Many of the environmental issues facing Indonesia are embodied in the plight of the orangutan, the red ape that inhabits the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutan populations have plummeted over the past century, a result of hunting, habitat loss, the pet trade, and human-ape conflict. Accordingly, governments, charities, and concerned individuals have ploughed tens of millions of dollars into orangutan conservation, but have little to show in terms of slowing or reversing the decline. The same can be said about forest conservation in Indonesia: while massive amounts of money have been put toward protecting and sustainable using forests, the sum is dwarfed by the returns from converting forests into timber, rice, paper, and palm oil. So orangutans—and forests—continue to lose out to economic development, at least as conventionally pursued. Poor governance means that even when well-intentioned measures are in place, they are often undermined by corruption, apathy, or poorly-designed policies. So is there a future for Indonesia’s red apes and their forest home? Erik Meijaard, an ecologist who has worked in Indonesia since 1993 and is considered a world authority on orangutan populations, is cautiously optimistic, although he sees no ‘silver bullet’ solutions.

Source: Mongabay.com News | 29 Jul 2010 | 10:26 pm

Mongabay: With 18,000 islands spanning two major bigeographic realms (and a curious outlier in Sulawesi) across an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers, Indonesia is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries. It has the world’s third largest extent of tropical forests, has the planet’s richest coral reefs, and is home to more than 12 percent of plant and animal species. Indonesia is culturally rich as well. Its hundreds of cultures speak more than 500 languages. But Indonesia’s …

Source: Rainforest Portal RSS Newsfeed | 29 Jul 2010 | 7:00 pm

Guardian: The UN has withdrawn the Galápagos Islands from its world heritage danger list, citing improved efforts by Ecuador to protect the archipelago’s unique biodiversity. The world heritage committee of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) voted 15 to four to remove the islands from the list of sites endangered by environmental threats or overuse. "It’s important to recognise the effort made by the Ecuadorean government to preserve this …

Source: Rainforest Portal RSS Newsfeed | 29 Jul 2010 | 7:00 pm

ScienceDaily: Not so for Gillian Galford, a recent graduate of the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences (and now a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute) and her colleagues, who take a big-picture approach to greenhouse gas emissions. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team estimates future emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane in the Brazilian Amazon state of Mato Grosso. The …

Source: Rainforest Portal RSS Newsfeed | 29 Jul 2010 | 7:00 pm

“President Obama called it ‘the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.’ So I thought I should face it and head to the Gulf”—these are the opening words on the popular blog Guilty Planet as the author, marine biologist Jennifer Jacquet, embarked on a ten day trip to Louisiana. As a scientist, Jacquet was, of course, interested in the impact of the some four million barrels of oil on the Gulf’s already depleted ecosystem, however she was as equally keen to see how Louisianans were coping with the fossil fuel-disaster that devastated their most vital natural resource just four years after Hurricane Katrina.

Source: Mongabay.com News | 29 Jul 2010 | 5:44 pm

Usually announcements of new species come from biodiverse rainforests or unexplored marine depths, but researchers have announced the discovery of nearly a dozen new species in one of Earth’s most well-trodden place: France. Eleven new species have been discovered in Mercantour National Park in southern France. All the new species are insects, including one beetle, seven new aquatic invertebrate living under creek beds, and three springtails, which are soil-dwelling arthropods.

Source: Mongabay.com News | 29 Jul 2010 | 2:49 pm

ScienceDaily (July 21, 2010) — Using NASA satellite data, scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map that details the height of the world’s forests. Although there are other local- and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform method.

Source: Sustainable Ecosystems and Community News – ENN | 26 Jul 2010 | 1:42 pm

Remember the debate about the subsurface “plumes” or oil released by the leaking BP well in the Gulf of Mexico? A new report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy about subsurface oil monitoring in the Gulf of Mexico contains preliminary data collected at 227 sampling stations extending from one to 52 kilometers from the Deepwater Horizon/BP wellhead.

The data shows that the movement of subsurface oil is consistent with ocean currents and that the concentrations continue to be more diffuse as you move away from the source of the leak. This confirms the findings of the previous report.

The report comes from the Joint Analysis Group (JAG), which is comprised of the afore mentioned agencies and was established to facilitate cooperation and coordination among the best scientific minds across the government and provide a coordinated analysis of information related to subsea monitoring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Sustainable Ecosystems and Community News – ENN | 24 Jul 2010 | 2:48 pm

More wineries are moving towards plastic bottles and aluminum caps and away from cork stoppers. Some would say this is unfortunate for a host of reasons. Harvesting cork is an ancient practice that keeps a cluster of cork trees, which are almost entirely in Portugal and Spain, alive.

Source: Sustainable Ecosystems and Community News – ENN | 23 Jul 2010 | 1:52 pm