It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.

Orangutan (Photo: Tom Theodore/Dreamstime)

On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.

More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.

Mass deforestation, due to the rapid establishment of palm oil plantations backed by multinational corporations, has recently made Indonesia the third-largest carbon emitter in the world. Think of it, number three  – after the more industrialized China and the United States.

Indonesia’s neighbors, Malaysia and Papaua, New Guinea, also are top producers of palm oil, making Southeast Asia a veritable carbon drain. Because of rapid rainforest loss in these sensitive areas, experts estimate that between 50 and 60 endangered orangutans perish each week, as their habits are destroyed or they are killed by workers. Roughly two football fields worth of rainforests are felled every minute by palm oil plantations, bellowing out stored carbon.

In addition, recent studies show that global deforestation creates one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions; and conversely, that tropical forests now absorb one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions that are caused by burning fossil fuels.

“Rainforests are one of the biggest ways that carbon gets absorbed from the atmosphere, so rainforests and trees and peat swamps – the whole ecosystem – takes in a large amount of carbon and stores it,” says Margaret Swink, of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which in the past year has stepped up its protests against companies like Cargill, which uses palm oil in many manufactured foods.

“It only releases when you destroy it – burning being the worst way. When rainforests are cut and burned, you’ve just released millennia of carbon absorption into the air, which is why rainforest destruction is such a threat. …You’ve just released all this carbon into the atmosphere, but because it’s a cycle (remember studying the carbon cycle in fourth-grade science?), you’ve also taken away the thing that was removing carbon from the atmosphere … and so when you replant a palm-oil plantation, it doesn’t absorb as much carbon that those older trees – as that whole ecosystem did” for many thousands of years.

And we, the current people generation, get a double carbon-whammy.

But until, say, two to five years ago, who knew that some of our favorite foods – holiday season or not – contain palm oil derivatives to preserve, add flavor to or fry foods to a golden crispness? Things like cocoa mix, crackers, potato chips, margarine, instant soups, cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, even certain types of granola are all formulated with palm oil.

Yet, as the holidays hover around us and we try to figure out what we’re really giving thanks for, we can take simple steps to slow rainforest destruction. We can learn about campaigns, such as RAN’s recent Call Cargill campaign and check out our pantry for products that rely on palm oil.

“Palm oil is the leading driver of deforestation in the second-largest standing rainforest, which is in Indonesia,” says Swink, who used to work for the Peace Corps in Cameroon; seeing trucks drive past her house, hauling thousand-year-old trees led her to RAN, headquartered in San Francisco.

“There are three areas of tropical rainforests still left in the world – the Amazon, Indonesia and Malaysia. Then there’s the Congo Basin. … But in Southeast Asia, we’re seeing the fastest rate of deforestation. RAN has been looking at the incredible rate of destruction, intersecting that with climate change. And Indonesia is now the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet, after the U.S. and China. But with the USA it’s fossil fuels and transportation that create the emissions. With Indonesia, it’s mostly deforestation. So when you take it all together, palm oil is a really large threat in terms of deforestation leading to climate change.”

As organizations like RAN, 350.org, Greenpeace, Rising Tide North America , World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Alliance amplify the clarion call, some companies are taking note. Gucci Group just declared its commitment to abandon paper products (i.e., those tony shopping bags) from Asian Pulp and Paper – and specifically from Indonesian plantations and rainforests, following Tiffany and a few other luxury brands’ leads.

And Cadbury recently announced that as a direct result of a New Zealand zookeepers’ boycott, it has vowed to dump palm oil and return to cocoa butter (but there’s a catch: that’s only in New Zealand).

Burning forest to make way for plantations in Sumatra (Photo: Mark Edwards, WWF-Canon)

These companies are responding to the dire situation that’s resulted over the past 70 years of deforestation by various industries, mainly logging and agriculture, in these Southeast Asian rainforests.

Aside from the devastating impacts on climate change, the forest destruction is taking a big toll on the biodiversity of the area. World Wildlife Fund estimates that converting natural forest to palm plantations results in the loss of 80 to 100 percent of the mammal, bird and reptile species in these normally rich ecosystems. (For a good graphic depiction of the rainforest losses, see the WWF’s report on Borneo and Sumatra and maps of the region, which show, for instance, that Sumatra has lost 85 percent of its natural forest.)

All this begs the basic question: Why are palm oil derivatives in so many foods and emulsive products, to begin with?

The answer “is easy,” says Brihannala Morgan, an activist with Rising Tide North America who lived in Indonesia for nine years and is now based in the Bay Area, where she is a graduate student in forest and climate policy at UC-Berkeley.

“Palm oil is the cheapest oil in the world, second only to soybean oil,” she says. “It’s about how much oil you can produce per hectare of land, and you can produce more palm oil per hectare than almost any other oil. So the laws of supply and demand apply. …It’s used not only in foods but in industrial lubricants, biofuels. But, in foods, it’s mostly for preserving. I’m not a food chemist, but all these things have to have some kind of oil, and they pick the cheapest, for the highest profit. In most countries besides the United States – and we’re only responsible for five percent of all palm oil consumed – but in other countries, it’s used for a frying oil – particularly in China and India, which have populations that are becoming wealthier and can afford more fried foods.”

HD Net’s Dan Rather Reports Tuesday night will feature never-before-seen footage from the island of Madagascar, where an ecological horror show is taking place. Madagascar’s national parks are, according to scientists, being raped by loggers who are illegally chopping down rare and extremely valuable rosewood trees. The recently obtained video shows loggers hauling the trees out of the forests by hand.

On Madagascar, loggers are illegally chopping down rare and extremely valuable trees. (Photo: HD Net)

Each of these trees is worth thousands of dollars on the international market, but the desperate residents of Madagascar are cutting them down for only a few dollars a day.

The images presented in this story were taped as a part of an undercover investigation by two international conservation groups, looking to make the case for prosecutions in the trade of these trees and prosecution of foreign businesses who use this illegal wood for their products.

The illegal logging also threatens the habitat for the rare silky sifaka lemurs, which live exclusively on the island. Originally thought to be extinct, scientists have found a few groups on the island, but their habitat is now threatened by the logging.

“Things are not pretty in Madagascar right now,” Andrea Johnson, a representative for the Environmental Investigation Agency, or EIA, one of the conservation groups that backed this undercover investigation, said in a statement. “It’s not as though there was never illegal logging before 2009. But the situation since the coup in February of ‘09 has made everything a whole lot worse.”

That’s when dozens of people died as the military opened fire into a crowd, unleashing panic across the country. The military went on to oust the country’s president — chaos reigned and the economy dissolved. The impoverished people streamed into the forests looking to make a quick buck in the illegal rosewood trade. Ebony trees are also taken from Madagascar’s forests and the precious lumber is in high demand.

The majority of rosewood and ebony is used for high-end furniture products and musical instruments, especially guitars.

Dan Rather Reports: Treasure Island airs Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. ET on HD Net with a re-air at 11 p.m. ET to accommodate West Coast Prime Time.

Amazingly, there are still places in the Bay Area and Central Valley where keen-eyed observers can witness one of nature’s miracles: wild salmon spawning. The Bay Institute has just published an updated map and calendar of top local viewing spots and information on the best seasons to see salmon in the wild. These free brochures are available at Aquarium of the Bay, where a new poster exhibit highlights the life cycle of these extraordinary fish.

Spawning salmon (Photo: The Bay Institute)

“Bay Area and Central Valley residents are fortunate to live within close driving distance of waterways where they can witness these magnificent but endangered creatures in their natural habitat,” Tina Swanson, executive director of The Bay Institute, said in a statement. “In addition to visiting these areas, we urge individuals to consider how their actions affect our salmon and the rivers they depend on, make smart decisions in their own lives about water and chemical use, and vote in favor of the environment. It will take all of us working together to protect and restore these species and the valuable fishery that, until recently, they supported.”

Within the Bay Area, Walnut Creek, Lagunitas Creek and Redwood Creek are top spots to secure front row seats. In the Central Valley, the number of salmon running up the American River comes to a crescendo in mid-November; the Stanislaus River is a leading location for viewing the animals in action; and the Feather River becomes an underwater interstate for salmon, as well as steelhead.

Twenty-six species of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast are endangered due to mismanagement of the rivers, streams and estuaries in which the animals spawn, grow and migrate. In California, dams on nearly all salmon-producing streams have eliminated more than 1,000 river miles and 82% of their historical spawning reaches, and water diversions and pollution in the remaining accessible rivers can harm or kill both adult and young fish.

Overfishing is not the key culprit in shutting down the commercial salmon fishing season over the past two years. Mismanagement of our rivers and streams is the main issue that must be resolved to allow salmon access to cold, clean water and healthy spawning habitats for the populations to recover. This year’s fall run of Chinook salmon will play a crucial role in determining whether a historic ban on commercial fishing will stretch into a third year.

The salmon viewing map was created in collaboration with the SalmonAID coalition, host of the annual SalmonAID Festival. The Bay Institute is a proud member of the SalmonAID coalition.

You can find information on local salmon viewing spots and learn more about issues facing salmon and what they can do to help, by visiting The Bay Institute online.

As debates about climate change — does it exist and how serious is it? – rage on, many scientists continue to uncover more and more evidence that atmospheric pollution is having negative effects on Earth, right here and now, climate change or not.

Scientists studying the chemistry of lakes reported in a study published this week that atmospheric nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and the widespread use of fertilizers in agriculture is altering the makeup of even remote bodies of water.

Green Lake 5 in Colorado (Photo: James Elser/ASU)

The study,  published in Science, found elevated nitrogen levels in alpine and subalpine lakes in Colorado, Sweden and Norway.

The added nitrogen changes the food composition of the aquatic environment, first by feeding the phytoplankton, and then other organisms as it moves up the food chain. With the lake’s plant life getting a disproportionate amount of nitrogen relative to other necessary minerals, like phosphorus, the “fundamental ecology,” of the lake is changed, according to the researchers.

This result of this new balance of minerals means that the phytoplankton, in essence, are eating differently (rather like when we hominids don’t get all our vitamins). The excess nitrogen restricts how much phosphorus they can absorb, and they become, in scientific lingo, “phosphorus limited.” And that’s not a good thing.

“We know that phosphorus-limited phytoplankton are poor food – basically ‘junk food’ for animal plankton, which in turn are food for fish,” said James Elser, a limnologist (people who study fresh water environments) in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, who lead the study of collaborating US and Scandinavian scientists.

“Such a shift could potentially affect biodiversity,” Elser said. “However, we don’t really know, because, unlike in terrestrial systems, the impacts of nitrogen deposition on aquatic systems have not been widely studied.”

In other words, it’s possible that the lake life will adapt. Or not.

Elser’s collaborators include researchers Tom Andersen and Dag Hessen from the University of Oslo; Jill Baron of the United States Geological Survey and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University; Ann-Kristin Bergström and Mats Jansson with Umeå University, Sweden; and Koren Nydick of the Mountain Studies Institute in Colorado, in addition to members of his own group in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Marcia Kyle and Laura Steger

Elser and colleagues were supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

While the world scrambles to find clean energy solutions, somewhere, every minute of every day, saws buzz through a forest, cutting down one of nature’s antidotes to carbon pollution.

Saving forests in the Congo will help save endangered gorillas (Photo: John Martin)

Each year the world loses about 50,000 square miles of wooded lands, enough to fill an area the size of Pennsylvania. The rapid clearing of tropical forests accounts for nearly 20 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions (partly due to trees being burned) — more than all transportation vehicles combined.

Increasingly, though, companies and non-profits are trying to stem the loss of woodlands to curb global warming and save habitat and native economies.

On Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company announced it will invest $7 million to save and restore forests in the Amazon, the Congo and the United States.

The projects aim to fight climate change, improve the quality of life in local communities and save jeopardized wildlife from gorillas in Africa to songbirds in North America.

“Disney has always been a conservation leader,” said Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger, in a statement. “Now, more than ever, it’s essential to take swift action to preserve our most vulnerable natural environments for future generations and to be innovative in achieving that goal.”

Rainforest Management in the Congo and the Amazon

Disney is giving $4 million to increase protection of forests in the Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo Community Reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Alto Mayo conservation project in Peru, two vital tropical forest regions.

The programs, managed by Conservation International, will help secure watersheds and save habitat for plants and animals, many of them threatened or endangered, including the gorilla and okapi in the Congo and the Andean spectacled bear and yellow-tailed woolly monkey in Peru.

The majority of Disney’s contribution will finance community management of these forests, help expand sustainable livelihood practices among local villages and provide for an analysis of the carbon-saving aspect of the project.

Both of these tropical forest efforts are expected to decrease carbon emissions by stopping slash and burn agriculture and to benefit local communities economically. CI estimates that Disney’s expenditure will prevent 900,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere over the next five years.

“This commitment by Disney represents the largest single corporate contribution ever made to reduce emissions from deforestation and will help build confidence in these activities that generate such compelling climate, local community and biodiversity benefits,” said Peter Seligmann, CEO and Chairman of Conservation International.

Reforestation in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Disney also is partnering with The Nature Conservancy to provide more than $2 million to support a pilot reforestation project in the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Restoring forests in the Mississippi Valley will help preserve habitat and mitigate carbon air pollution (Photo: Emily Whitted)

Working with private landowners in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, The Nature Conservancy expects to restore up to 2,000 acres of former forest land, planting trees in permanent easements to assure their longevity.

The reforestation will help alleviate carbon pollution and also expand the North American habitat of migrating songbirds and the black bear.

“Protecting forests is one of our most powerful tools in the fight against climate change,” said Mark Tercek, President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, in a news release. “This innovative project will give private landowners the support they need to join the global fight against climate change and restore local habitats for the betterment of both people and nature. We are proud to partner with Disney to protect critical habitat and ensure these incredible forests will be around for generations to come.”

Redwood Forest Management in Northern California

Disney also will invest $1 million in The Conservation Fund’s forestry work along California’s North Coast, where the group owns and sustainably manages two redwood forests in Mendocino County.
The project was set up to demonstrate that improved forest management, with selective harvests and verified carbon offset sales, can benefit the environment and the economy. Indeed, here in an area rich in natural resources, the well-being of humans, plants and animals are closely entwined: Healthy forests, watersheds and streams are needed to support Coho salmon, steelhead trout, spotted owl and other wildlife — and the people

Northern California Forest (Photo: Matthew Gerhart, Conservation Fund)

that depend on them.

Lawrence Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, joined the other environmental leaders in issuing a statement of gratitude for the Disney gift:

“Across America, forests are shrinking; 35 acres here, 500 there,” Selzer said. “The decline is so incremental, it masks a crisis. In partnership with leading companies such as Disney, we are pioneering new approaches to forest conservation and climate change. We’re proud to collaborate with Disney on this critical effort.”

Disney’s forest preservation investment is part of the company’s plan, announced last March, to meet aggressive 3 to 5 year goals to reduce emissions, waste, electricity and water use, and to limit its impact on ecosystems.

In addition to the investment announced today, Disney has recently committed to planting close to 3 million trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest and in the fire-ravaged areas in the mountains surrounding greater Los Angeles through contributions from the  Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund and local donations.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Florida’s housing bust may be disheartening for developers and damaging to the state’s economy, but it’s a blessing – short-lived, most likely – for one of the world’s most endangered big cats.

The Florida panther once roamed most of southeastern America, from the Carolinas to Louisiana and all over Florida. It was hunted, and then squeezed into an increasingly shrinking range as Florida’s human population boomed. Many other native species in the state have been pushed to the brink of extinction (and a couple are considered extinct).

Eventually, the Florida panther population was living in South Florida, in a tiny fraction of its original range. Their numbers fell. For a period, the panther was believed to be extinct; then investigators found an estimated 30 adults in the 1970s. All this, despite the fact that the panther had been placed on the endangered species list in 1967.

Now, three environmental groups have joined together to petition Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reserve more than 3 million acres of South and Central Florida which they say is essential to the panther’s survival.

The Center for Biological Diversity helped author a 30-plus page petition calling for more habitat for the panther, saying that previous conservation efforts – well-intentioned as they were — had not set aside enough land. Also, faulty science had led to incorrect assumptions about the panther’s behavior, range and habitat, they say

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Council of Civic Associations were also authors of the petition, filed Sept. 17. The government has 90 days to respond.

Previous efforts have brought the panther population up:  Today, there are an estimated 80 to nearly 200 in south Florida. That increase in numbers was partially achieved by introducing some Texas cougars, a close relative, to cross-breed.  A captive breeding program was launched in the early 1990s to bring more cats into the wild. Several times over the last few decades, large swaths of land in Florida have been cordoned off from development, or limited development, to provide the panthers room to roam. Many of the cats wear radio collars so their movements can be tracked.

Why so much land? These cats, sub-species of the mountain lion, need a lot of space. The males require as much as 200 square miles to establish territory; females need less, but still as much as 80 square miles, according to Big Cat Rescue. The Florida panther is the only large feline still living in the southeast U.S.

With less space, and fewer panthers, in-breeding has led to genetic abnormalities that threaten the population. Feline leukemia has taken a toll. The crowded habitat has led to deaths: male panthers kill other males to maintain their small piece of territory.

Even though one of the state’s popular vanity license plates says “Save The Panther,” about 10 percent of the panther population has been killed by cars and trucks.

In the past, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration was faulted for not protecting the big cat’s habitat, according to the Defenders of Wildlife group. In 2004, they say, the courts revoked a Corps of Engineers permit for a rock mine. That, conservationists say, would have destroyed more than 5,000 acres of habitat. Even now, the proposed panther habitat expansion could be at odds with plans for new cities and housing development in Collier County, one report said.

Panthers are solitary creatures, and their primary food is deer, along with wild hogs and smaller animals if necessary. They are mostly nocturnal. In previous research, according to the petition to the federal government, researchers miscalculated the breadth and variety of environments the panthers require.

They have adapted to hot and humid Florida over the decades. Males can be up to 8 feet from nose to tail and weigh up to 160 pounds. They can, under the right conditions, live up to 15 years.

The proposed enlarged habitat would establish three zones, a primary zone to keep panthers alive and reproducing, a secondary zone that expands beyond the first to give the big cats more natural terrain, and a third “dispersal zone” that would allow panthers to extend their numbers north into central Florida.

A portion of the conservationists’ petition waxes eloquent about their efforts:  “Nothing enhances civilization more than to reserve open lands for human contact with wild nature, and the greater the forbearance displayed the more the people in those communities may discover opportunities to enhance their own individual humanity.”

Read more about their work to preserve the panther at the Biological Diversity Web site. Interested in more about the Florida panther? PantherNet keeps tabs on them. Big Cat Rescue offers a video complete with growls, hisses and snarls from many of the world’s big cats. And if wildlife is your passion, Rare Earth Tones has ring tones featuring the sounds of endangered animals for your cell phone, including the Florida panther.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Bay City News
SAUSALITO — Three weeks after their return from exploring a vortex of floating plastic garbage 1,000 miles off the Pacific coast, scientists working on Project Kaisei are focused on how to clean up the giant garbage patch. >> Read the full story

Palm Oil, an ingredient found in most processed food, has been the subject of much environmental debate in recent years over its role in deforestation. It is commonly found in cooking oil and as an ingredient in cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and some plastics. Palm oil also has been considered for use in the production of biodiesel.

There have been many attempts to make palm oil sustainable. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was even established in 2003 to do just that. Unfortunately, six years later, there is still no system that can effectively trace palm oil beyond the processor to the plantation level. Companies that manufacture products using palm oil have little way of knowing where the controversial substance originated — which leaves the question of whether and to what degree palm oil is sustainably farmed up in the air.

This week, a press campaign run by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) and aimed at putting the best spin on the industry ran aground when Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a magazine ad by the Malaysian boosters.

The headline of the MPOC’s magazine advertisement read: “Palm Oil: The Green Answer.”

As if that were not misleading enough, the ad made many more claims, such as:

• “Palm oil is the only product able to sustainably and efficiently meet a large portion of the world’s increasing demand for oil crop-based consumer goods, foodstuffs and biofuel … Malaysia’s forest cover is certain to be maintained.”
• “With the increased attention paid to oil crops, and oil palm in particular, a number of criticisms have been leveled at Malaysia’s palm oil industry, from accusations of rampant deforestation and unsound environmental practices to unfair treatment of farmers and indigenous people. These allegations – protectionist agendas hidden under a thin veneer of environmental concern – are based neither on scientific evidence, nor, for that matter, on fact.”
• “In addition to its green credentials, Malaysia’s palm oil industry also plays an important role in the industrialization of the country and the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations.”

The advertisement violated substantiation, truthfulness, and the environmental claims sections of the Advertising Standards Authority’s Code, according to the group’s assessment.

“Although we acknowledged that some Malaysian palm oil companies had sought certification from the RSPO [the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil], we understood that the scheme and the certification of biofuels in general was still the subject of debate,” stated the Advertising Standards Authority’s Assessment.

They report explained that “palm oil had played a role in the development of the Malaysian economy in its shift from reliance on rubber and tin mining” and it acknowledged MPOCs assertion that this created one million jobs.

But it also noted that environmental and human rights groups had legitimate complaints about palm oil producers. Friends of the Earth, for instance, contends that palm oil production creates adverse social impacts by displacing indigenous communities affected by deforestation.

Issues over housing and land rights and low wages and poor treatment of workers “compromised MPOCs claim that palm oil had a societal benefit,” the advertisers assessment stated.

The advertising regulators concluded that the magazine ad must no longer appear in its current form.

There is no such thing as sustainable palm oil, at least not yet, according to the ASA.

Malaysian leader presses palm oil’s virtues

The MPOC fired back on Wednesday, complaining that the ASA was relying on FOE’s biased environmental conclusions and arguing that palm oil, being the cheapest vegetable oil, should be available to consumers, especially the poor.

“Today, the ASA ruled that an advertorial in The Economist highlighting the economic importance and environmental sustainability of Malaysian Palm Oil should not appear in any other UK media outlets. The ruling followed a complaint by Friends of the Earth about the advertorial. By censoring our message, this relatively small group of people is blocking the entire British public’s access to a diverse range of views and information about Palm Oil,” wrote the Malaysian group’s CEO Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Yusof Basiron.

“Consumers have a right to have information about the various products and services available to them and a right to determine for themselves which they want. Consequently, we are deeply concerned that the ASA is acting as an interested party in the public debate on palm oil rather than as a neutral and objective arbiter.”

Here’s a little cautionary tale about how bigger is not always better — and about the inter-connectedness of our energy and food systems, specifically how coal-fired power plants affect your diet.

Say you were camping with friends and caught a really BIG fish. This monster would give you bragging rights for a year. Now say you caught a smaller fish, suitable for pan frying but not Kodak-worthy.

What do you do? If you’re Daniel Boone, you toss the little guy back. It’s a no brainer. But if you’re a post-industrial age sportsperson, you must consider this: That big fish fillet could be disproportionately loaded with mercury; keeping the little fishy could be safer.

According to recent sampling studies by our federal government, ALL of our freshwater fish are contaminated, to some extent, with mercury. And the way mercury works its way through the food chain is that it builds momentum, so that those higher on the food chain are more contaminated — a process called “biomagnification”. And some of those big fish contain a mercury that’s become more toxic, too, after the mercury has been acted on by bacteria found in wetlands and swamps and converted to the more dangerous methylmercury.

The science is complicated, but you don’t need a biology degree to get the gist of things, that our fish are coming to us in less than pristine condition.

Fishy Findings

The US Geological Survey study tested fish from 291 streams across the country and found that all tested positive for traces of mercury, demonstrating how widespread mercury pollution has become. But scientists also reported that only about one-quarter had mercury levels exceeding the EPA’s safe guidelines for people eating “average amounts of fish.”

Still. ALL of the fish tested in the US showed some levels of mercury contamination. (The levels of mercury ranged from .008 to 1.95 parts per million – or micrograms per gram of wet tissue.)

This left us to wonder: Are we supposed to be alarmed? What can we now safely eat? Must we forfeit fresh fish along with all those ocean varieties that are endangered?

The answers: Yes and no. Some fish. No, but sometimes yes – can be confusing.

The government’s FAQs on this topic only left us feeling more uneasy about our future meals and also more than a little helpless about the air pollution at the root of it all. They explain that mercury is a “potent neurotoxin” in fish, wildlife and humans, yet they note that fish are “important part of a healthy diet.” We did know that: Fish are high in protein and healthy oils.

So officials are advising us to continue to eat fish, but with caution. The public should:

• Make “informed decisions” based on EPA and FDA guidelines.
• Check our state advisoriesUSDA guidelines to find out which freshwater fish are most affected and where.
• Kids and women of child-bearing age need to take special care because mercury can be harmful to developing bodies, and especially minds. They should eat no more than two meals a week that contain fish that are “lower in mercury,” according to the

“We don’t want to scare people away from eating fish, because they’re a healthy source of protein, but they should pay attention to state fish consumption advisories and also the EPA and FDA guidance for consumption of commercial fish,” says Mark E. Brigham, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a leader on the study and an expert in mercury in biological systems.

Isn’t that a lot to ask of consumers who are already busy reading food labels, trying to shop “the outside aisles” of the grocery store, searching for information on how livestock was fed and trying to find the hormone-free milk?

Pause…. “We want informed consumers,” says Brigham.

In case you think freshwater fish present a minor culinary concern, you should know that the federal government estimates about 34 million people fish for sport and food. No doubt many more fancy catfish at the neighborhood fish fry and patronize lakeside restaurants looking for walleye and perch.

To be fair, though, Brigham isn’t on the food side of this issue, but the fact-finding science side. He understands that his team’s discovery -  that every last fish tested had some traces of mercury – is not a comfort to the fish-eating public. But it was not surprising.

Mercury, he points out, “is a pervasive contaminant in the environment.” It is the second leading cause of “impaired” water systems – the first is pathogenic contamination, such as bacterial infections – and has been tracked for many years. Forty-eight of the 50 states issue advisories on mercury in fish.

In addition, “there’s always been a natural component to the mercury cycle. It does get emitted from volcanoes and is “degassed from the earth” and rained back down into waterways.
That’s the good news within the bad news.

A human-made problem

The really bad news, though, is that historical sampling of lake beds shows that mercury contamination from natural sources was slight compared with the rapid accumulation from post-industrial activities.

Knowingly and inadvertently, humans have spewed significant mercury into the earth’s biological systems, waterways and atmosphere as we’ve developed cement plants, mercury and gold mines, metal smelting and coal-burning power plants.

Some of that pollution has been cleaned up as we’ve realized that dumping industrial waste directly into streams and lakes, no matter how giant (think: Lake Erie) is not a good idea.

But the main contributor to the global “mercury cycle’” is coal power plants of which there are 491 in the US and hundreds more around the world, such as in China, which is building coal plants faster than anyone.

Coal-fired power plants account for 40 percent of all mercury emissions in the US, according to the EPA.

The top 50 most-polluting US coal-burning power plants emitted 20 tons of toxic mercury into the air in 2007, according to a study by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project.

All US coal plants collectively emit some 48 tons of mercury annually, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, preliminarily released in July.

That mercury gets emitted as oxidized, elemental or particulate-bonded forms. The oxidized or particulate-bonded mercury falls to the earth relatively quickly, contaminating the local region and watersheds — but it can also be captured more easily. The elemental mercury, though, can ride in the atmosphere, joining mercury emissions from around the world, Brigham said, which explains why his study group found mercury in fish in areas distant from known sources of mercury.

Furthermore, certain natural conditions, present in wetland environments and forests, enhance a process that converts mercury into methylmercury, which is easily taken up by aquatic life. This leads to the seeming paradox of some fish in relatively undeveloped watersheds and pristine areas having some of the highest elevated levels of mercury (in the rural South and wild wetlands of the Pacific Northwest and Midwest); and complicates the matter of knowing what is safe to eat.

The best way to help save our freshwater fish, and their ocean cousins, from further injury, Brigham, among others, have concluded, would be to reduce those mercury emissions at their source.

(Though remember, some fish is safe to eat all the time, and other fish is safe to eat some of the time, like once a week, if it’s the right type…Check your advisories.)

Dialing back mercury emissions

The EPA first tried to reduce mercury emissions from coal plants with a 2005 regulation called the Clean Air Mercury Rule. But it was thrown out by the courts, which advised the agency to employ the Clean Air Act to set mercury emission guidelines.

The EPA is in the midst of trying to make this change, but a new rule must meet certain tests. The Clean Air Act requires, for instance, that standards for other pollutants in the same category, known as “Hazardous Air Pollutants” (lead, toxic gases and dioxin) be set simultaneously.

Once a rule is written and approved, coal-fired plants will be required to use the latest technological advances to cleanse mercury from their admissions. It can be done: Some coal plants in the US have already added scrubbing technology, required by more stringent state guidelines, proving that removing the mercury is possible.

Furthermore, according to the July GAO report technology to remove mercury is effective and affordable.

Coal plants with the technology already in place are removing 80 to 90 percent of the mercury in air emissions.

Coal’s CO2 emissions, blamed for rising carbon in the atmosphere, will not be affected by this new rule

Resources:

• GAO Testimony to the US Senate committees and subcommittees concerned with food and environmental health.
• EPA list of State Fish Advisories
• Effects of Mercury on People on the EPA

(Photos of: Fish in a Pan by ZKruger/dreamstime.com; brook trout by Eric Engbretson, US FWS; boy fishing by Ronald Laubenstein, US FWS.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

At least three of Idaho’s wolves have been killed as hunting commenced this week under the first authorized sport wolf hunt in the lower 48 states.

But while the hunt has attracted sportspeople, it has repelled others.  A Lewiston-area man who killed the first wolf on opening day told the local media that he has received numerous calls of protest.

Robert Millage, a real estate agent, says he’s been called a “wolf murderer, a fat redneck and other names” in some 50 phone calls and hundreds of e-mails, according to the Lewiston Tribune. (To see a picture of the young wolf Millage killed view the story on Lewiston’s KLEW-TV.)

Idaho’s wolf season began on Tuesday, putting up to 220 (the maximum allowed kill) of the state’s estimated 1,000 wolves in jeopardy.

This hunting season follow nearly two decades of wolf restoration in the region.  The Rocky Mountain Wolf population was restored in the US in the mid-1990s with the introduction of gray wolves from Canada to try to replace US wolves, which were annihilated over decades of hunting and defensive shooting by ranchers. The restoration seeded the predators in the Yellowstone National Park area and allowed them to grow while under the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

When their numbers reached what the US government said was a sustainable level — there are about 1,500 to 1,600 wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — the wolves were “delisted” from the ESA, allowing the states to take over their management.

But many environmentalists say that the Idaho wolves — as well as a smaller population of several hundred in Montana, where the hunt begins Sept. 15 — have not reached levels that can be maintained.

“The heavy-handed wolf hunt beginning today in Idaho, together with the hunt planned to begin September 15th in Montana, puts the recovery of the Northern Rockies population of wolves at risk and demonstrates precisely the kind of irresponsible state management that should have precluded taking the wolf off the endangered species list at this point in time,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Added Suzanne Stone, a wolf expert for Defenders: “Today’s hunt undermines decades of tremendous support, time and investment from the American public, federal, tribal and state wildlife agencies, and threatens one of the most successful wildlife restorations in history.”

Defenders, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice and other groups have petitioned a federal court in Montana to stop the state hunts and reinstate federal protection for the wolves.

Friends of Animals, meanwhile, has urged those opposed to the wolf hunts to fight back — with a boycott of Idaho potatoes.

“As long as Idaho is in the business of killing wolves, the nature-respecting public should stop buying potatoes there,” said FOA president Priscilla Feral, explaining that consumers could look for potatoes grown in Maine, Colorado, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and other states.

This federal government has been taking steps for the past several years to remove the wolves from protection and has been stopped at least twice by court injunctions when environmentalists intervened. Those groups have argued that the wolf population should be at least 2,000, if not more, to be sustainable.

Wyoming, the only other US state where the wolves live in the wild, has not been allowed to institute a federal hunt. The US Fish and Wildlife Service was worried that Wyoming’s preliminary hunting plan was malicious.

As state hunting agencies add sport hunting to their menu of wolf control measures, it is worth noting that wolves already are subject to legal lethal measures when they interfere with livestock.

In 2008, 153 wolves were confirmed to have died in Idaho. Agency control and “legal landowner take in response to wolf-livestock depredation” accounted for 108 deaths, according to a detailed report by the Idaho Fish and Game Department. Other human causes (including illegal take) accounted for 23 deaths; 18 wolves died of unknown causes, and 4 wolves died of natural causes.

Also during 2008 calendar year, 96 cattle, 218 sheep, 12 dogs, and 1 horse foal were classified by
Idaho game officials as confirmed wolf kills; 32 cattle, 46 sheep, and 1 dog were considered probable kills by wolves.

The report contains numerous maps and charts, suggesting that the Idaho wolves, are well tracked. It also shows that the number of breeding wolf pairs declined slightly in 2008, before the hunts were authorized.

(Photos: Gray wolf, Idaho Fish and Game Department; Game official with wolf pup, USFWS.)

They started out as pets, perhaps living in little boys’ bedrooms, being shown off to friends and wrapping around arms. But then the Burmese pythons grew, and grew, and grew (about 7 feet in a year), and they weren’t so cute or easy to deal with any more.

So, trying to do the right thing, their owners gently released them into the wild, near the large, shallow “river of grass” that flows through much of south Florida, known as the Everglades.

Problem solved.

Not quite. Those pet pythons grew — up to 20 feet long and 250 pounds –and they eat anything from deer to bobcats to wood storks to endangered species. Less than a decade ago, there were only a few in the Everglades. Today, more than 100,000 of them are slithering around south Florida, crushing what was an already delicate ecosystem.

Even though the state is aggressively trying to find them and restrict the sale of them as pets, the python hunters will never catch up. And the giant reptiles are spreading, south into the Florida Keys and north into Central Florida. One estimate predicts they will eventually inhabit about one-third of the United States.

And that’s not taking global warming into account.

If there’s any wisp of a silver lining to this mess, it’s that the python problem has turned the nation’s attention toward the depth and scope of invasive exotic animals, fish, reptiles and plants.

The U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to try and staunch the flow of invasive species. But the damage the invaders cause brings that total to about $35 billion annually, according to National Invasive Species Council. Worldwide, the economic toll from invasives tops $1.4 trillion, according to the Nature Conservancy, which publishes a list of ways people can help reduce that number.

The invaders tend to spread rapidly, eating or killing the food and habitats of native species. They can clog streams and rivers, alter entire ecosystems and potentially wipe out endangered species. They can cause major forest fires, destroy rangeland and even decrease tourism.

It’s hard to put a number on them in the US: The Fish and Wildlife Department estimates as many as 50,000 non-natives are here now, but of those, about 4,300 are trouble-making invasives.

“I can tell you that for the Nature Conservancy, wherever we work, globally and nationally, invasive species have been identified as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity,” said Doria Gordon, the Director of Conservation Science for Florida’s chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Though relatively few imports become invasive, when they do, they can become a monumental problem, she said. Florida is a state where climate, population and ports create an ideal environment for voracious invasives. Reptiles such as monitor lizards, Cuban tree frogs and iguanas are growing quickly and gobbling up native species. “The Cuban frogs are capable of eating most of our native tree frogs,” she said.

The animals and reptiles may be more interesting, but it is the plants that really wreak havoc on the environment. They take over because, as exotics, they lack natural pests in their new territory. (Just as invading wildlife is able to run amok because their natural predators live on another continent.)

“Hydrilla and water hyacinth have been problems for years,” she said. “They constrain navigation and water flow, create hazards to navigation and power generation,” she said.

But Gordon reserves special scorn for a plant that poses perhaps the biggest threat to Florida’s native areas: Old World climbing fern.

Calling it a fern is misleading – it’s more like ivy on steroids. Native to Africa and Asia, Old World found its way into a nursery decades ago. Now, it covers large swaths of Florida’s uninhabited land, rapidly moving north thanks to wind-blown spores. Old World blankets the ground, bushes and even the top of forests, smothering everything it covers – like a leafy version of The Blob.

How can such a pervasive plant be controlled? “We try to contain them. At the edges, where densities are low, we can keep knocking them backwards,” Gordon said. Right now the northern boundary of Old World climbing fern’s range is near Orlando. “We’re now starting to look for spores in the air there,” she added.

“The real effort is to find a biological agent that can control the vine,” Gordon said, rather than using huge quantities of pesticides. Finding a living thing to battle back another living thing has only worked for a few species. “It’s difficult to find one that will only attack that specific species and not anything else.”

Hawaii is a perfect example of such well-intentioned plans gone wrong.

First Polynesians, then Europeans, arrived to the islands with their dogs, pigs, lizards, plants, cattle and sheep. The Westerners, unfortunately, brought along rats, too. The rats ate sugar cane and the unique flightless birds of the islands. To kill the rats, the mongoose was brought in. Unfortunately, the mongoose ate the birds, not the rats. Rats are nocturnal and the mongoose is not. Thus, dozens of the dwindling species of rare birds in Hawaii were wiped out.

Today, Hawaii’s struggle with non-native plants, animals and reptiles is worse than any other state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Unleashing one exotic to battle another has happened on the mainland as well, according to Richard Mack, professor in the school of biological sciences at Washington State University. “Ironically, most of our problems we brought upon ourselves. Two-thirds of the plant invaders were deliberately introduced (via horticulture), and it backfired,” he said.

“The problem is that we don’t have a good handle on this. The funds, resources, they haven’t been allocated.”

There’s a cycle to it all, Mack said. “One of these invaders arises and causes havoc. There’s a call to deal with it and it takes a sustained effort and incredible persistence to get rid of one of these species.

“There may be initial success – the population numbers go down. That’s mistakenly taken as a sign that public funds can be pulled back. But these are living organisms, so they go back and build up their populations and it gets as bad as it was before,” he said.

Thus, money to combat the invasives dries up, and often the task of trying to control the pests falls on area communities.

One of the bad actors in the U.S. now, Mack said, is cheatgrass. It came from Eurasia about 200 years ago. “It’s had a devastating effect in the far west,” he said. Despite its size, it is a strong competitor with native plant species and is a factor in major forest fires in California or Nevada. “It also causes downstream siltation and erosion in the river systems in the west,” Mack said.

And who can forget what has come to be known as the “Vietnam of entomology,” the fire ant fiasco in the Southwest?

From Green Right Now Reports

Columbus, Ohio, is celebrating the opening of the Grange Insurance Audubon Center at Scioto Audubon Metro Park, a brownfield redevelopment site that is a major bird migration stopover point. The $14.5 million center is the first of its kind to be built so close to surrounding urban spaces, according to Ohio officials.

“This new park and nature center are a treasure for our community and are a vital component in making Columbus’ urban spaces a great place to live, work or visit,” John O’Meara, executive director of Metro Parks, said in a statement.

The 18,000-square-foot Grange Insurance Audubon Center is the culmination of efforts by the city of Columbus, Metro Parks and Audubon Ohio to redevelop the brownfield area on the Whittier Peninsula, a former industrial dumping ground. The site is now home to a 72-acre park on Columbus’ Scioto River.

The new Audubon Center was funded by a public-private partnership that included a $4 million lead gift from Grange Insurance. The center, which will be LEED certified, will host year-round environmental education programs and will include a Metro Park boat dock and climbing wall.