Oil palm plantations support fewer ant species than rainforest

Oil palm plantations support substantially less biodiversity than natural forests when it comes to ant species, reports new research published in Basic and Applied Ecology.

Tom Fayle, a Cambridge University biologist, and colleagues sampled ant populations in a rainforest in Danum Valley Conservation Area and nearby oil palm plantations in Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo. The researchers counted 16,000 worker ants from 309 species in the natural forest but only in 110 species at the oil palm plantation.

The results are similar findings for other groups of animals, including birds and butterflies. Overall oil palm plantations are biologically impoverished relative to even selectively logged forests. The single-species monoculture offers fewer ecological niches than natural forests, providing fewer opportunities for plants and animals.

"Although oil palm plantations a higher diversity of ants than previously reported, we found that expansion of oil palm into rain forest still causes the loss of 81% of forest ant species," Fayle told mongabay.com.

The researchers also noted that invasive species are more common in oil palm plantations. 

By Rhett A. Butler

REDD may not provide sufficient incentive to developers over palm oil

In less than a generation oil palm cultivation has emerged as a leading form of land use in tropical forests, especially in Southeast Asia. Rising global demand for edible oils, coupled with the crop’s high yield, has turned palm oil into an economic juggernaut, generating US$ 10 billion in exports for Indonesia and Malaysia, which account for 85 percent of palm oil production, alone. Today more than 40 countries - led by China, India, and Europe - import crude palm oil.

The economic importance of the oil palm industry to Southeast Asia is undeniable. But such financial gains have come at a high price for the native wildlife and traditional rural livelihoods in this region. Conservation scientists have shown that oil palm expansion over the past few decades has led to the destruction of large swaths of tropical rainforests—to the detriment of many rare and endangered species that depend on these forests for survival (Fitzherbert et al. 2008; Koh and Wilcove 2008; Danielsen et al. 2009). Furthermore, social activist groups, such as Oxfam (www.oxfam.org) and Sawit Watch Indonesia (www.sawitwatch.or.id) have documented numerous cases of alleged land-use conflicts between oil palm companies and indigenous communities. Not only are such impacts continuing, but they are likely to intensify in the future as international demand for oil palm products continues to grow. 

French Company Prepares to Ship Illegally Logged Rainforest Wood from Madagascar

Delmas, a French shipping company that has been under pressure for facilitating the destruction of Madagascar's rainforest parks, has been cleared to begin picking up contraband rosewood as soon as Monday, report local sources in the Indian Ocean island nation. Leaders behind last year's military coup — which displaced the autocratic, but democratically elected President Marc Ravalomanana — have signed off on the shipment.

Observers in Vohemar report a frenzy of activity in preparation for the shipment. Rosewood and ebony logs have sitting in the port city for nearly three months while Delmas has wavered on whether the shipment was worth the potential damage to its reputation. On several occasions Delmas has said it would no longer ship illegally logged rosewood from northern Madagascar, but the company has faced heavy pressure from the "transition authority", which is seeking to use revenue from the rosewood trade to finance campaigns ahead of an election it hopes will legitimize its power grab in March 2009.

Logged Forests Burn Easily

Decades of industrial logging in Australia’s wet forests have made them more fire prone, raising urgent fire management issues, according to an ANU academic.

Professor David Lindenmayer of the Fenner School of Environment and Society challenges current fire protection practices in the March issue of Australasian Science magazine, published today.

“Much discussion focuses on how to best protect human lives and built assets,” Professor Lindenmayer writes. “But management also needs to counter the effects of past forestry activities on fire regimes.

“A prominent question is how much fuel or hazard reduction burning is needed to reduce risk. However, widespread fuel reduction burning is not an option in Australia’s moist forests and rainforests as they are generally too wet to burn in a controlled manner. Conversely, past forest management, particularly logging operations, may have significantly increased the fire risk.

“Research in tropical rainforests suggests that logging reduces the number of dry days needed to make a forest combustible from 30 to less than eight days. Logging also alters the density and spatial pattern of trees, the spacing between crowns, and other forest attributes in ways that increase their susceptibility to fire. In moist forests in south-eastern Australia, logging has shifted the vegetation toward a composition that is more characteristic of drier forests that tend to be more fire-prone.

“Clear felling of moist forests in southern Australia has produced dense stands of regrowth saplings, thereby creating more available fuel than if the forest was not clearfelled. Furthermore, debris from logging can also sustain fires longer than fuels in uncut forest, while roads required for logging increase the number of ignition points for wildfires and lightning strikes are more likely in logged areas due to logging slash.”

Prof Lindenmayer concludes that fire management “will become increasingly important with rapid climate change,” and advocates “creating extensive buffer areas that exclude logging near human settlements within landscapes dominated by moist forest… [and] from areas where human disturbances (like timber harvesting) have been limited, such as the old growth wet forests in Tasmania and eastern Victoria.”

By Australian National University