by william laurance

More than half of the timber now shipped globally is destined for China. But unscrupulous Chinese companies are importing huge amounts of illegally harvested wood, prompting conservation groups to step up boycotts against rapacious timber interests.

In Chinese folklore, a dragon symbolizes strength. It is an apt icon for a nation whose rise as an economic superpower has been nothing short of meteoric.

While China’s stunning economic advances have come at significant environmental cost, the boom has been a plus in a few realms. The country is investing avidly in green technologies, such as solar energy and high-tech car batteries. It has also undertaken an ambitious national reforestation program, while cracking down on illegal forest clearing and logging inside its borders. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, forest cover in China, including large areas of timber plantations, increased from 157 million hectares in 1990 to 197 million hectares in 2005.

Counter-intuitively, the expansion of Chinese forests has occurred at the same time the country has been developing an immense export industry for wood and paper products. China is now the “wood workshop for the world,” according to Forest Trends, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, consuming more than 400 million cubic meters of timber annually to feed both its burgeoning exports and growing domestic demands. Production of paper products has also grown dramatically in China, doubling from 2002 to 2007.

But the rise of the Chinese dragon has a darker side. As much as half of the timber and much of the paper pulp consumed by China is imported, primarily from tropical nations or nearby Siberia. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with this — China has every right to grow economically and seek the kind of prosperity that industrial nations have long enjoyed. However, in its fervor to secure timber, minerals, and other natural resources, China is increasingly seen as a predator on the world’s forests.

China is now overwhelmingly the biggest global consumer of tropical timber, importing around 40 to 45 million cubic meters of timber annually. Today, more than half of all timber being shipped anywhere in the world is destined for China. Many nations in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa export the lion’s share of their timber to China.

China faces three criticisms by those worried about the health and biodiversity of the world’s forests. First, the country and its hundreds of wood-products corporations and middlemen have been remarkably aggressive in pursuing timber supplies globally, while generally being little concerned with social equity or environmental sustainability. For instance, China has helped fund and promote an array of ambitious new road or rail projects that are opening up remote forested regions in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Asia-Pacific to exploitation. Such frontier roads can unleash a Pandora’s Box of activities — including illegal colonization, hunting, mining, and land speculation — that are often highly destructive to forests.

China is also a major consumer of wood pulp, which is helping to drive large-scale deforestation in places like Sumatra and Borneo. During a recent visit to Sumatra, I witnessed the felling of large expanses of native rainforests, which are being chopped up and fed into the world’s largest wood-pulp plant, located nearby, and replaced by monocultures of exotic acacia trees.

Second, China, in its relentless pursuit of timber, almost exclusively seeks raw logs. Raw logs are the least economically beneficial way for developing nations to exploit their timber resources, as they provide only limited royalties and little employment, workforce training, and industrial development. As a result, most of the profits from logging are realized by foreign timber-cutters, shippers, and wood-products manufacturers. A cubic meter of the valuable timber merbau (Intsia bijuga), for instance, yields only around $11 to local communities in Indonesian Papua but around $240 when delivered as raw logs to wood-products manufacturers in China, who profit further by converting it into prized wood flooring.

Finally, China has done little to combat the scourge of illegal logging, which is an enormous problem in many developing nations. A 2011 report on illegal logging by Interpol and the World Bank concluded that, among 15 of the major timber-producing countries in the tropics, two-thirds had half or more of their timber harvested illegally. Globally, economic losses and tax and royalty evasion from illegal logging are thought to cost around $15 billion annually — a large economic burden for developing nations. Forest ecosystems suffer serious impacts as well, because illegal loggers frequently ignore environmental controls on cutting operations.

According to a 2010 analysis by Chatham House, a respected UK think tank, illegal logging is slowly declining globally but this is despite, rather than because of, China’s influence. The report concluded that, from 2000 to 2008, China imported 16 to 24 million cubic meters of illegal timber each year. This is an incredible figure — twice the total amount imported annually by leading industrial nations.

Around a third of Chinese timber imports are ultimately exported, as furniture, plywood, flooring, disposable chopsticks, and other wood products. European countries, the U.S, and Japan are the biggest importers, with consumers there often unaware of the illicit origin of many wood products from China.

When it comes to illegal or predatory logging, it has not been easy to get China’s attention. Stories about illegal logging rarely penetrate the Chinese news media. For example, in 2006 the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), an international scientific organization, held its annual conference in Kunming, China. At the time I was president of the ATBC, and I spoke at length to Chinese journalists about the problem of illegal logging and the risks it posed for Chinese exporters. To my knowledge, not a single story about my concerns was reported in China, even though I emailed the journalists a summary of my comments translated into Mandarin Chinese.

Outside China, the story is different. Awareness of the rapacious nature of Chinese timber interests is growing, especially since a 2005 report by a green group, the Environmental Investigation Agency, that detailed massive illegal logging and timber theft in the Indonesian state of Papua. Smuggled timber from Papua arrived in mainland China via international criminal syndicates involving corrupt Indonesian insiders, Malaysian loggers, and Singaporean shippers. Other groups, such as the World Resources Institute, Forest Trends, WWF, and Greenpeace, have laid similar claims against China. With mainstream organizations such as the World Bank, Interpol, and Chatham House joining in, what began as murmurs of concern is becoming a loud clamor for change.

This is a dangerous situation for Chinese businesses and exporters. Influential environmental organizations in Europe and North America have their eye on China. For example, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has waged a campaign urging corporate customers to avoid paper and pulp products originating from two of Indonesia’s largest corporations, Asian Pulp & Paper (APP) and APRIL, which are felling large expanses of native rainforest for wood pulp. The pulp and paper have been used by Chinese manufacturers to make branded products for scores of well-known companies around the world. Some of those companies — including Gucci, Scholastic, Hachette, and Tiffany & Co. — have switched to recycled and sustainably certified paper products. As of this year, other companies — including Prada, American Greetings, Marc Jacobs, and the Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins publishing — are continuing to use APP or APRIL paper products supplied by Chinese manufacturers, according to RAN.

Such actions could have a big impact on Chinese exports. Boycotts initiated by green groups can have a major influence on consumer preferences and have forced some of the largest retail chains in North America and Europe, such as Walmart and Ikea, to limit products sourced from old-growth forests. Meanwhile, eco-certified timber products accounted for $7.4 billion in sales in the U.S. alone in 2005, and were expected to grow to $38 billion there by 2010. At some point, Chinese companies will buck the trend toward sustainable logging at their peril.

Adding teeth to such consumer actions are tougher laws and initiatives in industrial nations. In particular, new provisions to the Lacey Act in the U.S., and the European Union Timber Action Plan in Europe are increasingly holding corporations that import illicit timber products responsible for their actions.

One senses that efforts to combat illicit timber imports are finally beginning to gain some traction in China. The relevant government agencies are now engaged, and the country has commissioned an analysis of its role as an importer of illegal timber and released draft guidelines to improve sustainability of its timber-importing corporations. It also recently hosted the Asia Forest Partnership Dialogue 2011, in Beijing, designed to assess progress in efforts to combat illegal logging in Asia over the last decade.

However, China still has no national action plan or legislation to prevent the import of illegally sourced timber, and no formal trade arrangements with major timber-producing countries designed to improve enforcement. Despite dominating the global timber market, Chinese wood-products corporations feel little pressure from buyers to improve the legality of their timber products and consider it largely unimportant to their future competitiveness, according to the Chatham House report.

The bottom line: China’s efforts to limit the environmental impacts of its burgeoning timber imports are still mostly lip-service, with little practical impact.

Check the labels when you shop for any wood or paper products. If it says, “Made in China,” be wary of the dragon, and think twice before buying.

by Heather Carr

Menhaden is a tiny fish with a big impact on the ecosystem. Because of recent overfishing, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recommended a change in the amount of catch allowed this year from 92 percent of the spawning population to 70 percent.

What is a Menhaden and Why Do We Care?

Menhaden is a small fish that filter feeds on phytoplankton. This makes it an important cleaning fish for areas that have algal blooms from industrial and agricultural runoff, like the Chesapeake Bay.

While they are considered inedible for humans, menhaden serve as a prey fish for many of the fish that people do like to eat. The overfishing of the menhaden has caused many of the edible fish species to decline, making it harder for small fisherman to earn a living, thereby impacting coastal communities.

Omega Protein, a company based in Texas whose largest plant is in Virginia, is responsible for 80 percent of the annual menhaden catch. The company cooks the fish at their Reedville plant and grinds them up for use in animal feeds, pet food, agricultural fertilizers, and fish oil supplements.

Omega Protein and the Menhaden Catch

Omega Protein has resisted fishing caps through the years and gotten their way. If it seems odd that a single company could sway scientific opinion, it is because the menhaden fishery is unique.

Most fisheries are regulated by local and state commissions, but the menhaden fishery is regulated by the Virginia legislature. In order for the fishing cap to be enforced, the Virginia legislature must agree to it.

Even though the recognition of the need for limiting the menhaden catch is a good thing, it may not matter if the Virginia legislature doesn’t act on it.

by Beth Buczynski

Earlier this week, the City of Toronto became the latest major metropolitan area to ban the sale and possession of shark fins. The ban was passed by the city council by a vote of 38-4.

Fins from up to 73 million sharks are used every year to make shark fin soup, a delicacy in Asian culture. Shark finning is a cruel and wasteful practice – captured at sea and hauled on deck, the sharks are often still alive while their fins are sliced off. Because shark meat is not considered as valuable as the fins, the maimed animals are tossed overboard to drown or bleed to death.

The state of California, which has a large Asian population, also recently passed a similar ban on shark fins. The California bill was proposed and championed by Assemblymember Paul Fong (D-Cupertino), who is himself of Asian descent.

“It is time to stop serving a soup that is driving sharks to extinction,” said Assemblymember Fong in September. ”The cultural issue is very minor compared to the major environmental devastation of eliminating sharks for our world’s oceans. Chinese Americans are environmentally conscious, we believe in harmony with nature, it is in our culture to support the protection of our environment.

The Toronto bill was introduced by Councillors Glenn De Baeremaker, John Parker, and Kristyn Wong-Tam, with additional support from Licensing Committee Chair Cesar Palacio and other members of Council. As the fifth largest city in North America, the City of Toronto was the largest market for shark fins in all of Canada.

“Toronto’s action is a huge victory in the global fight against an illegal shark fin trade valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Rob Sinclair, Executive Director of WildAid Canada, who has been at the forefront of this campaign for the past five months.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 1/3 of the world’s shark species are threatened with extinction, with certain species experiencing declines up to 90 percent.

While the practice of shark finning is illegal in North America, current laws banning shark finning do not address the issue of the shark fin trade. Therefore, fins are being imported into North America from countries with few or even no shark protections in place.

In a study published in the journal Nature, a coalition of scientific organizations reported that 100 percent of healthy brown bats exposed to the fungus while hibernating developed the mysterious ailment, which has killed more than 1 million cave-dwelling bats in the U.S. since it was first identified in 2006. In the northeastern U.S., scientists say white-nose syndrome has caused an 80-percent decline in bats. The latest research confirmed that G. destructans can be spread from infected bats to healthy bats through direct contact, said David Blehert, a microbiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the authors of the report.

But like most pathogens, he said, spore-producing fungi can be spread in numerous other ways. Consequently, he said, agencies will take careful precautions to limit human access to sensitive areas occupied by bats and restrict the movement of equipment among research sites.

Photo by USFWS Headquarters/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Elizabeth Grossman

New studies have underscored the potentially harmful health effects of the most widely used flame retardants, found in everything from baby blankets to carpets. Health experts are now calling for more aggressive action to limit these chemicals, including cutting back on highly flammable, petroleum-based materials used in many consumer products.

Over the past 40 years, a class of chemicals with the tongue-twisting name of halogenated flame retardants has permeated the lives of people throughout the industrialized world. These synthetic chemicals — used in electronics, upholstery, carpets, textiles, insulation, vehicle and airplane parts, children’s clothes and strollers, and many other products — have proven very effective at making petroleum-based materials resist fire.

Yet many of these compounds have also turned out to be environmentally mobile and persistent — turning up in food and household dust — and are now so ubiquitous that levels of the chemicals in the blood of North Americans appear to have been doubling every two to five years for the past several decades.

Acting on growing evidence that these flame retardants can accumulate in people and cause adverse health effects — interfering with hormones, reproductive systems, thyroid and metabolic function, and neurological development in infants and children — the federal government and various states have limited or banned the use of some of these chemicals, as have other countries. Several are restricted by the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants. Many individual companies have voluntarily discontinued production and use of these compounds. Yet despite these restrictions, evidence has emerged in recent months that efforts to curtail the use of such flame retardants — a $4 billion-a-year industry globally — and to limit their impacts on human health may not be succeeding.

This spring and summer, a test of consumer products, as well as a study in Environmental Science & Technology, showed that use of these chemicals continues to be widespread and that compounds thought to be off the market due to health concerns continue to be used in the U.S., including in children’s products such as crib mattresses, changing table pads, nursing pillows, and car seats. Also this summer, new research provided the first strong evidence that maternal exposure to a widely used type of flame retardant, known as PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), can alter thyroid function in pregnant women and children, result in low birth weights, and impair neurological development.

“Of most concern are developmental and reproductive effects and early life exposures — in utero, infantile and for children,” Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, said in an interview.

Heather Stapleton, assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University and lead author of the recent Environmental Science & Technology study, said more action from industry and government regulators is urgently needed. “My concern is the elevated exposure infants and toddlers are receiving,” Stapleton said in an email. “A high proportion of infants are in physical contact with products treated with these chemicals almost 24 hours a day. Some of these chemicals are either known or suspected carcinogens. During the first year of life, infants are still developing, particularly their brain. And some of these flame retardant chemicals have chemical structures similar to known developmental neurotoxicants (e.g. organophosphate pesticides).”

In one study, published this summer in the American Journal of Epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley researchers found that each ten-fold increase in levels of various brominated flame retardants in a mother’s blood was associated with an approximately 115 gram decrease in her baby’s birth weight, a drop the researchers describe as “relatively large.”

“What makes this significant, is that this is the first long study that suggests maternal exposure to PBDEs may impact fetal development and health,” explained lead author Kim Harley, associate director for health effects at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health.

As evidence linking the use of halogenated flame retardants to health risks continues to mount, there is increasing pressure on government and industry to take action. About a dozen U.S. states have enacted laws that bar certain uses of various flame retardants. Among these regulations are those that bar the use of two or more polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), particularly in children’s products. New York recently passed a law limiting use of the flame retardant known as Tris, while the European Union limits the use of certain halogenated flame retardants in electronics — a regulation that most companies comply with worldwide. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission barred Tris from children’s clothing in 1977 after it was identified as a carcinogen and a mutagen. And using its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and PBDE manufacturers have worked out a voluntary phase-out of these compounds that began in 2004 and is to conclude in 2013.

Yet new halogenated flame retardants with chemical compositions and structures similar to those that are now regulated, including PBDEs, continue to enter the market. (This class of compounds typically uses bromine and chlorine, elements known as halogens, to inhibit combustion.) Meanwhile, those that are restricted are being found in products from which they’ve been barred, most likely due to various flaws in supply-chain oversight. At the same time, older products containing discontinued flame retardants remain in use; many of these products — furniture, carpeting, car seats, and strollers, for example — are designed to last for years, prolonging exposure to chemicals with documented adverse health effects. But tracking the use of individual flame retardants is challenging, as product labels are not required to declare these substances, nor are chemical manufacturers required to reveal full details of what goes into their products.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) and other chemical industry groups maintain the safety of currently manufactured flame retardants, and the ACC says that in the U.S. each year flame retardants prevent 360 deaths and 740 injuries that would have resulted from furniture fires alone.

So how can use of these compounds be reduced or eliminated?

The EPA is in the process of assessing potential alternatives to PBDEs and other flame retardants. But a list of potential alternatives released last month includes numerous other halogenated compounds, and many chemicals on the list will likely fail to meet the program’s health-safety goals.

Some experts say what is sorely needed is for industry to begin relying less on the highly flammable, petroleum-based materials used in so many consumer products. “It’s essential that we rethink the base materials we use to make products,” said Kathy Curtis, policy director of Clean New York, a non-profit organization advocating for chemical safety. “Styrene insulation is so flammable that flame retardants are required, and they still burn quite easily. Polyurethane foam in furniture and baby care products is also highly flammable, despite the added flame retardants certain flammability standards require. We have to stop using such fuel-rich, petroleum-based materials in buildings when safer, inherently flame-retardant substitutes are available for these same uses.”

John Warner, president of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, said that industry has become so reliant on flame retardants that as much as a third of the weight of plastics used in airplanes comes from one type of PBDE flame retardant, known as “deca.” Finding an alternative will be challenging, said Warner, especially since from a fire-safety point of view deca is “tried and true,” and it is used in so many different types of plastics and foams. There are viable non-toxic alternatives to using halogenated flame retardants, Warner explained, but thus far, not one that will work as a drop-in substitute for all uses of deca.

Two companies that manufacture children’s products are working to eliminate the need for flame-retardant chemicals by using fabrics whose density and composition enable them to meet flammability standards without chemical additives. Joseph Hei, president and founder of OrbitBaby, said his company has commissioned the milling of its own patented, organic cotton-wool blend fabrics that are fire-resistant. The safety of the products is certified to the Oeko-Tex 100 standard, administered by the Zurich-based Oeko-Tex Institute, which conducts tests to ensure the safety of textiles. “We verify and do our own follow-up screening of these fabrics,” Hei said in an interview.

Andreas Zandren, vice-president for sales, marketing, and product development for BabyBjorn, said his company has found a similar solution by using a densely woven cotton in some products and thinner foams that don’t require use of flame retardants. BabyBjorn does in-house testing of all fabrics to make sure they are free of hazardous flame retardants, Zandren said.

Hei explained that there are relatively few mills that offer Oeko-Tex certified fabrics, adding, “It’s a sourcing challenge.” Both companies also acknowledged that meeting California’s tough flammability standards and U.S. car flammability regulations is challenging. But, said Zandren, “Strict standards challenge us to be very creative in sourcing and testing new materials, as well as creating smart designs.”

This kind of sourcing and testing is costly, as reflected in these companies’ product prices when compared with other more mass-market brands. Asked about the relatively high price of OrbitBaby products and what that means for lower-income consumers, Hei said that he hoped awareness would lead to more demand for the kinds of materials his company is using and thus lead to lower prices. Several larger companies, among them Graco and Walmart, make car seats also rated as low in flame retardants by the Michigan-based non-profit, HealthyStuff.org. Walmart restricts use of PBDEs in children’s and other products, but declined to discuss details of what alternatives their products use to meet safety standards. Graco also declined comment on that issue.

Eventually, product redesign that avoids flammable materials will be key, experts said.

“I think we should be asking, ‘Where do we really need them?’” said Linda Birnbaum of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “I don’t question the need for flame retardants in an airplane, but do we need them in nursing pillows and babies’ strollers? Are we putting chemicals in places we don’t need them?”

Photo by ankakay/flickr/Creative Commons

by Jim Robbins

Conservationists have long called for creating corridors that would enable large mammals and other wildlife to roam more freely across an increasingly developed planet. But now scientists are taking a closer look at just how well these corridors are working and what role they might play in a warming world.

The rugged Cabinet Mountains of northwestern Montana are an island of wild country with a population of fewer than 30 grizzly bears, their existence tenuous because they are cut off from others of their kind by distance, roads, and other development. Biologists are concerned about the small number of females, since they reproduce only every three to four years. So in recent years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has occasionally caught a sow near Glacier National Park, trucked it to the Cabinets, and sent it running off into the woods to increase the number of females.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service is pinning its hopes for the long-term survival of this population on a different strategy: the protection of an ecological corridor that would connect the marooned Cabinet grizzly bear population with a larger, more intact ecosystem, 50 miles to the south. That ecosystem is the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, some 600 square miles of rugged bear habitat now devoid of bears because they were wiped out to protect sheep.

The Cabinet bears could make it to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness under their own steam, but standing in their way is the formidable obstacle of Interstate 90 — six lanes of concrete, with more than 8,000 vehicles a day zooming past at 75 miles per hour. Some tunnels exist under the highway to allow wildlife to bypass the road, but in the last few years only one grizzly bear has apparently made it to the other side, and he was shot by a black bear hunter. Biologists aren’t sure grizzlies will even make the trip but they are currently studying options for preserving land for a corridor; in August, a non-profit group bought a key, 71-acre parcel of land to expand the grizzly bear corridor near the Cabinet Mountains. “We can’t make them move,” said Chris Servheen, recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We can only provide the opportunity.”

Connecting the Cabinet Mountain grizzlies to the Selway-Bitteroot wilderness — part of the larger “Yellowstone to Yukon” corridor project — demonstrates the challenges involved in efforts to link up isolated populations of wildlife by establishing ecological corridors. With the planet increasingly carved up by human development, biologists and conservationists have for decades realized the importance of establishing ecological corridors that will enable remaining populations of animals — particularly large mammals — to have the room they need to thrive. Now, numerous studies are underway and the effectiveness of corridors remains an open question, especially as the climate, and natural systems, shift in unpredictable ways.

“We’ve studied the small ones, a couple of hundred yards [wide],” and they work, said Paul Beier, a conservation biologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and an expert on wildlife corridors. “We think the bigger ones will work too, but we don’t really know that.”

Still, the creation of corridors is moving ahead. In Germany biologists are planning to protect or create thousands of miles of corridors to connect national parks and conserve a range of species, especially the imperiled European wildcat. In India, conservationists have raised money to resettle several villages in the Tirunelli-Kudrakote corridor, a critical 2,200-acre swath that connects elephant habitat between two preserves that are home to roughly 6,300 elephants, the largest population of Asian elephants in the world. This summer, residents of a fourth village in the corridor agreed to abandon their land for new homes elsewhere.

In the Amazon, conservationists and international organizations are working to create corridors for animal and plant migrations upslope as the climate continues to change. “Extinction estimates for the Amazon Basin are terrifyingly high,” said Miles Silman, a Wake Forest biologist who is gathering baseline data on Andes ecosystems as the region warms. New fragmentation is unceasing; Peru and Brazil completed a massive construction project this year, the Interoceanic Highway, which slices through the protected tropical wilderness of both countries.

In Central America and South America, conservation groups such as Panthera are attempting to create a web of jaguar corridors in many of the 18 countries where the great cats live. The corridors will include parks and wilderness, but also agricultural areas and other human-dominated landscapes through which jaguars can pass without fear of being hunted by local residents.

In western North America, conservationists are hoping that bears and other large animals in the northern Rocky Mountain region will eventually be linked by the Yellowstone to Yukon corridor, which would connect major parks and wilderness areas and allow the flow of species across hundreds of miles of the wildest landscape in North America. “These are large blocks of public land separated by mountain valleys with private land,” said Servheen. “We want to reconnect all the blocks of public land.”

The textbook example of the perils of isolating populations of large mammals is the Florida panther, whose numbers dwindled to just two dozen individuals due to habitat fragmentation and resulting genetic impoverishment; the big cats were dying, in part, because of a heart defect related to inbreeding. But by introducing eight mountain lions from Texas — the same species, even though they have different names — and by building highway overpasses and tunnels that have reduced mortality from cars and trucks, the Florida panther has been pulled back from the brink of extinction. Roughly 100 to 160 exist today.

A critical element of conservation is the need to keep large mammals on the landscape, especially predators. And essential to protecting the large mammals is the preservation of their migration routes, whether they’re moving for food and water, for breeding, to make seasonal changes, or, more recently, to follow preferred habitat as a changing climate causes shifts in plant communities.

Some ecologists question, however, whether corridors are the panacea that conservationists make them out to be. Dan Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, said that some corridors will work, and some won’t — it’s site specific because habitats are so different. But he thinks they are a compromise that avoids the real problem, and diverts critical funds. “A general concern I’ve had with the corridor bandwagon is that it perpetuates the notion that we can somehow have conservation on the cheap by providing a technological solution to the problem of habitat destruction and fragmentation,” he said. “It’s seductive, but unlikely to work in many cases. Unfortunately to conserve biodiversity we have to conserve habitat.”

A study published in late September in Ecology Letters suggested that global warming could occur so rapidly that some creatures, including certain amphibians, might not be able to adapt, even with the aid of ecological corridors. “Our work shows that it’s not just how fast you disperse, but also your ability to tolerate unfavorable climate for decadal periods that will limit the ability of many species to shift their ranges,” said Dov Sax, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. “Ultimately this work suggests that habitat corridors will be ineffective for many species and that we may instead need to consider using managed relocation more frequently than has been previously considered.”

Few studies exist on the conservation effect of corridors on large mammal populations, but there is some good data on small- to medium-sized species. The longest-running study of corridors has gone on for 18 years at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina, a 310-square-mile federal nuclear reprocessing facility that is also a National Environmental Research Park. Nick Haddad, a professor of biology at North Carolina State University has investigated the impact of a restored corridor 150 meters long and 25 meters wide between fragments of native mixed longleaf pine and savannah. Haddad and his colleagues have done painstaking work, capturing butterflies and small mammals, marking them, and then recapturing them to see which creatures made the trip across the corridor. They have also dusted plant seeds with fluorescent powder, and then found those seeds again in bird waste on the other side of the corridor.

The verdict? “Corridors work as a superhighway for plants and animals and they use them a lot,” Haddad said. Of the 20 species studied, 18 moved more frequently with a corridor, some even ten times as much as species with no corridor. Areas connected by corridors also had 20 percent more plant species than those without according to a 2009 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists have shown that highway overpasses for wildlife on Arizona Highway 260 and in Banff National Park are well used and have reduced the number of large animals killed by traffic by more than 90 percent. They are widely considered to be a success, and similar structures are being built around the West. The question, though, is whether less road kill has an appreciable effect on a species’ long-term viability. A 2003 study along the 16-lane Santa Monica Freeway, used by 150,000 vehicles each day, found that bobcats and coyotes used the existing underpasses. But they also crowded the animals’ home ranges together and newcomers were fiercely challenged and did not stay long enough to breed.

Other studies say there is little or no effect from corridors. A 2002 study found, for example, that corridors did not offset the impacts of logging-caused fragmentation in the boreal forest in north-central Alberta, Canada, on most bird species.

Thomas Hoctor, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Florida, and a colleague, Reed Noss, drew up a connectivity plan for their state in the 1990s called Ecological Greenways, which proposed purchasing corridors from the coast to inland habitat. In the last few years, that project has become integral to the state's plans for adapting to climate change. Sea levels are projected to rise by as much as three to six feet in the next hundred years, and much critical habitat will likely be inundated, forcing species to migrate away from the coast. Over the past decade, the state bought hundreds of thousands of acres for corridors, but funding for the program was eliminated this year under the administration of conservative Republican governor, Rick Scott. Still, said Hoctor, the land that has already been purchased could help some species make the journey inland across the state’s densely developed landscape.

Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, is investigating climate change and the movement of species across large landscapes. He thinks the jury is still out on the efficacy of corridors. “The hypothesis is there, but there hasn’t been a lot of empirical work done,” he said. “We don’t know if species will use the corridors we think they will.” What is important about corridors, he said, is that “they create a dialogue and awareness that these are things we need to pay attention to.”

To some, the notion of preserving and creating corridors seems obvious, especially as a warming world will put more pressure on species to move. “Dozens are being created, and it will become hundreds quickly,” said Beier.

But other scientists are less sanguine. University of Minnesota ecologist Craig Packer, writing in Science in 2010 about the Florida Panther, said, “Once the entire planet reaches the same state of economic development and urbanization as the United States, wildlife managers all over the world can look forward to carting rare species from one park to another until the end of time.”

Photo by Ashleigh Bennett/flickr/Creative Commons

by Carl Haub

In a mere half-century, the number of people on the planet has soared from 3 billion to 7 billion, placing us squarely in the midst of the most rapid expansion of world population in our 50,000-year history — and placing ever-growing pressure on the Earth and its resources.

But that is the past. What of the future? Leading demographers, including those at the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau, are projecting that world population will peak at 9.5 billion to 10 billion later this century and then gradually decline as poorer countries develop. But what if those projections are too optimistic? What if population continues to soar, as it has in recent decades, and the world becomes home to 12 billion or even 16 billion people by 2100, as a high-end UN estimate has projected? Such an outcome would clearly have enormous social and environmental implications, including placing enormous stress on the world’s food and water resources, spurring further loss of wild lands and biodiversity, and hastening the degradation of the natural systems that support life on Earth.

It is customary in the popular media and in many journal articles to cite a projected population figure as if it were a given, a figure so certain that it could virtually be used for long-range planning purposes. But we must carefully examine the assumptions behind such projections. And forecasts that population is going to level off or decline this century have been based on the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world. That is far from a sure bet.

Eyeing the future, conservationists have clung to the notion that population will peak and then start to decline later this century. Renowned evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson has propounded what he terms the bottleneck theory: that maximum pressure on the natural world will occur this century as human population peaks, after which a declining human population will supposedly ease that pressure. The goal of conservation is therefore to help as much of nature as possible squeeze through this population bottleneck. But what if there is no bottleneck, but rather a long tunnel where the human species continues to multiply?

Population projections most often use a pattern of demographic change called the demographic transition. This model is based on the way in which high birth and death rates changed over the centuries in Europe, declining to the low birth and death rates of today. Thus, projections assume that the European experience will be replicated in developing countries. These projections take for granted three key things about fertility in developing countries. First, that it will continue to decline where it has begun to decline, and will begin to decline where it has not. Second, that the decline will be smooth and uninterrupted. And, finally, that it will decline to two children or less per woman.

These are levels now found in Europe and North America. But will such low levels find favor in the Nigerias, Pakistans, and Zambias of this world? The desire for more than two children — often many more than two — will remain an obstacle and will challenge assumptions that world population will level off or decline.

In quite a few developing countries, birth rates are declining significantly. But in others they are not. In Jordan, for example, the fertility rate still hovers around 4 children per woman. Indonesia was a country that was widely acknowledged for its innovative and steadfastly pursued family planning program in the 1980s, when its total fertility rate fell to 3 children per woman. It has been hovering for some time around 2.5. In a recent survey, about 30 percent of women with 2 living children said that they wanted another child. That figure was 35 percent for their husbands.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the region that now causes the most worry. It remains in a virtual pre-industrial condition, demographically speaking, with high fertility and rather high mortality. The UN projects that fertility will decline from a high level of 6 children per woman around 1990 and reach about 3 children per woman by 2050. Many sub-Saharan African countries have seen some decline, and today the average fertility rate is 5.2 children per woman. Should the UN’s assumptions prove correct, sub-Saharan Africa’s population would still rise from 880 million today to 2 billion in 2050.

Countries such as Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, and Rwanda have identified rapid population growth as a problem and committed sufficient resources to address it. Yet their fertility rates remain at 4.6 to 4.7 children per woman, and a future halt in fertility decline in those countries would surprise no one. But most future population projections assume a continuing decline.

Often fertility rates might decline from a higher level and then “stall” for a time, not continuing their downward trajectories to the two-child family, resulting in a higher-than-projected population. In sub-Saharan Africa, this has happened in Nigeria, where the fertility rate has stalled at about 5.7, and in Ghana, where the fertility rate is 4.1 and apparently resuming a slow decline. Very recent surveys have shown that fertility decline in Senegal has likely stalled at 5.0 children and has risen somewhat to 4.1 in Zimbabwe. Clearly, not all countries will see a continuous decline in fertility rates, and some have barely begun to drop, meaning that projected population sizes will turn out to be too low.

Fertility rates are lowest among educated, urban women who account for much of the initial decrease. What will it take to reach large, often inaccessible rural populations, whose desire to limit family size is frequently quite limited and whose “ideal” number of children is quite high? Challenges include: the logistical task of providing reproductive health services to women; informing them of their ability to limit their number of children and to space births over at least two years; low levels of literacy; the value husbands place on large families; and securing funding for family planning programs.

India provides another cautionary tale. The country is often hailed as an emerging economic power, yet 930 million people — three-quarters of India’s population — live on less than $2 per day. Some advanced Indian states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have excellent family planning programs and fertility rates of 1.8 children per woman, which will lead to declining populations in those states. But some of India’s poorest and most populous states — Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh — have total fertility rates ranging from 3.3 to 3.9. The Indian example illustrates an important trend: that the challenge of soaring populations will increasingly be concentrated in the poorest countries, and in the poorest regions of nations such as India.

The real possibility of fertility decline stopping before the two-children level is reached requires demographers, policy makers, and environmentalists to seriously consider that population growth in the coming century will come in at the high end of demographic projections. The UN’s middle-of-the-road assumption for sub-Saharan Africa — that fertility rates will drop to 3.0 and population reach 2 billion by 2050 — seem unrealistically low to me. More likely is the UN’s high-end projection that sub-Saharan Africa’s population will climb to 2.2 billion by 2050 and then continue to 4.8 billion by 2100. The dire consequences of such an increase are difficult to ponder. If sub-Saharan Africa is having trouble feeding and providing water to 880 million people today, what will the region be like in 90 years if the population increases five-fold — particularly if, as projected, temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degrees C, worsening droughts?

Many factors may arise to cause fertility rates to drop in countries where the decline has lagged. A rising age at marriage, perhaps resulting from increased education of females and from their increased autonomy; rising expectations among parents that their children can have a better life; decreasing availability of land, forcing migration to cities to seek some source of income; real commitment from governments to provide family planning services and the funds to do so. The list goes on.

But we must facts. The assumption that all developing countries will see their birth rates decline to the low levels now prevalent in Europe is very far from certain. We can also expect the large majority of population growth to be in countries and areas with the highest poverty and lowest levels of education. Today, the challenge to improve living conditions is often not being met, even as the numbers in need continue to grow.

As populations continue to rise rapidly in these areas, the ability to supply clean water for drinking and sustainable water for agriculture, to provide the most basic health services, and to avoid deforestation and profound environmental consequences, lies in the balance.

Photo by Wayne Large/flickr/Creative Commons

by Bill McKibben

Dear Friends,

The last two weeks have been spectacular.

In Washington DC, phase one of the tar sands campaign has just come to an end, and 1,252 North Americans have been arrested in a massive civil disobedience campaign. This historic groundswell was focused on stopping the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline — but it also sent a larger message that people everywhere are willing to take bold action to move our planet beyond fossil fuels.

The courage on display in DC has been inspiring, but I’ve been just as cheered by the help that has poured in from around the world. On Sunday, activists in front of the White House held a banner with a huge number on it: 618,428. That’s how many people around the world who signed the “Stop the Tar Sands” mega-petition to President Obama, with signatures from many350.org supporters, as well as members of Avaaz, Greenpeace, and dozens of other groups.

But this movement does more than sign petitions: many of you stood strong in front of the White House risking arrest, and protesters on every continent have picketed outside embassies and consulates. That makes sense, for global warming is the one problem that affects everyone everywhere.

And the next moment to demonstrate the power of the global movement is September 24 for Moving Planet – the massive day of climate action that will unite people all over the world. We’ve heard news of amazing actions from every corner of the earth — from a massive bike rally in the Philippines to an incredible eco-festival in Philadelphia. I truly can’t wait to see the pictures pour in.

But here’s why it’s important: we’re not just a movement that opposes things, we’re also a movement that dreams of what’s coming. And we don’t just dream, we also transform those dreams into reality. On September 24, on bike and on foot and on boards, we’re going to point the way towards that future. By days’ end, we’ll have shown why the bicycle is more glamorous than the car, and why the people have the potential to be more powerful than the polluters.

On some days fighting global warming means swallowing hard, mustering your courage, and making a sacrifice — other days it means getting all your friends up in the saddles of their bikes to have some fun and help move the planet forward.

September 24 is the second kind of day; it’s going to be powerful, it’s going to be beautiful, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. Click here to join in.

Photo by Josh Lopez Some rights reserved by tarsandsaction

by Rhishja Larson

Undercover visits to “tiger farms” in China confirm that these facilities have nothing to do with tiger conservation.

Although touted by China as “conservation”, the country’s notorious tiger farms are actually commercial enterprises engaging in the internationally banned business of selling products derived from tigers.

According to the WikiLeaks cable “Devouring Dragon, Disappearing Tigers: A Look at South China’s Tiger Farms and Reserves” dated July 12th, 2007, China’s so-called tiger conservation efforts appear to be little more than a camouflage for its lucrative market for tiger products.

Guilin Xiong Seng Tiger and Bear Farm

Posing as a Korean tourist, an American diplomat (referred to as “Econoff” in the cable) visited the Guilin Xiong Seng Tiger and Bear Farm in Guangxi Province.

During the visit, Econoff observed:

- Tigers being whipped and struck with a metal pole
- Tigers and bear cubs forced to perform in a “mock Chinese marriage procession”
- Tiger bone wine and powdered black bear bile for sale
- Four large vats “allegedly” filled with tiger bone wine

The diplomat was told by locals that tiger skins could be purchased by ordering in advance and that tiger meat was served “until recently” to visitors; however, this was denied by farm staff.

It was noted that in addition to more than 500 tigers, the “farm” was holding nearly 200 bears and a “small number of African lions.”

Sections of hair had been shaved off the bears’ torsos, presumably for bile extraction.

Longyan Tiger Reserve

On an excursion to the Longyan Tiger Reserve, the “Korean tourist” saw a family of South China tigers stuffed and on display (three cubs and an adult) at the “inn” located on the property.

Tiger bone wine from Guilin was for sale at the inn.

The “reserve” claims to have 22 tigers onsite, and at least ten were seen by Econoff.

Staff at Longyan Tiger Reserved told Econoff they were not aware of any plans to “reintroduce tigers into the wild”, as claimed by supporters of China’s tiger farms.

A ‘troubling’ conclusion

The cable concludes with the comment that Econoff finds the “commercial nature” of the Guilin farm “troubling.”

The large number of endangered tigers and bears present with no current plans to reintroduce to them into the wild raises concern regarding the motivation of such a farm.

Indeed, these commercial enterprises have done nothing except undermine legitimate efforts to conserve wild tigers by encouraging demand for tiger parts.

Today, only about 3,200 tigers remain in the wild.

WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES.

Another disturbing development worth mentioning here: China has imported over 100 young rhinos from South Africa, as part of a multimillion dollar scheme to breed rhinos under the guise of “conservation.”

This scheme is already having a devastating effect on efforts to protect rhinos by encouraging the use of rhino horn – which actually has no medicinal value.

(Learn more about the rhino horn scheme here. Links to photos of the “rhino farm” can be found here.)

Image no.1 By Eric Kilby from USA (YAWN Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; no.2 via Wikimedia Commons

by Fred Pearce

Airborne microbes — such as bacteria, fungal spores, and tiny algae — can travel thousands of miles and high into the stratosphere. Now scientists are beginning to understand their possible role in creating clouds, causing rain, spreading disease, and even changing climate.

Consider the African rain dance. People in tribal costumes stamping the ground to make rain — it’s nonsense, you might say. Except that we now know it could actually work. If you have enough dancers, there may be no better way to make rain, because bugs in the soil and surface vegetation make exceptionally good cloud- and ice-condensation nuclei — and rain dances stir them up.

Microbes, it turns out, are the hidden players in the atmosphere, making clouds, causing rain, spreading diseases between continents, and maybe even changing climates as well. Eos, published by the American Geophysical Union, last month reported that bio-aerosols are “leading the high life.” In the Eos article, David Smith of the University of Washington and colleagues argue that microbes are “the most successful types of life on Earth” and are the unacknowledged players in many planetary processes, particularly in the atmosphere. It’s time we caught up with them.

Back in 1979, Russell Schnell of the University of Colorado was in western Kenya wondering why the tea plantations there held the world record for hailstorms. They occurred 132 days a year. He discovered that tiny particles of dead and decaying leaves in the soil bore a close resemblance to the tiny particles around which hailstones formed. They were, it turned out, far better adapted to the task even than man-made cloud seeding chemicals like silver iodide.

Schnell, who is now deputy director of the Global Monitoring Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, concluded that “the feet of hundreds of tea pickers going about their daily jobs” were to blame for the hail. By kicking the bits of leaf into the air, he said, the tea pickers must be providing the abundant ice-nucleators that created the hailstorms. He published in Tellus in 1982, revealing that the critical actors in this Kenyan drama were the bacteria, Pseudomonas syringae, that attached themselves to the leaves as they rotted — the tea pickers sent the leaf bits airborne as they walked the fields picking the tea leaves from the bushes.

Biologists have long known that many species of bacteria trigger frost damage on vegetation, with Pseudomonas syringae the most efficient. The bacteria have evolved a gene that promotes spontaneous ice nucleation at around minus 2 degrees Celsius, much warmer than would happen otherwise. Their ice-making skills allow them to break down the cell walls of the plants they feed on. But it seems they also use the same skill in clouds.

Mineral and salt particles are present in large numbers in clouds and can act as condensation nuclei. But many bacteria, as well as fungal spores and tiny algae, are the cloud condensation nuclei of choice because they can work at higher temperatures. Since the formation of ice is normally the first step in the creation of raindrops in clouds, they are probably critical in the creation of rain. “Numerous studies,” say Smith and his colleagues in Eos, “have shown that many... condensation nuclei responsible for climate and precipitation patterns are in fact airborne micro-organisms, living or dead.”

And that, Smith says, means any human activity that puts more bugs in the air is potentially a rain-making activity, whether it is tramping tea plantations or cooking up a big rain dance. “Exactly how higher concentrations of airborne micro-organisms will interact with other variables that drive weather and precipitation is a major unknown in the climate change equation,” he says.

Schnell’s original observation was largely ignored by the wider science community. But recent papers have made similar observations in other places. For instance, Brent Christner, a microbiologist at Louisiana State University, reported in Science in 2008 that he had found “ubiquitous and abundant” microbes in fresh snowfall sampled from Antarctica to Montana – between 70 and 100 percent of ice nucleators found in the snow were biological.

This, Christner points out, was especially remarkable since he was sampling snow in areas where there was no local vegetation. The microbes had traveled a long way to do their job. “It’s a wake-up call,” he says. “Biological particles do seem to play a very important role in generating snowfall and rain.”

Then in May this year, at a meeting of the American Society of Microbiology, Alexander Michaud of Montana State University in Bozeman reported finding high concentrations of bacteria in hailstones falling on his campus.

“Bioprecipitation” is a hot topic. And the more so as we learn how much biological matter there is in the atmosphere — more than 10,000 individual bacteria per cubic meter of air over the land, according to a 2009 study by Susannah Burrows of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. These bacteria spend an average of about a week in the atmosphere; but while some stay close to the ground, others soar into the stratosphere, says Smith. Weather balloons have even found them in the mesosphere, up to 77 kilometers aloft, according to a forgotten study by Soviet scientist A. A. Imshenetsky, published in Applied and Environmental Biology as long ago as 1978 and uncovered by Smith.

This, says Dale Griffin of the U.S. Geological Survey in Tallahassee, Florida raises another interesting possibility. “Does the Earth shed microbial life into space, and how would this impact on our quest for extraterrestrial life? There are all kinds of interesting questions in this field, and very few people dabbling in it.”

Discovering how long they stay up is difficult. But a study after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 found micron-size particles — a reasonable proxy for bacteria — still falling to Earth five years later. Certainly, the dispersal is global.

Is there a permanent stratospheric ecosystem with bacteria, fungal spores, and viruses spending their entire lives in the clouds and reproducing? “I think we can talk about an atmospheric ecosystem,” says Griffin. “It is of course more fluid than what we classically call an ecosystem, but there is life, and it is plentiful.”

Other parts of the planet once thought devoid of life — such as Antarctic ice, deep oceans and deep rock formations — turn out to contain living organisms. “So,” asks Griffin, “why not the stratosphere?”

We are constantly being rained on by bio-detritus from around the world — from dandruff and algae to pollen and fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Ruprecht Jaenicke of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Mainz in Germany analyzed air samples from remote regions. He concluded in Science in 2005 that as much as a quarter of the aerosols in the atmosphere are of biological rather than geological origin.

Some bugs bring diseases, of course. Gene Shinn of the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Florida first reported in 1999 that outbreaks of major coral diseases afflicting the Caribbean coincided with dust storms. One culprit was a soil fungus called Aspergillus sydowii that killed most of the region’s sea fans, a form of soft coral.

The pathogens — Shinn found 130 species in all — mostly showed up when the wind was from the east, bringing Sahara sand across the Atlantic. Roughly a billion tons of African dust settles on the Caribbean some years. The fungus that kills sea fans first arrived in 1983, when an intense drought in the Sahara sent dust clouds billowing across the Atlantic.

So desertification on one continent can kill coral reefs on another. Presumably dust storms crossing the Pacific from China’s Gobi desert will also be carrying pathogens. Griffin thinks it possible that soybean rusts from the west coast of Africa may also have crossed the Atlantic and infected soybean plants in the Americas. There could be other undiscovered environmental consequences as well.

But many of the particles in atmospheric aerosols are bugs. Air sampled during 17 weeks in 2006 over San Antonio and Austin in Texas yielded 1,800 different types of bacteria. Many may have been locally generated, but not all, according to Gary Andersen, of the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who analyzed the air.

His study was commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security as part of its research into possible bioterrorism. “We want to determine the background levels of airborne pathogens and other microbes because only very limited work has been conducted on cataloguing organisms in the air,” Andersen says. “This work underscores how much we don’t know about airborne bacterial populations, or where the bacteria come from.”

The potential for bioterrorism from airborne bacteria is certainly there. The Aspergillus fungus also causes lung disease in humans and has been implicated in asthma outbreaks. Influenza viruses have been tracked traveling by air from mainland China to Taiwan. Griffin says that a major outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the virulent cattle infection, may have reached England in 2001 in airborne dust. There was never any proof, but Griffin said at the time: “Satellite images show a dust cloud moving over the Atlantic and reaching Britain on 13 February. One week later, foot and mouth broke out in the UK. Given that the disease's incubation period is seven days, that is one heck of a coincidence.”

It looks as if bugs in the air may not just be key players in local weather and disease. Scientists are now growing interested in the possibility that bugs in the air may influence global climate.

It’s not so far-fetched. We know that marine algae generate millions of tons of a gas called dimethyl sulphide that converts in the atmosphere into aerosols of sulphuric acid. These in turn form condensation nuclei that may be major causes of cloud formation in remote ocean regions. Some researchers who follow the Gaian theorist James Lovelock have argued that may be a mechanism for controlling planetary temperatures. Researchers such as the University of East Anglia’s Tim Lenton suggest that bugs in the air could be performing a similar role.

But whatever view you take of Gaia, microbes certainly make up a substantial part of the atmospheric aerosol that may be slowing global warming. And since much of the atmospheric bio-aerosol can absorb moisture and nucleate ice and water droplets, they will be making clouds and rain, too.

If, as seems likely, humans are making the atmosphere more dusty — through industrial emissions, deforestation, plowing, and desertification — and are adding large amounts of bio-aerosols into the mix, then this may be another means by which we are changing our atmosphere — and even our climate. We are, it seems, conducting our own impromptu rain dance.

Photo by Hamed Saber/flickr/Creative Commons