by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Russ McSpadden / Earth First! Journal
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has ordered the killing of an alpha female Mexican gray wolf for crimes against the cattle industry. She is accused of being the ringleader of a six member pack that has killed four cows in southwestern New Mexico over the last several months.
Extirpated from the wild by the 1950s, reintroduced through captive breeding programs in 1998, Mexican gray wolves are far from recovered. The outlaw matriarch of the Fox Mountain Pack—last seen roaming the mountainous woodlands of the northwest portion of the Gila National Forest—is one of only 58 of her kind left in the U.S. Southwest. And though Mexican gray wolves are endangered and federally protected she is now on the federal government’s hit list. There’s no telling how long she and her pups can hold out under the cover of pinion and ponderosa pine or the conifers of the colder peaks of the range with a warrant out for her life.
The ranchers who suffered the loss of cattle have already been reimbursed.
In 2007, the Fish and Wildlife service ordered the shooting of an alpha female of the Durango Pack in the Gila, also for cattle depredation. In a tragic twist of timing, then-governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson recalled the state’s order but his message arrived too late. She was killed in June of that year. Her lover and their pups disappeared and have not been spotted since. They are presumed dead.
Will the Fox Mountain Matriarch outwit the cattle lobbyists and government assassins long enough for an injunction?
From Earth First! Newswire: http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/outlaw-matriarch-of-the-fox-mountain-pack-ordered-dead-by-feds/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Uranium Network
A foreign uranium mining conglomerate will be allowed to exploit the precious Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania after the World Heritage Committee (WHC) decided, at its July 2012 session in Russia, to accept what was described as a “minor boundary change” of the site. The change had been requested by the Government of Tanzania, in order to make way for the development of a major uranium mine, Mkuju River Uranium Project, owned by Russian ARMZ and Canadian Uranium One.
The decision to allow the boundary change would allow the Mkuju River uranium project, situated in the South of the Selous Game Reserve at its transition to the Selous Niassa Wildlife Corridor, to go forward.
The Tanzanian Government lobbied heavily for the boundary change, after declaring its intent to ” win the battle” against the UNESCO WHC.
Dozens of environmental groups around the world, many of them members of the German-based Uranium Network, decried the WHC decision which could lead to the creation of 60 million tons of radioactive and poisonous waste by the mine during its 10-year lifespan (139 million tons if a projected extension of the mine should be implemented). The radioactive wastes pose a serious threat to Selous Game Reserve which is home to the world’s largest elephant population and other wildlife. No proven methods exist to keep the radioactive and toxic slush and liquids from seeping into surface waters, aquifers or spreading with the dry season wind into the Reserve.
It remains completely unclear how the company or the Government of Tanzania will guarantee that the impact of millions of tons of radioactive and toxic waste will be “limited”. The WHC decision appears to be influenced by heavy corporate and government lobbying and not by sound science. It sets a horrible precedent that could threaten other World Heritage Sites with similar dangerous and damaging exploitation.
The decision is in stark contrast to previous decisions of the WHC of 2011 stating that mining activities would be incompatible with the status of Selous Game Reserve, a World Heritage site.
The environmental groups question whether WHC members have fully understood and given adequate attention to the implications of a uranium mine – including diesel generators, uranium mill, housing, heavy truck roads, as well as the creation of millions of tons of radioactive and toxic waste which should be contained safely and separate from the environment for thousands of years.
Uranium mining creates radioactive dust, contaminates waterways and groundwater aquifers and depletes often precious water supplies. Once abandoned, the radioactive contamination from the mines can persist for decades or even hundreds of years.
The WHC’s decision was made at a time when Russia was chairing the WHC session in St. Petersburg, Russia; Mkuju River uranium project – which basically lives or dies with the decision on the boundary change – is majority owned by Russian ARMZ, a subsidiary of ROSATOM – who bought it from Australian Mantra Resources earlier in 2012.
The environmental groups urge the World Heritage Committee to reconsider its decision on the Selous Game Reserve Boundary Change and call upon the Government of Tanzania to refrain from licensing a uranium mine in Selous Game Reserve or on lands cut out from it.
From Hamsayeh.net:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 9, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Agence France-Presse
Villagers from northern Senegal vowed Thursday to fight a project by Senegalese and Italian investors to produce biofuels on their land, a venture already forced to relocate once by deadly protests.
“We will fight those who want to take our land. It is the land of our ancestors, an area of 26,000 hectares which houses villages, thousands of heads of cattle, mosques, cemeteries,” Oumar Ba, a representative of a collective of affected villages, told journalists.
“Whoever wants to take our land will first walk over our dead bodies,” said Ba, who lives in the village of Ndiael in the region of the same name.
The Senegalese-Italian company Senethanol/Senhuile had recently announced it was moving the project from the village of Fanaye, where violent protests in October 2011 left two people dead, leading government to suspend the venture.
Senethanol/Senhuile wants to grow sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, a renewable energy source which has soared in popularity as oil prices rise and concerns grow over emissions from traditional fuels.
The United States and Brazil are the biggest producers, but investors have been criticised for buying up large swathes of land in Africa to produce fuel to be exported to their nations.
Senethanol/Senhuile has denied its project is an example of land-grabbing, and last year described it as “an unquestionable interest in the improvement of the economic and social situation of the villages concerned and all Senegalese.”
But the organisation is again encountering resistance at its new project site.
“The case of Fanaye must serve as a lesson to authorities,” said Marieme Sow of the NGO Enda Pronat, who denounced “land-grabbing in Senegal by multi-nationals.”
“We are making this appeal for government to realise that 60 percent of the population of this country is made up of farmers who need this land.”
Senegalese rap group “Bidew Bou Bess” (New Star in the Wolof language) presented a song called “Don’t Touch My Land” to journalists.
“Let’s block the road to those who want to plunder our land. Let’s stop those who tear up our land. They want our land for profit. They are colonising us, they are using us,” the song said.
From Phys.org: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-senegalese-villagers-vow-biofuels.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 7, 2012 | Climate Change
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
A recent rise in deadly, debilitating, and expensive heatwaves was caused by climate change, argues a new statistical analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Climatologists found that extreme heatwaves have increased by at least 50 times during the last 30 years. The researchers, including James Hansen of NASA, conclude that climate change is the only explanation for such a statistical jump.
“This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened,” Hansen, a prominent scientist and outspoken climate change activist, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post. “Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”
Between 1981 and 2010, extreme heatwaves covered 10 percent of the world, according to the paper, which is 50 to 100 times greater than the 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the Earth’s surface covered by extreme heat from 1951-1980. The analysis not only finds that extreme heatwaves (defined as over three standard deviations above the base period) have expanded due to a warming world, but that moderate heat (over half of a standard deviation) has more than doubled: jumping from 33 percent to 75 percent. Many climatologists refer to this phenomenon as “loading the climate dice.”
“In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather, and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time,” Hansen explains in his op-ed. But now he says, climate change has shifted the dice: instead of only two sides being warmer than average, it should be four sides with one of those sides representing extreme heat.
“The climate dice are now loaded to a degree that a perceptive person old enough to remember the climate of 1951–1980 should recognize the existence of climate change, especially in summer,” the scientists write in the PNAS paper. Given their findings, the researchers also argue it is safe to say that recent heatwaves—like last year’s drought in Texas and Oklahoma, Russia’s heatwave and wildfires in 2010, and the European heatwave of 2003—were caused by climate change.
“[These events] almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of global warming with its resulting shift of the anomaly distribution,” the scientists write. “In other words, we can say with high confidence that such extreme anomalies would not have occurred in the absence of global warming.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 7, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Le Monde
From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.
The town of Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, is the largest Chinese source of these strategic elements, essential to advanced technology, from smartphones to GPS receivers, but also to wind farms and, above all, electric cars. The minerals are mined at Bayan Obo, 120km farther north, then brought to Baotou for processing.
The concentration of rare earths in the ore is very low, so they must be separated and purified, using hydro-metallurgical techniques and acid baths. China accounts for 97% of global output of these precious substances, with two-thirds produced in Baotou.
The foul waters of the tailings pond contain all sorts of toxic chemicals, but also radioactive elements such as thorium which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukaemia. “Before the factories were built, there were just fields here as far as the eye can see. In the place of this radioactive sludge, there were watermelons, aubergines and tomatoes,” says Li Guirong with a sigh.
It was in 1958 – when he was 10 – that a state-owned concern, the Baotou Iron and Steel company (Baogang), started producing rare-earth minerals. The lake appeared at that time. “To begin with we didn’t notice the pollution it was causing. How could we have known?” As secretary general of the local branch of the Communist party, he is one of the few residents who dares to speak out.
Towards the end of the 1980s, Li explains, crops in nearby villages started to fail: “Plants grew badly. They would flower all right, but sometimes there was no fruit or they were small or smelt awful.” Ten years later the villagers had to accept that vegetables simply would not grow any longer. In the village of Xinguang Sancun – much as in all those near the Baotou factories – farmers let some fields run wild and stopped planting anything but wheat and corn.
A study by the municipal environmental protection agency showed that rare-earth minerals were the source of their problems. The minerals themselves caused pollution, but also the dozens of new factories that had sprung up around the processing facilities and a fossil-fuel power station feeding Baotou’s new industrial fabric. Residents of what was now known as the “rare-earth capital of the world” were inhaling solvent vapour, particularly sulphuric acid, as well as coal dust, clearly visible in the air between houses.
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution