Turning to the matrix: a more accurate way to predict extinction

According to most conservationists the globe is striding into the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Species populations worldwide are dropping and in many cases species are vanishing all together due to pollution, climate change, poaching and hunting, overconsumption, invasive species, and exotic diseases, but no threat proves more pervasive and devastating for the world's species than habitat loss.

Discovering where species are most in trouble and where they are relatively secure has become a passion for many conservationists since such information allows attention and funds to be focused to the right places. Scientists have long employed the 'island biogeography theory' to decipher species' vulnerability, but a new model announced in a paper in Conservation Biology is more accurate than island biogeography at predicting trouble spots and extinctions.

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.

Brazilian cattle giants move toward zero deforestation in the Amazon

Brazilian cattle companies are making progress in their effort to map their supply-chains in the Amazon but are still falling short of their commitment to zero deforestation in the region, reports Greenpeace after a meeting at the Brazilian Association of Meat Exporters (ABIEC) in Sao Paulo.

Brazilian cattle giants last October signed a zero deforestation agreement following consumer uproar over a Greenpeace report that linked cattle products used in some of the world's leading brands to forest destruction in the Amazon. Under the agreement, the companies pledged to register and map all the ranches supplying cattle from the Amazon directly to slaughterhouses by April 1, 2010. The registry would make it possible to assure consumers that cattle products were not the result of Amazon deforestation.

But neither of the beef giants at the meeting met their commitment. Both Marfrig and Minerva asked for a three-month extension.

"Marfrig... reported that 80% of their suppliers operating in the Amazon has been registered, but the proper maps of the farms are still missing," reported Greenpeace on its web site. But both Marfrig and Minerva "reaffirmed their interest in cleaning up their supply chains."

Greenpeace also met with JBS — the world's largest slaughterhouse but no longer a member of ABIEC. JBS said that 80% of its Amazon production will be mapped by the end of April and asked for a three-month extension of the deadline.

The April deadline applies only to direct cattle suppliers. The companies have agreed to map and register their indirect suppliers by November 2011.

Greenpeace notes that deforestation for cattle ranching is still occurring despite the moratorium. It says that from October 2009 to January 2010 140 square kilometers of forest have been destroyed in "areas under direct influence of these slaughterhouses." The clearing accounts for 40 percent of all deforestation in the period.

Cattle ranching is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. In recent years cattle pasture has been the fate of about 80 percent of deforested land, making ranching the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil.

Brazil is now the world's largest producer and exporter of beef. Its herd in the Amazon is nearly the size of the entire U.S. herd.

By Rhett A. Butler

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."