Sites: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
topic: Temperate Forests
Social media activity version | Lean version
The Narwhal makes waves in Canada for environmental journalism
- On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, co-founder of the award-winning Canadian nonprofit news outlet The Narwhal, Emma Gilchrist, speaks with co-host Rachel Donald about their successes covering the most vital environmental news in the nature-rich nation.
- Gilchrist discusses what’s special about Canada’s natural legacy, the state of environmental reporting there, how she sees The Narwhal filling the gaps in historically neglected stories and viewpoints, and why something as universally appreciated as nature can still be a polarizing topic.
- She also details a legal battle her organization is involved in that could have significant implications for press freedom in Canada.
Rewilding Ireland: ‘Undoing the damage’ from a history of deforestation
- Eoghan Daltun has spent the past 14 years successfully rewilding 29 hectares (73 acres) of farmland on the Beara Peninsula in southwestern Ireland.
- Ireland is one of the most ecologically denuded countries in the world, only possessing about 11% forest cover but on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, co-host Rachel Donald speaks with Daltun about how he came to accomplish his rewilding feat simply by letting nature take its course and erecting a good fence, which has rapidly led to the regeneration of native forest, wildflowers and fauna.
- They also discuss the historical drivers of ecological devastation that have led to the classic, tree-less Irish landscape, from ancient times to imperial colonization and the advent of modern farming, and what the potential of rewilding is to change that and boost biodiversity.
Biden’s new sanctions on Russia should include timber exports (commentary)
- U.S. President Joe Biden responded to the death of dissident Aleksei Navalny with new sanctions that target hundreds of Russian entities and individuals, but these could go further in key areas that are also good for the planet.
- Timber represents more than half of all remaining U.S. imports of Russian goods: all of Russia’s vast forests are state-owned, and some are even under control of its military. Customs data show the U.S. has imported close to $2 billion of timber from Russian companies since the war began.
- “The U.S. should immediately bar Russian timber, pulp & paper imports, as the E.U. and U.K. have already done,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Conservationists aim to save South America’s super tiny wild cat, the guina
- The Americas’ smallest wild cat, the guina (Leopardus guigna), is superbly adapted to its home range in Chile and Argentina. But the region is severely affected by deforestation and increasing human population, putting the cat’s future at risk.
- The increase in people in the guina’s habitat has particularly severe consequences, including roads, fences, fires, cattle and, especially, attacks by dogs. The cats are also hunted by people due to their reputation as chicken killers.
- Conservation experts and authorities agree that solutions to save the guina must include local people. They have turned their attention to the people living outside protected areas to help conserve one of South America’s most endangered cats.
- New, groundbreaking environmental legislation in Chile hopefully will also help the cause of the guina and other species impacted by deforestation.
Forest conservation ‘off-track’ to halt deforestation by 2030: New report
- The world lost 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres) of forest, an area larger than Sri Lanka, and deforestation rates increased by 4% in 2022, according to a report published Oct. 24 that tracks commitments to forest conservation.
- The Forest Declaration Assessment is an annual evaluation of deforestation rates against a 2018-2020 deforestation and forest degradation baseline compiled by civil society and research organizations.
- Much of the forest loss occurred in the tropics, and nearly two-thirds of it was in relatively undisturbed primary forests, while forest degradation, more than deforestation, remains a serious problem in temperate and boreal forests.
- Despite being far off the pace to achieve an end to deforestation by 2030, a goal that 145 countries pledged to pursue in 2021, more than 50 countries have cut their deforestation rates and are on track to end deforestation within their borders by the end of the century.
Indigenous funding model is a win-win for ecosystems and local economies in Canada
- First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii of Canada, have successfully invested in conservation initiatives that have benefited ecosystems while also increasing communities’ well-being over the past 15 years, a recent report shows.
- Twenty-seven First Nations spent nearly C$109 million ($79 million) toward 439 environmental and economic development projects in their territories, including initiating research, habitat restoration, and guardian programs, that attracted returns worth C$296 million ($214 million).
- Funding has also set up 123 Indigenous-led business and was spent towards sustainable infrastructure and renewable energy projects.
- One of the world’s first project finance for permanence (PFP) models, this funding scheme is exemplary of how stable finance mechanisms can directly benefit Indigenous communities and the environment, say Indigenous leaders.
Brazil-U.S. cooperation is key for global forest conservation (commentary)
- On Friday, Brazilian President Lula visits President Biden in Washington, D.C., to discuss topics including the U.S. joining the multilateral Amazon Fund, aimed at fighting deforestation in Brazil: a commitment could be announced during the meeting.
- In the early 2000s, then President Lula’s Brazil slowed Amazon deforestation, designating 60 million acres of new protected areas and Indigenous territories, mounting anti-deforestation law enforcement operations, and cutting off farm credit to landowners who leveled forests illegally.
- The U.S. joining the Amazon Fund would be very important, but a genuine partnership is about more than money, a new op-ed argues: “The U.S. and Brazil should share their cutting-edge science, technology and data to monitor forests. Both sides have world-class space agencies and innovations to track and manage land use,” they write.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Peatland restoration in temperate nations could be carbon storage bonanza
- Much maligned and undervalued over the centuries, temperate peatlands have seen a lot damage in that time — drained for agriculture, planted with trees, mined for horticulture and fuel. But in an age of escalating climate change, people are now turning to restoration.
- As potent carbon sequesters, peatlands have only recently been given new attention, with active restoration taking place in many nations around the world. This story focuses on groundbreaking temperate peatland restoration efforts in the U.S. Southeast, Scotland and Canada.
- Every temperate peatland is different, making each restoration project unique, but the goal is almost always the same: restore the natural hydrology of the peatland so it can maximize carbon storage and native biodiversity, and improve its resilience in the face of climate change and increasingly common fires in a warming world.
Wildfires are climbing up the snowiest mountains of the western U.S.
- Forest fires are getting larger and hotter in the western U.S., shrinking the mountain snowpacks vital to communities and ecosystems.
- When a wildfire burns on mountain slopes, snow that falls later in the winter is more exposed to sun and wind, making it melt or evaporate faster and earlier than ever before.
- Burned land is recovering more slowly as the region warms, leaving less water for trees and plants to regrow and increasing the risks of erosion and flooding.
Podcast: How the Indigenous Shuar regained their ancestral forest
- “Ecuador had not declared community protected area management by Indigenous peoples until Tiwi Nunka Forest. This area is the first of its kind in Ecuador, and one of the few in the entire Amazon,” says our first guest on this episode, Felipe Serrano.
- Serrano is the Ecuador country director for Nature and Culture International, which helped the Shuar people in their struggle to reclaim this territory and get the forest included in Ecuador’s National System of Protected Areas.
- We also speak with journalist Paul Koberstein about the flawed basis for the U.S. State of Washington’s new and unusual climate solution: cutting down forests.
- The state claims that it’s more effective to store carbon in wood products than it is to keep forests standing, but as Koberstein shares, research shows that only a small percentage of the carbon remains in wood products, and the rest is lost to the atmosphere, so activists are pushing for a change in policy.
New study identifies mature forests on U.S. federal lands ripe for protection
- A new mapping study conducted by NGOs finds that older forests in the U.S. make up about 167 million acres, or 36%, of all forests in the contiguous 48 states. About a third of this, or roughly 58 million acres, are on federal lands. The rest are controlled by non-federal entities, including large amounts held by private owners.
- Just 24% of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management forests are fully protected, with the rest being at various levels of risk from logging, offering the Biden administration an opportunity to more thoroughly protect far more old-growth and mature forests on federal lands in order to help meet U.S. climate goals.
- The new study identified a challenge inherent in this strategy: The majority of federal lands are in the West, but one of the highest concentrations of U.S. mature and old-growth forests is in the Southeast, where most older forests are on private property. Privately held old-growth and mature forests are poorly protected in the U.S.
- If the U.S. wants to broaden its carbon emission reduction strategy, say researchers, then mature forest conservation should include both federal and private holdings. Private forests could be protected via state regulation, utilizing conservation easements and payments for verifiable carbon offsets, along with land trust acquisition.
British Columbia delays promised protections as old growth keeps falling
- Two years after British Columbia’s majority party promised a logging “paradigm shift” to conserve what’s left of the province’s tall old growth forests, Mongabay observed dramatic clear cutting on Vancouver Island in forests slated for protection. Old growth harvesting continues across British Columbia (BC) today.
- The BC minister of land management told Mongabay that the government, in partnership with First Nations, has deferred logging on 1.7 million hectares of old growth forests. But critics contest those numbers and note that much of these deferrals are for scubby alpine forests that aren’t in danger of being logged.
- First Nation leaders have been tasked by the government to determine which old growth forests to protect. This presents Indigenous communities with an economic conundrum, as many tribes will lose much-needed logging revenue if they choose conservation.
- Today, BC has many second-growth tree plantations that give the appearance of vast wooded expanses. But as Mongabay observed in July, these tree farms are “ecological deserts” that store less carbon than tall tree old growth and harbor little biodiversity as BC experiences intensifying climate impacts partly due to decades of overlogging.
Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia
- Over the past 10 years, some of Asia’s coal-dependent, high-emitting nations have turned to biomass cofiring (burning coal and biomass together to make electricity) to reduce CO2 emissions on paper and reach energy targets. But biomass still generates high levels of CO2 at the smokestack and adds to dangerous global warming.
- In South Korea, renewable energy credits given for biomass cofiring flooded the market and made other renewables like wind and solar less profitable. Although subsides for imported biomass for cofiring have decreased in recent years, increased domestic biomass production is likely to continue fueling cofiring projects.
- In Japan, renewable energy subsidies initially prompted the construction of new cofired power plants. Currently, biomass cofiring is used to make coal plants seem less polluting in the near term as utilities prepare to cofire and eventually convert the nation’s coal fleet to ammonia, another “carbon-neutral” fuel.
- In Indonesia, the government and state utility, encouraged by Japanese industry actors, plan to implement cofiring at 52 coal plants across the country by 2025. The initiative will require “nothing less than the creation of a large-scale biomass [production] industry,” according to experts.
End old-growth logging in carbon-rich ‘crown jewel’ of U.S. forests: Study
- A recent study of the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the United States, found that it contains 20% of the carbon held in the entire national forest system.
- In addition to keeping the equivalent of about a year and a half of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere, the forest is also home to an array of wildlife, including bald eagles, brown bears and six species of salmon and trout.
- Scientists and conservationists argue that the forest’s old-growth trees that are hundreds of years old should be protected from logging.
- They are also hoping that efforts by the administration of President Joe Biden are successful in banning the construction of new roads in the Tongass.
Missing the emissions for the trees: Biomass burning booms in East Asia
- Over the past decade, Japan and South Korea have increasingly turned to burning wood pellets for energy, leaning on a U.N. loophole that dubs biomass burning as carbon neutral.
- While Japan recently instituted a new rule requiring life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, this doesn’t apply to its existing 34 biomass energy plants; Japanese officials say biomass will play an expanding role in achieving Japan’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030.
- South Korea included biomass burning in its renewable energy portfolio standard, leading to 17 biomass energy plants currently operating, and at least four more on the way.
- Experts say these booms in Asia — the first major expansion of biomass burning outside Europe — could lead to a large undercounting of actual carbon emissions and worsening climate change, while putting pressure on already-beleaguered forests.
Trees and soil at the forest’s edge store more carbon than we thought, studies reveal
- Scientists investigated the differences in carbon storage of trees and soils along forest edges versus the interiors of temperate forests in the northeastern United States.
- They found that trees within 30 meters (100 feet) of the forest edge grow almost twice as fast as trees deeper in the forest interior, meaning the edge trees are pulling carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in their tissues at a faster rate.
- In urban areas, soil released 25% less carbon on the forest edge relative to the interior. Worldwide, more carbon is stored in the soil than in all aboveground plants, animals, and the atmosphere combined, so understanding the soil is an important part of the carbon equation.
- While this spells good news for the potential of forest fragments to combat climate change, the researchers made it clear that this is not an argument in favor of creating more fragments as a way to sequester more carbon, stating that “forest that is lost will always outweigh gains made from growth increases in the new edges.”
Opium production down as communities in Mexico’s Golden Triangle turn to forestry
- Four communities in Mexico’s state of Durango, located within the ‘Golden Triangle’, an area known for the presence of the Sinaloa Cartel and opium and marijuana production, embarked on a sustainable forestry project to reduce dependence on illegal crop production.
- The project has helped lift the Tamazula municipality, where the four communities are located, off the state’s poverty list, raise their income above the minimum wage and contain narcotrafficking, according to the Topia Unit for Development and Comprehensive Forest Conservation.
- The mountainous region of temperate forests, diverse species of conifers and deep-cut ravines has a long legacy of sustainable forest management, which the communities hope to revive to relieve stigmatization.
- However, the communities are very isolated and surrounded by long dirt roads, meaning journeys to sell their wood are often arduous and costly.
Forest enterprise in Mexico attempts to present opportunities for Indigenous communities
- In the state of Jalisco, northwest Mexico, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán is attempting to use the forest sustainably to create development opportunities for inhabitants.
- The state government and the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) are supporting projects that encourage forest conservation while providing income generating opportunities for the Indigenous Wixárika and O’dam communities.
- The area is home to Jalisco’s largest forest reserves with some 680,000 hectares (1,680,300 acres) of temperate, dense and arid forest in the state’s ten northernmost municipalities.
Here’s how science is trying to conserve the monarch butterfly’s forests
- A team of Mexican scientists are developing a successful experiment that allows for the recovery and maintenance of endemic trees in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve that provide a habitat for monarch butterflies every winter.
- The team is employing a mix of natural restoration, soil conservation and active reforestation that has so far achieved a survival rate of 83 to 84 percent, at least three times more successful than some government reforestation programs.
- According to Dr. Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero, one of the researchers of the project, forests where monarch butterfly colonies are located are becoming more susceptible to climate events through unusual foliage loss and increased woodland mortality.
- Researchers have started to implement the “assisted migration” of oyamel firs (Abies religiosa) to higher altitudes in the reserve, where they can best resist changing climatic conditions.
Ambitious English rewilding project aims to give 20% of land ‘back to nature’
- Rewilding projects are multiplying in the U.K. in response to a growing awareness of the country’s serious loss of biodiversity. Britain ranked 189th out of 218 countries in the 2016 “State of Nature” report for the quality of its biodiversity and its natural condition.
- One of the most innovative projects now underway may be WildEast, which ambitiously hopes to rewild an area more than three times the size of New York City, creating interconnecting wild corridors across East Anglia, the country’s most intensely farmed region.
- The plan originated with three large estate owners, who, in addition to the commitment of their own lands, have already registered 1,000 “pledgees” for the project. However, some local residents, especially farmers, have complained that there is not enough consultation by WildEast.
- Even so, many East Anglia residents welcome the explosion in wildlife happening on the newly rewilded areas. WildEast’s long-term goal is to rewild 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) by 2070.
Do forest declarations work? How do the Glasgow and New York declarations compare?
- On November 2, 2021 at COP26 in Scotland, 127 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which aims to end net forest loss by 2030. Those signatories account for about 90% of global tree cover and about 85% of the world’s primary tropical forests.
- The declaration came seven years after the New York Declaration on Forests, under which 39 countries pledged to halve natural forest loss by 2020 and end it by 2030. Those countries accounted for about 39% of both global tree cover and primary tropical forests.
- While the New York Declaration on Forests catalyzed global awareness for the importance of forests and the need to address deforestation, it missed the mark by a wide margin in terms of achieving its 2020 goal to reduce natural forest loss by 50%.
- The biggest new signatories are Russia (ranked #1 globally in terms of tree cover), Brazil (#2, thanks to the Amazon rainforest), and China (#6) which together account for 1.4 billion hectares of tree cover. Among tropical nations, after Brazil, the biggest new additions are Papua New Guinea (32 million hectares of primary tropical forest), Gabon (23 million hectares), and the Republic of the Congo (21 million hectares).
Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action
- Coastal temperate rainforests are among the rarest ecosystems on Earth, with more than a third of their total remaining global area located in a narrow band in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest. These are some of the most biodiverse, carbon-dense forests outside the tropics, thus crucial to carbon sequestration.
- “The diversity of life that is all around us is incredibly rare,” a forest ecologist tells Mongabay on a hike in Olympic National Park. “It’s all working together. And there’s not much left here on the Olympic Peninsula or just north of us in British Columbia.”
- British Columbia did the unexpected in 2016 by establishing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, protecting 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres) of coastal old-growth forest. But elsewhere in the province, 97% of all tall, old-growth forest has been felled for timber and wood pellets. In the U.S., protection outside Olympic National Park is scant.
- New protections are promised, but old-growth logging continues apace. The U.N. says the world must aggressively reduce carbon emissions now, as scientists press the Biden administration to create a national Strategic Carbon Reserve to protect a further 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of mature forested federal lands from logging to help meet U.S. carbon-reduction goals by 2030.
‘Bad science’: Planting frenzy misses the grasslands for the trees
- Planting trees by the millions has come to be considered one of the main ways of reining in runaway carbon emissions and tackling climate change.
- But experts say many tree-planting campaigns are based on flawed science: planting in grasslands and other non-forest areas, and prioritizing invasive trees over native ones.
- Experts point out that not all land is meant to be forested, and that planting trees in savannas and grasslands runs the risk of actually reducing carbon sequestration and increasing air temperature.
- The rush to reforest has also led to fast-growing eucalyptus and acacia becoming the choice of tree for planting, despite the fact they’re not native in most planting areas, and are both water-intensive and fire-prone.
Leaders make bold climate pledges, but is it ‘all just smoke and mirrors?’: Critics
- Forty nations — producers of 80% of annual carbon emissions — made pledges of heightened climate ambition this week at U.S. President Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate. But as each head of state took to the podium, climate activists responded by pointing to the abysmal lack of action by those nations.
- As the U.S. promised to halve its emissions by 2030, advocates noted the lack of policies in place to achieve that goal, and the likelihood of intense Republican political resistance. China promised at the summit to eliminate coal plants, but 247 gigawatts of coal power is currently in planning or development stages there.
- The UK, EU, Japan, and South Korea all pledged to do more, but all are committed to burning forest biomass to replace coal — a solution relying on a longstanding carbon accounting error that counts forest biomass as carbon neutral, though scientists say it produces more emissions than coal per unit of electricity made.
- “This summit could be a critical turning point in our fight against climate change, but we have seen ambitious goals before and we have seen them fall flat. Today’s commitments must be followed with effective implementation, and with transparent reporting and accurate carbon accounting,” said one environmental advocate.
With British Columbia’s last old-growth at risk, government falters: Critics
- British Columbia’s ruling New Democratic Party last autumn pledged to conserve 353,000 hectares (1,363 square miles) of old-growth forest. But so far, the NDP has largely failed to act on this pledge, even as forestry companies rush to procure and cut old-growth in the Canadian province.
- Unless the government acts quickly on its commitment, BC’s last old-growth could be gone in as little as 5-10 years say some forest ecologists. In addition, intense logging could mean that Canada is not going to meet its Paris Climate Agreement carbon-reduction goals.
- While the NDP promised a new policy boosting forest perseveration over forestry, critics say that — despite its rhetoric — the government continues to prop up an industry in decline to help rural communities in need of jobs.
- While it’s not now cutting BC old-growth, activists worry over the acquisition by U.K. Drax Group of BC’s largest wood pellet producer, Pinnacle Renewable Energy and its seven BC pellet mills. Drax provides up to 12% of the U.K.’s energy at the world’s largest pellet-burning plant. Its BC exports to Japan are also expected to grow.
Global forest loss increased in 2020
- The planet lost an area of tree cover larger than the United Kingdom in 2020, including more than 4.2 million hectares of primary tropical forests, according to data released today by the University of Maryland.
- Tree cover loss rose in both the tropics and temperate regions, but the rate of increase in loss was greatest in primary tropical forests, led by rising deforestation and incidence of fire in the Amazon, Earth’s largest rainforest.
- The data, which is now available on World Resource Institute’s Global Forest Watch, indicate that forest loss remained persistently high in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, but “does not show obvious, systemic shifts in forest loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to WRI.
- Destruction of primary tropical forests, the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems, released 2.64 billion tons of carbon, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of 570 million cars.
Dutch to limit forest biomass subsidies, possibly signaling EU sea change
- The Dutch Parliament in February voted to disallow the issuing of new subsidies for 50 planned forest biomass-for-heat plants, a small, but potentially key victory for researchers and activists who say that the burning of forests to make energy is not only not carbon neutral, but is dirtier than burning coal and bad climate policy.
- With public opinion opposing forest biomass as a climate solution now growing in the EU, the decision by the Netherlands could be a bellwether. In June, the EU will review its Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), whether to continue allowing biomass subsidies and not counting biomass emissions at the smokestack.
- Currently, forest biomass burning to make energy is ruled as carbon neutral in the EU, even though a growing body of scientific evidence has shown that it takes many decades until forests regrow for carbon neutrality to be achieved.
- The forestry industry, which continues to see increasing demand for wood pellets, argues that biomass burning is environmentally sustainable and a viable carbon cutting solution compared to coal.
500+ experts call on world’s nations to not burn forests to make energy
- Last week, more than 500 top scientists and economists issued a letter to leaders in the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, urging them to stop harvesting and burning forests as a means of making energy in converted coal burning power plants.
- The burning of forest biomass to produce electricity has boomed due to this power source having been tolerated as carbon neutral by the United Nations, which enables nations to burn forest biomass instead of coal and not count the emissions in helping them meet their Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction targets.
- However, current science says that burning forest biomass is dirtier than burning coal, and that one of the best ways to curb climate change and sequester carbon is to allow forests to keep growing. The EU and UK carbon neutrality designations for forest biomass are erroneous, say the 500 experts who urge a shift in global policy:
- “Governments must end subsidies… for the burning of wood…. The European Union needs to stop treating the burning of biomass as carbon neutral…. Japan needs to stop subsidizing power plants to burn wood. And the United States needs to avoid treating biomass as carbon neutral or low carbon,” says the letter.
Will new US EPA head continue his opposition to burning forests for energy?
- Under President Donald Trump the U.S. made moves toward legally enshrining the burning of forest biomass to make energy on an industrial scale as a national policy. That same policy has been embraced by the United Kingdom and European Union, helping them move toward a target of zero carbon emissions — at least on paper.
- However, the carbon neutrality label given to the burning of woody biomass to make energy, first proclaimed under the Kyoto Protocol, then grandfathered into the Paris Climate Agreement, has been found by science over the last decade to be more accurately characterized as a risky carbon accounting loophole.
- Current science says that carbon neutrality achieved from burning wood pellets would take 50-100 years to achieve, time the world doesn’t have to slash its emissions. Further, burning woody biomass is inefficient, and dirtier than coal.
- Michael S. Regan, President Biden’s choice for EPA head, wrestled with the problem of producing wood pellets for use as energy while leading North Carolina’s environmental agency. Now he’ll be contending with the issue on a national and possibly global scale. His past views on the topic are laid out in this story in detail.
EU renewable energy policy subsidizes surge in logging of Estonia’s protected areas (commentary)
- European Union renewable energy subsidies are fueling a dramatic surge in the logging of protected forests in Estonia.
- The Estonian government has issued logging permits for 82,000 hectares of forest – the equivalent to 115,000 football fields – which have been designated protected habitats under Natura 2000.
- “As a result, intolerable pressure is being exerted on the forests that cover half our country, with even protected forests being clear-cut,” writes the vice-chairman of the Estonian Fund for Nature.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
One year on: Insects still in peril as world struggles with global pandemic
- In June 2019, in response to media outcry and alarm over a supposed ongoing global “Insect Apocalypse,” Mongabay published a thorough four-part survey on the state of the world’s insect species and their populations.
- In four, in-depth stories, science writer Jeremy Hance interviewed 24 leading entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations to get their expert views on the rate of insect decline in Europe, the U.S., and especially the tropics, including Latin America, Africa, and Australia.
- Now, 16 months later, Hance reaches out to seven of those scientists to see what’s new. He finds much bad news: butterflies in Ohio declining by 2% per year, 94% of wild bee interactions with native plants lost in New England, and grasshopper abundance falling by 30% in a protected Kansas grassland over 20 years.
- Scientists say such losses aren’t surprising; what’s alarming is our inaction. One researcher concludes: “Real insect conservation would mean conserving large whole ecosystems both from the point source attacks, AND the overall blanket of climate change and six billion more people on the planet than there should be.”
American Forests CEO Jad Daley: ‘We are one nation under trees’
- For nearly 150 years, the group American Forests has been at the forefront of efforts to protect woodlands across the U.S., institute sustainable forestry management, and, more recently, mitigate against increasingly severe wildfires.
- Its president and CEO, Jad Daley, says forests remain a viable solution to contemporary problems ranging from the pandemic-induced economic crisis to social injustice to climate change.
- Investing in forest restoration and urban forestry generates jobs, Daley says, while also contributing to carbon sequestration and providing sustainable timber.
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Daley says he wants the forest movement to be “a place that feels relevant and welcoming for everyone.”
As predators return to Sweden’s wild, ecotourism looks to change mindsets
- Top carnivores such as bears, wolves and lynxes are thriving in the wild in Sweden, where many of them were once extinct or nearly wiped out.
- Policies such as hunting restrictions and compensation for herders affected by livestock predation have allowed these species to recover.
- However, the growing presence of these animals, in particular the wolf, has been controversial, especially among farmers and hunters.
- Ecotourism operators, who expect the predator populations to hold steady over the long term, want locals to see that they can coexist with, and even profit from, the wildlife in their midst.
Are forests the new coal? Global alarm sounds as biomass burning surges
- As climate change rapidly escalates with worsening impacts, and with standing forests vital to achieving global warming solutions, the forest biomass industry is booming. While the industry does utilize wood scraps, it also frequently cuts standing forests to supply wood pellets to be burned in converted coal power plants.
- Though current science has shown that burning the world’s forests to make electricity is disastrous for biodiversity, generates more emissions than coal, and isn’t carbon neutral, a UN policy established in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol erroneously counts energy produced from forest biomass as carbon neutral.
- As a result, nations pay power companies huge subsidies to burn wood pellets, propelling industry growth. While the industry does utilize tree residue, forests are being cut in the US, Canada, Russia, Eastern Europe and Vietnam to supply pellets to the UK, EU and other nations who can claim the energy creates zero emissions.
- So far, the UN has turned a blind eye to closing the climate destabilizing carbon accounting loophole. The Netherlands, which now gets 61% of its renewable energy from biomass, is being urged to wean itself off biomass for energy and heat. If the Dutch do so, advocates hope it could portend closure of Europe’s carbon loophole.
Climate change could put tropical plant germination at risk: Study
- Under a worst-case climate change scenario, more than 20% of plant species in the tropics may experience temperatures too high for their seeds to germinate by 2070, according to an analysis of seed germination data compiled by the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
- Under that same worst-case scenario, over half of tropical species may see reduced rates of germination by 2070 as well, the study reports, while many temperate species at high latitudes will move closer to their optimum temperature and may experience increased germination success as a result.
- The analysis shows that 26% of tropical species and 10% of temperate species are already experiencing temperatures above their optimum. Some plants are found living at sites where temperatures are already above their maximum, suggesting that their lineage in that location may be effectively extinct.
- Plants that find themselves outside of optimum or tolerable temperature ranges may be able to migrate to higher latitudes or altitudes, and existing diversity can offer a reservoir of genetic variation for species to adapt, but physiological limits and long generation times may mean even diverse species struggle.
Photos show scale of massive fires tearing through Siberian forests
- A series of newly released images from Greenpeace International show megafires burning through the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Russia.
- It’s estimated that fires have burnt more than 20.9 million hectares of land in Russia, and 10.9 million hectares of forest, since the start of 2020.
- The fires are being helped by unusually warm temperatures, including a reading of more than 38° Celsius (100° Fahrenheit) in the town of Verkhoyansk — the hottest on record inside the Arctic Circle.
- There are concerns that the smoke from the Siberian fires will cause respiratory problems for people living in urban areas, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
British Columbia poised to lose ‘white rhino of old growth forests’
- In the public imagination, British Columbia is swathed in green and famous for its towering old growth forests. But while the provincial government says 23% of BC’s forests are old growth, a new study finds that a mere 1% remains with tall trees.
- Intense pressure is now being put on the remaining trees by a forestry industry eager to capitalize on nations desperate for new “carbon neutral” sources of energy, including the revamping of coal-fired power plants to burn wood pellets.
- But while the UN says burning biomass in the form of wood pellets is carbon neutral, ten years-worth of new data says that burning trees to make electricity could help put the world on a glide path to climate catastrophe — exceeding the maximum 2 degree Celsius temperature increase target set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
- A recently elected progressive government in BC is weighing its policy options as it negotiates a new provincial forest plan, trying to satisfy the dire need for forestry jobs and a growing economy, while conserving old growth forests which store large amounts of carbon as a hedge against climate disaster. The outcome is uncertain.
As investment giant BlackRock pulls back from coal, NGOs urge the same for biomass energy
- BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management corporation, announced in January that it would be reducing investments in coal due to the fuel’s role in climate change.
- Environmental organizations laud the move, but say it’s not enough. In March, a coalition of 32 organizations from 17 countries delivered a letter stating burning biomass was more polluting than burning coal and asking BlackRock to divest its 5% stake in UK-based Drax, operator of the world’s largest wood-burning power plant.
- Biomass energy is commonly produced by burning wood pellets. Critics of the wood pellet industry say it produces tons of carbon emissions while leveling old-growth and managed forests in the U.S. Southeast and Eastern Europe needed for carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection and resiliency from increasingly intense storms and flooding.
- However, biomass was designated a renewable energy source in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on par with zero-emissions wind and solar energy. Because of this, countries that burn wood pellets do not have to count the emissions it produces. This gives an on-paper-only impression of carbon emissions reductions, thus putting a dent in the global effort to meet Paris Agreement emission-reduction goals to keep warming to 1.5 degree C this century over a 1900 baseline. Global temperatures have already risen 1 degree C over the past 120 years.
Success of Microsoft’s ‘moonshot’ climate pledge hinges on forest conservation
- One mechanism by which the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement incentivizes greenhouse gas reductions is via carbon offsets, payments that compensate nations, states and private landowners who agree to keep forests intact in order to preserve carbon storage capacity and biodiversity.
- But problems exist with forest carbon offset initiatives: corrupt landowners, lack of carbon accounting transparency, and low carbon pricing have caused wariness among investors, and failed to spur forest preservation.
- Now, in a landmark move, Microsoft has pledged to go “carbon negative” by 2030, and erase all the company’s greenhouse gas emissions back to its founding in 1975 by 2050. A big part of achieving that goal will come via the carbon storage provided by verified global forest conservation and reforestation projects around the globe.
- To achieve its goal, Microsoft has teamed with Pachama, a Silicon Valley startup, that seeks to accurately track forest carbon stocks in projects in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, the U.S. and elsewhere using groundbreaking advanced remote-sensing technology including LiDAR, artificial intelligence and satellite imaging.
Agroforestry program in Appalachia receives $590,000 in federal funding
- Agroforestry is set to expand in the eastern U.S. region of Appalachia with the announcement of new funding from the U.S. government.
- More than $590,000 will help growers increase production of a range of non-timber products like ginseng, which prefer to grow under forest cover.
- Growing crops in combination with woody plants like trees and shrubs in a system mimicking a forest is called agroforestry.
- Agroforestry is a highly climate- and biodiversity-positive form of agriculture that is estimated to sequester 45 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere.
The thinning fabric of Earth’s forest cover (commentary)
- The ever-smaller number of forests that remain truly intact and free from degradation are a precious resource, pivotal in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss as well as offering many other benefits to people. But are we taking good care of them? Not yet.
- More and more of the world’s remaining forests are switching from healthy core to degraded, carbon-emitting edges, or isolated patches as intensive human use drives fragmentation, logging, over-hunting, fires, and a host of other pressures large and small.
- Decision makers mistakenly perceive that forest intactness is not as important or urgent as deforestation, or that it is too difficult to measure and monitor. We must lift these constraints, put better policies in place, and expend far more effort into halting the degradation of forests on the ground, in particular in those 20-30 countries where the most-intact forests are concentrated.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Protected areas best conserve mammalian diversity when connected with corridors, biologged weasels show
- For protected area (PA) networks to be an effective conservation tool, they should be well-connected to allow species movement through unprotected landscapes, but questions remain on what configuration of natural features can best facilitate animal movement.
- A recent study compared three theories of animal movement (structurally intact corridors, least-cost paths, and stepping stones) by analyzing the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers, a member of the weasel family. They found the tagged fishers consistently moved along structurally intact, natural corridors across a PA network.
- With the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity Targets in mind, the authors highlight that simply increasing the number of protected areas alone may not achieve the objectives of the protected area network amidst an increasingly fragmented landscape; the conservation of natural corridors between PAs may be equally important, something for future planners to consider.
Two studies provide dueling looks at where trees should go
- A study published today in Science finds the planet contains a U.S.-sized area of unforested land environmentally capable of growing trees without displacing farmland or cities.
- The authors write that if this area were completely reforested, those new trees could, in theory, soak up two thirds of humanity’s carbon emissions to date.
- Meanwhile, another published earlier this week in Science Advances and which analyzed the tropics only, arrived at a slightly smaller area estimate. It points “restoration hotspots” based on the environmental and economic likelihood of restoration success, including Brazil and several African countries.
- However, the authors of the Science study warn we may not have much time to act as many places become hotter and drier in response to global warming, making it harder for trees to survive. They found that almost a quarter of places that could currently grow forests will become climatically unsuitable under business-as-usual global warming scenarios, with the vast majority of these losses in the tropics.
Mongabay investigative series helps confirm global insect decline
- In a newly published four-part series, Mongabay takes a deep dive into the science behind the so-called “Insect Apocalypse,” recently reported in the mainstream media.
- To create the series, Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations, producing what is possibly the most in-depth reporting published to date by any news media outlet on the looming insect abundance crisis.
- While major peer-reviewed studies are few (with evidence resting primarily so far on findings in Germany and Puerto Rico), there is near consensus among the two dozen researchers surveyed: Insects are likely in serious global decline.
- The series is in four parts: an introduction and critical review of existing peer-reviewed data; a look at temperate insect declines; a survey of tropical declines; and solutions to the problem. Researchers agree: Conserving insects — imperative to preserving the world’s ecosystem services — is vital to humanity.
First Nations have created a robust conservation economy in Great Bear Rainforest: Report
- Over the past decade, First Nations have created a robust conservation economy in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest old-growth temperate rainforests left in the world, through investments in sustainable development and environmental stewardship projects that link the health of nature to the wellbeing of indigenous communities, according to a new report.
- The report was issued last week by Coast Funds, an Indigenous-led conservation finance organization created in the wake of historic land-use agreements signed by First Nations and the Canadian province of British Columbia in 2006.
- The nearly $82 million in funding Coast Funds approved for 353 projects between 2008 and 2018 attracted more than $286 million in additional investment in the region, the organization reports. First Nations’ sustainable development projects in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii have had substantial local economic impacts, leading to the creation of more than 1,000 permanent jobs and the founding or growth of 100 businesses, per the report.
The Great Insect Dying: How to save insects and ourselves
- The entomologists interviewed for this Mongabay series agreed on three major causes for the ongoing and escalating collapse of global insect populations: habitat loss (especially due to agribusiness expansion), climate change and pesticide use. Some added a fourth cause: human overpopulation.
- Solutions to these problems exist, most agreed, but political commitment, major institutional funding and a large-scale vision are lacking. To combat habitat loss, researchers urge preservation of biodiversity hotspots such as primary rainforest, regeneration of damaged ecosystems, and nature-friendly agriculture.
- Combatting climate change, scientists agree, requires deep carbon emission cuts along with the establishment of secure, very large conserved areas and corridors encompassing a wide variety of temperate and tropical ecosystems, sometimes designed with preserving specific insect populations in mind.
- Pesticide use solutions include bans of some toxins and pesticide seed coatings, the education of farmers by scientists rather than by pesticide companies, and importantly, a rethinking of agribusiness practices. The Netherlands’ Delta Plan for Biodiversity Recovery includes some of these elements.
The Great Insect Dying: Vanishing act in Europe and North America
- Though arthropods make up most of the species on Earth, and much of the planet’s biomass, they are significantly understudied compared to mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Lack of baseline data makes insect abundance decline difficult to assess.
- Insects in the temperate EU and U.S. are the world’s best studied, so it is here that scientists expect to detect precipitous declines first. A groundbreaking study published in October 2017 found that flying insects in 63 protected areas in Germany had declined by 75 percent in just 25 years.
- The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has a 43-year butterfly record, and over that time two-thirds of the nations’ species have decreased. Another recent paper found an 84 percent decline in butterflies in the Netherlands from 1890 to 2017. Still, EU researchers say far more data points are needed.
- Neither the U.S. or Canada have conducted an in-depth study similar to that in Germany. But entomologists agree that major abundance declines are likely underway, and many are planning studies to detect population drops. Contributors to decline are climate change, pesticides and ecosystem destruction.
The Great Insect Dying: A global look at a deepening crisis
- Recent studies from Germany and Puerto Rico, and a global meta-study, all point to a serious, dramatic decline in insect abundance. Plummeting insect populations could deeply impact ecosystems and human civilization, as these tiny creatures form the base of the food chain, pollinate, dispose of waste, and enliven soils.
- However, limited baseline data makes it difficult for scientists to say with certainty just how deep the crisis may be, though anecdotal evidence is strong. To that end, Mongabay is launching a four-part series — likely the most in-depth, nuanced look at insect decline yet published by any media outlet.
- Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and researchers on six continents working in over a dozen nations to determine what we know regarding the “great insect dying,” including an overview article, and an in-depth story looking at temperate insects in the U.S. and the European Union — the best studied for their abundance.
- We also utilize Mongabay’s position as a leader in tropical reporting to focus solely on insect declines in the tropics and subtropics, where lack of baseline data is causing scientists to rush to create new, urgently needed survey study projects. The final story looks at what we can do to curb and reverse the loss of insect abundance.
Where the forest has no name
- North America’s temperate rainforest extends some 2,500 miles from California to the Gulf of Alaska, providing important habitat for many species and playing a big role in global carbon sequestration. However, despite its uniqueness, there is no officially recognized name for the whole of the forest.
- This forest has been beset by logging over the last century, with little unprotected old growth remaining. The Trump administration’s plans to allow logging in roadless areas in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest could ramp up its loss in the coming years.
- Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate, editors of Cascadia Times, argue an official name could help galvanize action to save this forest.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Tall and old or dense and young: Which kind of forest is better for the climate?
- Scientists say reforestation and better forest management can provide 18 percent of climate change mitigation through 2030. But studies appear to be divided about whether it’s better to prioritize the conservation of old forests or the replanting of young ones.
- A closer look, however, reconciles these two viewpoints. While young forests tend to absorb more carbon overall because trees can be crowded together when they’re small, a tree’s carbon absorption rate accelerates as it ages. This means that forests comprised of tall, old trees – like the temperate rainforests of North America’s Pacific coast – are some of the planet’s biggest carbon storehouses.
- But when forests are logged, their immense stores of carbon are quickly released. A study found the logging of forests in the U.S. state of Oregon emitted 33 million tons of CO2 – almost as much as the world’s dirtiest coal plant.
- Researchers are calling on industry to help buffer climate change by doubling tree harvest rotations to 80 years, and urge government agencies managing forests to impose their own harvest restrictions.
Protecting small, old-growth forests fails to preserve bird diversity: Study
- Recent research suggests that designating small fragments of old-growth temperate forests as protected areas is not sufficient to halt loss of bird diversity, and that better monitoring and management of forests is required to achieve conservation goals.
- A research team led by Jeffrey Brown, a doctoral student at Rutgers University in the U.S., used data spanning a 40-year time period to study bird populations in Mettler’s Woods, a 64-acre old-growth forest within the Rutgers-owned William L. Hutcheson Memorial Forest in the state of New Jersey.
- Mettler’s Woods is one of the last uncut stands of oak-hickory forest to be found in the United States. It would, on its surface, appear to provide ideal habitat for many bird species. But nine birds known to historically inhabit the forest no longer nest there, and many other species have lower populations than expected.
Super variable California salamander is ‘an evolutionist’s dream’
- The ensatina is a widespread salamander species that can be found in forests along the entire western coast of North America.
- It is one of only two species that broadly lives up to the “ring species” concept: the ensatina is considered to be a single species, but is characterized by a chain of interconnected populations around California’s Central Valley that can look strikingly different. While the intermediate populations can interbreed, the forms at the southern ends of the loop are so different that they can no longer mate successfully everywhere they meet.
- Ensatinas are among the key predators on the forest floors they occupy, and play a critical role in sequestering carbon.
- Researchers are now trying to figure out if ensatinas and other North American salamanders have any natural defenses against the deadly Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans fungus.
New study finds young forests have a huge climate impact
- A recent study finds young forests sequester more carbon per year than old-growth forests. In total, it estimates that intact, old-growth forests sequestered 950 million to 1.11 billion metric tons of carbon per year while younger forests – those that have been growing less than 140 years – stored between 1.17 and 1.66 billion metric tons per year.
- The study also estimates that the world’s regenerating forests stand to uptake a further 50 billion metric tons of carbon as they grow.
- These findings upend conventional wisdom that old-growth tropical rainforests are the planet’s biggest carbon sinks.
- The authors say their research could be used to improve forest management and help mitigate climate change.
In a predator-infested forest, survival for baby birds comes by the road
- Fledglings of a common bird, the white-rumped shama, in a tropical forest in Thailand were more likely to survive if they came from nests near a roadway than if they fledged deeper in the forest, researchers have found.
- The scientists believe that predators’ preference for the forest’s interior at this study site led to the difference in survival rates.
- Still, they caution that the apparent benefits of one road for a small subset of a single species don’t necessarily extend to the broader bird community, and say that planners should avoid building roads through areas of high conservation value.
- More research is necessary to determine if this effect is specific just to this study site.
Essential ubiquity: How one tiny salamander species has a huge impact
- Red-backed salamanders are little lungless salamanders that live in the deciduous forests of eastern and central U.S. and up into Canada. They have one of the biggest distributions of any North American salamander.
- Their secretive nature means they can be hard to find. However, they’re some of the most abundant leaf-litter organisms in the forests within their range.
- Research indicates that because of their abundance, red-backed salamanders hold pivotal roles in their ecosystems, influencing a forest’s fungal communities. Fungi break down organic matter like fallen leaves, logs, and dead organisms. If nothing were to rot, the forest would soon starve. Red-backed salamanders feed on a wide variety of invertebrates like ants, spiders, centipedes, beetles, snails, and termites — many of which graze on fungus.
- But while red-backed salamanders are still relatively common, they are facing a number of threats. Logging in the southern Appalachian Mountains has reduced their numbers an estimated 9 percent (representing a loss of around 250 million individuals). And a salamander-eating fungus may soon invade North America, which researchers are worried could decimate salamander populations across the continent.
Pumas engineer their environment, providing habitat for other species
- A new study finds that mountain lions in the western United States change their surroundings and as a result are “ecosystem engineers.”
- A team of scientists tracked 18 lion kills in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming and identified 215 species of beetles living in, on and off the carcasses — that is, the kills provided habitat as well as food for scavengers.
- The work demonstrates the critical role mountain lions play in providing resources to other species in the ecosystems in which they live.
Forestry reforms could fall short without PM’s backing in Ukraine
- Ukraine’s prime minister called for “a massive crackdown” on his country’s timber sector after allegations of widespread corruption and illegality.
- The London-based NGO Earthsight first revealed the potential illegalities in a July 2018 report, and since then, independent investigations from WWF Ukraine and the EU’s Technical Assistance and Information Exchange have corroborated Earthsight’s findings.
- A reform package that would allow for independent enforcement of Ukraine’s forestry laws and increased transparency has been approved by the country’s cabinet of ministers, but it still lacks the signature and public backing of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.
Bear-human conflict risks pinpointed amid resurgent bear population
- New research maps out the potential risk “hotspots” for black bear-human conflict based on an analysis of conditions that led to nearly 400 bear deaths between 1997 and 2013.
- The study area covered the Lake Tahoe Basin and the Great Basin Desert in western Nevada.
- The methods used to predict risks based on environmental variables could help wildlife managers identify and mitigate human-carnivore conflict in other parts of the world, the authors write.
Diversity is key to forests withstanding drought, research finds
- Research published in Nature last week finds that “hydraulically diverse” forests are particularly resilient in the face of drought, which could help inform strategies for restoring forests after they’ve been degraded by wildfires or logging.
- Hydraulic traits are essentially the mechanisms by which a tree moves water through itself, which in turn help determine the degree of drought stress a tree can withstand before its water-transport system starts to shut down. These characteristics, the researchers write in the study, were found to be “the predominant significant predictors” of drought response across all of the forest sites they studied.
- The researchers suggest that there are steps forest managers can take to improve the diversity and drought resilience of forests, especially following a traumatic disturbance of the ecosystem such as logging or wildfire.
Earth has more trees now than 35 years ago
- Tree cover increased globally over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature.
- The study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based on analysis of satellite data from 1982 to 2016.
- The research found that tree cover loss on the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions.
- However all the tree cover data comes with an important caveat: tree cover is not necessarily forest cover.
Cross-border camera trap research puts wild Amur leopard number at 84
- Scientists working in Russia and China have used camera traps to estimate that 84 Amur leopards remain in the wild.
- Previous studies tracked the cats using their footprints in snow, but the camera trap photographs allowed the researchers to identify individual animals by their unique spot patterns.
- The team found that 20 percent of the Amur leopards appeared on both sides of the border between China and Russia, highlighting the importance of cross-border collaboration.
EU demand siphons illicit timber from Ukraine, investigation finds
- Corrupt management of Ukraine’s timber sector is supplying the EU with large amounts of wood from the country’s dense forests.
- The London-based investigative nonprofit Earthsight found evidence that forestry officials have taken bribes to supply major European firms with Ukrainian wood that may have been harvested illegally.
- Earthsight argues that EU-based companies are not carrying out the due diligence that the EU Timber Regulation requires when buying from “high-risk” sources of timber.
Backfire: How misinformation about wildfire harms climate activism (commentary)
- In this commentary, Douglas Bevington argues that climate activists may be inadvertently hurting their cause when they repeat erroneous claims about forest fires in the American West.
- Bevington says that fire suppression has caused an ecologically harmful shortage of fire in western forests.
- He adds that forest fire policy is being used as a pretext for logging and biomass energy production.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Nearly four decades of cycling race video reveals climate change’s effects
- A team of ecologists has used video from key locations along the route of the annual Tour of Flanders cycling race to understand how plants are responding to regional rises in temperature.
- After watching more than 200 hours of footage from 36 years of the race, the team found that trees began producing flowers and sprouting leaves earlier in the season.
- By 2016, trees were 67 percent more likely to have produced leaves by the time of the race than in the 1980s. By comparison, few if any trees had leaves before 1990.
- The researchers believe that analyses of video from other cycling races and similar annual events could yield new insights into the ecological changes that temperature changes instigate.
City forests store rainforest-levels of carbon, study finds
- A recently published study mapped the carbon stores of areas of tree cover in the London Borough of Camden.
- Their results reveal high levels of carbon in Camden’s urban forests – including one area that approaches the carbon density of tropical rainforest.
- They write that although the contribution of urban areas to global aboveground biomass may be comparatively small area-wise, some urban forests have carbon densities comparable to rainforests.
- They say that their results highlight the importance of conserving urban forests as carbon sinks.
After logging, activists hope to extend protections for Bialowieza Forest
- Bialoweiza Forest straddles Poland and Belarus and is Europe’s largest remaining lowland old growth forest, home to wildlife that has disappeared from much of the rest of Europe. In March 2016, the government approved a plan to triple industrial logging in Poland’s Bialoweiza forest. The government argued it was the only way to combat a spruce bark beetle outbreak, but environmentalists believed that was largely an excuse to give access to the state-run logging regime.
- According to watchdog organizations, loggers cut 190,000 cubic meters of wood in 2017. This amounts to around 160,000-180,000 trees and affects an area of about 1,900 hectares. It also represents the most trees cut in the forest in any one year since 1987 when Poland was under a communist government.
- In May 2018, Europe’s highest court ruled the logging illegal, noting that the government’s own documents showed that logging was a bigger threat than the beetles, which are a part of natural, cyclical process that is likely exacerbated by climate change. Poland, threatened with high fines, backed down—and the logging stopped.
- Activists and environmentalists are calling for expanding national park status – which currently applies to just a small portion of Poland’s portion of the forest – over its entirety. But they worry a government panel of experts will once again push to open Bialoweiza to logging.
As biomass energy gains traction, southern US forests feel the burn
- An estimated 50 to 80 percent of southern wetland forest is now gone, and that which remains provides ecosystem services totaling $500 billion as well as important wildlife habitat. Logging is considered one of the biggest threats to the 35 million acres of remaining wetland forest in the southern U.S., and conservation organizations are saying this threat is coming largely from the wood pellet biomass industry.
- Touted as a renewable energy source, research shows wood pellets release more carbon dioxide than coal per megawatt of electricity produced and industry critics worry that incentivizing this energy source could actually be accelerating climate change.
- Experts argue that biomass energy effectively acts as a loophole for countries to under-report their carbon emissions and give a false impression of meeting Paris Agreement objectives. Research indicates pellet production plants also have a negative impact on air and water quality.
- But industry proponents say biomass energy is an important component of mitigating climate change and that regulations will ensure its sustainability.
Scientists find Europe’s last primary forests
- A study finds 3.4 million acres (13,760 square kilometers or 5,313 square miles) in Europe fit the definition of primary forest set by the FAO.
- These forests are scattered around Europe and provide important habitat for wildlife.
- But the researchers warn that less than half are strictly protected, meaning that logging is legal in the majority.
- They urge the EU to increase the official level of protection granted to these forests.
Deforestation leads to big hikes in local temperature, study finds
- Researchers have discovered a correlation between deforestation and local temperature changes in many temperate mid-latitude locations around the world.
- These increases were particularly high in North America. The study found that deforestation in heavily cleared regions of the central U.S. contributed as much as 1 degree Celsius to local maximum temperatures.
- Overall, the study indicates that deforestation contributes around one-third to average hottest-day temperature increases in places that lost at least 15 percent of their forest cover.
Why intact forests are important
- Overall, the world lost more than 7 percent of its intact forest landscapes in just over a decade, a trend that appears to be accelerating.
- A new study discusses how intact forests are critically important for mitigating climate change, maintaining water supplies, safeguarding biodiversity and even protecting human health.
- However, it warns that global policies aimed at reducing deforestation are not putting enough emphasis on the preservation of the world’s dwindling intact forests, instead relying on a one-size-fits-all approach that may end up doing more harm than good.
- The researchers urge more inclusion and prioritization of intact forests in global commitments and policies aimed at curbing deforestation.
Smallest wild cat in the Americas faces big problems — but hope exists
- The güiña (Leopardus guigna) is the smallest wild cat species in the Americas. It lives in the temperate rainforests of Chile and western Argentina. The species is listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with habitat loss and illegal killing considered the major causes of its decline.
- Scientists from institutions around the world interviewed residents and surveyed güiña habitat using camera traps and remote-sensed imagery to model the drivers of local extinction in the Chilean portion of the species’ range.
- They found the biggest threat to the güiña in Chile is agricultural land subdivision, which is causing habitat fragmentation. However, the study also revealed that the güiña appears to be able to tolerate a fair amount of habitat loss.
- But as agricultural land is subdivided, understory forest — important habitat for the güiña — is being cleared. The researchers write it’s important to build spatial plans for this species at the landscape scale and incentivize farmers to manage their lands in a güiña-friendly way.
Study reveals forests have yet another climate-protection superpower
- Scientists looked at reactive gases emitted by trees and other vegetation, finding they have an overall cooling effect on the atmosphere globally.
- As forests are cleared, emissions of these cooling reactive gases are reduced. The researchers estimate the loss of this function this may contribute 14 percent towards deforestation-caused global warming.
- The authors write that effective climate policies will require a “robust understanding” of the relationship between land-use change like deforestation and climate, and urge more research be done toward this goal.
Conserving habitat not enough to help species cope with climate change
- New research finds that habitat-based conservation strategies don’t adequately compensate for the range that species in three groups stand to lose due to climate change.
- The team of scientists based in Austria looked at the effects of climate change on 51 species of grasshoppers, butterflies and vascular plants living in central Europe.
- Habitat-based conservation can provide a lifeline, but their model predicts that it won’t be enough to prevent some species from regional extinction.
New study: Bird species blossom in stable climates
- A team of scientists from Sweden and the United States found that more bird species inhabit stable climates.
- The finding runs counter the hypothesis that a changing climate induces the evolution of species.
- That could mean that these bird species will be less adapted to upticks in temperature as part of current climate change.
- But the stability of these climates could also protect the species living there since they’re not expected to warm as much as more seasonal areas.
New study: Climate change shifts timing of floods in Europe
- A team of 46 scientists analyzed five decades of data on river flooding in Europe, leading to the strongest evidence yet that climate change affects this important natural process.
- In northeastern Europe, where rising temperatures have accelerated snowmelt, the team found earlier flooding at more than 80 percent of the data collection locations.
- Across the rest of the continent, the impacts of climate change were less direct.
- In some places, such as the Atlantic coast, the researchers found a shift toward earlier flooding. Some parts of Europe near the Mediterranean Sea experienced flooding later in the year.
Five promising stories for Global Tiger Day
- Since the last Global Tiger Day in 2016, researchers have discovered tiger populations in unexpected areas, such as forested corridors along riverbanks and in areas that recently served as theaters of war.
- Several countries have worked to protect the tigers that live within their borders, including the creation of a massive national park and taking steps to end tiger farming.
- Camera trap surveys continue to prove invaluable to wildlife researchers in tracking down tigers and other species that can range over huge areas.
How the World Heritage Convention could save more wilderness: Q&A with World Heritage expert Cyril Kormos
- Since its inception in the 1970s, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention has officially recognized 1,052 sites of cultural or ecological importance around the planet.
- Making the list as a World Heritage site can help provide a location with increased protection and attention.
- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an advisor to the World Heritage Committee, released a study showing that 1.8 percent of wilderness areas are covered under World Heritage protection.
- The IUCN recommends a more methodical approach to the designation of World Heritage sites to help fill these gaps.
Leaked terms of huge EU-Japan trade deal spark environmental alarm
- A new trade deal between the European Union (EU) and Japan is set to become one of the biggest ever.
- The deal would alleviate certain trade barriers, improve access to automobile and machinery industries for both Japan and the EU and establish new protocols for the resolution of investment disputes.
- Conservation NGOs are critical of the deal’s terms, which they say lack “any binding obligations” to environmental protection, and will result in lower standards against illegal logging.
Forest conservation might be an even more important climate solution than we realize: Study
- Trees are a crucial regulating factor in the cycle of water and heat exchange between Earth’s surface and atmosphere — and thus forests play a key role in regulating local climates and surface temperatures, according to the authors of the study.
- The researchers discovered that forests often help keep temperate and tropical regions cooler, while contributing to warming in northern high-latitude areas.
- “Forests play a more important role in cooling the surface in almost all regions of the Earth than was previously thought,” Kaiguang Zhao, an assistant professor of environment modeling and spatial analysis at The Ohio State University and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.
Warming climate coaxes carbon from down deep in temperate soils
- The study looked at the release of carbon in temperate soils down to 100 centimeters (39.4 inches).
- A 4-degree Celsius rise in soil temperature led to an increase of 34-37 percent in the amount of carbon released.
- If all soils to react in the same way, that could unleash an amount of carbon into the atmosphere equivalent to about 30 percent of what human activities emit, according to the authors.
Nitrogen pollution slows down forest decomposers
- Soil fungi are the primary decomposers in temperate forests.
- Scientists found that fungi species reared in nitrogen polluted soils were able to decompose far less plant material than the same species collected from less polluted soil.
- Even when fungi from polluted areas were grown in un-polluted petri dishes, they still could not decompose as well as fungi collected from cleaner soils.
- Researchers hypothesize that nitrogen pollution could be altering how fungi metabolize nitrogen.
Forest Stewardship Council cuts ties with Austrian timber giant
- A year-long investigation by the FSC found Holzindustrie Schweighofer was illegally sourcing wood from Romania – including from national parks. In response, the FSC put the company on probation, a move seen as a slap on the hand by critics.
- On February 17, the FSC announced its intention to fully disassociate from Schweighofer. Re-association is possible in the future.
- Romania is home to Europe’s last old-growth lowland forest, which is losing its tree cover to deforestation activities.
‘Last frontiers of wilderness’: Intact forest plummets globally
- More than 7 percent of intact forest landscapes, defined as forest ecosystems greater than 500 square kilometers in area and showing no signs of human impact, disappeared between 2000 and 2013.
- In the tropics, the rate of loss appears to be accelerating: Three times more IFLs were lost between 2011 and 2013 as between 2001 and 2003.
- The authors of the study, published January 13 in the journal Science Advances, point to timber harvesting and agricultural expansion as the leading causes of IFL loss.
Fragmentation boosts carbon storage along temperate forest edges
- A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science reports that trees on the edges of temperate forests in eastern Massachusetts grow nearly 90 percent faster than those on the interior, in contrast with the declines documented in tropical and boreal forest edges.
- The increased growth rates and biomass production could translate into a 13-percent boost in carbon uptake and a 10-percent bump in carbon storage over current estimates in the region.
- However, these edges are more sensitive to higher temperatures, and as the climate warms, their growth rates will likely drop off more quickly than those further into the forest.
Illegal logging shows little sign of slowing
- The report was produced by a dozens of scientists and is the most comprehensive analysis of illegal logging to date.
- It finds organized crime and a lack of land tenure for local communities to be big drivers of illicit timber extraction in tropical countries around the world.
- Research indicates around a third of all tropical timber traded globally may come from illegal forest conversion.
- Those affiliated with the report underline the need for more cooperation between countries and sectors, as well as the development of effective policies, in the fight against illegal logging.
93% of world’s roadless areas are less than half the size of Cincinnati
- The study used crowd-sourced data covering 36 million kilometers to map the extent of roads around the world.
- The researchers found roads have essentially fragmented the Earth’s land surface into 600,000 pieces. Only 7 percent of roadless areas are larger than 100 square kilometers, and only 9 percent of these are protected.
- The study’s authors and an outside expert caution that the area affected by roads is likely much higher, since some regions are not thoroughly mapped.
- The study recommends governments place higher importance on preserving the world’s remaining roadless areas.
FSC puts timber processor on probation after ‘scathing’ investigation
- Holzindustrie Schweighofer is an Austrian company that sources timber from Romania, which contains some of Europe’s last tracts of primary forest.
- An FSC investigation uncovered evidence of Holzindustrie Schweighofer engaging in activities in Romania that went against FSC certification policy, such as sourcing illegally logged timber.
- The investigation’s conclusions led its panel to recommend that the company be disassociated from the FSC, but the organization chose instead to put the company on a two-month probation during which time it must fulfill certain conditions.
- The move has attracted criticism from Environmental Investigation Agency, which called the decision “shocking.”
Study points to El Niño-like global connections between forests
- A team of scientists from the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, Michigan State University and the Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia modeled climate simulations comparing what would happen as the result of die-offs and deforestation in the Amazon and western North America to other forests.
- In isolation, a forest die-off in North America would lead to slower growth in northern Asia’s forests and a drier climate in the southeastern United States. However, the loss of forests in both North America and the Amazon could make the American Southeast’s forests more productive.
- The authors say that the ‘teleconnections’ between forests separated by huge distances revealed by their research indicates a need for globally coordinated forest management.
Tree biodiversity critical to forest productivity, study finds
- A team of more than 80 researchers collected data in 44 countries covering nearly all major forest ecosystems.
- In natural forests, they were able to show accelerating declines in productivity as the forest loses more tree species.
- Based on their calculations, the value of tree species biodiversity is $166-$490 billion.
Russia’s Far East: then and now
- Mongabay interviewed Jonathan Slaght, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, who recently published an annotated translation of the observations of Russian military surveyor Vladimir Arsenyev.
- Arsenyev first started exploring the eastern province of Primorye shortly after the vast region became a Russian territory, documenting in great detail the animals and people that inhabited the area.
- Since that time, Primorye’s forests have been extensively logged and its wildlife hunted. But Russia has made some gains in terms of conservation, with tiger numbers rebounding after hunting nearly wiped them out by the 1940s.
- Slaght is currently working with logging companies to close logging roads and make Primorye’s forests less accessible for timber extraction and poaching.
China’s reforestation program a letdown for wildlife, study finds
- According to fieldwork from south-central Sichuan Province, biodiversity within monocultures is lower than within cropland, the very land being restored.
- The research found that cropland restored with mixed forests offers marginal biodiversity gains and comes at no economic cost to households, relative to monocultures.
- The researchers recommend incentives for restoration of native forests under the program, which they say would provide the greatest benefits for biodiversity.
Greenpeace firefighters attacked by armed men in Russia
- A Greenpeace volunteer firefighting team was attacked overnight by armed men in southern Russia, says the activist group.
- In a statement issued Friday, Greenpeace said that a staff member and a volunteer were given medical treatment for injuries sustained in the attack.
- Forest fires are a regular occurrence across Russia’s taiga forests in Siberia and the Russian Far East, but are worsening due to logging, forest management practices, and the effects of climate change.
Deforestation has been occurring continuously in New England since the 1980s
- New England, which includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, is often considered a prime example of a so-called “forest transition,” in which forest regions recover from widespread historical deforestation as economic development activities, especially farming and forestry operations, diminish.
- Researchers found that, while New England did undergo a forest transition phase prior to 1985, it has been in a secondary phase of deforestation ever since.
- Their results showed that more than 385,000 hectares (more than 950,000 acres) of forest has been lost since 1985 — five percent of New England’s total forest area.
Putting the ‘evidence’ in evidence-based forest conservation
- Conservation Evidence (CE) has published a comprehensive new synopsis of global interventions in forests summarizing the results of more than 120 conservation actions that have been undertaken, such as changing fire regimes, legal and community protection, prescribed burning, or encouraging seed-dispersing birds to take up residence in degraded areas.
- Scientists publish thousands of research papers every year that could help improve conservation, but the knowledge they impart and the changes they recommend are implemented on the ground all too infrequently.
- Essentially, the CE team has summarized the findings of hundreds of those unread scientific papers and grouped them by the interventions that they evaluate — providing a database of evidence for the effectiveness of various management techniques in temperate, tropical, and boreal forests.
Ignoring scientists, Poland begins logging famous primeval forest
- Unlike the rest of Poland and much of Europe, a significant portion – approximately half – of Bialowieza Forest has never been knowingly logged.
- The forest is home to wildlife like wolves, moose, and lynx. It served a pivotal role in bringing back the European bison, which had been hunted to extinction in the wild.
- Now, Poland’s new far-right government is planning on opening up parts of Bialowieza Forest to loggers, in a purported effort to fight spruce beetle infestation.
- But scientists and environmentalists are criticizing the move, saying it isn’t scientifically valid and is simply a ploy to access the forest’s timber reserves.
For Earth Day: climbing a redwood tree
- On the outskirts of Silicon Valley, I’m scaling a 200-foot tall, somewhere between 600-1000 year old redwood tree .
- I have been afforded this unique opportunity care of Tree Climbing Planet, an organization that arranges and runs tree climbs, and an extremely generous individual, who owns the private land we’re on today.
- Tree Climbing Planet headed by Tim Kovar, a master tree climber. Its goal is to get people into trees safely and reconnect them with the natural world.
China’s forests are growing back – but at a cost
- In 1998, catastrophic flooding spurred China to implement the Natural Forest Conservation Program, with a goal of reforesting 40 million hectares by 2020.
- Analysis of satellite data indicate the program has had some success, with a 1.6 percent gain in overall tree cover between 2000 and 2010.
- But now, instead of supplying its own timber products, China is sourcing them from the forests of other countries.
UNESCO declares largest biosphere reserve in North America
- The new biosphere reserve encompasses Great Bear Lake and its surrounding watershed in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
- Great Bear Lake is the world’s eighth-largest lake, and one of its most pristine.
- The designation was made to reflect the region’s ecological significance and the efforts by indigenous communities to protect it in the face of climate change.
10 facts about forests for International Forest Day
- Today is International Forest Day, which was launched by the United Nations March 21, 2012 to promote the importance of forests and trees.
- In recognition of the designation, below are ten facts about forests.
- Forests cover around 4 billion hectares or 30 percent of Earth’s land surface.
Scientists blame Smokey Bear for making U.S. forests less resilient
- Strict anti-fire policy was implemented in the 1940s aimed at stomping out wildfires and preventing them from starting.
- But many scientists and wildlife experts say fire suppression can be harmful to ecosystems.
- A new study finds fire suppression has contributed to a big compositional change in eastern U.S. forests, with less resilient tree species supplanting drought- and fire-resistant species.
Market-based conservation programs slow deforestation in Chile, study finds
- In recent years, eco-certification, moratoria, and other so-called non-state, market-driven governance regimes have become a common approach to reducing deforestation.
- However, data on the effectiveness of these programs has been limited.
- A new study analyzing three such programs in Chile finds that the more collaboration between industry and environmental groups a program entails, the more successful it may be.
Widespread death of evergreens predicted in American Southwest
- The U.S. Forest Service said last year that as many as 12 million trees had been killed by the drought in California alone.
- Researchers published a paper last month in the journal Nature Climate Change predicting widespread death of needleleaf evergreen trees in the Southwest United States by the year 2100 due to global warming.
- The research team that conducted the study performed field tests and studied a range of validated regional predictions and global climate models in order to reach their dire conclusion.
Biomass: a burning issue for European and U.S. forests
- Pellets made from woody biomass are being touted as a cleaner alternative to traditional energy production methods.
- However, a new report argues that subsidies aimed at the biomass industry are encouraging the clearing of forests in Europe and the U.S.
- The report’s authors say the southeastern U.S. and Romania – home to Europe’s last “intact forest landsape” – are particularly under threat from biomass production.
Romania struggles to turn the tide of illegal logging
- Romania has Europe’s last tract of primary forest that’s large enough to retain its original levels of biodiversity.
- An average of 62 reported cases of illegal logging are reported every day, with three hectares of woodland lost every hour.
- The European Commission is investigating claims alleging Romania’s biggest timber exporters are sourcing illegally-felled wood.
World’s protected forests lost 3 percent of their tree cover in 13 years
- They found that forests occupied one-third of the world’s total land area in the year 2000. Of this, 19 percent was under some form of protection, and 25 percent was intact.
- Latin America experienced respective losses of 1 percent of its PAs and IFLs, compared to a 5 percent loss outside of them. North America had the highest rate of both protected and intact forest loss between 2000 and 2012 at 6 percent each. Central America and Australia/Oceana lost 5 percent of their protected forest cover.
- In some areas, the researchers found protected status appeared to confer no actual protection when it came to deforestation.
Lumber Liquidators pays $13.2M to end illegal logging probe
- U.S. flooring company Lumber Liquidators Inc. will pay $13.2 million to resolve a federal investigation into its timber sourcing practices.
- Under the settlement, announced Wednesday, Lumber Liquidators will plead guilty to violating the Lacey Act, a law that regulates imports of timber and wildlife products.
- Prosecutors say the company’s suppliers in China were using suspect wood from Myanmar and Russia.
U.N. data suggests slowdown in forest loss
- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has released the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), a report published every five years.
- FRA is based primarily on self-reported data from countries and territories.
- The report shows that global forest loss slowed over the past 5 years, with the tropics accounting for most forest loss.
How many trees are cut down every year?
- A new study published in Nature estimates the planet has 3.04 trillion trees.
- The research says 15.3 billion trees are chopped down every year.
- It also estimates that 46% of the world’s trees have been cleared over the past 12,000 years.
Global forest loss reached 46 million acres in 2014
- Global forest loss amounted to 18.7 million hectares (46 million acres) in 2014, a decline of about 9 percent relative to 2013 and 20 percent compared to 2012.
- The much-anticipated data, published this morning on Global Forest Watch, reflects changes in tree cover, including deforestation, harvesting of tree plantations, fire damage, and forest die-off from disease and pests.
- The usual suspects topped the 2014 list: Russia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia and the United States.
Satellite data shows how deforestation is impacting our weather and our food
Inside Central American rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Thanks to the world’s voracious appetite for crops like coffee, palm oil, rice, rubber, soy and tea, large-scale agriculture is one of the main drivers of deforestation around the globe. The conversion of forests to cropland can drive local temperatures up or down by as much […]
The triumph of the bison: Europe’s biggest animal bounces back a century after vanishing
We’d been hiking through deep snow all day with the mercury well below zero, not an uncommon occurrence during winter in eastern Poland. Still I was sweating, covered in several layers and walking with greater strides than I was used to. We stopped once for lunch, taking our repast on a snow-covered log, eating our […]
Earth Day call to double native forest canopy by 2035
A group of prominent researchers, philanthropists, and activists are calling for a doubling of the planet’s native forest canopy by 2035 as a way to make a “U-turn” on global environmental degradation. “The Earth Day Declaration to Double Native Forests” was initiated by Randy Hayes, the head of Foundation Earth and the co-founder of the […]
Scientists warn of global warming threat to temperate rainforests
Redwoods in Big Basin State Park, California. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. If you Google “rainforest,” you’re almost assured to get a page of search results mostly about the tropics. Yet, another kind of rainforest also exists: temperate rainforests. Far less expansive than the tropical kind, temperate rainforests occur in isolated patches and strips around […]
Study finds soil releases carbon for decades after forests are felled
Autumn leaves in Pittsfield State Park, Massachusetts. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Soil plays a big role in the global carbon cycle, but how much or how quickly forest soil carbon pools decline after logging is poorly understood. This may have serious implications for how carbon emissions from deforestation are accounted for. The U.S. Forest […]
Photos: Amur leopard population hits at least 65
Camera trap of Amur leopard. The Amur leopard evolved its thick coat to keep warm in the cold, long winters. Photo by: WWF. Most of the world’s big predators are in decline, but there are some happy stories out there. This week, WWF announced that the Amur leopard population has grown to a total of […]
China tries out logging ban in northeastern province
China’s Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia to its north and east, contains 18.5 million hectares of state forest – more natural forest than any other province in the country. However, since the mid-twentieth century, Heilongjiang has had over 600 million cubic meters of timber extracted from its woodlands. Now, China is trying out a complete […]
Scientists call on Obama to stop logging in old growth forests
Clear-cut logging in Alaska. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Seven conservation societies have joined a campaign to push the Obama administration to end old-growth forest logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The American Fisheries Society, American Ornithologists Union, American Society of Mammalogists, Ecological Society of America, Pacific Seabird Group, Society for Conservation Biology, and The […]
Tree climbing as a tool to build respect for forests
Tim Kovar on an Amazon sunset climb. Courtesy of Tim Kovar. The bulk of life in the rainforest is found the leafy layers of the canopy. But little was known about this world until relatively recently, when hobbyists, naturalists, and researchers began devising ways to access the upper levels of the forest. These efforts accelerated […]
Dissolving pulp: a growing threat to global forests
100 million trees are cut down every year to make dissolving pulp for clothing, toothpaste, food Dissolving pulp is not just a threat to the forests of Indonesia. It is a growing industry across the globe, and it’s putting several of the world’s endangered forests in jeopardy. You might not have heard of dissolving pulp, […]
How do we save the world’s vanishing old-growth forests?
Scientists say both rich and developing countries must recognize primary forests as a conservation priority. Primary rainforest in Imbak Canyon in the state of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The forest is home to pygmy elephants, clouded leopard, orangutans, banteng, and proboscis monkeys among thousands of other species. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. There’s nothing in the […]
When forests aren’t really forests: the high cost of Chile’s tree plantations
Increased tree cover in Chile is due in large part to expansion of wood fiber farms At first glance, the statistics tell a hopeful story: Chile’s forests are expanding. According to Global Forest Watch, overall forest cover changes show approximately 300,000 hectares were gained between 2000 and 2013 in Chile’s central and southern regions. Specifically, […]
World Heritage Committee takes ten minutes to reject Australia’s bid to strip forests of protection
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee today unanimously rejected a controversial proposal by the Australian government to strip 74,000 hectares of temperate rainforest from a World Heritage Site in Tasmania. In an embarrassing setback for the Australia government, it took the committee less than ten minutes to unanimously reject the proposal, according to the Guardian. The […]
3M linked to deforestation in Brazil, Canada, Europe, and U.S., says NGO
A new report from activist group, ForestEthics, alleges that U.S. company, 3M, supplies many of its products from endangered forests around the world. The NGO links 3M’s masking tape and sandpaper to caribou habitat in the boreal forests of Canada, Scotch-Brite sponges to a controversial paper mill in Brazil, and those ubiquitous Post-it Notes to […]
The remarkable story of how a bat scientist took on Russia’s most powerful…and won
Suren Gazaryan. Photo by: Goldman Environmental Prize. In a country increasingly known for its authoritarian-style crackdown on activists and dissidents, a bat scientist has won a number of impressive victories to protect the dwindling forests of the Western Caucasus. Beginning in the 1990s, Russian chiropterologist Suren Gazaryan led a number of campaigns to fight illegal […]
After widespread deforestation, China bans commercial logging in northern forests
Forestry authorities in China have stopped commercial logging in the nation’s largest forest area, marking an end to more than a half-century of intensive deforestation that removed an estimated 600 million cubic meters (21 billion cubic feet) of timber. The logging shutdown was enacted in large part to protect soil and water quality of greater […]
How hunters have become key to saving Bulgaria’s capercaillie
A version of this article appeared in National Geographic Bulgaria. Surprising clatter cuts through the silence in the snowy forest shortly before sunrise. The powerful clicking sounds like a dropping Ping-Pong ball before culminating in a loud pop resembling the opening of a champagne bottle. This sound is heard clearly and far. Propped on a […]
Australia proposes removing old-growth forests from World Heritage Site
Last year, after decades of fighting, environmentalists and the forestry industry reached a landmark agreement that added 170,000 hectares of old-growth forest in Tasmania as a part of a World Heritage Site. But less than a year later and that so-called peace agreement is in danger of unraveling. The new Australian government, under Prime Minister […]
Featured video: U.S. forests decimated for ‘green’ bio-energy in Europe
Wetland forests in the southern U.S. are becoming the victims of a drive for so-called green energy in Europe, according to activist group Dogwood Alliance, which has produced a new video highlighting the issue. The activists contend that bio-energy that depends on chopping down forests not only devastates vital ecosystems, but actually emits more greenhouse […]
Powered by Google, high resolution forest map reveals massive deforestation worldwide
Researchers today released a long-awaited tool that reveals the extent of forest cover loss and gain on a global scale. Powered by Google’s massive computing cloud, the interactive forest map establishes a new baseline for measuring deforestation and forest recovery across all of the world’s countries, biomes, and forest types. The map has far-reaching implications […]
Activists, indigenous people plan healing walk in ‘sick’ tar sands landscape
Hundreds of activists including Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein are going into the heart of Canada’s tar sands this week – not to protest the destruction of the local environment, but to pray for the ‘healing’ of land and the people. Native elders from all over North America will lead people past lakes of tailings […]
Greenpeace launches series of case studies critiquing forest certification standard
Activist group Greenpeace says it will publish a series of case studies highlighting examples of good and bad practice among operations certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an eco-standard for forest products. Greenpeace, an FSC member since the body was found in 1993, says that as the standard has expanded, the risk to its […]
Decades-long fight leads to old-growth forest protection in Tasmania
Almost 200,000 hectares of Tasmania’s old growth forest have been world heritage listed, bringing hope that a three-decade fight between environmentalists, politicians and loggers is over. The World Heritage Committee has extended the heritage listed boundary of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area by more than 170,000 hectares after accepting a proposal from the Australian […]
Logging may destabilize carbon in forest soils
Logging in temperate zones may release more greenhouse gases than previously thought by destabilizing carbon stored in forest soils, argues a new paper published in the journal Global Change Biology-Bioenergy. The research involved analysis of carbon released from forest management practices in the northeastern United States. It found that while most models assume carbon stored […]
Southern U.S. logging soars to meet foreign biofuel demand
In order to meet the European Union’s goal of 20% renewables by 2020, some European utility companies are moving away from coal and replacing it with wood pellet fuel. The idea is simple: trees will regrow and recapture the carbon released in the burning of wood pellets, making the process supposedly carbon-neutral. But just like […]
Snowy tigers and giant owls: conservation against the odds in Russia’s Far East
-WCS-Russia.600.jpg)
The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th – July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. An Amur tiger in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, […]
International Paper commits to working with longtime foe to protect endangered forests
In another sign that the global paper industry may be steering toward more sustainable practices following years of bruising activist campaigns and pressure from buyers, International Paper (IP) has committed to identifying and protecting endangered forests and high conservation value areas in the southern U.S. The company, which is the world’s largest paper maker, will […]
Environmentalists target controversial logging practices in California
The Sierra Club has launched a campaign against clear-cutting by a logging giant in California. Two weeks ago the environmental group sent a letter to Sierra Pacific Industries asking it to disclose the area of forests it has clearcut over the past five years and intends to raze this year. Sierra Pacific, which is led […]
Mountain pine beetle threatening high-altitude, endangered trees
Whitebark pine stand. Photo by: Richard Sniezko/U.S. Forest Service. In the western U.S., few trees generally grow in higher altitudes than the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis). Providing shelter and food for bears, squirrels and birds, the whitebark pine ecosystems also help regulate water flow from snowmelt. But, according to a new study in the Proceedings […]
Greenpeace says U.S. logging company has broken landmark boreal forest agreement
UPDATE: GREENPEACE RETRACTS ALL ALLEGATIONS. In a statement Greenpeace has retracted its allegations that Resolute Forest Products was logging in critical caribou habitat. Here’s the statement in fulll: “On 6 December 2012, Greenpeace Canada made statements regarding Resolute Forest Products which incorrectly stated that Resolute had breached the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement by approving and […]
Legislation leaves future of world’s largest temperate rainforest up in the air
Stream and forest in the Tongass National Forest, the world largest temperate rainforest located in Southeast Alaska. Photo by: Matthew Dolkas. Although unlikely to pass anytime in the near term, recurring legislation that would hand over 80,000 acres of the Tongass Rainforest to a Native-owned logging corporation has put local communities on guard in Southeast […]
Future of the Tongass forest lies in salmon, not clear-cut logging
.568.jpg)
Stream in the Tongass National Forest. Photo by: Ian Majszak. The Parnell administration’s Timber Task Force recently unveiled a proposal to carve out two million acres of the Tongass National Forest for clear-cut logging under a state-managed “logging trust.” The stated goal is to revive Southeast Alaska’s timber industry that collapsed two decades ago amid […]
Cute animal picture of the day: red panda kits
Twin red panda girls were recently born at the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Whipsnade Zoo. They have been named Ying and Yang. Photo by: ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. Although called red pandas, these Asian animals are neither pandas nor bears, and despite a resemblance to raccoons they are not closely related to them either. Red […]
Forest destruction leads to more floods in temperate regions
Frozen stream in Minnesota. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. Keeping forests standing would lessen both the number and size of spring floods in temperate regions, according to a new study in Water Resources Research, by slowing seasonal snow melts. In deforested areas, snow melts faster due to a lack of shade causing at least twice as […]
Chart: Forest loss in Latin America
Change in vegetation cover by biome across Latin America, 2001-2010. Click image to enlarge. Latin America lost nearly 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of forest — an area larger than the state of Oregon — between 2001 and 2010, finds a new study [PDF] that is the first to assess both net forest loss […]
Featured video: restoring rivers in the Tongass Rainforest
A new video highlights recent efforts to restore rivers in the Tongass Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. Industrial logging in vital watersheds have hurt salmon populations and other wildlife in the region, an issue the government, along with several partners, are now trying to rectify. The salmon industry in the region is worth […]
Saving ‘Avatar Grove’: the battle to preserve old-growth forests in British Columbia
- A picture is worth a thousand words: this common adage comes instantly to mind when viewing T.J. Watt’s unforgettable photos of lost trees.
- For years, Watt has been photographing the beauty of Vancouver Island’s ancient temperate rainforests, and documenting their loss to clearcut logging.
- The photographer and environmental activist recently helped co-found the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), a group devoted to saving the island’s and British Columbia’s (BC) last old-growth while working with the logging industry to adopt sustainable practices.
- This February the organization succeeded in saving Avatar Grove—which was only discovered in 2009—from being clearcut.
Scientist: ‘no doubt’ that climate change is playing a role in U.S. fires
The map depicts the relative concentration of aerosols from wildlife smoke in the skies above the continental U.S. on June 26, 2012. Image by: NASA. A noted climate scientist says there is “no doubt” that climate change is “playing a role” in this year’s series of record fires in the western U.S. A massive wildfire […]
Warmer forests expel carbon from soils creating “vicious cycle”
Temperate forest in Gooseberry Falls State Park, Minnesota. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. As the world warms, temperate forests could become a source of carbon dioxide emission rather than a sink according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Scientists found that two forest sites in the U.S. (Wisconsin […]
As Colorado and New Mexico burn, scientists say prepare for more
The High Park Fire in Colorado started on June 9th from a lightening strike and quickly expanded. This image is from June 10th, taken by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Image courtesy of NASA. A massive wildlife in Colorado still burns after it has killed one person and damaged or destroyed […]
Climate change creating “novel ecosystem” in Arctic
If melting sea ice and glaciers weren’t enough, now climate change is producing what researchers call a “structurally novel ecosystem” in the northwestern Eurasian tundra. Warmer weather and precipitation changes in the region, which covers western Russia into Finland, has allowed shrubs of willow and alder to grow into sparse forests within just forty years, […]
NASA image: New Mexico suffers record megafire
New Mexico’s biggest fire ever as seen on May 29th from NASA’s Aqua satellite. Photo by: NASA. To date, around 250,000 acres (101,000 hectares) of the Gila Forest in New Mexico have burned in the state’s largest fire ever recorded. Begun on May 16th due to lightning strikes, the unprecedented fire has likely been made […]
IKEA logging old-growth forest for low-price furniture in Russia
Destroyed old-growth forest with piles of timber on land leased by IKEA/Swedwood in Russian Karelia. Photo © Robert Svensson, Protect the Forest 2011. A new campaign is targeting IKEA, the world’s biggest furniture retailer, for logging old-growth forests in the Karelia region of Russia. An alliance of groups, headed by the Swedish NGO Protect the […]
Turkey’s rich biodiversity at risk
Turkey’s stunning landscapes and wildlife are under threat due to government ambivalence. Here, the sun sets outside Igdir, Turkey. Photo by: Cagan Sekercioglu. Turkey: the splendor of the Hagia Sophia, the ruins of Ephesus, and the bizarre caves of the Cappadocia. For foreign travelers, Turkey is a nation of cultural, religious, and historic wonders: a […]
Featured Video: the true cost of the tar sands
What’s the big deal about the tar sands? Canadian photographer Garth Lenz presents the local environmental and social concerns presented by the tar sands in a concise, impassioned speech in a TEDx talk in Victoria, Canada. The tar sands has recently moved from a primarily Canadian issue into an international one as activists in the […]
Alaskan fishermen tell government to focus on salmon, not logging
Tongass temperate rainforest. Photo of Southeast Alaska, courtesy of BigStock. Alaskan fishermen and tour operators visited Washington D.C. last week to urge the federal government to shift the focus from logging to conservation in the Tongass rainforest. Local Alaskans along with NGOs Trout Unlimited, Alaska Program, and Sitka Conservation Society, made the case that conservation, […]
Featured Video: logging run amuck in Latvia
A recent expose by Al Jazeera reveals the environmental toll of clear-cutting on Latvia’s forests, in addition to highlighting the fact that the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifies clear-cut forests. The FSC responded shortly afterward that it did not re-certify logging in Latvia as reported in the expose. However, the FSC is currently in the […]
U.S. legislation threatens oldest, tallest trees in Tongass rainforest
Old-growth tree in Tongass temperate rainforest. Such trees may be as old as 800 years. Photo by: John Schoen. Up to 17 percent of the tallest old-growth trees in the Tongass temperate rainforest could be cut under new U.S. legislation, according to a report by Audubon Alaska. The report argues that the legislation under consideration […]
NASA satellite image shows extent of logging in Pacific Northwest
Over 13 percent of old growth forests in Pacific Northwest lost to logging in just over a decade, the vast majority on non-federal lands. NASA map shows forest cover in Washington and parts of Oregon. The greener an area the more carbon the forest stores. Photo by: NASA. New satellite and space radar images by […]
Interactive map reveals the human cost of mountaintop mining
Mountain top removal mining site. Photo by: JW Randolph. Environmental degradation can have major impacts on a community’s quality of life and a new interactive map of mountaintop mining for coal in the U.S. makes this abundantly clear: based on 21 scientific studies, the map highlights how communities near mountaintop mining have lower life expectancy, […]
NASA map reveals the heights of the world’s forests
NASA map of global forest height, the redder the taller, the bluer the shorter. Image courtesy of NASA. The height of a forest is important in a number of different ways. First the taller a forest, the more likely there are important niche habitats in the canopy providing homes to unique species. In addition, a […]
Green groups: government moving too slowly on protecting Canada’s Great Bear rainforest
Three environmental groups have submitted a letter to British Columbia Premier, Christy Clark, to ask the government to speed up the process of implementing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, which is meant to ensure 70 percent of old-growth forest is maintained. “For the communities of the Great Bear Rainforest, a healthy economy depends on a […]
More big companies disclosing impacts on forests
Largescale clearing of Amazon rainforest for soy fields in Brazil. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. More companies are reporting on the impact of their operations on global forests, finds a new report. Eighty-seven global corporations disclosed their “forest footprint” in 2011, according to the third Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD), which asks companies to report on […]
New meteorological theory argues that the world’s forests are rainmakers
The Amazon rainforest meets cleared area for cattle pasture. A radical meteorology theory argues that loss of forest, both in temperate and tropical regions, will lead to less precipitation over land. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. New, radical theories in science often take time to be accepted, especially those that directly challenge longstanding ideas, contemporary […]
Economic slowdown leads to the pulping of Latvia’s forests
Aerial view over Latvian forests—please note almost all cutting patches are fresh, not yet regenerated. Photo by: R.Matrozis, 2007. The economic crisis has pushed many nations to scramble for revenue and jobs in tight times, and the small Eastern European nation of Latvia is no different. Facing tough circumstances, the country turned to its most […]
Small town rises up against deforestation in Pakistan
View Larger Map The town of Ayun, home to 16,000 people in the Chitral district of Pakistan, has been rocked by large-scale protests and mass arrests over the issue of corruption and deforestation in recent days. Villagers are protesting forest destruction in the Kalasha Valleys, the home of the indigenous Kalash people. The protests first […]
Texas loses half a billion trees to epic drought
Map shows the level of drought and dryness across the US in July 2011. Map courtesy US Department of Agriculture. Click to enlarge. A punishing drought in Texas has not only damaged crops, killed cattle, and led to widespread fires, but has also killed off a significant portion of the state’s trees: between 100 and […]
Picture of the day: quiet river in the woods
River and forest in the northern US. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. A river and forest in Gooseberry Falls State Park in the US state of Minnesota. The forest here is made up primarily of evergreens, aspen, and birch. The park is home to beavers, wolves, black bears among many other species. Near the coastline of […]
12,000 surround White House to protest tar sands pipeline
Around 12,000 protestors surrounded the White House, some carrying a symbolic pipeline. Photo by: Clayton Conn. One year to the day before the 2012 US election, up to 12,000 activists encircled the White House to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s infamous tar sands to […]
Featured video: could a forest be worth more than a gold mine?
Jason A. Sohigian, the Deputy Director of the Armenia Tree Project (ATP), presents at TEDx on the often-unacknowledged economic value of forests, including wildlife habitat, safeguarding watersheds, soil health, and tourism. In Amerina, Sohigian estimates the economic value of forests to be between $7 million to $1.1 billion annually, if not more. “I’m suggesting that […]
Tar sands pipeline ‘another dirty needle feeding America’s fossil fuel addiction’
Protestor against Keystone XL Pipeline escorted away after arrest. Photo by: Josh Lopez/Tar Sands Action. Climate and environmental activism in the US received a shot of enthusiasm this summer when it focused unwaveringly on the Keystone XL Pipeline. During a two week protest in front of the White House, 1,253 activists—from young students to elder […]
‘Indisputable proof’ of Yeti discovered
View Larger Map Abakan Mountain range where yeti conference says the beast is likely hiding. A conference has announced that given recent evidence they are 95 percent convinced the yeti, a mythical or perhaps actual primate, exists in the cold wilds of Siberia. Scientists and cryptozoologists (those who have a fascination for the ‘study of […]
Activists protest Australian forest destruction from top of the Sydney Opera House
A series of actions protesting forest destruction in Australia led to seven arrests last week. Led by a new NGO, The Last Stand, the activists targeted Australian retail giant Harvey Norman for allegedly being complicit in the destruction of native forests in Australia, which harbor many imperiled species found no-where else. “Climbers have abseiled from […]
Penurunan predator puncak dan megafauna ‘pengaruh manusia yang paling mudah menyebar pada alam ‘
Singa betina mempertahankan wildebeest yang terbunuh di Tanzania. Foto oleh: Rhett A. Butler. Populasi serigala di seluruh dunia telah turun sekitar 99 persen dari jumlah populasi yang pernah ada dalam sejarah. Populasi singa jatuh dari 450.000 menjadi 20.000 dalam 50 tahun. Tiga subspesies harimau punah di abad ke-20. Penangkapan ikan yang berlebihan dan pemotongan sirip […]
Yellowstone burning: big fires to hit world’s first national park annually by 2050
An icon of conservation and wilderness worldwide, Yellowstone National Park could see its ecosystem flip due to increased big fires from climate change warn experts in a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). A sudden increase in large fires—defined as over 200 hectares (500 acres)—by mid-century could shift the […]
Decline in top predators and megafauna ‘humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature’
Lioness defends wildebeest kill in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Worldwide wolf populations have dropped around 99 percent from historic populations. Lion populations have fallen from 450,000 to 20,000 in 50 years. Three subspecies of tiger went extinct in the 20th Century. Overfishing and finning has cut some shark populations down by 90 percent […]
Tropical forests more effective than temperate forests in fighting climate change
Tropical reforestation more effective than temperate afforestation for slowing global warming. Rainforest tree in Panama. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Preserving forest cover and reforesting cleared areas in the tropics will more effectively reduce temperatures than planting trees across temperate croplands, argues a new paper published in Nature Geoscience. Using computer models, Vivek Arora and […]
iPhone app uses Google Earth to track climate change impact on redwoods
Redwood trees in Huddart County Park. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The Save the Redwoods League is partnering with Google Earth Outreach and iNaturalist.org to connect citizens and scientists in an effort to track the effects of climate change on redwood trees and forests. Redwoods have a relatively limited natural range, beginning in central California […]
US southern forests face bleak future, but is sprawl or the paper industry to blame?
White Marsh Clearcut, outside of the Green Swamp, North Carolina, US. Photo by: Abigail Singer, courtesy of Dogwood Alliance. More people, less forests: that’s the conclusion of a US Forest Service report for forests in the US South. The report predicts that over the next 50 years, the region will lose 23 million acres (9.3 […]
Australia forest destruction connected to local products
Some of Australia’s most popular stores are driving the destruction of native forests, according to a report by a new environmental group Markets for Change (MFC). Furniture, building materials, and paper products were found to be coming at the expense of native forests in Australia and being sold by over 30 businesses in the country, […]
Beaver dam lessens impact of massive oil spill in Canada
Google Earth view of location of Little Buffalo, Alberta near site of oil spill. Yellow line is the Canadian border with the US. The Canadian province of Alberta has suffered its worst oil spill in 35 years with 28,000 barrels of oil (over a million gallons) spilling from a ruptured pipeline operated by Plains Midstream […]
Forest carbon map released for the US
The National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD) map of the continental US courtesy of Woods Hole Research Center. Click to enlarge. The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) has released the first hectare-scale map displaying aboveground woody biomass and forest carbon in US forests. The map, which also shows canopy heights, is known as the National […]
Want water? save forests
The UN-backed Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) is urging nations to conserve their forests in a bid to mitigate rising water scarcity problems. “[Forests] reduce the effects of floods, prevent soil erosion, regulate the water table and assure a high-quality water supply for people, industry and agriculture,” said the Forestry Department Assistant Director General, Eduardo […]
Birnam Wood in the 21st Century: northern forest invading Arctic tundra as world warms
In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth the forest of Birnam Wood fulfills a seemingly impossible prophecy by moving to surround the murderous king (the marching trees are helped, of course, by an army of axe-wielding camouflaged Scots). The Arctic tundra may soon feel much like the doomed Macbeth with an army of trees (and invading species) closing […]
Dari Kamboja ke Kalifornia: 10 hutan yang paling terancam di dunia
Keterangan pers dari Conservation International awalnya memasukkan Selandia Baru sebagai negara dengan hutan paling terancam kedua di dunia, padahal sebenarnya posisi itu diduduki oleh hutan di Kaledonia Baru Hutan-hutan di Asia-Pasifik adalah yang paling terancam, termasuk 5 dari 10 hutan paling terancam di dunia. Populasi yang sedang tumbuh, pertanian yang sedang berkembang, komoditi seperti minyak […]
British government throws out plan to sell forests, apologizes
The British government, headed by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, has tossed out a controversial proposal to sell off significant sections of its forest to the private sector. The plan came under relentless criticism, including 500,000 people who signed a petition against the proposal, and brought together a wide variety of British notables such as […]
Selling the Forests that Saved Britain
Glenn Hurowitz is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. You can join the campaign to protect England’s forests through the impressive Save Our Woods organization. I confess that British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to auction off all 650,000 acres of England’s national forests to the highest bidder came […]
From Cambodia to California: the world’s top 10 most threatened forests
The press release from Conservation International originally listed New Zealand as possessing the world’s 2nd most threatened forests when in fact it is New Caledonia’s forests. Asia-Pacific forests are the most endangered, including 5 of the top 10 threatened forests. Growing populations, expanding agriculture, commodities such as palm oil and paper, logging, urban sprawl, mining, […]
How Genghis Khan cooled the planet
- In 1206 AD Genghis Khan began the Mongol invasion: a horse-crazed bow-wielding military force that swept through much of modern-day Asia into the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
- But aside from creating the world’s largest empire, the Mongol invasion had another global impact that has remained hidden in history according to new research by Julia Pongratz of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.
- Genghis Khan and his empire, which lasted nearly two centuries, actually cooled the Earth.
Red pandas may be threatened by small-scale trade
Two studies investigated the scale and potential threat of continued trade in red pandas and found that while reports are low, the occurrence of isolated incidents may be enough to threaten species survival. The red panda, Ailurus fulgens, is a cat-sized, arboreal mammal which lives in temperate forests in the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. […]
What do wolves and sharks have in common?
Sharks dwell in the ocean, wolves on land; sharks are a type of fish, wolves are a mammal; sharks go back some 400 million years, wolves only some 2 million years. So, these animals should have little in common, right? However, a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment points to surprising similarities […]
Tropical agriculture “double-whammy”: high emissions, low yields
Food produced in the tropics comes with high carbon emissions and low crop yields, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In the most comprehensive and detailed study to date looking at carbon emissions versus crop yields, researchers found that food produced in the tropics releases almost […]
UK government plan to sell off half its forests faces stiff criticism
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced plans to sell up to 150,000 hectares of its forest to the private sector—over half of its forests in England—touching off harsh criticism from environmentalists, including the UK’s Green Party. “If this means vast swathes of valuable forest being sold to private developers, […]
Humanity consuming the Earth: by 2030 we’ll need two planets
Too many people consuming too much is depleting the world’s natural resources faster than they are replenished, imperiling not only the world’s species but risking the well-being of human societies, according to a new massive study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), entitled the Living Planet Report. The report finds that humanity is currently consuming […]
Oil devastates indigenous tribes from the Amazon to the Gulf
For the past few months, the mainstream media has focused on the environmental and technical dimensions of the Gulf mess. While that’s certainly important, reporters have ignored a crucial aspect of the BP spill: cultural extermination and the plight of indigenous peoples. Recently, the issue was highlighted when Louisiana Gulf residents in the town of […]
Record highs, forest fires, and ash-fog engulf Moscow
Moscow and parts of Russia have been hit by record high temperatures and forest fires. Ashen fog from peat forests burning near Moscow has prompted officials to warn elderly and those with heart or bronchial problems to stay inside. Workers should be allowed a siesta to rest in the afternoon, as well, said the Russia’s […]
Conservation photography: on shooting and saving the world’s largest temperate rainforest, an interview with Amy Gulick
Most of the US’s large ecosystems are but shadows of their former selves. The old-growth deciduous forests that once covered nearly all of the east and mid-west continental US are gone, reduced to a few fragmented patches that are still being lost. The tall grassy plains that once stretched further than any eye could see […]
Local voices: frustration growing over Senate plan on Tongass logging
Recently local Alaskan communities were leaked a new draft of a plan to log 80,000 acres of the Tongass forest making its way through the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee. According to locals who wrote to mongabay.com, the draft reinforced their belief that the selection of which forests to get the axe has […]
Photos: Tongass logging proposal ‘fatally flawed’ according to Alaskan biologist
A state biologist has labeled a logging proposal to hand over 80,000 acres of the Tongass temperate rainforest to Sealaska, a company with a poor environmental record, ‘fatally flawed’. In a letter obtained by mongabay.com, Jack Gustafson, who worked for over 17 years as a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, argues […]
A total ban on primary forest logging needed to save the world, an interview with activist Glen Barry
Radical, controversial, ahead-of-his-time, brilliant, or extremist: call Dr. Glen Barry, the head of Ecological Internet, what you will, but there is no question that his environmental advocacy group has achieved major successes in the past years, even if many of these are below the radar of big conservation groups and mainstream media. “We tend to […]
International alliance created to help corporations avoid illegal wood
Given the complexities of the global wood trade and the difficulty of deciphering a product’s source of wood, the World Resources Institute (WRI), the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA-US and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have banded together to create a global initiative, the Forest Legality Alliance, to aid private corporations to reduce the […]
Big compromise reached on Canada’s Boreal by environmental groups and forestry industry
In what is being heralded as the ‘world’s largest conservation agreement’ 20 Canadian forestry companies and nine environmental organizations have announced an agreement covering 72 million hectares of the Canadian boreal forest (an area bigger than France). Reaching a major compromise, the agreement essentially ends a long battle between several environmental groups and the companies […]
NASA, Google Earth catch North Korea logging protected area
Employing satellite data from NASA and Google Earth, Guofan Shao, a professor of geo-eco-informatics at Purdue University, has established that North Korea is logging Mount Paekdu Biosphere Reserve. Since North Korea is off-limits to most researchers, Shao has turned to open-access satellite data to monitor deforestation on the UN designated Man and Biosphere region. “Particularly […]
Logging in Tongass rainforest would imperil rare species
According to a letter from three past employees of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation to Sean Parnell, the Governor of Alaska, a proposal to bill logging the Tongass temperate rainforest would threaten two endangered species. In fact, the letter warns that if the bill passes and the company in question, Sealaska, proceeds with logging […]
Locals plead for Tongass rainforest to be spared from Native-owned logging corporation
The Tongass temperate rainforest in Alaska is a record-holder: while the oldest and largest National Forest in the United States (spanning nearly 17 million acres), it is even more notably the world’s largest temperate rainforest. Yet since the 1960s this unique ecosystem has suffered large-scale clearcutting through US government grants to logging corporations. While the […]
United States has higher percentage of forest loss than Brazil
From 2000 to 2005 the world lost over a million square kilometers of forest. Forests continue to decline worldwide, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Employing satellite imagery researchers found that over a million square kilometers of forest were lost around the world between 2000 and […]
World failing on every environmental issue: an op-ed for Earth Day
The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the deforestation crisis: we are living in an age when environmental issues have moved from regional problems to global ones. A generation or two before ours and one might speak of saving the beauty of Northern California; conserving a single species—say the white rhino—from extinction; or preserving an ecological […]
US Eastern forests suffer “substantial” decline: 3.7 million hectares gone
The United States’ Eastern forests have suffered a “substantial and sustained net loss” over the past few decades, according to a detailed study appearing in BioScience. From 1973 to 2000, Eastern have declined by 4.1 percent or 3.7 million hectares. Deforestation occurred in all Eastern regions, but the loss was most concentrated in the southeastern […]
Seed dispersal in the face of climate change, an interview with Arndt Hampe
The second in an interview series with participants in the 5th Frugivore and Seed Dispersal International Symposium. Without seed dispersal plants could not survive. Seed dispersal—i.e. birds spreading seeds or wind carrying seeds—means the mechanism by which a seed is moved from its parent tree to a new area; if fortunate the seed will sprout […]
US gun, guitar, and furniture-manufactures must declare basic information about wood sources
In May of last year federal agents raided Gibson Guitar headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee after they received information that the guitar-giant was using illegally logged rosewood from Madagascar in the construction of their musical instruments. The scandal forced Gibson’s CEO to take a leave of absence as a member of Rainforest Alliance. As the Gibson […]
Why seed dispersers matter, an interview with Pierre-Michel Forget, chair of the FSD International Symposium
The first in an interview series with participants in the 5th Frugivore and Seed Dispersal International Symposium. There are few areas of research in tropical biology more exciting and more important than seed dispersal. Seed dispersal—the process by which seeds are spread from parent trees to new sprouting ground—underpins the ecology of forests worldwide. In […]
How that cork in your wine bottle helps forests and biodiversity, an interview with Patrick Spencer
Next time you’re in the supermarket looking to buy a nice bottle of wine: think cork. Although it’s not widely known, the cork industry is helping to sustain one of the world’s most biodiverse forests, including a number of endangered species such as the Iberian lynx and the Barbary deer. Spreading across 6.6 million acres […]
Photos: highest diversity of cats in the world discovered in threatened forest of India
Using camera traps over a two-year period, wildlife biologist Kashmira Kakati has discovered seven species of wild cats living in the same forest: the Jeypore-Dehing lowland forests in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Yet the cat-crazy ecosystem is currently threatened by deforestation, unsustainable extractive industries, including crude oil and coal, and big hydroelectric projects. […]
Decline in fog threatens California’s iconic redwood ecosystems
Redwoods in Huddart County Park, San Mateo County, California. Photo by Rhett Butler. A surprising new study finds that during the past century the frequency of fog along California’s coast has declined by approximately three hours a day. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers are concerned that this decrease […]
Canada creates massive new park in the boreal
Last Friday, the government of Canada and the governments of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador signed a memorandum of understanding to create a the new Mealy Mountains National Park. Larger than Yellowstone National Park, the new Canadian park will span 11,000 square kilometers making it the largest protected area in Eastern Canada. The park […]
Dispelling myths about the US Lacey Act
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has released a document to dispel common myths related to the 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act, which makes it possible for the United States to support efforts to combat illegal logging both abroad and at home. The Lacey Act makes it so that any wood that is harvested illegally […]
Over 15 percent of Florida panther population lost last year due to car collisions
A record number of endangered Florida panthers died this year due to car collisions, reports conservation organization, Defenders of Wildlife. Sixteen panther deaths from cars have been confirmed in 2009; an additional animal is suspected of having died from injuries due to a car in October. The mortality rate due to cars alone depletes the […]
Scientists call for an end to mountaintop removal mining in the US
A group of scientists have called for the Obama Administration to place a moratorium on infamous mountain top mining due to “growing scientific evidence” of severe environmental degradation and serious impacts on human health, including cancer. The article, published in Science, is written by a dozen influential scientists, including hydrologists, ecologists, and engineers. “The scientific […]
Housing developments choking wildlife around America’s national parks
Americans are ‘loving [their] protected areas to death’. Housing developments within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of America’s national parks have nearly quadrupled in sixty years, rising from 9.8 million housing units to 38 million from 1940 to 2000. The explosion of housing developments adjacent to national parks threatens wildlife in a variety of ways, according […]
Cattle company bulldozing UNESCO site, threatening uncontacted natives
A Brazilian ranching company is bulldozing land within UNESCO Chaco Biosphere Reserve in Paraguay, home to the only uncontacted natives outside of the Amazon in South America. While the UNESCO status provides no legal protections to the area, it is meant as an international marker to protect the tribe of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode and the forest […]
Developed countries plan to hide emissions from logging
While developing countries in the tropics have received a lot of attention for their deforestation emissions (one thinks of Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia), emissions from logging—considered forest cover change—in wealthy northern countries has been largely overlooked by the media. It seems industrialized countries prefer it this way: a new study reveals just how these countries […]
Has Canada become the new climate villain (yes, that’s right, Canada)?
Is Canada really worse than the United States, China, India, and Indonesia on climate change? In 2007 American delegates to a climate summit in Bali were booed outright for obstructing a global agreement on climate change. Then in a David versus Goliath moment they were famously scolded by a negotiator from Papua New Guinea, Kevin […]
Not just the polar bear: ten American species that are feeling the heat from global warming
A new report, America’s Hottest Species, highlights a variety of American wildlife that are currently threatened by climate change from a small bird to a coral reef to the world’s largest marine turtle. “Global warming is like a bulldozer shoving species, already on the brink of extinction, perilously closer to the edge of existence,” said […]
Reforestation effort would lower Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent
A study by Britain’s Forestry Commission found that planting 23,000 hectares of forest every year for the next 40 years would lower the island nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent, according to reporting by the BBC. The tree-planting effort would also raise Britain’s total amount of forest cover from 12 percent to 16 percent […]
Coastal habitats may sequester 50 times more carbon than tropical forests by area
Highly endangered coastal habitats are incredibly effective in sequestering carbon and locking it away in soil, according to a new paper in a report by the IUCN. The paper attests that coastal habitats—such as mangroves, sea grasses, and salt marshes—sequester as much as 50 times the amount of carbon in their soil per hectare as […]
New report: boreal forests contain more carbon than tropical forest per hectare
A new report states that boreal forests store nearly twice as much carbon as tropical forests per hectare: a fact which researchers say should make the conservation of boreal forests as important as tropical in climate change negotiations. The report from the Canadian Boreal Initiative and the Boreal Songbird Initiative, entitled “The Carbon the World […]
Gucci drops APP in pledge to save rainforests
One of the world’s largest and most prestigious fashion brands has stated it will stop sourcing paper from Indonesian forests and will drop Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) as a supplier, which has become notorious for tropical deforestation. The move comes after pressure from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) on the fashion industry to stop […]
Tiger success story turns bleak: poachers decimating great cats in Siberia
There were two bright spots in tiger conservation, India and Russia, but both have dimmed recently. Last year India announced that a new survey found only 1,411 tigers, instead of the previous estimation of 3,508, and now Russian tigers may be suffering a similar decline. The Siberian Tiger Monitoring Program—a collaboration between the Wildlife Conservation […]
500 scientists call on Quebec to keep its promise to conserve half of its boreal forest
This March, the Canadian province of Quebec pledged to conserve 50 percent of its boreal forest lying north of the 49th parallel, protecting the region from industrial, mining, and energy development. On Thursday 500 scientists and conservation professionals—65 percent of whom have PhDs—sent a letter to Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest calling on him to make […]
New center for studying temperate rainforests announced in Alaska
Temperate rainforests will soon have a new center in Juneau, Alaska. It is hoped that the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center (ACRC) will instigate new research and educational opportunities. The center will be a collaboration between government agencies and local universities, including the University of Alaska Southeast, University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest […]
Boreal forests in wealthy countries being rapidly destroyed
Boreal forests in some of the world’s wealthiest countries are being rapidly destroyed by human activities — including mining, logging, and purposely-set fires — report researchers writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Assessing the status of the boreal forest that stretches across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia, Corey Bradshaw and colleagues found that less […]
Kimberly-Clark announces greener wood fiber sourcing, sparking debate between environmentalists
Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the maker of Kleenex, Scott and Cottonelle brands, has announced stronger fiber sourcing standards that will reduce the company’s impact on forests worldwide. The move comes in response to a long campaign by Greenpeace, an environmental group that is now advising Kimberly-Clark on its forest policy. Under the new policy, Kimberly-Clark will only […]
Global warming-induced forest fires to increase health risks in western U.S.
Warmer, drier climate in the American West will increase the incidence and severity of forest fires, worsening air quality, reports a new study accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. Using climate models to forecast the impact of moderate global warming on western U.S. wildfire patterns and atmospheric chemistry, Harvard University’s […]
Tasmania gets Australia’s first CCB-certified REDD deal
Project will pay landowners not to log old-growth forests in Tasmania A forest conservation project in Tasmania has become Australia’s first Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) project to meet Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards. The project, run by Sydney-based Redd Forests, is on 860 hectares of private land in Tasmania. Logging of old-growth […]
U.S. approves logging of 381 acres of primary rainforest in Alaska
The Obama administration moved this week to allow clear-cutting of 381 acres (154 ha) of primary temperate rainforest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, reports the Environmental News Service (ENS). Pacific Log and Lumber of Ketchikan will produce some 3.8 million board feet of wood from forest on Revillagigedo Island near Ketchikan, Alaska, in the first […]
Japanese paper firms contribute to destruction of old-growth forests in Tasmania
Ontario to preserve area of forest the size of Uganda
Ontario to preserve area of forest the size of Uganda Ontario to preserve area of forest the size of Uganda Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com July 31, 2008 The government of Ontario has announced it will preserve 56 million acres of boreal forest from all types of development. The reasons for such a large conservation plan are […]
Carbon uptake by temperate forests declining due to global warming
Carbon uptake by temperate forests declining due to warming Carbon uptake by temperate forests declining due to global warming mongabay.com January 3, 2008 North American forests are storing less carbon due to warmer autumns, reports a study published in the journal Nature by an international team of researchers. Shilong Piao and colleagues found that “net […]
Beetle droppings help forests recover from fire
Beetle droppings help forests recover from fire Beetle droppings help forests recover from fire Bev Betkowski, University of Alberta December 4, 2007 Armed with a pair of tweezers and a handful of beetle droppings, University of Alberta forestry graduate Tyler Cobb has discovered why the bug-sized dung is so important to areas ravaged by fire. […]
Hurricane Katrina released large amounts of carbon by destroying 320m trees
Hurricane Katrina released large amounts of carbon by destroying 320 million trees Hurricane Katrina released large amounts of carbon by destroying 320m trees mongabay.com November 15, 2007 The destruction of 320 million large trees by Hurricane Katrina reduced the capacity of forests in the Southern United States to soak up carbon, reports a new study […]
California fires release 8M tons of CO2
California fires release 8M tons of CO2 California fires release 8M tons of CO2 mongabay.com November 1, 2007 Southern California wildfires released 7.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in just the one-week period of October 19-26–the equivalent of about 25 percent of the average monthly emissions from all fossil fuel burning throughout California–according to […]
Boreal forest fires important source of emissions
Boreal forest fires important source of emissions Boreal forest fires important source of emissions mongabay.com October 31, 2007 Forest fires in the boreal forests of Canada are an important source of greenhouse gas emissions reports a new study published in the journal Nature. University of Wisconsin-Madison forest ecology professor Tom Gower, and colleagues write that […]
Threatened Amur tiger shows signs of recovery
Cautious optimism for recovery of the threatened Amur tiger Cautious optimism for recovery of the threatened Amur tiger By Ken Burton of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service October 31, 2007 IN A WORLD WHERE MANY ANIMALS ARE UNDER SIEGE, THE AMUR TIGER OFFERS AN ENCOURAGING WORD: SUCCESS In a world where many animals are […]
Melting permafrost affects greenhouse gas emissions
Melting permafrost affects greenhouse gas emissions Melting permafrost affects greenhouse gas emissions Climate change and permafrost thaw alter greenhouse gas emissions in northern wetlands Michigan State University August 10, 2007 Permafrost — the perpetually frozen foundation of the north — isn’t so permanent anymore, and scientists are scrambling to understand the pros and cons when […]
Temperate forests not a fix for global warming
Temperate forests not a fix for global warming Temperate forests not a fix for global warming Carbon offsets based on northern plantations may be bunk mongabay.com August 9, 2007 Carbon sequestration projects in temperate regions — already facing doubts by scientists — were dealt another blow by Duke University-led research that found pine tree stands […]
U.S. could offset 20% of emissions through reforestation of marginal lands
U.S. could offset 20% of emissions through reforestation of marginal lands U.S. could offset 20% of emissions through reforestation of marginal lands mongabay.com May 3, 2007 Reforesting marginal agricultural land could significantly slow the increase of carbon in the atmosphere reports a new study based on NASA data, though it would be no magic bullet […]
Global warming could cause Canadian forests to absorb more carbon
Global warming could cause Canadian forests to absorb more carbon Global warming could cause Canadian forests to absorb more carbon mongabay.com February 19, 2007 Researchers say they have found links between seasonal temperature changes and the uptake and loss of carbon dioxide. Speaking last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting […]
Forest fires may cool climate
Forest fires may cool climate Forest fires may cool climate mongabay.com November 16, 2006 Boreal forest fires may actually cool climate according to research published in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), found that cooling may occur in regions where burned trees — and reduced canopy cover […]
Boreal forests worth $250 billion per year worldwide
Boreal forests worth $250 billion per year worldwide Boreal forests worth $250 billion per year worldwide mongabay.com September 24, 2006 Boreal forests provide services worth $250 billion per year globally according to estimates by Canadian researchers. Carbon in Canada’s boreal forest worth $3.7 trillion Carbon stored in Canada’s boreal forests and peatlands is worth $3.7 […]
Logging may increase the risk of forest fire
Logging may increase the risk of forest fire Logging may increase the risk of forest fire Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com January 5, 2006 Logging increases the risk of fire according to a new assessment in the aftermath of a large fire in Oregon. The study also found that undisturbed areas may be at lower fire […]
Temperate forests may worsen global warming, tropical forests fight higher temperatures
Temperate forests may worsen global warming, tropical forests fight higher temperatures Temperate forests may worsen global warming, tropical forests fight higher temperatures Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com December 5, 2005 At this week’s climate conference in Montreal there have been a number of proposals to plant trees for the purpose of absorbing carbon emissions and helping […]
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia