Guardian – Lord Mandelson has been recruited to advise a multinational company accused of illegally chopping down endangered rainforest. The Labour peer and his staff in the political consultancy that he set up after leaving government have been meeting officials on behalf of Asia Pulp and Paper. For more than a decade, APP, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, has been accused by environmental groups such as Greenpeace of destroying thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest and endangering some of the world’s rarest animals. A growing number of firms have boycotted APP. The disclosure comes as Mandelson and other peers are expected to face pressure from the House of Lords authorities to declare their clients. Read article
The transformation of forested lands by human actions represents one of the great forces in global environmental change and one of the great drivers of biodiversity loss. The World Resources Institute estimates that only about 22% of the world’s original forest cover remains intact. The impact is, of course, enormous. Find out more by reading our news archive of 288 articles on Deforestation for the bigger picture. CLICK HERE
Business Day – John Auta, the Acting Director of Forestry Department, Federal Ministry of Environment has decried the illegal production of charcoal in the country, saying it aggravate the process of deforestation in the country. He appealed to marketers of kerosene to make it accessible to all Nigerians so as to reduce the over-dependence on forestry products as alternative energy sources. Read article
Jakarta Post – Several protected areas across the archipelago remain under threat of deforestation apparently due to the ineffective moratorium program launched by the government last year, environmental groups say. The environmental groups have witnessed continuing forest destruction by several companies despite the moratorium. On Thursday, Greenpeace, a member of the environmental groups’ coalition, published its findings on the current situation of Indonesian forests in Riau and Central Kalimantan provinces. Read article
AFP — A coalition of green groups in Indonesia on Thursday criticised a moratorium on deforestation as “weak”, saying the year-long ban still excludes large tracts of the country’s carbon-rich forests. Greenpeace, which is leading the coalition, said government maps that mark protected areas exclude 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) of peatland — biodiverse swamp-like forests that hold rich carbon reserves. Greenpeace said the government must review all existing logging permits on the country’s natural forests and peatland, and improve governance based on an accurate set of maps. Read article
AP – Activists are warning that a proposed revamp of Brazil’s tough environmental law could roll back historic gains in the fight against Amazon deforestation by opening parts of the rainforest to farming and increasing impunity for violators. Brazil’s agricultural lobby, which has maintained a decade-long fight for changes to the country’s Forest Code, contends the bill would make pragmatic changes to an overly strict law that is unfair to farmers and ranchers. Read article
NPR – The rising tide laps at the feet of local children and fishermen and submerges all but the tops of the mangrove trees of Tiwoho village in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province. At one degree of latitude north of the equator, the climate here is about the same all year round: hot, wet and perfect for the forests of salt-tolerant trees that grow along sheltered coastlines. Indonesia has one-quarter of the world’s mangrove forests, but it’s losing them at an alarming rate of 6 percent a year. The world as a whole is estimated to have lost half of its mangroves in the past half-century. The flooded forests help protect coastlines from tidal floods and erosion, provide a home to an important variety of biodiversity, and provide important absorption of the world’s carbon dioxide. Listen to Audio/Read Transcript
BBC – Hundreds of indigenous Bolivians have started a second long march in protest at government plans to build a road through the Tipnis national park. They say the project would destroy their homeland in the Amazon forest. A similar march last year led President Evo Morales to cancel the project. But he later backtracked after other communities said the road would bring economic development. Read article
Telegraph – The 74-year-old monarch has faced a barrage of criticism over his extravagant lifestyle at a time when Spaniards are suffering harsh austerity measures in a nation mired in economic crisis. Left wing leaders called for greater transparency of Royal accounts and one even suggested it may be time for the once popular monarch to give up his throne. Read article
TOI – The unbridled growth of moose, deer and other herbivore populations is contributing to deforestation thanks to the loss of predators such as wolves. This loss has allowed animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and also reducing biodiversity, researchers have concluded. Densities of large mammalian herbivores were six times greater in areas without wolves, compared to those in which wolves were present, the European Journal of Wildlife Research reports. Read article
ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2012) — The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction — which occurred about 450 million years ago — was related to climate change, exactly how the climate change produced the extinction has not been known. Now, a team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a framework for weighing the factors that might have led to mass extinction and has used that framework to determine that the majority of extinctions were caused by habitat loss due to falling sea levels and cooling of the tropical oceans.
The work — performed by scientists at Caltech and the University of Wisconsin, Madison — is described in a paper currently online in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers combined information from two separate databases to overlay fossil occurrences on the sedimentary rock record of North America around the time of the extinction, an event that wiped out about 75 percent of marine species alive then. At that time, North America was an island continent geologists call Laurentia, located in the tropics. Read Article
IBN Live – Deforestation and conversion of land for agriculture has caused habitat loss leading to threat to Blyth?s tragopan, an endangered bird, in Nagaland. According to the latest annual report of the forest and wildlife department, large-scale hunting and snaring of this enchanting bird by people for food was also a big threat. It said, excessive human intervention into the pheasant?s habitats was rapidly fragmenting the remaining habitats of this avian species. Read article
Press TV – According to experts, massive deforestation caused by commercial farming led to the deadly floods which struck Thailand last year, killing at least 700 people. As a result of the flooding, Thailand suffered great losses in its farming sector. The country’s crop sector also witnessed a three percent contraction during the first three months of this year. Read article
Digital Journal – After yesterday’s decision by the Banda Aceh Administrative Court not to rule on a case brought by a coalition to protect orang-utans and their habitat in the Tripa forest, we spoke with Ian Singleton of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme. Digital Journal first reported on the plight of Sumatran orang-utans on March 31, when we learned that an estimated 100 apes had been killed in 92 fires, burning out of control in the Tripa forest on the coast of Aceh province. Read article
PhysOrg – Chile’s Supreme Court Wednesday removed the last legal obstacle to building a giant $2.9 billion hydroelectric complex in the Patagonian wilderness, rejecting a bid by environmentalists to block it. The highly controversial project, which environmentalists say will wreck a unique and pristine habitat in the southern tip of South America, sparked violent protests last year. Read article
A coalition of conservation groups in Guatemala is reporting tentative signs of success in their efforts to save the spectacular scarlet macaw from extinction. The species is critically endangered due to habitat loss and poaching, so the groups are closely monitoring nests throughout the protected Maya Biosphere reserve to ensure as many newly-hatched birds as possible reach adulthood. Transcript Link Page
The Himalayan – If the seizure of illegal wood in the last two months is any indication, then deforestation has become rampant in Kanchhanpur district. Speaking at a press meet organised by the district forest office, District Forest Officer Lal Narayan Singh today informed that the office had impounded 1,205 cubic feet illegal wood across the district. It is the highest in Raikawarbichar VDC, where 569 cubic feet wood was impounded in the last two months. District Forest Office, Kanchhanpur, impounded more than 1000 cubic feet. Read article
The Scientist – No other species symbolizes the “war-in-the woods” over logging vs. forest protections better than the northern spotted owl. The owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1990 due to destruction of its forest habitat by logging. Unchecked logging at the time, as well as ongoing mechanization of mills that accelerated the speed at which trees could be processed by fewer workers, would have soon eliminated nearly all older forests along with forestry jobs. Historic logging levels also would have severely impacted the owl population, possibly eliminating it altogether, throughout most of its range. Read article
Ttjonline – A new report by the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC) and members of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership has revealed that the annual rates of gross deforestation in the Congo Basin have doubled since 1990. Read article
BBC – Illegal logging generates $10-15bn (£7.5-11bn) around the world, according to new analysis from the World Bank. Its report, Justice for Forests, says that most illegal logging operations are run by organised crime, and much of the profit goes to corrupt officials. Read article
The transformation of forested lands by human actions represents one of the great forces in global environmental change and one of the great drivers of biodiversity loss. The World Resources Institute estimates that only about 22% of the world’s original forest cover remains intact. The impact is, of course, enormous. Find out more by reading our news archive of 272 articles on Deforestation for the bigger picture. CLICK HERE
Catholic On-line – Wildlife in Indonesia’s Sumatran region is being threatened on all sides by deforestation. Sumatran tigers, elephants, orangutans, rhinos, as well as indigenous communities, is threatened by the “world’s fastest deforestation rate.” The World Wildlife Fund says that dwindling forests are caused by the local pulp and paper industry. Read article
AllAfrica – A Finnish timber expert has expressed concern at the high rate of deforestation in Zambia and has called for swift action to address the situation. Mr Mauri Kiviniemi also observed that the dwindling timber resources, especially in state managed forests was equally worrying and needed huge investments to replenish them. Read article
BBC – It is now two months since the devastating floods that hit the southern Philippines, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving many more homeless. Officials admit that deforestation was the cause of much of the destruction and the government says it has renewed efforts to prevent any more trees being cut down. But the BBC has seen evidence that logging is still causing concern that December’s disaster could be repeated. Kate McGeown visited one of the worst affected areas in Mindanao to see the impact of the floods and hear from locals. See video
PhysOrg – Often referred to as the world’s largest freshwater wetland system, the Pantanal extends through millions of hectares of Brazil, eastern Bolivia and eastern Paraguay. It includes sanctuaries for migratory birds, nursery grounds for aquatic life, and refuges for such creatures as the yacare caiman, deer, and jaguar. Some 4,500 different species live in the Pantanal. A leading environmental group, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), is sounding the alarm about the growing threat to the region posed by intensive farming, deforestation, urban growth and the proliferation of hydro-electric dams. Read article
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