Afforestation drive planned to mark Tamil conference

Coimbatore: The State Government has announced a massive drive to ensure greenery in Coimbatore by planting one lakh saplings. State Forest Minister N. Selvaraj is expected to launch the drive on Tuesday.

A meeting to finalise the plan of action was held on Monday, which was attended by Conservator of Forests R. Kannan, District Collector P. Umanath, Corporation Commissioner Anshul Mishra, and District Forest Officer I. Anwardeen. Meeting resolved to ensure fullest participation of Government departments, public, local bodies, educational institutions and non-governmental organisations to achieve 100 per cent target and to ensure highest survival rate of the saplings especially when the southwest monsoon is expected to set in soon.

Representatives of educational institutions, officers from education department (both school and higher education), representatives from Anna University, Bharathiar University, officials from Town Panchayats, Panchayats, officials from Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, Highways, Coimbatore Coporation, office-bearers of voluntary organisations such as Osai, Siruthuli and RAAC took part.

Authorities have planned to have reasonable but specific targets for each organisation, institution and ensure success.

The objective is to enhance the green lung space within the City, suburbs and across the district. The drive is expected to compensate the loss of trees owing to various road widening works. Officials have planned to have trees planted on either side of the arterial roads especially in pockets where there are no space constraints. The authorities discussed the modalities for ensuring the watering of the plants till the northwest monsoon brings in a substantial downpour. The project is expected to take off immediately.

From THE HINDU

WWF-India meet in Kerala on responsible wood trade and forest certification

WWF- India in association with the Malabar Chamber of Commerce hosted the global multi stakeholder meet on responsible wood trade and forest certification here on Thursday.

The conference is aimed at understanding the various approaches for responsible wood trade.

The conference saw the participation of SME’s across India, international experts on wood trade and certification, wood processors, forest and plantation managers, farm forestry/agro forestry growers, timber traders, paper and pulp companies, retailers dealing with wood and non-wood forest products, NGOs, certification bodies, financial institutions, builders, architects and relevant government agencies.

Business to business meetings were also conducted amongst the companies committed to promote responsible wood trade and credible forest certification.

WWF-India is a partner in implementing the project “Sustainable and Responsible Trade Promoted to Wood Processing SMEs through Forest and Trade Networks in China, India and Vietnam” with the support of the European Commission.

A major objective of this project in India is to build capacity among SMEs in wood processing sectors of Kerala, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh towards providing certified sustainable forest products to national and international markets. By Juhan Samuel (ANI)

From Sify

WWF welcomes landmark Norway, Indonesia agreement on deforestation

Oslo, Norway – WWF welcomed Wednesday’s announcement that Norway will provide USD 1 billion to support Indonesia’s efforts to reduce emissions caused by deforestation in that country.

Loggers clearing a swamp forest for a palm oil plantation. Central Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. Norway will provide USD 1 billion to support Indonesia’s efforts to reduce emissions caused by deforestation in that country. © WWF-Canon / Alain COMPOST

The two governments agreed Wednesday to enter into a partnership to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) in Indonesia’s forests and peat lands.

The announcement came as more than 30 governments today meet to discuss a first-time partnership at the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference to advance REDD+ activities this year.

“This partnership is a key step in developing a workable framework for reducing emissions from deforestation in Indonesia,” said Fitrian Ardiansyah, Climate and Energy Program Director of WWF-Indonesia, “The Indonesian President’s announcement to put a break in releasing new permits to convert peat land also provides new opportunities for further reduction of emissions and this will move the partnership of the two countries closer to achieving the goal.”

“Indonesia’s agreement with Norway to big reductions in deforestation is a groundbreaking achievement in the work to combat climate change,”said Rasmus Hansson, CEO of WWF-Norway,“This commitment to halting destructive forest and land use by one of the world’s key forest countries promises to directly limit global CO2 emissions.”

For real climate benefits to be realized, this agreement needs to be followed up by implementing specific work plans in developing countries, including in Indonesia, that formalize REDD+ implementation and ensure that these activities contain the proper governance for REDD+ and safeguards for indigenous peoples and biodiversity, according to WWF.

“This agreement sets an inspiring example of responsible climate cooperation between developing and industrialised nations,” said Hansson, “To WWF, it is of particular importance that the partners recognise that forest conservation is about much more than CO2 emissions. Safeguarding ecosystems, biodiversity and indigenous peoples’ livelihoods is an absolute prerequisite for making this work – and obviously a crucial benefit in itself.”

According to the Norwegian government, as part of the partnership funds will initially be devoted to finalizing Indonesia’s climate and forest strategy, building and institutionalizing capacity to monitor, report and verify reduced emissions, and putting in place enabling policies and institutional reforms, according to the Norwegian government. A two-year suspension on new concessions on conversion of natural forests and peat lands into plantations also will be implemented as part of the agreement.

By 2014, the plan is to move to an Indonesian-wide instrument of funding contributions in return for verified emission reductions, the government said in a press release. Funds will be managed by an internationally reputable financial institution according to international fiduciary, governance, environmental and social standards.

From WWF

Lizards succumb to global warming

Climate change is already sending reptile populations extinct worldwide.

By 2080, global warming could result in one-fifth of the world’s lizard species becoming extinct, a global study has found.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios for curbing carbon dioxide emissions, the analysis by an international team shows that one-fifth of the globe’s lizard populations, corresponding to 6% of all lizard species, may go extinct by 2050.

“We’ve committed ourselves to that,” says Barry Sinervo, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the study. He and his colleagues found that climate change has already driven 12% of the populations of Mexico’s colourful Sceloporus lizards extinct since 1975.

If emissions continue at current levels, he predicts that by 2080, 39% of the world’s lizard populations will have vanished, corresponding to a 20% loss in species. The study is published in Science this week1.

About one eighth of Mexican populations of Sceloporus lizards have died out since 1975. F.R.M. de la Cruz

It’s a stunning finding, says Raymond Huey, an evolutionary physiologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who wasn’t part of the study team. “Lizards are animals that should be very tolerant of climate warming,” he says.
Wave of extinction

Sinervo wasn’t intending to study extinctions. Rather, he had planned to use a Eurasian lizard, Lacerta vivipara, to examine the role of coloration in lizard evolution. But when he went to sites in France, Italy, Solovenia and Hungary where Lacerta had been studied, the lizards weren’t always there. A few years later, he found that Mexico’s Sceloporus lizards were also vanishing.

Concerned, he assembled a team to examine the issue globally. Studying reports of extinctions on five continents, the scientists concluded that the problem is widespread.

“It’s happening really, really fast,” Sinervo says. “We’re seeing a massive extinction wave sweeping across the planet.”

Huey warns that not seeing lizards doesn’t mean that they’re not there. They may just have been overlooked. “Populations go up and down,” he says. Still, he notes, Sceloporus is very conspicuous. “It would be hard to miss.”

“These kinds of studies take a lot of work, and people have just recently started to do them,” says Anthony Barnosky, a palaeoecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming (Island Press, 2009).

Of the handful of similar analyses, a 2008 study found population losses in amphibians living in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming2, and another found that small mammals in Yosemite National Park in California had tracked warming temperatures in the past century by shifting their range3.
Feeling the heat

Lizard disappearances in the areas the team studied can’t be due to habitat destruction because they’re occurring where habitat has been protected. Rather, hotter sites close to the equator or at low altitudes are most likely to lose their lizards.

To see how hotter climates damaged the reptiles, Sinervo’s team created a dummy lizard, set it out in the sun at sites in the Yucatán peninsula where Sceloporus is found and where it had gone extinct, and monitored its temperature. Like all organisms, lizards must avoid overheating and keep their body temperature within a certain range to survive.

The problem, the team found, seems to be warmer springtimes, rather than higher maximum temperatures at midday or in midsummer.

Higher temperatures in spring mean that the animals spend less of the breeding season out foraging and more time in the shade. “That is the time of year that females need the maximum amount of food,” says Huey. “If the temperature gets higher in the spring, then the lizards restrict their activity. They simply may not have enough active time to catch enough food.”

Underfed females do not have the resources needed to make young, causing populations to crash.

The ecological consequences of lizard extinctions are unknown. “If Barry’s right or even close to right,” Huey says, “the world as we know it will be very different. Lizards are primarily insect eaters. So if a population goes extinct, that will affect the insects living there. Lizards are also prey for many snakes, birds, mammals and some other lizards. But how serious those [effects] will be is going to be very difficult to predict.”

By Richard Lovett From Nature

Captive breeding of seahorse successful

Tuticorin: The captive breeding of seahorse by research scholars of Suganthi Devadason Marine Research Institute here was successful.

As many as 530 young ones were produced and released in a phased manner in the coral and sea grass area along the coast of Tuticorin.

A batch of 116 young ones was released here on Tuesday in the reef area outside the Tuticorin port. Seahorses were mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world. They prefer to live in sheltered area such as sea grass beds and coral reefs. Sea horses were being exploited in various parts along the coast of India. The major threats to seahorses are exploitation for the purpose of commercial trade, habitat destruction due to trawling and pollution. The extracts from seahorses were being used for medicinal purpose since they have medicinal values.

As far as the Chinese medicine was concerned, seahorses were traditionally considered the main components.

“Since the species of seahorses are being depleted, seahorse captive culture and sea ranching is essential for enhancing wild stocks and to improve its production. Seahorse captive breeding is not a complex technology but the major concern in establishing seahorse aquaculture is a provision of sufficient quantities of nutritionally balanced live food,” J.K. Patterson Edward told The Hindu here on Tuesday. Having regard to all these factors, a pilot project has been taken up by the Forest Department, he said.

J. Praveen Paul Joseph From THE HINDU