Desdemona Despair

By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY
28 February 2011

Turtles and tortoises may not get the same sort of attention as the cuddlier and fuzzier animals of the world, but a new report from the Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group of the IUCN shows that these reptiles are in fact the most endangered group of vertebrate animals. Over half of the world's 328 turtles and tortoises are threatened with extinction.

That breaks down thusly: Of the total 328 species there are 263 freshwater and terrestrial turtles and 58 tortoises; 54% of these are threatened. The world's seven sea turtle species were not covered in this report. Of these threatened species, 17 of the 25 most-endangered are found in Asia.

As for the main reasons for turtles becoming so threatened--keep in mind that threatened with extinction is different than being classified as endangered, critically endangered, etc.--the report lists a host of causes similar to those causing other species to become threatened: Unsustainable levels of hunting for both food and medicinal use, collection for the pet trade, pollution and habitat loss. …

Turtles Now World's Most Endangered Vertebrates - Over Half of Species Threatened With Extinction

By Staff Writers
Feb 24, 2011

Sacramento (UPI) - Scientists say the water situation in California is "bleak" and the state needs to act to bolster its entire aquatic ecosystem.

"Our assessment of the current water situation [in California] is bleak," says Ellen Hanak, a Public Policy Institute of California economist. "California has essentially run out of cheap, new water sources."

The institute has released its findings in a publication written by a team of scientists, engineers, economists and legal experts from three University of California campuses and Stanford University, AAAS ScienceMag.org reported Thursday.

Their report says water quality is deteriorating, pollution from agricultural runoff is increasing, and efforts to manage water and species recovery are hampered by a fragmented system of hundreds of local and regional agencies responsible for water supply, water treatment, flood control and land-use decisions.

"Today's system of water management, developed in previous times for past conditions, is leading the state down a path of environmental and economic deterioration," Hanak says. "We're waiting for the next drought, flood or lawsuit to bring catastrophe."

To stave off such a catastrophe, the report says, California needs to reform the way it manages water.

However, the study's authors say numerous entrenched interests, such as farmers, utility companies and landowners, have already proven reluctant to make sweeping changes.

"It's not going to be easy," says Jay Lund, a study co-author and director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. "It's not going to be popular."

However, he says, the current system is failing. "This is an approach that is not working. We need to take a longer view of it."

California water future called 'bleak'

By Jonathan Watts
28 February 2011

One of the world's most advanced rainforest restoration projects may be going up in smoke in southern China.

A short while ago, I received a frantic phone call from Bulang Mountain in Xishuangbanna, where scientists and conservationists are fleeing 30m-high flames that, they said, were consuming trees in seconds.

Witnesses said the blaze had reached the edge of the Seeds of Heaven biodiversity development centre, where an ecologically healthy forest had been painstakingly rebuilt over the past four years on the site of a former rubber plantation.

"It's like an inferno," Prof Friedhelm Goeltenboth, of the University of Hohenheim, told me. "It's horrific. This model, which is recognised internationally as one of the most advanced of its type in the world, is now going up in flames."

The project – which was launched about five years ago by the German biologist Josef Margraf, now deceased, and his wife Minguo – pioneers a "rainforest farming" technique that creates a rich habitat for multiple species, from which a modest income for people can be cultivated from orchids, tea, honey and other products.

Hopes were high that the project could offer an economically viable alternative to the monocultures that are gobbling up forests across vast swaths of south China and south-east Asia.

German scientists and investors from Lufthansa told me they were visiting this week to evaluate progress. They were expected to sign up to a new commitment period tonight.

But the fire intervened. The flames appear to have spread from the direction of a neighbouring cow farm. Local officials say the spark was deliberately lit to create a controlled firebreak. Others told the visiting group that the fire may have been part of an effort to clear land for the expansion of a cattle farm.

"This is no accident. You just don't do a controlled fire on a windy day like today," said Pavlos Georgiadis, a former student of Margraf, who died of a heart attack last year. "This is the peak of the dry season. We haven't had rain for two months." …

Scientists flee blaze in Chinese rainforest restoration project

ScienceDaily (Feb. 28, 2011) — Lodgepole pine, a hardy tree species that can thrive in cold temperatures and plays a key role in many western ecosystems, is already shrinking in range as a result of climate change -- and may almost disappear from most of the Pacific Northwest by 2080, a new study concludes.

Including Canada, where it is actually projected to increase in some places, lodgepole pine is expected to be able to survive in only 17 percent of its current range in the western parts of North America.

The research, just published in the journal Climatic Change, was done by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. It was based on an analysis of 12,600 sites across a broad geographic range.

Lodgepole pine ecosystems occupy large areas following major fires where extreme cold temperatures, poor soils and heavy, branch-breaking snows make it difficult for other tree species to compete. This includes large parts of higher elevation sites in Oregon, Washington, the Rocky Mountains and western Canada. Yellowstone National Park is dominated by this tree species.

However, warming temperatures, less winter precipitation, earlier loss of snowpack and more summer drought already appear to be affecting the range of lodgepole pine, at the same time increasing the infestations of bark beetles that attack this tree species.

The researchers concluded that some of these forces have been at work since at least 1980, and by around 2020 will have decreased the Pacific Northwest range of lodgepole pine by 8 percent. After that, continued climatic changes are expected to accelerate the species' demise. By 2080, it is projected to be almost absent from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, some of the areas facing the most dramatic changes.

"For skeptics of climate change, it's worth noting that the increase in vulnerability of lodgepole pine we've seen in recent decades is made from comparisons with real climatic data, and is backed up with satellite-observations showing major changes on the ground," said Richard Waring, an OSU distinguished professor emeritus of forest science.

"This is already happening in some places," Waring said. "Bark beetles in lodgepole pine used to be more selective, leaving the younger and healthier trees alone.

"Now their populations and pheromone levels are getting so high they can more easily reach epidemic levels and kill almost all adult trees," he said. "Less frost, combined with less snow favors heavier levels of bark beetle infestation. We're already seeing more insect attack, and we project that it will get worse." …

Climate change causing demise of lodgepole pine in western North America

By Chris Buckley; Editing by Ken Wills and David Fogarty
28 February 2011

BEIJING (Reuters) - China faces acute environmental and resource strains that threaten to choke growth unless the world's second-biggest economy cleans up, the nation's environment minister said in an unusually blunt warning.

In an essay published on Monday, Zhou Shengxian also said his agency wants to make assessing projected greenhouse gas emissions a part of evaluating proposed development projects.

That could give China's Ministry of Environmental Protection more sway in climate change issues, an area dominated by agencies whose main interest is shoring up industrial growth.

Zhou set environmental worries at the heart of China's next phase of economic development -- a theme in focus at the country's annual parliament session starting on Saturday.

"In China's thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today," Zhou said in the essay published in the China Environment News, his ministry's official newspaper.

"The depletion, deterioration, and exhaustion of resources and the deterioration of the environment have become serious bottlenecks constraining economic and social development."  …

"If we are numb and apathetic in the face of the acute conflict between humankind and nature, and environmental management remains stuck in the old rut with no efforts in environmental technology, there will surely be a painful price to pay, and even irrecoverable losses," said Zhou.

China is now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities that scientists say are causing global warming. It is the world's biggest polluter and biggest consumer of resources across a range of other measures.

In 2009, nearly 20 percent of the length of China's monitored rivers and lakes had pollution worse than Grade 5, making the water officially unfit for even irrigating crops, according to government statistics.  …

In January, more than 200 children living near battery plants in eastern China showed elevated levels of lead in their blood -- the latest such outbreak to prompt an outcry. … 

China minister warns pollution, waste imperil growth

By Victoria Gill
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

The effective population of the critically endangered Amur tiger is now fewer than 14 animals, say scientists.

Approximately 500 Amur tigers actually survive in the wild, but the effective population is a measure of the genetic diversity of the world's largest cat.

Very low diversity means any vulnerability to disease or rare genetic disorders is likely to be passed on to the next generation.

So these results paint a grim picture for the tiger's chance of survival.

The findings are reported in the journal Mammalian Biology.

The Amur tiger, or Siberian tiger as it is also known, once lived across a large portion of northern China, the Korean peninsula, and the southernmost regions of eastern Russia.

During the early 20th Century, the Amur tiger was almost driven to extinction, as expanding human settlements, habitat loss, and poaching wiped out this biggest of cats from over 90% of its range.

By the 1940s, just 20 to 30 individuals survived in the wild. The new study has identified that this recent "genetic bottleneck" - when the breeding population of tigers was so critically low - has decimated the Amur tiger gene pool. …

Genetically speaking, the Amur tiger has not recovered from this.

"Our results are the first to demonstrate a quite recent genetic bottleneck in Siberian tigers, a result that matches the well-documented severe demographic decline of the Siberian tiger population in the 1940s," the researchers wrote in the paper.

"The worryingly low effective population size challenges the optimism for the recovery of the huge Siberian cat."

Amur tigers in population crisis

Caption by Holli Riebeek
24 February 2011

How could melting ice thousands of miles away possibly affect you? A recent study published in Nature Geoscience provides one answer to that question. Mark Flanner at the University of Michigan and his collaborators used satellite data to measure how much changes in snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere have contributed to rising temperatures in the last 30 years. The loss of snow and ice warmed the planet more than models predicted it would.

Snow and ice help control how much of the Sun’s energy Earth soaks up. Bright white snow and ice reflect energy back to space. Because that energy does not get absorbed, it does not go into Earth’s climate. As a result, snow and ice cool the planet. This effect is called a climate forcing because snow and ice directly influence the climate.  …

The image shows how the energy being reflected from the cryosphere has changed between 1979 and 2008. When snow and ice disappear, they are replaced by dark land or ocean, both of which absorb energy. The image shows that the Northern Hemisphere is absorbing more energy, particularly along the outer edges of the Arctic Ocean, where sea ice has disappeared, and in the mountains of Central Asia.

“On average, the Northern Hemisphere now absorbs about 100 PetaWatts more solar energy because of changes in snow and ice cover,” says Flanner. “To put it in perspective, 100 PetaWatts is seven-fold greater than all the energy humans use in a year.” Changes in the extent and timing of snow cover account for about half of the change, while melting sea ice accounts for the other half.

Flanner and his colleagues made both calculations by compiling field measurements and satellite observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, and Nimbus-7 and DMSP SSM/I passive microwave data. The analysis is the first calculation of how much the energy the entire cryosphere reflects. It is also the first observation of changes in reflected energy because of changes in the entire cryosphere.

Melting Snow and Ice Warm Northern Hemisphere

24 February 2011 (BBC) – Rapidly rising acidic water in the abandoned gold mines under Johannesburg in South Africa could leak out early next year, the water ministry warns.

Its report recommends building pumps and monitoring stations immediately.

The toxic liquid has been building up in mine shafts which were dug more than a century ago and stretch for many kilometres under the city.

Trevor Manuel, a minister in the president's office, reassured residents that there was no cause for panic.

The BBC's Milton Nkosi in Johannesburg says the report [pdf], compiled by a group of experts in December, was published by the Department of Water Affairs on its website on Thursday.

The panel of experts warn that if the water is allowed to continue to rise, it will start decanting in low-lying areas in the vicinity of the former mine at Gold Reef City, popular with tourists.

The report states that water with low pH readings - the measure that indicates the acidity or alkalinity of a solution - will affect property and infrastructure.

It recommends that acid mine drainage intervention be made in the western, central and eastern basins as a matter of urgency.

The basins referred to are areas of interconnected mining tunnels underlying Johannesburg and surrounding areas.

The government has said it is feasible to have pump stations by March 2012.

Toxic water 'threatens SA city'

February 21, 2011 (PhysOrg) - The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.

The work of glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute, is the focus of This Icy World, the latest film in the University's Cambridge Ideas series.

A frequent visitor to both the Arctic and Antarctic, Dowdeswell's research has found that the glaciers around Greenland are the fastest flowing in the world.

He said: "There is evidence that some parts of the ice sheet have doubled in speed up to 10 km per year in the last decade. That means the contribution of Greenland to global sea level change is increasing."

"The numbers of icebergs released into the seas around Greenland is also increasing. We need to know just how fast these changes are taking place.

"Things are changing very rapidly here because the Arctic is the most sensitive part of the global climate system. Over the coming century, temperatures are likely to rise at double the global average here." …

"Glacier and ice-sheet change is a reality at both poles. The ice is thinning and retreating and that means water is flowing back into the global ocean. Today, sea level is rising 3mm per year; over the coming century, sea level is likely to rise by up to about 1m and it's actually that rise - with the worst storm waves you can imagine - that could cause real damage.

"In those circumstances, sea defences can be breached and low lying areas of the world can be flooded. That has serious implications for humankind."

Greenland's glaciers double in speed via Climate Progress

By MICHAEL FIELD
26 February 2011

(Stuff) – An Antarctic ice shelf used as a runway is breaking away, forcing an emergency airlift to close summer operations on the continent.

The situation is being complicated by the Christchurch quake which is limiting operations at Christchurch Airport.

Staff at New Zealand's Scott Base and the US's McMurdo Sound are scrambling to get people off Antarctica to Auckland.

With winter closing in, the prospect is that people either get out now or stay all winter.

CEO Lou Sanson told Radio New Zealand two giant US Air Force Globemasters are heading down tonight from Christchurch and will bring back several hundred Americans tomorrow.

They will be flown on to Auckland by the RNZAF.

But Sanson said they have a complication now that the Ross Ice Shelf is separating quickly from Ross Island where Scott Base and McMurdo are.

"We are seeing the biggest ever break out of the Ross Ice Shelf in 15 years, our supply lines to the airfield are getting affected."

Scott Base manager Troy Beaumont told Stuff this afternoon that the sea was opening up and access to the iceshelf was becoming difficult.

"The ice is breaking up," he said.

He said it was likely the Globemasters would be able to land at this point, but it would take staff longer to get onto the ice.

Scott Base is already in its winter operations, with only one New Zealander due out, but there are several hundred Americans needing to get out.

Emergency airlift at McMurdo in strife

By Jarrod Booker
22 February 2011

New Zealand's Antarctic base is getting closer to becoming prime waterfront property as conditions in the Southern Ocean change.

The breaking up of sea ice in McMurdo Sound means the sea is now within a kilometre of Scott Base, providing easier shipping access.

At nearby McMurdo Station, the seafront is ice-free.

"The last time we saw open sea in front of Scott Base was 1998," Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said.

"In the ensuing time, we have had these massive icebergs break off the Ross ice shelf that led to these unusual sea ice conditions in McMurdo Sound, and some of the 'bergs were the 'bergs that floated up the coast of Dunedin."

The icebergs, some of which were half the size of Stewart Island, blocked the entrance to McMurdo Sound and led to "massive multi-year sea ice", some of which took ships 160km of icebreaking to get through.

"The United States and New Zealand are both delighted to see the extent of the sea ice breakout this year because it does mean that we are dealing with much cleaner ice, much shallower ice in terms of ice-breaking channels, and new sea ice that freezes for the runways," Mr Sanson said. …

Welcome to McMurdo Station-sur-Mer

By Pau; Cleary, The Australian
February 28, 2011

AUSTRALIA'S $46 million airfield in the Antarctic, which was opened just three years ago, may have become a short-lived victim of climate change, as unusually warm weather this summer has prevented flights landing there.

So far this summer, only one Airbus A319 flight has landed on Wilkins runway, 70km southeast of Casey station, compared with 29 over the last two summers.

The first flight managed to leave Hobart only last Thursday.

Wilkins runway began operating in January 2008 when then environment minister Peter Garrett joined the first official flight.

The airfield was designed to overcome the long sea voyage for personnel working at Casey station.

But this year's experience has raised doubts about the long-term viability of the airstrip.

Instead of landing at Wilkins, Australian Antarctic Division staff have landed at the US base, McMurdo, and then been ferried by smaller aircraft to Casey.

A spokeswoman for the division said the combination of warmer temperatures and increased UV strength was affecting the runway.

Even flights to the US base have been limited to the colder part of the day, she said.

McMurdo base is located at 72 degrees latitude, compared with 67 for Casey station.

"Being that much further south is advantageous in these warmer-than-usual times," the spokeswoman said. …

Global warming hits Australia's $46m Antarctic airfield

By Jan Khaskheli
Sunday, February 27, 2011

Karachi (thenews.com.pk) – Residents of 16 small villages located near Hyderabad city and comprising a population of 20,000, are living an uncertain life after the recent flood wrought havoc, depriving them of their livelihood and basic facilities of life. In the absence of government assistance to rehabilitate the flood-affected people, the community people, comprising of Hindus and Muslims, are facing difficulties and feel insecure about their future.

Dhano Patel a village chieftain and a former councilor, now works as a farmer. Sharing his experience during the flood and after, he said, they belong to the low-caste minority and instead of waiting to get Watan cards announced by the government to help the flood victims they prefer to work hard to rehabilitate themselves on self help basis. The families mostly work together, cultivate vegetables and earn a little amount. Traders frequently visit the fields, buying products and supplying them to different cities, he added.

Zeema Thakur, a Gujrati speaking woman, despite her weakening health, is still eager to continue laboring to help her poor family. A mother of seven children, she continues to work from dawn to dusk. She lives in a makeshift abode with other families at the embankment of the River Indus after the community was displaced by the recent flood. All other women of the same community have the similar choice to work as vegetable harvester in the neighbourhood, as after the devastated flood they remained in a helpless situation, without labor for a long time.

“It seems we were born and grew up in the same atmosphere, as all the family members work together to meet the domestic needs,” she describes. The village is surrounded by vegetable crops, where entire families can be seen busy at work.

Meem Bai, another working woman was busy working in the damaged Ramapir Temple near her house to redecorate the remaining murtis kept there for the community members for worshipping. “Hunger and poverty has made us useless otherwise, earlier all the people used to donate generously to maintain the temple, bathing some of the murtis by milk on such occasions and celebrating traditional festivals. But due to persistent joblessness and destruction by the flood, the residents could not decide yet whether to rebuild their houses first or the temple,” she said. …

Despite living close to the Indus River, these people are advised by the researchers not to use underground water for drinking and domestic use, as it is poisonous. The scared people are now compelled to travel long distance to fetch water from scattered river ponds. Recently, a charity organization has installed a water purification plant in his village. The provision of potable water is a major demand of the entire community living there. …

Flood victims living an uncertain life

Enough supply, but price is a question: Al Ghurair

By VM Sathish
February 27, 2011

Food supply and food stocks in the region will remain tight for the rest of 2011 as the unexpected bush fire in Russia, flood in Australia, and climatic problems in other producing countries have caused a shortage in the supply of wheat, said Essa Abdulla Al Ghurair, Chairman, Al Ghurair Foods, one of the world’s leading flour mill companies.

Speaking to Emirates 24|7, Al Ghurair said nobody can predict the food price trend in the future but wheat stock will be tight because nobody expected a bush fire in Russia that destroyed considerable quantity of wheat farms in Russia. Even though the UAE does not produce wheat or rice, Al Ghurair Foods has reached 50 countries around the world, procuring commodities from around the world and processing in its strategically located wheat and rice mills.

“The bush fire in Russia and floods in Australia have caused the wheat supply situation very tight. Everybody is trying to store a bit more than their regular requirement and there is a psychological pressure to stock food crops,” Al Ghurair said at Gulfood, the largest food exhibition in the Middle East. He said the UAE Government is also creating a food safety reserve and Al Ghurair Foods is lending one of its food silos for the purpose.
 
The largest flour supplier in the Middle East has two flour mills in Dubai, flour mills in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Sri Lanka together having an average daily milling capacity of 5,500 MT of wheat.  The company imports wheat from Australia, Canada and India. He said Al Ghurair Foods is building a new storage facility in Algeria port of Jinjin and will have a soya crushing plant there with 3,000 tons per day capacity.

Last year Russia witnessed the worst wild fire in 130 years. Russia is one of the world’s largest wheat producers, accounting for 8 per cent of global production. “The floods in Australia affected wheat growing areas and damaged some of the best wheat farms. The wheat from these farms have been downgraded to cattle feed due to floods,” Al Ghurair added.  Wheat price skyrocketed following the recent floods in Australia.

He said the recent political upheavals in the Middle East, especially Egypt, due to food shortage and high food price will not happen in any of the GCC countries because there is enough food supply in the market. “Whether food is not available or available at a higher or lower price is different. The UAE has a free market economy. When prices go up, people learn how to avoid wasting food. Instead of taking three cups of rice per day, people may reduce the rice intake to two cups. Such situation demands that consumers know how to carefully use the resources.”

Economic slowdown has not affected the demand for food products in the region: “Recession may affect markets for clothing, shoes or other items, but food is the last item that people will avoid. Nobody skips breakfast or lunch. In Dubai, the hotels and restaurant sector has not witnessed a major downfall in food purchase, because more foreign tourists coming to the city need food.” …

Russian bush fires, Australian floods impact Gulf food imports

By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune
February 21, 2011

BP has reneged on promises made in November to negotiate early payments to Louisiana to help rebuild oyster beds, repair damaged wetlands and build a fish hatchery to allow the state to respond immediately to the collapse of commercial fisheries in the wake of the BP Gulf oil spill, state officials said Monday.

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman Garret Graves and Department of Wildlife & Fisheries director Robert Barham said the state will instead scramble to find millions of dollars to begin the work itself, then bill BP for the costs.

"BP has clearly changed their approach," Barham said. "All we've asked is for them to do what they said they would do in their commercials, be here for the long haul and make it right."

Instead, he said, the company has clearly moved from a public relations strategy to one focusing on litigation over whether damage to the state's oyster beds was BP's fault. The state contends that its decision to open many freshwater diversions along the Mississippi River to full blast at the height of the oil spill kept oil from entering the oyster beds, though the fresh water killed the oysters, requiring the beds to be restocked with cultch, oyster shell deposited beneath the water on which oyster larvae grow.

"Their response today was that we see no evidence of oil injuring the oysters," Barham said. U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., had asked BP to pay $15 million for new oyster cultch, and even that would not have been enough money to restock all the beds that were damaged in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson and Lafourche parishes, he said.

Wildlife & Fisheries is financed by license fees, with little help from the state budget. And those fees were another casualty of the spill that BP has not acted on, Barham said.

"We had made a claim for lost recreational license sales and BP had, quote, agreed to pay $2.5 million for our loss of license revenue back in December and we still haven't received a dime," he said. The reason is that the state has refused to sign an agreement with BP that would release the company from liability "for everyone they've ever done business with, an impossible release for us to sign." …

BP reneges on deal to rebuild oyster beds, repair wetlands, Louisiana officials say

By John Platt
Feb 25, 2011

Asian appetites are rapidly driving the world's tortoises and freshwater turtles toward extinction, and some species might only be savable through costly and labor-intensive conservation efforts, according to both a new report and speakers at a workshop about conserving Asian turtles.

"It's going to take some intense management, both to protect wild populations and manage captive populations as a hedge against extinction," says Rick Hudson, president of the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA), who contributed to the report.

The report, "Turtles in Trouble," provides details on the 25 most endangered tortoises and freshwater turtles, 17 of which live in Asia, but almost all of which are threatened by demand from Asian markets. The report was released Tuesday by the Turtle Conservation Coalition, an informal alliance of several organizations that, along with the TSA, includes the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resource (IUCN) Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group; the Turtle Conservation Fund; the Turtle Conservancy / Behler Chelonian Center; the Chelonian Research Foundation; Conservation International; the Wildlife Conservation Society; and the San Diego Zoo Global Action Team.

The turtle crisis has become significantly worse in the past two decades, Hudson says. "It's amazing that in 15 to 20 years things have changed so much. People always used turtles, but in a sustainable way. But now everyone is harvesting turtles. It's a huge drain on wild populations." Wild turtles are harvested for their meat, traditional Asian medicine and the pet trade, and all three of those uses are on the rise due to China's growing economic prosperity. Turtle habitats are also at risk from human development and pollution.

Hudson was in Singapore this week for the Conservation of Asian Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles Workshop, where teams from 20 nations presented new research on the fate of the animals. "It's been a daunting and disheartening couple of days," he says. "I'm trying to be optimistic, but I'm not optimistic about our hope of saving wild populations, at least in Asia." …

Turtles in trouble: New report identifies the 25 most endangered turtle species

Eradication programme aims to save millions of seabirds from invasive rats on South Georgia

By Lewis Smith, guardian.co.uk
24 February 2011 14.57 GMT

Testing for the biggest rat eradication programme in history is beginning on a remote UK island in the south Atlantic.

Scientists are preparing to drop poison in a limited area of South Georgia in a bid to save the world's most southern songbird from extinction and restore tens of millions of seabirds to the island's breeding grounds.

Millions of bird-eating and egg-eating rats are estimated to be living on the island, which Captain James Cook claimed for Britain in 1775. The clearance project is intended to kill all of them within five years.

Two helicopters have been transported to South Georgia to take part in the extermination programme and will from Tuesday begin dropping poison pellets on the island.

The first drops will take place in a limited area to test whether the techniques used by the extermination team work. They will return in 2013 and if the rats have disappeared from the test area, drops will take place over the rest of the island.

Researchers have calculated that they need to clear rats from 800 square kilometres (80,000 hectares) – making the project almost 10 times bigger than the previous biggest rat eradication programme on Australia's Macquarie Island.

Prof Tony Martin, of the University of Dundee and the South Georgia habitat restoration project director, said: "Killing any rat on an island like South Georgia is a hell of a challenge. If you underestimate their ability to survive and stay away from danger you will fail. "The vast majority of birds that should be breeding on South Georgia have been displaced by the presence of rats. Rats have gone virtually everywhere except the very cold southern coast. We are looking to restore millions, possibly tens of millions of sea birds to the island.

"The exciting thing for me about this is there are few things you can do to revert the impact of human activity on the planet but what we are going to be doing will reverse two centuries of human impacts on the island."

Brown rats reached the island 200 years ago on sealing and whaling ships and wreaked devastation on the bird population by eating countless eggs and the chicks and fledglings. The ground-nesting birds have little defence against rats seeking to eat the eggs or their young. …

Scientists prepare for mass rat cull on remote UK island

Temporal disaggregation of the moderate spatial resolution forest cover loss map for Riau province, Sumatra. Landsat band 5 is displayed in grayscale with dark tones representing forest cover. Colors mark the year of MODIS-detected forest cover loss. Image and caption courtesy of Broich 2011

Kalimantan and Sumatra lost 5.4 million hectares, or 9.2 percent, of their forest cover between 2000/2001 and 2007/2008, reveals a new satellite-based assessment of Indonesian forest cover.

Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra lose 9% of forest cover in 8 years

By Rich Davis, Evansville Courier & Press
February 25, 2011

EVANSVILLE — A flood warning has been issued for the Ohio River in the Evansville area in the wake of record rainfall, including snowmelt upriver.

Meanwhile, searchers have now found the bodies of all four Amish children who were swept away in a creek swollen by torrential rain in southwestern Kentucky about 25 miles south of Paducah. Three were found after midnight, the fourth, an 11-year-old girl, this morning.

The discovery dashed hopes that the 11-year-old might have been alive and clinging to a tree or rock through the night.

Meteorologist Mike York with the National Weather Service in Paducah said the Evansville airport received 2.56 inches of rain Thursday, a new record that included 1.3 inches that fell between 6 and 9 p.m.

The Ohio River, now at 27 feet at Evansville, is expected to reach 36 feet by Sunday and 42 feet, or flood stage, by next Friday. That level will puts some roads or farmland in low-lying areas under water.

The children's deaths from yesterday’s heavy rains came as an Amish couple and seven children were crossing a creek in a horse-drawn buggy on Thursday.

According to the Associated Press, because of the dark and the downpour the adults may not have realized the creek had risen. The buggy overturned, knocking the family into the water.

Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon said the couple and three of the children escaped, but four others under age of 12 were swept away; one was a 5-month-old baby.

Record rain brings river flooding; several Amish children drown

By Nadya Anscombe for environmentresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network
24 February 2011 14.46 GMT

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) used by researchers today – where climate change data is integrated with economic data – are dangerously flawed because they are based on naïve assumptions, according to Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change at the University of Manchester, UK.

Anderson told environmentalresearchweb: "The vast majority of IAMs assume low emission growth rates; early emission peaks; annual reduction rates limited to between 2 and 4%; untested geoengineering; and a high penetration of nuclear power alongside untested 'carbon capture and storage' technologies. Because IAMs typically use similar and inappropriate sets of assumptions, they repeatedly come up with the same narrow and fundamentally flawed answers."

Anderson argues that actual emissions growth rates are much higher than those used by most IAMs, and that even ambitious emission peaks are much nearer 2020–2030 than the naïve estimates of 2010–2016 used by most models. His calculations have shown that, if we want to aim for a high chance of not exceeding a 2°C increase in global temperature by the end of the century, our energy emissions need to be cut by nearer 10% annually rather than the 2–4% that economists say is possible with a growing economy.

"The output from today's models is politically palatable," said Anderson. "The reality is far more depressing, but many scientists are too afraid to stand up and speak out for fear of being ridiculed. Our job is not to be liked but to give a raw and dispassionate assessment of the scale of the challenge faced by the global community." In a recent paper in Philosophical Transactions, Anderson and his colleague Alice Bows of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester warn that "there is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global mean surface temperature at below 2°C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary".

This, they say, is because of a lack of contextual thinking. For example, Anderson and Bows found that several models assumed that fossil-fuel carbon-dioxide emissions from developing nations would exceed those from industrialised nations as late as 2013–2025, despite the actual date being around 2006.

"Too many models use an extrapolation of old data and this gives results that are too optimistic," said Anderson. "When I present my findings I am often pulled apart for taking away people's hope. But what these models are giving us is false hope. Surely that is worse?" …

Models guiding climate policy are ‘dangerously optimistic’

By Mike Tidwell
Friday, February 25, 2011; 4:00 PM

Ten years ago, I put solar panels on my roof and began eating locally grown food. I bought an energy-efficient refrigerator that uses the power equivalent of a single light bulb. I started heating my home with a stove that burns organically fertilized corn kernels. I even restored a gas-free lawn mower for manual yardwork.

As a longtime environmental activist, I was deeply alarmed by new studies on global warming, so I went all out. I did my part.

Now I'm changing my life again. Today, underneath the solar panels, there's a new set of deadbolt locks on all my doors. There's a new Honda GX390 portable power generator in my garage, ready to provide backup electricity. And last week I bought a starter kit to raise tomatoes and lettuce behind barred basement windows.

I'm not a survivalist or an "end times" enthusiast. When it comes to climate change, I'm just a realist.

I haven't given up the cause. I still work overtime to promote clean energy, and I take solace when top climate scientists say we can still avoid the worst effects of global warming if we move quickly. It's just that, well, we're running out of time.

The proof is everywhere - outside my front door, in my neighborhood, on the news. After a decade of failure to address climate change at the national and international levels, our weather has gone haywire. In the Washington region alone, in barely a year, we've annihilated all records for snow accumulation, we've seen appalling power outages associated with year-round thunderstorms, and we've experienced the hottest summer in the 140 years we've been measuring. Winston Churchill's oft-quoted warning on the eve of World War II now applies directly: "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

Those consequences explain the generator in my garage and why I'm reinforcing my basement windows to protect emergency supplies.

This may seem like a stunt, or a sign that this frustrated environmentalist has finally lost it. But I'm not crazy. Just wait. The mega-storms and social disruptions on the horizon will be the best proof of that.

It wasn't the wildfires that blackened much of Russia last summer that led me to buy my portable generator, nor the unspeakable rains in Pakistan that inundated nearly a quarter of that country. It was the one-two punch of thunderstorms that blew through the D.C. area on July 25 and Aug. 12 of last year. The first storm, with wind gusts of 90 mph, knocked out power to 400,000 people and generated a wave of lightning that, by a freak tragedy, killed my friend Carl Henn at a community picnic in Rockville.

The second storm hit while I was in the parking lot of a TV station in Northwest Washington, about to be interviewed about Arctic ice melt. Suddenly, darkness overcame us, and it became midnight at 8 a.m. The street lamps flickered on. Cars turned on their headlights. And I saw the largest, darkest, windiest thunderstorm I'd ever seen, approaching from the west. I whipped out my cellphone and called my wife in Takoma Park. "Go to the basement now!" I said. Inside the TV studio, I watched the anchors switch to a live report about apartment dwellers trapped by a massive fallen oak as the first of more than 100,000 homes began to lose power. Houses across the area were ripped open by wind and crashing tree trunks.

Throughout 2010, my neighborhood lost power more times than I can remember. This included blackouts during the "Snowmageddon" storms, of course, when Washington traded in sidewalks for white trenches and roads for deep canyons. And yes, major snowfall events are increasing in the eastern United States even as the planet warms, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It makes sense, too. We're not setting records for average low temperatures, after all. Not even close. We're setting records for precipitation intensity across a huge swath of America, in summer and in winter. A warmer atmosphere evaporates more water from oceans and lakes. And what goes up must come down. Last year was the wettest year on record worldwide, NOAA announced last month. That's what's driving the snow extremes - while the mercury rises. …

A climate-change activist prepares for the worst

24 February 2011 (AFP) – LIMA — A glacier on Peru's Huaytapallana Mountain shed half its surface ice in just 23 years, officials said Wednesday, reinforcing concerns of climate change's growing threat to fresh water resources.

"Recent scientific studies indicate that between June 1983 and August 2006, the glacier has lost 50 percent of its surface ice," Erasmo Meza, manager of natural resources and the environment in the central Andean region of Junin, told the official Andina news agency.

He said the five square kilometers (1.9 square miles) of ice shrinkage on Huaytapallana, whose steep, jagged glacier and breathtaking lakes are popular tourist draws, was caused by global warming and presents growing problems in agriculture, health, fresh water resources and disaster mitigation.

To prevent further deterioration on the 5,557-meter (18,230-foot) mountain, the regional government of Junin is developing a project to declare Huaytapallana a natural conservation area -- a move Meza said could help prevent damage from a mining company doing a feasibility study in the area.

Glacier studies are often carried out in the Andes, the so-called "Roof of the Americas" region comprising more than 100 peaks above 5,000 meters (16,500 feet).

But the Huaytapallana studies show a sharper rate of glacial melt than other major findings.

A 2009 World Bank-published report said that in the last 35 years, Peru's glaciers have shrunk by 22 percent, leading to a 12 percent loss in the amount of fresh water reaching the coast -- home to most of the country's citizens.

It also warned that Andean glaciers and the peaks' permanent snow caps could disappear in 20 years if no measures are taken to tackle climate change, echoing the findings of Peruvian agencies.

One of the most threatened is Pastoruri, a 5,200-meter (17,060-foot) peak in Huascaran National Park in northern Peru that is home to Huascaran Mountain, Peru's highest point at 6,768 meters (22,200 feet).

Climate change halves Peru glacier: official

By Faye Sunderland
February 25, 2011

Australia has abolished plans to help develop greener cars and encourage consumer uptake of lower emission vehicles.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that the country’s $1.3 billion Green Car  Innovation Fund  will be dropped along with the Cleaner Car Rebate Scheme as part of spending cuts to help finance rebuilding Australia’s flood-affected regions.

Australia recently suffered its worst floods in more than thirty years, with large swaths of Queensland particularly badly affected. Preliminary estimates, following consultation with the Queensland Government, indicate that the Government will need to invest $5.6 billion in rebuilding flood-affected regions. Two-thirds of that funding will be delivered through spending cuts, the rest through an emergency tax levy.

The country’s Cleaner Car Rebate Scheme worked much the same as the Scrappage Scheme in the UK or the Cash for Clunkers scheme in the US; consumers were granted AU$2,000 towards a new car in return for scrapping their 15 years-or older-model. It was designed to get old, dirty cars off the road, replacing them with cleaner and safer models while helping support Australia’s auto industry.

The Green Car Innovation Fund provided financial assistance to companies involved in the design, develop and manufacture greener and alternative fuel cars and components in Australia.

Announcing the closing of the fund  Industry Minister Kim Carr reminded citizens; “The Green Car  Innovation Fund  is only one component of the New Car Plan for a Greener Future.”

The New Car Plan is designed to support the introduction of new technologies into Australia  including hybrid engines, electric vehicles, new fuel systems, lighter car bodies and batteries.

The minister added: “We remain committed to ensuring Australian automotive manufacturers produce Australian made vehicles that are easier on the pocket and the environment.”

Australia cuts green car funding in wake of floods

By Shane Green
February 26, 2011

THE nation's car industry union has begun a strident campaign against the federal government's contentious decision to scrap the green car fund to pay for flood reconstruction, accusing Canberra of ''abject betrayal''.

The powerful Australian Manufacturing Workers Union has sent a letter of protest to federal Labor MPs, is campaigning in marginal seats and will soon launch press, TV and radio advertisements.

In the letter, it says the decision to scrap the fund was bad policy and short-sighted, and argues for a temporary auto import tariff, which it says would raise money for flood reconstruction and help local car makers under pressure from the high Australian dollar.

''For the government to abolish the fund in the manner it has is an act of abject betrayal and has the potential to seriously erode future investment and job prospects of workers within the industry,'' it wrote.

''We consider the policy an ill-conceived, knee-jerk response to the flood crisis that will do little to assist flood victims but much to damage vehicle workers.''

The Rudd government set up the fund as part of its $6.2 billion car plan, unveiled at the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008, when the local car industry was on its knees.

GM Holden secured $149 million to build a local version of the Cruze small car, which will be unveiled on Monday at its Elizabeth plant in South Australia.

But the Gillard government scrapped the fund at the end of last month as part of cost-cutting measures to fund the Queensland and Victorian flood reconstruction, saving the government $234 million. …

Demise of green car fund an act of betrayal: union

February 25, 2011 (mongabay.com) – Kalimantan and Sumatra lost 5.4 million hectares, or 9.2 percent, of their forest cover between 2000/2001 and 2007/2008, reveals a new satellite-based assessment of Indonesian forest cover.

The research, led by Mark Broich of South Dakota State University, found that more than 20 percent of forest clearing occurred in areas where conversion was either restricted or prohibited, indicating that during the period, the Indonesian government failed to enforce its forestry laws.

"Our analysis showed that the majority of all mapped forest cover loss (79.9%) occurred in land allocation zones that permit permanent or temporary clearing, while 20.1% occurred where clearing is either prohibited or restricted," the authors write. Under Indonesian law, clearing of conservation forest, protection forest, and limited production forest is illegal.

Forest loss was higher in Sumatra, which saw large areas of forest converted for pulp and paper plantations and oil palm estates. Both Sumatra and Kalimantan suffered from large-scale fires set for land-clearing purposes.

Overall, deforestation peaked in 2006, when forest loss topped 900,000 hectares. Riau and Central Kalimantan provinces accounted for nearly half of the total forest cover loss, according to the analysis. …

Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra lose 9% of forest cover in 8 years

Caption by Holli Riebeek
February 22, 2011

Dense smog settled over the North China Plain on February 20, 2011. The featureless gray-brown haze is so thick that the ground is not visible in parts of this photo-like image taken at 11:35 a.m. by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. At that time, a weather station at Beijing’s airport reported visibility of 1.9 miles (3.1 kilometers). Visibility dropped as low as 1.1 miles (1.8 km) later in the afternoon.

Smog frequently builds up in eastern China during the winter when weather conditions trap pollutants over the plain. Haze had been reported over Beijing for much of the previous week.

It is not possible to tell from this view exactly what pollutants made up the haze on February 20, but it probably contains mostly soot or black carbon and possibly some ground-level ozone. Soot is released from burning fossil fuels (particularly diesel and coal), wood, and other biofuels. These same processes also release chemicals that combine in sunlight to form ozone: methane, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide. In China, coal is an important fuel burned in home heating and cooking and energy production.

Both soot and ozone cause respiratory problems and can permanently damage the lungs. Ozone harms plants, which decreases food production. Soot and methane (one of the gases that create ozone) also contribute to global warming. In fact, a UN report to be released this week found that reducing emissions of black carbon and methane would cut global warming in half over the next forty years. By cutting carbon dioxide emissions as well as controlling soot and methane, the global temperature change could be kept under 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the short term.

The panel of 70 scientists that prepared the report for the United Nations Environment Program identified 16 control measures, such as installing clean-burning cooking stoves and putting particle filters on vehicles, that would significantly reduce black carbon and methane pollution using existing technologies. The measures would also improve air quality and increase food production, preventing as many as 2.5 million deaths.

Asian countries, particularly China and India, emit the most soot and would therefore see the greatest economic and health benefits in reducing emissions. To read more, see Cleaning the air would limit short-term climate warming, an interview with Drew Shindell, the NASA climatologist who led the scientific panel.

NASA tracks pollution worldwide using a variety of sensors, including MODIS. However, the most valuable sensor for monitoring soot will fly on a new NASA satellite, Glory, which is scheduled to launch this week on February 23, 2011. Glory will be able to differentiate between different types of particles in the atmosphere to monitor the impact of manmade particles, like soot, on Earth’s climate.

Haze over China

By Leigh Coleman and Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton
Thu Feb 24, 2011

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - The death toll of dolphins found washed ashore along the U.S. Gulf Coast since last month climbed to nearly 60 on Thursday, as puzzled scientists clamored to determine what was killing the marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the alarming cluster of recent dolphin deaths "an unusual mortality event," agency spokeswoman Blair Mase told Reuters.

"Because of this declaration, many resources are expected to be allocated to investigating this phenomenon," she said. …

As of Thursday, the remains of 59 dolphins, roughly half of them newly born or stillborn calves, have been discovered since January 15, on islands, in marshes and on beaches along 200 miles of coastline from Louisiana east across Mississippi to Gulf Shores, Alabama, officials said.

That tally is about 12 times the number normally found washed up dead along those states during this time of the year, which is calving season for some 2,000 to 5,000 dolphins in the region.

"We are on high alert here," said Moby Solangi, director of the private Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi. "When we see something strange like this happen to a large group of dolphins, which are at the top of the food chain, it tells us the rest of the food chain is affected." …

The latest wave follows an earlier tally of 89 dead dolphins -- virtually all of them adults -- reported to have washed ashore in 2010 after the Gulf oil spill.

Results from an examination of those remains, conducted as part of the government's oil spill damage assessment, have not been released, though scientists concluded those dolphins "died from something environmental during the last year," Mase said.

"The number of baby dolphins washing ashore now is new and something we are very concerned about," she added.

Gulf Coast dolphin death toll rises to nearly 60

By MARK HUME, Globe and Mail
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 9:11PM EST

VANCOUVER — When David Hancock saw the bald-eagle count on the Chehalis River drop from more than 7,000 to fewer than 400 over a few days in December, he knew a crisis was coming.

Earlier this week, news reports that starving eagles were “falling out of the sky” in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island, confirmed his fears.

Wildlife rescue centres on the Island have reported birds growing so weak from hunger that they fall out of trees, or fly so clumsily they hit things. One crashed into a roof.

Mr. Hancock said a collapse of chum salmon runs has left British Columbia’s bald-eagle population without enough food to make it through the winter, leaving them weak from hunger and forcing thousands of birds to scavenge at garbage dumps.

Reports of starving eagles have been coming in from all over the Lower Mainland but seem concentrated in the Comox Valley, he said.

“This is what I said would be happening,” said Mr. Hancock, a biologist, publisher and author of The Bald Eagle of Alaska, BC, and Washington.

Mr. Hancock said about 25,000 eagles flock to salmon rivers in the Pacific Northwest in the fall, to feed on the carcasses of spawning salmon. One of the biggest gatherings is on the Chehalis River, about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver, where as many as 9,000 eagles gather in November and December, drawn by what is usually a large run of chum salmon. The big fish, which average about 6 kilograms, are among the last salmon to spawn and their carcasses are usually available on gravel bars well into the winter.

But Mr. Hancock said the chum didn’t arrive in any numbers on the Chehalis this year, reflecting a coast-wide collapse of the species, and then heavy rains washed away what carcasses there were. The birds were forced to disperse, to look for food where they could find it.

“It was absolutely incredible. Within 10 days, we had gone from 7,200 eagles to 345 … So I knew it was going to be a pretty desperate winter,” said Mr. Hancock, who has been studying eagles for 50 years.

“So where did they go? I have a count of 1,387 one day at the Vancouver dump … that was in the week following the Chehalis dispersal,” he said. …

Mr. Campbell said he has nine bald eagles under care, and most of them are recovering from poisoning they got while feeding at the Campbell River landfill.

“We had 1,300 eagles sitting there at the dump the other day,” Mr. Campbell said. “People dump poisoned animals in there and the eagles feed on them … the birds are starving, but a large percentage are poisoned, too.”

Maj Birch, manager of the Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society in Courtenay said she usually handles 40 eagles a year, but in the first two months of this year alone she has taken in 20 birds. …

“One young bird was perched in a tree and it just fell out. One was flying and hit a roof. They are falling, collapsing, losing their ability to fly,” she said.

Starving eagles ‘falling out of the sky’ via Richard Pauli