404 Latin America
Index:
–Jamaica: 1) Save the trees by stopping Bauxite mining, 2) Agriculture, squatting and polluting are biggest threats to island watersheds,
–Haiti: 3) Hurricane’s effect on severe deforestation and extreme poverty
–Mexico: 4) Conservationists fail to halt illegal logging of Butterfly wintering site
–Costa Rica: 5) Gathering disease resistant Mahogany seeds
–Panama: 6) Rural poor and indigenous people amid declining forests, 7) MTV’s green crusade trashes the forest,
–Guatemala: 8) leading enviro survives being shot after court victory regarding mining laws
–Nicaragua: 9) New law to protect the Bosawas biosphere reserve
–Guyana: 10) Need to look beyond traditional approaches to financing for forests
–Ecuador: 11) Four tribes members head to Wash. DC to talk about Chevron
–Argentina: 12) Lots of tourist sprawl at Iguazu Falls
–Brazil: 13) New website gets 13 million protests against fires and deforestation in only 13 days, 14) Amazon stats, 15) Tropical woodland savannahs give way to big ag exploits, 16) State of emergency has been declared in Tailandia, 17) Norway offers a billion US dollars for forest protection, 18) World’s oldest ant species found living in Amazon, 19) Understanding recolonization of degraded forest lands by pioneer species, 20) Isolated native Indians in the Amazon forest threatened by advancing loggers, 21) Amazon mayors up for election are helpful to illegal loggers, 22) More on new web site: Globo Amazônia, 23) Greenpeace gives Lula a firefighter outfit,
Articles
Jamaica:
1) For 30 years I have been painting landscape in one of the great beauty belts of Jamaica, the Garden Parish of St Ann. This historic area of Jamaica is known for its beauty in an island that is already famous for its natural beauty since its discovery by Christopher Columbus, that this beauty must be con-sidered a major natural resource. I have just learned that our Government, in partnership with exploiting Americans and Chinese, plan to mine for bauxite in the very heart of Jamaica, the precious heart of the Garden Parish itself, which sits on an aquifer that supplies the entire north coast with clean, unpolluted water. The reason given is the usual regurgitated lie that it will give jobs, but if bauxite mining, which has existed in the area since the ’50s, could not change the fortunes of the people of St Ann, still after all that mining the poorest parish, it is hardly likely to do so now. The loss of beauty is not simply an aesthetic concern. Substitute the word ‘Environment’ for ‘Nature’ and my concern expands to a level serious enough to have caused a whole new area of study, that of survival itself, but if ‘global warming, melting ice caps, etc.’ seem like far-away dangers to us we have a textbook example of the losses incurred by misguided developers in our own backyards that is impossible to ignore. http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080919/letters/letters4.html
2) POOR AGRICULTURAL practices, pollution and squatting pose the biggest threats to the island’s 26 main watersheds. “In most of our watersheds, we have caused massive degradation in terms of vegetation loss. Therefore, when it rains, flooding and landslides are extremely common,” comments environmental consultant, Eleanor Jones. Jones and her company, Environmental Solutions Limited, have done extensive work on Jamaica’s watersheds and its management over the years. In fact, the company is currently engaged in the development of a national water-sector adaptation strategy to address climate-change impact. The project is being implemented with funding from the World Bank. worst watersheds According to Jones, St Thomas watersheds are among the worst in the island. The parish has three main watersheds, one of which is the main supplier of water to the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR). But it seems, she notes, that the people who depend on the watersheds most are the very ones destroying them. Although St Thomas has the largest concentration of small farmers in Jamaica, bigger farmers are also a huge problem. “Our coffee farmers, for instance, in St Andrew and St Thomas, have this idea that you have to clean off the slopes and then put bananas and plantains to shade the coffee plants,” argues Jones. On a recent trek into the hilly interiors of the Morant River watershed, The Sunday Gleaner witnessed what Jones has described: large, grassy parcels of land on hillsides lay bare, stripped of trees, rendering the sheltered valleys and roads below flood-prone. In fact, that happened during the passage of hurricanes Dean and Ivan in 2007 and 2004, respectively. Evidence of scarring is still visible in areas such as Somerset and Mount Lebanus, where many houses lie abandoned due to constant flooding. “The man dem burn off the hillside dem,” says 57-year-old coffee farmer Doriley Brown of Somerset. Though he does not admit to engaging in slashing and burning, he says it is done frequently in the area, especially by younger farmers. “Everybody want fi go pon the fast lane. Nobody want fi go pon the slow lane because most of dem not working otherwise and making money, apart from the farming,” says Brown. According to him, competition from other large farmers and importers makes it difficult for small farmers. The main crop produced in Somerset is carrot, which is selling for $30 per pound these days. “You have fi use manpower fi clear the land, so you haffi pay a man $1,000 fi weed it and then you haffi pay fi transport it,” says Brown. To avoid some of the costs, many set fire to the land or use weedicides or insecticides to clear it for farming. During the dry season, it becomes particularly dangerous as dry winds and scorching sunlight torch the hillsides. http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080921/lead/lead6.html
Haiti:
3) With severe flooding, hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands lacking food and basic provisions, Haiti has been hit badly so far this hurricane season, with four severe storms in less than four weeks. The Caribbean nation has suffered more than its neighbors, also lashed by major storms, in part because of severe deforestation and extreme poverty. After Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Gustav in August, the poorest country in the Americas was devastated by Tropical Storm Hanna last week, and flooding was compounded Saturday night and Sunday when Hurricane Ike clipped the country’s northern peninsula as it raged westward toward Cuba. Damaged infrastructure and continuing rains left aid organizations struggling to bring emergency assistance to hundreds of thousands of storm victims. About 600 people died in Haiti’s recent storms, according to UN and government figures, and one million were affected. The storms also battered roads and bridges. But many say the damage could have been reduced by better environmental planning. http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/deforestation-and-poverty-behind-haiti.html
Mexico:
4) The traditional wintering site for tens of millions of monarch butterflies in central Mexico is under continuing threat after conservationists failed to halt the onslaught of illegal logging in the area. The butterflies are in the middle of their annual journey of up to 2,800 miles from eastern Canada to the small area of evergreen fir forest that acts as their wintertime sanctuary. But, despite an unprecedented drive to protect it, deforestation is threatening the Monarch Biosphere Reserve and its visitors. A report from the WWF showed deforestation of the area up nearly 10% over the last year, at 260 hectares (650 acres), reversing a downward trend established with the help of unparalleled efforts by the authorities and conservationists. “The problem is more complicated than we had thought,” said Omar Vidal, director of WWF Mexico. “It is very worrying.” Before the latest figures came out activists and government officials were hinting at victory in the battle to protect the mountainside reserve, which was formed in 1986 from land owned by 38 communities. Deforestation soared after the arrival of the logging mafias in 2001, reaching a peak of 460 hectares in 2006. The impending disaster led to unprecedented efforts to protect the reserve’s 11,000 hectare core. Police and the army manning checkpoints cracked down on trucks piled high with logs leaving the reserve and local people were offered financial incentives to conserve the forest, and advice on other ways of making money, such as tourism. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/12/wildlife.climatechange
Costa Rica:
5) A group of engineers from the Research and Forest Services Institute from the National University in Costa Rica have collected over 300 mahogany tree species throughout Central America in order to clone them. The mahogany tree species has been pointed out as an endangered species due to the demand of its precious wood. In Costa Rica, the cutting down of Mahogany trees has been prohibited as an effort to conserve the species. Costa Rica’s forests have transitioned from being a productive wood source for the construction market to being a protected area in order to preserve nature. This has lead to a deficiency in the country’s wood source having reached a 20% deficit, thus forcing the country to import wood from other countries such as Chile, Canada and Nicaragua. The engineers from the National University have stated that Costa Rica counts with over 150,000 hectares of agroforest land which can be used to exploit the reforestation of precious woods. By cloning the collected trees, engineers will be able to replant these species in specified areas which will allow their growth as well as their cutting for the use of its wood. The engineers have successfully cloned over 30,000 species which have undergone treatment in order to grow a straight trunk for a better extraction of wood. From these 30,000 cloned trees, engineers will only replant those which show resistance to the mahogany plague. http://www.128canopy.com/cloned-trees-to-alleviate-deforestation/
Panama:
6) Despite a deceptively high national per-capita income, there is much poverty in Panama. The “poster child” of Panamanian poverty would be malnourished, rural and indigenous. There would be no shortage of models for such a poster; 87.7% of the rural indigenous population and 33.5% of the total rural population has been classified as suffering extreme poverty. This means they have a per-capita income of less than $470 dollars per year, insufficient to provide a minimum daily consumption of 2280 calories (Government of Panama, 1998). At the same time, the natural resources, which sustain the rural population, and with wise use could produce an acceptable standard of living, are being depleted at an alarming rate. For reasons of climate, geographical location and topography, Panama has an apparent comparative advantage in wood and other forest products. Nevertheless, little has been done to develop this advantage. Often, thousands of dollars of valuable wood is burned to clear land where less than one hundred dollars of rice or corn will be harvested. The annual rate of deforestation has been estimated at 50,000 to 70,000 Ha. per year. Areas of extreme soil degradation due to erosion comprise more than 2,000,000 Ha. More than 1,700,000 Ha. of land that is unsuited to agricultural production is currently in use, and will likely be added to the total of degraded land in the future. Thus, it is probable that the migration to urban areas will continue or increase from its current level (Stewert, 1996). Who they are and what they are like about 45% of Panama’s population is classified as rural, with 1,007,247 rural non-indigenous and 206,489 rural indigenous people (GOP, 1998). While exact figures for the number of subsistence farmers are not available, a drive through the countryside will suffice to know that the majority of the rural working population is engaged in subsistence agriculture at least part of the year. Within two hour’s travel in any direction from Panama City’s tall buildings, one will encounter subsistence farmers. http://paulownianow.blogspot.com/2008/09/brief-overview-of-subsistence-farmers_20.html
7) Contrary to the goals of the MTV’s current Green Crusade, the most recent MTV “Real World/Road Rules” challenge — which has yet to air — seems to pit competing teams against each other in an effort to wreak the most havoc on Panamanian rainforests. The devastation left behind once the shoot wrapped, was described in a recent article from the Tree Climber’s Coalition. They say MTV left the formerly pristine area riddled with trash, unstruck sets, and even discarded scripts for the so-called “reality” series. Apparently when MTV execs see green, they’re not looking at the environment. Calls to MTV were not immediately returned. http://www.tmz.com/2008/09/13/mtvs-real-world-deforestation-challenge/
Guatemala:
8) On September 4, Yuri Melini was shot three times in Guatemala City and, despite grave injuries, was fortunate to survive. Melini is a leading environmental activist and had just won an important Court victory striking down aspects of Guatemala’s Mining Law. The attack appeared to be carefully planned. The assailants were reportedly waiting for Melini and called his name to guarantee his identity before shooting him. On the same day, 50 other environmental activists received threats relating to their work. The Guatemalan government has expressed concern that the killing may have been an act of intimidation to deter Melini and others from engaging in environmental advocacy. Take action now to support the government’s initial reaction and to urge it to: 1) Investigate the attempted murder and prosecute those who ordered the shooting. 2) Ensure that Melini and other environmental activists are adequately protected from further attacks. Click here to send the below letter to the Guatemalan government: http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Yuri/
http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Yuri/explanation
Nicaragua:
9) Nicaraguan legislators have approved a law to protect the Bosawas biosphere reserve in the northeast of the country, an opposition deputy said Wednesday. The Nicaraguan National Assembly approved the Soil Use Conservation Law in the Bosawas reserve on Tuesday, said Maximino Rodriguez from the Constitutionalist Liberal Party. The law establishes measures to prevent illegal wood trafficking in the region, which is the second largest rainforest in the Americas after the Amazon in Brazil and represents 15.25 percent of the national territory. Rodriguez said that wood has been sold illegally in El Salvador and Honduras, where it was widely used for making furniture and other products. Moreover, a million hectares of woods in the area were destroyed in September last year by hurricane Felix. President of the parliamentary Environment Commission Carlos Garcia said the new law imposes penal and administrative sanctions. “This law is against the people from the north of the country who are used to the felling and burning of trees,” said Garcia, who is from the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. The Bosawas reserve is the largest tract of tropical rainforest north of the Amazon. It is home to indigenous Miskito and Mayangna people whose traditional life style causes little habitat disturbance. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/11/content_9914623.htm
Guyana:
10) Guyana’s President Bharat Jagdeo gave a presentation on the importance of financing for sustainable forest management when he addressed a conference on forest management in Paramaribo, Suriname on Tuesday. Jagdeo underlined and emphasised the need to look beyond traditional approaches to financing for forests. He made reference to the work of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPC), McKinsey and Company and the Stern Review, who have all underlined the importance of addressing deforestation as part of global climate change. The Guyana Chronicle reported that Jagdeo pointed out that forests need to be included in any international framework being established to address climate change. He noted that the current EU Carbon Trading Scheme does not recognise standing forests nor does the Kyoto Protocol, which actually provides a disincentive for tropical forest conservation and protection. Touching on finances, Jagdeo made the point that while overseas development assistance for forest management has been helpful, he said there is need for a more predictable flow of finances which can only come from a market based approach. He also emphasised that “without proper valuation of our forests, tropical forest countries may be short changed in the negotiations.” He made reference to the circumstances of Guyana and Suriname, as countries with high forest cover and very low deforestation rates. http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-10597–13-13–.html
Ecuador:
11) With pressure mounting in Ecuador from a major environmental lawsuit and criminal fraud indictment against Chevron lawyers, four residents of the Amazon rainforest will travel to Washington to discuss the devastating impact of the oil company’s operations over three decades in what once was one of the world’s most pristine jungles. Meetings are set with members of Congress and Congressional staff. (Media can obtain the names of the members of Congress and congressional staff on September 17th by emailing or phoning the media contact. We are not releasing the names until then to prevent Chevron from interfering with the meetings.) The lawsuit, filed in 2003 after Chevron insisted the case be shifted to Ecuador from a U.S. federal court, is expected to result in one of the largest civil judgments in history. An independent court-appointed expert recently assessed damages between $7.2 billion and $16.3 billion. Chevron recently hired several A-list Washington lobbyists, including McCain Campaign finance chair Wayne Berman and former Senator Trent Lott, to try to convince the Bush Administration and Congress to deny Ecuador trade benefits as “punishment” for letting these individuals press their private legal claims against Chevron. Further, two Chevron lawyers were indicted last week in Ecuador for conspiring to falsify the results of a purported environmental clean-up as a ruse to avoid liability in the civil case. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/battle-over-chevrons-amazon-chernobyl/story.aspx?guid={3439C6B6-186E-4871-9B8F-B8F7D4CDC2CD}&dist=hppr
Argentina:
12) Iguazu Falls is one of the largest waterfalls on earth; made up of many cascades it is located in the border of Brazil and Argentina. It was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1984 and its surrounding rainforest boosts over 2,000 species of flora and fauna including tapirs, ocelots, jaguars and caimans. The pristine natural surroundings are complemented by world class hotels offering five star activities from the most unique spa treatments to the most daring adventures. There are alternatives for all members of the family like touring the rainforest, bird watching or discovering the colors of the gemstones at a nearby mine. For those seeking an adrenaline rush rappelling, zip-lining and tyrolean crossing will create unforgettable experiences. Major international hotel developers as well as respected local companies are investing in the region to add more than 3,000 rooms. Yriapu Tropical Forest will concentrate most of the investment that will be guided by sustainable practices including low density hotels, low rise constructions and usage of local materials. http://travelvideo.tv/news/more.php?id=15440_0_1_0_M
Brazil:
13) Thirteen days after the official launch of the website Globo Amazônia and the interactive map Amazônia.vc in the Fantástico television show, on September 7, the application registered 13 million protests against fires and deforestation in the Amazon. The protests came from more than 230,000 users who installed Amazonia.vc, available as an Orkut application, which enables users to follow the devastation of the forest in real time. The interactive map allows an active participation in the fight against the destruction of the forest. The users can record their protests, which will then be used by the news team of the Globo Amazônia website as material in the production of journalistic features. Since the launch of the application, most of the protests were made against deforestation areas in the northern state of Pará. There were posted 5,784,305 protests. Pará was followed by Mato Grosso, with 3,037,099, and Rondônia, with 1.429.199 protests. The position of the Brazilian states in the ranking of protests is proportional to the intensity of destruction of the forest in each of them. In July, most of the deforestation was located in Pará, according to the latest survey on devastation presented by Brazilian space agency INPE. In this northern state, 236 square kilometers were deforested in just one month. Mato Grosso came in second with 33 square kilometers of new cleared areas, followed by Amazonas, where 24 square kilometers of destruction were detected by the satellites. http://g1.globo.com/Amazonia/0,,MUL766901-16052,00-GLOBO+AMAZONIA+SURPASSES+MILLION+PROTESTS+AGAINST+DEFORESTATION.html
14) The Amazon Rainforest encompasses 1.4 billion acres (5.5 million square kilometres). In the 10 years from 1991 to 2000, about 500,000 square km of the Amazon was lost to deforestation. It’s been estimated that 17.1% of the Amazon has been lost to deforestation since the 1970. And at the present rate of deforestation, the Amazon Rainforest will be reduced by 40% by 2020. That’s a big problem for all of us. The Amazon is a huge carbon sink – it locks away huge amounts of the greenhouse gas CO2. Deforestation not only reduces the world’s capacity to lock away CO2; it leads to the release of CO2 too. The existence of the Amazon Rainforest has huge benefits for all of us. Ask a typical person on the street how to solve the problem of deforestation and you’ll get answers such as: prevent illegal logging or ban deforestation of the Amazon. But then put yourself in the position of somebody who lives in or near the Amazon. Obviously, you’ll need to feed your family and make a living. Cut down some trees and sell the timber to make a bit of money. Use the land to farm and to graze cattle and to feed your family. I think it’s extremely unfair for anybody to tell the people who live in the Amazon they can’t do this. I mean, how are they expected to make a living otherwise? Sure, we all lose out from the deforestation because it contributes to climate change. But it’s only fair that the people living in the Amazon should primarily be allowed to look after themselves and their families in the only way they have. http://cow.neondragon.net/index.php/guide-how-to-save-amazon-rainforest-and-environment
15) Judson Barros lives in the state of Piaui in northwestern Brazil – a region known as El Cerrado that is traditionally dominated by dirt poor family farms and tropical woodland savannahs. It’s a stunted, scruffy landscape often overshadowed by the larger and more romanticized Amazon jungle to its west. But it is nonetheless important as Brazil’s second-largest ecosystem. Scientists say it is one of the most biologically diverse savannahs on the planet. To clear the land, plantation owners commonly stretch a long chain between two bulldozers and rip out the vegetation along their path. Then the roots and top layer of soil are swept together and set on fire. Trucks cart off the native wood to be burned as fuel at the Bunge plant. With help from state officials, the company obtained a 15-year tax holiday for the factory and permission to burn all the savannah hardwood within a 17-mile radius of the plant, eventually extending its wood purchasing to a 100-kilometer, or 62- mile, radius. Once all the native wood is gone, Bunge says it will switch to eucalyptus plantation wood that it is having grown just for this purpose. In 2003, New York-based agribusiness company Bunge Ltd. opened a soybean-crushing factory in the city of Urucui in the south of the state. In search of cheap land, a few commercial soybean farmers had already moved into Piaui from soy-growing strongholds in southern Brazil. Once the Bunge plant arrived, the conversion of Piaui’s Cerrado into industrial farmland began in earnest. The state’s soybean cultivation nearly tripled over the next three years. Such was the rush to expand the agricultural frontiers that new fields were often cleared without the proper land titles and required environmental permits. By 2006, soybeans became the state’s number- one cash crop. Barros, president of the nonprofit Fundacao Aguas do Piaui (the Waters of Piaui Foundation, known as Funaguas) was outraged by this plan. So Funaguas teamed with the attorneys general offices of both the state and federal governments and sued Bunge, charging it had neglected to adequately study the environmental impact of its operations, as required by Brazilian law. A federal judge ruled in the group’s favor and ordered the company to find a more environmentally friendly alternative to the firewood. But when Bunge executives threatened to close the factory and leave the state, a judicially approved deal was cut that allowed the company to keep burning the firewood. Funaguas filed a formal objection to the ruling in 2004. The group has also publicly denounced Bunge, alleging its involvement in an array of environmental and human rights offenses. Funaguas’ fight with the multinational hasn’t made Barros popular among plantation owners and their farmhands. He has received death threats and has been burned in effigy. And he’s fighting civil lawsuits for the equivalent of $1 million that Bunge filed for alleged “moral damage” to its reputation. http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1562402/conservation_corp_enviros_ally_with_big_grain_traders/
16) There is discouraging news on the delicate state of the rain forests in Brazil. They are among the world’s greatest natural wonders, but they continue to fall victim to human trespassers. Police are raiding the sawmills in the town of Tailandia. They’re there to crackdown on illegal logging, a practice that’s destroying the Amazon rainforest. It’s an uphill struggle – In this region, a state of emergency has been declared. Years of indiscriminate logging have destroyed this area, once thick with rainforest. Now, all that’s left are razed areas, torched to clear the land for cattle ranching and illegal charcoal ovens, In these poverty-stricken areas, woodmill workers are scared of losing their jobs as the authorities clamp down on the illegal mills: “We’ll be unemployed – said this logger – “people here live off the logging industry. When this stops everyone will feel the effect.” This is the largest crackdown launched by the Brazilian authorities on illegal logging. Just last year alone, environmental agencies estimate that $3 billion were made from the sale of illegal timber – that’s twice the amount made from legitimate sales. The Brazilian environment agency says in the last few months of 2007 an area almost the size of Rhode Island was cleared here – that’s sixty per cent more than what was cleared in the previous three years. The impact of logging on the forest has been devastating but it’s not. http://www.necn.com/Boston/World/Police-crackdown-on-illegal-logging-in-Amazon-rainforest-/1221673371.html
17) Norway will give Brazil US$1 billion by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rain forest, as long as Latin America’s largest nation keeps trying to stop deforestation, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday. The promised donation is the first to a new Amazon preservation fund Brazilian officials hope will raise US$21 billion to protect nature reserves, to persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees and to finance scientific and technological projects. “Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest and cheapest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “Brazilian efforts against deforestation are therefore of vital importance if we shall succeed in our campaign against global warming.” Amazon trees are felled by loggers or burned in bulk, releasing an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide — 80 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gases — into the atmosphere every year and making the country one of the world’s top sources of emissions. Brazil slowed Amazon jungle clearing between 2005 and 2007, but environmentalists worry the trend may now reverse itself, as more trees are cut to make way for cattle ranches and soy plantations that soaring world food prices have made more profitable. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/16/news/LT-Brazil-Amazon-Fund.php
18) A newly discovered species of a blind, subterranean predator — dubbed the “Ant from Mars” — is likely a descendant of one of the very first ants to evolve on Earth, a new study finds. Christian Rabeling, an evolutionary biology graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, found the only known specimen of the new ant species in dead plant material on the ground in the Amazon rainforest at the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria in Manaus, Brazil, in 2003. Rabeling and his colleagues named the ant Martialis heureka (“ant from Mars”) because they’d never seen an ant like it before. The ant is well-adapted for its underground home, with a long, pale body and no eyes. It also has long, slender forceps-like mandibles that researchers suspect the ant uses to capture prey. M. heureka not only constitutes a new species, but a new genus and subfamily of ants as well. The new subfamily, one of 21 ant subfamilies, is the first new one to be named by scientists since 1967. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423117,00.html
19) Understanding this recolonization of degraded forest lands by pioneer species will critical to efforts to rehabilitate restore forests around the world. A new study, published in the open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science, looks at the process by examining the 13 most common pioneer tree species that make up early successional forests in the Central Amazon. Tony V. Bentos and colleagues found that the pioneer community “showed a variety of phenological patterns but as a whole tended to be characterized by annual flowering and fruiting, either continuously or seasonally.” They suggest that those species with continuous reproduction, starting at small diameters, may produce the most rapid cover; that those dispersed by bats and birds are likely to be spread more widely than those dispersed by primates or terrestrial mammals; and that a mix of bird- and bat-dispersed species is likely to facilitate recruitment of mature forest species and will provide a highly diverse seed rain into secondary forest. The research is significant given the global-scale transition from large extents of intact primary forest towards human-dominated landscapes characterized by a matrix of agricultural land and secondary vegetation. Because this anthropogenic matrix is dominated by pioneer species, understanding the traits of these species may help both project the future nature of forests and facilitate restoration of ecosystems. “In this landscape, pioneer tree species will play three quintessential functions,” the authors explain. “First, as the critical first elements in the colonization of clearcuts and abandoned agriculture, they determine, together with landscape history, the rates of change and trajectories of secondary successions.” “Second, during succession, pioneer trees play critical community and ecosystem functions—providing resources for pollinators and seed dispersers, building soil structure, recycling nutrients, and accumulating carbon stocks. Third, the future of fragments of mature forest appears to be increasingly dependent on the quality of the matrix or surrounding secondary vegetation,” they continue. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0915-bentos_tcs.html
20) Isolated native Indians in the Amazon forest of Brazil and Peru remain threatened by advancing loggers despite growing international attention to their plight, a senior Brazilian official said on Thursday. “Pressure from Peruvian loggers continues, it’s a concern,” Marcio Meira, head of the government’s Indian affairs agency, Funai, told the foreign press association in Brasilia. Brazil’s Acre state along the border with Peru is one of the world’s last refuges for such groups, but increasing activity by wildcat miners and loggers puts them at risk. Dramatic pictures of pigment-covered Indians from the region threatening the photographer’s aircraft with bows and arrows were carried in May by media worldwide. The Peruvian ambassador to Brazil subsequently told Meira his government was concerned about the issue and preparing measures, without detailing what these were. Brazil has 26 confirmed native Indian tribes that live with little or no contact with the outside world. There are unconfirmed reports of an additional 35 such groups. Many of them live in the forest like their forefathers did centuries ago, hunting and gathering. More than three months after the photographs sparked an international media frenzy, Funai officials continue to witness logging activity in the region. “There is evidence. We see timber floating down the river which originates in Peru,” said Meira. Survival International, a group that campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights, said last week that the Peruvian government had not lived up to its promise of publishing an investigation into accusations of illegal logging. http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN1134175920080911
21) Amazon mayors are up for election next month and that may prompt them to turn a blind eye to illegal logging, speeding the rate of rain forest destruction, Brazil’s environment minister warned Wednesday. “No mayor wants to be seen as unpleasant on the eve of an election,” said Environment Minister Carlos Minc. “I’m very worried … I’ve flown over the Amazon and I’ve seen the forest burning.” Mayors across Brazil, campaigning for re-election on Oct. 5, are under constant pressure from local ranchers and loggers who want to clear the land for cattle, soy crops and wood, Minc told reporters. Amazon deforestation jumped 69 percent in the past 12 months, the first such increase in three years, according to the National Institute for Space Research, known as INPE, which monitors forest destruction. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/10/america/LA-Brazil-Amazon-Destruction.php
22) From this Sunday, September 7, you will be able to defend the Amazon forest. It´s the beginning of a new web site, Globo Amazônia, that will bring exclusive news content about the region and an interactive map with real time information about the forest. With this map, you can follow up on the deforestation and fires in the Brazilian Amazon, a huge area of 5,2 million square kilometers. And more: you will be able to protest against all this, while our news teams investigate these cases and ask proper authorities for solutions. It´s very simple to use the map, which was especially developed to be used with Google’s Orkut. Orkut’s full version of this map (see here how to use it) allows users to protest against the destruction of the forest, invite friends to participate in the surveillance and get the latest news on the region. Right now there are more than 1,900 fires in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon. The number is not an estimate or a projection, but real data based on satellite monitoring taking place at the very moment this text is written. This information, previously accessible only to governmental specialists or environmentalists, is now at hand to any Internet user thanks to a new map of the region developed by Globo.com and Globo Television, the largest Brazilian network, after an idea born in the Fantástico TV show’s newsroom. The map – called Amazônia.vc, or Amazon.you – is fed with the most recent satellite data provided by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, known as Inpe. The data is updated up to six times a day, which means that it is possible to check up on a fire on the same day it is happening and, moreover, protest publicly against the destruction of the forest. In Amazônia.vc, it is possible to see, all in one screen, the data of two systems used by the space research institute: the Fire Monitoring System and the System of Deforestation Detection in Real Time, known as Deter. The former receives information from European and American satellites that track the radiation emitted by the flames. Deter, which is updated monthly, shows the deforested areas in the Amazon. Images captured by Terra, a satellite launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), go through a filter and are analyzed by a team of Brazilian researchers who register all the newly cleared locations. It is the most complete system of deforestation monitoring on the planet. http://g1.globo.com/Amazonia/0,,MUL751482-16052,00-KEEP+A+WATCH+ON+THE+AMAZON+AND+PROTEST+AGAINST+ITS+DESTRUCTION.html
23) A group of Greenpeace activists gave Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a fireman’s outfit Wednesday in a symbolic request asking him to do more to combat forest fires in the Amazon. The members of the environmental organization had to leave the suit with security after being prevented from walking into Lula’s presidential palace to hand it to him personally. They also left three other fireman’s suits for Lula’s cabinet chief-of-staff and the agriculture and transport ministers. “Fires cause are the most aggressive and devastating destruction of the forest,” one Greenpeace activist, Marcio Astrini, told reporters. He explained that farmers and cattle ranchers in the Amazon used fire to clear the land for their activities, contributing to deforestation of the protected region. Brazil’s environment ministry estimates that in the 12 months to July, 12,000 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) of the Amazon were cleared, mainly by ranchers and soya farmers. That was an increase over the 11,200 square kilometers recorded in the previous 12 months. Brazil is considered the fourth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and 75 percent of them come from deforestation. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gb_uN0mZtohFfsGQ7HguT0d5jcwQ
[...] interesting website http://forestpolicyresearch.org/2008/09/22/404-latin-america reported that the official launch of the website Globo Amazonia and the interactive map Amazonia.vc [...]