July 29, 2004
This month Chad, one of the world's poorest countries, got its first $38 million in oil revenues from a newly constructed pipeline that runs through Cameroon to the west coast of Africa. In an effort to avoid the systemic corruption that plagues many African development projects, Chad is working with the World Bank to change how oil wealth is distributed to ensure that some economic benefits reach the general population. The plan calls for Chad "to spend 80 percent of oil revenues on schools, clinics, roads, and other basic needs. Five percent goes to a fund for future generations. Another 5 percent goes to develop the southern oil region, near the Cameroon border. And 10 percent is socked away in case oil prices fall." If the plan proves successful it could serve as a model for future oil development projects in Africa.
July 28, 2004
Malaysia announced it would go ahead with its controversial, US$2.4 billion Bakun hydroelectric dam in the rainforest of Borneo, despite widespread criticism from environmental groups.
July 27, 2004
With the Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia conference meeting today in Brazilia, I added a new section to mongabay: the Amazon Rainforest. Currently included are pages on Rainforest ecology, Amazon wildlife (amphibians, birds, fish, insects, mammals, reptiles), Amazon people, Amazon destruction, Amazon deforestation figures, Amazon deforestation map, Amazon Basin map, and Amazon conservation. More pages will be added shortly.
July 25, 2004
Next month, scientists at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will lead a diving expedition off the North Carolina coast study the Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans), a venomous predatory fish whose population appears to be growing in waters along Florida, North Carolina and Bermuda. The lionfish is a popular aquarium fish that was introduced to Atlantic waters in the past four years by intentional or unintentional releases from aquariums. It is the first Pacific marine fish known to populate Atlantic waters.
July 24, 2004
Next week 800 scientists and policy makers will converge in Brazilia to share the outcome of around 700 studies conducted as part of the Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). The program, launched in 1998, has funding through 2008 and is made up of 120 projects, 61 of which are already complete. To date the program has "shown that the Amazon jungle is not as homogeneous as it might appear, and that it provides great environmental services as a carbon sink and a generator of clouds and heat, influencing the climate over vast areas of the planet."
July 22, 2004
Burning of the Amazon rainforest has made Brazil one of the world's top 10 producers of greenhouse gases. The government should soon release figures showing that Brazil produces around 300 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent a year, 200 million of which comes from logging and burning of the world's largest tropical forest. Brazil still has a long way to go in catching the world's leader in CO2 emissions -- the United States and its territories emitted 5,795.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2002.
July 21, 2004
A new study in Nature found that anthrax killed at least six wild chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast. This marks the first time that anthrax has been found in Africa's tropical rainforests and researchers are concerned that the disease could spread to humans through the illegal trade in bushmeat.
July 20, 2004
According to Conservation International, Brazil's savannah is vanishing at a rate comparable to its loss of rainforests. Each year 20,000 square kilometres of savannah -- known as the cerrado -- is burned to create agricultural land for crops like soy, wheat and cotton.
July 19, 2004
According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the 5,700-acre Foothill wildfire in southern California was caused when a red-tailed hawk hit power lines and caught fire before igniting vegetation on the ground.
July 17, 2004
Tawain has been urged by a coalition of environmental groups to ban the importation of illegally logged ramin wood from Indonesia. According to the coordinator of the campaign, ramin wood is typically smuggled from the forests of Indonesia to Malaysia where corrupt government officials certify the wood as a legal Malaysian export. Then the wood is sent to manufacturers in Taiwan, China and Europe by organized criminal groups.
July 16, 2004
Last week 43 countries representing 98 percent of the world's diamond trade announced an embargo on diamonds from The Republic of Congo. The country is believed to be a major clearinghouse for conflict diamonds -- the illegally mined gems used to fund brutal civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Congo (Kinshasa). The Republic of Congo raised suspicions in international diamond circles by sending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of uncut diamonds to polishing centers abroad despite having few known diamond resources of its own.
July 15, 2004
Brazil announced that it will send in the army to help police the Amazon from illegal deforestation.
July 13, 2004
Yesterday the Bush administration proposed replacing a rule from the Clinton administration that put 58.5 million acres of national forest largely off limits to logging, mining or other development with a new system that would leave it up to governors to control road construction in forests.
July 11, 2004
This fall I will be returning to Magadascar to visit some regions I missed on my first visit. I will be gone several weeks, also spending some time in Europe on the trip.
July 10, 2004
I am currently making a number of backend changes to the site to improve performance. For this reason, updates over the next month will be somewhat irregular.
July 9, 2004
According to a study published today in Science, researchers have developed a drug that uses a new approach in fighting HIV. The compound blocks an enzyme called integrase that HIV uses to make copies of itself by splicing its genes into a cell's DNA. The drug could bring new hope in the battle against drug-resistant HIV strains.
I added some new travel pages that aggregate pictures for the following topics: crocodiles, elephants, freshwater fish, great cats, lizards, mammals, mangroves, primates, reefs, reptiles, reptilia, snakes, sunsets, and temples.
July 6, 2004
Ahead of this weekend's AIDS conference in Bangkok, UNAIDS announced that five million people last year were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS -- the largest number in any single year since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. UNAIDS estimates that AIDS killed 2.9 million people in 2003, and 37.8 million are living with HIV, up from 34.9 million in 2001. UNAIDS also estimates that of the world's 15 million AIDS orphans, more than 80% live in Sub-Saharan Africa. More HIV/AIDS data from UNAIDS.
July 5, 2004
Indonesia plans to impose harsher penalties -- including the death penalty -- on people found guilty of illegal logging or starting forest fires. Air quality is worsening in Indonesia due to fires set for clearing forest.
July 1, 2004
I added some new travel pages that aggregate pictures for the following topics: beaches, birds, butterflies, chameleons, frogs, glaciers, grand canyon, glaciers, insects, and lemurs. These pages will be improved in time and I plan to add further topics shortly.
June 30, 2004
This past weekend, Central African countries and international agencies failed to come to an agreement on how to finance a plan to manage the Congo Basin rainforest, one of the world's most important conservation priorities. Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon offered to pay $600 million of the $1.5-billion plan over the next 10 years but wanted international support for the remainder of the funding.
Separately, Greenpeace claims to have found evidence of illegal logging and bribery involving The Danzer Group, a Swiss/German logging company operating in the African rainforest. The article includes a picture of a gorilla making a familiar gesture.
June 28, 2004
According to a study by the Center for International Forestry Research, 92 percent
of wood consumed by the Indonesian pulp industry between 1988 and 1999 came from clear-cut rainforests.
A 27-year-old Santa Monica woman was attacked by a mountain lion while hiking in a rural area near Johnsondale, California. According to the California Department of Fish and Game, there have been a total of 15 mountain lion attacks on humans since 1890 -- six of which have been fatal. There are 4,000-6,000 mountain lions in California.
June 25, 2004
An article in today's Wall Street Journal focused on a shift in strategy in fighting famine: "International agencies that once encouraged countries to solve starvation crises by growing more food are now tackling the more fundamental problem of rural poverty as well. The old development mantra -- produce more food, feed more people -- is giving way to a new call: Create more jobs, provide income to buy food."
June 24, 2004
I added two picture pages: rainforest photos and rainforest animal photos. More will be added soon.
June 23, 2004
SocialFunds.com released an article that explores "How Unsustainable Forestry Practices in Indonesia Impact Sustainable Practice in the US."
The article cites International Paper as a forest products company that refuses to procure Indonesian wood because it "found no system in place to guarantee that the wood coming from Indonesia" originates from sustainable forestry.
June 22, 2004
Today the The Wall Street Journal featured an article on the booming beef export market in Brazil. While the article focuses on meat baron whose pasturelands are outside the Amazon rainforest, many blame increasing deforestation on the cattle industry.
According to BirdLife International, Indonesia has changed its forestry regulations (under decree: "Regulation of the Minister of Forestry on Ecosystem Restoration in Production Forest Reserves") so that "production forest" already designated for clearance can be restored and managed for conservation. BirdLife International is working to acquire the logging rights for a 60,000-80,000 hectare block of forest for rehabilitation and protection.
June 18, 2004
The Guardian reports that Lord Ron Oxburgh, chairman of Shell Oil, admitted that the threat of climate change makes him "really very worried for the planet" and said there is an urgent need for carbon sequestration to capture emissions of carbon dioxide and store it underground. These statements mark a signifcant change in posture since a few years ago when Shell's official postition was that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion could not be linked to climate change.
Yale University Press released a new book on how Chiquita Bananas changed its environmental legacy. From the press release: "Beginning in the 1990s, an astonishing transformation began at Chiquita, a transformation not compelled by any government or policing agency, but driven by an unprecedented voluntary shift in focus and by a desire to protect its brand. In partnership with the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance, Chiquita set out to improve conditions for its workers, to minimize the environmental impact of its farms, and to conserve the rainforest surrounding its plantations."
June 17, 2004
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The UN issued a press release that included the following: "Since 1990, it is estimated that some six million hectares of productive land have been lost every year due to land degradation. This in turn has caused income losses worldwide of US$ 42 billion per year. Yet, the costs associated with inaction in regards to desertification are estimated at one to three percent of developing countries’ GDP. In most cases, investment in combating desertification is one order of magnitude below this amount."
Yesterday The Wall Street Journal featured on article on the relatively low cost of some conservation projects overseas. The article focused on a penguin conservation project in Peru: "You'd be surprised what $25,000 a year can buy in the Third World," says Mike Macek, bird curator for the St. Louis Zoo, which teamed up with Chicago's Brookfield Zoo and the Philadelphia Zoo to fund the penguin sitters. "In some cases you might be able to save an entire species."
June 16, 2004
According to a study by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, establishing a global network of marine parks, critical to restoring the health of the oceans and sustaining fishing industries, would cost the global community some $12-14 billion annually.
June 15, 2004
Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, secretly used government funds to help Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe build a new $10 million mansion outside the capital city of Harare. Specifically, Dr Mahathir donated a shipment of rare Malaysian rainforest timber for Mr Mugabe to use in the construction of his 25 bedroom residence at a time when nearly half of Zimbabwe's population is dependent on international food aid.
June 14, 2004
In today's International Herald Tribune, Eugene Linden, Thomas Lovejoy and J. Daniel Phillips proposed a plan for conserving rainforests. Their plan would "divide the forest into 100 blocks, and then solicit commitments from international environmental groups, development institutions, corporations and other credible donors." The purpose: "to find an entity that would take responsibility for maintaining forest cover and forest health in each block of the entire forest system." The benefit of such a system would be the low cost and relative ease of implementation. Even corporate sponsors could get in on the action.
June 12, 2004
Rio de Janeiro's Botanic Gardens opened a plant DNA bank to preserve the genetic codes of hundreds of endangered plant species. According to a The World Conservation Union 338 plants species are facing extinction in Brazil.
June 11, 2004
A new study using NASA satellite data suggests that large-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is affecting regional climate. Researchers found that during Amazon dry season in August 2003, there was a distinct pattern of higher rainfall and warmer temperatures over deforested regions. One of the lead authors, Andrew Negri, says "In deforested areas, the land heats up faster and reaches a higher temperature, leading to localized upward motions that enhance the formation of clouds and ultimately produce more rainfall." The study appears in a recent American Meteorological Society Journal of Climate.
High gas prices are spurring consumer interest in the Toyota Prius hybrid car -- so much that some dealers are tacking markups of $5,000 or more on top of the car's sticker price.
June 10, 2004
The government-appointed panel assigned to come up with solutions to environmental problems in the Grand Canyon is bogged down by political bickering according to a story by the Associated Press. Since the construction of dams on the Colorado River, four of the canyon's eight native fish species have gone extinct.
June 9, 2004
An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that some retailers take advantage of consumers' ecological sentiments by charging excessive markups on "fair-trade" and eco-labeled goods while promoting themselves as good corporate citizens.
An editorial in last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle notes that the World Bank is facing an important decision regarding global climate change: "whether to heed an official recommendation to stop financing oil and coal projects in developing countries."
June 8, 2004
According to the New York Times, 70,000 acres of rainforest are cut each year from the Lacandon region in Mexico, North America's most biologically diverse forest. International environmental organizations blame organized crime for much of the current destruction in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve -- trees are logged by armed vigilantes and forest is cleared for marijuana cultivation.
June 7, 2004
Following widespread criticism after new figures showed increasing deforestation in the Amazon region, Brazil's president accounced four new national parks that protect rainforests in the states of Paraiba, Parana, Amapa and Maranhao. In conjunction with the decree, the World Wildlife Fund announced the creation of a permanent, multi-million dollar endowment to fund conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon in partnership with the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and the government of Brazil. WWF and its partners are financing a 10-year, $240 million plan to create a network of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon one and a half times larger than the entire U.S. National Parks system.
June 6, 2004
Rolling Stone featured a politically-charged article on global warming, specifically targeting the Bush Administration's stance on environmental policies relating to climate change.
June 4, 2004
A new article in Ecology outlines concerns among some scientists over the biological effects of ultraviolet-B radiation on amphibians, a group of animals that have been declining at an alarming rate over the past two decades. Some ecologists fear that the decline in amphibians -- as some of Earth's most sensitive animals -- may be a harbinger of a more widespread extinction crisis brought about by climate change, pollution, and habitat loss.
The Paper Recycling Action Group of Australia calculates that only 11.4 per cent of printing and writing paper was recovered (recycled) in 2003, compared with 73.5 per cent of old newspapers. Evidently everyday citizens are making the effort to recycle, but paper from workplaces is ending up in landfills. Friends of the Earth estimates that 7% of the pulp used by Australia's dominant producer of office paper comes from Indonesian rainforests.
June 3, 2004
Francisco Santos Calderón, vice-president of Colombia, wrote an editorial in the the International Herald Tribune blaming deforestation on Colombia's Pacific Coast on cocaine production by guerrillas. He claims that cocaine workers for the United Self-defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) have "laid to waste an estimated 1.8m hectares (7.92m acres) of pristine rainforest." He continues: "In Colombia, the production of cocaine is not an organic extension of indigenous medicinal culture ... It is an industry run by Farc, ELN and AUC, who pollute rivers and forests with millions of gallons of toxic fertilisers and slash and burn the natural habitats of increasingly endangered species." [full editorial]
[more on drugs & deforestation]
June 2, 2004
Already in 2004, Mongabay.com has had more visitors than in all of 2003 -- 788,100 visits in the last month alone. Thank you for your continued interest.
June 1, 2004
Last week the Brazil government lashed back at recent media reports on deforestation in the Amazon. In a statement entitled, "Ministry contests data about Amazon deforestation," the agriculture ministry reacted to recent articles apeearing in The New York Times, The Economist and The Guardian that blamed cattle ranching and soybean farming for increased forest loss. Incidently, mongabay has experienced a marked increase in hate mail since posting an article on deforestation in the Amazon.
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