Rainforest Information

Preface
 Preface

Section 1: Tropical Rainforests of the World
 Tropical Rainforests of the World
 Biogeographical Forest Realms
 Types of Rainforest
 Changing Times - Changing Forests
 Golden toad
 primary forest cover versus total forest cover for selected countries
 Wallace Line

Section 2: Structure & Character
 Rainforest Ecology
 Biogeographical Forest Realms
 Keystone Species

Section 3: Rainforest Diversity
 Rainforest Diversity
 Climate and Stability
 Canopy, Structure, & Area
 Short Term Variation & Ice Ages
 Diversity of Image
 Mimicry & Camouflage
 Convergent or parallel evolution
 Increase in Diversity Toward the Tropics
 Evolution
 Countries with the High Biodiversity
 Ice Ages
 Mean Net Primary Production by Ecosystem
 Population Diversity
 Portraits of Diversity

Section 4: The Canopy
 Overstory
 Study
 Epiphytes
 Structure
 Leaf-Eating Mammals
 Vines & Lianas
 Locomotion
 Bats
 Other Mammals
 Birds
 Amphibians, Reptiles, Invertebrates
 Canopy Tree Adaptations
 Mean species richness in of lianas across four tropical regions
 Easily observed differences between butterflies and moths
 Strangler Fig

Section 5: The Forest Floor
 Forest Floor Introduction
 Soils & Nutrient Cylcing
 Seeds & Fruit
 Forest Succession
 Mammals (Herbivores)
 Mammals (Carnivores & Omnivores)
 Birds
 Reptiles & Amphibians
 Invertebrates
 Amazonian Reptiles - A Historical Account
 Epipedobates tricolor and ABT-594/epidatidine
 Fungi
 Gastric Brooding Frog
 Leaf Cutters in Perspective
 What if There Were No Insects
 Tiger Medicinals Available in the U.S
 Where are the Rocks in the Lower Amazon?
 Article on gorilla poaching
 Article on tracking forest elephants in Ghana

Section 6: Rainforest Waters
 Rainforest Waters
 Types of Rivers
 Rivers, Streams, & Creeks
 Flooding, Low, and High Water
 Floating Meadows
 Life by the River
 Importance of Rainforest Rivers
 Threats to Rivers
 Varzea vs. Igapo Forest
 Damming the Amazon
 The Death of Lac Alaotra, Madagscar

Section 7: Forest People
 Forest People
 African Forest People
 Asian Forest People
 American Forest People
 Forest People Overview
 Incas - Wade Davis
 Incan Achievements
 Dyaks
 Indigenous Health
  Lessons from the Maya
  Forest people plant knowledge
 A Brief Social History of Borneo
  Forest people today
  Tri-country Amerindian summit
  Indigenous people estimates
 Varzea vs Terra settlements

Section 8: A World Imperilled -- Threats to Tropical Rainforests
 Rainforest Destruction: A World Imperilled [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Natural Forces [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Threats from Humankind [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Subsistence Activities [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Economic Restructuring [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Oil Extraction [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Logging [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Mining [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Fires [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: War [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Commercial Agriculture [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Cattle Pasture [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Hydro, Pollution, Hunting [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Fuelwood, Roads, Climate [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Debt [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Population & Poverty [Deforestation]
 Rainforest Destruction: Consumption, Conclusion [Deforestation]
 Logging . . . Amphetamine Style
 Illegal poaching in Africa
 An Account of Illegal Logging in Thailand
 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
 Deforestation Defined
 Deforestation Estimates
 Satisfying International Timber Demand
 Habitat fragmentation
 FAO 1997: Regional forest change: 1990-1997
 Freeport mine in Indonesia
 Trans-Amazonian highway
 Tropical Hardwood Log Imports into Japan
 The Asian Forest Fires of 1997-1998
 Impact of Interest Rates on Deforestation
 Total Tropical Timber Imports into Japan
 Case Study: Mahogany
 Population Growth
 Deforestation as a Protest
 Rains Impacted by Smoke?
 Commonly Harvested Tropical Timber Hardwoods
 Indonesia's Transmigration Program
 U'wa of Colombia
 Photo of mining operation near Mandraka, Madagascar

Section 9: Consequences of Deforestation
 Consequences of Deforestation
 Local Climate Regulation
 Erosion
 Loss of Species, Disease
 Loss of Renewable Resources
 Climactic Role
 Atmospheric Role
 Extinction
 Agriculture
 The Origin of AIDS
 The Impact of AIDS in the Developing World
 Global Carbon Emissions Breakdown
 Hydroelectric projects
 Global Warming and Developing Nations
 Extreme Deforestation - Easter Island
 El Ni�o: A Preview of Global Warming?
 Habitat Fragmentation
 Historic Mass Extinctions
 Hurricane Mitch
 Global Warming in a Nutshell
 Linking Global Warming and the Ozone Hole
 Endangered Plants
 Presence Does Not Always Signify Survivability in Degraded Forest
 Questions Over Global Warming
 Coral Reefs: the Tropical Rainforests of the Sea
 Environmental Refugees
 Global Carbon Reserviors
 Environmental Security
 A "tippy" climate - 1�F Warming per year at the Poles?
 The Extinction Vortex
 Species Highly Vulnerable to Extinction
 Biologist Alfred Wallace on Biodiversity Loss
 Freshwater Availability
 Where Are All These Disappearing Species?
 Estimates for extinction rate of today
 Anti-HIV compounds from the rainforest

Section 10: Solutions
 How to Save the Rainforest
 Saving Rainforests Through Sustainable Dev - Agriculture
 Saving Rainforests Through Sustainable Forest Products
 Saving Rainforests Through Eco-tourism
 Saving Rainforests Through Large-scale Forest Products
 Saving Rainforests Through Foods & Genetic Diversity
 Saving Rainforests Through Medicinal Drugs
 Saving Rainforests Through Medicinal Drugs & Pesticides
 Saving Rainforests Through Sustainable Logging
 Logging (con't)
 Logging (con't)
 Cattle
 Oil
 Saving Rainforests Through Increasing Productivity
 Conservation Priorities
 Types of Reserves
 Reserve Size & Valuation
 Funding
 Organization
 Developing nations
 Intergovernmental Institutions
 NGOs
 Communication, Education
 International Organizations
 Indigenous people
 Conclusion
 ANTI-HIV COMPOUNDS FROM THE RAINFOREST
 Bioengineering Backlash
 Green Bananas
 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: COSTS AND BENEFITS
 Avoiding Biopiracy
 BP: Moving Ahead
 Tradable Greenhouse Gas Budgets
 Returning Carbon Dioxide to the Earth?
 Animal Alternatives to Cattle
 Chico Mendes
 CITES
 The Complexity of Ecosystem Interactions
 Sampling of Corporations that Support Rainforest Projects
 Ecological Corridor Project: Sponsored by the "new" World Bank
 The Costal Rainforest Coalition
 Domestic Timber Consumption
 MEDICINAL DRUGS DERIVED FROM RAINFOREST PLANTS
 Combatting Amazonian Forest Fires
 Are Forest Fragments Worth Saving?
 Gaia
 The Problem with GDP as a Measure of Economic Health
 The WWF Global 200
 Grains: Savings from Genetic Resources
 HOT-SPOTS
 Possible Funding Strategies for the Future
 Intergovernmental Institutions involved in Rainforest Use and Conservation
 invasion of alien species
 The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)
 IUCN's eight categories of protected area,
 Mauritius kestrel
 Lower Taxes and Save the Environment
 Species - Area Math
 international conservation organizations
 There Are No Lemurs in America?
 Bolivia's Noel Kempff Mercado National Park
 Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs)
 Carbon Offset Programs
 COMMON PLANTATION SPECIES
 Profit Through Reduced-Impact Logging
 multiple use reserve
 The Petroleum Revolution
 reduced-impact logging
 Reforestation of a Mining Concession
 The History of Rubber
 satellite imaging
 Brazil Moves to Slow Amazon Settlement
 Examples of Sustainable Forestry
 Sustainable management
 Shell Oil in Gabon
 Solar and Wind Power as an Economic Stimulus
 Small Steps to Reduce Energy Consumption
 Valuing a Sustainable Harvest in Ecuador
 Economic Values
 Indigenous Viewpoints
 Overharvesting: the Wotango Tree
 Nov 17 2002 - Big-leaf mahogany, also known as American mahogany, is listed on Appendix II of CITES

References / Bibliograpy
 World Rainforests [Section 1] References
 Characteristics [Section 2] References
 Diversity [Section 3] References
 The Canopy [Section 4] References
 Forest Floor [Section 5] References
 Waters [Section 6] References
 Forest People [Section 7] References
 Forest People [Section 7] References
 Threats [Section 8] References
 Threats [Section 8] References
 Threats [Section 8] References
 Threats [Section 8] References
 Threats [Section 8] References
 Consequences [Section 9] References
 Consequences [Section 9] References
 Consequences [Section 9] References
 Consequences [Section 9] References
 Consequences [Section 9] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References
 Solutions [Section 10] References

Country Reports

 Country Reports
 Afrotropical Realm
 Australia & Pacific
 Asian Realm
 Neotropical Realm

Photos of Places
 Australia
 Australia, New Zealand
 Belize
 Big Sur
 Botswana
 Brasil
 Cambodia, Thailand
 Chile, Argentina
 China
 Costa Rica II
 Costa Rica I
 Cuba
 Grand Canyon
 Huntington Gardens
 Fiji
 India
 Madagascar
 Malaysia
Palisades Lake
Peru
Other US Locations
Tahiti
Venezuela



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Rainforest Articles for the Period from August 4-27, 2003.


- Cameroon tackles sex tourism - BBC: August 12, 2003
- Rural tranquility for now, but the Amazon could soon be transformed - Noticias Aliadas/Latinamerica Press: Aug. 12, 2003
- The conservationists and the canary - The Japan Times: Aug. 10, 2003
- New program allows rain forest lumber - Washington Times: Aug. 9, 2003
- The Myth of Nature - Freezerbox: August 8, 2003
Aliadas/Latinamerica Press: August 12, 2003
- Daintree Rainforest Research Crane - ABC FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND: Aug. 5, 2003
- Non-profit group wants to boost credibility of Indonesian logging practices - Home Channel News: August 4, 2003
- Reports: Police Find Body of Kidnapped Briton - Reuters: August 14, 2003
- In a Snap, Extinct Cat Comes Back to Life - Reuters: August 14, 2003
- Greenwashed Indonesian Wood Hits U.S. Market - RAN: August 18, 2003
- Mexico tries a new tactic against Chiapas rebels: conservation - In These Times: August 21, 2003





Tuesday, 12 August, 2003, 21:10 GMT 22:10 UK
BBC
Cameroon tackles sex tourism
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3145687.stm


Cameroon has decided to tackle sex tourism, which the authorities say is threatening to undermine the country's campaign against the spread of HIV/Aids.

The director of tourism promotion, Elise Bomba, told the BBC that the issue would dominate a three-day tourism conference in Limbe which started on Tuesday.

Mrs Bomba said that the delegates, including hotel managers, travel agencies and representatives from the general public, were discussing ways of raising awareness of the dangers of encouraging sex tourism.

"We want to educate tourists not to engage in sexual activities with Cameroonians, especially underage girls," Mrs Bomba said.

Cameroon is often referred to as "Africa in miniature", offering a range of attractions, such as mountains, volcanic highlands, coastal plains, jungle rivers, rain forest and savannah.

But it has now become a magnet for sex tourists, she said.

'Tourist influx'

Last month the BBC discovered an international child-trafficking ring based in Cameroon with links to Britain.

Many of the children are taken via Bafoussam

Most of the children were traced to a northwest Cameroonian town of Bafoussam where Aids-free girls were sold as brides by a tribal chief only later to find themselves working in brothels in the UK.

Mrs Bomba said that the while the government wants to promote Cameroon as a tourism destination, it is concerned about what she called "organised tourism which involves sending girls abroad for sex purposes".

"We do not want to promote Cameroon as a sex destination and since such tourism can accelerate the spread of HIV/Aids, our main priority will be to discourage it, and we hope that the conference will come out with strategies to tackle this problem."

Cameroon is a member of the Universal Federation of Travels Agents Associations (UFTAA) which pledges to combat the prostitution of children related to sex tourism and to protect the child victims of such tourists.




Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Noticias Aliadas/Latinamerica Press
Rivers threatened by development
Rural tranquility for now, but the Amazon could soon be transformed
Jadson Porto
http://www.lapress.org/Article.asp?lanCode=1&actCode=10&actDesc=Sustainable+development


Excerpted from World Rivers Review (Dec. 2002)

Transforming the region's rivers into industrial "highways" will harm the environment.

From the Lacandon rainforest of Mexico and Guatemala to the Amazon and La Plata rivers in Brazil and Argentina, governments and multinational companies plan to exploit the hydroelectric potential of the region's rivers and carve water "highways" through their basins.

There are plans for hundreds of dams in the region, including more than 400 in Brazil, 70 in Mexico's Chiapas state, 100 in Costa Rica, 13 in Nicaragua and 10 in Chile.

River channeling projects threaten to convert the region's rivers into industrial supply lines. The projects would require the blasting, dredging and straightening of many thousands of miles of natural riverbeds across Latin America to accommodate large ships all year round.

Virtually all of the proposed projects threaten indigenous communities and could have irreversible effects on the world's largest wetlands, the Brazilian Pantanal, and other valuable ecosystems in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. The projects include an ambitious scheme to connect the Orinoco, Amazon and La Plata river basins for the benefit of agribusiness and timber industries, and a "multi-purpose" channeling and hydro scheme for Colombia's Guamues River.

"Rivers are being destroyed because of a lack of awareness and respect for their value in maintaining ecosystems and contributing to the lives of riverine populations � that combined with a healthy dose of plain greed," said the International Rivers Network's Glenn Switkes. "The result is expensive, environmentally damaging boondoggles that enrich an elite while displacing thousands of people, driving many to absolute poverty," he said.

Latin America has enormous hydropower potential and untapped raw materials, which local governments and international financial institutions aim to exploit. In an effort to make the region more attractive to multinationals two plans have been dreamt up by local governments and industrial leaders. They are the Infrastructural Regional Initiative for South America (IIRSA) and the Plan Puebla-Panama (LP, Aug. 6, 2001).

Both are financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the World Bank, the Central American Development Bank, the Andean Development Corporation, the United Nations Development Program, and export credit agencies of developed countries, all of which, say observers, will receive substantial economic benefits from their involvement.

The IIRSA proposal involves transferring energy from less industrialized countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to more energy-intensive economies like Brazil and Peru.

"IIRSA's projects involve no consultation and minimal information released to the public, such as how the regional environmental and social standards will be maintained," said Switkes.

Plan Puebla-Panama concerns a private sector-funded expansion of the electrical grid in Mexico and Central America. "The structure of the markets should allow private investment, particularly in generation, which allows energy competition and reduction of energy tariffs for the benefit of all the inhabitants in the region," states the Inter-American Development Bank.

However, according to Gustavo Castro, of the Center of Economic and Political Research for Community Action in Mexico, "the objective of Plan Puebla-Panama is to create one electricity law for the entire region: one administrator, one agency, and one integrated grid system to supply the United States with energy from our countries. This plan has been drawn up to respond to the demands of the transnational companies, not to meet the demands of the region," he said.

Projects such as the Boca del Cerro Dam on Mexico's Usumacinta River have encouraged anti-US feeling in the region. Indigenous communities on both sides of the river have organized regional committees and conducted studies of the foreseeable impact of the dam, which threatens to flood a large number of Mayan archaeological sites.

The Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, which is the largest wetland reserve in Central America, could be affected by various Plan Puebla-Panama projects. The 13-square mile reserve is home to 3,000 plant species, the endangered jaguar and the scarlet macaw.

Regional economic initiatives, such as the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), seek to protect trade and foreign investment from regulation by liberalizing public services and complement the IIRSA and Plan Puebla-Panama initiatives.

The region's environmental movement is struggling to make its voice heard before development schemes are approved. Civil society groups in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama have created national citizens� committees to oppose Plan Puebla-Panama. Activists protested at IADB and World Bank offices in cities throughout the Americas. In Mexico, 150 Chiapas communities came together to block the Panamerican highway in protest at the 70 dams proposed for that region.

While new projects are planned, communities affected by past dams continue to seek restitution. Plans to raise the water levels of Mexico's Miguel Aleman and Cerro de Oro dams have outraged previously resettled communities that have yet to be adequately compensated for their losses. Some communities, still owed the 170,000 hectares of land they were promised when the Cerro de Oro dam was built, may again face displacement.

The former Maya Ach" communities in the R"o Negro area of Guatemala, who were affected by the construction of the Chixoy Dam, are in the process of preparing a legal case and conducting a socioeconomic study of the damages and losses. The case, which will cite the IADB and the World Bank as well as construction companies, could be precedent-setting for other dam-affected communities.




The Japan Times: Aug. 10, 2003
EDITORIAL
The conservationists and the canary
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20030810a1.htm


The conservationists' string of laments is a familiar one by now. Even a child can name the elements: worldwide degradation of land, loss of habitats (especially in the rapidly shrinking tropical rainforests) and the accelerating extinction of species. In fact, the plaint has become so familiar that we have almost stopped hearing it. It's too abstract, too general, to absorb. Unless it is couched in terms of a threat to a particularly striking or lovable species -- the red-crowned crane in Japan, the Spix's macaw in Brazil, China's pandas -- we tend to ignore the glum greenies or dismiss them as alarmists.

As for less attention-getting forms of life, well, a species of butterfly or fish or tree might die out, and we not only wouldn't care, we wouldn't even know. Sometimes, though, one of those warning voices manages to get our attention sufficiently to alert us to the bigger picture of destruction and loss, not just the colorful individual example.

Such was the case with a study of extinction rates published last month in the international science journal Nature. It zeroed in on Singapore as a worst-case microcosm of a process scientists say is unfolding throughout Southeast Asia. (Singapore was chosen both because it is an advanced model of urban development in the region and because, thanks to the meticulous British, who commandeered the island in 1819, it has records of identified species dating back almost two centuries. Most tropical regions' records are much more recent.) The study's findings were sobering indeed.

If the world goes as Singapore is going, the authors basically conclude, within 100 years it could lose one-fifth of its current tally of plant and animal species. One-fifth! That's a lot of plants and animals. How did the scientists -- a team from Australia and Singapore -- make that determination?

To start with, they analyzed those precious species lists to determine extinction rates of mammals, birds, fish, butterflies and other groups in Singapore itself over the past 183 years -- the period in which the island also experienced rapid growth in its human population. They found that Singapore has lost a minimum of 28 percent and, more likely, as much as 73 percent of its animals and plants since the British opened their first trading post, with the main cause being deforestation. More than 95 percent of Singapore's original rainforest has disappeared under the advancing tide of farms and urban sprawl. The last Singapore tiger died in the 1930s, and several other species are described by the scientists as the "living dead" -- not surviving in viable numbers.

So goes small, highly developed, urbanized Singapore. Still, scientists say the island nation provides an extreme instance of what is happening in tropical, species-rich Southeast Asia as a whole, where deforestation is a fact of life even in less-developed countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. Malaysia, for example, is reported to have lost 60 percent of its original rainforest to agriculture. Extrapolating from the Singapore numbers, the team calculated that between 13 percent and 42 percent of Southeast Asia's flora and fauna will become extinct in the next century. Other scientists have said they find those numbers plausible.

The reason these calculations are so significant for the planet is, of course, that most of the planet's species are found in its tropical regions. This means that, as one of the authors put it, "a local extinction is like a global extinction," because most of these species are not found anywhere else. As places like Singapore destroy their old-growth rainforests, the whole world loses the life forms that are destroyed along with them. For ecological purposes, the Singapore revealed in this study is like the canary in the mine: an augury of worldwide calamity.

The news is hardly surprising, since it fits with the general prognosis of doom we've been hearing for some time. But it is, as some commentators have pointed out, newly persuasive, since there have been very few studies to date of extinction rates in tropical, as opposed to temperate, regions, and even fewer that are based on such detailed data. The Singapore study should give us all pause, even those who have never given much thought to conservation before.

It might also remind us that there are practical measures we can and should take if these trends are ever to be reversed, from making personally responsible lifestyle choices to backing those politicians who support environmentally friendly legislation both globally (as in United Nations initiatives) and locally. Japan, after all, has behaved no better than Singapore with respect to its own native forests -- nearly half of which have been cut down since World War II and replaced with species-threatening commercial cedar plantations.




Aug 9, 2003
Washington Times
New program allows rain forest lumber
http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20030809-110426-6962r.htm


NORFOLK (AP) � Workers have unloaded about 1,000 tons of Indonesian lumber in the first delivery to the United States of wood certified under a program that supporters say will encourage environmentally friendly harvesting of rain forest trees.

The nearly 2 million pounds of reddish meranti wood unloaded at the Norfolk International Terminals last week bore white labels identifying the wood as "RIL verified." The labels certify that the wood was harvested by "reduced-impact logging" through a program created by a coalition of rain forest preservationists, government agencies and businesses.

Leading the RIL certification program is the Alexandria-based Tropical Forest Foundation, which started the program in the Amazon River basin in Brazil. The project is monitored by an independent auditing agency called SmartWood, a certification program of the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit environmental group based in New York City.

The wood that arrived Tuesday was moved to a warehouse operated by Penrod Co., a Virginia Beach importer of metal and wood. Penrod co-owner and executive vice president Carl Gade is president of the Tropical Forest Foundation's board.

Mr. Gade told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper that the company's 350,000-square-foot warehouse imports about 5 percent of its volume from Indonesia, a small amount because of the environmental and legal problems associated with it.

The pilot program in Indonesia began about a year ago in a forest in West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, near the Malaysian border. It promotes legal logging by rewarding loggers for cutting trees in only certain areas, taking only trees of a certain age and species, and removing no more trees than permitted.

Trees are tagged, and auditors track them from stump to shipping point. Program officials also train local workers in the least-damaging methods of building roads, cutting trees and moving them through the forest.

Some environmental groups, such as the Rainforest Action Network, have argued against any import of lumber from Indonesia. That nation's policies do not protect the land rights of the forests' indigenous populations nor do they stop rampant corruption, making any certification program untenable, Brant Olson, network spokesman, told the Virginian-Pilot.

However, Tropical Forest Foundation Executive Director O. Keister Evans said the program offers immediate benefits.

"The objective was to really do something, get on the ground and teach good forest management," he said. "It's not only more environmentally sound, it's more economically sound. It saves time, labor, fuel."

Besides the foundation, program sponsors include the U.S. Agency for International Development, the USDA Forest Service, construction-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. and do-it-yourself retailer Home Depot Inc.

The Tropical Forest Foundation was set up in 1991 by the International Wood Products Association, a lumber and wood products industry group. The foundation's board includes a number of current and former IWPA board members as well as current and retired executives from several wood products companies, including Georgia-Pacific Corp., Crown Hardwood Veneer Corp., Plywood Tropics USA Inc. and Stihl Inc.

The board also includes executives of the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups, as well as forest-products research programs at several universities.




August 8, 2003
Freezerbox
The Myth of Nature
BY TANYA M. HAYES
ENVIRONMENT | 2.7.2003
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=263


In Latin America, the economy and the environment rarely get along. Honduras, tucked away between Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, is no exception. Exploitative resource activities there, such as cattle ranching, slash-and-burn agriculture and timber extraction, are rapidly destroying one of the last swathes of tropical forest in Central America. Displaced people are pushing farther into the forest lands of eastern Honduras and threatening conservation initiatives in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site that protects approximately 800,000 hectares of forest in northeastern portion of the country. Created in 1980 to protect a crucial section of the Mesoamerican biological corridor (a 3 million hectare area that encompasses some 40 percent of the Atlantic slopes from southern Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama) the Reserve is failing to meet its dual objectives, which are to conserve biodiversity and provide for the indigenous populations living in the area. In 1996 a report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Reserve a World Heritage Site in Danger.

While there is no single source of the Reserve's troubles, one of the prime culprits is intra-country migration onto environmentally fragile land, or what academics the call the "colonization process." Whatever the name, it is taking its toll. Aerial and satellite images show the colonization front eating away at the Reserve's western edge, and a population survey in 1998 revealed that the number of non-indigenous (ladino) residents in the Site had tripled, from 7,000 inhabitants in 1990 to 21,000 in 1998. Despite international attention and renewed efforts to remove people from the park, the destruction continues.

What is happening in the Rio Platano is characteristic of colonization processes throughout Latin America, where the scarcity of land�along with the relatively the few people who control it�often leads to environmental destruction. As large-scale agribusiness (which is by itself harmful to the environment) expands, it pushes small farmers off the land and forces them to live as migrants. To survive, they practice slash-and-burn agriculture, compete for and occupy land belonging to indigenous groups, and clash with both property owners and conservationists. The result is a messy web of interested parties, most of whom are working against each other, all of whom are at least partly justified in their actions, and few of whom are interested in cooperating with each other.

This story is probably at least mildly familiar to many readers. Agricultural expansion first gained international disrepute in the Amazon Basin of Brazil, where conflict between environmentalists, landless peasants, indigenous groups, and cattle ranchers appeared to threaten the natural and cultural sanctity of the region. But while the rainforest media craze, like all media crazes, came and went, the problems of land distribution and environmental destruction in Latin America have not gone away. Since the late 1980s landless peasants in Central America have increasingly pressured their governments to open up forests for settlement. Southern Mexico, eastern Guatemala and eastern Honduras are just a few of the regions where peasants seek out arable land in the last remaining forested areas.

There was a time when many observers thought�and, indeed, many still do think�that the needs of all these competing interests could be satisfied. In the late 1980's and early 90's, after a decade of relative apathy, the state of the environment began to receive international attention. In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development released "Our Common Future" (also known as the Bruntland Report) and laid out within it the doctrine of sustainable development. Now a near-ubiquitous buzzword, sustainable development was billed as the best chance for balancing the needs of environmental health, social justice and economic growth. The report defined sustainable development as "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Lauded as the silver bullet for resolving the world's social, economic and environmental woes, sustainable development sought to wed previously opposing policy objectives: economic development and environmental conservation. New proposals spilled forth, and people talked eagerly of the promises of eco-tourism, as well as of a renewed respect for the untrammeled parts of the Earth.

Building on the premise that conservation and development could progress hand in hand, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro highlighted the plight of the world's forests, and the Fourth World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA) requested that each country designate a minimum of 10 percent of each biome under its jurisdiction (oceans, forests, tundra, wetlands, grasslands) as a protected area. Many countries signed the major treaty that emerged from Rio�the Convention on Biodiversity�and pledged to protect their ecosystems. (The United States, perhaps depressingly but not surprisingly, chose not to sign it). But subsequent events, and in particular the troubles in Honduras, raise important questions about the effectiveness not just of the treaty but also of protected areas in general. Can parks actually protect forests? And more specifically, are we even correct in pursuing our dreams of "pristine" nature�of chasing people out of some areas to satisfy a romantic image of a world untouched? And what happens to the people we chase out? What price do they pay for our conception of nature?

[continued . . .]




Tuesday, 5 August 2003
ABC FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND
Daintree Rainforest Research Crane
Presenter: Kate Humphris
http://www.abc.net.au/farnorth/stories/s917544.htm


Every day, thousands of people come from all over the world to explore the wonders of the Daintree Rainforest.

But � being unable to fly � most people are unable to explore some of the most interesting and beautiful areas of the forest � the canopy.

There's a group of scientists who have solved this problem � not by inventing wings � but using a specially designed crane.

The crane gives scientists the opportunity to research things such as plant pollination or creating a detailed map of the dense forest.

While sticking a giant crane in the middle of world heritage forest may not seem environmentally sensitive � it actually protects habitat.

This is because scientists no longer have to collect entire branches from the tops of trees � or climb the trees themselves.

The crane is the only one of it's kind in Australia � and linked to a small group of others worldwide.

The project provides valuable and new information about the rainforest � important because it could lead to better ways of managing the Daintree in the future.




August 4, 2003
Home Channel News
Non-profit group wants to boost credibility of Indonesian logging practices
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20030810a1.htm


Alexandria, Va. - August 4 - In an effort to quell criticism of Indonesia's logging practices, the Tropical Forest Foundation, a non-profit group based here, says it wants to show that tropical hardwoods can be harvested from Indonesia with legal documentation and tracked along the way.

As part of a four-year pilot project, the Tropical Forest Foundation will bring in its first shipment of Lauan from Indonesia that the group says was harvested by reduced-impact logging and tracked by auditing firm, Smartwood. The 1,500-cubic-meter shipload of Lauan will be delivered to Lambert's Point Decks in Norfolk, Va., tomorrow morning.

The group expects to bring in a new shipment every quarter as part of its pilot project, which is funded by the USAID Asia and the Near East Bureau's Public-Private Alliance, U.S. Forest Services International Programs and Home Depot.

Lauan, a tropical hardwood grown primarily in Indonesia, is used in plywood, floor underlayments, door veneers and furniture. Lauan pulp is also used to make paper.

Back in May, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) launched a media blitz highlighting illegal logging practices in Indonesia, claiming up to 70 percent of wood harvested in that country is illegally logged.

"Indonesia has had difficulty with credibility in forest management," said Keister Evans, executive director of the Tropical Forest Foundation. "This is an effort to demonstrate the good companies [in Indonesia] can carry out proper management and move that wood to the U.S. market."

The Tropical Forest Foundation was established in 1990 to demonstrate and teach sustainable forest management through reduced-impact logging in major tropical timber-producing countries.


Biodiversity Inc.
Mexico tries a new tactic against Chiapas rebels: conservation
By Bill Weinberg
08.21.03
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=331_0_1_0_C

Lacandon Selva Rainforest, Chiapas, Mexico�As all eyes remain on the messy aftermath of the Iraq war and the strategic oil resources of the Persian Gulf, war threatens to return again to the United States� own "backyard"�southern Mexico and Central America. Here, as in the Gulf, struggles for control of petroleum and other key resources are at stake.

In this past December's prelude to the anniversary celebrations of their New Year's Day 1994 armed rebellion, the Maya Indian rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas broke the official silence they had been maintaining since September. The silence, and the breaking off of all dialogue with the government, was an official protest to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling that upheld a series of constitutional reforms on indigenous rights. The constitutional reform package was ostensibly based on the Zapatistas� peace plan, hashed out painstakingly with federal legislators years earlier.

But the rebels charged that the plan was gutted, with binding provisions on control of territory excised by Congress after the fact. The accord was challenged in the courts by the rebels� supporters�including indigenous groups and village municipal governments across Mexico�as failing to meet international standards on self-determination. But the Supreme Court ruled it had no jurisdiction to overturn the so-called Indian Rights Law, sending the peace process with the EZLN back to square one nearly nine years after it was initiated.

In the December 29 communique, the Zapatistas asserted their defense of the indigenous autonomous government in the Chiapas rainforest, the rebel zone of the Lacandon Selva. The EZLN's Subcomandante Marcos pledged that the rebels would resist the government's planned removal of pro-Zapatista peasant communities from the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, in the heart of the Selva. "There will not be a peaceful expulsion," wrote Marcos.

At this moment, army troops are stationed in the area of the biosphere reserve, awaiting government orders to eject the self-governing rebel Indian communities. Since they emerged in the 1994 rebellion, these jungle "autonomous municipalities" have been protected by the cease-fire under which the peace accords were negotiated. Now President Vicente Fox is preparing to move against the settlements in the name of ecology.

--------------

While the Zapatistas say they will refuse to give up their guns until their original peace plan is approved, they have hardly fired a shot in anger since the truce that ended their 1994 uprising. Now, many are growing impatient with the deadlock. On the January 1 anniversary celebrations, 15,000 Zapatistas�masked but unarmed�marched on the Chiapas highlands city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, which the rebels had briefly occupied during the uprising.

Last October 12, hundreds of Zapatista sympathizers marked Dia de la Raza by blocking the entrance to the main Chiapas military base, Rancho Nuevo. They demanded demilitarization of Chiapas and protested Fox's "Plan Puebla-Panama" (PPP), which calls for a series of new superhighways, ocean-to-ocean pipelines and hydro-electric dams across southern Mexico and Central America as arteries for global trade and development.

"These lands belong to the people and we will not abandon them," said one protest leader. "The riches belong to those of us who have lived here for centuries and we will oppose their globalization."

Ironically, just as protecting the biosphere reserve�the embattled and shrinking heart of the rainforest�has become an urgent priority, megadevelopment plans for the Lacandon Selva, put on hold when the Zapatistas seized the jungle in 1994, are now back on track. At the forefront are long-stalled plans for a giant hydro-electric complex on the Usumacinta River, which cuts through the heart of the forest and forms the border with Guatemala. The Inter-American Development Bank has undertaken studies on funding of the project. The oil exploitation plans, which would expand south into the rainforest from the industry's toxic heartland along the Gulf Coast in Tabasco, are also being revived after nine years.

More ironically still, the Zapatistas and their supporters claim that even the conservation imperative in the U.N.-recognized biosphere reserve masks a corporate agenda. The Maya inhabitants of the Selva, the "autonomous municipalities" loyal to the EZLN, say that�contrary to both U.N. guidelines and the peace plan principles�Montes Azules is not being protected for the resident indigenous peoples, but for transnational biotech corporations that hope to profit from the region's vast genetic wealth.

--------------

Two years ago, the California firm Diversa signed a three-year "bio-prospecting" deal with the Mexican government. Diversa, which has a similar deal with the U.S. Interior Department for Yellowstone National Park, was granted access to Mexico's biosphere reserves, with areas like Montes Azules especially targeted. In the deal, the government got $5,000 to train and equip personnel from the Mexican National Autonomous University who are actually to collect the samples; $50 per sample; and royalties between 0.3 and 0.5 percent of net sales on products derived. By contrast, the U.S. Interior Department in the Yellowstone deal got $15,000 in equipment, royalties from 0.5 to 10 percent, and a $100,000 fee up front.

The University of Georgia and the U.K.-based Molecular Nature Ltd. have signed on for a similar five-year project. This one, dubbed "Drug Discovery and Biodiversity Among the Maya of Mexico"�specifically targets Chiapas. Hoping to tap the vast reservoir of ancient Maya herblore, the program was to receive $2.5 million from the U.S. International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG), a consortium of agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture. Researchers hoped to draw on indigenous healers� wealth of knowledge on tens of thousands of curative plants in the region. The researchers would share their data with private pharmaceutical and biotech firms that were commercial partners in the deal.

But last year, a coalition of traditional Maya healers in Chiapas declared victory following the cancellation of the ICBG program. The Chiapas Council of Traditional Indigenous Midwives and Healers (COMPITCH) led the campaign against the program, coordinating Maya communities and international environmental groups, such as Canada's Rural Advancement Foundation International. COMPITCH declared their non-cooperation with the project, and denounced it as "biopiracy," asserting the impoverished Maya communities would receive little benefit from any patents developed.

Another key player in the privatization of Chiapas biodiversity is Alfonso Romo Garza, an agro-industrialist who has a joint project in the biosphere reserve with Conservation International (of which he is a board member). In 1991, Conservation International brokered a "debt-for-nature" swap, buying a $4 million chunk of Mexico's debt for the right to establish a genetic research station in Montes Azules. But Romo's interests may lie less in conservation than expanding control over global agribusiness seed stock through his Monterrey-based Grupo Pulsar.

Romo is also an official promoter of Fox's PPP, with its visions of interoceanic rail and highway links, industrial pods, and free-trade zones stretching from the Panama Canal to the Mexican state of Puebla. The Zapatistas decry the PPP as a "counterinsurgency" measure aimed at bringing the restive Indian communities of the Mexican south (and Central America) under industrial control.

There is an uneasy symmetry between this mega-scheme and the paradoxically interlocking plan�backed by Conservation International and the World Bank�to integrate Montes Azules into a "Mesoamerican Biological Corridor," linking the biosphere reserves and other protected rainforests of the isthmus as far south as Panama. This symmetry raises the vision of these tropical forests surviving only as corporate-administrated genetic colonies in the midst of devastated zones of industrial sprawl.

Bill Weinberg, who frequently reports from Central and South America, is the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso).




Greenwashed Indonesian Wood Hits U.S. Market
From Rainforest Action Network
Monday, August 18, 2003
http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp?objid=D1D1366D000000F7177C7B7C8D2F3A51


'Reduced-Impact Logging' Doesn't Protect Human Rights Or Endangered Forests

San Francisco - On Tuesday, August 5, a new shipment of old growth, tropical hardwood from Indonesia labeled "RIL verified" slipped virtually unnoticed into the United States through the port of Hampton Roads in Norfolk, Virginia. The wood arrived as part of a reduced-impact logging (RIL) pilot program, a partnership between U.S. corporate interests, USAID and Indonesian timber barons, and is the latest marketing ploy to greenwash the sale of lauan, an endangered Indonesian hardwood also marketed as meranti, in the U.S. Rainforest Action Network and allies support Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's May 13, 2002 call for a moratorium on logging in Indonesia until processes are put in place to protect endangered rainforests and secure the rights of indigenous people to their ancestral homelands.

"U.S. ports should be closed to Indonesian wood until their rainforests are protected and human rights are respected. The so-called stump-to-store RIL certification program is little more than an elaborate means by which to systematically document the destruction of Earth's remaining old growth rainforests. You can't save endangered rainforests by logging them, selectively or otherwise," said Jennifer Krill, Old Growth Campaigns Director, Rainforest Action Network.

Documents released by the RIL pilot program partnership indicate that the August 5 shipment was logged from PT Suka Jaya Makmur, a cut-block nearly twice the size permitted under a 1999 Indonesian law. The holding company, Alas Kusuma Group, has documented ties with the former dictator's regime and his timber cartel, many of which remain major players in the country's corrupt timber trade. The RIL program does not require PT Suka Jaya Makmur to either protect endangered forests within its concession, or to ensure prior and informed consent of local communities before logging their ancestral land.

Rather than foster sustainable forestry by restricting logging to plantations and secondary forests, the Indonesian Ministry of Forests looks the other way when 'legal' loggers cut outside their concessions and mills accept undocumented lumber from timber bandits. In October, the RIL pilot program is scheduled to begin its second phase by attempting to convince retailers to further confuse and deceive American consumers into buying tropical hardwood from old growth forests that should be permanently protected. RAN has called on American purchasers such as Home Depot and Georgia-Pacific to stop buying wood products from Indonesia until both endangered forests and human rights there are protected.

President Bush referred to 'reduced-impact logging' in his "Initiative Against Illegal Logging" released on July 29, just one week before the first shipment from Indonesia arrived in Norfolk. Earlier this year, Rainforest Action Network released the report, "Importing Destruction" documenting how U.S. imports of Indonesia's tropical hardwoods are devastating indigenous communities and ancient forests.




Science - Reuters
In a Snap, Extinct Cat Comes Back to Life
Thu Aug 14, 1:45 PM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030814/sc_nm/environment_malaysia_cat_dc

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A wild cat thought to be virtually extinct has been captured on film in the wild, a Malaysian scientist said Thursday.

"We have discovered a species thought extinct in Borneo," Mohd Azlan told Reuters by telephone from East Malaysia, where he led a research project for University Malaysia Sarawak and the state forest department.

A Borneo bay cat (Catopuma badia), about the size of a large domestic cat though with an extra long tail, triggered a remote camera in daylight on June 27, yielding a lone image from what was a two-month monitoring period.

Azlan, who previously tracked tigers in Peninsular Malaysia using so-called camera traps, said the data suggested there were at most a few of the animals in the area of the Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary under study.

"In up to two months of camera tracking, we got a single photo, which means it must be low in abundance or density."

The sanctuary, a tropical rainforest area closed to the public and adjoining a sister park across the border in Indonesia's Kalimantan, is home to orangutans, Bornean gibbons and hundreds of tree species.

Azlan said his project was seeking funds and support from international donors for more research into the bay cat, only seven specimens of which have been documented -- the last in 1992.




Reports: Police Find Body of Kidnapped Briton
http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1800130

Police in Ecuador have found the body of British oil worker John Buckley, 10 months after he was kidnapped with his driver in the jungle, it was reported today.

The remains of both men were discovered about 100 miles north-east of the capital Quito in the El Chaco region, local reports said.

Police could not immediately confirm the discovery, and it was not immediately apparent when the bodies were found nor how the men were killed.

Mr Buckley, 64 at the time of the kidnapping, was from Clara village in County Offaly, Ireland. He had been living in the UK with his wife and daughter before his abduction and is believed to have held dual nationality.

He and Diaz, then 60, disappeared on October 2 near Sardinas village, 60 miles-south east of Quito, in an oil-rich region about halfway from the capital to the Colombian border.

Weeks later, Argentine oil company Techint paid an unspecified ransom.

But by mid-December, the company offered a �25,000 reward for information leading to the men's rescue after it became apparent the payment had not secured their release.

Since then, there had been no news of the men or information about their kidnappers.

Police said investigators would go to El Chaco today in search of more details and to determine how the men were killed.




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