by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 22, 2012 | Toxification
By Environment News Service
Flares, leaking pipelines and tanks emitted 92,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the air during accidents, break-downs and maintenance at Texas oil and gas facilities, refineries and petrochemical plants over the past three years, finds a report released today by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, EIP.
Based on data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a state agency, the EIP report shows that, in addition to the emissions from normal operations, more than 42,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and just over 50,000 tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds were released from 2009 through 2011. The report shows a “pattern of neglect” as the pollution from these events drags on for weeks or months.
Community groups, including the EIP, notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today that they will take the agency to court if it fails to crack down on this toxic pollution.
Hilton Kelley, executive director of Communities In-power and Development in Port Arthur, Texas, sees the health effects of these emissions every day. “The EPA knows there are a disproprortionate number of people living with respiratory, cancer, liver and kidney disease directly related to what they’re being exposed to,” he told reporters on a conference call today.
“Within Port Arthur I personally know at least 12 people who have recently died from cancer and one young lady who died from an asthma attack,” said Kelley. “The Environmental Protection Agency must do a better job of counting the toxic pollution dumped into low-income and minority communities.”
In Houston, Juan Parras, founder of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, said, “I am a firm believer and advocate for clean air, however, I live in an environment where ‘clean’ is dictated by petrochemical, gas plants, and oil refineries in the Houston Region. They decide what they can get away with and blame their highly toxic emissions on ‘accidents’ that they claim are beyond their control.”
While both sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds, VOCs, are linked to asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments, and can contribute to premature death from heart disease, because they result from these so-called “emission events,” they are usually not included in the data the government uses to establish regulations or evaluate public health impacts.
Natural gas operations, including well heads, pipelines, compressors, boosters, and storage systems, accounted for more than 85 percent of total sulfur dioxide and nearly 80 percent of the VOCs released during these emission events, the Environmental Integrity Project report shows.
The Clean Air Act makes polluters strictly liable for their mistakes, but loopholes in regulations either excuse violations that result from malfunctions altogether, or allow polluters to escape penalties by claiming that such mishaps are beyond the control of plant operators. As a result, federal or state agencies rarely even investigate these events, much less take enforcement action.
Read more from Environment News Service: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2012/2012-07-18-01.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 20, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
John R. Platt recently examined the impacts of shark finning for his Extinction Countdown blog on Scientific American:
The appearance of a shark fin piercing the ocean surface is often seen as a sign of danger to humans. Even more dangerous to sharks is the sight of a shark fin floating in a bowl of soup.
Around the world, sharks are in crisis. Many species have suffered population declines of 90 to 99 percent in recent decades, mostly to feed the seemingly endless demand for the tasteless concoction known as shark fin soup, which is served to mark important occasions such as weddings and business deals in China and some other Asian communities. An astonishing 10.3 million kilograms of shark fins and shark fin–based products were imported into Hong Kong in 2011, according to statistics released last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts Environmental Group in the report, Navigating Global Shark Conservation: Current Measures and Gaps (pdf). The organization says Hong Kong imports about half of the world shark fin harvest.
The Pew group obtained these figures from the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, but even they don’t tell the whole story. Previous research (pdf) has estimated the total worldwide shark fin catch to be three to four times what is legally reported. Because so much of the shark trade is illegal and carried out in the black market, the true total number of sharks killed each year is impossible to ascertain, but the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and other organizations estimate it at more than 100 million. Another group, Shark Defenders, puts the annual average at 38 million, citing the same 2006 research that quantified the shark-fin trade.
Another hidden part of the story, according to the Pew report, is the types of sharks being caught. Many of the nations that allow shark fishing do not require good record-keeping and allow fishermen to log all of their catches simply as “sharks” rather than specific shark species. Some nations even report their take in extremely broad categories such as “sharks, rays, skates, etcetera,” so there’s no specificity to what their fishing fleets actually landed.
Read more from Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/07/18/hong-kong-imported-10-million-kilograms-shark-fins/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Toxification
By University of Central Florida
The largest oil spill on open water to date and other environmental factors led to the historically high number of dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico, concludes a two-year scientific study released today.
A team of biologists from several Gulf of Mexico institutions and the University of Central Florida in Orlando published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE.
For the past two years, scientists have been trying to figure out why there were a high number of dolphin deaths, part of what’s called an “unusual mortality event” along the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Most troubling to scientists was the exceptionally high number of young dolphins that made up close to half of the 186 dolphins that washed ashore from Louisiana to western Florida from January to April 2011. The number of “perinatal” (near birth) dolphins stranded during this four-month period was six times higher than the average number of perinatal strandings in the region since 2003 and nearly double the historical percentage of all strandings.
“Unfortunately it was a ‘perfect storm’ that led to the dolphin deaths,” said Graham Worthy, a UCF provosts distinguished professor of biology and co-author of the study. “The oil spill and cold winter of 2010 had already put significant stress on their food resources, resulting in poor body condition and depressed immune response. It appears the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from snowmelt water that pushed through Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound in 2011 was the final blow.”
The cold winter of 2010 was followed by the historic BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010, which dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, likely disrupting the food chain. This was in the middle of the dolphins’ breeding season. A sudden entry of high volumes of cold freshwater from Mobile Bay in 2011 imposed additional stress on the ecosystem and specifically on dolphins that were already in poor body condition.
“When we put the pieces together, it appears that the dolphins were likely weakened by depleted food resources, bacteria, or other factors as a result of the 2010 cold winter or oil spill, which made them susceptible to assault by the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from land in 2011 and resulted in distinct patterns in when and where they washed ashore,” said Ruth Carmichael, a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, an assistant professor of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama and the lead author of the study.
The majority of perinatal strandings were centered on the Mississippi-Alabama coast, adjacent to Mobile Bay, the 4th largest freshwater drainage in the U.S. The onshore movement of surface currents during the same period resulted in animals washing ashore along the stretch of coastline where freshwater discharge was most intense.
Others who contributed to the study include: William M. Graham and Stephan Howden from the University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Space Center and Allen Aven from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the University of South Alabama.
Worthy is the Hubbs Professor of Marine Mammalogy. He received his PhD in 1986 from the University of Guelph in Canada and then completed post-doctoral training at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied elephant seals, bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. He spent 11 years as a faculty member in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston and served as the State Coordinator for the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
Worthy and his team at UCF have been studying dolphin populations in the Pensacola and Choctawhatchee bays for years.
From University of Central Florida News: http://today.ucf.edu/study-points-to-causes-of-dolphin-deaths-in-gulf-of-mexico/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By David Koch, Neal Rockwell, Pei Ju-Wang, and Tim McSorley / Montreal Media Co-op
For two weeks now, members of the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake have been standing fast in their opposition to clearcut logging on their territory.
On July 2, 2012, residents of Barriere Lake, located four hours north of Montreal, noticed loggers from Resolute Forest Products (formerly known as Abitibi Bowater Inc.) on their territory. The presence of the loggers came as a shock, since no consultation process had been carried out with the community members who harvest from that land.
These logging operations are also surprising due to an ongoing moratorium on corporate-based logging of the Algonquin land. Since 1991, Algonquins of Barriere Lake (ABL) have been fighting for the provincial and federal governments to respect an agreement they signed that allows for co-management of the land and guarantees the community a say in the exploitation of resources on their land.
ABL members moved quickly to stop the logging.
Community members protested along the road leading to the clearcut site. They had to move quickly, since no advance warning of the logging was given. On July 4, they set up a protest camp along the logging road leading to the clearcut zone. They say they were able to stop the initial logging. On July 9, they delivered a letter to both the loggers and members of the Surete du Quebec (SQ), demanding the logging be halted. On July 10, though, the logging resumed.
“It was very hard to find out what’s happening [with the logging] because we have no communication, especially with the [Indian and Northern Affairs-approved] council that is there right now. They don’t really say what’s going on, they don’t give us any information whatsoever…They don’t say nothing,” said community member Severe Ratt. (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada is now known as Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada).
In the summer of 2010, under the guise of resolving an internal governance dispute, the federal government imposed on Barriere Lake section 74 of the Indian Act, removing their traditional governance structure and imposing a band council system. The band council government is seen by many among the ABL as collaborating with the government and few people in the area recognize its leadership.
While no formal notice of the logging was given to most members of the community, it did not take long for residents of the land to realize what was happening.
The family that harvests that part of the ABL territory—hunting, fishing, collecting food and medicine—alerted others nearly two weeks ago that logging equipment had been moved onto the land. Community members, including Jeannette Wawatie, one of the harvesters, say they contacted the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife (MRNF) to get more information, but weren’t given clear answers.
“[Jeannette] called [MRNF] to see when they were going to start cutting. They told her, a couple days, a couple weeks, they weren’t really giving her a straight answer. So we were in and out of the place, just monitoring the area,” explained Norman Matchewan, a community spokesperson. “And last week, on Monday night [July 9, 2012], we came for a ride and they were bringing in their machines. And Tuesday we came back and they had started working. So we got our camping gear and we came to set up a camp.”
The logging is being carried out by Resolute Forestry Products, formerly Abitibi Bowater Inc. One of the main questions among the ABL is how the company got the go-ahead to log on their land.
“[Since the logging began] we met with [MRNF] and SAA [Secretariat aux affaires autochtones]…[MRNF] was saying they consulted, SAA was saying they didn’t do any consultation. So there was no consultation, as to Gabriel’s knowledge,” said Matchewan. “Gabriel Wawatie is the main harvester, he says that he never got consulted, never gave consent to the cutting.”
Matchewan added that the company says they have a document they claim Gabriel Wawatie signed consenting to the logging. Matchewan pointed out that no one could provide the document and that Wawatie has been at the protest camp all week, opposing the cutting.
On Tuesday, July 17, a Resolute spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that the company negotiated the logging with the Barriere Lake band council, and that is is the responsibility of the council to consult with the rest of the community, not Resolute’s.
It didn’t take long after the protest camp was set up for the police to arrive. While the police presence mostly consisted of SQ officers, since the land around Barriere Lake is under their jurisdiction, riot police from Montreal were also dispatched.
While there have been no arrests yet, the police presence has been visible and intimidating, according to both ABL members and solidarity activists who have traveled to the camp to lend support and deliver supplies.
Over a dozen police cars, several paddy wagons and an SQ helicopter have been present. Police have been warning community members not to interfere with the logging and to wait for negotiations with the government. One officer even told protesters that he was there to protect them as much as to protect the loggers.
“They came in and they were saying, ‘We’re here to protect you,'” said Ratt. “But really, in about three, four days, they really showed their true colours. Why they are there is to protect the loggers. So they wouldn’t even let us pass. They just stop us and say, ‘Stay on your side, don’t cross the border, or you’ll be charged.'”
Despite the threats, on Wednesday, community members still moved out onto the land being logged. When the Resolute employees saw them in their path, they shut down their equipment and stopped their work. But logging resumed by Thursday, and despite guarantees from the SQ that the cutting would be halted from Friday at noon until Monday, it continued well into the weekend.
When logging began again Monday, ABL community members and supporters repeated their tactic of moving out into the path of the cutting, and logging was once again halted, although the workers and equipment are still there.
While the ABL blame the logging company for attacking their land, they also place a large part of the responsibility on the Quebec government.
“The Charest government has acted in bad faith, giving this company the go-ahead to log while they ignore their signed agreements with our community,” said Matchewan in a press release on Monday, July 16. “It has left us with no choice but to try to stop forestry operations. We have been waiting 20 years for the Quebec government to honour their agreements.”
Read more from The Dominion: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4545
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
The very ecology of tropical rainforests—their rich biodiversity, unparalleled variety, and hugely complex interconnections between species—makes them particularly susceptible to disturbance. Targeting only a few key tree species in the forest, loggers quickly plunder these species while leaving the rest standing, rapidly changing the overall structure of the ecosystem. In this way, loggers undercut the very ecological system that allows their favored trees to replenish.
“Virtually all currently high-value timber species, are exceptionally long lived and slow growing, occur at low adult density, undergo high rates of seed and seedling mortality, sustain very sparse regeneration at the stand level, and rely on animal diversity for reproduction, all of which point to the conclusion that tropical trees probably need very large continuous areas of ecologically intact forest if they are to maintain viable population sizes,” Zimmerman and Kormos write in their paper.
The particular ecology of these trees has resulted in most logging companies simply entering a primary forest, cutting all high-value species, and then leaving it to colonizers or razing everything for cattle pasture or monoculture plantations (such as pulp and paper, rubber, or palm oil).
“Logging in the tropics follows the same economic model as is evident in most of the world’s ocean fisheries,” Zimmerman and Kormos write. “The most-valuable species are selectively harvested first, and when they are depleted, the next-most-valuable set is taken, until the forests are mined completely of their timber.”
While initial logging can be quite profitable, later harvests bring in less-and-less money: fewer target trees can be found and the regenerative process for such species is compromised overall. Eventually industrial logging kills itself, leaving an economic vacuum that in accessible areas is often filled by conversion to pasture land, oil palm estates, industrial agriculture or timber plantations.
Some scientists have argued that the solution to this problem is to inject sustainable forest management practices into logging companies in the tropics. According to these sustainability proponents, this would ensure harvests over the long-term while protecting overall forest health.But according to their paper, even so-called reduced-impact logging—which is currently the exception rather than the norm in the tropics—considerably changes a forest’s ecology. With many of the forest’s vital seed and crop trees cut, Kormos and Zimmerman point out that “low-impact” logging leaves 20-50 percent of the canopy open, when “even small openings in the canopy (5-10 percent) can have significant impacts on the moisture content in the forest and increase risk of fire.” Debris left on the forest floor quickly dries out, creating perfect fodder for fire. Unlike temperate forests, fires in primary rainforests are almost unheard of, but low-impact logging creates a new set of ecological conditions that leave the forest vulnerable to heat, wind, and, yes, fire.
“We now know that under the present sustainable forestry management guidelines, tropical forests left to regenerate naturally will be composed largely of light-wooded tree species of no to low commercial value, whereas dense-wood, high-value timber species will experience severe population declines,” Kormos and Zimmerman write, noting that current guidelines are far too lax to keep forests intact.
True sustainability is not impossible to achieve, write Zimmerman and Kormos, but guidelines would need to be considerably toughened. Forestry companies would need to cut only every 60 years or more, harvest less than five trees per hectare, leave smaller logging gaps in the canopy, avoid cutting young trees, and use siliviculture techniques to plant new seedlings, among other considerations.
“The key to a forest’s ability to recover most of its original attributes after selective logging is low harvest intensity,” they write.
But, there is a reason why there are no industrial loggers in the tropics putting such stringent rules in place.
“The problem with implementing this kind of protocol is that it would substantially diminish harvestable timber volume while further increasing management and training costs, which would make the timber operation economically unviable,” Zimmerman and Kormos told mongabay.com.
It’s no wonder then that logging companies generally cut-and-run, a practice which has resulted in loggers moving from one untouched tropical forest to the next, always looking for the short-term gain. For example, after logging out most of the forests in Borneo, loggers moved into places like Sumatra. Now that Sumartra has been devastated—with many of its forests turned into monoculture plantations—industrial logging went to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Primary rainforest is vanishing worldwide.
Logging not a “middle way”
Zimmerman and Kormos’ paper is one among several that debates, sometimes heatedly, the role of logging in protecting or destroying tropical forests. For example, a paper in Conservation Letters recently came to a very different conclusion than Zimmerman and Kormos, describing well-managed logging as a middle way between conservation and outright destruction of tropical forests for agriculture or ranching.
“Selectively logged tropical forests, especially if they are logged gently and with care, retain most of their biodiversity and continue to provide ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and hydrological functions,” lead author of that study, Francis Putz with the University of Florida told mongabay.com in May.
Putz’s paper did not argue that logging had no impact, but rather that any impact from logging was far preferable than clearing a forest entirely. While Kormos and Zimmerman agree with this point, they see a different remedy. “There is no question that industrial logging is better than cattle pastures or oil palm or other plantations—but the fact that industrial logging is better than total forest conversion doesn’t mean we should subsidize it,” Zimmerman and Kormos told mongabay.com. “Subsidies should be directed towards activities that maximize carbon, biodiversity and social benefits.”
They also say some of the paper’s findings are problematic. “The article includes introduced species in the biodiversity totals, and the biodiversity surveys cited were all done soon after logging and before a second harvest, so there would be an expectation that there would still be biodiversity left in the short term—the question is what happens to biodiversity in the medium term, in particular after a second harvest? In addition, the article states that a logged forest retains 76% of its carbon. But 24% of a forest’s carbon is a very substantial amount of carbon emissions—it could take several decades just to recapture that carbon, whereas we need to be maximizing forest carbon right now.”
Even more importantly, perhaps, is that economic problems remain, dooming many logged forests to total clearance.
“The ‘middle way’ does not make logging sustainable. The Putz et al article clearly acknowledges that the middle way does not achieve sustained timber yields. As a result, it does nothing to change the fundamental dynamic, which is that logging usually precedes conversion to higher value agriculture use. So the ‘middle way’ could actually make things worse—accelerating forest conversion,” Zimmerman and Kormos say.
