Crazy “missing link” Darwin fish can breathe air, walk on land AND climb trees!

Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

In Australia, there is a fish that has lungs, can walk on dry land, and breathe air, for up to six days. It’s not a new species, but it’s on the move. This has scientists warning that if the reaches the mainland, it could be devastating to native species, who are simply not equipped to share an environment with a super-powered creature such as this.

Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

The fish, known as the aggressive climbing perch, is just a little guy, ranging six to eight inches long at adulthood. Small stature aside, this critter is basically terrifying. It can “walk” on land, using its gill plates to crawl across the ground. The perch has lungs, as well as gills, so it can breathe air as well as any mammal—for up to six days, at least. This bizarre, evolutionary ‘missing link’ of fish can even suffocate a predator who attempts to swallow the perch, by swelling up inside the attacker’s throat. Oh, and did we mention it’s called a climbing perch because of its ability to climb trees? For real.

The climbing perch, originally discovered over 200 years ago, is native to Papua New Guinea and was already known to have spread to Indonesia. The land-loving fish has more recently been discovered in northern Australia, which has wildlife scientists more or less freaking out. An invasive species like this could spell “major disaster” for native animals, and it’s not just the other fish who are in danger, according to Nathan Waltham, an ecologist at Australia’s James Cook University. He believes this fish would also wreak havoc for turtle and bird populations. Waltham manages the TropWATER program, aimed at educating the public about this and other dangerous invasive species.

Let’s recap some of the amazing abilities of this freaky freshwater fish:

• walks on dry land
• has lungs and can breathe air for six days
• climbs trees!!!
• suffocates its predators from the inside
• can tolerate saltwater (despite being a freshwater dweller)
• hibernates in the mud for up to six months
• scares the begeezus out of rational humans

Via The Guardian and James Cook University

Images and video via Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

ORIGINAL: Inhabitat

by Cat DiStasio

07/27/2015

New pollution high as haze chokes Singapore

ORIGINAL: BBC

Many stores have run out of face masks amid soaring demand

Pollution levels reached a new record high for a third day in a row in Singapore, as smoky haze from fires in Indonesia shrouded the city state.

The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hit 401 at 12:00 on Friday (04:00 GMT) - the highest in the country's history.

The haze is also affecting Malaysia, with another 100 schools closed in the south of the country.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong warned on Thursday that the haze could remain in place for weeks.

"We can't tell how this problem is going to develop because it depends on the burning, it depends on the weather, it depends on the wind," he said.

"It can easily last for several weeks and quite possibly it could last longer until the dry season ends in Sumatra which may be September or October." 'Life threatening'

A PSI reading above 300 is defined as "hazardous", while Singapore government guidelines say a PSI reading of above 400 over 24 hours "may be life threatening to ill and elderly persons".

"I can't even see what's happening outside my house due to the smog” Nicole Wu Singapore resident

"Healthy people [may also] experience adverse symptoms that affect normal activity," the government says.

Singapore resident Nicole Wu told the BBC that she had stayed indoors for the past two days.

"It's terrible. In my flat the windows are all closed with the air conditioning on," she said. "My mother has to wear a mask to go shopping."

"I can't even see what's happening outside my house due to the smog. You can't see birds [or] moving objects," she added.

Philip Koh, a doctor, told AFP news agency that the number of medical consultations he had had in the past week had increased by 20%.

Air traffic controllers have been told to exercise caution given the poor visibility

"My patients are telling me they are worried about how long this is going to last and how much higher this is going to go," he said.

Singapore's National Environment Agency has started providing hourly PSI updates on its website, in addition to the three-hourly updates it previously provided.

Around 300 schools in southern Malaysia have now been closed as a result of the smog. Schools in Singapore are currently closed for the holidays.

The fires are caused by illegal slash-and-burn land clearance in Sumatra, to the west of Singapore.

The smog has strained diplomatic relations between Singapore and Indonesia - two countries that usually share good relations, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta reports.

Mr Lee said Singapore had provided satellite date to Indonesia to help it identify companies involved and said that if any Singapore firms were involved, that would be addressed.

Indonesia says two helicopters with cloud seeding equipment were deployed early on Friday to try and create artificial rain to put out the fire, AFP reported.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said "all the country's resources" would be mobilised to extinguish the fires.

Pollution Paradise

ORIGINAL: Greenpeace

"Tanah Air Kita"

Water has a special place in Indonesia’s culture. The expression for “homeland” in Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, is “Tanah Air Kita” – which translates as “Our Land and Water”, reflecting the fact that Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands. Tisna Sanjaya, an Indonesian artist and social and environmental activist, describes the Citarum River as “the cradle of our nation’s culture”.

CHEMICAL COCKTAIL

Sadly, industrial facilities are treating public waterways like private sewers in many areas of Indonesia, pumping out a cocktail of hazardous substances into the local waterways.

One of the major sources of pollution is the fashion industry – with 68% of industrial facilities on the Upper Citarum producing textiles. The printing and dyeing processes are particularly chemical intensive, and have contributed to the Citarum developing a reputation as one of the dirtiest rivers on earth.

POISONING PARADISE

Greenpeace collected samples of wastewater discharged from one of the many facilities located on the Citarum – owned by PT Gistex – and found the presence of a number of hazardous chemicals, including nonylphenol, antimony and tributylphosphate.

Worse still, wastewater discharged from one of the two smaller outfalls was highly alkaline  (pH 14), which is highly caustic, will burn human skin coming into direct contact with the stream, and will have a severe impact (most likely fatal) on aquatic life in the immediate vicinity of the discharge area. The results suggests that this wastewater had not received even the most basic of treatment prior to discharge.

ABAH DAYAT

Beyond the facts and statistics, there are a huge number of people affected by the pollution along the Citarum River.

Meet Abah Dayat and his Grandson Fazril. Abah is a former fisherman who has been forced to collect scrap from the Citarum River ever since the fish numbers declined rapidly. Abah and his family are just one example of how the changing environment is having an impact upon people’s livelihoods and jeopardising people’s futures.

SHADY PRACTICES

Indonesian law gives legal guarantees to every individual to gain access to information and justice in order to fulfill their right to a healthy environment.

But access to information is a big problem. PT Gistex’s facility is just one thousands in Indonesia - and around the world - taking advantage of a system that requires little transparency and where inadequate laws are failing to prevent the release of hazardous chemicals.

But this water is OUR water, and we have a right to know what is in it.

"Tanah Air Kita"

MIND THE GAP

Behind the scenes, major international brands are conducting business with suppliers such as PT Gistex, helping to sponsor toxic water pollution and murky business practices.

One of these brands is Gap - which has been linked to toxic water scandals before, and whose clothing items tested positive for hazardous chemicals in a previous investigation.

How many more scandals need to break before Gap work with their suppliers in Indonesia and around the world to Detox their production processes and products, and help Detox our water?

TAKE ACTION

1. Share this story with the world

Every time you like, share, and promote this story it increases the pressure on Gap to change its ways: to stop polluting rivers in the countries where their products are made, and to stop shipping hazardous chemicals all over the world in their clothes.

Major competitors including H&M, Zara, Levi’s and UNIQLO have all committed to Detox. What is Gap waiting for?

  

2. Join a global movement

Around the world, over half a million fashionistas, activists, designers and bloggers have joined together, united by a belief that beautiful fashion needn't cost the earth. Join the movement and send a clear message to major brands and suppliers linked to this environmental destruction that we want clothes with a story we can be proud of.

SIGN THE DETOX FASHION MANIFESTO

3. Help us continue this important work

Your support has already resulted in 17 major fashion brands committing to remove all hazardous chemicals from their supply chains and products. You can also help protect our precious water supplies by making a contribution today so that we can continue this important work in those areas where it is needed most.

DONATE TODAY

Yuck: Our Seafood Is Loaded with Unspeakably Gross Pollutants

ORIGINAL: AlterNet

November 30, 2012

Some of our most popular seafood treats come to us from filthy operations in other countries.

Photo Credit: © AJP/Shutterstock.com

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

When you tuck into a delicious seafood dish, is it possible that the fish you are eating once ate human poop? Surprisingly, that might be the case. A look at the U.S. seafood supply reveals that some of our most popular seafood treats might come to us from unsanitary and disgusting operations in other countries. And the federal government does not necessarily stop it from making its way to your dinner plate, either.

These days, 91 percent of U.S. seafood is imported, and half of that is farmed (the other half is wild-caught). Our top suppliers include China, Thailand, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Ecuador, and Vietnam. And the production systems some of these countries use would make your stomach turn.

Michael Doyle, regents professor and director at the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, described tilapia production in China, saying, “The farmers there grow the fish in ponds that are maybe one to two acres in size. That's their livelihood. And they use excessive antibiotics.” China is a leading supplier of tilapia to the U.S.

“It's not just antibiotic residues on the seafood. It's also antibiotic-resistant microbes that come with the fish or the shrimp,” he continued. “A primary source of salmonella is the raw manure that is used to feed the shrimp and fish. Many of these farmers have poultry -- maybe chickens, maybe geese, maybe ducks. The fecal waste of these animals is fed directly into these ponds, which is the source of nutrients for these fish and shrimp… Poultry can harbor salmonella... that's shed in the feces. And many of these little farms have the family outhouse just feed directly into the ponds."

If that makes you less interested in ordering the tilapia, then you surely don’t want any Vietnamese “catfish” either. U.S. aquaculture produces channel catfish, but these days, American producers compete with a flood of cheap Vietnamese fish that are marketed as catfish. Dr. Carole Engle, chair and director of aquaculture and fisheries at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, says these Vietnamese catfish are “not only a different species, it's a different genus and a different family. We call it pangasius.”

To understand pangasius farming in Vietnam, one must first know a little bit about life in the Mekong Delta. Engle explains, “What's striking when you first get there is that there's more water than there is land in the Mekong Delta region. There are these large rivers coming through the Mekong Delta… These waters are everything. A lot of the transportation is on the water, and a lot of people live on the water, on houseboats. It's also a disposal system. People live on these rivers and their restrooms are right on these boats and they are discharging right on the rivers. And all the human waste, and all of the waste from cities… it's all going into the river and the river is the source of the water.”

That water is where the fish are raised. “A lot of the fish are raised in cages directly in rivers,” says Engle, but “more and more the pangasius are raised in what the Vietnamese call ponds.” But the ponds are nothing like U.S. aquaculture ponds that are closed systems using clean water. The Vietnamese ponds are regularly flushed with polluted river water. "Upstream a factory or a houseboat might have discharged something into it, and all that human waste is flowing through these ponds because they are flushing it through a few times a day," Engle explains.

Another concern with imported farm-raised seafood is the use of drugs and pesticides that are banned in the United States. A few that show up frequently include the drugs chloramphenicol and nitrofurans, and the fungicide malachite green. Each of these is banned in the United States for a good reason. Chloramphenicol can cause aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow does not produce enough new blood cells, in humans. Doctors use it as a drug of last resort to treat typhoid fever and meningitis. Nitrofurans and malachite green are potentially carcinogenic in humans.

What happens when a shipment of filthy or toxic seafood shows up in a U.S. port? Most likely, nothing. It enters the U.S. and unwitting Americans eat it. The Food and Drug Administration has an inspection program that is notoriously limited, underfunded and not at all transparent – particularly when compared to its counterparts in Japan, Canada and the EU.

In a study published last year, David Love, science director of the Public Health and Sustainable Aquaculture Project at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, found that Japan physically inspected 12 to 21 percent of its seafood imports between 2004 and 2009. The European Union goes even further, physically inspecting either 20 percent or 50 percent of all imported seafood shipments, depending on the risk of each individual product. But the U.S. inspects less than 2 percent of seafood imports.

Since 1997, the U.S. has relied on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system (which some deride as Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray). The system essentially turns control over to industry, requiring it to identify and control for points in the production chain when food might become contaminated. When done properly, it’s an excellent system. But it’s fair to say that setting your family’s outhouse to flow into your aquaculture pond does not constitute a good HACCP system.

Most of the time, the FDA relies on inspecting documentation to verify that adequate HACCP programs are in place and that they are being followed. (Because, you know, no one would ever falsify paperwork…) For just over 1 percent of imported seafood shipments, the FDA performs sensory examinations, checking for things like color, texture and odor. These exams can easily discover whether the seafood is filthy or rotting, but might not catch residues of veterinary drugs or microscopic pathogens.

Less than 1 percent of U.S. seafood import shipments actually go to a lab for testing. Last year, a GAO report titled “FDA Needs to Improve Oversight of Imported Seafood and Better Leverage Limited Resources” chided the FDA for inadequate oversight and even failing to meet its own inspection goals. According to the report, “FDA”s sampling program is limited in scope, is not effectively implemented, and does not fully use the capabilities of FDA’s laboratories.”

For example, in 2009, the FDA tested only 0.1 percent of seafood imports for drug residues. When they do test, they only test for 16 drugs, whereas Canada tests for 40, some European countries test for 50, and Japan tests for 57. In recent years, the U.S. lagged behind other nations in starting to test for drugs. The EU began testing for chloramphenicol and nitrofuran in 2001, but the U.S. did not do so until 2002 and 2004, respectively. In 2003, the EU began testing for malachite green, but the U.S. waited until 2005 to do so.

Once the FDA rejects a shipment of seafood, “they don't destroy the product,” explains Engle. “So it can go out on the ship and come in on another port. And because there is such a small percentage being tested, then when they go to another port like that, it's equally unlikely to be caught. So that's what happens. They call it port swapping.” She concludes, “FDA is just simply not catching things, and the system is not set up to catch it.”

The U.S. catfish industry was so fed up with the FDA’s lack of oversight that it lobbied to have catfish inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture instead. The USDA requires equivalency, says Engle, meaning that imported catfish (including pangasius) are held to the same standards as domestically raised catfish. “Why should we have different standards for our US growers and... an imported product?” Engle asks.

But even though catfish oversight was transferred to the USDA in the 2008 farm bill, the change was never implemented. Engle calls it a "political battle” between states with many seafood importers and those with a domestic catfish industry. Vietnam joined in the fight too, threatening to boycott U.S. beef. “Why would they be worried about it unless they realized they couldn't meet the US safety standards right now?" Engle points out. “The battle was not about safety for US consumers or even safety for Vietnamese consumers. It's really a shame.”

Engle worries most about the veterinary drug residues and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that have evolved alongside them in foreign aquaculture operations. "It's a long-term kind of a thing -- there aren't bodies for people to look at like an immediate acute kind of disease like salmonella and so people don't worry so much about it,” she says.

Even worse, because other importing nations have stricter regulations than the U.S., “the best quality fish goes to Europe and Japan and Canada, and we get lower quality products here." Engle is outraged by this. “I find it appalling as a U.S. consumer. I just don't think we should have lower standards than other countries in the world for our food safety,” she says. “I still believe this is the greatest nation on this planet, and yet we don't act like it sometimes.”

With the FDA asleep at the wheel, what can U.S. consumers do to avoid eating imported farmed fish produced in unsafe conditions? If you are buying unprocessed seafood at a grocery store, the product will be labeled with its country of origin.

Veterinary drug violations are disproportionately from China, Vietnam and Indonesia, and they are disproportionately found in shrimp. (Shrimp is also the cause of a large percent of shipments rejected for filth and salmonella.) Farmed salmon (particularly from Chile) is another product that has been caught with banned veterinary drug residues.

However, 70 percent of seafood consumption takes place in restaurants, which are exempt from country-of-origin labeling. That means that most of the time, U.S. consumers have no idea where their seafood comes from – unless they ask their waiter and receive an answer. Processed seafood is also exempt from country of origin labeling, so you might want to skip on the pre-cooked cocktail shrimp, too.

To truly ensure you are eating safe and sustainable seafood, check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which provides updated guides to buying and eating seafood. Of course, the real solution is improving federal oversight of imported seafood, and that does not seem forthcoming.

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..

Stanford researchers show oil palm plantations are clearing carbon-rich tropical forests in Borneo

ORIGINAL: Stanford News

By Rob Jordan

Demand for palm oil is driving the deforestation of forests in Borneo, as trees are cleared to make way for the planting of oil farm plantations, which will send carbon dioxide, a global-warming gas, into the atmosphere.

Lian Pin Koh / Creative Commons. An oil palm nursery in Indonesian Borneo. New Stanford research shows that deforestation to make way for oil palm plantations in Borneo is becoming a globally significant source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Expanding production of palm oil, a common ingredient in processed foods, soaps and personal care products, is driving rainforest destruction and massive carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new study led by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities.

The study, published online Oct. 7 in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that deforestation for the development of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo is becoming a globally significant source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Plantation expansion is projected to contribute more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2020 – an amount greater than all of Canada's current fossil fuel emissions.

Indonesia is the leading producer of palm and palm kernel oil, which together account for more than 30 percent of the world's vegetable oil use, and which can be used for biodiesel. Most of Indonesia's oil palm plantation expansion is occurring on the island of Borneo, also known as Kalimantan, which occupies a land area nearly the size California and Florida combined. Plantation leases, covering 32 percent of Kalimantan's lowlands outside of protected areas, represent a major land bank that is slated for development over the next decade, according to the study.

In 2010 alone, land-clearing for oil palm plantations in Kalimantan emitted more than 140 million metric tons of carbon dioxide – an amount equivalent to annual emissions from about 28 million vehicles.

Major emitter of greenhouse gasses
Home to the world's third-largest tropical forest area, Indonesia is also one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, due to rapid loss of carbon-rich forests and peatlands. Since 1990, development of oil palm plantations has cleared about 16,000 square kilometers of Kalimantan's primary and logged forested lands – an area about the size of Hawaii. This accounts for 60 percent of Kalimantan's total forest cover loss in that time, according to the study's authors.

"Despite contentious debate over the types and uses of lands slated for oil palm plantations, the sector has grown rapidly over the past 20 years," said project leader Lisa M. Curran, a professor of ecological anthropology at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. By combining field measurements with analyses of high-resolution satellite images, the study evaluated lands targeted for plantations and documented their carbon emissions when converted to oil palm.

The study's researchers generated the first comprehensive maps of oil palm plantation expansion from 1990 to 2010. Using cutting-edge classification technology, developed by study co-author Gregory Asner from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, researchers quantified the types of land cleared for oil palm plantations, as well as carbon emissions and sequestration from oil palm agriculture.

"A major breakthrough occurred when we were able to discern not only forests and non-forested lands, but also logged forests, as well as mosaics of rice fields, rubber stands, fruit gardens and mature secondary forests used by smallholder farmers for their livelihoods," said Kimberly Carlson, a Yale doctoral student and lead author of the study. "With this information, we were able to develop robust carbon bookkeeping accounts to quantify carbon emissions from oil palm development."

The research team gathered oil palm land lease records during interviews with local and regional governmental agencies. These records identify locations that have received approval and are allocated to oil palm companies. The total allocated leases spanned about 120,000 square kilometers, an area slightly smaller than Greece. Most leases in the study occupied more than 100 square kilometers, an area slightly larger than Manhattan.
Tracking the land leases

Using these leases in combination with land cover maps, the team estimated future land-clearing and carbon emissions from plantations. Eighty percent of leases remained unplanted in 2010. If all of these leases were developed, more than a third of Kalimantan's lowlands would be planted with oil palm by 2020.

Despite these large numbers, accurate information about leases is not readily available for public review and oversight, even after the leases are granted. The average Kalimantan resident is unaware of plans for local oil palm development, which can have dramatic effects on residents' livelihoods and environment, Curran said.

"These plantation leases are an unprecedented 'grand-scale experiment' replacing forests with exotic palm monocultures," said Curran. "We may see tipping points in forest conversion where critical biophysical functions are disrupted, leaving the region increasingly vulnerable to droughts, fires and floods."

Combined with results generated from their more detailed district-level study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers emphasize that sustainably producing palm oil – a stated goal of the Indonesian palm oil industry – will require re-evaluation of awarded oil palm plantation leases located on forested lands.

The research study, "Carbon Emissions from Forest Conversion by Kalimantan Oil Palm Plantations," was supported by the NASA Land Cover/Land-Use Change Program, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Santa Fe Institute and the National Science Foundation.

Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Media Contact

Lisa Curran, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: (203) 606-4513, lmcurran@stanford.edu

Christine Harrison, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: (650) 725-8240, christine.harrision@stanford.edu

WWF scandal (part 1): Bears feeding on toxic corporate waste

ORIGINAL: Redd Monitor

By Chris Lang, 27th July 2011

WWF, the world’s biggest environmental organisation, is under fire. On 23 June 2011, the German TV station ARD broadcast a documentary highlighting WWF’s cozy relationship with distinctly unsustainable companies like the genetically modified giant Monsanto and the rainforest destroying palm oil company Wilmar. This week Global Witness published a report criticising WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network.

The only surprising thing is that it has taken so long for the WWF scandal to become public. The title of this post, “Bears feeding on toxic corporate waste,” is borrowed from an email that was circulated anonymously back in April 2003 (posted in full, for a little light relief, below). Sooner or later, the WWF scandal had to go public.

Today’s post is part 1 of the WWF scandal. It looks at the ARD documentary. Part 2 (coming soon) will look at the Global Witness report investigating WWF’s abysmal failure to rein in the logging industry.

The ARD documentary, “Der Pakt mit dem Panda”, was produced by Wilfried Huismann, a prize winning investigative journalist. It is posted below and can be viewed on ARD’s website(in German).

The film produced shock waves in Germany. But rather than facing up to the fact that these are serious criticisms, WWF Germany responded defensively, producing a “fact check” page on its website and a series of interviews with staff of WWF Germany who, surprise, surprise, tell us that they are doing everything they can to save the planet.

The film focusses in on WWF’s cozy relationships with corporate eco-nasties. Here are two particularly egregious examples, from the palm oil sector in Indonesia and the soy industry in Argentina.

In Indonesia, WWF has a partnership with Wilmar, a company that has converted vast areas of rainforest to monoculture oil palm plantations. WWF is quick to point out that its Memorandum of Understanding with Wilmar is to protect high conservation value forest and that it receives no money from Wilmar under this MoU. But as Nordin, who works with WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia), points out in the film, WWF is in effect helping to greenwash an environmental disgrace:

“WWF says that you can produce palm oil in a sustainable way. Look around. How can that be sustainable? Nothing regrows here. The partnership with Wilmar improves the image of the firm, not their practices. I have no evidence that WWF is corrupt but it helps the industry to expand further.”

Predictably, Wilmar mentions the MoU in its 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility report as an example of how it implements its policies:

Wilmar upholds a policy of enhancing and maintaining flora and fauna species, and uses a flexible menu of conservation practices to protect natural habitats that are found to be rich in biodiversity.

There are two toe-curlingly embarrassing interviews in the documentary with WWF staff. In the first, a WWF Indonesia employee explains that she doesn’t really know what’s happening on the ground in the Wilmar plantation where Huismann filmed. In the second, Dörte Bieler, WWF Germany’s manager for “sustainable biomass”, is interviewed at an industry conference. No other NGOs took part in the conference. She tells Huismann that

“Our work is science-based. We always conduct a study before we have an opinion… And with this science-based evidence we have been able to achieve some things.”

But she is unable to point to a single thing that WWF has achieved through its cooperation with corporations. What’s important for WWF, according to Bieler, is that the NGO is “not just ridiculed, but accepted as a competent discussion partner.”

In Argentina, Huismann looks at WWF’s relationship with soy companies. The film includes an interview with Dr Hector Laurence,[*] the personification of the WWF scandal. In a World Business Council for Sustainable Development brochure he is quoted as saying,

“I am surprised to find that some people consider that if NGOs work with business they risk loosing [sic] objectivity. Efficient and transparent collaboration between these sectors is precisely the way to overcome this prejudice.”

We shouldn’t be surprised by this, since Laurence’s career included being head of a conservation organisation called Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina (WWF’s associate in Argentina), President of the Argentinean Asociation of Agrobusiness; and Vice-president of Pioneer Overseas Corporation, part of Dupont.

Laurence’s position on pesticides and GM soy is identical to that of the agribusinesses who have planted millions of hectares of GM soy in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

WWF’s response to the interview with Hector Laurence is particularly odious:

Hector Laurence was never with WWF, instead he worked with the associated partner organisation Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina (FVSA) until 2008.

In fact, the panda is very cuddly with FVSA. WWF’s website, under the headline “WWF-Argentina: Our solutions”, states that

Together, [WWF and FVSA] held joint campaigns, arrange global actions and receive financial backup for executing programs and projects.

The layout of FVSA’s website design is very similar to a previous WWF layout (WWF’s website has since been re-designed). FVSA’s url even includes the magic letters wwf and panda.org:

WWF-Argentina: wwfar.panda.org 

WWF-International: wwf.panda.org

WWF was one of the founders of the Round Table on Responsible Soy. But the issue of genetically modified soy is not part of RTRS discussions. Members of the RTRS can use as much GM soy as they wish. WWF denies that it promotes GM crops, arguing that it remains in the Round Table on Responsible Soy in order to reduce the amount of GM soy planted. But the reality, whether WWF likes it or not, is that its presence in the RTRS is lending legitimacy to RTRS and thus to GM soy, monocultures and agribusiness. WWF knows this – it’s beenpointed out to them many times.

Jason Clay of WWF-US [*] declined Huisman’s request for an interview. Instead the documentary included a 2010 presentation that Clay gave to the Global Harvest Initiative, an agribusiness lobbying initiative set up by Archer Daniels Midland, DuPont, John Deere and Monsanto. Among GHI’s consultative partners are Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and WWF. “We need to freeze the footprint of agriculture,” Clay says in his presentation. He explains that WWF is suggesting seven or eight things we need to work on to achieve this. “One is genetics, we have got to produce more with less,” he says, sounding just like an GM agribusiness lobbyist.

“It takes 15 years, at least and maybe longer as we go along, to bring a genetically engineered product to market. If we don’t start today, we’re already at 2025. The clock is ticking. We need to get moving. There is a sense of urgency.”

WWF’s response? “WWF Germany disagrees.” But the programme is not about WWF Germany. It is about WWF. And WWF admitted to the Süddeutsche newspaper that it has accepted money from Monsanto. Meanwhile, Jason Clay is not a paper pusher in some neglected outpost of the WWF empire. He is Senior Vice President for Market Transformation at WWF-US.

Not everything in Huismann documentary hits the target. A handful of WWF’s rebuttals appear plausible. But that does not make WWF’s response either acceptable or adequate. The documentary raises important issues about WWF’s cozy relationship with massive, destructive corporations. That WWF is not even interested in an intelligent and open discussion of these issues, let alone changing the way it works with destructive corporations, is a disgrace.
UPDATE and APOLOGY – 30 July 2011: I have deleted the descriptions of Hector Laurence and Jason Clay. Thanks to everyone who pointed out that the way these people look has nothing to do with the argument. I apologise for causing any offense to anyone and promise not to do that again.

Here, for the record, is Jason Clay’s presentation in full to the Global Harvest Initiative:

Global Harvest Initiative Symposium – Clay from Global Harvest Initiative on Vimeo.

Return to text: Laurence ^^; Clay ^^.

Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 06:04:32 -0800 (PST)

From: Panda Person

Subject: Bears feeding on toxic corporate waste

Leading ecologists call for an ‘Urgent Global Coalition to save the Panda’

Grass roots environmental groups around the world must unite to save the Giant Panda (Wufwuf martinensis) from imminent extinction, say some of the world’s top ecological experts. The Giant Panda’s habitat (most of which is found near Gland, Switzerland) is being invaded by rapacious multinational companies intent on gaining control of this crucial environmental area. Recent reports indicate that the Giant Panda’s territory is now completely surrounded and heavily infiltrated by mining, logging, chemical and drug corporations.

Some scientists believe that, because of the ecological impacts caused by these companies, only a few Giant Pandas are likely to remain within a few years. As their native habitat has been destroyed, the bears have increasingly become dependent on scraps of food found at the corporations’ waste dumps. This change of diet causes Pandas to become bloated and listless, and also impairs their sight and hearing.

The Giant Panda’s population has actually been increasing in recent years, and the beasts have been seen roaming in areas where they have never previously been encountered. This has caused problems in itself. One leading bear expert has said that “The Pandas seem disorientated, lost. They’ve been stumbling around and trampling all over the habitat of other species. They’re constantly hungry and have eaten all the food needed by other, smaller, bears. Giant Pandas are lovable creatures in the right place but, to be honest, they’ve become a real pest. Ideally, they should be rounded up and put back into National Parks, where they will be less of a danger to themselves and others. Some people now feel that, if the rogue bears can’t be got rid of in any other way, then we may have to start shooting them.”

Increasingly, the Pandas are finding themselves in mortal battles with other species of bear. One renowned ecologist has reported that “The Giant Panda’s favourite tactic is to use its horribly distended size simply to crush other smaller bears to death. In some cases, the Pandas rip out the brains of the other bears and eat them. Very few smaller bears have been able to defend themselves so far, and mostly they just have to run away and hide. However, these kinds of ‘bear against bear’ clashes are likely to become more frequent and more bloody.”

Many scientists now believe that the Giant Panda’s recent population explosion will inevitably be followed by an equally dramatic, and possibly terminal, population crash. One expert (who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals) has said that “The Pandas appear to have lost the ability to feed themselves with fresh food in their own natural habitat. If the corporations decide to stop leaving their waste around for the bears to eat, as they eventually will, then the Panda population will plummet. This is the kind of phenomenon observed in some small-brained creatures such as lemmings, but never before with species that are supposedly as intelligent as Giant Pandas.”

Other sub-species of the Panda around the world are equally threatened. The population of the South African Panda, for example, is being held in captivity by the country’s two largest plantation companies, one of which is a world leader in the development of genetically modified ‘Frankenstein trees’. Some observers believe that it is only a matter of time before the companies slay the South African Pandas for their precious skins, which corporate executives value highly for use as camouflage when hunting down local environmentalists. Others believe that sinister experiments are underway in which the captive bears are also being genetically modified such that, in future, they would become dependent on leaves from the company’s bio-engineered eucalyptus trees.

In Canada and Sweden, some of the most controversial logging companies have been seen feeding the local Pandas. There is widespread speculation that the food is either laced with poison or possibly with a strong tranquillising drug which will render the Pandas helpless and immobile. Canadian corporate executives regularly force captive Pandas to perform humiliating and degrading dances at international events, just for the sake of public entertainment.

In Australia, the huge Vino Tinto mining company has bought the entire local population of Pandas. It has been reported that Tinto has also been feeding the Australian Pandas with huge quantities of food spiked with a highly addictive drug, and has set the doped animals to work in guarding the company’s mines.

In the US, corporate executives have successfully disguised themselves as Pandas in order to infiltrate the local population of bears. Some local observers see this as part of a cunning long-term plan to ensure that future generations of Pandas never learn from their parents how to use either their teeth or claws.

Ecologists believe that these problems are part of a worldwide pattern. However, the fate of other Panda sub-species is not entirely known. A spokeswoman for the newly formed ‘Save the Panda Coalition’ said “We suspect that Pandas from Japan to Brazil, and Germany to Indonesia may have already been captured by multinational corporations, and are being forced-fed with contaminated food. We urgently need more research on this by local experts.”

Summing up the tragic situation, a bear expert has said that “Some Pandas seem to have escaped the clutches of the big industrialists but, really, there’s nowhere else for them to go. They will probably just die of starvation. We need a global effort to get the corporations out of the Giant Panda’s habitat, and to free all the sub-species now being held in captivity. This has to be a top priority for the world environment and conservation movement. Any genetically modified and mutant Pandas will probably have to be destroyed, along with those that have become totally dependent on corporate waste, but this is a price worth paying if it helps to protect the species as a whole.”

Dove Onslaught(er)

ORIGINAL: Dove Onslaught(er) 

You talked to Dove now talk to Nestlé. Ask them to stop using palm oil from forest destruction.

UPDATE: Thanks to the staggering public support for our international Dove campaign in April 2008, Unilever has now agreed to play their part in saving the Paradise Forests of South East Asia. As the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, Unilever has a special responsibility to help clean up the industry that's behind so much forest destruction.

They have agreed to support the call by Greenpeace for an immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil plantations. They have also agreed to urgently contact other major companies calling on them to support the moratorium.

This is the first success in a broader campaign to secure real change on the ground in South East Asia -- to stop the palm oil industry from destroying the Paradise Forests. Greenpeace campaigners will work with Unilever for th next six months (starting May 2008) to bring together a major coalition of companies to make the moratorium a reality. We will see at the end of this period how things are progressing and if we need to change our campaign approach.

About the music:

The song's called "There They Go". It was made specifically for the Greenpeace video by a Czech band called Ohm Square.http://www.myspace.com/ohmsquare

Tiny dragon discovered in Indonesia

ORIGINAL: Science Dump

07/31/2012

Draco volans, or the Flying Dragon, is a member of the genus of gliding lizards Draco. It can spread out folds of skin attached to its movable ribs to form "wings" that it uses to glide from tree to tree over distances upwards of 8 metres (25 feet); however, like all modern reptiles, it lacks the ability to sustain powered flight, and is capable only of gliding. Its wings are brightly coloured with orange, red and blue spots and stripes, and they provide camouflage when folded. The flying dragon can reach lengths as long as 19 - 23 cm. It feeds on arboreal ants and termites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_volans

Increíble criatura es mitad molusco, mitad discoteca

ORIGINAL: Pijamasurf

La "almeja de la flama eléctrica" produce una espectacular luz con su cuerpo que la hace una de las especies más llamativas de la siempre profusa fauna marina

Para sueños de cuerpos eléctricos, este molusco Ctenoides ales, que se enciende como si fuera la atracción de un club nocturno. También conocida como la “almeja de la flama eléctrica”, este invertebrado habita en las costas de Indonesia y de Japón y es capaz de manipular su tejido altamente reflejante en una moción ondulatoria que da la impresión de que tuviera una bobina de Tesla pulsando.

No se sabe bien para que tiene esta función lumínica, además de entretener a biólogos marinos y lectores de curiosidades, pero se cree que podría ser una forma de ahuyentar a predadores –que no gustan de los clubes nocturnos.

Charlie Beats the Drums ...to save endangered turtles

ORIGINAL: Take3

Only 25 turtles from 100 eggs made to the ocean through the rubbish...

Take 3 pieces of rubbish with you and recycle them when coming from visiting the beach. Otherwise will be there forever

The EPA’s most important decision this year could be over... vegetable oil?

ORIGINAL: Washington Post

by Brad Plume

04/27/2012

Okay, quick quiz: Which country is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the United States and China?

There are around 6,600 orangutans on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, but more than two-thirds of the area has been divided up into palm oil concessions. (Reuters)

The answer, at least in some recent years, has been Indonesia. That’s surprising. It’s not the world’s third-largest economy. It’s not an industrial powerhouse. But Indonesia has been clearing its vast rain forests and burning through its peatlands of late, releasing huge stores of carbon into the air. One of the big culprits here has been the country’s fast-growing production of palm oil, an edible vegetable oil that’s increasingly being harvested to make biodiesel fuel for cars and trucks in Europe and elsewhere.

This isn’t just a bit of environmental trivia. Currently, there’s a fierce battle in the United States over whether the Environmental Protection Agency should allow more diesel made from palm oil to be used by U.S. refineries. Agribusiness groups are lobbying for its use. Environmentalists are trying to block it — with some saying this could be the EPA’s most important climate-change decision of the year.

Here’s the backstory: In 2007, Congress expanded a requirement for U.S. refineries to blend a certain amount of “renewable fuel” in with their gasoline. Ethanol or biofuels could count. They just had to be 20 percent cleaner than traditional fossil fuels. And, in January, the EPA released a preliminary analysis suggesting that biodiesel and renewable diesel made from palm oil didn’t quite make the cut, thanks in part to the deforestation effect. (Over the course of their lifecycle, the EPA found, palm-oil fuels emitted between 11 percent to 17 percent fewer greenhouse gases than regular gasoline.)

But the EPA hasn’t fully made up its mind yet. The agency is gathering comments on its analysis until Friday, April 27. And industry groups from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the United States have sharply criticized the agency’s analysis, with the American Palm Oil Council claiming that the EPA’s conclusion was “based on faulty data and erroneous assumptions.”

What do they mean? Robert Shapiro, a former Clinton administration economist who now does analysis for business groups, argued in his comment that it’s “highly speculative” to calculate how, exactly, the production of biofuels will drive deforestation. Efforts to figure out how biofuels indirectly affect land use — by, say, displacing cooking-oil production elsewhere — are still a relatively new area of science. If you remove this from the analysis, Shapiro argued, then palm-oil fuels look considerably cleaner and easily qualify as a renewable fuel. What’s more, he noted, palm-oil producers will likely increase their yields on existing lands in the future, which means they’ll cut down fewer forests.

Palm-oil skeptics aren’t buying it. In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Jeremy Martin, a biofuels expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the EPA’s analysis actually understimates the destructive impact of palm-oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia. His group’s comments to the EPA can be found here.

For one thing, Martin explained, much of the forest area that’s being cleared for palm oil is peatland, whose soils store considerable amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The EPA assumed that only around 9 to 13 percent of future palm-oil production would occur on peatland, whereas a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the number was already above 50 percent. And, Martin said, the EPA was too optimistic about the ability of countries like Indonesia to enforce their forestry laws.

When all of these factors are taken into account, said Martin, “the emissions of palm oil based biofuels substantially exceed the emissions from conventional petroleum diesel.”

There’s a lot at stake in getting this right. Palm oil is a potentially lucrative industry for developing countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. But Indonesia’s peatlands also contain an enormous amount of carbon-dioxide. (To get a sense for the scale here, one particularly large peatland fire in Kalimantan in 1997 released more total greenhouse-gas emissions than the entire United States over that period.) And, according to the PNAS study, peatland emissions from palm-oil production are expected to surge in the years ahead. Palm-oil producers are also razing habitats for elephants, tigers, rhinos, and orangutans on various islands in Southeast Asia.

Some green activists have placed their hopes in sustainable palm-oil production to navigate these concerns — after all, poorer communities in Southeast Asia aren’t just going to agree to an outright ban. But, increasingly, attention has shifted toward wealthy countries that are artificially inflating palm-oil production with government mandates on biofuels.

The EPA decision will help determine whether the United States becomes a major buyer. But, for now, the biggest market for palm-oil based fuels is still the European Union, which has a law requiring 10 percent of all transportation fuel to come from renewable sources by 2020. The problem with this rule, said Chris Malins of the International Council on Clean Transportation, is that the European Union never considered the indirect deforestation effects from biofuels. The science on this only really emerged in 2008 or so, after the E.U. law was largely crafted.

“What Europe did was basically consistent with the best life-cycle emissions analyses of the past,” said Malins. “But,” he added, “Europe recognizes that there’s an issue here, and there’s an ongoing process to change that.”

Which means that the EPA’s decision here in the United States could very well influence how governments around the world think about palm oil. In a quiet year for climate policy, that could stand out as a major move.