Guest guest Posted June 15, 2008 Report Share Posted June 15, 2008 --Today for you 34 new articles about earth's trees! (357th edition) --You can now RSS tree news in a regional format at: http://forestpolicyresearch.org --To Subscribe / to the world-wide email format send a blank email to: earthtreenews- OR earthtreenews- In this issue: BC-Canada EU-Africa Latin America Index: --British Columbia: 1) Loggers prevent critical habitat, 2) Spruce budworm / Tussock moth, 3)As if the forests were saved: enviros and loggers join hands, 4) Salvage of Beetle kill makes problem worse, 5) Island timberlands kills non-conifers/poisons neighbors, --Canada: 6) Tembec shuts down all harvesting until Nov., 7) Heron rookery destruction heads to trial, 8) A demonstration of what's wrong with mining claims, 9) Battles over Indigenous land rights continue to this day, 10 ) Treeclimbing, 11) Oil sands' conservation offsets? 12) From age 7 to 104 they speak for the trees, --France: 13) Cutting down Graffitti-carved Beech trees of soldier's WWII celebrations --Israel: 14) 2000 year-old date palm seed sprouted and keeps growing, now 1.5 meters --Nigeria: 15) Inadequate control of the eco-system by the Federal Government --Uganda: 16) African Golden Cat lives in the dense woods --Cameroon: 17) World Environment Day celebration focuses on what's wrong --Sierra Leone: 18) alleged 'strict new rules' as timber export ban ends, 19) Log seizures, --Zimbabwe: 20) Victoria Falls rainforest being destroyed by hotel builders / amenities --Congo: 21) Rainforest Foundation's efforts to save forest, 22) No war means logging, --Ghana: 23) Illegal logging bust! 24) EU-oriented policy for legal / illegal logging, --Madagascar: 25) 9 million tons of carbon offsets for sale --Costa Rica: 26) Bird Route is the brain child of the Rainforest Biodiversity Group --Colombia: 27) New rainforest reserve dedicated to the protection of medicinal plants --Paraguay: 28) Hiking a last chunk of rainforest near San Rafael: only 5% remains --Brazil: 29) Stora Enso bribes it way into the destruction of another 2,500 hectares, 30) What is the jungle like? 31) Eliasch's demise, 32) restoring the forest will take 4,000 years, 33) Save the golden lion tamarin, 34) Species diversity in regenerating forests, British Columbia: 1) Confidential BC government documents recently released to the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice reveal political interference in the overdue Recovery Strategy for the Vancouver Island marmot one of the world's most endangered mammals. Despite the fact that the marmot has been intensively studied, and its habitat has been mapped and identified, no critical habitat is identified in its draft Recovery Strategy. The identification and protection of critical habitat, the area an endangered species needs to survive or recover, is essential for the recovery of species. This is especially important given that over 80 percent of species at risk in Canada are at risk because of the loss and fragmentation of their habitat. Recovery strategies for species at risk are required under the Federal Species at Risk Act. BC is leading the development of numerous recovery strategies for provincially at-risk wildlife. Recovery strategies are legally required to identify critical habitat to the extent possible. The lack of critical habitat identification is a hallmark of recovery strategies spearheaded by the BC Government. Last year an internal memo released to the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice revealed the provincial government explicitly instructed recovery teams to not map critical habitat. Maps are key to identifying the location of critical habitat and thus essential to its eventual protection. The newly released confidential government documents regarding the Vancouver Island marmot, which include emails between BC government bureaucrats and recovery team members, contain concerning comments including: 1) " The Government stripped out identification of critical habitat. Things keep changing. " 2) " It is not clear from the text why currently occupied " I must say I am ratherï€ ï€©ï€³habitat couldn't be identified . . .. " disappointed with the state of the recovery strategy at this stage. Especially for such a high profile species with so much money invested in it. . . This document is likely to get a lot of public scrutiny, and it is already overdue. " " We have a big problem, " said Gwen Barlee, policy director with the Wilderness Committee. " The BC government has a written policy which is preventing the identification and mapping of critical habitat in recovery strategies even when there is enough scientific knowledge to do so. They don't want to identify and protect critical habitat because they don't want to step on the toes of industry that is shameful. " http://www.wildernesscommittee.org 2) Rogan said spruce budworm, a moth that eats new shoots on fir and spruce trees in its larval stage, is plentiful in Kamloops and the surrounding Crown forest. It can kill saplings in one year. And over several years of attack, even mature trees are at serious risk. While the Ministry of Forests is spraying thousands of hectares surrounding the city, there is no control program in Kamloops. And another pest, tussock moth — far more destructive than spruce budworm — also threatens to turn what's left of Kamloops' tree canopy a grey and lifeless swath. " We're approaching what we'd call year one, " said Lorraine Maclauchlan, an entomologist with the B.C. Forest Service, of tussock moth. " It's cyclical and appears almost magically and in big numbers. After three years it crashes just as fast. " Tim Hall, a Barnhartvale landowner, knew even before he could see any damage or see the larvae that he was facing an infestation of tussock moth that began last year. " You can smell them before you can see them, " said Hall. " You get a sweet smell and that's the smell of tussock moth. " In large numbers, the moths can cause allergic reactions in some people when hairs fill the air and cause symptoms ranging from rash and itching to anaphylactic shock. " I had the full reaction, " said Deborah Murray, owner of Thompson River Tree Service, who ended up with an infection from taking out five trees at Rayleigh elementary this year. " Every inch of the branches had a cocoon. " For spruce and fir trees, even hardy Colorado blue spruce varieties used in landscaping, the moth " can and does kill trees in a single year, " Maclauchlan said. Unlike pine beetle, which kills trees by burrowing into bark, spruce budworm and tussock moths eat shoots and needles. Like pine beetle, when populations are in check, they help the ecosystem by preying on weak trees, thinning out the canopy and increasing growth on neighbouring timber. But large outbreaks can wipe out 40 per cent or more of timberlands and stunt growth for a decade of those trees that do survive. For unwary neigbourhoods, the insects can strip and kill valued trees. Maclauchlan is overseeing spraying this week for tussock moth around the city, particularly in the Barnhartvale area where Hall's 44-hectare property has already been hard hit by pine beetle. landwatch 3) Their roadside confrontations over old-growth coastal forests a fading memory with the establishment of new rules and conservation areas, environmentalists and forest workers are joining forces to focus on restoring B.C.'s historic links between timber harvesting and local jobs. The Wilderness Committee and Steelworkers issued a joint statement calling on the province to establish a " forest land reserve " to protect B.C.'s forests from residential development, similar in concept to the agricultural land reserve. Wu says with three quarters of B.C.'s south coastal forests now second-growth, B.C. should be ensuring investment in mills and manufacturing from private and public forest lands. " Conservation and sustainability of jobs go hand in hand, " Wu said at the Fort Langley demonstration. " The government needs to be proactive, with retooling and investment, otherwise when there is recovery we will be logging but without the milling jobs. " Steelworkers representative Scott Lunny welcomed the environmental group's help to push for requiring local manufacturing as a condition of all forest licences. The combined effort is planned to continue up the May 2009 provincial election. " Any support we can get for our efforts to protect B.C. jobs is welcomed in these desperate times, " Lunny said. After ending the requirement for local milling, the B.C. Liberal government began releasing private forest lands from tree farm licences at the request of companies on Vancouver Island. The licences required the private lands to be managed for forest use, in exchange for cutting rights on Crown land. Their release allows key water access and log sort locations to be considered for waterfront development. Another forest land release in the Kootenay region is pending, and is a condition of land sales organized under bankruptcy proceedings for U.S.-based forest company Pope & Talbot. B.C. Auditor General John Doyle is examining whether the government should require compensation from timber companies for releasing private lands. landwatch 4) There is mounting evidence that salvage logging of pine beetle-killed stands causes more ecological degradation than leaving them alone, scientist Phil Burton told a forum at UNBC on Tuesday. Given that only about one-third of the beetle-impacted area is made up of pure lodgepole pine stands, and given that the dominant form of harvesting is clear-cut logging, when salvage operations take place they are also removing the secondary forest structure, he said on the opening day of a two-day forum on the impacts of the pine beetle. That secondary structure -- particularly the non-pine species -- could provide timber for mills in 20 to 40 years so is important from a mid-term timber supply perspective, explained Burton, who works with the Canadian Forest Service in Prince George. It is an issue that communities in the heart of the beetle-epidemic are particularly concerned about, given the mid-term timber supply is forecast to drop about 40 per cent in the next decade, and even greater in some communities. The decrease in timber supply will bring a decrease in traditional forest-based jobs in many of the forest-based communities. The Canadian Forest Service has estimated that a conservative 22-per-cent decrease in the timber supply, will cause 600 job losses in Burns Lake and Houston. In Prince George, a conservative 17-per-cent decrease in the timber supply would cause a job loss of 2,900. Burton said the salvage logging can also have an impact on wildlife habitat given the large areas of salvage logging. It is important that wildlife have snags and brush to hide in, or they will be forced off the land and be compromised, he said. Wide-spread salvage logging is also an issue for carbon loss, as there are projections that show a greater loss of carbon from salvage-logged areas, he said. Carbon loss is an issue in climate change as carbon is considered a greenhouse gas, in part, responsible for warming temperatures. The forum, organized by the Forest Research Extension Partnership (FORREX), a non-profit organization which partners with industry and government, is meant to provide an opportunity for scientists and industry and community leaders to share lessons learned from the epidemic and explore community-based solutions. http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/20080610135926/local/news/beetle-logging-coul\ d-be-hurting-f orests-wildlife.html 5) Starting as soon as Monday (June 16), Island Timberlands plans to apply pesticides to kill maple and alder trees on its privately owned lands north of Cliff Gilker Park, near the B & K logging road in Roberts Creek. The move has some neighbourhood residents crying foul. Brett Heneke lives on Day Road and said trails in the area are heavily used by mountain bikers, trail walkers and horse riders. Gough, Clack and Roberts creeks all pass through cutblocks that will be affected. Island Timberlands manager of community affairs Mackenzie Leine said the pesticide will be delivered through a basal application of glyphosate (sold in stores as Vantage and Roundup) and triclopyr (which also goes by the brand name Release). " It's actually a benign application of herbicide, " she said, noting there will be no broadcast spraying involved. All neighbours within 150 metres of the treatment area boundaries were notified in a letter sent out on May 26, meeting the minimum 10-day notification period required. Any water sources identified, such as wells, will be given a 30-metre radius of protection. The application won't begin until the weather stays dry for a few days, she added. These are all minimum margins of protection required under the province's 2003 Integrated Pest Management Act, said Dan Bouman, executive director of the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association. The act requires a forestry operator to detail what pesticides they'll use and what areas they will target — not enough information with which to evaluate the possible risks to the ecosystem and to those living nearby, Bouman said. " The system this new act replaces had provisions in place for a member of the public to appeal to higher bodies, " he said. " Now, the public has no right of appeal. " At the June 5 infrastructure services committee meeting, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board passed a motion, put forward by Gibsons director Barry Janyk, that Island Timberlands be requested to find alternatives to using pesticides. The SCRD will also send a letter outlining the SCRD's pesticide policy to Stuart MacPherson, the executive director of the private managed forest land (PMFL), and copy it to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). http://www.coastreporter.net/madison%5CWQuestion.nsf/0/9CA0A0DB6407869B882574670\ 0167705?OpenD ocument Canada: 6) Tembec is halting all harvesting activities in Northeastern Ontario until November. The decision will temporarily affect about 100 employees mainly in the Hearst and Kapuskasing area. There is a sufficient supply of logs to meet production requirements given the stockpiles already in mill yards and in bush inventories. Tembec says the harvesting suspension is another indication of the serious state of lumber market conditions, driven primarily by the dramatic fall in the number of housing starts south of the border. Tembec is active in the Hearst forest and has equal ownership with Kruger in Marathon Pulp. http://foresttalk.com/index.php/2008/06/12/harvesting_halts_in_northeastern_onta\ rio 7) BURTON — New Brunswick forestry giant J.D. Irving Ltd., charged in 2006 with destroying blue heron nests while cutting a logging road, will face a trial after the company failed to persuade a judge that the law protecting migratory birds is out of date and unconstitutional. The company and one of its foremen are accused of destroying eight nests on J.D. Irving property in Lower Cambridge. Herons are protected under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act. Violations are punishable with fines up to $1 million, a three-year prison term or both. Irving lawyers challenged the federal legislation, which has been on the books since 1917, arguing the law is as outdated and infringes on provincial jurisdiction. But provincial court judge Patricia Cumming disagreed. In her decision, she said the protection of migratory birds is an international matter that overlaps federal and provincial jurisdiction. " The subject matter of the legislation is the protection of migratory birds that travel and are found internationally, requiring a single and unified approach to fulfil Canada's obligations under an international treaty, " she told the court. Irving's lawyers also argued the wording of the legislation is vague, and that it was meant to deal with the impact of hunting. But Cumming said the wording is clear, and the intention of the Act " remains conservation and protection. " " This is not merely hunting legislation...this is environmental legislation, " she said. Cumming has ordered a trial to begin Oct. 15. Outside the court, the decision was applauded by Jim Wilson, director of Nature New Brunswick. " It's certainly good news for migratory birds across North America and beyond, " he said. http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jODgL40WxnmaRmp6B9CdneBP1fLg 8) I bought a new axe and a file for sharpening the axe, a huge roll of pink plastic ribbon, donned my official old prospector's hat and set out around our neighbourhood in lovely rural Kingsville to stake my claims. I consulted geological maps and discovered a possibility that oil and natural gas could be found in my backyard and ravine. There is also potential for salt and, if worse comes to worse, I can always open an aggregate quarry and harvest sand and gravel. We may not have gold in the ground in Kingsville but by jimminey-crackers we still have resource exploitation potential. Some of my neighbours have not been sympathetic to my prospecting. One complained loudly when I took my axe and blazed along the trees of his driveway. And, he's still fuming about the pink ribbons I've hung in his magnolia tree. But, I showed him the Ontario Mining Act and he cowered under my threat to call out Ontario's Mines Minister Michael Gravelle and troops to enforce my mining claims. Another neighbour was upset simply because I explained to her that her in-ground swimming pool violated my sub-surface mineral rights now that I'd staked a claim around her red maple trees and hung pink ribbon on her forsythia bushes. I warned that her menacing shotgun would be no match for my right to call in the Ontario Mining Commission and its enforcement brigade. I adjusted my GPS, spat a wad of chewin' tobacco into her daffodils, and carried on. Of course, with all my neighbours, I've induced them to my point-of-view with the prospect of big royalties they will surely earn once we bring in a few gas wells in their front and back yards. I suppose the prospect of being a petroleum baron in Kingsville has mollified their initial shock and turned it to awe. We will know much better next year after our initial test well drillings are completed. http://www.kifriends.org/2008/06/why-muskoka-cottage-owners-will-win.html 9) Mention Native peoples being forced off their lands and most Americans think of their high school history books. But battles over Indigenous land rights continue to this day, even right here in North America. Here's one example, but with a happy ending. Grassy Narrows First Nation is an 800-person community living on 2.4 million acres of Boreal forest in northwest Ontario, 28 hours by car from Toronto. For more than a decade, the community has been fighting the clear-cut logging of its forest. On Tuesday, it won a major victory against the largest paper company in the world: logging giant Abitibi Bowater is formally announcing its decision to stop clear-cutting and buying wood from Grassy Narrows traditional territory today at its shareholder meeting in Montreal. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) began collaborating with Grassy Narrows in 2003, a year after the community established what would become the longest running logging road blockade in North America. RAN helped the community by pressuring U.S. companies Weyerhaeuser and Boise, the major buyers of wood from Grassy Narrows territory, to cancel their contracts with Abitibi. Boise announced that it would do so in February. Weyerhaeuser continued with business-as-usual and is rumored to be considering stepping in to log Grassy Narrows territory for itself after Abitibi leaves. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brune/major-victory-for-indigen_b_105778.h\ tml 10) " Hug the tree, say your name, and ask for permission to climb. " Those instructions begin my 36-metre climb of a white pine that's more than 200 years old and majestically rooted atop a rocky hillside near Wakefield, Que. I'll climb to a height of 18 metres -- six storeys high -- where I'll rest temporarily atop a unique seven-metre-wide treehouse -- one of the largest, if not the largest, in Canada. From there, I'll get a slight boost as I continue stretching and pulling myself up, literally towards the end of my rope, to a total height of 36 metres -- 12 storeys up from the ground. Did I mention that I have a fear of heights? I do, but with my harness secured and ropes double-checked, I feel that this adventure is both scary and safe. My guide is Jamie Robertson, a former highrise window installer, cleaner and certified instructor in something called " highrise suspended access. " Robertson runs a business called Wild Adventures in the forest surrounding Wakefield, incorporating the lushness of the landscape with off-the-path activities meant to heighten an awareness of the joys of being immersed in the natural world. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/travel/story.html?id=33e9a57a-b5eb-4aa1\ -826c-4083664 c5aac 11) A new system of conservation offsets has been proposed for Alberta's oil sands and other industries to address the growing impact on biodiversity on the Boreal forest. The report, Catching Up: Conservation and Biodiversity Offsets in Alberta's Boreal Forest, was commissioned by the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI) and brings together experiences from the applications of offset policies in other jurisdictions, with perspectives from industry, First Nations, government, academics and environmental groups in Alberta.Biodiversity or conservation offsets allow resources companies to compensate for the unavoidable effects on biodiversity from their development projects by conserving lands of equal or greater biological value, with the objective being no net loss in biodiversity. " Managing development to maintain biodiversity is a significant challenge in Alberta's Boreal Forest because of the combined and growing effects of energy and forest sector development, " said Simon Dyer, a leader author of the report. " There is also a real need for conservation to 'catch up' to the pace of development. Within Alberta's Boreal Forest, the amount of land now licensed for development has doubled to 2.8 million hectares over the past five years, and unless key lands are soon secured for conservation, there will be real consequences for wildlife and traditional uses. Conserving forests to offset impacts associated with development projects is a tool industry can use to compensate for their impacts. " The report was supported by Canadian-based energy company Nexen Inc., which is actively looking for ways to reduce the industrial footprint from its oil sands operations. Along with report author Pembina Institute and CBI, Nexen is part of a working group advancing two pilot biodiversity offset projects in northeastern Alberta that seek to protect large areas of the forest from industrial activity, in order to offset some of the biological impacts of development within the region. Other members of the working group include Suncor Energy, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., the Little Red River and Tall Cree First Nations, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada Alberta Region. http://www.canadiandriver.com/thenews/2008/06/10/biodiversity-offsets-proposed-f\ or-oil-sands.htm 12) Almost 100 years separated some of the speakers Monday night as Nova Scotians expressed their views on the future of the province's natural resources. " The animals are really important because if we were animals, we wouldn't like our homes to be all ruined and all our food to go away, " Laura Bartlett, 7, said in an interview after the public meeting in Halifax. Wilfrid Creighton, 104, had a little more natural resource experience than the younger speakers. He was appointed provincial forester in 1934 and served for 15 years. In 1949, he became deputy minister of the Department of Lands and Forests. For the next 20 years, he said, he worked to improve and expand provincial Crown land. That's a resource Nova Scotia has been wasting since the province was first settled, he said. " Successive provincial governments have shown little appreciation for the value of our forests, " Mr. Creighton said. " In my estimate, our Crown lands in their present state are worth about $200 an acre, or $800 million in total. With better management, these lands could easily increase in value at least threefold. " Mr. Creighton said more foresters and technicians are needed in the woods, and the additional cost would be offset by the increased forest value. He said it's up to the government to manage the forests properly and it should ban clearcutting near roads, lakes and rivers. " Once the government has managed its lands properly and set an example, it should enforce existing legislation, " said Mr. Creighton, who received an ovation from the crowd when he finished. Leo Dillman, executive director of Voluntary Planning, said the public meetings are to determine what natural resources issues and concerns are most important to the public. The information gathered from the meetings, along with written submissions, will be compiled in the group's final report, due in December. http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1061322.html France: 13) The beech trees of Saint Pierre de Varengeville-Duclair forest bore a poignant testimony to the D-Day landings for more than six decades. Thousands of American soldiers stationed there after the liberation of Normandy spent their spare hours with a knife or bayonet creating a lasting reminder of their presence. Although the trees grew and the graffiti swelled and twisted, this most peculiar memory of one of the 20th century's defining moments remained visible - until now. Amid bureaucratic indifference and a dispute between officials and the forest owner, most of the trees have been felled, chopped up and turned into paper. Claude Quétel, a French historian and Second World War specialist, was horrified when he discovered what he called a catastrophe and a shameless act. " It is a typically French failing to wipe out the traces of the past, " he told The Times. " I am indignant. " Local people are calling for the few " name trees " that still stand to be classified as historic monuments and saved from the same fate. " It should have been done a long time ago, " said Nicolas Navarro, the curator of a Second World War museum in the grounds of his family's 13th-century Château du Taillis near by. " It's sad and pathetic that it wasn't. " The trees surrounded land in the heart of Saint Pierre de Varengeville-Duclair forest, near Rouen in Normandy, which was once home to a US army camp named after the Twenty Grand brand of cigarettes. It was one of nine cigarette camps - along with Pall Mall, Old Gold, Philip Morris, Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, Home Run, Wings and Herbert Tareyton - used by troops needing treatment or waiting to be sent elsewhere. They were places of calm between the D-Day landings and the Ardennes, the Siegfried Line or the Pacific. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4124354.ece Israel: 14) ISRAELI researchers who grew a sapling from a date seed found at the ancient fortress Masada said today the seed was about 2000 years old and may help restore a species of biblical trees. Carbon dating confirmed that the seed - named Methuselah after the oldest person in the bible - was the oldest ever brought back to life, Sarah Sallon, a researcher at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, reported in the journal Science. The seed came from the Judean date palm, a species that once flourished in the Jordan River Valley and has been extinct for centuries, Sallon said. It was one of a group discovered at Masada, a winter palace overlooking the Dead Sea built by King Herod in the 1st century BC. The fortress was used by hundreds of Jewish insurgents in a revolt against Roman rule that erupted in 67 AD. " It has survived and flourished, " Ms Sallon said. Previous attempts to grow plants from ancient seeds failed after a few days. Since the seed was first germinated a few years ago, Ms Sallon said there had been some doubt whether it was really 2000 years old, like the others found at the site. " At first we couldn't break off pieces of the seed for carbon dating, " Ms Sallon said. " But when we moved the plant to a larger pot, we found fragments of the the seed on the roots, which we were able to carbon date. " This showed the tree is about 2000 years old and preliminary genetic studies suggest it may share about half of its genetic code with modern dates. If the tree, which now stands about 1.5 metres tall, is female, it might be able to help restore the species which once formed thick forests throughout the Jordan River Valley, she said. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23856766-401,00.html Nigeria: 15) Inadequate control of the eco-system by the Federal Government is responsible for the deforestation in the country. Mr. Lawrence Ogundare, the desk officer, International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) said this in an interview with newsmen in Abuja. He lamented that government has not taken full control of Nigerian forests as provided by law. " At the national level, the Federal Government is the policy maker, " he said, adding that states manage those within their jurisdiction. " As a result of this, the states cut the trees indiscriminately, " he said. He said a policy on forestry, which is being fine-tuned, would be domesticated in all the states of the federation. The policy, he said, needs legislative backing, otherwise it would be regarded as an ordinary document. " As soon as this is done, the Federal Government would hold states responsible for massive deforestation, " he said. He blamed those who planned the forest in the past for not putting in place adequate measures to check deforestation. " We have a lot of forest plantations all around but no proper maintenance of these forests, " he said. " If we had been maintaining our forests, we wouldn't be talking about the depletion of our forests today, " he said. http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=06/12/2008 & qrTitle=Inadequate%20c\ ontrol%20respo nsible%20for%20deforestation%20%E2%80%93%20Expert & qrColumn=ENVIRONMENT Uganda: 16) The African Golden Cat is a medium sized cat and can grow to 90cm in body length and weigh up to 18kg. Although its name implies a golden coloured coat the golden cat is polymorphic - its base coat coloration varies extensively depending on its location -ranging from a golden/reddish brown to slate/silver grey. Primarily due to its dense rain forest habitat very little is known of the lifestyle and biology of the golden cat. Most reports suggest that golden cat is a solitary and crepuscular hunter but sightings of a golden cat stalking the mainly diurnal black-fronted duika in South West Uganda suggest that the cat may well be active during daylight hours in parts of its range. Apart from duika and other small antelope it is thought that the main part of the golden cats diet is made up of rodents, tree hyraxes and birds. There are conflicting reports of the golden cat foraging close to human habitation - sources around the Bwindi National Park in Uganda have confirmed that the preying on domestic poultry and livestock is common, whilst research in the Tai National Park in the Ivory Coast suggest that domestic predation is a rare occurrence. Small monkeys are also known to be taken by the cat which may suggest that although thought of as mainly terrestrial, the golden cat is also active in the lower branches of the forest canopy and can climb well. The primary habitat of the golden cat appears to be the Tropical Rain Forest belt which traverses the African equator, however penetration into the adjoining tropical Dry Forests and Savannah scrub is also in evidence. To the east of its range in Uganda the golden cat has been known to inhabit regions up to 3500 meters and be present as far east as the Mau Escarpment in western Kenya. Although the golden cat is said to prefer virgin forest, reports from around the Bwindi Mountain Gorilla National Park in South West Uganda suggest that the cat is equally at home in secondary forest areas where logging activities had led to an initial decline in many of the herbivore prey species and an increase in human activity. http://world-360.blogspot.com/2008/06/golden-cat.html Cameroon: 17) The irrational use of waste and the indiscriminate felling of trees for fuel became the concern of environmentalists during this year's World Environment Day celebrations in Yaounde. Officials in the Ministry of the Environment and the Protection of Nature, MINEP, and the Coordinator of the United Nations System in Cameroon, called for the rational use of energy at the end of activities marking the Environment Day on June 5. The United Nations System Coordinator expressed concern on how pollution and the poor management of waste affect the health of local inhabitants.The coordinator also said the world is gripped by a carbon habit, which, according to her, should be discouraged in order to protect the environment. Against this backdrop, the US Ambassador to Cameroon, Janet Garvey, said the US Embassy supports a community-based waste management project put in place by Centre International pour la Recuperation, CIPREThe aim, according to the Garvey, is to bring together many stakeholders in the sorting, collection and management of urban household waste.She said one of the most important aspects of reducing waste is awareness. The diplomats pointed out that poor farming habits such as the felling and burning of trees deplete the soil and releases a lot of carbonic gases, which also deplete the ozone layer, causing climate change. http://allafrica.com/stories/200806121039.html Sierra Leone: 18) Sierra Leone on Thursday announced strict new rules to curb logging misuses, a day after lifting a six-month ban on the export of timber to stop alleged widespread plundering of its natural forests. " With immediate effect, forest rangers will have to supervise the cutting of trees for logs and no tree should be cut without their supervision, " Forestry Minister Sam Sessay said. He added that all loggers must apply for a transportation permit from the ministry before moving any timber and said all wood due to be exported should have a special identification code from the ministry. " The process is not to frustrate investors but to put proper rules and regulations in place, " he explained. The authorities are also promising a reward to anyone who gives " credible information about illegal logging. " Informants " will receive compensation of one-tenth of the cost of the logs arrested and confiscated, " ministry forestry expert Mohamed Hassan said. In January, Sierra Leone banned timber experts after complaints that mostly Chinese logging companies were destroying the country's forests, plundering natural resources and causing environmental problems. Experts calculate that logging is a multi-billion dollar (euro) business in Sierra Leone with Chinese companies leading in the trade. A 2006 European Union report identified logging as " the leading cause of environmental degradation in Sierra Leone. " Environmental watchdog Global Witness, which focuses on the exploitation of natural resources in conflict zones, said earlier this year that there was an upsurge in illegal logging in the country. Already devastated by a bloody decade-long civil war, many communities in the north-west of Sierra Leone who depend on the forest for their livelihoods are complaining that Chinese loggers are destroying it. " The Chinese are depleting the forest cover without replanting trees, " environmental activist Morlai Sulaiman said. A villager who lives near the northern national park of Outamba-Kilimi added that the loggers often duped local residents. " Chinese loggers would promise us roads, water and clinics but after cutting down the trees, they would drive their heavy trucks without even talking to us, " Alpha Kamara lamented. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5huANkm_ZqmMrWJVxUJpTuNrtvKhg 19) Statistics from the East Provincial Delegation of Forestry and Wildlife indicate that 1665 cubic meters of white wood were seized from loggers in the Dengdeng and Goyoum forest reserves between November 2007 and April 2008. According to the Provincial Chief of Forest Control Brigade, Pone, the seizures came within the framework of an operation dubbed " Operation coup de poing " launched on November 12, 2007 by the East Provincial Delegate for Forestry and Wildlife, Bruno Mfou'ou Mfou'ou. The operation was intended to weed out loggers from these forests whose conservation is one of the preconditions for the construction of the Lom-Pangar Dam.The wood, according to Pone, was auctioned for FCFA 22,000,000 and the proceeds deposited in the public treasury. Elsewhere in the Province, 2100 cubic metres of sawn timber were seized from loggers within the same period. Pone further revealed that 18 offence cases related to illegal logging were taken up by the Provincial Delegation the last six months. He said some of the cases have already been forwarded to the Ministry for further action. Guilty parties could be required by the 1994 forestry laws to suffer prison terms ranging from one year to three years or fines ranging from FCFA 3,000,000 to FCFA 10,000,000.It remains to be seen whether those civil proceedings will lead anywhere, given that those in power generally tend to connive with the loggers. A recent study carried out in the East Province shows that 21 percent of civil proceedings taken by forestry officials in the East Province against illegal loggers were " stopped by some one on high up. " Tracking down illegal loggers is hampered by a number of factors. Eco-guards are so poorly equipped that they find it difficult to monitor large areas of forestland. Secondly, they are few in number as one forest controller has to monitor over 20,000 hectares of concessions and loggers have developed the instinct to skirt the controllers. http://allafrica.com/stories/200806121074.html Zimbabwe: 20) BULAWAYO - The Victoria Falls rainforest along the Zambezi River could lose its place on the World Heritage Sites list, owing to business activities in the area. Ethel Mlalazi, director of the Victoria Falls Department of Physical Planning, said something needed to be done urgently to save the rainforest. " This comes as a result of some helicopter operators doing business along the Zambezi River from the Zambian side. The construction of hotels and lodges is another factor. But there has been a joint heritage management plan agreed to by Zimbabwe and Zambia to stop major developments that go against the rules of UNESCO, " said Mlalazi. Developments on the Zambian side have been stalled as the two countries work together on a joint plan to avoid the de-listing of the site as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. This has resulted in pressure mounting on one of the leading tour operators in the region - Shearwater Adventures - to relocate their helipad to a nearby site in Chamabondo, in line with UNESCO. The helipad is used to launch flights over the rainforest. " Since time immemorial, planners outlined that the site near Elephant Hills Resort was temporary, as it was not suitable for such operations. That site, even from old and outdated plans, was not, and is still not, suitable for helicopter flights. The activity is not in harmony with development, " said Mlalazi. The Victoria Falls is Zimbabwe's biggest tourist attraction due to an eclectic composition of the wildlife and the mighty Falls which have attracted international celebrities: Michael Jackson, American musician Joe Thomas and Russian tycoon and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abromovich. http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content & view=article & id=1340\ 2:helipad-enda ngers-tourism & catid=31:top%20zimbabwe%20stories & Itemid=66 Congo: 21) The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK), which has been working to protect the Congo Basin rainforest and the people that live in it since 1996, welcomes the fund as a good opportunity to encourage new ways of looking at forest management. To move beyond a straight choice between " give it to the loggers " and " turn it into a national park " , and towards systems which put the needs of people who live in the rainforest first. Simon Counsell Rainforest Foundation UK Director said: " While all eyes are on the Amazon, the Congo Basin, the world's second largest rainforest, is coming under increasing threat. If the Congo Basin follows the same pattern as West Africa, where complete forest destruction followed timber exploitation, then the result would be a catastrophe for millions of forest-dependent people and would drive countless plants and animals to extinction. The destruction of the Congo Basin forests would also have global consequences, releasing the equivalent of six years worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The launch of the Congo Basin Fund is a great opportunity to reverse this trend, support innovative ways of protecting the forest and generate much-needed livelihoods for local people. " http://www.oneclimate.net/2008/06/13/uk-governent-to-launch-congo-basin-fund/ 22) KINSHASA – From a workshop behind her house, botanist Terese Hart can glimpse log-filled barges churning down the Congo River toward a nearby sawmill. Such traffic had come to a virtual standstill during the nation's civil conflicts, but now, she says, the " lights are blazing at night " as massive logs from the forests of Bandundu and Équateur provinces are fed, around the clock, into the jaws of giant saws.At nearly 2 million square kilometers, the Congo River Basin's dense tropical rainforest is second in size only to the Amazon's. In Heart of Darkness, novelist Joseph Conrad–who piloted a steamboat on the Congo a century ago–described this as " impenetrable " territory, where " the big trees were kings. " Although deforestation is a severe problem in parts of the continent, central Africa's rainforests have so far avoided that fate. A recent analysis estimated that Africa accounted for less than 6% of the total loss of humid forest cover during the 1990s, whereas Brazil's loss represented nearly half of the total. The DRC's remoteness, political instability, bad roads, and unnavigable river rapids had helped save large tracts of its forests from exploitation. But forest degradation has been worsening in other Congo Basin countries, and a combination of factors over the past few years–including a sharp population spike in the eastern DRC and the mounting Asian interest in African timber–have raised the ax over Conrad's " kings. " The DRC contains more than 60% of the basin's remaining forests, and " the new scramble for central African resources, exerting massive pressures to open up frontier areas, has the potential to culminate in a 'perfect storm,' " says William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, who has studied the impact of logging on wildlife in several rainforests. http://www.mydeadspace.cn/blog/?p=239 Ghana: 23) Two KIA vehicles of registration numbers AS 5933 Y (White) and AS 8650 W (Blue) have been impounded by the Kumawu Police and the Forestry Department on 2nd May, 2008. The vehicles were intercepted when the police and the Forestry office were tipped off that they were carrying stolen teak logs. The teak trees had been felled from the forestry's land situated at a few kilometres from Drobonso. The perpetrators of the crime had carried out their nefarious activity under the cover of darkness. The mini-trucks have been conveyed to the Forestry's quarters and have had all their tyres deflated. Both trucks are full of eight-foot size teak logs which had been illegally lumbered. All attempts to bribe the police and the forestry workers have proved futile. The drivers of both trucks, who are yet to disclose the identities of their clients are awaiting further action and likely prosecution at the Kumawu District court. http://www.modernghana.com/news/169662/1/bravo-kumawu-police-refused-bribe.html 24) Preliminary reports from the ongoing voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) negotiations on how to stop illegal logging and illegal timber trade between Ghana and European Union (EU) have indicated that Ghana's forestry resources and industry were in danger of a hard fall if changes are not made to the current rate of timber harvest in the country. A media backgrounder to the report made available to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the current annual timber harvest in Ghana, including illegal timber, was around 3.3 million cubic metres, which was several times more than the amount the country's forests could deliver in a sustained manner. " If changes are not made in the near future the country's forest resources, and accordingly, its forest industry, will suffera 'hard fall' " , the media backgrounder said. The EU receives over 50 per cent of Ghana's timber exports, whiles half of total timber harvested in Ghana is consumed by the domestic market, out of which 70-80% of are from illegal sources, mainly chainsaw operators, the paper said. It, however, noted the VPA, which was primarily intended to ensure that only legal timber was imported into Europe from Ghana, would also help to move the country to a more sustainable regime and thereby save the forest resources. " The working group on the legal standard has therefore recommended that legislative reforms be undertaken to create a Consolidated Forest Act and Legislative Instruments to effectively support the 1994 Policy. " The paper also noted that the domestic market largely depended on illegal chainsaw operators, who usually supplied timber at a cheaper rate than the legal timber concessionaires. http://www.modernghana.com/news/169829/1/forest-resources-in-danger-report.html Madagascar: 25) Madagascar will sell more than nine million tons of carbon offsets to fund rainforest conservation in a newly established protected area. Conservationists say the deal will protect endangered wildlife, promote sustainable development to improve the economic well-being of people living in and around the park area, and help fight global warming. In a ceremony in Madagascar's capital city of Antananarivo, the government of Madagascar signed an agreement with the Makira Carbon Company (MCC), a company established by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a conservation group that helped set up the Makira Forest protected area. MCC will aim to sell the forest carbon offsets to entities abroad who seek to purchase " high-quality emissions reductions delivering multiple benefits — climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable economic development, " according to a statement from WCS. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0611-madagascar.html Costa Rica: 26) Staring up into the rainforest canopy, it's almost like looking into a living Impressionist painting, your eyes dazzled by the flash of colors, your ears picking up the extroverted squawks and screeches of green and blue colored Macaws, orange and green Motmots, and multi-hued Toucans. You're in Central America's first bird route. Now the 400 plus bird species that inhabit the Sarapiquà region of Costa Rica will have a greater chance of survival, and birders from around the world a chance to see these grand winged masters of the sky. At roughly the size of West Virginia, Costa Rica has a greater variety of bird species than all of North America. It is home to five per cent of all the world's known animal and plant species, including 850 bird species. The Costa Rican Bird Route is the brain child of the Rainforest Biodiversity Group, and partially funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The route consists of twelve birding sites, teaming up established and newly created biological reserves, to offer a variety of bird watching opportunities and programs in the San Juan – La Selva Biological Corridor of northeastern Costa Rica. The birdwatching industry is a global phenomenon, and has seen the largest increase in participants over the last ten years. Birding is the fastest-growing outdoor activity in the US, and according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 51.3 million Americans report that they watch birds. And more are taking it up all the time. http://travelvideo.tv/news/more.php?id=14675_0_1_0_M Colombia: 27) Colombia today announced the creation of a rainforest reserve dedicated to the protection of medicinal plants. The Orito Ingi-Ande Medicinal Flora Sanctuary encompasses 10,626 hectares of biologically-rich tropical rainforest ranging in altitude from 700 to 3300 meters above sea level. The sanctuary is based on an initiative launched by local indigenous communities with the support of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), an innovative NGO working with native peoples to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests. Members of the communities — which include the Kofán, Inga, Siona, Kamtsá, and Coreguaje tribes — combined their rich knowledge of medicinal plants with cutting-edge technology to determine the placement and extent of the reserve. Their contributions to the effort are reflected in the name of the reserve, according to ACT. " The name 'Ingi-Ande,' which means 'our territory' in the language of the Kofán people, is being used to underscore the robust participation of local indigenous peoples in the design and declaration of the sanctuary, part of which lies on Kofán ancestral lands and is long celebrated in their rich oral traditions, " said ACT in a statement. " The process of creating, designing, and declaring the Orito Ingi-Ande sanctuary has been the result of a coordinated effort among the Ministry of the Environment, Housing, and Territorial Development; the Special Administrative Unit of the Colombian National Park System; the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT); Rosario University; and especially the Union of Traditional Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC), whose traditional healers and apprentices provided the support and knowledge necessary to undertake the process. " Indigenous groups used GPS units to map the occurrence of yoco plants and other important medicinal plants identified by shamans, or indigenous healers. By combining technology with traditional plant knowledge, the effort helped strengthen cultural ties between indigenous youths and elders at a time when such cultures are disappearing even faster than rainforests. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0612-colombia.html Paraguay: 28) I always take an umbrella when I go to the rainforest. Some people believe in just getting wet, but this can be uncomfortable and surprisingly chilly. I put the damn thing up a little before six last Sunday morning and set off into the forest. I was at San Rafael, a chunk of Atlantic rainforest in Paraguay. The determined, soaking downpour explained how such forests get their name. Atlantic rainforest bears the distinction of being the most damaged habitat on Earth. There's about 5 per cent of it left. I was traveling with a conservation organisation called Guyra Paraguay, and for me the glass was 5 per cent full. The forest was silent, no voices, just the sound of the rain pattering on umbrella and the wide leaves of the understorey. The place is both inhospitable and enchanting. It sucks you in, it involves you. You raise your eyes and see plants on plants on plants. Everything is soft, damp growth. If you are still enough, you can hear the trees growing. It is not a good place for human beings; it lacks the clear logic of the African savannahs from where we sprang. This is a sad place, a lonely place, a broken forest crying out for healing. A fragile and fractured environment, it has been patched and patchworked. That it survives at all is miracle enough. Some might think that the surviving 5 per cent is hardly worth bothering with, but you don't think that when you are in the guts of the place. From the air, bouncing in by light aircraft, I could see chunks here, chunks there. This part has been bought up by Guyra Paraguay with the support of the World Land Trust in this country. There are holes at the edge of the forest and here, gloriously, the broken forest is being healed. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_barnes/article4133079.\ ece Brazil: 29) Stora Enso has acquired 2,500 hectares of land in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the south of Brazil, reportedly to cultivate fast-growing eucalyptus trees for paper production. This will force out peasant farmers from their land, thereby jeopardising food production, campaigners say. The company is also at the receiving end of public anger in Finland after it closed down a pulp factory this year. The company laid off 200 workers in the small northern Finnish city Kemijärvi. Brazilian land rights activists say Stora Enso will exacerbate food insecurity because it plans to divert agricultural land to cultivating eucalyptus. " With the global rise in food prices, the use of land for cultivating monocultures and soya for cattle is counterproductive, " Ulysses Campos, coordinator of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil told IPS on a visit to Finland. " The Brazilian government is to a large extent an accomplice in spreading the cultivation of monoculture plantations, but they are selling it as if eucalyptus would be something very good for the Brazilian economy, " he said. MST says that Stora Enso is currently in violation of a 29-year-old law that forbids foreign companies from owning land within 150 kilometres of Brazil's border. The area in Rio Grande do Sul where the company is said to have acquired the land is close to Uruguay. In order to circumvent the law, Campos said Stora Enso has set up proxy companies in Brazil which then acquire the land for Stora Enso. One of the companies, he said, is Azenglever Agropecuária. Ulla Paajanen-Sainio, vice-president for investor relations and financial communications at Stora Enso denied that Stora Enso is doing anything illegal. " It is not our view that we have done anything illegal, and we are relying on Brazilian legal advice to proceed further with this, " she told IPS. Azenglever Agropecuária, she said, is owned by two Brazilians who are local employees of Stora Enso. She said the Finnish-Swedish company is providing the equity. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42794 30) The jungle, in the words of Candace Slater, a specialist in Brazilian literature, is " an emphatically nonparadisal space. " For five hundred years, the Amazon has been one of those " dark unruly spaces of the earth " — the phrase is that of postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha — that serve as a Rorschach test of the European imagination. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver describes the jungle like this: " The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. The forest eats itself and lives forever. " Rainforest environmentalism sees the rainforest native as sharing the purity of the rainforest — closer to nature, less affected by the evils of the world, demonstrating the integrity of the unspoiled. The native of the rainforest is a monolithic figure, the keeper and companion of the plants and animals, an instrument to criticize our own civilization. That purity becomes associated with a wisdom we once had but have lost, and which we need to recover in order to rebuild what our technology has destroyed. Thus, the native is our guide — " our guide to nature, or our guide to the prehistoric past, " as anthropologist Bernard McGrane puts it. http://singingtotheplants.blogspot.com/2008/06/jungle-and-rainforest.html 31) Eliasch, a Swedish-born businessman, is a former deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, and now serves as Gordon Brown's special representative for deforestation. In the course of a speech in 2006 he said that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico had cost insurance companies " $75bn " (£38bn) and it might be cheaper to buy the entire Brazilian rainforest for " $50bn " (£26bn) thereby preventing deforestation and making hurricanes less frequent. Eliasch has himself bought up around 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest, an area about the size of Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. He made the purchase in 2005 and is believed to have paid around £8m for it. According to its website, the idea behind Cool Earth is that " rainforests are worth much more left standing – both for the planet and for local communities. " His organisation, Cool Earth, invites people to donate money to " secure one area of land that would otherwise be sold to loggers and ranchers and to price deforestation out of the market " . The charity says that it puts its money into a local trust and that it " employs local people to do the work, helping them to get income from the forest without cutting it down, and make sure the rainforest is worth more standing than cut down " . " For as little as £70 you can protect a whole acre " it tells potential donors, while £35 protects half an acre. So far, so worthy, but the combination of Eliasch's remarks and activities have now caused a growing backlash amongst Brazilians outraged by the notion that they cannot be trusted to take care of the Amazon themselves. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/12/brazil.climatechange?gusrc=r\ ss & feed=worldnew s 32) A new study has suggested that for a rainforest to regenerate completely, it might take up to 4000 years. According to a report in New Scientist, the study, which focused on the Brazilian Atlantic forest, determined that though certain aspects of a rainforest may return in just 65 years, for the landscape to truly regain its native identity takes a lot longer up to 4000 years. The Atlantic forest originally stretched along the southern half of Brazils Atlantic coast, covering some 1.2 million square kilometers. Once lush, the forest has been continually exploited for food, wood and space. Today, land it used to occupy is home to most of the country's population, including Brazils two largest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and only 100,000 square kilometers of forest remain. To determine how long it would take for the forest to regenerate, Marcia Marques and colleagues at the Federal University of Parana collected data on different parcels of forest that had been virtually cleared and left to recover for varying amounts of time. They then plugged the data into a computer model to calculate how long it would take for the forest to recover entirely. The researchers looked at four different measures of forest regrowth: the proportion of tree species whose seeds are dispersed by animals, the proportion of species that can grow in shade, tree height, and the number of native species. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/rainforest-regeneration-might-tak\ e-up-to-4000-yea rs_10059292.html 33) The endangered golden lion tamarin — a flagship species for conservation efforts in Brazil's highly threatened Atlantic Forest or Mata Atlantica — plays an important role in seed dispersal, thereby helping forest regeneration, according to research published in the June issue of the open access e-journal Tropical Conservation Science. Collecting droppings of golden lion tamarin introduced to União Biological Reserve in Rio de Janeiro state, Marina Janzantti Lapenta and Paula Procópio-de-Oliveira of the Golden Lion Tamarin Association found that the small primates are efficient seed dispersers, due to the number and variety of seeds consumed and because they help faciliate germination. " The tamarins deposit the seeds in places more favorable to germination, " said Lapenta, lead author of the study and an ecologist at the University of São Paulo. Lapenta says that tamarins deposit seeds in favorable habitats far from the trees where they feed, giving the seeds a better chance of germinating away from seed predators and with better access to sunlight. " While other animals disperse seeds in the same forests of golden lion tamarins, these species disperse seeds of different sizes and in other quantities, " Lapenta explained. Lapenta and Procópio-de-Oliveira suggest the golden lion tamarin goes beyond simply serving as flagship species for conservation: the charismatic primate actually plays an important role in the recovery of the Mata Atlantica, an ecosystem than has been diminished by more than 90 percent due to logging and agricultural expansion. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0609-lapenta_tcs.html 34) In 1967, an American billionaire named Daniel Ludwig purchased 16,000 square kilometers of rainforest in Brazil–an area half the size of Belgium. Ludwig, who had made his fortune building supertankers, was betting on a paper shortage and hoped to boost his wealth by growing Eucalyptus trees for pulp.Thinking big, Ludwig shipped a preassembled paper mill from Japan and floated it up the Jari River. He built a new town, and his workers chopped down about 1300 square kilometers of rainforest to make way for the plantations. The rest remained untouched. After a little more than a decade, however, the scheme failed. Stymied by rising energy costs and business setbacks, Ludwig pulled out. Logging continues in the area, but many of the clear-cuts have been returning to the wild. Ludwig's losses have been science's gain. Given the rate at which rainforests are being cleared, some ecologists say there is a growing need to turn more attention to the woods that sprout up in their place. Whether the land is left to its own devices or managed by humans as tree farms, these second-generation ecosystems are coming to dominate the wooded landscape. Attracted by the Jari property's combination of intact rainforest, vast tree plantations, and regenerating forest, Carlos Peres recognized it was a perfect place to figure out which species persist where. " If you're trying to predict the future, this is what you need to do, " says Peres. A wildlife biologist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K., he and his team have now published their follow-up of Ludwig's folly in a series of recent papers. " It's comprehensive enough that the results are convincing, " says ecologist Robert Dunn of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Whether those results are good news or bad news, however, is a matter of debate. " The big take-home message is that there are a lot of species missing " from secondary forests and plantations, Dunn says. And for Peres's team, the findings reinforce the need to conserve the remaining old-growth tropical forests. " Primary forest is even harder to replace than many researchers expect, " says Toby Gardner of the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil. " For many species, once these virgin forests have gone there is nowhere else to go. " http://www.mydeadspace.cn/blog/?p=237 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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