324 – Earth’s Tree News

Today for you 32 new articles about earth’s trees! (324th edition USA-Africa-Latin America)
Subscribe / unsubscribe send blank email to: earthtreenews-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
Weblog: http://olyecology.livejournal.com

To Donate: Click Paypal link in the upper left corner of: http://www.peacefromtrees.org

–Alaska: 1) Old man of the Tongass says what forest are for
–Washington: 2) Friends of Heybrook Ridge, 3) Save school’s trees, 4) Cont.,
–Oregon: 5) Roy Keene sets record straight, 6) Roy Keene on forest Poisons, 7) New and improved Wilderness bill, 8) Cascade Crest Timber Sale,
–California: 9) Redwood lumber quality plummets, 10) High Rez videos of Clearcuts, 11) Disneyland’s fake rainforest is saved! 12) Cal poly wants to log Santa Cruz’s old growth redwoods, 13) UC Berkeley’s treesit cost lots of money,
–New Mexico: 14) 1.4 billion board feet of fuel-load buildup is a threat?
–Colorado: 15) Tree Ring anthropology mystery, 16) Beetles don’t really destroy forests,
–Wisconsin: 17) Menominee tribes forestland
–Massachusetts: 18) Woods hole research guides international forest policies
–New York: 19) GPSing Central Park
–Kentucky: 20) Chasing timber thieves with a .44 Magnum
–Tennessee: 21) Chestnut trees renew mined over moonscape?
–Georgia: 22) Wilmington Island Garden Club speaks for the trees
–USA: 23) Park inholdings turned to condos, 24) Demise of conservation reserves,
–Liberia: 25) Post war logging plans
–Ghana: 26) Increasing deforestation from agriculture system, 27) Atewa Forest Reserve,
–Nigeria: 28) 200,000 hectares of forest are destroyed annually
–Kenya: 29) New forest management approach, 30) Political unrest amid treeplanting,
–Belize: 31) Three-phase Paradise Earth project
–Peru: 32) The last uncontacted tribe

Alaska:

1) When I was born in Killisnoo, in 1908, the Tongass National Forest had just celebrated its first birthday. President Theodore Roosevelt set aside this land and water when Killisnoo was a bustling, productive community which produced much wealth. We processed everything from herring to whales and used everything from blueberries to Sitka Spruce. Nearby Angoon provided labor to Killisnoo, to canneries in Hood Bay, Hawk Inlet and the mines in Juneau. A coal mine was worked in Angoon as trees were cut to provide for buildings, heating and docks. We utilized our resources. President Roosevelt, the great conservationist, proclaimed: “And now, first and foremost you can never forget for a moment what is the object of our forest policy. That is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful, though that is good in itself, not because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness, though that too is good in of itself; but the primary object of our forest policy, as the land policy of the United States, is making of prosperous homes. It is part of the traditional policy of home making in our country. Every other consideration comes as secondary. You yourselves have got to keep this practical object before your minds; to remember that a forest which contributes nothing to the wealth, progress or safety of the country is of no interest to the government and should be of little interest to the forester. Your attention must be directed to the preservation of the forests, not an end in itself, but as a means of preserving and increasing the prosperity of the nation.” As we, the people and communities of the Tongass spent the next 50 years working together to share in this wealth with the United States, we mostly got along. Some newcomers were not friendly and brought bad manners with them and worse. Nonetheless, we welcomed them as we worked our fisheries, our timberlands and local mines while continuing our customary and traditional activities which have sustained us from the beginning. The economy prior to statehood offered the people of Southeast choices, something we no longer seem to have despite many advances in health care and many dollars spent on education. http://juneauempire.com/stories/040808/opi_266368125.shtml

Washington:

2) An anonymous donor pledged to pitch in $500,000 to protect a mountain ridge near Index from logging, a grass-roots group of residents and outdoor enthusiasts said Tuesday. “A shock, total shock,” said Louise Lindgren, president of the Friends of Heybrook Ridge. “We were a long way from our goal.” The nonprofit group is scrambling to raise $1.3 million to buy about 130 acres of mature forest from a logging company. The money needs to be secured by June 30 or Heybrook Ridge is likely to be logged by the property owner. Backers for the preservation of Heybrook Ridge hope to create hiking trails in the forest and develop educational programs to let people learn about the ecosystem, said Lindgren, a longtime resident of Index, population 150, just off U.S. 2 in the Skykomish Valley. “It’s not only about stopping logging,” she said. “It’s also about how to turn the forest into a different use.” The town was incorporated in 1907 and thrived on logging and mining. Now few people there make a living that way. In late 2006, W.B. Foresters in Stanwood proposed logging Heybrook Ridge, saying that alders in the area are mature and need to be logged before they die. The company owns the forest and has a state permit to harvest trees there. People in Index protested, saying that the logging would ruin the area’s scenic view and lower their property values. The company later withdrew its logging application after state officials determined there is fish habitat in the area. Index residents formed the nonprofit group to preserve the area. The group has raised about $35,000 through fundraising events, Lindgren said. Debbie Buse, the logging company’s business manager, said the company is open to selling the 130 acres to the group as long as the money is raised.”This group has been very impressive,” Buse said. “They’ve been very active.” The group has teamed up with Cascade Land Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation organization. The $500,000 pledge makes the effort to preserve the ridge realistic, supporters said. http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20080409/NEWS01/542043821&news01ad=1

3) The trees are coming down to make room for needed classrooms. But neighbors wonder why the construction can’t be shifted to a large grassy space just around the corner, sparing the towering cedars and firs. “How many places in the city do we have groves of trees like this?” asked Steve Zemke, who lives near the school in North Seattle. “These trees look pretty healthy and have years to go yet.” The battle at Ingraham is the latest fight over construction that includes the felling of dozens of big trees, an act that seemingly runs counter to city and state goals to increase tree cover for its environmental, economic and health benefits. Neighbors and tree lovers have protested trees coming down in the Maple Leaf neighborhood where land owned by Camp Fire was sold to developers. They objected to tree removal near Greenwood Avenue North where old homes and parking lots are being turned into shops and housing. The disputes often become emotional — people grow attached to majestic, decades-old trees, while developers and designers aim for profitable, high-density projects to serve growing populations. “Trees are important, but the code and the policies have to be balanced with private property,” said Scott Kemp, a planner with the city’s Department of Planning and Development. “You have to balance trees and development.” Trees are valued for providing habitat to birds and other animals, controlling stormwater runoff, helping fight climate change and cleaning the air. But while city leaders say they want to save trees, those critical of the Ingraham plan wonder if Seattle Public Schools missed that message. David Tucker, district spokesman, said they’d like to preserve as many trees as possible, but it’s not their primary mission. “Our focus has to be what is going to best assist those students in progressing academically,” Tucker said. If the building was built on the nearby grassy site as some suggest, classroom daylight would be lost, more open space would be eliminated because the proposed two-story building would be spread over one story, and the addition would be much closer to the street. It also would cost more. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/356974_ingraham29.html

4) Efforts to save sixty two old Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees from being cut down at Ingraham High School in North Seattle are gaining momentum. Neighbors have collected over six hundred and fifty signatures for a petition urging Ingraham High School, the Seattle School District, the Seattle School Board and the School Design Team to develop an alternative design for Ingraham High School that protects the sixty two large Douglas Fir and Western Cedar trees that are slated to be cut down on the west side of the property. Recent signatories to the petition include King County Executive Ron Sims; State Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen; and State Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Kenney. Others include Estella Leopold, Professor Emeritus in Botany at the University of Washington, Joan Thomas, a former President of the Washington Environmental Council, and Marilyn Knight, a former President of the League of Women Voters of Washington. Four Democratic candidates for state Legislature are also on board – Gerald Pollet and Scott White in the 46th LD, John Burbank in the 36th LD and Tina Orwall in the 33rd LD. Senator Ed Murray was the prime sponsor in the Senate of the new Green Cities law that calls on municipal governments to create an inventory of existing trees and develop plans to conserve and retain green areas. Last week both the Seattle Community Council Federation and the Haller Lake Community Club voted to endorse the petition. The school district’s plans are thoughtless and ignorant. The state has just enacted a law to preserve trees in towns across the Evergreen State and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently issued an executive order to protect existing trees within the city and plant new ones. The Ingraham grove is merely one place, however, where trees are threatened. There are others. If we cannot stop the destruction of dozens of trees on public property, then no tree in Seattle is safe. http://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2008/04/ron-sims-ed-murray-ken-jacobsen-endorse.html

Oregon:

5) Dave Montgomery, a private forest owner, invites me to his “planet” to show me that logging and healthy forest can coexist. I appreciate the invitation, but I’ve already been to Montgomery’s forest — many years ago, when it had more timber. I cruised parts for his family’s estate settlement and once helped Montgomery get a better price for his timber than local mills offered. There are other forest “planets” folks should visit before thinking that logging and healthy forests can coexist. Over the hill from Montgomery’s tree farm is Georgia-Pacific’s Siletz wasteland, deserted after thousands of acres of 35-year-old trees were slicked off hastily. An entire watershed was left slash-filled and muddied. Across the road are barren, half-square-mile cuts where Roseburg Forest Products is rapidly stripping and poisoning lands the company acquired from International Paper Company, another out-of-state despoiler. Visit Oregon’s North Coast to see tens of thousand of acres of dying, needle-cast-infected fir plantations left by Times-Mirror, along with bankrupted human communities. Travel through Southern Oregon’s warmest slopes to witness several hundred thousand acres of Bureau of Land Management land yet to be successfully reforested from decades old clear-cuts. I suggest that industrial foresters inquire into forestry’s historical roots before making so many “professional” judgments. Perhaps they should even visit the wild corners of our public forests: Planets without roads or eroded streams, where whistles and jake breaks don’t break the silence. Where there are still groves of old trees that have withstood the test of fire and climate change. Places where elk calve and winter undisturbed and salmon find cold, clean stream gravels to spawn in. Places that remain “unimproved” by their management. http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=90206&sid=5&fid=1

6) The forest is the “womb” of the salmon. Poison the womb, you poison the salmon. In his report, “Diminishing Returns: Salmon Decline and Pesticides,” Dr. Richard Ewing details the effects on salmon caused by sub-lethal concentrations such as damage to their immune systems and negative effects to their food supplies. Ewing says that “Scientists, policy makers, and interest groups have thus far given insufficient attention to the role that pesticide contamination of our watersheds may play in salmon decline.” Collateral damage from forest poisoning also continues to reduce crucially important honey bee and bird populations and will inevitably cause further ecosystem failures. Since Lane County has 788,000 acres of private forestland (568,000 acres of it owned by industry), this implies that 9 percent of Lane’s private forest may be poisoned in a single year. With a pound of chemical concentrates and gallons of “inert” mixer commonly sprayed on each acre, perhaps 30 tons a year of pesticides, plus their chemical dilutants, are spread annually across our watersheds. In our survey, two timber companies emerged as giants of forest poisoning: Roseburg Forest Products, which treated 42,000 acres, mostly in western Lane’s Long Tom and Siuslaw River drainages; and Weyerhaeuser Company, which treated 39,000 acres, mainly in eastern Lane’s McKenzie, Willamette and Row River drainages. Both companies are known within forestry circles for having a “pure plantation fetish” and going to chemical extremes, regardless of costs, to achieve this dubious goal. Densely filling every acre with Douglas fir, growing the trees as quickly as possible and then harvesting at the most profitable moment is intensive forest management’s focus. Since after 30 years, dollar growth exceeds tree growth, many plantations will be harvested before they’re 40 years old. Today, with wood chips worth as much as saw logs, fiber farming will lead to even quicker rotations. Neither does this business tolerate other kinds of trees competing for space and sun. Consequently, growing and harvesting these teenage monocultures relies on chemical poisoning and fertilizing. Lots of it. http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/04/03/views2.html

7) Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the last major wilderness expansion in Oregon. Congressmen Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer rightly believe it’s time to end that drought. The two Oregon Democrats last week proposed an “Oregon Treasures” bill that would add 132,000 acres of wilderness, 34,550 acres of recreation area and 80 miles of wild and scenic river designations to the Mount Hood National Forest. That’s 6,500 acres more than is proposed in the Lewis and Clark Mount Hood Wilderness bill, which is bottled up in the Senate. DeFazio and Blumenauer want to go even further by expanding wild and scenic river protections on the Lower Rogue River to include 143 miles of tributary streams and by adding 4,000 acres to the 480-acre Oregon Caves National Monument. In a recent letter to Oregon’s congressional delegation, Gov. Ted Kulongoski noted that 3.7 percent of Oregon is protected under the federal Wilderness Act. While that may seem like a lot, consider that 14.4 percent of the land area in California and 10.1 percent in Washington state has wilderness protection. None of the additions — which include the Boulder Lake, Bluegrass Ridge and Salmon Huckleberry Keyhole areas — is likely to generate a controversy that could cause the painstakingly crafted Wyden-Smith bill to unravel, and a more wilderness-friendly Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress provides a welcome opportunity to let out the seams. Once Wyden and Smith find a way to pry their bill loose from the hold placed on it by Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who specializes in political obstructionism, they should make the additions proposed by DeFazio and Blumenauer and ensure there is no need for a conference committee to resolve differences between the bills. The addition of new Rogue River wild and scenic protections is also a welcome addition. The Rogue was one of the original eight rivers designated as national treasures when Congress passed the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act nearly 40 years ago. The existing designation protects a corridor that extends a strip a quarter of a mile wide on each side of the roiling and magical Rogue. But the river’s memorably named tributaries — Kelsey, Whisky, Big Windy, Howard, Mule, Grave, Anna, Missouri, Jenny, Rum, Wildcat, Montgomery, Quartz, Hewitt and Dulong creeks — lack significant federal protections and are vulnerable to logging and other resource extraction activities. http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=89283&sid=5&fid=1

8) Last year, Bark learned of the Cascade Crest Timber Sale – a Forest Service proposal to log near the Olallie Lakes Recreation Area. Native insects have begun to lunch on the lodgepole pines along the road that leads to Olallie Lake. The Cascade Crest proposal is to clearcut the forest instead of allowing fire to play its natural role in stopping the insect infestation while also regenerating the forest. In addition, the proposal includes using, for the first time on Mt. Hood, the logged wood for biomass fuel. Biomass, which includes converting wood into energy, is one of the many alternative electricity sources on the market and has the potential to be a new frontier for energy companies. Bark is monitoring biomass to make sure it’s not the next big driver for logging Mt. Hood National Forest and will continue to stand against the use of public lands for commercial, profit-driven resource extraction. Cascade Crest will result in over 300 acres of logging in Late-Successional Reserves, intended to be preserved as old-growth forest. The project also overlaps proposed wilderness, a designated Wild and Scenic River, a Scenic Recreation Area, an Inventoried Roadless Area, and crosses the Pacific Crest Trail. Natural processes (including insects) do not change the fact that these designations are meant to protect forests from unnecessary management. The Forest Service has just released a Preliminary Assessment, which is a document stating some of the environmental consequences of logging. There is currently a 30-day public commenting period open. We ask that you join us in telling the Forest Service not to log near Olallie Lakes! You can read more about this project and talking points against it on our website where you can also follow the link to their environmental review. Comments are due April 23, 2008 Email comments to Jim Roden at jroden@fs.fed.us. http://bark-out.org/tsdb/detail.php?sale=cascade

California:

9) Redwood is to Lumber what black angus is to beef and Mercedes is to cars: a specialized and highly valuable brand. Uniquely beautiful and resistant to rot and insects, redwood lumber sells for two to three times as much as other softwoods. And because redwood is produced almost exclusively in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, it keeps many North Coast timber operators playing profitably in the increasingly competitive global lumber game. But some people who follow the timber industry say that the large redwood companies are selling inferior wood and undermining redwood’s image in the process — something akin to DaimlerChrylser marketing Dodge Neons as Mercedes luxury sedans. “They’ve managed to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes,” says Michael Evenson [photo at right] , a forest activist who owns Old Growth Timbers, a company on Highway 101 between Eureka and Arcata that sells recycled lumber from dismantled buildings. “After 10 years [in an outdoor setting], second growth isn’t going to perform very well.” The problem, according to Evenson and others, stems from even-aged management, the practice of clearcutting many acres at once, replanting redwoods, then clear-cutting again as early as 40 years later. “With their relatively short [logging] rotations, these trees aren’t getting that big,” says John Rogers, president of the Institute for Sustainable Forestry (ISF), a Redway nonprofit founded in 1991 to study and promote alternatives to industrial logging. “[The wood] has lots of knots [and the quality] is not that good.” Rogers, Evenson and others predict buyers will eventually become disenchanted with redwood and start buying more western red cedar, redwood’s arch-competitor, as well as imported tropical woods like ipé and composite materials such as Trex plastic/wood decking. UC Berkeley’s Shelly writes that the fine-grained heartwood associated with old-growth redwood generally isn’t realized until a tree has reached 200 years of age. “Growth rates are typically slower in older trees [leading to finer grain], but it is more like trees over 200 years [or more] than 100 or less,” he writes. http://watchpaul-articles.blogspot.com/2008/04/ncj-redwood-reckoning.html

10) I have begun placing HIGH REZ video, suitable for television. These files can be handed over to reporters doing a story or documentarians (-10sp) etc. I am limited by my satellite connection as to speed and size of these clips but I will continue to upload over the coming days. The files marked lassen west are aerial shots. I recommend downloading everything in this folder. Please note the word document labled README… about credits etc. I have included some of the graphs that have been useful in the campaign. Also, (Kristin), you will find that www.stopclearcuttingcalifornia.org has a number of high resolution graphics, ie: the satellite photos, graphs, aerial photos etc., which can be downloaded directly from the homepage. The graphic posters etc (at the bottom of the homepage) have high rez pictures that can be extracted via photoshop after you download them. I am happy to extract a particular photo, graph etc and send them to you if you have trouble. I am also happy to put your particular organizations name on any of the work to suit your needs. I WELCOME IDEAS AND IMPROVEMENTS I would like to put Forest Ethics name on this document as well, and if Forests Forever, Ebbetts Pass, is able, your name too. Please pass the word, or forward this, to other organizations, Sierra Club, Ebbetts Pass etc…as the the availablity of these files for the local television and campaigns. I can be reached at 530 356 7343 – Mauro http://stopclearcuttingcalifornia.org/video/B-Roll/

11) The Small World boat ride, currently down for a 10-month rehab at the Anaheim theme park, will not be removing the Papua, New Guinea, rainforest scene to make way for an “Up with America” scene and will not be adding Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters in an effort to turn the “classic attraction into a marketing pitch for Disney plush toys,” according to Sklar. “Now, based purely on rumors that are mostly inaccurate, we are being criticized for touching another one of Walt Disney’s ‘classics,’” Sklar wrote in a letter published by Mouse Planet staff writer Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix. Sklar’s fury appeared directed at another open letter by the family of Small World creator Mary Blair that accused Walt Disney Imagineering of a plan to “bastardize” her stylized artwork and “marginalize” the original theme of the attraction. Imagineering officials recently acknowledged that Alice in Wonderland and other Disney characters would be added to Disney’s Anaheim attraction. “To make It’s A Small World even more relevant to our guests,” Sklar wrote, “We decided to seamlessly integrate Disney characters into appropriate thematic scenes in the attraction and do it completely in the distinctive ‘Mary Blair style.’” A recently launched online campaign to “Save the Rainforest” urges Small World fans to call, write or e-mail Disneyland, Walt Disney Imagineering or Disney’s corporate headquarters to put a halt to the proposed changes. “We all agree that It’s A Small World is a Disney classic,” wrote Sklar, a 50-year Disney veteran. “But the greatest ‘change agent’ who ever walked down Main Street at Disneyland was Walt himself. In fact, the park had not been open 24 hours when Walt began to ‘plus’ Disneyland, and he never stopped.”. http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/?p=1647

12) Turns out that Cal Poly has several old growth stands which are to be harvested under the NTMP. Well, there are at least two, the General Smith Stand the Tranquility Flats Sub-Unit. According to the DFG PHI report, the plan is not clear and there may be additional old growth stands. There are trees greater than 50” dbh in or near the Tranquility-Flats sub-unit along Little Creek. DFG has asked for 1) greater clarification of just how much old growth exists and where, and 2) retention of 18 trees greater than 40” dbh within the 11 acre Tranquility Flats sub unit, where the plan states that there are 9.5 trees per acre in the greater than 38” dbh size class. Apparently Big Creek and Cal Poly are objecting. Unfortunately, DFG did not get to see all of the old growth (nor did the other PHI team members) during the PHI. DFG also wants additional protections for coho and will hopefully ask that the latest USFWS red-legged frog guidelines be adhered to once they are finalized. (See below for more info). Did I mention ACREAGE? Oh yes, in perusing the plan I noticed that Cal Poly owns nearly 4000 acres in Santa Cruz County (along Valencia Creek in Aptos and Little Creek in Swanton.) The plan gives a fuzzy accounting of how many acres are in grassland, used for the historic train, set aside for this and that and deems that Cal Poly has only around 1800 acres of timberland. The cutoff for an NTMP landowner is 2500 acres. Well, with that much of a ‘buffer’ why worry? Remember, Big Creek also told us that San Jose Water Company only had 2001 acres of timberland out of their 6000 acre ownership. NAIL did their own flyover and acreage assessment and computed over 2700 acres of timberland for SJWC. CALFIRE finally did their own assessment and also determined that SJWC owned more than the 2500 acre NTMP limit. That plan was declared invalid and tossed out. A few well-placed questions need to be put to CALFIRE and Cal Poly on this one.
ftp://thp.fire.ca.gov/THPLibrary/North_Coast_Region/NTMPs2007/1-07NTMP-020SCR Jodi Frediani, Director – Central Coast Forest Watch – JodiFredi@aol.com

13) UC Berkeley police have spent $300,000 and taken more than 200 police reports while managing a group of protesters living in campus trees for 17 months, says Cal Police Chief Victoria Harrison. About a half-dozen people have been living in the oak grove next to Memorial Stadium since December 2006 to protest the school’s plan to cut down the trees and build an athletic training center. The project has been held up in court for more than a year after the city of Berkeley, a neighborhood group and a group that wants to save the trees sued the university. A judge’s decision is due before June. Some of the $300,000 the police have spent in connection with the protest has gone toward overtime and some toward 24-hour security guards at the protest site, Harrison said. And while many of the 200-plus police reports at the site are related to protester activities, the protesters themselves have been victims of crimes by people who disagree with them, Harrison said. Cal’s normally low-profile police chief sent an open letter to about 45,000 faculty, staff and students earlier this week explaining the department’s reasons for allowing the tree-sitters to stay, running up the bills for the department. “I understand that many of you are frustrated by an approach that seems overly tolerant, while others believe we should just let it all be,” Harrison wrote. “However, I am convinced there is a middle ground where we can and will maintain that delicate balance between tolerance and law enforcement.” But Marcella Sadlowski, a fourth-year Cal student who has been working with the tree-sitters for about a year and who has been arrested twice for it, said the police department is not maintaining any kind of balance. The police are out to “silence the voice that is going against the university’s horrible policies,” she said. In the 1960s, during fights over the future of People’s Park, and again in the 1990s during protests calling for more ethnic studies, the UC Berkeley police beat people, Sadlowski said. “So they are not here to protect students, or the community,” she said. “They are here to serve the administration and the regents who are war profiteers and business tycoons. So, of course, the police are not neutral.” Harrison said she wrote the letter to the campus community after several students asked about the police department’s take on the situation and because the protest has gone on for so long. http://origin.mercurynews.com/healthandscience/ci_8822098?nclick_check=1

New Mexico:

14) Montane Meadow and Open Area Encroachment in the Lincoln Forest, Sacramento Grazing Allotment: The study reveals that U.S. Forest Service-controlled lands in New Mexico forests alone had accumulated approximately 1.4 billion board feet of fuel-load biomass buildup between the years 1986 to 1999, as logging declined 82.4 percent during the same period. All of the Mexican spotted owl habitat in the Los Alamos area and the owl-nesting protected locations were lost, as were many of the ground-dwelling endangered species. Other endangered and protected habitat areas were also seriously compromised or destroyed by these fires. The report also points out the loss of an entire cultural timber-harvesting infrastructure due to owl restrictions and the resulting loss of the economic sector to rural communities in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This is in addition to the costs of fire fighting, the personal costs and loss of homes (including the threat to the Los Alamos nuclear facilities in the path of the Cerro Grande fire), as well as the human lives lost as a result of these fires. It is doubtful that the families who lost everything were concerned over the the loss of a few birds. http://westinstenv.org/ffsci/2008/04/07/30/
Colorado:

15) Even in the worst of times, major waterways kept flowing. “The Provo River didn’t dry up,” said James Allison, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University. “The San Juan River didn’t dry up. There are places where people could have stayed and farmed and chose not to.” Some inhabitants left the relatively lush climes of what is now southern Colorado for the bone dry Hopi mesas. “Climate makes the most sense for this big pattern change,” Dr. Lipe said. “But then you think, So they went to Hopi to escape this?” Hopi was far from an anomaly. “The whole abandonment of the Four Corners, at least in Arizona, is people moving to where it’s even worse,” said Jeffrey Dean, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. Some archaeologists have proposed that colder weather contributed to the downfall. Measurements of the thickness of pollen layers, accumulating over decades on the bottom of lakes and bogs, suggest that growing seasons were becoming shorter. But even when paired with drought, the combination may have been less than a decisive blow. Soon after the abandonment, the drought lifted. “The tree-ring reconstructions show that at 1300 to 1340 it was exceedingly wet,” said Larry Benson, a paleoclimatologist with the Arid Regions Climate Project of the United States Geological Survey. “If they’d just hung in there . . .” Though the rains returned, the people never did. “Why didn’t they come back?” said Catherine M. Cameron, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado. “Why didn’t anyone come back to the northern San Juan? It was a fine place, and apparently by 1300 it was very fine.” Juxtaposing data on rainfall, temperature, soil productivity, human metabolic needs and diet, gleaned from an analysis of trash heaps and human waste, the model suggests a sobering conclusion: As Anasazi society became more complex, it also became more fragile. Corn was domesticated and then wild turkeys, an important protein source. With more to eat, the populations grew and aggregated into villages. Religious and political institutions sprung up. When crops began dying and violence increased, the inhabitants clustered even closer. By the time the drought of 1275 hit, the Anasazi had become far more dependent on agriculture than during earlier droughts. And they had become more dependent on each other. “You can’t easily peel off a lineage here and a lineage there and have them go their own way,” Dr. Kohler said. “These parts are no longer redundant. They’re part of an integrated whole.” Pull one thread and the whole culture unwinds. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08anasazi.html?pagewanted=all

16) “Some people think of the beetles as destroying our forests. That’s not really the case,” said Jim Maxwell, a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “What they’re doing is they’re killing off the mature lodgepole pine, but the forest is already renewing itself,” he said. The beetle, a native species that burrows into the bark of the tree to lay its eggs, has hit the Rockies hard in the past five years, spreading through the pines like a slow-moving wildfire. Biologists say the trees, already weakened by drought, are particularly susceptible because almost a century of wildfire control and logging restrictions has left entire forests that are uniformly 80 to 100 years old. Among the most important changes expected is an increase of as much as 30 percent or more in water yield, depending on the number of trees lost and variables such as snowfall, said Lee MacDonald, a professor with the Colorado State University watershed-science program. The roots of dead trees no longer absorb water, and their denuded branches no longer serve as a platform for snow that never reaches the ground before evaporating, MacDonald said. The additional water may, however, be of limited benefit because it will flow into streams during the wettest times of the year, MacDonald said. “You’d have to capture that additional melt that you get early in the spring, and that means building reservoirs,” he said. The increase in water also would be relatively short-lived, typically lasting only 20 to 30 years, until new plants and trees replace the dying pines. As the new vegetation grows it will also compete for that extra water, said Kelly Elder, a research hydrologist at the Fraser Experimental Forest. “These younger trees are very efficient at using that water,” Elder said. slipsher@denverpost.com

Wisconsin:

17) NEOPIT – The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin prides itself on a long-standing commitment to the environment, and its forestry and saw mill operation is celebrating 100 years managing a 230,000-acre forest in northeastern Wisconsin. Menominee Tribal Enterprises, officially founded in 1908, is a leader in helping improve the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem, commonly referred to as sustainable forest management. The enterprise has continued to grow and now counts 300 employees across the area with more than half of its staff working in the saw mill during peak periods. Prior to establishing a saw mill and forestry under the MTE name, the tribe possessed a long history of sustainable forest management. The tribe’s experience with forest management dates back to at least 1808, when horses and handsaws were used to manage the forest, said MTE president and CEO Adrian Miller. Miller is finishing his fourth decade at MTE. He first became involved with MTE in the late 1960s while sweeping floors at the mill after attending college. In addition to performing various tasks at the saw mill, he spent 10 years harvesting and has countless experiences within the Menominee forest. He has not seen a large change in the original mission of MTE, which was to enjoy, cherish and help sustain resources provided by the forest. ”The way we harvest is still the same,” he said. ”The thing that has changed – modernization and computers – but we still cut the same amount of lumber.” The forest may even be better off than it was a century ago. Estimates from 1854 show 1.3 billion board-feet of timber contained within the forest, and MTE counts a growth of 400 million board-feet today to 1.7 billion board-feet of timber. A variety of tree species are represented in the forest including beech, black cherry, maple, pine, white ash and numerous others. ”The Menominee forest is one of the best-managed forests in the world,” Miller said. ”Cuts are done on a 15-year cycle and every year we go to a different area to do the cuts.” http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416981

Massachusetts:

18) Its objective: to inform policymakers worldwide of the extent of deforestation, climate change, global warming, and other causes of environmental stress. The team’s hope: To stimulate solutions for a better world. “We need technology to support environmental science,” Josef Kellndorfer, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center told cc2day. “We take measurements provided by solid science and translate it for policymakers. At the Center, we are diagnosing and monitoring ‘patient Earth’.” Conventional satellite imaging technology such as Google Earth’s can’t see through clouds, Kellndorfer explained. So his group relies on radar and lidar, a relative of radar that uses laser pulses instead of radio waves. Their signals penetrate cloud cover and provide images of Earth’s surface and the vegetation growing on it. “We are now in the third year of the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset,” Kellndorfer said. “When we finish the project at the end of next year, we will have a three-dimensional forest map of the entire country.” That map will permit U.S. officials to quantify biomass and stocks of carbon, which can produce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. The data will also provide data on forest fires and floods. The project on global deforestation relies on data from the Advanced Land Observing Satellite, a Japanese craft launched in January 2006. “The sensor is so accurate that, without any user interference, we can generate global datasets,” Kellndorfer explained. “We can map the entire globe within a couple of months. So we have a way of checking the amount of global deforestation year after year. This is something we want to track annually to help policymakers.” http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2008/04/04/monitoring-our-world-from-woods-hole?blo
g=53

New York:

19) Mr. George was collecting information for a comprehensive inventory of Central Park’s trees, the first of its kind to use global positioning technology to pinpoint the exact location of each one. Some of his other equipment had older origins. The Biltmore stick, for example, was developed around the middle of the 18th century to determine a tree trunk’s diameter. And to ascertain the width of each tree’s crown, Mr. George used no equipment at all: he counted the paces it took to get from one end of the tree’s canopy to the other. Stopping before a black cherry tree, he logged the species name, which was translated by his computer into the Latin name, Prunus serotina. Then he entered the tree’s other data: its height and diameter, its condition, and its percentage of dead wood. Dead wood, Mr. George said, was a result of a largely invisible “underground battle,” taking place throughout the park, among competing tree roots for prime real estate. The Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit group that manages the park under contract with the city, hired the Davey Resource Group, based in Ohio, to conduct the survey with a team of certified arborists, including Mr. George. The final count: 24,132 mature trees (informally defined as higher than chest level with a trunk diameter of more than six inches). The arborists noted an additional 2,000 saplings, one to six inches in diameter. In a 1982 survey, a group of 16 volunteers spent an entire summer tramping through the park to come up with their count of 24,595 mature trees. With the new technology, Davey’s four-person team took less than six weeks as they found trees with G.P.S. devices instead of plotting locations on paper maps. The survey was completed in March, producing, for each of the park’s trees, a computer file storing its long-term history. With this record, park workers can assess the maintenance needs of each tree. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/nyregion/06trees.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Kentucky:

20) When Dave Potter of Cincinnati got a call from a cousin saying loggers were stealing timber from the family’s land in the Kentucky mountains, he grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and headed south. His cousin, Mark Combs, brandishing a .44-caliber Magnum, got there first and scared off the loggers. The poachers fled in a pickup truck, leaving behind two bulldozers. When Potter arrived, he was shocked to see the devastation inflicted on the wild, wooded land his family has owned for seven generations. It’s the place where his mother was raised, the place where he spent his summers as a kid. And now this high-tailing gang of chainsaw raiders had toppled 30 giant oak trees — some of them centuries old, five feet wide — leaving a wake of destruction and a field of stumps. “They destroyed the whole mountaintop,” said Potter, who has had the logs appraised at $16,000 wholesale. “Those trees were amazing to look at. We’ll never be able to replace them.” Forestry officials say timber theft is common in Ohio, Kentucky and nearby states that are rich in valuable hardwoods like oak and walnut. A white oak tree 50 inches in diameter is worth about $3,000 on the market. Thieves regularly prowl and poach on private land where owners don’t live or where owners are elderly. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/120747076026150.xml&coll=2

Tennessee:

21) PIONEER — In a double-barreled approach to environmental restoration, Appalachian mountains scarred by strip-mining are being planted with American chestnut trees, a species that has been all but wiped out in the U.S. by a fungus. For the past 30 years or so, federal regulations essentially said that once a forested mountainside was scraped open and the coal extracted, mine companies had to smooth the soil over and seed it with grass. But recently, federal regulators have begun promoting the planting of chestnuts and other hardwoods to improve drainage, reduce erosion and return the landscape to a more natural state. The project has the added advantage of helping to bring the American chestnut back from the brink of extinction. American chestnuts “were a critical part of the forest and they are gone now, for all intents and purpose,” said John Johnson, a former leader in the militant environmentalist group Earth First! and now an employee and student in the University of Tennessee forestry program. “So this in a way is like double research — like, how to bring chestnuts back and how to reclaim these sites.” http://greenerloudoun.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/chestnut-trees-used-for-mine-reclamation/

Georgia:

22) Mary Stoller remembers how Johnny Mercer Boulevard looked nearly 20 years ago. “Before we had a gorgeous shade but because of the development it’s coming down and it’s taking a lot of the island beauty with it,” said Stoller. Stoller and several other members of the Wilmington Island Garden Club protested a week ago trying to save the trees. Each tree stood for over 150 years, but early Saturday morning both were cut down. “When you’re sitting at that stop light it provides a shade and a canopy, which is needed during the summer,” said Stoller. “It was just a nice place to idle your car and now they’re gone.” But Chatham County chairman, Pete Liakakis, says all rules were followed. “If you look at the permits and ordinances, all of this was done legally,” said Liakakis. Liakakis said three years ago, a developer went to the Metropolitan Planning Commission and applied for permits at the Johnny Mercer Boulevard and Penn Waller Road. Only one tree was approved to be removed. But traffic engineers said because it’s a busy intersection, they needed an additional traffic lane and the second tree would have to go. Liakakis would later get involved. “I saw that they had the permission to take down those two trees,” said Liakakis. This didn’t sit well with one member of the Wilmington Island Garden Club. “Safety’s very important but we feel there has to be a way the county can work with the MPC and the developer to have both and preserve the oak trees,” said Stoller. County officials say they’re trying to do just that. “The county is not eager to go out and take down trees we want to follow what the rules are but we are also concerned about the environment,” said Liakakis. http://www.wtoctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8124737&nav=0qq6L9Si

USA:

23) Millions of privately owned acres in National Park Service boundaries could be developed into luxury homes or commercial enterprises because the federal government has not allocated funds to buy out these lands, according to two reports issued this week.
About 4.3 million acres of privately owned land lie within the 391 National Park Service properties nationwide, according to a National Parks Conservation Assn. report released Tuesday. Of these acres, 1.8 million are considered priorities to be acquired for recreation and habitat connectivity at a cost of $1.9 billion, according to the parks service. The national parks were set up by Congress to acquire and protect lands within their boundaries for resources preservation and public use. But federal appropriations to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the primary source of the National Park Service’s acquisition money, has dropped by more than $100 million in the last nine years, according to the report. As a result, in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the country’s largest urban park and the most visited recreation area, about 1,300 acres of private land is developed each year, according to a second conservation association report. About 46% of the recreation area’s roughly 153,000 acres are privately held. Some parcels are up for purchase, but the park has received no money in the last eight years from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In Washington’s Mt. Rainier National Park, the park service would like to acquire 800 acres for $4.5 million. The land is part of the park’s Carbon River Valley watershed, which provides habitat for endangered and threatened species such as the northern spotted owl and chinook salmon. Half the acreage is owned by a timber company that is willing to sell to the federal government. But the report notes that “even the most public-spirited owners cannot be expected to forgo their own financial needs indefinitely.”Among other private acreage on the park service’s wish list is a 28,000-acre parcel in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park that was included in a 2004 expansion of the park. The National Parks Conservation Assn. report recommends that Congress appropriate at least $100 million in 2009 for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Congress can allocate as much as $900 million a year to the fund, which is paid for by royalties from oil and gas leases. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-parks9apr09,1,5693921.story

24) The program peaked late last summer, with more than 400,000 farmers receiving nearly $1.8 billion for idling 36.8 million acres. Put all that land together and it would be bigger than the state of New York. The group doing the most to undermine this amiable coexistence is the farmers themselves. Last fall, when five million acres in Conservation Reserve came up for renewal, only half of them were re-entered. While the program has gained some high-priority land in the last few months, in part from an initiative to restore bobwhite quail habitats, the net loss is still more than two million acres. That is just the beginning, warns Ducks Unlimited, a politically potent organization with more than half a million members in the United States. Ducks Unlimited is concerned about the three-quarters of a million acres of grassland that were removed from the program last year in the so-called duck factory in the Upper Midwest. “We foresee a dramatic reduction,” said Mr. Ringelman, a conservation director for the association. Ardell Magnusson, a farmer in Roseau, Minn., shows the changing mood. He said the program was “a godsend” when he put 300 of his 2,300 acres into it eight years ago. “I needed some guaranteed income or my banker was going to tell me to find another occupation,” Mr. Magnusson said. It is not exactly a bonanza: he gets about $12,000 a year. He calculates he can make more than that by farming sunflowers or wheat or soybeans. When his contract expires in two years, he plans to withdraw about half his land. It would not be a shock if the Agriculture Department cut him loose sooner. “Another nine months of wheat at today’s prices and there will be political pressure on this program like you wouldn’t believe,” Mr. Magnusson said. That pressure is exactly what the bakers and their allies are aiming for, saying the Conservation Reserve costs taxpayers and hurts consumers. “This program is taking money out of your pocket twice a day,” said Jay Truitt, vice president for government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “Do you think it’s right for you to pay so there’s more quail in Kansas?” The cattlemen and bakers argue that farmers should immediately be allowed to take as much as nine million acres out of the Conservation Reserve without paying a penalty, something they say would not harm the environment. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/business/09conserve.html?scp=1&sq=conservation&st=nyt

Liberia:

25) Proceeds from Liberia’s timber industry reportedly helped to fuel the Charles Taylor bush war that decimated the country and sent thousands to their unwanted graves. That necessitated a United Nations embargo unless reforms in keeping with international standards were put into place so that ordinary Liberians can benefit. That reform process then got underway during the transitional period. Upon taking office in 2006, the present administration began from where its predecessor stopped, ratified and passed into law new forestry law. There are reports that several logging companies want to do business and that Forestry Development Authority (FDA) is contemplating granting the permits. But Global Witness, a renowned international advocacy institution, is thinking otherwise, alarming that a rush to log the nation’s forest could jeopardize the reform process. The Analyst looks at the statement from GW. Global Witness says that under intense pressure from the timber industry, including many familiar faces from the past, the Forest Development Authority (FDA) has started issuing timber contracts while key legislation on community rights to ensure an equitable balance between community, conservation and commercial forestry is still in draft. http://allafrica.com/stories/200804021071.html

Ghana:

26) Mr. Ernest Debrah, Minister of Food and Agriculture, has lamented the increasing effect of deforestation on Ghana’s agriculture system and called on all stakeholders to join the fight against it. Mr. Debrah said in addition to deforestation, the disappearance of ground cover in general, poses a very serious threat to the growth of agriculture in the country. “Deforestation is proceeding much faster than reforestation,” he said. The Minister made the call when he officially opened the 2008 International “Promoting Local Innovation” (PROLINNOVA) Meeting in Tamale on Monday. He mentioned human activities such as bush fires, woodcutting for household use, animals foraging on foliage and shrubs and mass clearing of trees for agriculture production as some of the main causes of the problem. “In less than a generation, we have seen wooded environment literally disappear”, he said. Mr. Debrah said the renewed global effort to revamp agriculture under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADEP) under NEPAD and the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategies (GPRS) calls for all African countries to rethink the issues of agriculture development. He called for active collaboration to enable the nation meet the goal of halving the number of hungry citizens by 2015.”All efforts should therefore be made to protect the natural resource that can contribute to the achievement of our development goals”, he said. http://allafrica.com/stories/200804040431.html

27) As scientists explored one of the largest remaining blocks of tropical forest in Western Africa, Atewa Range Forest Reserve, various scientically interesting findings have been made. Among critically endangered frogs, rare species of butterflies known for the widest wingspan in the world and fish that are potentionally highly valuable in the aquarium trade, a strange new species of spider tick was found. Its lineage is as old as the dinosaurs, it looks like a cross between a spider and a crab and, which is very unusual, males have their reproductive organs on their legs. From this group only 57 other species are known throughout the world, scientists consider them exiguous. This globally important forest reserve is not only beautiful unique reservation of the rarest species. Besides having a significant intact forest ecosystem, it also serves as an essential source of water for local villages and for Accra. However, not only the last living inhabitants of the forest are in danger. In addition to illegal timber harvesting and bushmeat hunting, mining exploration activities may cause a future threat, as the reserve contains gold and bauxite deposits. Leeanne Alonso, a Conservation International senior scientist heading the RAP program, claimed “This is an SOS to create with local communities and other stakeholders viable economic development options that also protect Atewa’s valuable natural resources.”Scientists called for the government to upgrade the area’s protection status to a National Park, create a buffer zone around the park and develop a management plan including conversation measures and economic development strategies. http://scienceblogtechsource.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/ghanian-forests-hiding-new-species/

Nigeria:

28) Some 200,000 hectares of forest are destroyed annually, according to Mr Thomas Fameso, the Chief Forest Officer, the Department of Forestry, Federal Ministry of Environment. Fameso told newsmen in Abuja that data received from the Nigeria SAT 1 showed that the country currently has about 10 per cent forest reserves. He said the rate of deforestation was 1.36 per cent annually. The forest officer blamed the degeneration of the country’s forests on human activities which included agriculture, urbanisation, road construction and over grazing. To check the menace, he said the FAO had provided technical assistance to carry out pilot studies on Community-Based Forest Management in five forest zones of the country. He identified the five zones as Wudatawo Sudan Forest Reserve in Borno State, Kpashimi Guinea Savannah Forest Reserve in Niger State and Osho Dry Savannah Forest Reserve in Oyo State. Others are the Amahor Lowland Forest Reserve in Edo State and Okpeurobo Mangrove Forest Reserve in Delta State. According to him, the duration of the pilot study is three years in all the selected zones. Fameso explained that Community-Based Forest Management is a new concept aimed at ensuring sustainable management and protection of the country’s forests. He said the concept would allow the participation of communities in forest management as it had been discovered that the government could not do it alone. “The rate of cutting down trees is not commensurate with the rate of planting and the cost implication is quite on the high side,” he said. http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=04/03/2008&qrTitle=200,000%20hectares%20defores
ted%20annually%20%E2%80%94%20official&qrColumn=ENVIRONMENT

Kenya:

29) Under the new forest management approach, communities adjacent to forests are to be mobilized and organized in groups of 10 members to form a Community Forest Association (CFA) which will act as partners in the management of forests at the local levels. The KFC has already earmarked communities in Ijara, Samburu, Baringo and Makueni Districts for piloting the new approach. For example at Makuli forest station in Makueni District, the KFS has set up the Miti Mingi Maishi Bora project funded by the government of Finland in collaboration with Kenya and has so far trained 46 local team selected from the surrounding communities. The 46 local teams from Nguta community bordering the Makuli forest were trained on participatory forest management process from which they developed a participatory forest management plan as per the requirement of the KFS. Patrick Milimo, the Miti Mingi Maisha Bora project consultant expressed optimism that the new approach imparted a spirit and sense of ownership to communities and would enhance natural forest protection. Milimo disclosed that in the past, the State had the sole responsibility in forest management. He noted however that this was not successful due to various factors like inadequate financial resources and lack of enabling policy and legislation that could involve the locals. Thus it was easy for communities to encroach forests they perceived ‘foreign’ due to increased population and poverty leading to rampant illegal logging, illegal charcoal burning and encroachment of forest resources for agriculture and settlement. “These factors undermined the government’s efforts in achieving sustainable forest management. But the new approach provides for an ecosystem-wide approach and provides appropriate incentives that would promote sustainable use and management of forest resources” Milimo said. He said as a result of the past encroachment on forests, there has been erosion of indigenous tree species which provided sources for herbal medicine for locals. He said the adoption of the new legislation and the establishment of the KFS posed an opportunity to address the low forest cover which stood less than 10 per cent and to improve the sustainability of local forest covers as well as improve the livelihood of the local community. http://africasciencenews.org/asns/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=279&Itemid=1

30) “I permitted the group to plant a tree, but a demonstration is illegal,” Mbithi said. Among the protestors were Maina Kiai, the chairman of the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights, Ms Gladwell Otieno, the executive director of Africa Centre for Open Governance, and former Assistant minister, Dr Joseph Misoi. In her style of planting a tree before peace missions, Maathai planted one at Freedom Corner before attempting to hold a peaceful demonstration to President Kibaki’s Harambee House office, where the Head of State was meeting Internal Security minister, Prof George Saitoti. In their protest letter, which they planned to hand over to Kibaki and the Prime Minister-designate, Mr Raila Odinga, the protestors called for a 24-member Cabinet. In a protest letter Otieno read, the protestors said it was wrong for PNU politicians to propose a 44-member Cabinet. “These are irresponsible and expensive suggestions given the economic crisis in the country,” Otieno said. She said running 44 ministries would cost taxpayers Sh387 billion a year. The activists said Kenyans wanted a lean and clean Government with committed, qualified and honest members. For Maathai, yesterday’s experience was a case of history repeating itself. Nineteen years ago, the acclaimed environmentalist faced off with the police at the same venue, marking the beginning of her campaign against Government plans to build a 60-storey complex at Uhuru Park to house the then rising Kenya Times Media Trust empire. Three years later, in 1992, as the country had just returned to multiparty politics and was looking forward to the momentous elections, Maathai’s was in trouble again at Uhuru Park. Her knee blocked a flying tear-gas canister fired at her as she prodded the mothers of political prisoners camping at the park to hold their ground and force the Kanu Government to release their sons. http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/maathai-teargassed-over-lean-govt-better-than-de
tention-without-trial/

Belize:

31) David Calvin’s Paradise Earth team recently traveled to Belize and Panama to gather information for the three-phase Paradise Earth project: the website http://www.ParadiseEarth.com , the 165,000 square foot rainforest habitat and educational center being built in Arizona, and the Paradise Earth TV series. In line with the Paradise Earth mission of both conservation and education, the team has published video footage and photo slideshows of their travels on the website, freely available to the public. “Educating the public about the world’s rainforests is really the first step in encouraging conservation,” says Char Mandarich of the Paradise Earth Media Team and the Mandarich Media Group. “We had the opportunity to document species that most people won’t ever see for themselves. The team wants to share these images with the public to help raise awareness as well as to simply share some of the Earth’s most beautiful creatures.” Rainforests are disappearing across the globe, despite the growing popularity of living “greener” lives. The Paradise Earth team is making this photo and video collection available to educate the public about what they’re actually losing. Available resources from the recent trips to Panama and Belize include photo slideshows of the butterflies of Panama and the Kuna Indians of the San Blas Islands, and a video diary filmed daily by Calvin in Panama. http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/4/prweb826054.htm

Peru:

32) At first they are just a blur, tiny figures by a river in Peru’s Amazon jungle. Then the plane descends, the camera focuses, and you see them: 21 people outside palm huts, the apparent remnants of an uncontacted tribe. They gaze up at the intruder, itself a blur of noise and metal, and a woman carrying arrows gestures aggressively. When the plane makes a second pass, the people melt into the jungle. The encounter took place last month by the banks of the Las Piedras River in the Alto Purús national park near Peru’s frontier with Brazil. Scientists believe the grainy figures were members of the Mascho Piro tribe, hunter-gatherers who have shunned the outside world. The contact was fleeting but the repercussions could be profound because this swath of Amazon, 880km east of Lima, is at the centre of a battle pitting indigenous rights groups and environmentalists against the Peruvian state, loggers and oil companies. Those who want to develop the rainforest have played down the impact on its human inhabitants. Some even questioned their existence. Daniel Saba, president of Perupetro, the state oil company, said the notion of uncontacted tribes was “absurd” since no one had seen them. A company spokesperson compared the rumours to the Loch Ness monster. The film, taken by ecologists from the national institute of natural resources, is a powerful riposte. They were looking for evidence of illegal logging and spotted the group by chance, said Ricardo Hon, a forest scientist who was in the small plane. “There were three huts and about 21 Indians — children, women and young people,” he said. Similar types of huts were spotted in the region in the 1980s, prompting speculation that this was the Mascho Piro, a tribe that erects temporary dwellings near riverbanks during the dry season when it is easier to fish, then moves back into the forest during the wet season. “This is the most recent recorded sighting of them,” said Peru’s national Indian organisation, Aidesep. “The uncontacted tribes exist. If we don’t act now, tomorrow could be too late.” Contact with outsiders has proved fatal to people who have not developed resistance to the common cold and other illnesses. More than half of the Murunahua tribe who came into contact with loggers in the mid-1990s are said to have died. http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=336575&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__intern
ational_news/