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Up To Date Planet News Butterfly that mimics ants gives conservation clueOSLO —
A blue butterfly died out in Britain 30 years ago because of
disruptions to a life cycle that includes pretending to be an ant,
according to a study published Tuesday that points to smarter ways to
protect wildlife. ... > full story
Exxon must pay $480 million in interest over Valdez oil tanker spillAbout 200 New Species Of Amphibians In Madagascar DiscoveredAmazon Deforestation: Earth's Heart and Lungs DismemberedEU, Japan team up to fight climate changePRAGUE (AFP) – The European Union and Japan decided to join forces in the battle against climate change and invited large countries to follow suit at a summit meeting in Prague on Monday. Cool PoolsUse Less Energy and Enjoy Your Pool More
 African Bird Species Could Struggle To Relocate To Survive Global WarmingAfrican bird species could
struggle to relocate to
survive global warming
because natural features of
the landscape will limit
... > full story
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 Drinking Water From Air Humidity(June 8, 2009) — Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous. Cracks permeate the dried-out desert ground, the landscape bears testimony to the lack of water. But even here, where there are no lakes, rivers or groundwater, considerable quantities of water are stored in the air. In the Negev desert in Israel, for example, annual average relative air humidity is 64 percent – in every cubic meter of air there are 11.5 milliliters of water. Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart working in conjunction with their colleagues from the company Logos Innovationen have found a way of converting this air humidity autonomously and decentrally into drinkable water. “The process we have developed is based exclusively on renewable energy sources such as thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic cells, which makes this method completely energy-autonomous. It will therefore function in regions where there is no electrical infrastructure,” says Siegfried Egner, head of department at the IGB. The principle of the process is as follows: hygroscopic brine – saline solution which absorbs moisture – runs down a tower-shaped unit and absorbs water from the air. It is then sucked into a tank a few meters off the ground in which a vacuum prevails. Energy from solar collectors heats up the brine, which is diluted by the water it has absorbed. Because of the vacuum, the boiling point of the liquid is lower than it would be under normal atmospheric pressure. This effect is known from the mountains: as the atmospheric pressure there is lower than in the valley, water boils at temperatures distinctly below 100 degrees Celsius. The evaporated, non-saline water is condensed and runs down through a completely filled tube in a controlled manner. The gravity of this water column continuously produces the vacuum and so a vacuum pump is not needed. The reconcentrated brine runs down the tower surface again to absorb moisture from the air. “The concept is suitable for various sizes of installation. Single-person units and plants supplying water to entire hotels are conceivable,” says Egner. Prototypes have been built for both system components – air moisture absorption and vacuum evaporation – and the research scientists have already tested their interplay on a laboratory scale. In a further step the researchers intend to develop a demonstration facility.
The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve (SIWR) is a wetland conservation property and a tribute to Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. The 135,000 ha property, in Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, is
home to a set of important spring fed wetlands which provide a critical
water source to threatened habitat, provide permanent flow of water to
the Wenlock River, and is home to rare and vulnerable plants and
wildlife. The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve (SIWR) was acquired as part of the National Reserve System Programme for the purpose of nature conservation with the assistance of the Australian Government. The SituationThe Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve (SIWR) is being threatened by strip mining. Cape Alumina Pty Ltd has lodged mining lease applications which include approximately 12,300 ha of the Reserve. Cape Alumina company documents indicate an intention to mine 50 plus million tons over a 10 year period commencing 2010. The greater part of this mine is on SIWR The proposed area for mining on the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve contains the head waters of irreplaceable waterways and unique biodiversity which will not recover after mining operations are finished. Help Us Collect SignaturesIf you would like to help further in Saving the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve, we can send you a petition pack. Please contact us on (07) 5436 2000 or email info@australiazoo.com.au How else can I help?As
the battle to save Steve’s Place continues, Australia Zoo and
partnering organisations are looking for alternative ways to protect
the area forever.
Cocoa: A Harvest to Save the ForestCocoa cultivation can be a major driver of rainforest destruction. Clearance to plant cocoa has for a century or more opened up the forests of West Africa, with Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire at the forefront. Reports in 2001 that cocoa plantations were being worked by child labor, so-called "chocolate slaves", only enhanced the industry's unsavory reputation.
Joseph Essissima first planted his cocoa trees in the bush outside Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, 60 years ago. He hacked down the jungle to fill the confectionery shelves of Europe and North America. Ever since, many ecologists have branded Joseph and his fellows as environmental pariahs. But now the ecologists are praising him. Even more remarkably, they want to help him make more money out of his trees so that he can plant some more. They say that planting cocoa could be the best way to save Africa's greatest surviving rainforest, which stretches southwards from Cameroon into the Congo basin. "Cocoa has been an important agent of deforestation during the 20th century," says Francois Ruf of France's Center for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research and Development in Paris. "But in the 21st century, cocoa may switch from being an agent of deforestation to an agent for reforestation." Cameroon farmers harvest some 120 000 tons of cocoa a year, most of it grown on smallholdings of a hectare or less close to the forests. But cocoa cultivation here is unusually benign to the environment. Joseph's plantation is typical. It feels more like a rainforest than a farm: dark, dank and full of life. There are cocoa trees, but also many others, some natural and some planted. Various fruit trees are dotted around: orange and mango, avocado and cherry. Some original rainforest trees have been kept for their timber, for medicinal bark and to provide additional shade. Of one tree he says: "We keep this one because it attracts caterpillars that we eat." Cameroon's cocoa forests are quite unlike the monocultures of Côte d'Ivoire. They are biologically very diverse, with more than half as many species as a natural forest, says Jim Gockowski of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Yaounde, who has studied the methods of the local farmers. What is more, Joseph's smallholding is as fertile as when he first planted. The number of earthworms -- a key test of the forest floor's ability to recycle nutrients -- is almost as high as in a natural rainforest. "By maintaining a shady canopy of diverse forest species, these farmers manage one of the most biologically diverse landuse systems in Africa," says Gockowski. It may not be virgin rainforest, but "if the farmers didn't plant cocoa, they would be doing slash-and-burn farming." The country's fast-growing population would be clearing the forest wholesale, and planting maize or oil-palm or turning it over to cattle. Across southern Cameroon, large areas of former rainforest land now lie fallow after the exhaustion of their soils by farming. Yet in their midst the cocoa forests, which were once dismissed as just another scar on the natural landscape, are green oases. "In many ways, the environmental benefits of a closed, natural forest are now being provided by cultivated forests of cocoa and fruit trees," says the IITA's station chief in Yaounde, Stephan Weise. "So why not convert the large areas of unused former forest into cocoa forest? If we can do that, we will create a physical and economic buffer to protect the surviving natural rainforest." A few farmers are taking up the challenge. Not far from Joseph's smallholding, Madame Abomo is growing cocoa trees and bananas in abandoned maize fields. But most farmers are moving in the opposite direction. For many years, cocoa was a profitable crop in Cameroon. The government guaranteed good prices. But in the past decade, the privatization of the marketing system and a collapse in the international price of cocoa have impoverished cocoa farmers here. "The government used to be like a father to us," one of Joseph's neighbors, Mani Alexandre, says. "Now buyers can pay what they like." According to Gockowski, the fall in cocoa prices "led directly to
a very significant increase in Today, they call cocoa an "old man's crop". "Young people don't have cocoa production in their heads. Prices are too low," says Mani. The tragedy is that at the very time when cocoa emerges as an environmentally friendly crop, its profitability has slumped. Soon, maybe the chocolate slave-masters will be in business here. Enter the chocolate companies. Firms like Mars and Cadbury's buy cocoa through the big trading and milling conglomerates that trade here. And they are growing worried. They fear the current market free-for-all could ultimately jeopardize their supplies, and may create more PR disasters. Martin Gilmour, UK-based cocoa research manager for Mars, says: "We would like to see farmers get higher prices for their cocoa. It would be better for both of us." Like the farmers, Mars claims an interest in ethical and environmentally sustainable production of the crop. "We find it interesting that they appear to grow cocoa in Cameroon in a more sustainable way. Agroforests are ecologically speaking almost as good as natural mature forest," says the man from Mars. "That is why we are funding research into these systems." That research is aimed at improving cocoa and fruit tree varieties and fighting the diseases that are running rampant through the ill-tended cocoa forests. But it will be useless, unless the farmers can win a proper price for their product. Many ecologists believe that agroforestry on the model of the Cameroon cocoa forests is the only way that many of the world's rainforests can be saved. And yet there is a real risk that the model itself will expire before it can be properly researched and copied. As I left the forest one young boy, the son of a farmer, came up to me and asked simply: "What does chocolate taste like?" His family, he said, could not afford the price of a bar.
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Nigeria: Country Loses 350,000 Hectares Annually to Deforestation Abuja — Minister of Environment, Mr. John Odey, has said the country loses over 350,000 hectares of land every year to deforestation and other impacts of climate change. According to him, the impact of climate change in the country could result into great danger for both the social development and the health of Nigerians.
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Five-million-year old sloth fossil found in PeruThe nearly intact fossil of an ancient sloth that lived 5 million years ago has been unearthed in Peru, a find about 4 million years older than similar ones discovered in the Americas, researchers said. The sloth was found beneath the cement floor of a house in the Andean region of Espinar in southern Peru when workers were installing a water system. Parts of a giant armadillo that has also been dated to 5 million years ago were also found nearby. The sloth, about 10 feet long, was an herbivore and lived during the Mio-Pliocene era, said paleontologist Rodolfo Salas of Peru's Natural History Museum and one of the scientists on the dig sponsored by the French government. "This skeleton of the sloth is especially important as it is the first complete skeleton of its kind that is 5 million years old in the Americas," he told Reuters. "Previously, discoveries have been made of partial skeletons of similar animals, but from the Pleistocene era, meaning from the last million years." The sloth was found at 13,000 feet above sea level. Salas said the sloth was relatively small compared with other animals of its type and would help researchers better understand evolution of mammals in the Andes. Peru's dry climate has helped preserve thousands of fossils from the Pacific coast to the Andes highlands, making it a favorite of fossil hunters.
Major shift in US climate policy sparks hope for global treaty The
United States is no longer insisting that China and other large
developing countries must make cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions
under proposals tabled by the Obama administration for a new global
treaty to combat climate change. Dr Pershing, who is head of the US delegation at the UN climate talks in Bonn, said yesterday that the large emerging economies would be required to take actions aimed at curtailing the growth in their emissions, rather than having to make actual cuts.
The US proposals, which call for the adoption of a new legal instrument under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to supplement or even supplant any agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol, are being studied closely by the EU. The US is of the view that we need a new agreement, to frame what comes next, Dr Pershing said. This would call for all countries to take action, but the US and other developed countries would take additional action in line with their historical responsibility and capacity. Under the US proposals, a legally binding implementing agreement in effect, a new treaty all developed countries would have to make significant and substantial reductions in their emissions, while large developing countries undertook commitments to change course. Dr Pershing said the US expectation was that large emerging economies, including India and Brazil, would take actions that would be quantified, measured and reported. This was not the same thing as saying that the outcome is binding . Dr Pershing said he anticipated that this would be enough to satisfy sceptical US senators, who have insisted that China in particular should make a comparable effort to reduce its carbon footprint.
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