RELATED e360 DIGEST ITEMS

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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12 Nov 2009: Brown Pelican Removed
From U.S. Endangered Species List

The brown pelican, a bird once prized by hunters for its feathers and later imperiled by rampant pesticide use, has “fully recovered” and no longer requires federal protection, the U.S. Interior Department announced. Populations of the bird — a fixture in Florida, the Gulf Coast states and along the Pacific coast — have reached more than 650,000 in North and Central America. That marks a stark contrast to decades ago, when a combination of hunting and the use of the pesticide DDT — which weakened pelican eggs, causing them to hatch prematurely — had decimated the species. Pelican populations at one time had dipped as low as 10,000. The bird was declared endangered in 1970. A ban on the general use of DDT in 1972 was a key step in the recovery, federal officials said. “It has taken 36 years, the banning of DDT and a lot of work,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “but today we can say that the brown pelican is back.” Removal from the endangered species list means that officials will no longer be required to consider effects on the bird when reviewing construction projects.
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27 Oct 2009: Ocean Acidification’s Effects
Documented in New Study of Shellfish

Relatively small increases in ocean acidity significantly harm clams, bay scallops, and oysters, particularly in their crucial larval stage, according to a new study. Researchers at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, exposed shellfish to levels of acidity expected in Earth’s oceans later this century and next century, and found that modest increases in acidity led to a 50 percent decline in survival of clam and scallop larvae, reduced the size of the larvae, and caused the larvae to develop more slowly. Oyster larvae also grew more slowly, but their survival was not affected until ocean acidity reached levels expected next century. The world’s oceans absorb about half of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide released annually by burning fossil fuels, and the increased carbon dioxide is rapidly making the oceans more acidic, inhibiting the ability of mollusks such as clams and scallops to make their calcium carbonate shells. The researchers said the detrimental impact of ocean acidity on shellfish larvae growth rates is particularly worrisome, as the larvae are free-swimming and exposed to predation. The group’s work is being published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
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26 Oct 2009: Key Wolves in Yellowstone
Killed Near Park by Hunters in Montana

Hunters have killed some of Yellowstone National Park’s best-known alpha wolves, animals vital to studies conducted in the park since wolves were reintroduced there in 1995. Among those killed was an alpha female, known as wolf 527, who was born into Yellowstone’s Druid Peak pack, featured in a PBS documentary entitled “In the Valley of the Wolves.” Before she, her mate — the pack’s alpha male — and her daughter were shot this month, wolf 527 was wearing a radio collar that enabled researchers to track and study her and her pack. Doug Smith, the biologist in charge of Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction program, said the new pack wolf 527 helped form — the Cottonwood Pack — was a “key pack on the northern range” of the park, adding, “Whether the pack exists anymore or not, to us the pack is gone.” Wolf 527 was killed in a special hunt designed to cull Yellowstone wolves killing livestock and elk on the park’s northern boundary. Montana officials, surprised by the large number of Yellowstone wolves killed, called off the special hunt, even as an expanded wolf hunt begins in Montana this week. More than 1,600 wolves exist now in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, and state officials are allowing 75 to be killed this season in Montana and 220 in Idaho.
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23 Oct 2009: Protected Polar Bear Habitat
Proposed by U.S. Government in Alaska

The U.S. Interior Department is proposing that more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea, and ice in Alaska and nearby waters be given special protection to help preserve 3,500 polar bears threatened by the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice. The Interior Department has proposed designating the vast area as “critical habitat,” which means that any government agency or company must show that activities such as oil drilling and shipping will not affect the bears’ habitat or accelerate the extinction of the species. In 2008, the Interior Department declared that polar bears were threatened with extinction. Shell Oil this week was given permission to drill in the proposed protected area, and conservation groups have criticized the Interior Department for not banning all oil and gas activity in the protected zone. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its annual “Arctic Report Card” saying there is mounting evidence of widespread warming in the Arctic, including a drastic reduction in thick, multi-year sea ice; record-setting heat in Greenland and other parts of the Arctic; an unprecedented amount of freshwater on the surface of the Atlantic from melting ice; and growing evidence that Arctic warming is altering weather patterns in the northern hemisphere.
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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: Genetically Modified Crops
Needed to Avert Food Crisis, Panel Says

Further development of genetically modified (GM) crops will be needed to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will live on the planet by mid-century, according to a report from the U.K.’s Royal Society. The report said that rising populations, the impacts of climate change, and projected water shortages mean that new, drought-resistant and highly productive food plants must be developed to feed the world. The report said other economic and technological changes — such as improved irrigation and crop management — also will be necessary. The Royal Society scientists concluded that the development of new crops is an urgent priority if global agriculture and land-use problems are to be solved. The scientists’ conclusions drew fire from opponents of GM crops, who contend that the technique is unsustainable and could cause major environmental harm.
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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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16 Oct 2009: Kew Gardens Seed Bank
Has Collected 10 Percent of Plant Species

A repository created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has collected nearly 10 percent of the seeds from the world’s estimated 300,000 seed-bearing plants, completing the first phase of an ambitious plan to preserve the seeds of all the species threatened by human development and climate change. The final seeds added in the project’s opening phase came from an endangered pink banana — Musa itinerans — favored by Asian elephants. To date, the Kew seed bank has collected 1.6 billion seeds from a total of 24,200 plant species. The next phase of the project aims to preserve seeds from 75,000 species by 2020. The seed bank has already been used to revive threatened species, including replanting a shrub, the shiny nematolepis, whose only known remaining plants were destroyed in massive Australian wildfires earlier this year. Scientists estimate that as many as 200,000 of the world’s seed-bearing species could eventually be at risk from rising temperatures and human encroachment on the natural world. The seed bank, which opened in 2000, stores the seeds in super-cooled, underground vaults in Sussex.
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14 Oct 2009: Salt Marshes and Mangroves
Cited as Vital in Combating Climate Change

Salt marshes, sea grasses, mangroves, and other forms of marine vegetation withdraw and store an enormous amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and should be preserved and restored by creating a new global fund, according to a U.N. report. The study, calling for the creation of a “Blue Carbon” initiative, said that although such marine vegetation covers less than 1 percent of the world’s seabed, these plants are estimated to store 1.6 billion tons of CO2 every year — more than half of all carbon buried in the ocean floor. The U.N. report said that these vital marine habitats are being destroyed at a rapid rate, with parts of Asia losing up to 90 percent of their mangrove forests since 1940 and an estimated 2 to 7 percent of salt marshes, sea grasses, and mangroves lost annually to human development. But the report said that such ecosystems can be restored, and that the restoration of large areas of marine vegetation, coupled with efforts to preserve tropical forests, could reduce global carbon emissions by 25 percent.
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14 Oct 2009: Non-Native Snakes in U.S.
Threaten Ecosystems and Other Species

Five giant invasive snake species threaten the health of native ecosystems in Florida and parts of the southern U.S. because the reptiles could decimate indigenous species of animals and birds, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Robert Reed, a USGS invasive species scientist who co-authored the report, said that Burmese pythons, northern and southern African pythons, boa constrictors, and anacondas — some of which grow more than 20 feet long and weigh 200 pounds — “threaten to destabilize some of our most precious ecosystems and parks, primarily through predation on vulnerable native species.” Several of the species — generally bought as pets and then released when they became too large — breed in south Florida, including the Burmese python, whose numbers in the state are estimated in the tens of thousands. The USGS report said that the snakes thrive in rural and suburban areas and could pose a threat to humans. The report cited as a cautionary tale the Pacific island of Guam, where the invasive brown treesnake has wiped out 10 of Guam’s 12 native bird species.
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07 Oct 2009: From ‘Albatross Cam’
New Insights into Foraging Behavior

By attaching small digital cameras to the backs of several albatrosses in the sub-Antarctic, Japanese and British scientists have discovered that the great seabirds sometimes feed in conjunction with pods of killer whales, apparently picking up scraps left by the predatory mammals. The researchers affixed the cameras to four black-browed albatrosses captured on Bird Island in South Georgia in January, then retrieved three of the four cameras when the seabirds returned to their breeding colonies. The scientists collected nearly 29,000 digital images, some of which showed albatrosses flying behind killer whales and landing in the sea near the orcas. Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, the scientists said that the albatrosses appeared to be feeding on scraps of Patagonian toothfish or other prey devoured by the killer whales. Such interactions between albatrosses and killer whales have rarely been observed, and the researchers said that one way albatrosses may locate prey in a vast, featureless sea is by spotting orcas and feeding in their vicinity. The cameras, each weighing 82 grams, captured other images of fellow albatrosses in flight, as well as icebergs adrift in the Southern Ocean.
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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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28 Sep 2009: U.S. May Remove Humpbacks
From List of Endangered Species

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service may remove the humpback whale from its list of endangered species, citing evidence that the species has rebounded from near extinction. Since an international ban on their whaling in 1966, populations of the north Pacific humpback have increased about 4.7 percent each year, researchers say. An estimated 18,000 to 20,000 humpbacks now exist in the north Pacific, a sharp increase from the 1960s, when populations had dropped to about 1,400. About 60,000 humpbacks exist globally, according to the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “Humpbacks by and large are an example of a species that in most places seems to be doing very well, despite our earlier efforts to exterminate them,” said Phillip Clapham, a senior whale biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. must review the status of endangered species whenever there is “significant” new information, and this is the first time the humpback’s status has been reviewed since 1999. Some groups object to lifting the endangered status of the humpback, citing climate change and ocean acidification as emerging threats to the species.
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25 Sep 2009: Fanged Frog and Striped Gecko Among New Species Discovered in Mekong

Scientists discovered 163 new species in the Greater Mekong region last year, including a fanged frog that eats birds and a striped gecko with cat-like eyes, according to a new report by WWF International. New species discovered in the area over the last year include 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and a bird, according to the conservation group's report. The Greater Mekong region includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and China’s Yunnan province. From 1997 to 2007, 1,068 new species have been discovered in this area. But the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion, could alter the ecosystems for these species, putting them at risk of extinction, researchers said. “Rare, endangered and endemic species like those newly discovered are especially vulnerable because climate change will further shrink their already restricted habitats,” said Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Programme.
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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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28 Aug 2009: A Rare Photograph
Of a Snow Leopard in Afghanistan

One of the most remote and beautiful regions in the world — Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor — is also home to one of the globe’s rarest creatures, the snow leopard. Researchers for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently took some remarkable, close-up photographs of a snow leopard in the Wakhan, using a camera trap that automatically shoots a picture when a creature passes by. Afghanistan is believed to be home to fewer than 200 snow leopards, which live in the Hindu Kush mountains. The Wakhan is a narrow finger of land high in the Hindu Kush in northeastern Afghanistan. WCS researchers are conducting wildlife surveys in the Wakhan with the goal of including it in a network of parks and protected areas that the Afghan government is planning to establish in the war-torn nation. Snow leopards — found in mountainous regions of central and south Asia — are listed as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
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