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The World's Forests
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Jul 22, 2008 | Updated: 4:20 p.m. ET Jul 22, 2008 Summer at Colorado's Beaver Creek Resort is usually a time of hot days, cool nights, verdant views and the peaceful sound of the Rocky Mountains. Not this year. The area's idyllic silence is being disturbed by the sound of chainsaws cutting down large swaths of dead or dying trees in this gated community. "We have no illusions, no choice," says Tony O'Rourke, executive director of Beaver Creek's Home Owners Association. "We can't stem the tide." O'Rourke's dire tone comes from the resort's lost battle with a bug--the mountain pine beetle--that is destroying much of Beaver Creek's lush green vistas and reducing them to barren brown patches. Before landing in Beaver Creek, the pine beetles tore through neighboring Vail, Winter Park, Breckenridge and several areas around Steamboat Springs. So far, say state foresters, the beetles have eaten through 1.5 million acres, about 70 percent of the all the state's lodgepole pines. The tree's entire population will be wiped out in the next few years, Colorado state foresters predict, leaving behind a deforested area about the size of Rhode Island. The last significant Colorado outbreak was recorded in the late 1970s and was, by most accounts, far less devastating than the current infestation. "This the most extreme [beetle outbreak] in recorded U.S. history," notes Tom DeLuca, a senior forest ecologist for The Wilderness Society, which has tracked the epidemic. placeAd2(commercialNode,'bigbox',false,'') <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/3706/3/0/%2a/w%3B205634387%3B1-0%3B0%3B19702143%3B4307-300/250%3B27399243/27417122/1%3B%3B%7Eokv%3D%3Bdir%3Dtechbiz%3Bdir%3Dprojectgreen%3Bad%3Dbb%3Bsz%3D300x250%3Bdel%3Djs%3Bajax%3Dn%3Btile%3D3%3Bheavy%3Dn%3BpageId%3Dnewsweek-id-148297%3Bpoe%3Dyes%3B%7Eaopt%3D2/1/2700ff/1%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp%3A//bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/BannerRedirect.asp%3FFlightID%3D563892%26Page%3D%26PluID%3D0%26Pos%3D4183" target="_blank"><img src="http://bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/BannerSource.asp?FlightID=563892&Page=&PluID=0&Pos=4183" border=0 width=300 height=250></a> Coming up with solutions isn't easy. "It's clear these beetles don't read the book," says Ingrid Aguayo, the top forest entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service and a lecturer at Colorado State University. The beetles are breaking all the rules taught in forestry school. The last few relatively warm winters have allowed the beetle population to flourish and enabled them to attack trees at much higher altitudes, like the 10,000-foot forests around Beaver Creek. Also, the current beetles are also proving to be less picky eaters than their predecessors. Today's bugs are even attacking small trees, further endangering any chance for new growth. There is some evidence, too, that the beetles are hatching and taking to flight earlier in the year, giving them longer summer days to do damage. Is there an unequivocal reason for beetles' advance? "They have food," Aguayo adds, noting that drought conditions in Colorado in the early 2000s weakened trees, and after decades of fires suppression, many lodgepole pine stands are more than 80 years old, moving toward the end of their lifecycle and thus vulnerable. "The stars are aligned," Aguayo says. "It's a perfect storm for [the bugs] to do well." Untended, the situation could prove deadly very soon. With summer in full swing, wildfire in the high country is on everyone's mind. Lodgepole pines can stand 80 feet tall. But once beetles leave them for dead, the trees transform into giant matchsticks. The fire danger they pose has even forced some Colorado campgrounds to close until further notice. Another concern: That the bugs' eating habits may change. For decades, foresters have lived by a theory that when beetles kickoff their feeding frenzy, they chose a particular tree species as their target. For instance, in the 1970s Colorado outbreak, the favored flavor was ponderosa pine, a cousin of the lodgepole. This time around, foresters are worried the beetle will make a species jump. The result could not only be another decade of watching dying forests, but infestations at lower altitudes and in areas more populated, like the foothills just west of Denver, Colorado Springs and Boulder. "We'll know in the next year or two," says Aguayo. "It's a very tense time." If there is an upside to the demise of the lodgepole pine, it's that scientists and foresters are seeing signs of thriving bird populations that have made newly felled trees their home. The state's entrepreneurs are also finding a way to capitalize. In Kremmling, just outside of Steamboat Springs, a new 18,000 square-foot wood-pellet plant opens in two weeks. Feeding on beetle-killed trees, the plant will provide wood pellets for heating stoves, a booming business not only because of the ample supply of wood, but increasing energy costs. There's even research being done on the feasibility of turning the millions of dead trees into ethanol. In the meantime, the beetles march on, unabated. Once a tree shows signs of infestation, it's already dead. Chemical treatments on seemingly healthy trees do work, if applied in the spring. But at an average cost of $50 per tree and annual treatments for as long as the infestation lasts, it's uneconomical on mountain-wide scales. That's why behind the gates of the posh Beaver Creek Resort, managers have turned to the simplest solution: clear cutting, thus getting a jump on the next generation of trees. The company will spend about $100,000 this year cutting beetle-infested trees, and has budgeted to do so for at least the next five years. While the work is a bit jarring to a visitor, O'Rourke downplays all the chopping among the multi-million dollar homes. He points to the healthy stands of aspen trees and how little can be done in the beauty of nature's way. "We just equate it to a nip-a-tick," he says, speaking in the local parlance. "We'll look a lot better when it's done." As for the rest of the state, that remains to be seen. |
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The World's Forests
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The reports from the U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) said this massive potential leap in deforestation could add to global warming and put pressure on indigenous forest dwellers that could lead to conflict. "Arguably we are on the verge of the last great global land grab," said Andy White, co-author of "Seeing People Through the Trees," one of the two reports. "Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers. It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone." RRI is a global coalition of environmental and conservation non-government organizations with a particular focus on forest protection and management and the rights of forest peoples. White's report said that unless agricultural productivity rises sharply, new land equivalent in size to 12 Germanys will have to be cultivated for crops to meet food and biofuel demand by 2030. Virtually all of it is likely to be in developing countries, principally land that is currently forested. The second report, "From Exclusion to Ownership", noted that governments still claim ownership of most forests in developing countries, but said they had done little to ensure the rights and tenure of forest dwellers. It said people whose main source of livelihood is the forests were usually the best custodians of the forests and their biodiversity. RRI said governments were failing to prevent industrial incursions into indigenous lands. Its report noted that cultivation of soy and sugar cane for biofuels in Brazil is expected to require up to 128 million hectares of land by 2020, up from 28 million hectares now, with much of it likely to come from deforestation in the Amazon. "We face a deficit of democracy plagued by violent conflict and human rights abuses," said Ghanaian civil rights lawyer Kyeretwie Opoku, commenting on the reports. "We must address underlying inequalities by consulting and allowing forest peoples to make decisions the themselves regarding the actions of industry and conservation," he added. (Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; Editing by Catherine Evans) © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved |
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The World's Forests
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 /ecosystems/article/37455 MANILA (Reuters) - The United Nations has called on more Asian leaders to agree to a plan to end deforestation by 2020 to slow down the destruction of plants and animals, a top official said on Friday.
About 80 percent of the world's known biodiversity could be found in forests, where about 1.6 billion people also depend for their survival, Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive director of U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told a news conference in Manila. "The project to stop deforestation by 2020 is feasible, it's doable," Djoghlaf said. In a meeting in Germany in May, 65 countries committed to support a call by the Worldwide Fund for Nature for a zero net deforestation by 2020, but only two -- Cambodia and Vietnam -- were from Southeast Asia. Djoghlaf said the world was losing around 13 million hectares of its forest cover every year, about the size of 36 football fields a minute. About 95 countries have totally lost their forests, he said. In Southeast Asia, forest fires destroyed about 10 million hectares between 1997 and 2006. More trees were being felled due to shifting agricultural practices, illegal lumber trade and large-scale mining, he said. At the current rate of deforestation, said Rodrigo Fuentes, head of Southeast Asia's Center for Biodiversity, the region would lose three-fourths of its 47 million hectares of forest and up to 42 percent of its biodiversity by 2100. Djoghlaf and Fuentes said the destruction of biodiversity would also impact global security and the world economy due to rising competition for scarce food and fuel resources. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; editing by Carmel Crimmins and Roger Crabb) |
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The World's Forests
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Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:27pm EDT By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the world rate and the continent's few glaciers are shrinking fast, according to a U.N. atlas on Tuesday. Satellite pictures, often taken three decades apart, showed expanding cities, pollution, deforestation and climate change were damaging the African environment despite glimmers of improvement in some areas. "Africa is losing more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year -- twice the world's average deforestation rate," according to a statement by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) about the 400-page atlas, prepared for a meeting of African environment ministers in Johannesburg. Four million hectares is roughly the size of Switzerland or slightly bigger than the U.S. state of Maryland. Photographs showed recent scars in forests in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda. It said forest loss was a major concern in 35 countries in Africa. And it showed that environmental change extended beyond the well-known shrinking of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa's highest peak at 5,895 meters (19,340 ft), or the drying up of Lake Chad. On the Ugandan border with Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, glaciers on the Rwenzori Mountains where the highest peak is 5,109 meters shrank by half between 1987 and 2003, it said. DARFUR Trees and shrubs had been cut from the Jebel Marra foothills in Sudan, partly because of an influx of refugees from the conflict in Darfur. "The Atlas ... clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of people in the region to forces often outside their control, including the shrinking of glaciers in Uganda and Tanzania and impacts on water supplies linked with climate change," UNEP head Achim Steiner said in a statement. The atlas said 300 million people faced water scarcity and that areas in sub-Saharan Africa experiencing shortages were expected to increase by almost a third by 2050. "Climate change is emerging as a driving force behind many of these problems," it said. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a new U.N. treaty by the end of 2009 to slow climate change, blamed mainly on emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. But the atlas said there were signs of hope. "There are many places across Africa where people have taken action -- where there are more trees than 30 years ago, where wetlands have sprung back and where land degradation has been countered," Steiner said. Among examples, the report showed that action to prevent over-grazing had helped a national park in south-eastern Tunisia. A project to expand wetlands in Mauritania was also helping to control flooding and improve livelihoods. For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Janet Lawrence) © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved |
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The World's Forests
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Tue Jun 3, 2008 12:00pm EDT By Ana Nicolaci da Costa BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's newly appointed environment minister drew a bleak picture of the Amazon rain forest's future on Monday, saying the latest figures for deforestation in April were worrying and that this year would likely be worse than last. "The worst is to come. Now is the test," Carlos Minc told reporters, noting the period with the highest deforestation was historically from June to September when farmers prepared for planting by burning ground cover. "I think it will be very difficult to have a number below that of last year's," he said. Minc was speaking after data showed 433 sq. miles of forest were lost in April, up from 56 sq. miles in March. The sharp rise was partly explained by the fact there had been much more cloud cover obstructing satellite pictures in March. About 2,700 square miles of the forest was lost between August and December last year, coinciding with a rise in global food prices and marking a sharp annualized increase after three years of declines. Minc, a founder of the Green Party in Brazil, said the government was taking steps to clamp down on deforestation, including seizing cattle grazing on unauthorized land. "The data is worrisome," he said "Time is short, the measures are right, there hasn't been time for them to bear fruit." He took over last month when Marina Silva, who was widely seen as a defender of the Amazon, stepped down citing an inability to carry out her agenda. Environmental groups have expressed concern that Minc will put up less resistance than Silva to powerful industrial and agricultural lobbies that want to develop the world's largest forest, which has shrunk by about a fifth since the 1970s. Minc said high global food prices were one reason for latest spike in deforestation. "The price of beef and soya has spiraled. There is a strong correlation between the price of beef and soya and deforestation. This is historically proven in Brazil," Minc said. (Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Eric Walsh) © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved |
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The World's Forests
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BONN, Germany (Reuters) 27 May 2008 - Germany has pledged 500 million euros ($786.2 million) by 2012 to help protect the world's forests, a move activists said could give impetus to U.N. talks on preserving the earth's biodiversity. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who won praise from environmentalists last year for her part in pushing through EU and G8 deals to fight climate change, made the commitment at a U.N. conference as it entered its decisive phase. "We need a turning point on the issue of biodiversity," Merkel told delegates from 191 states participating in the 12-day conference which ends on Friday. U.N. studies say the planet is facing the most serious spate of extinctions since dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, and experts meeting in Bonn are trying to agree on ways to slow down the rate at which plants and animals are dying out. Human activity, including greenhouse gas emissions, are largely to blame, say the experts, who also warn of the economic costs of the loss of biodiversity. Politicians have started to take biodiversity more seriously because of a surge in food prices which has been linked to booming demand in fast-growing economies, including China, and the growing use of crops to provide fuel. Experts say crops will suffer if wild stocks die out. "We're ready to take responsibility," said Merkel. "We're ready to do everything we can to safeguard the riches of our earth and the foundation of life for mankind," she said, adding some 150 animal and plant varieties die out every day. She told delegates Europe's biggest economy would spend an additional 500 million euros on a network of protected forest areas until 2012. After that, Germany would boost spending to 500 million euros per year from an annual 200 million now. About 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gases come from the destruction of forests, say experts, and paying farmers in developing countries to keep them is seen by some as a way of slowing down climate change. BREAK DEADLOCK Environmental groups welcomed Merkel's announcement, saying it sent a strong signal to other countries and may help break the deadlock in the talks. "After years of talk with little action, this new commitment will put the air back in the lungs of conservation funding," said Olaf Tschimpke, president of the Nature Conservancy and Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU). The conference is working on a range of possible measures, including new rules on access to genetic resources and sharing their benefits, boosting the area of land and sea in protected areas and finding ways to combat invasive species. A U.N. summit in 2002 set a goal of slowing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 but most experts say that target is out of reach. "The time for action is now," EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told delegates. "Extinction is forever. We cannot wait until the degradation of ecosystems reaches a point of no return." (Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia) © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved |
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The World's Forests
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Wed May 28, 2008 9:17am EDT, OSLO (Reuters) - A tract of tropical forest in the Congo Basin mapped with the help of local pygmies has become the largest in the world certified under a system meant to ensure responsible logging, partners in the project said on Tuesday. The 7,500 sq km (2,896 sq mile) concession area, almost the size of Cyprus or Puerto Rico, is operated by Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB), a unit of Danish hardwood specialist DLH Group. The area was the "largest ever tract of contiguous certified tropical forest in the world", partners said in a statement after the forest won certification meant to avoid deforestation. It more than doubled an existing CIB concession. "Timber production does not have to be synonymous with the destruction of tropical forests," said Scott Poynton, executive director of the Tropical Forest Trust, a Geneva-based non-profit charity that works with industry to conserve forests. Pygmies in Congo used GPS satellite handsets to pinpoint sacred sites on maps in the Pokola rainforest to ensure that they would be untouched by loggers. "For instance, at a large Sapelli tree prized for its edible caterpillars, or an important collecting point for medicinal plants, they simply selected the appropriate icon and the GPS records the location," the statement said. The handheld mapping device "made it possible for the pygmy communities to communicate to us the specific forest resources that they hold sacred", said Robert Hunink, executive vice president of DLH Group. The area of forest received certification from the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent non-profit group which tries to set standards for logging companies to avoid deforestation. Forests in the Congo Basin cover about 1.81 million sq km (700,000 square miles), making them second largest in the world after the Amazon. But the Congo Basin forests lose about 40,000 square km every year "due to the effects of poverty, population increase, illegal logging, mining, poor forest management and conversion of forest land to agriculture", the statement said. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved |
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