in smaller, so-called “mesopredators,” causing significant ecological and economic damage, according to a new study. The populations of primary predators such as wolves, lions, and sharks have sharply declined because of hunting, fishing, and habitat disruption, researchers from Oregon State University say in a report published in the journal Bioscience. And in numerous cases worldwide, the next species in line — including birds, sea turtles, lizards, rodents, and insects — have flourished, often with unintended consequences. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, the decimation of lion and leopard populations has caused a surge in populations of baboons, which increasingly destroy crops and menace villagers. Steep declines in sharks have led to increases in ray populations, which have decimated some bay scallop fisheries. In North America, the largest terrestrial species have declined for two centuries, enabling 60 percent of smaller predators to expand their ranges. Among other findings, researchers say the surge in smaller predators has triggered collapses of entire ecosystems and led to significant plant and crop damage. The researchers said it may be more cost-effective to reintroduce apex predators into ecosystems than spending large sums controlling mesopredators.
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28 Sep 2009: Impact of Mountaintop Mining
To Be Subject of Major Study by U.S. EPA

The Obama administration is quietly launching a major scientific review of the environmental impact of mountaintop coal mining on streams and rivers in Appalachia, according to a news report. The Charleston Gazette says that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is forming a scientific panel to study how mountaintop removal has affected headwater streams and impacted downstream water quality. The study, announced without fanfare in the Federal Register, will also examine whether coal mining companies are meeting their obligations to restore Appalachian streams where millions of tons of mining debris have been dumped. Mountaintop coal removal is an environmentally destructive practice in which companies blast off the tops of mountains to get at coal seams below, then dump the debris in Appalachian valleys. Hundreds of miles of headwaters streams have been buried in mining debris, and the proposed EPA review marks the first time that the agency will undertake a major review of mountaintop mining. The Obama administration has promised to take “unprecedented steps” to reduce the impacts of mountaintop removal.
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22 Sep 2009: U.S. Judge Puts Yellowstone Grizzly Back on Threatened Species List

The Yellowstone grizzly bear, facing the duel threats of diminished food sources and increased killing by humans, has been placed back on the threatened species list. In issuing the court order, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy cited the loss of whitebark pine, which produces nuts that many of the 600 grizzlies in the greater Yellowstone region — which includes parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming — depend upon to survive. Several factors, exacerbated by climate change, have devastated the whitebark pine. For instance, mountain pine beetles, already active in the lower lodgepole pine forest, have moved up to the higher-elevation whitebarks as winters have gotten warmer over the last seven years. With fewer trees, the grizzlies wander into other areas for food sources and have increasingly been killed by humans. In 2007, the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed Endangered Species Act protection for the bear after it returned from near extinction. As many as 54 grizzly bears — including 37 shot by humans — were known to have died in 2008, the highest mortality ever recorded.
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09 Sep 2009: EPA Seeks Revocation
Of Largest Mountaintop Coal Mine Permit

The Obama administration, which promised to take “unprecedented steps” to rein in the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop coal mining, is attempting to revoke the permit for the largest mountaintop removal project in West Virginia. Citing the potential of the Spruce Mine “to degrade downstream water quality” and do other environmental damage, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw a previously issued permit. The EPA said the mine project would violate the Clean Water Act by blasting off the top of a mountain and then burying eight miles of streams in debris from the 2,300-acre mine. The EPA cited “new information” and data showing that the mine owners could never replace the environmental functions performed by the affected streams and that other so-called “valley fills” in Appalachia had seriously harmed stream ecology. The Spruce Mine project has been delayed by litigation, and the corps has asked a federal judge for time to study the EPA’s objections. Mountaintop coal mining has buried roughly 800 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed hundreds of square miles of woodlands.
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25 Aug 2009: Tree Advance Documented

A study of 166 sites around the world shows that trees are advancing to higher latitudes and higher elevations at more than half the locales, retreating in only two study sites, and remaining stable at the rest. Examining records from 166 areas where temperature and treeline records have been kept since 1900, scientists from New Zealand discovered that trees have advanced at 89 locations and remained stable at 77. The key factor in colonization of new areas appeared to be whether winter temperatures had risen in the past century, as treeline advance was most pronounced at sites where winters were warmer. Winter temperatures rose at 77 sites by an average of about 2 degrees C (3.6 F) over the past century, and summer temperatures increased at 117 of the 166 sites, rising by an average of 1.4 degrees C (2.5 F) since 1900. The findings, published in the journal Ecology Letters, seemed to suggest that rising winter temperatures were the crucial factor, because even if seedlings did colonize new areas in the warmer months, colder winter temperatures would kill them if they advanced to higher latitudes and elevations that had not warmed.
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18 Aug 2009: Borneo Dam Developer
Illegally Burning Forest, Group Says

The developer of a massive dam project in Borneo is illegally burning thousands of acres of felled rainforest, contributing to a smoky haze blanketing parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, according to a conservation group. The Sarawak Conservation Action Network reports that the developers of the controversial Bakun Hydroelectric Power Dam project are in the process of felling 200,000 acres of rainforest, a significant portion of which is being set afire. The fires, carried out by the developer’s contractors and sub-contractors, are in direct violation of Malaysia’s laws against open burning, according to Mongabay.com. Local and international conservation groups have unsuccessfully sought to block the Bakun Dam for more than a decade, arguing that the project — which will have a reservoir the size of Singapore — will displace forest communities and destroy biologically rich rainforest. The dam will be used to generate electricity for mining projects and for Singapore and Malaysia. Extensive bush and forest fires in Indonesia and Malaysia have created a dense haze covering large portions of Southeast Asia.
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12 Aug 2009: Obama Administration Okays
Major Mountaintop Removal Coal Project

After vowing to crack down on the controversial practice of leveling the tops of Appalachian mountains to get at the coal seams below, the Obama administration has quietly approved a major mountaintop removal project in West Virginia. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved the issuance of a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy’s Peg Fork Surface Mine, an 817-acre project that would permanently bury nearly three miles of Appalachian streams in mining debris. The Peg Fork mine was one of six mountaintop removal projects that Obama’s EPA initially said it opposed because “they all would result in significant adverse impacts to high-value streams.” Environmental groups criticized the administration for failing to carry through on its pledge to crack down on mountaintop removal, with a Sierra Club official expressing disappointment that the EPA failed to “adopt new regulations or policies that would end this destructive practice.” Mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia have destroyed more than 1,500 square miles of forests and buried more than 800 miles of streams in debris.
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Satellite Image: Carajas Mine in Brazil

Gouged out of the Amazon, the Carajas mine — one of the world’s largest deposits of iron ore — stretches across more than six miles of rainforest in northeastern Brazil. Discovered in 1967, Carajas is an open pit mine where minerals are removed from the surface one layer at a time, as shown in this photograph taken by NASA’s EO-1 satellite in late July. In 2007, 296 million metric tons of iron ore were dug out of the mine, which is estimated to contain a total of 18 billion tons of iron ore, gold, manganese, copper, and nickel. The mine is one of scores of mining, hydropower, agricultural, and road projects that are increasingly denuding the world’s largest rainforest.
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29 Jul 2009: Wave of Extinctions in Oceana

Habitat destruction, overfishing, and the spread of invasive species now threaten a large number of species in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands with extinction, and governments must act quickly to create far more extensive parks and reserves on land and sea, according to a new study. An international team of 14 scientists combed through 24,000 scientific publications to put together a sobering picture of biodiversity loss across much of the southern Pacific Ocean. Published in the journal Conservation Biology, the report said that more than 1,200 bird species have become extinct on southern Pacific islands in recent centuries, that 50 percent of Australia’s forest ecosystems have been modified or destroyed by agriculture and that nearly three-quarters of remaining forests have been degraded by logging, that habitat destruction accounts for 80 percent of all threatened species in Oceana, and that invasive species have caused 75 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate extinctions on the region’s islands. Among other measures, the scientists recommended setting aside 10 percent of terrestrial regions and 50 percent of marine areas as parks or reserves, as well as restoration of degraded ecosystems such as wetlands.
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28 Jul 2009: Sichuan Earthquake Destroyed
One-Quarter of Panda Habitat in Key Area

The 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, which killed 69,000 people and left 4.3 million homeless, also devastated more than 23 percent of a key swath of territory inhabited by endangered giant pandas, according to a study by Chinese scientists. The study, published in the journal Frontiers of Ecology, said that the quake in the South Minshan region turned 137 square miles of prime, bamboo-forested habitat into bare ground and that the quake also fragmented other key panda territories. Overall, said the researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 60 percent of the region’s panda population — estimated to be as low as 35 individuals — was affected by the earthquake. The destruction and fragmentation of the panda habitat, documented by satellite photographs, will make it more difficult for the animals to find each other and breed and could increase the risk of inbreeding, the report said. The scientists said that, as a result of the earthquake, they were recommending the establishment of protected corridors for pandas connecting areas of prime habitat, the creation of more nature reserves, and the protection of panda territories as towns are relocated and rebuilt in the devastated region.
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23 Jul 2009: Reintroduction of Wolves
Would Boost Ecology of Scottish Highlands

The reintroduction of grey wolves in the Scottish Highlands would create a beneficial “landscape of fear” that would prevent red deer from severely overgrazing the region, according to a new study. U.S. and Australian researchers studied the beneficial ecological effects of the reintroduction of grey wolves in Yellowstone National park in the 1990s and concluded that bringing wolves back to the Highlands would be equally salutary. Scotland’s grey wolves were extirpated by hunting 250 years ago, and without fear of predators the red deer — a species of elk — have badly overgrazed the hills and valleys, leading to a sharp reduction in tree species such as Scots pine and birch. In Yellowstone, the scientists found that the return of gray wolves kept elk from overgrazing many areas, leading to the regrowth of aspens, willows, and cottonwood trees. That, in turn, has led to a resurgence in bird and beaver populations. A co-author of the paper, to be published in the journal Biological Conservation, said “we want to broaden the discussion not just to the intrinsic value of the wolves but to the ecological effects.”
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20 Jul 2009: Malaysian Forests Felled
For Massive Rubber Tree Plantations

Malaysia’s remaining rainforests are rapidly being clear-cut and replaced with plantations of cloned trees that yield latex rubber and can also be harvested for timber, according to a report in The Star in Malaysia. The newspaper says that permanent forest reserves — protected areas in which some selective logging is allowed — are being converted to monoculture plantations that grow not only the latex-timber clone but also stands of African mahogany, teak, Acacia, and other species. Up to 80 percent of Malaysia’s remaining intact rainforests are threatened by the plantations, which harbor a fraction of the biodiversity found in pristine rainforests, the newspaper reported. “What we’re seeing today is wholesale clearing of permanent forest reserves and massive conversion to plantations,” said Surin Suksuwan, protected areas conservation manager for WWF-Malaysia.
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13 Jul 2009: Protected Brazilian Timber
Reportedly Being Sold as “Eco-Certified”

The Brazilian government is investigating charges that illegal timber is being cut in protected reserves and laundered as “eco-certified” to markets abroad, including the United States and Europe, according to a report in the newspaper O Globo. A federal prosecutor says wood taken from reserves and indigenous lands in the Brazilian state of Pará was classified as certified timber, a designation that earns a higher price from international buyers interested in purchasing and marketing sustainably harvested wood. The alleged operation involves as many as 3,000 companies, according to the report. Pará, which has emerged as a major timber market in recent years, also has the highest deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon, accounting for 43 percent of total forest loss.
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09 Jul 2009: Poaching for Horns Driving
Extinction of Rhinos, Report Says

A surge in the illegal trade of rhino horns in Asia and Africa is pushing the already endangered animal closer to extinction, according to a new report. Increased poaching by Asian-based gangs has produced a 15-year high in rhino deaths, particularly in South Africa and Zimbabwe, according to the report by WWF-International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The poachers are feeding a demand in Asia for horns to be used in folk remedies, including the horns’ alleged — and disproven — boost in male potency. “Rhinos are in a desperate situation,” said Susan Lieberman of WWF. While only about 3 rhinos in Africa were killed illegally each month from 2000 to 2005, about 12 of the continent’s estimated 18,000 rhinos are now killed monthly. Meanwhile, 10 rhinos have been killed for their horns in India since January. Another seven have been killed this year in Nepal. The total rhino population in those two nations is about 2,400. Lieberman said it was time for governments "to crack down on organized criminal elements responsible for this trade" and to increase funding for enforcement efforts.
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