Urgency
Traumatized Trees: Bug Them Enough, They Get Fired Up
The area burned by fire each year is expected to double -- or even triple -- if temperatures increase by about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C) in our region, according to University of Washington and USDA Forest Service research. Such temperature increases could occur in as little as 40 years, according to projections from the UW's Climate Impacts Group.
"I'm not a doom-and-gloom kind of guy but this is a great concern," said Dave Peterson, a UW professor of forest resources and a biologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Fuels built up after a century of rushing to suppress fires have long been pointed to as the reason for growing numbers of wildfires. That's indeed a major factor, Peterson said, but starting in 1993 UW's Jim Agee, now professor emeritus of forest resources, was the first to point out that climate was probably a contributing factor.
$6B forest conservation plan lacking in transparency, indigenous participation, say activists
The process to establish REDD+, a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by funding conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests (REDD+), is lacking in transparency and failing to include civil society organizations and indigenous peoples, say activists across forty NGOs.
On Tuesday, organizations led by the Rainforest Foundation UK, Friends of the Earth (USA & France), Global Witness and The Wilderness Society issued a statement criticizing the Paris-Oslo Process — which aims to establish a forests deal outside of a broader climate agreement — for "lack of genuine consultation in the drafting of the agreement" and "failing to take into account underlying issues that need to be tackled in the fight against deforestation." The groups fear that lack of transparency in the decision-making process and allocation of the $6 billion in "fast-start" financing so far pledged to REDD+ could undermine the effectiveness of the forest conservation initiative as well as the overall progress on addressing climate change.
Hope for survival as isolated orangutans joined by rope bridge
Researchers in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo are joyful after receiving confirmation that a young male orangutan used a rope bridge to cross a river, which has separated one orangutan population from another. Due to logging and clearing forests for oil palm plantations, which cover 18 percent of land in Sabah, orangutans on the Kinabantangan River have been cut into fragmented populations.
"Over the years we have received numerous local eye witness reports of the orangutans using these rope bridges but this is the first time we have received photographic evidence which clearly shows a young male orangutan using the first rope bridge we constructed in 2003 to cross over Resang river, a small tributary of Kinabatangan," explains primatologist, Dr. Isabelle Lackman, Co-Director of the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project (KOCP) in a press statement.
Photos of a male orangutan using the rope bridge were captured by Ajirun Osman, who says that after the male spent twenty minutes at the rope bridge, he crossed: "it seemed like once he decided to cross, he did so very fast going over in about three minutes from the Pangi Forest Reserve into Lot 1 of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary."
16 percent of mangrove species threatened with extinction
The first ever assessment of mangrove species by the IUCN Red List found 11 out of 70 mangrove species threatened with extinction, including two which were listed as Critically Endangered. Threats include coastal development, logging, agriculture, and climate change.
Species were evaluated by mangrove specialists and the Global Marine Species Assessment Unit (GMSA), a joint venture between the IUCN and Conservation International.
"The potential loss of these species is a symptom of widespread destruction and exploitation of mangrove forests," says Beth Polidoro, Research Associate of the GMSA at Old Dominion University and lead author of the study appearing in PLoS ONE. "Mangroves form one of the most important tropical habitats that support many species, and their loss can affect marine and terrestrial biodiversity much more widely."
Low success from rainforest revegetation investment
A project to investigate the outcome of large government investments in community based rainforest revegetation has found that only about half the area reported as revegetated was actually forested after six to 11 years. About half of this forested area was in poor or very poor condition – often due to a lack of monitoring or maintenance.
Project leader, Associate Professor Carla Catterall of Griffith University, says that despite the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars on replanting rainforest vegetation, and the dedicated enthusiasm of many community members, only about one per cent of previously cleared rainforest in tropical and subtropical Australia has been replanted with rainforest trees.
