231 Earth’s Tree News

Today for you 37 new articles about earth’s trees! (232st edition)
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–Alaska: 1) Save the Tongass
–British Columbia: 2) FSC destroying ancient forests, 3) Beetle stats, 4) Owl debacle,
–Washington: 5) Roads to ruin need to be repaired,
–California: 6) Old growth redwood logging, 7) Spooner treesit, 8) Berkeley treesit,
–Montana: 9) Support WildWest
–Pennsylvania: 10) State owned forests to be taken over by oil and gas
–New Jersey: 11) FSC finally proven wrong
–USA: 12) Old growth is growing faster these days
–Canada: 13) Flooding 135 sq. miles of wilderness, 14) Logging Jasper National Park,
–UK: 15) Green Billboards, 16) Boston Woods Trust,
–Czechoslovakia: 17) Running out of wood
–Bulgaria: 18) Balkani Wildlife Society proposes 40% forests for protection,
–Mexico: 19) Tree planting, 20) Dead and dying forest defenders,
–Honduras: 21) New Forest and Wildlife Law
–Argentina: 22) Treesit moves beyond 6 days
–Brazil: 23) Selling soybeans, 24) forest collapse in less than 75 years,
–Paraguay: 25) Last uncontacted Indians
–Peru: 26) Deforestation and disease
–Guyana: 27) Banning Bai Shan Lin
–Bolivia: 28) Birds: Save two forest specialists
–China: 29) Biofuels drive up food prices and halts farmland reforestation
–India: 30) Jammu and Kashmir now importing wood, 31) Forest Department concern,
–Bangladesh: 32) Brick makers destroying forests,
–Philippines: 33) Toyota helps fight deforestation,
–Malaysia: 34) Selling Palm Oil,
–Australia: 35) Industry plans to sustain it logging
–Boreal Forests: 36) Forests limit melting of permafrost
–Tropical Forests: 37) Forests NOW Declaration

Alaska:

1) One hundred years ago today, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. The Tongass is the biggest, wettest, and wildest place in the national forest system. Setting aside the Tongass was one of Roosevelt’s many conservation achievements. Far ahead of his time, TR conceptualized conservation as the centerpiece of a strategy to keep America strong and prosperous long into the future.The Tongass, one of 150 national forests that TR established during his presidency, is one-third of the world’s remaining temperate rainforests, a comparatively rare ecosystem. It is an outdoorsman’s paradise of superlatives: Big bears, big salmon, big rivers, big trees, big ice. Everything about the Tongass is big — except for the federal government’s vision for the forest, which over the past half-century or so has been as small as TR’s was large. The Tongass is a showcase of how badly the federal government can mismanage the great commons of America’s public lands. Peruse the history of the Tongass, and one could be forgiven for wondering whether Russia actually sold Alaska to the U.S. Cutting quotas, road-building subsidies, timber sales that have no takers — it’s all reminiscent of the Soviet model of state socialism. Turning thousand-year-old Sitka spruce trees into pulp was just the sort of value-destroying enterprise that would have made the old commissars feel right at home. Seeing the hash that was made of Prince of Wales Island’s forests during the heyday of Tongass logging can give rise to tempting thoughts that perhaps libertarians are right when they assert that land is better off under private management. But privatization wouldn’t cure the baleful combination of pork-barrel politics and short-term expedience that has ailed the Tongass and flies in the face of everything that TR stood for. What would set matters straight is a broader vision of the Tongass’ true worth. Timber has a future in the Tongass, but not the high-volume production model that has wasted so much taxpayers’ money and degraded so much habitat. Alaska is too far from markets and its production costs are too high for massive pulp and saw timber industries to be competitive. http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/09/09/logging-make-pulp-of-roosevelts-vision-for-tongass/6358/

British Columbia:

2) FSC Old Growth Forest from Clayoquot Sound is coming down rapidly as roads and chain saws screech away on the hills and valleys of this Biosphere Reserve…it is business as usual with two logging companies busy falling and road building. Two logging companies, supposedly owned by First Nations…Makoah Logging (in conjunction with Coulson Logging Co. in Pt. Alberni, known as ruthless and fastest logging on the coast) and Issaak Logging (which is in conjunction with Triumph Logging from Campbell River and Ecotrust) are hard at it here. Helicopters are flying over checking out new road areas to access Clayoquot from remote areas nearer to Pt. Alberni and old growth cedars and other giant trees are crashing down daily. Please urge people to purchase only old growth free forests as FSC certification here is a farce. Thank you, Susanne Hare

3) The Mountain Pine beetle has now impacted 12 million hectares of forest in B.C. That is 120 thousand square kilometres. Need a better idea of how much forest is now dead, or dying? Look at the map shown above, imagine a forest the size of Vancouver Island, now multiply that by nearly 4 times. Now you have a visual idea of just how much damage has been, or is being done to the forest industry in British Columbia. Still, Chief Forester for B.C. Jim Snetsinger, is optimistic. Repeating a quote from Einstein, Snetsinger says “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” In this case, the opportunities may be: 1) Taking better care of the understory in the forest when harvesting the dead wood. 2) Development of new technology on ways to mill the wood to ensure the best value is recuperated given the knowledge the wood has a “best before” shelf life of no less than 5 years. 3) New efforts to showcase our wood products, and one of the most impressive will be the Speed Skating oval in Richmond for the 2010 Olympics. It will use one million board feet of beetle kill wood for the 6.5 acre roof on that facility. 4) Heightened interest in bio energy – The most important opportunity says Snetsinger is the move to ensure all forest practices and policies are developed with climate change in mind. That could mean planting species that are more tolerant of a changing climate “zone” or more plantings of multiple species. “There are some lodgepole pine that have survived this epidemic” says Snetsinger “It will be important to examine the genetics of those trees. While it won’t help us with this epidemic, it may be the key in helping to make future trees more resilient.” He will review the Prince George District Timber Supply in late 2008 and will take into account the rate of harvest, the progress in dealing with the mountain pine beetle wood , the shelf life of the wood that is standing “All of these things will come into play when I make the decision on what the next annual allowable cut will be.” http://www.opinion250.com/blog/author/13/1/250+news

4) The e-mails contain complaints the B.C. government is using misleading figures to support its recovery plan for the owl, reveal intergovernmental squabbling over management, and assert the province is catering to the logging industry at the expense of the species’ future. Much of the criticism stems from biologists in the Ministry of Environment frustrated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, which has jurisdiction. But one of the strongest indictments comes from David Cunnington, senior species-at-risk biologist for Environment Canada in Delta, who lambastes the province for its policy of augmenting spotted owls through measures such as captive breeding while failing to protect sufficient old-growth habitat. “This kind of approach can be characterized as halfway technology, putting a Band-Aid on a heart attack, or treating the symptom instead of the disease, and is a great example of fiscal inefficiency,” Cunnington writes. He also notes that of 363,000 hectares designated for spotted owls, only 48 per cent is suitable habitat and even then contains large parts in which owls have never been located. Harvesting has occurred in valley bottoms leaving “disconnected sub-optimal habitat for owls on valley sides,” he writes. Myke Chutter, the province’s bird specialist, said in an e-mail provincial efforts amount to a “cop-out” and “a recipe [for] extirpation over time.” Chutter worries that discussions over owl recovery have “centred on what [timber] licensees may or may not be willing to do rather than what the owl needed.” Just 17 spotted owls, including five pairs, are known to exist in the wild in 12 locations in southwest B.C., the northern end of a range that extends south to California. The spotted owl is also endangered in the U.S. Bell used the 363,000-hectare figure in April 2006 when announcing a five-year, $3.4 million recovery strategy for the spotted owl. Of the 363,000 hectares, 182,000 are within parks and protected areas, and 181,000 are managed to retain 67-per-cent suitable habitat for spotted owls, according to the Species at Risk Coordination Office. The strategy calls for measures such as captive breeding and release, moving spotted owls to new locations, increasing food sources and managing competing species, along with protecting nine Wildlife Habitat Areas in which surveys in 2005 detected spotted owls. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=3fa642dc-7803-407c-a499-77c8bb5fb5ea

Washington:

5) There’s an old saying that when you find yourself in a hole, you stop digging. Right now, our federal government is in a hole and is still digging. In doing so, it is turning its back on an agreement with Washington state to maintain and restore thousands of miles of decades-old, deteriorating logging roads in our national forests. Muddy water harms the gills of salmon and trout. Silt smothers their eggs when it settles into clean gravel beds. Muddy runoff also contributes to making streams wider, shallower and more susceptible to warming by the sun. Warm streams further threaten salmon and trout that need cold, clean water to survive. Rivers and streams with headwaters in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and the Olympic national forests flow into an already sick Puget Sound. If we are serious about saving Puget Sound, we must pay attention to the top of the watersheds that feed it. Right now, the federal government lags behind large private and state forest landowners in maintaining the 22,000 miles of national forest roads it manages in Washington. Private and state timber landowners are on target to comply with the road-maintenance requirements in Washington’s forest-practice rules by 2016. In an interagency agreement with the Washington Department of Ecology, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to bring our state’s national forest roads into compliance with Washington’s forest-practice rules — which include road-maintenance requirements designed to protect water quality and fish habitat — by this same 2016 deadline. It is clear that the federal government will miss this deadline; the only remaining question is by how much. Washington has long partnered with the Forest Service, which is doing the best it can with the funding it receives. Our beef isn’t with the Forest Service; it’s with the current administration, which has chosen not to seek funding necessary to meet its road maintenance commitments. It’s high time for the federal government to live up to its commitment to restore and maintain its failing logging roads. Puget Sound restoration, salmon recovery and the health of our rivers will suffer if it does not. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003881567_jaymanning13.html

California:

6) The Blue Label Timber Harvest Plan (THP)is a 335 acre THP is in Lower Larabee Creek and is not approved yet. The THP includes the removal of late seral and old growth forest which is habitat for several kinds of sensitive forest species that are protected. Time is running critically short for submitting comments on this THP. The forest in this THP is considered occupied by marbled murrelets, and the USFWS signed off on several units of marbled murrelet habitat under the Habitat Conservation Plan. The prescription includes clearcutting, select cutting, shelterwood preparatory step, shelterwood removal step and two other silvicultural methods. The Erosion Hazard Rating for this THP is high. Marbled murrelets, an endangered species, continue to decline as over 94% of their nesting habitat along the coast has been destroyed. Combined with the fact that the ecosystem protections of the Northwest Forest Plan have been shown to be inadequate to protect marbled murrelet populations, this species is on a downward spiral towards extinction. Please submit comments by 17 September 2007 to: CDF Northern Region Headquarters, 135 Ridgeway Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. For more information about the THP please look at California Dept of Forestry’s FTP site for original THP documents. noel@wildcalifornia.org ftp://thp.fire.ca.gov/THPLibrary/North_Coast_Region/THPs2007/

7) Eric Shatz was one of the raiders cutting down platforms, traverses and living spaces with gas powered chainsaws in Marbled Murrlete habitat during Murrlete protection season. This has been verified by experienced activists. No (loud)work should be done by PL during this protection season. Not only did they disturb the wildlife, they also dumped our contained food stores all over the forest floor. This is a BIG taboo for sitters, we compost all food scraps, we avoid feeding wildlife because corvids such as Grey Jays and Crows attack nesting birds. Corvids are attracted by garbage and human scraps. The raiders also left the equipment they did not steal such as sleeping bags, blankets, ropes and other non-biodegradable items scattered throughout the woods.Forest defenders were away from Nanning this summer for a number of reasons. We felt that the grove was safe due to the Murrlete restrictions. We felt that our presence, even at a bare minimun, was not ethical. If we were in the canopy during the summer, we may have discouraged nesting Murrletes…contradicting our hard work to protect this habitat. We run a tight ship in regards to “leaving only footprints” in the woods. Yes, it is more than obvious who’s property we are on. However, we were really surprized at the lack of respect that Eric Shatz and his crew has for the forest and wildlife. We hope that you will answer the call to help us, to hold PL accountable for their actions, and to support the effort to protect Nanning Creek. As of Wednesday, September 12th, PL continues to harass sitters from the ground, as well as maintain a security presence at entrances to the Nanning sit. Please use caution if you attempt to enter the sit. Call Humboldt Forest Defense for more information. http://humboldtforestdefense.blogspot.com/2007/09/nanning-raid-updatepl-violations-of.html

8) Protesters living in an oak grove in front of Memorial Stadium secured a small victory Wednesday as an Alameda County Superior Court Judge refused to immediately order them down from their growing perch. Saying he saw no immediate emergency, Judge Richard Keller denied a University of California, Berkeley request to order an immediate end to the 10-month long protest. Instead, Keller said he wanted to wait for a full hearing next month before making a decision on whether the tree sitters have a First Amendment right to live in the grove. “I am going to maintain the status quo,” Keller said. “There is no reason to believe that the situation is going to continue to grow.” University officials sued the tree sitters Monday, asking a judge to order the removal of the group because they posed a danger to themselves and the surrounding neighborhood. With that suit, the university asked for a temporary restraining order demanding the tree sitters leave the area until a hearing is held. The university claimed the protesters are posing fire, health and safety risks by creating a tree-top village using a series of wooden platforms connected by a complex system of ropes and pulleys. Protesters set up camp in the trees in December in hopes of preventing the university from moving ahead with plans to build an athletic training complex at the site. Cal wants to build a $125 facility at the steps of Memorial Stadium, in part to attract student. athletes. Since December, however, the protest has grown. Tree sitters have brought propane tanks to the site and have cooked with open-flame camping stoves, the university said. Urine and feces has fallen from the trees and, at least once, a protester reportedly threw a firecracker at a police officer. The pyrotechnic ignited the ground at the base of the trees, the university said. “I don’t understand why the university can’t control its own property,” Keller said. “What prevents the university from securing the area and not letting people in?” Goldstein responded that the university does not want to cordon off the area because of safety concerns. “We don’t believe we can do that safely,” he said. http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6882974?nclick_check=1
Montana:

9) As the hottest summer on record in the northern Rockies comes to a close, I am especially thankful for our public national forest lands. Not only do these lands help regulate our climate and provide habitat for countless species, but I can’t think of a better way to beat the heat than visiting our national forest lands! Whether it’s a high alpine lake, a clear flowing stream or the coolness of a pristine, old-growth forest, we are truly blessed to live surrounded by some of the most beautiful public lands in America. TheWildWest Institute continues to successfully work to protect and restore these lands – your public forests, wildlands and watersheds here in the Northern Rockies. Please take a moment to learn about our recent successes and then consider joining the WildWest Institute as a member with a tax-deductible contribution today. The past year saw us continuing to work together with diverse interests to help establish a new, sustainable restoration economy in our region that will benefit our forests, wildlife, watersheds and communities. During the 2007 Montana legislative session, we helped to form and worked together with a Restore Montana partnership that worked to acquire $6 million in new money for restoration work in Montana. One of the most exciting aspects of that funding is the establishment of a state-wide Restoration Office, to be housed in the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Recently, WildWest helped form FireSafe Montana, which serves as a clearinghouse for homeowners seeking information, resources and assistance on community wildfire protection. Also, One of our successful cases from 2007 issued a major blow to the Bush Administration’s attempts to illegally rewrite the rules for managing our national forests. Together with fourteen other conservation groups, our lawsuit will have a lasting, positive impact on the overall management of 192 million acres of federally owned forests and grasslands. Another positive result of a successful WildWest lawsuit, which made it all the way to the US Supreme Court earlier in the year, has been the Forest Service finally being forced to monitor past and current management activities to ensure the long-term viability of birds and animals dependent on old-growth forest habitat throughout the Northern Rockies. https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1537/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1544

Pennsylvania:

10) Spurred by rising oil and gas prices, the industry wants to reopen exploration and development on the 2.1 million acres of state-owned forest land. More than a dozen companies have already asked for permits on a total of 4.5 million acres of state forest land. State Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, who represents one of the state’s oil and gas areas, said this week she plans to introduce legislation soon that would require DCNR to auction oil and gas leases for any state forest property where more than one company wants to drill. In a news release, Ms. White, who is chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, criticized the Rendell administration for not granting leases at the same time it had made “energy independence” a central theme of its energy program. But Jeff Schmidt, the Harrisburg lobbyist for the Sierra Club, said it is opposed to reopening the state forests for drilling because of the same biological concerns that led the state to impose the moratorium in the first place. “The science hasn’t changed,” Mr. Schmidt said, “but the political pressure has resulted in this choice to remove the moratorium.” Frank Feldbaum, president of the Pennsylvania Biological Survey, said oil and gas development on state lands could further fragment the forest, disrupt sensitive habitat and create openings for invasive plant species. “Invasives are eating Pennsylvania alive and everywhere they cut a road in for an oil or gas well opens the door for whatever seeds are on that dozer’s blade or tracks,” Mr. Feldbaum said. “As for fragmentation, you can see what’s been done with all the drilling going on in the Allegheny National Forest, and now that will bump right into the state forests.” http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07257/817427-113.stm

New Jersey:

11) New Jersey based Friends of the Rainforest and Ecological Internet’s campaign to stop the use of ancient rainforest timbers for boardwalk repairs is progressing nicely — garnering media attention and already changing the city council’s vote. An important precedent is being set that ancient rainforest timbers belong in rainforest canopies, not in construction projects and consumer products. You can still take action — we are making a difference with every protest email we send and every new protest network participant we recruite. The crusade to keep ipê out of Ocean City’s boardwalk reconstruction is a rejection of Forest Stewardship Council and big greens’ efforts to certify and greenwash industrial ancient forest logging as being responsible, while falsely implying sustainability. First time logging of primary rainforests — selective, certified, ecosystem based or otherwise — results in an immediate huge release of carbon, permanent reductions in future carbon sink potential, and reductions in species numbers and diversity. One of the gravest obstacles to mitigating climate change, conserving ancient forests and achieving global ecological sustainability is the pernicious myth that selectively logging ancient forests (certified or not) is environmentally beneficial. It is NOT. With just over 15% of the world’s ancient forest existing in large, intact blocks; areas that are critical for continued functioning of ecosystems and the biosphere, what remains MUST be protected in an intact state that is free from all industrial activities. Ensuring the Earth’s continued capacity to provide humanity and our sister species our habitat; including addressing climate change, ending the extinction crisis and maintaining freshwater resources, depends critically upon ending ancient forest logging and finding methods to compensate local peoples and governments for avoiding deforestation AND forest diminishment such as that wrought by “certified” logging.

USA:

12) Clues found in old-growth tree rings from Michigan to Maine show an increasing growth spurt during the last century, possibly from global climate change, according to Neil Pederson, an assistant professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Normally, trees, like people, slow growth as they age, said Pederson. But ring patterns in oaks, poplars and cedars — some up to 400 years old — instead show trees started growing faster in recent decades. “It is like my grandmother suddenly growing taller and dunking a basketball or playing football,” said Pederson. “It’s not supposed to happen.” He said it is likely that global warming is behind the change. “The most important factor to limit growth in trees is low winter temperature,” he said. Since starting his research while at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York City, Pederson has collected more than 1,600 tree ring samples. In New York state, some specimens came from Fred Breglia, horticulture and operations director of Landis Arboretum in Esperance. Winter has been gradually retreating from New York and neighboring states for four decades, according to research by Cameron Wake, a professor at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. In the 1970s, there was an average of 87 days with snow on the ground — two weeks longer than now. Average winter temperatures have climbed 4.5 degrees. Warmer weather also means more rain to fuel tree growth. Snow now accounts for about 70 percent of winter precipitation, down from 80 percent, according to Wake. In looking at rings from 230 Atlantic white cedars from Maine to North Carolina, he found trees from New Jersey and north showed accelerated growth rates for the last 80 years, while trees south of that were unchanged. Breglia agreed with Pederson’s view. He said he has also seen similar growth spurt patterns in 600-year-old black gums that he sampled in Saratoga County, N.Y., which is the northernmost edge of the species range. http://www.startribune.com/389/story/1420201.html

Canada:

13) American environmental groups today announced their support for Canadian environmental groups and three Cree Indian communities fighting Hydro-Quebec’s most recent assault on the James Bay wilderness in Quebec, Canada. Hydro-Québec’s primary purpose for damming and diverting the Rupert River – one of the last undammed major river in Northern Quebec – and creating a massive reservoir equivalent in size to flooding two-thirds of Montreal, or half of New York or New Orleans, is to generate new power capacity to sell to the northeastern United States. “This massive, non-sustainable energy project has been cloaked in secrecy and preliminary work has started with almost no public scrutiny,” said Doris Delaney of PROTECT, adding that it is never too late to re-examine the Rupert diversion. “We seek a construction moratorium, to allow time for impartial and complete review of the project’s environmental and social impacts, and of the very attractive wind power alternative, which Hydro-Quebec appears to have deliberately concealed,” said Delaney. On average, 71% of the river’s annual flow will be diverted by 2009 to new reservoirs flooding 135 square miles of land, leaving a trickle of the original flow. The water will be funneled to Hydro-Québec’s La Grande hydropower system further north on James Bay. http://www.savetherupert.org

14) Jasper National Park staff are hoping Mother Nature gives them enough time to reshape their forests, before a massive invasion of mountain pine beetles devastates their trees. The deadly insects have only made small inroads into Jasper so far, but that could change quickly, says Warden Dave Smith, who runs both the park’s wildlife and pine beetle prevention programs. “They only fly during a two-week period each year. Quite literally, if the winds are blowing in our direction at the time of the next flite we could be the next place where the mountain pine beetle hits in a big way,” Smith says. The day before the interview he spent seven hours in a helicopter looking for signs of mountain pine beetles in various areas of the park. Smith found about 200 infested trees in the northwest corner of the park, near the Wilmore Wilderness area, and about another 100 in other locations. In the past they have usually found about 30 infested trees in the northwest so there’s no doubt the problem is growing. “For us that’s a heck of a lot but when you compare it with some other areas, such as B.C. it’s sill very minor, comparatively speaking,” Smith says. The answer to all this is fire. The only way to regain the biodiversity the park thrives on and to protect it from mountain pine beetles is to allow more fires within the park, so that there is a mix of trees of different ages rather than an overabundance of older ones. “What fire does is kill the trees above ground, but below the surface it stimulates new growth, so new shoots will pop up,” Smith explains. “Fire is the perfect gardening tool on a large scale to create ecological restoration.” In addition, creating fires around the areas of mountain pine beetle infestation effectively creates a blockade, preventing the beetles from easily spreading to nearby trees. “When we find mountain pine beetle we cut those trees down and burn them, but we know that is just a finger in the dyke maneuver,” Smith says. “So what we’re doing is we’re trying to use the natural process of fire to slow or stop the mountain pine beetle from going 7through Jasper National Park.” Sounds simple, but in practice is it a very complex proposition. Starting a fire is easy enough, controlling it is a whole other issue, Smith says. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=69705878-f2ad-4ea9-936a-15efb7db7706

UK:

15) Communications agency Creative Concern has created a ‘green’ billboard that replaces carbon-intensive materials with a living hedge of native willow trees. The Green Billboard is an advertising medium made entirely from willow trees which the agency believes offers a superior range of benefits to traditional hoardings including reduction of noise pollution, increase in tree coverage and a natural screen for unsightly developments. The initiative has been developed by Manchester agency Creative Concern, Cheviot Trees of Berwick upon Tweed and fellow Manchester design agency, Modern Designers. The first installation of the willow billboard has been sited on a new woodland development in Merseyside at Bidston Moss adjacent to the M53. and follows months of meticulous planning by the ethical agency in partnership with Cheviot Trees and fellow design agency, Modern Designers. The hoarding, which measures 30 metres by 2.5 metres, was delivered on behalf of the NWDA and the Forestry Commission and displays the partnership’s message ‘ One Tree Is Planted Every Ten Seconds In This Region’. http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/other-media/creative-concern-claims-launch-of-wo
rld%92s-first-%E2%80%98living-advert%92-20070913927/

16) As revealed in The Standard earlier this summer, the Boston Woods Trust is hoping to almost double the amount of woodland it currently manages with the purchase of a further 27.5 acres off Wyberton West End Road – on the town side of the existing Westgate Wood – and 15.5 acres in Fenside. The larger piece of land will be used to create the first part of the Sir Joseph Banks Country Park and Arboretum, while the stretch in Fenside will become an extension of the trust’s neighbouring Beech Wood, and will include a pond and walnut grove. Boston Borough Council chief executive Mick Gallagher has this week recommended to councillors they support the trust’s scheme with a £50,000 contribution. He said the scheme would bring the following benefits to the Boston community: 1) Give the public the chance to adopt healthier lifestyles through new walking and cycling facilities. 2) Enhance the appearance of the borough, making it more attractive to investors and tourists. 3) Help to address climate change through the planting of more trees. 4) Provide extra recreation space within the borough. 5) Increase the biodiversity of Boston’s wildlife. 6) Provide opportunities for new eco-tourism/forestry jobs, wildlife education and volunteer work. – The total cost of the two projects is expected to run to around £230,000, including the land purchase, landscaping work and the provision of all-weather pathways. The Woods Trust is able to contribute £45,000 of its own funds, and hopes to secure a further £100,000 from private and business sponsorship. http://www.bostonstandard.co.uk/news/50000-council-cash-for-woods.3196633.jp

Czechoslovakia:

17) The Czech Republic has a record-high supply of wood that increases by three million cubic metres every year, but despite that the country may face a shortage of wood in 30 years owing to the constantly growing demand, an executive said. Czech wood stock has risen by 70 million cubic metres over the past ten years, and forest area in the country grows by 1,000 hectares a year, Jan Rezac, head of the foundation Drevo pro zivot (Wood for Life), told CTK at the Wood-Tec fair that opened in Brno today. He added, however, that the most productive forests were founded after the World War I and have not been renewed sufficiently. The current wood supply in Czech forests is estimated at 668 million cubic metres. According to Czech Statistical Office (CSU) data, a total of 17.68 million cubic metres of wood was extracted in 2006, up 14 percent against the previous year. Demand for wood grows steadily in the Czech Republic, especially in construction. “The share of buildings based on wood is now at five percent, while still two years ago it was less than one percent,” Rezac said. In contrast, the share reaches ten percent in Germany, 15 percent in Austria and more than 60 percent in Scandinavian countries. Demand for wood will grow in future also because of the Czech Republic’s pledge to produce twenty percent of energy from renewable resources by 2020, said Rezac. http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/168/czech_business/12015/

Bulgaria:

18) Balkani Wildlife Society proposes that 40% of the forests in Bulgaria should be included in NATURA 2000, Andrey Kovachev from the Society, told Focus News Agency. He expressed flat disagreement with the statement of the National Agency for Forestry that 33% of Bulgaria’s forests should be included in the ecological network. Kovachev participates as an expert in Thursday’s session of the National Council on Biodiversity. He regards the decision as completely unacceptable because it cuts Bulgaria’s most valuable sites where the nature is preserved. “Minister of Environment and Water Dzhevdet Chakarov pledged to work jointly with our experts on the Black Sea coast problems. So far he has not kept his promise,” he added. http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n121938

Mexico:

19) Earlier this summer Mexican President Felipe Calderón unveiled his government’s National Climate Change Strategy, a plan with specific targets for reducing as much as 25 billion tons of CO2. The plan isn’t pegged to any particular year’s levels, but lists opportunities for emissions reduction and carbon capture by 2014. The comprehensive carbon-sequestration section features a call to plant 250 million trees in 2007, the development of wood-based biofuels in forest communities and restoration of agricultural lands. While the tree-planting goal is obviously quite ambitious, the Distrito Federal, or Federal District, which encompasses much of Mexico City, has made a solid contribution to the goal by planting three million trees in 25 communities over 49,000 acres (20,000 hectares) in the district’s rural southern zone. According to the National Forest Commission (Spanish link), as of mid August, 50 million tree seedlings had been distributed around the country, which means they may reach the goal of 250 million trees by year’s end. The Distrito Federal loses on average 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of natural areas per year, and while the state has set aside 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares) for conservation purposes, only 158,000 acres (64,000 hectares) remain due to illegal logging and squatting. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/three_million_trees.php

20) Much of Mexico’s forestland is owned by 500 mostly-indigenous ejidos — shared community land — but indigenous ownership does not guarantee that the forests will be defended and conserved. Mexico’s lush forestland covers a quarter of its national territory and accounts for 1.3 percent of the world’s forest resources, but this land is becoming increasingly littered with the corpses of dead forest defenders. Mexican forests are a violent battleground between drug gangs clearing land for illicit cultivation, guerilla groups encamped under the canopy, heavily-armed wood poachers who steal 2,000,000 board feet of timber each year, and those who seek to defend the trees. In recent years, Mexico’s forests have become a killing floor every bit as lethal as Brazil where such environmental martyrs as Chico Méndez, Sister Dorothy Stang (LP, March 9, 2005) and young Dionicio Ribieras were allegedly by the pistoleros of ruthless landowners. The list of the dead is horrific. In the state of Mexico, 30 forest inspectors, a third of the state force, have been murdered since 1991 according to a count kept by Héctor Magallanes, Greenpeace Mexico forest action coordinator. While many ejidos zealously protect their forests which are held in common and represent the communities’ most valued resource, other indigenous groups such as the Lacandon, who occupy the forest of the same name lease out their timber rights to millions of meters of precious mahogany and cedar, stands to corporate loggers. On the other side of the ledger, Zapatista Mayan indigenous rebels who share the rain forest with the Lacandones, enforce timber cutting strictures in their communities and set up roadblocks at key chokepoints in the jungle and the surrounding canyons to keep the wood poachers from moving their loads to clandestine sawmills in the municipality of Ocosingo. Clashes at the roadblocks have resulted in casualties on both sides. “The earth is our mother,” explained Omar, a Zapatista forest defender on the Ejido Morelia, a recent forum in the Lacandon jungle. “We are prepared to die to defend her.” http://www.latinamericapress.org/article.asp?lanCode=1&artCode=5292

Honduras:

21) Next month Honduras will have a new Forest and Wildlife Law, approved by National Congress and setting up to 15 years in prison for wood smuggling. COHDEFOR Former Manager Rigoberto Sandoval indicated that no law has been so widely discussed as this one, from which came more than 15 different versions and at least five reports over eight years. The new Institute of Forest Sciences will replace the Honduran Forest Development Corporation (COHDEFOR). Congress President Roberto Micheletti celebrated the consensus reached and said all the country will benefit from this. http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BAAFDE977-4BF7-4BDA-AC37-B857F9E56E2C%7D&language=EN

Argentina:

22) For six days now, the activists have continuously occupied trees inside a part of the Yungas forest that’s a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. They’ll stay there until “la Ley de Bosques” [the Forest Law], legislation to protect Argentina’s remaining forests, is agreed by the Argentinean congress. Greenpeace Argentina is calling for 1 million signatures to help get the law passed, and has already collected over 600,000. If you are Argentinean and have not yet signed, please help by signing now. While support from all is welcome, we need signatures from Argentineans to get this law through. The trees the activists are living in are up to 25 metres high. A ‘land team’, camping on the forest floor, supports the activists in the trees, and all of them are trained in jungle survival techniques. Argentina’s forests are in crisis. Forests are being chopped down at a rate 8 times faster than the world average, clear cutting a massive 300,000 hectares a year. To put that figure into context – Argentina destroys an area of forest the size of 40 football fields, every hour. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/jaguar-tree-camp070913

Brazil:

23) Brazil, soon to be the world’s largest producer of soybeans, recently formed the Global Roundtable on Responsible Soy Association as concerns grow that global demand for biofuels will level the Amazon rainforest. Environmentalists say demand from China is playing an important role in surging soybean production in the region. According to Reuters, the Brazilian Oils and Fats Industry Association (Abiove), a member of the Brazilian Roundtable, and Brazil’s National Grain Exporters Association recently said they would not to trade soy that originates from the Amazon. Last year, after an investigation by Greenpeace linked Amazon soy to chicken feed used to supply McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants in Europe, a consortium of Brazil’s largest soy crushers announced a two-year moratorium on trading soybeans grown on newly deforested lands in the Amazon basin. During that time the agricultural sector will work with the Brazilian government to prepare an effective mapping and monitoring system for the Amazon biome, develop strategies to encourage soy producers to comply with the Brazilian forestry laws, and work with other groups to layout rules on how to conduct operations in the region. The industry-driven trend is a hopeful sign that sustainability is gaining traction in the Amazon. Aliança da Terra, an organization founded by a Texas rancher named John Cain Carter and his wife Kika, is working on a certification platform for Brazilian cattle ranchers — the largest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon. Carter believes that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the environment, the market can succeed where conservation efforts have failed. “We’re setting up an accrediting mechanism that will help responsible landowners gain access to markets and get the best price for their products,” Carter told mongabay.com.

24) Because evaporation from the forest itself creates the conditions necessary to sustain a rain forest, the entire forest need not be logged for the system to collapse. The 1.2 billion acre Amazon basin is located in five nations — Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana — with Brazil holding 60%. The forest accounts for about half the world’s remaining intact rainforest. Deforestation has increased in recent decades, as the government and private interests have built roads into and through the forest, individuals and conglomerates have cleared land for ranching, and other interests eye the forest for short-term gain. Brazil has recently celebrated its success at slowing the rate of deforestation, conservation groups have long been active in the region and the world’s industrialized nations are increasingly interested in schemes that might protect the forest as a way to offset their carbon emissions. Like other large forests, the Amazon holds carbon that — if trees are logged or burned — would be released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. If logging of the Amazon Rainforest doesn’t stop, the forest could be destroyed in less than 75 years, Brazilian environmentalist Philip Martin Fernside told TASS. http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/09/10/amazon-rainforest-could-disappear-by-2080/6366/

Paraguay:

25) Signs of the last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin have been spotted by other members of their tribe in Paraguay. Footprints and a still-burning campfire were seen by members of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe last week in the western half of their territorial heartland. The news has alarmed the Indians’ supporters, as the area is the scene of rapidly increasing deforestation. The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode have been trying to protect the last substantial part of their ancestral forest since 1993. Many of their relatives still live in this area, resisting all contact with outsiders. All members of the tribe, including those who have had contact with outsiders for many years, depend on this forest for their livelihood. Although Paraguay’s government is legally obliged to title this area to the Ayoreo, only a small part has so far been handed back to the Indians, and now illegal deforestation is rampant. Last month Survival handed to the Paraguayan authorities a 57,000-signature petition calling on the Ayoreo’s land to be titled to them without delay. Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘We know that the still-uncontacted Ayoreo Indians are being forced to live on the run as their forest is cut down all around them. On the day the UN is expected finally to approve a declaration on indigenous peoples’ rights, the shameful saga of the Ayoreo shows the vast gulf for many tribal people between the reality on the ground and the aspirations of the UN declaration.’ For further information contact Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or email mr@survival-international.org http://www.survival-international.org/news/2500

Peru:

26) Three years ago today I was dripping wet and happily exhausted, having just hiked from 10,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes down into the Amazon lowlands. A colleague and I were collecting soil samples to study the diversity of tropical microbes. A Wake Forest University friend was using the different elevations to understand how climate change might affect rainforest diversity. A writer for Smithsonian Magazine interested in deforestation was trying to keep his camera and notebooks dry. As we hiked through the jungle, I was struck by the changes we saw, including clear-cutting, forest fragmentation and soil erosion, and by the far-reaching impacts those changes might have. From diversity to deforestation, the environment and human health are inseparable. The environment gives us food, shelter and an abundant source of medicines. The changing environment is what I’d like to focus on here-how issues such as climate change, deforestation and the quest for clean water affect human health today. Tackle these problems and we’ll save lives; ignore them, and health crises are possible. The World Health Organization recently estimated that climate change is already claiming 150,000 lives a year through the spread of diseases, heat waves and other factors. Warming temperatures allow the mosquitoes that spread malaria and dengue fever to expand their ranges. Cases of food poisoning from salmonella and other pathogens increase with higher temperatures. http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/09/13/Columns/The-Changing
.Environment-2966880.shtml

Guyana:

27) A few months ago, Bai Shan Lin had been banned from exporting logs because of its failure to live up to investment timetables. Earlier this year, this newspaper had reported that Bai Shan Lin Inc had secured the rights to 400,000 hectares of forest for a period of 20 years, according to the company’s website. The website said the company would be processing logs harvested from the Jaling concession. CEO of DTL S.K. Chan had said in a letter to Stabroek News that in line with government’s policy of further downstream processing of timber products, the company had embarked on a technical assistance management agreement with Bai Shan Lin “to secure the market linkages in China…”
It did not provide any further details on this agreement. Earl Julien, Site Manager at Bai Shan Lin’s Coomacka operations in Region Ten, had earlier told Stabroek News that his company was in the process of “taking over the operations” at DTL’s Mabura location. This was confirmed by Bai Shan Lin’s Administrative Manager Karen Canterbury. However, Chan’s letter said the arrangement with the Chinese-owned company would add processing equipment to its existing mills at Mabura to produce a wider range of value added timber products. He said too that DTL only deals in logs it harvests itself in its licenced areas of operation under the Forest Management Plan and Annual Operations Plan as approved by the GFC. http://guyanaforestryblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/govt-assured-no-assets-shares-moved.html

Bolivia:

28) Assessment of habitat use for species of conservation concern can lead to important measures for habitat conservation. In high-Andean Polylepis forests (3000–5000 m), two such species are the Giant Conebill (Oreomanes fraseri) and the Tawny Tit Spinetail (Leptasthenura yanacensis), two forest specialists confronted with the loss and fragmentation of their habitat. The high degree of habitat specialization with strong confinement to Polylepis forest patches predisposes them to a much lower threshold to habitat fragmentation than more generalist species. In this study, we examined their habitat use. Through the use of principal component analysis and generalized linear models considering the vegetation structure, tree density, ground cover and interior and edge plots, we found micro-habitat use only for O. fraseri. This species was more abundant (foraging and perching) in plots with high presence of mature trees. Also, both species showed strong edge avoidance, regardless of fragment size or vegetation characteristics. Adverse microclimate conditions, such as extreme temperatures during warm or cold periods at edges may be the most probable cause of edge avoidance. The reduction of edge:interior ratio within Polylepis fragments and management measures against mature tree cutting is suggested for the conservation of these two near threatened Andean birds. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V5X-4PMT5T3-1&_user=10&_coverDate=0
9%2F11%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=
0&_userid=10&md5=4e6417608c60d6e715932fbe5f60366a

China:

29) China has suspended a plan to plant millions of trees across the country amid worries that they would have taken up increasingly scarce farmland, state media reported on Wednesday. China had planned to reforest 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of farmland as part of a five-year project due to end in 2010, the China Daily newspaper said. But the the project has been halted to maintain the minimum 120 million hectares of farmland deemed necessary to feed the country’s people, the paper said, citing an order from the State Council, China’s cabinet. The suspension will affect 1.07 million hectares, with the other land already planted with trees, it said. The move comes amid official concern over the increasing use of land to grow corn and other grains for use as biofuels rather than food. It also follows Tuesday’s announcement that August saw the highest inflation rate in nearly 11 years, fuelled in large part by skyrocketing food prices. Reforestation and urbanisation has reduced China’s arable land to 122.07 million hectares, the paper said, just above the government-set “red line.” However, it quoted officials from the State Forestry Administration as calling the suspension a “pause.” “We will continue to implement the project in the coming years,” said Liu Qing, an official with the forestation project. It said more than 24 million hectares of farmland have been reforested since 2000. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hccflDh4j5cWCyvyTjQCeSIs4rqQ

India:

30) The forest-rich state of Jammu and Kashmir is now importing timber from Canada, Malaysia, Russia, Indonesia and other countries for construction purposes. The imported timber costs 40 percent less than local logs, which are now rarely found in the market due to heavy inundation of forests over the past two decades. Timber merchant Wajahat Ahmed says he alone procured 30,000 cubic feet of timber last year from Gujarat. Wajahat and other Srinagar-based merchants procured a quarter of a million cubic feet of timber from Canada last year. The exploitation of forests has now left only 20,230 sq km of forest in the state known for its pastures and lush green forests. Official records say that 14,372 hectares had been encroached upon. A huge forest track had been allotted to the Mata Vaishnau Devi Trust to construct facilities for pilgrims and a grand university in the Jammu region. Similarly, forest tracks have been procured by the Amarnath Shrine Board to develop tracks and facilities for the Amarnath-bound pilgrims. Kashmir has seen an increasing man-animal conflict over the past few years. Environment Minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal told the state legislature recently that over 30 people had been killed and hundreds injured in such conflicts over the past two years. The minister said the reason for the rise in such incidents was the shrinking habitat of the wild animals, spread of human settlements and deforestation. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C09%5C14%5Cstory_14-9-2007_pg7_44

31) Kashmir – Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Legislative Assembly has expressed concern over the functioning of Forest Department and State Forest Corporation (SFC) regarding inordinate delay in realizing the arrears from various departments on account of forestland that has been handed over to them. The Committee has directed the Department and Corporation to take immediate steps to realize the arrears from the concerned departments and also settle the pending issue of fixing the rates of royalty on timber and clear the liabilities at the earliest possible time. The PAC that met here Wednesday under the chairmanship of MLA Mian Altaf Ahmed reviewed the functioning of these organizations and held detailed discussion on the audit paras of CAG’s Report for the year 2001-02 pertaining to these departments. The Committee directed the officers to ensure plantation of required number of plants in lieu of the fallen trees from the forestland that has been used by the other departments for other purposes so as to maintain the prescribed ratio of cutting trees and plantation of new trees, the Committee maintained. http://www.greaterkashmir.com/full_story.asp?Date=13_9_2007&ItemID=49&cat=21

Bangladesh:

32) As trees fall and forests are thinned, wildlife disappears. The total number of Hoolock Gibbon our only ape species will soon be in double digits in the wild. Flagship species such as the Asian Elephant and the Bengal Tiger are in similar states of crisis, as are hundreds of lesser known species of cats, birds, butterflies and plants, to name a few. How has this neglect of our once pristine Protected Areas and the consequent loss of biodiversity come to pass? The Forest Department has faced a number of challenges. The Wildlife Act allows for little involvement of local communities in conservation of Protected Areas, leaving Forest staff to conclude that their principal role is to keep everyone out of the Areas, and to arrest and or prosecute those who do enter. Because there is no plantation work to be done in a Protected Area, budgets for management of the areas have been much smaller than other Reserve Forests. In the absence of any Protected Area Management Plans or any systematic wildlife management training — local Forest staff have focused almost exclusively on the goal of “keeping people out”. In those Protected Areas where staff and other local or national powerful interests have been less than honest, Protected Areas have provided an ideal venue for theft of logs, fuel wood, and establishment of brick fields or other encroachment of lands. Consider the challenges of managing the forest impact of the brick burning sector alone. A single brick field makes on average 2.4 million bricks a year, and this requires 1,000 tons of fuel wood, or the equivalent of 40,000 head loads of wood from the forest. Although the Brick Burning Control Act explicitly prohibits brick fields within 3 km of any Protected Area or Reserve Forest, many brick fields have situated themselves directly adjacent to Protected Areas because they can extract “free” wood fuel and clay. At one Protected Area in the south of the country, 15 brick fields have situated themselves either directly inside or immediately adjacent to the forest. http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=3882

Philippines:

33) Efforts to protect Philippine rain forests from illegal logging received a boost from a US$1.5 million (€1 million) corporate donation for a reforestation project, an environmental group said Thursday. Conservation International said its partnership with Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp., which will provide the funds over the next three years, will help restore northeastern forests in an area larger than Switzerland. Plans also include offering jobs to indigenous people to prevent illegal logging. The initiative between the corporate and environmental communities “will demonstrate how forest protection efforts benefit both biodiversity and community development,” the group said in a statement. Conservation International said deforestation is responsible for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions — more than double the amount from the world’s cars and trucks. It said the Philippines is one of the most threatened of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots — regions where 75 percent of the planet’s most-threatened mammals, birds and amphibians live within just 2.3 percent of the earth’s surface. Those locations have already lost at least 70 percent of their vegetation, it said. The Penablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape, which is linked with the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park on the main northern island of Luzon, includes several threatened vertebrate species, such as the Philippine crocodile, the northern Luzon shrew rat and the country’s national bird, the Philippine eagle. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/13/asia/AS-GEN-Philippines-Rain-Forests.php

Malaysia:

34) A canary-yellow machine lumbers onto a fallow oil palm field and, with a roar of its motor, rips into a pile of fronds and shavings of dead trunks. As plantation operators and scientists observe the mulching process, their guide, Cheriachangel Mathews, a senior manager at United Plantations’Jendarata Estate, warns that the group has been infiltrated. “We have a journalist with us,” he says. “I want him and all of you to know that nothing here—nothing—is wasted.” Mathews has good reason to be concerned about the take-home message. With prices soaring, palm oil, Malaysia’s number one crop, has recently surpassed soybean as the top-selling vegetable oil in the world. Oil squeezed from palm fruit bunches is an ingredient in myriad products, from ice cream to soap, and it is being touted as a biofuel that can stem reliance on fossil fuels. But the industry has been taking a mulching in the press. Environmental groups have accused plantations of razing forests to plant the lucrative crop and slaughtering orangutans that pilfer and eat the fruit. Hoping to turn over a new frond, the oil palm industry is now endeavoring to demon- strate its sustainability. It faces an uphill battle. A just completed review by three dozen academics details species declines pinned on the oil palm, a native of West Africa that has become a dominant feature of Southeast Asia’s landscape. It is an “unavoidable fact that the replacement of diverse tropical forest with an exotic monoculture significantly impacts biodiversity,” states the Biodiversity and Oil Palm Briefing Document. It will be presented at a gathering in November of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), in which industry officials, scientists, and other parties are hammering out a voluntary certification scheme for minimizing harm to the environment. Scientists and like-minded industry insiders hoping to curb destructive growth may get help from the market. Rising palm oil prices are strangling demand for palm as a biofuel, Edgare Kerkwijk, managing director of the BioX Group, a renewable-energy company in Singapore, told the International Palm Oil Congress in Kuala Lumpur late last month. That’s bitter news for companies in Southeast Asia that have been racing to ramp up capacity to process palm into biodiesel. With crude palm oil now topping $700 per ton, “we believe that palm oil is not a long-term bio-fuel,” Kerkwijk said. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/317/5844/1491

Australia:

35) Greens Leader, Peg Putt, says the report is an attempt to justify bad forestry practices. “This report says we can keep killing the forests for a long time. That’s what we mean by sustainable,” Ms Putt said. “It doesn’t talk about the ecological sustaiinability of what’s happening,” she said. Hans Drielsma from Forestry Tasmania says the report shows that in 90 years, the volume of eucalypt wood managed by the company will be substantially higher. He also says the average age of the forest will be roughly the same. Mr Drielsma says the report assumes future production levels will remain the same. “There’ve been some recent suggestions for instance that in the context of this new pulp mill, there’s going to be a dramatic increase – a doubling I think I heard yesterday of production from our forests,” Mr Drielsma said. “Well, I’m not sure where that’s going to come from, because it’s certainly not coming from the state forests that we’re managing,” he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/15/2033651.htm

Boreal forests:

36) “There is no doubt that northern regions are warming and permafrost is melting as shown by numerous observations and modeling studies,” says Altaf Arain, co-author of the study and associate professor in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences. “However, there is large uncertainty about the rate and magnitude of permafrost degradation and thaw depth.” Previous studies using the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate Model suggest that global warming is rapidly melting permafrost in the North regions. According to those studies, only a million square kilometres of the currently estimated 10.5-million square kilometres of permafrost would remain by the end of this century. However, Arain says these studies failed to consider the impact of peat and vegetation cover. “A layer of peat above the permafrost acts as insulation by trapping air pockets, which reduce heat transfer and helps permafrost retention,” he says. “Vegetation can also help slow the rate at which permafrost melts because it shades the ground. Forest cover provided more protection than shrubs or bare ground, and thick layers of peat were such effective insulators that permafrost showed only minimal decline even by 2100. On the other hand, Arain adds, disturbance of the ground cover on a local scale or fires in the boreal forest and tundra can lead to accelerated permafrost thaw. Forest fires in permafrost regions, which may become more prevalent in the future, can reduce surface organic layer, and this can affect ground thaw on both local and regional scales. Preservation of peat layer and forests may help in maintaining permafrost in northern regions. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070913132927.htm

Tropical forests:

37) The Forests NOW Declaration, which is backed by charities such as Friends of the Earth and Care International, is being unveiled in London today. It demands governments take steps to protect tropical and subtropical forests to combat climate change, preserve biodiversity and sustain the livelihoods of 1.4 billion of the world’s poor. The campaigners want to see: the protection of forests included in carbon trading schemes; assistance to developing nations to participate in carbon markets; incentives for regeneration of degraded land, and; the removal of incentives which encourage forest destruction. The declaration was signed in the Brazilian rainforest canopy by Amazonas state environment secretary Virgilio Viana along with science leaders and aid agencies, and will make its way across the world before arriving in Bali for the UN climate change conference in December. It is also endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, famed botanist Edward O Wilson, the Bishop of Liverpool the Rt Rev James Jones, and executive director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations Kevin Conrad. The declaration’s journey to Bali, where the successor to the Kyoto Protocol will be discussed, is being co-ordinated by the Global Canopy Programme. Mr Conrad said: “Global markets for cows and coffee have been driving deforestation. “The measures called for in this declaration offer and opportunity to compete head to head with the money a country can make elsewhere – while protecting forests. “We absolutely must do this if we are serious about climate stability.” http://www.breakingnews.ie/business/?jp=MHCWQLEYMHMH&rss=rss2