Index:

–South East Asia: 1) Asean center & regional stats
–Cambodia: 2) US army trucks donated to support illegal loggers
–Malaysia: 3) Logging allowed at Pedu, Muda, and Ahning dam cathments, 4) Cont. 5) Ten warrants for arrest of indigenous blockade organizers,
–Indonesia: 6) Who is Dorjee Sun? 7) Japan-Indo agreement on fire monitoring,
–Sumatra: 8) Shrimp ponds and oil palm must give way to Mangroves,
–Australia: 9) Measuring biodiversity in reforested areas, 10) Jamberoo Reserve,

South East Asia:

1) Asean center Executive Director Rodrigo Fuentes said that the rich biodiversity of the Southeast Asian region is in severe threat that could affect the lives of more than 500 million people in the region. Fuentes explained that while the Southeast Asian region’s rich biodiversity occupies only 3 percent of the world’s total surface, it accounts for 20 percent of all known species that live in its mountains, jungles, rivers, lakes and seas. The total land area of the region is 447 million hectares, of which 45 percent is covered with forests. The said area also has over 24,000 islands. The Philippines along with Indonesia and Malaysia were listed as three of the world’s 17 megadiversity countries, Fuentes said. He further said that the region has seven of the world’s 25 recognized biodiversity hotspots, and almost of entire Philippines is included. He added that 80 percent of Southeast Asia’s coral reefs are at risk due to destructive fishing practices and coral bleaching. “If the rate of deforestation continues, the region will lose up to 3/4 of its forests, and up to 42 percent of its biodiversity by 2100,” Fuentes said. Because of this, the Environment department and Asean cnter are expected to attend the next Conference of Parties in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, to submit their reports on what they are doing to contribute to the rehabilitation of the biodiversity. Djoghlaf stressed that step by step and action by action, the world can achieve the zero deforestation by 2020 through the cooperation of every member of the Uncbd. http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/june/21/yehey/metro/20080621met1.html

Cambodia:

2) US Army trucks recently donated to the Cambodian government are being used to transport illegal logs, however, US embassy officials denied that this story is not true. A local journalist claimed that soldiers from army unit Ngo-70 confiscated his camera while he was taking pictures of police arresting 2 trucks carrying wood logs. The trucks are suspected to be donations by the US. The local journalist, who asked to remain anonymous for fear for his personal safety, indicated on 15 June, he saw soldiers and police officers stopping 3 trucks, he then started taking pictures of these vehicles when 3 soldiers from the army unit Ngo-70 came to take his camera and confiscated the film in the camera. He added that about 30 minutes later, following an intervention from their superior, the soldiers then returned the camera back to him According to an eyewitness, who happens to be a local journalist also, said that at about 2:00 PM on Sunday, at the Snab Ta Oan village, Koki commune, Kien Svay district, Kandal province, along National Road No. 1, a group of police officers stopped 2 trucks loaded with wood logs, during this operation, national military police force was also present. He added that, later on the military police and soldiers group send 20-cubic-meter of precious wood to be stored at the house of General Mao Sophan, the commander of army unit Ngo-70, located in Spov Kanleng village, Dey Ith commune, Kien Svay district, Kandal province, then the trucks took off. RFA attempted to obtain clarification from the Kien Svay district police chief since 17 June, but he told RFA to wait until 18 June instead, However, on 18 June, RFA called him and his deputy back many times, but no one picked up their phones. Heng Thieb, the Kien Svay district governor, indicated that he knew there was a wood inspection that took place, but that this is the duty of the forestry department, and he said for RFA to ask the forestry department instead. Heng Thieb said: “I only know that they belong to the joint force of the forestry department.” Sophorn (RFA): So was there any confiscation as reported or not, Mr. Deputy-governor? Heng Thieb: There was a wood inspection. The department of forestry is working on it. On Wednesday, RFA tried to call Y Sophy, the director of the Kien Svay forestry department, for clarification, but no one picked up the phone. http://www.cambodia.org/blogs/editorials/2008/06/us-army-trucks-recently-donated-to.html

Malaysia:

3) This is one piece of news that will freak out environmentalists. In case you missed it. The Kedah MB Azizan Abdul Aziz has announced that logging would be allowed at Pedu, Muda and Ahning dam catchment areas . The state is desperate and it hope to make RM16bil in revenue from the logging. The lush jungle in Pedu, for example, is home to many animals including elephants, deers, rhinocerous and even leopards but the sightings are already becoming rare. This is the home of the famous “tualang” trees which stands over 50m. News of the planned logging has already become a hot topic among environment groups. There may be hotter issues like the SAPP vote of no confidence against the PM but there are also issues such as this that we must not lose sight or forget. Blogger Khoo Kay Peng is pissed that there are politicians, regardless of their parties, who are prepared to chop down the trees in these areas. The PAS chaps may be in green but their kind of green is not for the environment for sure. The forests should be kept for eco-tourism, not chopped down. Sure, they will say there would still be enough trees but that’s beside the point. http://chunwai08.blogspot.com/2008/06/save-trees-in-kedah.html

4) The Kedah Government’s recent announcement to allow logging in the Ulu Muda, Pedu and Ahning Dam forest reserves is alarming. More pertinently, the logging will take place in the water catchment areas of the three reservoirs. The purpose of the proposed logging is to raise funds for the state. However, such short-term gain will come at a terrible price. The forests in northern Kedah are arguably the most strategic in Malaysia, not only in terms of biodiversity but also in terms of national security. The three dams are a crucial part of the irrigation infrastructure of Kedah’s rice fields. They form a vital component of the rice belt that supplies the nation with at least half its rice needs. Logging their water catchment areas will decrease the capability of the three dams to attract rain and store water. Siltation caused by the logging will lower their capacity to store water. This will strain their irrigation capability and adversely affect rice production. To aggravate matters, rainfall in the Pedu-Muda area is not constant. It is highly influenced by the monsoon seasons. During the rainy season, the three dams overflow due to heavy rainfall. Increased siltation due to the logging will worsen the overflow during this time. This will lead to increasingly destructive floods downstream. During the dry season, the dams may all but dry up. Siltation caused by logging will further hamper the dams’ capability to store water for irrigation. The nation’s goal for self-sustenance in rice will be severely hampered by the proposed logging. With the supply of rice imports uncertain due to the damage caused by Typhoon Nargis, any shortage caused by failure of our rice crop will place the nation on the brink of turmoil. To date, irreversible damage has already been inflicted upon forests in that area. The construction of a four-lane expressway to replace the original road has led to massive tree felling and soil erosion. Intrusion into the forests by poachers can be expected to increase with the proposed logging. The production of wild honey, the prized product of northern Kedah will also be adversely affected as irreplaceable Tualang trees would be felled or damaged. In the end, the livelihoods of the people in the area will be affected. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/6/21/focus/21612760&sec=focus

5) Ten Kenyah natives have arrest warrants out for them from the Miri Magistrates Court for blockading Samling timber company from logging their communal lands in the remote Baram region of Sarawak. On May 19, indigenous Kenyahs from six longhouse communities – Long Moh, Long Je’eh, Long Bela’ong, Long Sawan, Long Silat and Long Mekabar – gathered at upper Sungai Moh to stage a non-violent protest against logging operations by Samling. They’ve erected wooden barricades on the major logging roads used by Samling to carry out its logging activities within the communal lands and forest area where the Kenyahs of Kedaya Telang Usan in Baram inhabit. The blockade – located about 300km southeast of Miri – aimed to discontinue timber extraction and transportation from their forest areas in the upper Sungai Sebua, Sungai Jekitan and Sungai Moh area. According to Abin, Samling’s logging activities – legal and also purportedly illegal ones – have temporarily ceased for the last three weeks since the blockade was erected.“Hundreds of timber logs that had been felled are stacked up along the sides of the logging road. “The Kenyahs have stopped all the logging trucks and other logging machineries from entering and transporting timbers from the area,” he said in a statement. Raymond indicated that the natives have written to the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) requesting for an urgent physical inspection of all logs felled by Samling and want them to disallow further logging until the inspection was completed. He pointed out that the indigenous people have severely suffered the environmental impacts of logging activities ever since Samling started its logging operations in upper Baram area. The company simply encroached into their communal land and forest areas to carry out logging activities, without any consultation and consideration for their source of livelihood. “They resorted to this action after the company continued to ignore their demands and rights of access and benefits to their natural forest resources. “Their numerous complaints to the authorities and the logging companies regarding their claims to the forest resources and the problems caused by logging have fallen on deaf ears,” he stated. http://redapes.org/news-updates/blockade-arrest-warrants-for-natives-in-remote-baram/

Indonesia:

6) When not raiding illegal Indonesian logging operations with the Governor of Aceh or hanging ten off the Australian coast, Dorjee Sun is cutting carbon offset deals – among them the world’s largest avoided deforestation project to date. The Ecosystem Marketplace talks to one of the environmental movement’s true mavericks. It was March, 2007, and Dorjee Sun was trying to crash a party. The CEO of carbon offset project developer Carbon Conservation, Sun had applied to get into a workshop on reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in Cairns, Australia, only to be turned down five times. So he bought a plane ticket and checked himself into the Cairns Hilton. “I sat in the lobby at the coffee store, grabbing delegates as they went to the toilet,” he says. He nabbed delegates from Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea before a security guard latched onto him. Not to be deterred, he showed up to schmooze over canapés and drinks at a conference reception. Again, the security guards… along with the Australian delegate to the conference. But this time they told the protesting Sun that he could attend the conference – if he could have a fax sent from the Australian environment minister by eight the next morning. “7:45 AM, baby,” Sun says, laughing — that’s when the fax machine started whirring. Sun’s persistence — and enthusiasm — has fueled an unprecedented agreement with the Indonesian province of Aceh to protect 1.9 million-acre Ulu Masen forest, avoiding 100 million tons of CO2 emissions over 30 years. In February, the project was validated under the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) standards; and in April, Merrill Lynch signed a $9 million deal with Carbon Conservation to finance it. “As far as we know,” says John-O Niles, Carbon Conservation’s chief scientific officer, “this is the largest single climate mitigation project in the history of the world that’s actually going to market.” Niles was an advisor to the Coalition of Rainforest Nations when he met Sun as he tried to sneak into the March, 2007, meeting. “He said, ‘I’ve been studying this, and I want to stop deforestation this year, and I’m kind of sick of everyone just talking about it so I came to do something,'” Niles recalls. The next day, Sun took him snorkeling, and then to dinner — a dinner at which Sun handed over his Blackberry and told Niles to contact anyone he wanted, so that he’d know how serious this party-crasher was. http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/article.news.php?component_id=5918&component_version_id=
8736&language_id=12

7) The Indonesian government has set aside the equivalent of more than US $40,000 this year for cooperation with Japan in forest fire management, a senior Forestry Ministry official said Wednesday. “Through the cooperation, we hope Japan will grant more than 500 million yen [4.63 million yen],” said Soni Partono, director for forest fire management at the directorate general of forest protection and natural conservation. “Last year, Japan gave us 300 million yen for the cooperation.” Indonesia and Japan have long cooperated in the field and last year’s grant was for training on how to prevent forest fires, the state-run Antara news agency quoted Partono as saying. The cooperation this year was targeted at forest fire management in Jambi and Riau provinces on Sumatra island and West Kalimantan on the Indonesian portion of Borneo Island, he said, in addition to observation in the provinces of North Sumatra, Jambi, Riau, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan and South Sulawesi. Forest fires in Indonesia have become an international issue as their release of greenhouse gases have caused Indonesia to become the world’s third-largest carbon emitter. Each year since 1997, uncontrolled slash-and-burn practices by farmers, plantation owners and loggers, especially on Sumatra and Borneo, also sends haze into neighbouring countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand. The smog causes health problems and losses amounting to billions of dollars from lost tourism revenue and flight delays, among other things. The fires sparked diplomatic rows with Indonesia’s neighbours. Indonesia has argued it lacks the money and technical expertise to prevent or control the fires in the vast archipelago nation. http://redapes.org/news-updates/indonesia-plans-forest-fire-management-cooperation-with-japan/

Sumatra:
8) Medan – North Sumatra province needs to work hard to restore its mangrove forests most of which have been converted into shrimp ponds and oil palm plantations in the past few years, an official said. “I don`t know the exact figure but the area of damaged mangrove forests along the eastern coast of Sumatra island accounts for 70 percent of the total area and it takes at least five to eight years to restore them,” Head of the North Sumatra Provincial Environmental Impact Management Board (Bappedalda) Prof Syamsul Arifin said on Saturday. Efforts to restore the damaged mangrove forests were badly needed to conserve the environment, stem natural disasters such as flood and increase fishermen`s income, he said. “The damaged mangrove forests have led to a decline in fish production as fish feed does not grow as expected,” he said. The restoration of damaged mangrove forests worked slowly due to a lack of full supports from all stakeholders, he said. “Today, only the government and certain quarters have been serious about restoring the mangrove forests while in fact all sides must take equal responsibilities as the mangrove forests serve their common interests,” he said. Earlier, the Forum of Journalists Caring About Karo (FJPK) said an estimated 2.4 million hectares of land in North Sumatra were in critical condition and 1.3 million hectares of it must be rehabilitated soon because they had the potential of causing disasters. http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/6/22/n-sumatra-needs-hard-work-to-restore-mangrove-forests/

Australia:

9) CSIRO researchers have been able to use measured values of biodiversity in planted forest systems to develop tools for the assessment and planning of biodiversity in plantation and revegetation projects. Where native revegetation programs in particular are concerned, biodiversity values need to be properly quantified for informed decision-making. Key indicators, such as habitat complexity and bird species richness, can be used to help determine these values. Commencing in Spring 2005, surveys of bird species and numbers were undertaken at 38 sites of direct-seeded revegetation, tubestock revegetation, natural regeneration following stock exclusion, remnant forest and farm forestry plantation in north-central Victoria. The relationships between biodiversity indicators, forest type, plantation age and vegetation structure indicated that woodland bird species, known to be declining in the region, were most strongly associated with the older revegetation sites and remnant woodland sites. Investigations suggested that birds were most likely to be associated with structural features of the habitat, such as vegetation cover and age of woody vegetation, rather than being associated with functional features, such as the carbon sequestration role of plantations. To assess the relative biodiversity benefits of a plantation plan or established coupe, researchers developed a rapid scoring system that can be used at the planning, management and harvesting stages of any plantation operation in Australia. The Plantation Biodiversity Benefits Score (PBBS) is based on extensive research on the biodiversity values of native forests, commercial plantations and environmental plantings to improve habitat for native species. The Score system has been incorporated into a Scenario Planning and Investment Framework (SPIF) tool to assess the score of individual plantation plans. The planner selects an area to establish a plantation and is provided with a series of questions related to the intended management practices pertaining to the plantation, for example maintaining existing paddock trees, growing mixed-age stands, increasing tree rotation length and planting buffers of local native trees, shrubs and grasses. This approach allows adaptation of plantation design and management for the highest feasible biodiversity value. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20082006-17521.html

10) As the traveller leaves the freeway and inches through the suburban sprawl that is Albion Park and Albion Park Rail, just south of Wollongong, it is hard to imagine that a local mill manager’s daughter wrote of the area in 1840: “From Wollongong to Jamberoo, the road was a mere day track through a forest of tropical foliage; gum trees 200 [feet] or more in height, gigantic india-rubber trees with broad shining green leaves, lofty cabbage palms and many other kinds of tree towered above us, so that their tops made a twilight canopy, unpenetrable to the sunlight, save for an infrequent clearing in the forest made by the settler’s axe. Huge lianas, some as thick as a man’s arm, hung down snakelike from the trees.” The only way you can now imagine even a glimmer of this pre-urban flora is in the small patches of subtropical, warm temperate and dry rainforest, 401 hectares in total, that still exist behind Jamberoo at the Minnamurra Falls Reserve in Budderoo National Park. Having been saved from the worst of the area’s cedar-felling activities of the mid-1800s, the reserve was officially gazetted as a protected area in 1904. How did it escape? According to Peter Kennedy, the manager of the Minnamurra Rainforest Centre, the area’s preservation was sealed by a combination of luck and difficult terrain. The narrow gorge, with its spectacular waterfalls, was always going to be last to be felled. About the time when the easily accessible cedar trees had been cut down, large new tracts were found on the North Coast. Rather than trying to extract timber from the headwaters of the Minnamurra River, many of the cedar cutters simply headed to the rich pickings in the foothills around Lismore. Fortunately, this means visitors to the South Coast get to walk through the southernmost remnant of subtropical rainforest. Nothing like it exists between Jamberoo and the North Coast. Just so everyone can experience the gigantic fig trees, the spectacular ferns and the great diversity of rainforest flora (including the occasional lyrebird), National Parks staff have created two walks. http://www.smh.com.au/news/new-south-wales/saved-from-the-fellers-axe/2008/06/18/1213770732342
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