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.

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.

Orangutan survival and the shopping trolley

The challenge of saving the orangutan - man's closest relative - from extinction is trickling down to the weekly shop.

Many of the biscuits, margarines, breads, crisps and even bars of soap that consumers pick off supermarket shelves contain an ingredient that is feeding a growth industry that conservationists say is killing the orangutans.

The mystery ingredient in the mix is palm oil - the cheapest source of vegetable oil available - and one that rarely appears on the label of most products.

Controlling the Ranching Boom that Threatens the Amazon

In the Brazilian Amazon, 80 million head of cattle — nearly as many as exist in all of the United States — now graze on land that once was tropical rainforest or the biologically rich, wooded grassland known as cerrado. An area larger than France is given over to the cattle, making ranching by far the biggest driver of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, responsible for more than three-quarters of forest loss.

Environmental groups have warned for years that cattle production is gobbling up huge chunks of the world’s largest rainforest, but their campaigns have had no discernable impact on deforestation. Forest clearing remains stubbornly high while beef production has continued to expand, enabling the industry to become an economic and political juggernaut, seemingly unstoppable.