Deforestation // Current

Prince Charles and His Vision for the World’s Rainforests

Prince Charles has an idea: He thinks that rich countries should pay annual “bills” to stop destruction of the... more

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Chimps 90 Percent Gone in a "Final Stronghold"

West African chimpanzees have declined by 90 percent in the last 18 years in an African country that is one of the... more

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Hungry bears surround Russian villages

Dozens of brown bears searching for food have forced two villages in a mountainous region of southern Russia to impose a curfew,... more

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Brazilian Gov't Agency Listed as Biggest Illegal Logger of Amazon

"Brazil’s environment minister announced yet another series of measures to halt deforestation of the Amazon this week,... more

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Amazon Deforestation Doubles

This is really sad. The Amazon is being deforested more than twice as fast as last year, Brazilian officials said Monday,... more

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Bushmeat trade "most significant" threat to Africa's wildlife says Richard Leakey

Maverick conservationist, Richard Leakey, writes that "commercial bushmeat hunting has become the most significant immediate threat to the future of wildlife in Africa and around the world" in an article on Wildlife Direct. Founded by Leakey, Wildlife Direct is a nonprofit allowing researchers and wildlife organizations in Africa and Asia to connect directly with supporters through blogs.

A paper recently released by the Centre of International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biodiversity (CDB) argued that legalizing bushmeat trade is the only way to ensure species survival and provide protein needs to impoverished people. Leakey disagrees: "legalizing this multi-billion trade will not help the wildlife. It will instead exterminate what remains, species that we are working so hard to preserve." Leakey has spent two decades working to conserve wildlife in his native Kenya.

"CIFOR argues that since up to 80 percent of the rural households in central and western Africa already depend on bushmeat for their daily protein requirements, a blanket ban on the trade would endanger both humans and wildlife " Leakey writes. "They call for regulated but legal uptake of wildlife protein. Maybe, but just how can this be done? There are no mechanisms to regulate this even with the best legislation."
Leakey says that CIFOR and CDB's idea of legalizing the bushmeat trade "shows remarkable naÃ¯vetÃ© and totally fails to understand the realities on the ground. A hungry population is never going to practice conservation of food, especially where it can be had free from the forest."

Comparing legalizing the bushmeat trade to legalizing drugs, Leakey writes that there are other ways in which to provide poor communities with protein. "Why don't people encourage the rearing of chickens, fish or cane rats to alleviate their protein deficiency? This will bring development and a better and healthier existence."

According to Leakey a number of species that have experienced local extinctions or drastic declines due to the bushmeat trade in Africa, including elephants, chimpanzees, gorillas, pangolins, bush pigs, duikers, and monitor lizards. Numerous primate species are especially susceptible. The bushmeat trade is also a threat to many species in Asia.

Richard Leakey, son of famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, is known for his bold conservation views and his long career in politics, anthropology, and conservation in Kenya.
Maverick conservationist, Richard Leakey, writes that "commercial bushmeat hunting has become the most significant immediate... more

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1 month ago

Treating Frog Fungus With Bacteria | Dr. Lucy Spelman

About half of the world's frog and amphibian species are threatened with extinction. In an effort to raise public awareness,... more

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1 month ago

Petition Against Kimberly-Clark’s shocking mismanagement of forest resources

Shocking new photos released today reveal the existence of a massive stockpile of old-growth logs that are destined to become... more

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1 month ago

UN launches program to cut deforestation emissions

The UN launched a programme that it hopes could be the foundation for a system in which rich countries would pay poor ones to slow climate change by protecting and planting forests.

The new programme, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Program, or UN-REDD, will assist nine developing countries, including Bolivia, Indonesia and Zambia, in establishing systems to monitor, assess and report forest cover.

"Forests are worth more alive than dead... and their ecosystem services and benefits are worth billions if not trillions of dollars if only we capture these in economic models," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

Clearing forests for timber and farmland in developing nations emits nearly 20 per cent of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, according to the UN's climate science panel. Trees store heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they rot or are burned.

Tropical countries are pushing to include UN-REDD in the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Delegates representing countries around the globe are scheduled to meet in Copenhagen at the end of next year in hopes of hammering out a successor to the pact, which expires in 2012.

Under such a plan, the tropical countries would generate tradable carbon credits by saving and planting trees. Indonesia, for example, has the potential to be compensated €682 million a year if its deforestation rate was reduced to one million hectares annually, the UN estimated.

Presumably, rich countries would buy the credits to meet their own emission limits, like the way EU countries have invested in credits representing emissions cuts generated by clean energy projects in poor countries.

Not everyone agrees such a programme would be a good idea. Barry Gardiner, British Prime Minister special envoy for forests, said in an interview earlier this month that the model of avoided deforestation is flawed and risks alienating voters in rich countries.

Mr Gardiner proposed instead that rich countries should simply make payments to tropical nations based on the size of existing forests. If countries continued to log or burn they could be expelled from the scheme.
The UN launched a programme that it hopes could be the foundation for a system in which rich countries would pay poor ones to slow... more

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1 month ago

New manatee species discovered!

NEW SPECIES OF LIVING MANATEE! 'A New Species, the Dwarf Manatee, Amazon Association for the Preservation of Nature'... more

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1 month ago

Mountain Gorilla Expedition | Morris Animal Foundation

Morris Animal Foundation (MAF) withalong with the Mountain Gorillas Veterinary Project (MVGP) . Up close & personal with... more

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2 months ago

Eaten into Extinction?

Elephants, gorillas and other large forest mammals may become extinct in central Africa within 50 years if hunting meat to feed starving populations continues at the current pace. Each year, rural peoples consume some 2.2 billion pounds (one million metric tons) of so-called bushmeat from wildlife, the equivalent of four million cattle; the flesh accounts for 80 percent of the protein and fat in their diet.

"If current levels of hunting persist in central Africa, the most vulnerable species will become extinct in the near future," cautions Nathalie Van Vliet, a researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based in Indonesia. The problem is, she adds, that "if the people that currently rely on bushmeat as a source of protein in central Africa had to rely on livestock, we would see the same catastrophe that is destroying the Amazon Basin: deforestation for pasture land and livestock raising."

In fact, there is no simple solution to this problem. CIFOR, in a report released today, argues that a hunting ban would not work, as evidenced by the failure of antipoaching programs, among other things. But it also says that forest species such as elephants, buffalo and apes that are slow to reproduce need to be protected or they will disappear entirely. Already, roughly 40 percent of jungle species are killed in greater numbers than can be regained through reproduction, according to the report "The Bushmeat Crisis."

The report calls for local agreements that allow hunting of species that can rebound quickly (such as various species of duikers, a type of forest antelope) while nixing kills of species with long gestation periods (such as elephants who give birth after 22 months). This is "hunting that can satisfy the demand from the poorest in future generations as well as ensure the stability in the long-term of hunted animal populations," Van Vliet says. But she notes the "success" of such pacts will depend on local communities' willingness to abide by them.

The only examples of such sustainable hunting, however, are either among people who have almost no contact with other human beings, such as the indigenous Aché people in the forests of eastern Paraguay, or those who have already killed off local populations of slow-breeding animals as is evidenced in the bushmeat market in Takoradi, Ghana.

Further exacerbating the problem: illegal and even legal activities in central African forests, such as logging and mining, that carve out new access as well as attract new people who also crave meat. And laws against the wildlife trade have failed to prevent supplies of everything from rhinoceros horns to tiger bones from reaching the estimated $3.9-billion global market.

That suggests that even granting ownership of the common resource represented by a duikers herd might not solve the problem, as some experts suggest. But it also shows that blanket bans are not working either. "In the tropics, they have genuine needs," says entomologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology, who was not involved with this study but has been assessing the problems presented by expanding human population since the 1960s. "There are desperately poor people surrounding reserves. If I was there, I would shoot the hippo and eat it, too."Elephants, gorillas and other large forest mammals may become extinct in central Africa within 50 years if hunting meat to feed... more

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2 months ago

Endangered Mountain Gorillas Featured on Morris Animal Foundation

Endangered Mountain Gorillas Featured on Morris Animal Foundation Web Exclusive, MAF Responded to Dian Fossey's Request for Veterinary Care--

DENVER, Sept 15, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Morris Animal Foundation (MAF) has posted a Web exclusive, http://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/gorilla/index.html, featuring an up close and personal visit with the magnificent, though highly endangered, mountain gorillas of Rwanda. In the exclusive video, MAF visits the site of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP), an innovative gorilla health initiative first established in 1985 when Dian Fossey asked MAF for help in response to a crisis situation for these gorillas. Their very survival was at stake. MAF accepted the daunting challenge and established veterinary care and health resources in the Rwanda jungles. Thousands of loyal MAF donors and friends also stepped up to answer the call for help. The MGVP is a testament to the kindness, generosity and commitment of people to saving a species.
MAF Chief Operating Officer John Taylor takes viewers to the MGVP headquarters and into the mountains where these gorillas live, explains how the project came about and allows the audience to enjoy these inspiring creatures at very close range. In fact, in one segment Taylor explains how one of the gorillas harmlessly reached out and grabbed one of the human members of the group.
In recent years the program was transitioned from MAF to MGVP, Inc., but MAF remains the primary funding source. Today, ecotourism plays a crucial role in the gorillas' survival and protection, inasmuch as they represent an important economic asset to the nation's economy. Information on how to visit the gorillas is provided as well as some good tips on making the trip.
About Morris Animal Foundation:
Morris Animal Foundation, established in 1948, is dedicated to funding animal health research that protects, treats and cures companion animals and wildlife. MAF has been at the forefront of funding breakthrough research studies benefiting animals in some 100 countries, spanning all seven continents. MAF has its headquarters in Denver. The Foundation has funded more than 1,500 humane animal health studies. Charity Navigator ranks MAF as a four-star charity, the highest rating.
For more information, call 800.243.2345, or visit http://www.MorrisAnimalFoundation.org.
SOURCE Morris Animal Foundation
http://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org
Endangered Mountain Gorillas Featured on Morris Animal Foundation Web Exclusive, MAF Responded to Dian Fossey's Request for... more

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2 months ago

Cuteness Kills Endangered Monkeys

Illegal Wildlife Trade - Too Cute for Their Own Good Cotton-top tamarins are smaller than spider monkeys, but they are equally... more

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2 months ago

Amazon Deforestation Slows Last Year, but 8,147 Square Kilometers Still Chopped Down : TreeHugger

Though Brazil has made a number of moves towards monitoring and slowing rates of Amazon deforestation of late which seem to be... more

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2 months ago

Humans Suffer from 1,415 EID's, Over 60 Percent Zoonotic; Bushmeat

The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.

Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as “emerging infectious diseases” or EIDs.

Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ‘emerging’.

Between 1972 and 1999, 35 new agents of disease were discovered and since then many more have re-emerged with renewed vengeance after long periods of inactivity, or are expanding into areas where they have not previously been reported, according to World Health Organization (WHO). These include tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera.

Public health professionals from across the globe met in Atlanta in March for the sixth International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, to discuss these and other emerging pathogens and current work on surveillance, epidemiology, research, bioterrorism and more.

Wildlife Conservation Society reports that as humans progress ever further into the forest, the risk of disease transmission between humans and wildlife becomes greater. Many diseases can move back and forth between species, mutating into more virulent, resistant forms.

Myths aside, it has been claimed that the HIV/ AIDS virus may be such a case, as it is thought that it entered human populations through the consumption of non-human primates. The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon.

Dr William Karesh, a WCS veterinary expert, believes the threat of potential pandemics such as Ebola, SARS, and avian influenza demands a more holistic approach to disease control, one that prevents diseases from crossing the divide between humans, their livestock, and wildlife.

But this may not be good news to a good number of Africans necessitated by poverty and high food prices to rely on bush meat, including gorilla and other great apes meat, and who may be courting, among others, various new encephalitis and hemorrhagic viruses, Lassa fever, and Ebola virus.

A recent WCS survey in a remote village on the border between Gabon and Congo revealed that about 18 tons of bush meat were sold and consumed in a particular period of time. As wildlife conservationists and medical experts bite their teeth, an average 17 species are killed per day, corresponding to a biomass of 65kg per day.

The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins... more

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2 months ago

Thousands of Australia's koalas killed by land-clearing: WWF

Sydney (AFP) Sept 7, 2008 Australian koalas are dying by the thousands as a result of land clearing in the country's... more

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2 months ago

Climate change could stop corals fixing themselves

Climate change is depriving coral reefs across the globe of the building materials used to make their shells. Current plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to fix the problem, according to new research.

The daily life of corals is a constant battle against erosion. The reef builders patch up holes in their shells, left by nibbling sea creatures, using a mineral called calcium carbonate. To keep up with repairs, corals in the wild usually require three times as much of the mineral as sheltered corals grown in laboratories.

Before the industrial revolution, says Ken Caldeira of Stanford University, 98% of all corals lived in waters above the required calcium carbonate threshold.

But the situation is changing, according to Caldeira, who has built a model to study how greenhouse gas emissions tinker with the chemistry of open water oceans.
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Oceans are becoming saturated with Co2 and corals are suffering for it. This is important because corals play a very important role in the health of our oceans, which in turn plays a very important role in the health of the web of life in our oceans, which then plays a vital role in our own health. Mitigating carbon emissions is now key: how many times does it have to be said?

The impasse between what politicians in this country want and what this world now needs is vast and bringing dangerous consequences to us. We can no longer afford to ignore scientific warnings regarding the deterioration of our oceans, and we cannot wait until politicians see it as politically expedient to do something or until we have passed the point of no return.

Besides carbon mitigation and freezing emissions, I believe we need a major global tree planting initiative to be undertaken. Planting trees in areas of great deforestation can help to return many of the carbon sinks that have been lost to us from illegal logging practices and overconsumption. This would then hopefully help to balance the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere instead of most of it being soaked up by oceans. This is a human made catastrophe and only humans can reverse it. Hopefully, it is not too late.Climate change is depriving coral reefs across the globe of the building materials used to make their shells. Current plans to... more