Tickling a Loris

The loris is a funny faced creature indigenous to India and Southeast Asia.  Apparently they like being tickled.   I'm posting this entry because it shows this creature to be intelligent and also endearing.  The best way to appreciate the loris is to leave it alone,  free in the forest where it belongs. Loris's are wild animals.  We should not be encouraging people to have them as pets. The best thing we can do for them is protect the forested lands they depend on for survival. 

I would love to tickle a loris, but I prefer they be left alone to live out their lives free of human interference.

Here is a link to a loris getting tickled...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ5ACLVjYwM&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Zero Illegal Deforestation

Forests are critical to any effort to push back against global climate change.  The world came together this week to pledge an end to illegal logging


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‘Zero Illegal Deforestation’ Target Set on First World Forests Day

ROME, Italy, March 22, 2013 (ENS) – On the first International Day of Forests, celebrated Thursday by the United Nations, Jose Graziano da Silva proposed that all countries support a Zero Illegal Deforestation target.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva, second right, announces a zero illegal deforestation target, (Photo by Alessia Pierdomenico ©FAO)

 

 

As director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, Graziano da Silva linked illegal deforestation and hunger at a ceremony marking the UN’s newest International Day.
“In many countries, illegal deforestation is degrading ecosystems, diminishing water availability and limiting the supply of fuelwood – all of which reduce food security, especially for the poor,” he said. “Stopping illegal deforestation and forest degradation would do much to end hunger, extreme poverty and bring about sustainability.”
“This is why, I would like to encourage countries to promote tree planting and to consider a Zero Illegal Deforestation target in the context of the post-2015 debate. These two goals should be closely linked,” said Graziano da Silva, an American-born Brazilian agronomist and writer.
“We can achieve positive results if countries, the international financial institutions, the UN, civil society and the private sector join forces to tackle these issues,” he said.
The UN General Assembly has proclaimed March 21 the International Day of Forests. From 2013 on, the day will be observed each year to celebrate and raise awareness of the importance of forests and trees to all life on Earth.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on governments, businesses and civil society to protect forests by reducing deforestation, preventing environmental degradation, and providing sustainable livelihoods for all who depend on this precious ecosystem.
“Forests are vital for our well-being. They cover nearly a third of the globe and provide an invaluable variety of social, economic and environmental benefits,” said Ban.

Logging steep slopes in the Peruvian Amazon (Photo by Gino Cassinelli)

 

 

Forests are the source of three-fourths of the world’s freshwater, they stabilize slopes and prevent landslides, and protect coastal communities against tsunamis and storms. In addition, more than three million people use forest wood for fuel, said Ban.
Forests also help combat climate change as they store more carbon than is in the atmosphere, said the UN chief, yet some 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed annually, and deforestation accounts for 12 to 20 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
“As weather patterns change due to climate change, many forested areas are increasingly vulnerable. This underlines the urgency of a global, inclusive, legally binding climate change agreement that will address greenhouse gas emissions and encourage the protection and sustainable management of forests,” Ban said.
“International Day of Forests will help raise awareness of the contributions of forests,” said Harris Sherman, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment. “Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world today and the environmental stressors from our changing climate do not stop at international borders.”
The U.S. Forest Service’s International Programs office, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State, works with other countries to promote low-emissions strategies, and the sustainable use and conservation of natural resources.
For example, International Programs is assisting the Peruvian government in implementing a new forest law that will comply with international agreements. The Peru Forest Sector Initiative aims to develop an information and control system for forest and wildlife resources, chain of custody for species listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, environmental law enforcement and prosecution, concession management, forest inventory, and community and indigenous forest management.
In addition, the North American Forest Commission, the U.S. Forest Service, and Canadian representatives are collaborating on treatments for forests affected by insects and disease, problems which heightened by climate change.

Mediterranean officials met at the Maison du Parc National de Tlemcen in northwestern Algeria to adopt forest conservation measures. (Photo courtesy Mediterranean Forest Week)

 

 

High-level officials from Mediterranean countries met this week in Tlemcen, Algeria’s forested national park in Tlemcen province, to adopt a Strategic Framework on Mediterranean Forests.
Based on the key recommendations adopted on Thursday in the Tlemcen Declaration, the future implementation of the Strategic Framework on Mediterranean Forests is viewed as a useful regional tool to adapt national forest policies in the face of global changes affecting the Mediterranean region.
Some of the strategies in the framework are:
* – to enhance the role of Mediterranean forests in rural development by supporting local stakeholders to organize associations and clarifying land use rights
* – to enhance the development and marketing of ecotourism
* – to promote forest governance and land tenure reforms at the landscape level
* – to promote wildfire prevention in the context of global climate change
* – to manage forest genetic resources and biodiversity of enhance adaptation of Mediterranean forests to climate change
* – to improve sustainable production of goods and services by Mediterranean forests such as cork, honey and mushrooms

Algerian school children planted trees to celebrate International Day of Forests, March 21, 2013 (Photo

courtesy FAO)

 

 

Algerian schoolchildren planted trees Thursday at Tlemcen and other groups planted trees in many places across the world to celebrate the first International Day of Forests.
Mediterranean forests will be hard hit by climate change and are under severe pressure from population growth, finds the first FAO report on The State of Mediterranean Forests, published Thursday.
Temperatures in the Mediterranean area increased by one degree during the 20th century while rainfall decreased by 20 percent in certain Mediterranean areas. By the end of this century, temperatures will have risen by a further two degrees, the report projects, which is likely to put some forest species at risk of extinction and result in loss of biodiversity.
Population growth is expected to rise from around 500 million people currently living in the Mediterranean area to 625 million by 2050, putting additional pressure on forests as sources of food and water.
The report was developed by more than 20 scientific and technical institutions and nongovernmental organizations and nearly 50 authors and other contributors coordinated by FAO and Plan Bleu, the main support center of the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development.
FAO intends to publish The State of Mediterranean Forests every five years, providing further opportunities to unify and mobilize partners in the management of Mediterranean forests and other wooded lands.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2013. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

A Fierce Green Fire

Those of us who care about our earth and are committed to saving the environment from polluters and people for whom profit is the be all and end all, can draw much inspiration from this new movie.

Here is a link to the movie trailer for A Fierce Green Fire...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94zbq5Vaod0&feature=player_embedded

Here is a link to the website for the movie...http://www.afiercegreenfire.com/

Treeless Paper

Paper is made mostly from fibrous cellulose that comes from trees. To print one edition of the Sunday New York Times, it takes 63 thousand trees.   When you consider how many newspapers are printed around the world, how much toilet paper is consumed, and add to that all the product packaging, shipping materials, and paper we write on and and use in our computers, it's no wonder deforestation is a very serious problem. 

Forests are essential to the health of the planet.  They absorb carbon dioxide, the principle greenhouse gas created by human addiction to fossil hydrocarbon energy sources like coal and oil.  Trees  expire oxygen in the photosynthetic process.  They provide food, shelter, and a lot more to the insects, birds, and animals that are adapted to live in them. The more trees we have, the better off we all  are. 

Fortunately, a lot of factors are at work to reduce demand for paper from trees. Technology has evolved to a way that is replacing newspapers, magazines, and books printed on paper with electronic versions available on smartphones and tablet computers. Paperless communication is an idea that has arrived and is here to stay.

Packaging that once depended to a high degree on cardboard and paper is evolving rapidly. Plastics have taken over a lot of the burden from paper, and now more and more of the plastic packaging  we use is made of biodegradable, plant derived materials that are relatively benign to the environment.

There is always going to be a requirement for paper, but cutting down old growth forests and reducing them to pulp to make toilet paper makes no sense at all.   The cellulose plant fiber used in paper can be readily provided by seasonal crops like switch grass, begasse from sugar cane, kenaf, and industrial hemp.  Instead of taking years to grow, these plants grow over a matter of months into a form that is readily harvestible and easily processed into paper. 

It used to be, we depended on forests for building materials and for making furniture. These days, we have environmentally friendly substitutes that serve those same purposes. 

Biofuels have become an important part of the equation for replacing oil and coal.  Cellulosic biofuels can be made from corn stalks and other waste materials that are part of growing food crops.  Stripping trees from forestland to make bio-fuels is not cost-effective and it cannot be justified in any way when the raw materials can be acquired from fast growing cultivated crops.

We have reached a point in evolution when we can no longer take from our environment without consequence. We.must embrace our proper human role of stewardship. We must be the nurturers of our biosphere.  The transition to treeless paper is a big step in the right direction.

Encyclopedia of Earth

Here is a tremendous, open source, immanently accessible, peer reviewed information resource on all subjects related to the Earth sciences.

http://www.eoearth.org/

Collapse

Humans have a history of overreaching. In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond offers up several examples.   As the Rapanui culture on Easter Island in the Pacific expanded its population, it exploited its critical resource base to the point of exhaustion.  Once forested, Easter Island was stripped of its trees by the people who lived there.  When they reached the point where they no longer had trees to make the canoes needed for sustenance fishing the ocean, the Rapanui civilization collapsed, and has never recovered.

The same ignominous fate brought down the Anasazi in the American Southwest and Viking settlements on Greenland. Too many people, too few resources.

The human population on earth has nearly tripled just in my lifetime. There are now more than seven billion of us, each needing food, water, and shelter, at a minimum.   Everywhere one turns, one can see serious resource overreach. Deforestation, water depletion, soil depletion,  exhaustion of commercial fisheries;  the biological fabric of our planet is unraveling, and we are totally responsible.

Jared Diamond's book is a very serious wake-up call.
 

Here is a link to a TED video with Jared Diamond talking about his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed...

http://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.html

My Close Encounter with a Spirit Bear

In late September of 1999, I found myself on the Canadian raincoast, 400 miles north of Vancouver, B.C.  I was there to produce a documentary on the destructive impact of clear cut logging on that remote, incredibly beautiful stretch of coastal wilderness.

Traveling aboard, Maple Leaf, a restored 19th century schooner, the production team we put together followed the documentary project's host, James Cromwell and Ian McAllister, former leader of the Raincoast Conservation Society, as they talked about salmon, bears,  whales, and the lush forests that dominate the landscape, except where loggers have stripped the land clear of trees.

It happens that one of the rarest bears in the world can be found only in one small area of the raincoast. The Haisla, the Canadian First Nations people, native to that area, call this bear,  Kermode or Spirit Bear.  It's actually a genetically distinct, common black bear that happens to have white or blond fur.  There are only about 400 known to exist.

During this trip, I had one the most thrilling experiences of my life. It happened  on a day we spent sitting next to a rocky waterfall, watching and filming wild bears catching and eating one salmon after another. The bears would come around to the falls, one at a time - a territorial thing, we were told. After hanging around long enough to catch and eat a couple of fish, the bear would move on, making away for another bear looking for a meal. This went on, hour after hour. The biggest thrill was the arrival of a Spirit Bear. There was a special kind of magic to this encounter, and not just because this white bear was considererd a spirit by the locals. He was big as bears go; and very healthy looking; probably well over 400 pounds. It's no wonder the way he dined. During the 75 minutes he was with us,  that white bear caught and ate one salmon after another; eight total. The weight of the fish consumed; at least 40 pounds. He knew we were there. He didn't care. He'd catch his fish, then amble across a log into the forest, where he would settle back on his butt against a tree (really, he did that; eight times!), and  eat his catch.  At one point, Marc Griffith,  our cameraguy,  set up just three feet below the log that bear walked over, each time with a fish flapping in its jaws. I was right behind Marc. We were assured we would not be in danger, unless we tried to take the bear's fish.  No chance of that happening. The whole experience was amazing. The most exhilerating animal encounter of my life.

Years later,  the B.C government changed its raincoast policy away from unbridled exploitation to the point that much of the Great Bear Rainforest is now protected.  Where logging continues, it is  subject to closely monitored regulation. I like to think my colleagues and I made a modest but useful contribution to that very encouraging outcome.

The link below is a short video shot by Ian McAllister that features the Spirit Bear and images of the Canadian raincoast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IRxdk6m17s