Is deforestation rising or falling in the Amazon?

Last week Brazil's National Space Agency INPE reported a 51 percent drop in Amazon deforestation in the six months ended February 2010 compared with the year earlier period. But the seemingly happy news for environmentalists may be premature.

Data from Imazon, an independent organization that aims to improve forest transparency through advanced analysis of satellite imagery and other tools, reveals a 23 percent increase during the period. Why does the data conflict?

Paper company loses green certification after rainforest destruction in Indonesia

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global certifier of sustainably managed forest, has dropped another Indonesian company for the destruction of rainforests. Asia Paper Resources International Limited (APRIL), has had its certification suspended due to evidence of conversion of rainforests for acacia plantations, the destruction of 'High Conservation Value Forest', draining peatlands, as well as continuing conflicts with local communities. The decision was made by the Rainforest Alliances Smartwood, an accreditation program with the FSC.

"This means that until practices on the ground drastically improve, pulp and paper products from Indonesia must be off limits to anyone who cares about human rights, the climate or rainforests," said Lafcadio Cortesi of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in a press release.

APRIL is not the first pulp and paper company to lose its certification due to deforestation and problems with communities. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP)—Indonesia's largest paper producer—lost its FSC certification in 2007 due to similar problems. A number of big paper purchasers have also dropped APP—including Office Depot, Unisource, Tiffany and Co., Wal-Mart, Staples, Woolworths, and Gucci—to the tune of an estimated loss of $300 million in 2008.

Rainforests Die for Cattle Feed

DAIRY farmers have been implicated in a new palm oil scandal after revelations that last year the national herd ate one-quarter of the world's palm kernel stock food supply.

More than one million tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) was imported last year, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, where environmental groups are concerned at the palm industry's role in the loss of tropical rainforest and destruction of tiger and orang-utan habitat.

An international body, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, has been set up to ensure sustainable supply of palm product, but secretary-general Dr Vengeta Rao said last week that "very little" of what entered New Zealand would have been certified.

His comment follows Cadbury's decision to back down on plans to introduce palm oil to its Dairy Milk chocolate, after a public outcry.

PKE is created when palm fruit is crushed and processed to produce palm kernel oil. Based on figures provided by the roundtable, a maximum 330,000 tonnes of PKE on the global market since last August could be considered certified. This country imported 1,104,387 tonnes, putting our consumption rates second only to the combined 27 countries of the European Union.

Slash and Sprawl: U.S. Eastern Forests Resume Decline

Trees once covered almost the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Vast forests supported a rich ecosystem, including flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon big enough to blot out the sun. But by the 1920s at least half of this forest was gone—a victim of tree-clearing for farming, forestry or fossil-fuel extraction.

Then, the forest rebounded for several decades as once-farmed fields were left fallow. But a new study reveals that since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3.7 million hectares of forested land—an area larger than the state of Maryland—have been transformed into subdivisions, tree plantations and lunar-esque landscapes resulting from mountaintop removal mining. In fact, the latter activity alone eliminated 420,000 hectares of woodlands in the past two decades.

"Human land use is a primary driver of environmental change," says geographer Mark Drummond of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who collaborated on the study in the April issue of BioScience with USGS Earth observation scientist Thomas Loveland. "The cumulative footprint of human activities on the land surface is causing a significant net decline in forest cover."