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Archive for July 8th, 2011
Kenya: Jatropha: an Italian company and the forest of Dakatcha
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 8th, 2011
Rainforest News: Dakatcha is located in southeastern Kenya and it hosts tropical dry forests, grasslands and farmlands. The region is rich of biodiversity, and it represent a corridor for elephant. Besides the Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew, in the area live 11 other endangered species live in the forest area. In addition, the Dakatcha forest home to many rare bird species. For this reason, Dakatcha was declared in 2001as "Important Bird Area". Dakatcha is also home to more than 20,000 indigenous peasants of the...
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Ethanol Industry Greets Compromise
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 8th, 2011
New York Times: Any other year, the ethanol industry would have declared a defeat, not a victory. As I mention in Friday’s Times, three senators — one an ethanol opponent and the other two supporters — came up with a grand compromise on Thursday that would end the $6 billion in annual tax credits that go to blenders of ethanol in gasoline and a tariff designed to keep Brazilian ethanol out of the United States. The deal would direct $1.33 billion of that unspent money toward lowering the federal budget deficit...
Spain: Climate change may alter conditions for growth of oak trees in Euskadi
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 8th, 2011
EurekAlert: The research was undertaken on the basis of the most pessimistic and severe scenarios for conditions of climate change in the future and claims that for 2080, the oak woods of the Basque Country would undergo a significant or almost total reduction of their habitat, given that, in our territory, wooded areas will not meet the variables of temperature and humidity necessary for their development. Neiker-Tecnalia experts consider that this study illustrates the tendency towards the 'Mediterraneanisation"...
East Africa crisis could have been prevented with early action
Posted by Guardian: Alison Rusinow on July 8th, 2011
Guardian: Images of people arriving at refugee camps in east Africa this week have brought home the stark reality of the impact of drought in the region.
Many have walked for days or weeks to get to the camps, carrying children and a few possessions. In some cases, older people have been brought in wheelbarrows or in makeshift carts.
Those arriving at camps like Dadaab in northern Kenya, now home to nearly 400,000, are the "lucky ones", still in need of additional support and food, but finally protected...
Papua New Guinea: Iconic turtle is ‘harvested’ out
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 8th, 2011
BBC: Numbers of pig-nosed turtles have declined steeply over the past 30 years, researchers have discovered.
The unique reptile has become an international conservation icon, due to it having no close relatives and being considered the turtle most adapted to life underwater in freshwater ponds and rivers.
Yet demand for its eggs and meat in Papua New Guinea, one of the turtle's main homes, has led to the species being dramatically over-harvested by indigenous people.
Details of the decline are...
Australia: Climate change threatens endangered freshwater turtle
Posted by SPX: None Given on July 8th, 2011
SPX: The Mary river turtle (Elusor macrurus), which is restricted to only one river system in Australia, will suffer from multiple problems if temperatures predicted under climate change are reached, researchers from the University of Queensland have shown.
The scientists, who are presenting their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual conference in Glasgow on 3rd July 2011, incubated turtle eggs at 26, 29 and 32 degrees C. Young turtles which developed under the highest temperature showed...
Calif. groups sue EPA over civil rights complaint
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on July 8th, 2011
Associated Press: Sixteen years ago, soon after she gave birth to her first baby, Maricela Mares-Alatorre joined residents of three small California farmworker towns who alleged they were being discriminated against by environmental regulators, because all three of the state's toxic waste dumps were located in or near poor rural Latino communities.
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which received that civil rights complaint when Bill Clinton was president, hasn't addressed it and all the dumps continue...
In Rush to Find Gold, Indonesians Defy Dangers
Posted by New York Times: Norimitsu Onishi on July 8th, 2011
New York Times: On an otherwise verdant and untouched mountain, a patch of orange and blue tarpaulin stood out incongruously near the summit, the telltale sign of an illegal gold mine. The footpath leading there, freshly carved out of the thick bush and pockmarked with stones, suggested that the mine was new. Women with 50-pound sacks of rocks on their heads clambered down the path, carrying the loads to a nearby village where they would be crushed by hand and by machine, mixed with water and mercury, in a search...
Montana pulls out of oil spill joint command
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on July 8th, 2011
Reuters: Montana's governor withdrew his state on Thursday from participation in a joint command team directing the cleanup of oil spilled from a burst Exxon Mobil pipeline, saying citizens "can't get straight answers" from the company.
In establishing the state's own incident command center in Billings, just downstream from Friday night's spill on the Yellowstone River, Governor Brian Schweitzer cited what he characterized as a lack of public transparency by Exxon.
Schweitzer said Exxon had restricted...
ExxonMobil finds 2 oil spots beyond 20 miles of spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 8th, 2011
Reuters: ExxonMobil said it found two separate spots of oil beyond 20 miles from the point of release from its ruptured Montana oil pipeline, but there was no oil between 20-40 miles from the site of the release.
One spot of oil was located about 40 miles from the site of the release and the second spot was about 80 miles away, the company's unit ExxonMobil Pipeline Co said in a statement.
Earlier, the company had said that the spill appeared to be concentrated within a 15-mile stretch of the Yellowstone...