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Jokowi to oversee Indonesia peat restoration agency but details thin on the ground
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 27th, 2015
Mongabay: Indonesia's forestry minister says a government agency to manage the archipelago's peat restoration plans will be overseen by the president.
The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki) announced new policies at a palm oil conference in Bali on Thursday.
A shipping trade publication in Singapore surveyed 250 people in the city state and found 18% of them would relocate if the haze “became an annual norm.”
Indonesia will form a government agency overseen directly by President Joko “Jokowi”...
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Industry wields too much influence over U.S. pesticide regulation, says study
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 26th, 2015
Mongabay: Pesticides are ubiquitous and important; but how safe are they, and who answers this crucial question? According to a paper published in the journal Bioscience, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticide evaluation process may be riddled with flaws, allowing industry too much power. The paper, led by biologist Michelle Boone of Miami University in Ohio, uses the weed-killer atrazine as an example to support its conclusion that the EPA’s risk assessment process is rife with conflicts of...
Researchers are inducing a drought in an Australian rainforest to study its effects
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 25th, 2015
Mongabay: Susan Laurance and colleagues at James Cook University in Australia wanted to study how different groups of plants in tropical forests are affected by drought. So a few months ago, the researchers used 3,000 clear plastic panels to create what they call a “raincoat for a rainforest,” artificially inducing a drought in several thousand square meters of the Daintree Rainforest on the northeast coast of Queensland. The drought experiment allows the team to study a wide range of plant life, from trees...
New fund lands $4M to protect the Amazon
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 21st, 2015
Mongabay: Efforts to protect the Amazon River's headwaters got a boost today with a $4 million commitment from the Wyss Foundation to a new conservation initiative.
The Wyss Foundation announced a multi-year grant to the Andes Amazon Fund in support of "locally-driven conservation initiatives in the headwaters of the Amazon".
While launched only this summer, the Andes Amazon Fund (AAF) has already made a name for itself with a million dollar commitment to the world's newest rainforest reserve: Sierra...
Small, controlled fires are the only way to prevent large wildfires, researchers argue
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 20th, 2015
Mongabay: Stamping out forest fires indiscriminately leads to denser trees and debris in many forests, fueling unusually large wildfires.
Recent U.S. wildfires have gained so much power that scientific models can no longer predict their behavior.
A new paper urges the public to demand a correction in this trend by changing how forest fires are managed
At a time when wildfires around the world are burning through records for intensity and size, several western U.S. ecologists argue that in many forests...
50% of world’s natural history specimens may have wrong names
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 19th, 2015
Mongabay: Study found widespread mislabeling and misidentification of plant specimens.
Too few taxonomic revisions over the years, and a doubling of specimen collections and herbaria could have resulted in these errors, researchers write.
Study suggests use of remotely accessible digitized specimens, instead of traditional practice of expert taxonomists visiting herbaria to name specimens.
Most of us expect museum specimens to be accurately labelled and meticulously catalogued. But up to half of the...
Water supply for 2 billion people at risk as snowpack declines across northern hemisphere
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 18th, 2015
Mongabay: Snowfields once considered permanent are shrinking from the Rocky Mountains to the Himalayas.
Nearly 100 drainage basins across the northern hemisphere that currently supply water to 2 billion people in the American West, southern Europe, the Mideast and central Asia are at considerable risk over the next century.
Dwindling water supplies will not be a universal impact of declining snowpacks due to climate change, however.
Scientists have observed declining snowpack accumulation across the...
Chinese Giant Salamander: millions farmed, nearly extinct in wild
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 14th, 2015
Mongabay: The Chinese Giant Salamander can grow to as much as a meter in length, but it is a mysterious and enigmatic creature threatened by over-exploitation, disease, and habitat loss.
Millions are being raised on farms, but the vast majority of breeding stock for those farms are either wild-caught, or first generation offspring of wild-caught animals. The wild salamander’s extinction would also likely spell doom for the farming industry.
Conservation programs are underway to save wild Chinese Giant...
Jokowi turning over a new leaf for Indonesia on haze but details still foggy
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 13th, 2015
Mongabay: Environmental groups have welcomed new technical guidelines issued by Indonesia’s forestry ministry which, if implemented correctly, could prohibit new development in Indonesia’s peatlands, keeping them moist to prevent wildfires.
“This gives a real hope that the country is changing its direction on how it manages its peatlands,” Woro Supartinah of the Riau Forest Rescue Network (Jikalahari) said in a statement on Thursday. “These instructions on peat protection and management pave the way for...
Indonesian NGO takes aim at government for failure to handle haze
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 9th, 2015
Mongabay: A human rights watchdog in Indonesia intervened in this year’s haze crisis on Monday to criticize the government for failing to do enough to protect the human rights of citizens affected by toxic pollution.
“Kontras does not see any coordination among state institutions or even serious steps to provide protection of the fundamental rights of citizens who live around the [affected] forest area and land,” Puri Kencana, a senior official at the Commission for “the Disappeared” and Victims of Violence...