by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 1, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy
By Sea Turtle Restoration Project
The first ever recorded hybrid hawksbill sea turtle found in Australia nested this season at James Price Point, site of the proposed natural gas refinery in the Kimberley of Western Australia. The rare sea turtle was discovered during an independent survey of marine turtles at James Price Point conducted to provide more accurate and comprehensive science than the oil-industry funded studies done to date.
The findings from the recent sea turtle study were released today, casting further doubts over the scientific integrity of the W.A. Government’s environmental impact assessment for the James Price Point gas hub.
SeaTurtles.org reported the nesting of the sea turtle in December and posted a video of the unusual sea turtle with the details here. Now the hybrid nature of the turtle has been confirmed. We will post the full sea turtle study as soon as we get it!
The peer-reviewed study into marine turtle nesting in the James Price Point area led by University of Melbourne marine biologist Malcolm Lindsay found 14 turtle nests and 38 false crawls over the 2011/2012 nesting season, including the first ever recorded hawksbill hybrid in Australia.
The vast majority of nesting activity was concentrated in a 6 kilometer strip of coastline directly adjacent to the proposed natural gas refinery. As a consequence, the nesting habitat will be heavily impacted by the proposed gas refinery and associated marine facilities and pipeline.
In contrast, the marine turtle nesting study commissioned for the Western Australian Department of State Development on behalf of the joint venture partners Woodside Petroleum, Chevron, Shell, BP and BHP Billiton found only one ‘old’ nest and three false crawls. The authors of the independent report claim that the government’s study was inadequate and poorly designed. The government study surveyed only 12 percent of the coastline most threatened by the precinct, overlooking the significant 6km strip of important nesting habitat.
One of the authors, marine biologist Madeline Goddard commented:
“We understand that these projects require difficult weighing up of impacts to environment and aboriginal culture versus perceived jobs and royalties, we would hope that those difficult judgements would be well informed. That is not occurring with the science involved here.”
Traditional Goolarabooloo elder, Phillip Roe, commented yesterday:
“[W.A. Premier] Barnett can try to paint James Price Point as insignificant, but we know that there are dinosaur footprints, bilbies, turtle nests, whales, songlines, registered sacred sites all here, this is a sacred site worth protecting for all Australians, black or white.”
“The hybrid hawksbill is exciting news, but even more so is the science that supports local knowledge that James Price Point is important to sea turtles,” said Teri Shore, Program Director at SeaTurtles.org in California. Shore has provided expert comments and testimony on the environmental analysis of the Browse Basin natural gas projects. She has traveled to the Kimberley to help monitor flatback nesting beaches and lend support to local activists striving to halt the fossil fuel expansion.
All three species found in the study are nationally listed as threatened and any nesting population is considered significant by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority due to the heavy impacts that have occurred and the international significance of Northern Australia’s turtle populations.
The new sea turtle findings add additional scientific doubts to the integrity of the Strategic Assessment Report for the Browse Basin Gas Refinery proposed for James Price Point.
In July, a Queensland palaeontologist documented dinosaur trackways of international significance at James Price Point that were overlooked by the government studies.
Another significant oversight was revealed in August, when an ecological survey found a breeding population of the nationally threatened Bilby at the site.
The cetacean research group of Macquarie University recently released a damning public submission on the Strategic Assessment Report, remarking that they had “little confidence in the scientific integrity of the report and … conclusions reached within.”
From Sea Turtle Restoration Project:
Photo by Randall Ruiz on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 30, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Kathy Marks / The Independent
Fires raging unchecked in an Indonesian peat swamp forest could wipe out the remaining Sumatran orang-utans which live there, conservationists are warning. The forest is one of the last refuges of the great apes. The illegal fires, started by palm-oil companies clearing land to plant the lucrative crop, are believed to have killed at least 100 orang-utans – one-third of those living in the Tripa swamp, on the west coast of Sumatra’s Aceh province. The rest could die within weeks, according to Dr Ian Singleton, conservation director of the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme.
“The speed of destruction has gone up dramatically in the last few weeks… This is obviously a deliberate drive by these companies to clear all the remaining forests,” Dr Singleton said. “If this is not stopped right now, all those orang-utans… will be gone before the end of 2012.”
Only 6,600 Sumatran orang-utans are estimated to be left in the wild, and the Tripa swamp – where they are most densely concentrated – is considered crucial to the species’ survival. But less than one-quarter of the peat forest remains; the rest has been converted to palm-oil plantations.
Satellite imagery showing 92 fires over the past week has horrified conservationists, who are awaiting a court ruling with far-reaching implications for the protection of wildlife habitats in Indonesia. The judgment relates to a lawsuit brought against the governor of Aceh by the local branch of Walhi, an environmental group. Walhi decided to act after the governor, Irwandi Yusuf, granted a new permit to one of the country’s biggest palm-oil companies, PT Kallista Alam. Walhi Aceh argues that the permit, which would allow another 4,000 acres of peatland to be destroyed, was granted illegally.
The judges are due to reach a decision next Tuesday. If they dismiss the challenge, other important habitats could also be threatened. Tripa is nominally protected by a presidential moratorium on new logging and palm-oil concessions, as well as by legislation governing the conservation area within which it is located.
There may now be as few as 200 orang-utans left in the Tripa forest, which shelters a dozen endangered species, including the white-handed gibbon, clouded leopard, Malayan sun bear, Sumatran tiger and giant soft-shelled turtle.
From The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/up-in-smoke-ecological-catastrophe-in-the-sumatran-swamps-7600987.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 28, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Turkey: the splendor of the Hagia Sophia, the ruins of Ephesus, and the bizarre caves of the Cappadocia. For foreign travelers, Turkey is a nation of cultural, religious, and historic wonders: a place where cultures have met, clashed, and co-created. However, Turkey has another wealth that is far less known: biodiversity. Of the globe’s 34 biodiversity hotspots, Turkey is almost entirely covered by three: the Caucasus, the Irano-Anatolian, and the Mediterranean. Despite its wild wealth, conservation is not a priority in Turkey and recent papers in Science and Biological Conservation warn that the current development plans in the country, which rarely take the environment into account, are imperiling its species and ecosystems.
“The current ‘developmentalist obsession,’ particularly regarding water use, threatens to eliminate much of what remains, while forcing large-scale migration from rural areas to the cities. According to current plans, Turkey’s rivers and streams will be dammed with almost 4,000 dams, diversions, and hydroelectric power plants for power, irrigation, and drinking water by 2023,” the authors write, adding that other threats include urbanization, wetland-draining, and poaching.
Turkey is particularly rich in plants: with over 9,000 recorded to date, a third of them are found only in Turkey. Amphibians and reptiles are also highly diverse with 150 species to date. And Turkey, even now, still retains some startling big mammals including the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), brown bear (Ursus arctos), gray wolf (Canis lupus), caracal (Caracal caracal), and Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx). But it has also lost nearly as many as it has retained, including cheetahs, lions, tigers, and aurochs.Turkey is also a hugely important bird country with over 500 species identified so far.”Turkey lies at the intersection of globally important bird migration flyways. It has the highest number of breeding bird species in the Europe, but also the highest number of threatened bird species in Europe,” co-author Cagan Sekercioglu, a Turkish ornithologist and ecologist, with Stanford, told mongabay.com. “Few people realize that the famous Rift Valley bird migration over Israel and into Africa, and the Rift Valley itself, begin in Turkey. Bird species of traditional farms are declining fastest in Europe but can still be found in large numbers in the bioculturally diverse rural communities of Turkey, particularly in the east. Among others, Turkey hosts globally important breeding populations of threatened white-headed ducks, Egyptian vultures, sakers, great bustards, and imperial eagles, and is a key stopover site for declining migratory bird species like sociable plovers.”But all of Turkey’s remaining species are facing threats. In 2012 the Yale Environmental Performance Index ranked Turkey in the bottom 8 percent for its biodiversity and habitat conservation efforts, putting Turkey in the same category as some of the world’s most troubled and impoverished countries, such as Haiti, Libya, Eritrea, and Iraq. But scientists warn that recent policy efforts could push Turkey, which is working to become an economic powerhouse, even lower.
“Turkey’s environmental laws and conservation efforts are eroding, not improving. This has precipitated a conservation crisis that has accelerated over the past decade. This crisis has been exacerbated by legislative developments that may leave Turkey with a nature conservation legal framework that is weakened and severely out of line with globally accepted principles,” scientists wrote recently in separate letter in Science.Loose laws, poor enforcement, and little public oversight has created a situation whereby the Turkish government is capable of steamrolling any environmental concerns.”The government, practically unopposed, easily modifies existing laws and passes new ones to remove any environmental obstacles to the construction of dams, mines, factories, roads, bridges, housing projects, and tourism developments. Such construction increasingly occurs in ‘protected’ areas, often at the expense of local people,” the authors write.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Eleven top scientists have slammed a proposed palm oil plantation in a Cameroonian rainforest surrounded by five protected areas. In an open letter, the researchers allege that Herakles Farm, which proposes the 70,000 hectare plantation in southwest Cameroon, has misled the government about the state of the forest to be cleared and has violated rules set by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), of which it’s a member. The scientists, many of whom are considered leaders in their field, argue that the plantation will destroy rich forests, imperil endangered species, and sow conflict with local people.
“You can’t just cut the heart out of this area and then expect everything to be fine,” says signatory Thomas Struhsaker, an expert on African primates and rainforest ecology at Duke University. “If this project proceeds the parks will become islands, surrounded by a hostile sea of oil palm.”
The scientists say they are not against palm oil plantations in principle. While the oilseed is the world’s most productive, it has come with a considerable ecological cost in Southeast Asia due to its link to deforestation in the region. Recently, the expansion has spread to Latin America and West Africa.
“We do not dispute that when oil palm plantations are established on previously deforested or abandoned lands and do not degrade nearby biologically rich areas, their environmental costs can be acceptable,” the letter reads. “The project proponents, however, have located their concession in the midst of a biodiversity hotspot on land that buffers and provides vital support functions to Korup and Bakossi National Parks, Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve, and Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary.”
Korup National Park alone is home to over 600 species of trees, nearly 200 reptiles and amphibians, around 1,000 butterflies, 400 species of birds, and 160 species of mammals, including one of the richest assemblages of primates in the world. Fourteen primates are found in the single park, including the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti), the most imperiled of the world’s chimpanzee subspecies. Forest elephants, leopards, and forest buffalo also roam the park.
Tropical ecologist and letter signatory, William Laurance of James Cook University says the region represents “some of the world’s most biologically important real estate,” adding that, “There’s no way a project like this would be allowed in most countries, because the price for biodiversity is just too high.”
A spokesperson from Herakles Farm told mongabay.com, “we certainly value the environment and biodiversity in the Southwest Region of Cameroon and laud the establishment of the protected areas around our concession,” pointing to a 28-page sustainability guide. In the guide the company describes its forest concession quite differently than Laurance, stating that it is “heavily exploited” secondary forest and therefore of “low biodiversity value.”
But in the letter, the scientists contend that Herakles Farms has misled Cameroon’s government about the state of the forest they propose to clear.
“[Herakles Farm] claims that the ‘vast majority of the concession is secondary and degraded forest’ and that the concession area was selected because it was located on ‘land that had been previously logged,'” reads the letter. But the scientists say that parts of the region have never seen logging, and, in addition, almost three-fourths of the palm oil concession currently has at least 70 percent natural tree cover, about the same as the world-renowned Korup National Park.
Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0315-hance_herakles_letter.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 3, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jason Koebler / U.S. News and World Report
If you happen to see a frog hopping around in your back yard, take a good look— it might not be around for much longer. Ecologists are increasingly warning that due to habitat destruction, widespread infectious disease and climate change, amphibians are facing “extinction in real time.”
As many as 40 percent of amphibious species, which include frogs, salamanders and newts, could be facing “imminent extinction,” according to David Wake, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley.
“It’s happening around the world … we’re seeing it on our watch,” he says. “People talk more about birds or mammals because they are charismatic, they’re in the public eye. I’m concerned about rhinos and tigers, too, but in the meantime, we’re losing the things that are in our backyard.”
Scientists first began noticing the decline in the late 1980s, but despite increased awareness, amphibious populations haven’t grown.
“If anything, the problem has gotten worse,” Wake says. “The attention we’ve given to it has led to some surprising discoveries,” such as Chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease caused by a fungus that lives around the world and has a near 100 percent mortality rate in amphibious animals. So far, biologists haven’t been able to stop the disease.
Researchers disagree, however, on why we might soon have to say farewell to frogs forever. A controversial paper published in November by Christian Hof, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, asserted that climate change is one of the biggest reasons the amphibian population is in worldwide decline. In an analysis released Friday in Science Magazine, Wake admits amphibians might be susceptible to changing climates, but their survival over millions of years points towards adaptability.
“With their moist and seemingly delicate skins, amphibians might be highly susceptible to climate change, but they are long-term survivors, having gotten through the end-Cretaceous extinctions and Pleistocene climate changes,” he writes. Habitat destruction and Chytridiomycosis are more imminent problems, he says.
Read more from U.S. News and World Report: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/03/02/are-frogs-rapidly-facing-extinction
Photo by Jared Evans on Unsplash
