Untitled Document

The great rainforest tragedy

By Michael McCarthy

June 28— Of all the world’s great environmental tragedies it is the most compelling, and yesterday the deforestation of the Amazon was shown to be taking a huge turn for the worse.

After falling or staying steady for the past eight years, the rate at which Brazil’s rainforest is disappearing has leapt by 40 percent in a single year —and Europe’s intensive farming may be a contributory cause.

Vast new tracts of virgin forest in the states of Mato Grosso and Para are being put to the chainsaw, according to figures from the Brazilian government, and turned into farmland —much of it used for growing soy beans, which end up as industrial cattle feed in Europe.

What is being destroyed is the most species-rich habitat on Earth. It provides much of the world’s oxygen. It has been the subject of more green protests, and had more voices raised in its defense, than any other piece of ground on the planet. They seem to have availed it nothing.

Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, based on satellite observations, reveal that in the year to August 2002 the amount of rainforest cut down was 25,500 square kilometers, or 10,190 square miles - an area about the size of Belgium. This has leapt from the previous year, when the area cut down had been 7,266 square miles, an area about the size of Wales.

The more recent total was the second highest in the whole 30-year saga of Amazonian deforestation, exceeded only by the exceptional year to August 1995, when 12,200 square miles were destroyed. Since then the figure has dropped and remained steady at about 18,000 sq km - giving people some hope that the situation was not as hopelessly out of control as once it seemed to be.

But now the sudden increase in the deforestation rate has appalled even hardened Amazon-watchers. “This is shocking,” said Mario Monzoni, a project coordinator for Friends of the Earth in Brazil. “The rate of deforestation should be falling; instead the opposite is happening.”

Brazil’s Environment Minister, Marina Silva, herself a former rubber tapper from the Amazon who also worked as a maid by day, said there would be “emergency action to deal with this highly worrying rise in deforestation.” Promising an announcement next week, she said the government was considering real-time monitoring of deforestation and, for the first time in Brazil, to force all ministries to consider the environment when enacting policies.

All those who care for the Amazon will warmly welcome her comments, but not hold out excessive hope. The social and economic forces behind deforestation are stupendous, and for three decades have been far beyond the ability of bureaucrats in Brasilia or Sao Paulo to control them. In a huge country with a burgeoning population and oppressive poverty there is insatiable hunger for land, and the Amazon provides a ready answer.

It can take a lot of punishment — its rainforest covers 60 percent of the territory of Brazil and extends for 1.6 million square miles, an area as big as western Europe. But already about 16 percent of it has been destroyed for development, logging, and most of all farming.

There now seems to be a new and even more intense agricultural advance into the treeline, especially from large-scale growers of soy beans. Brazil is expected to overtake US soy production in a few years, making it the world’s leading producer of a crop that offers its farmers large profits and gives a sizeable boost to its national trade accounts.

David Cleary, director of the Amazon program at the Brazilian office of the Nature Conservancy, the US green charity, said that last year’s deforestation figures were at least 30 or 40 percent higher than historical trends. “It’s clear that the soy boom is an important element of this in the southern Amazon, and if ways are not found to minimize the impact it is difficult to see these figures falling in coming years,” he said.

We may have a role in this ourselves. Much of the soy bean crop is exported to Europe as part of the 55 million tons of cattle feed the EU imports annually, attracting strong criticism from environmentalists, who say it is promoting industrial factory farming as well as helping to subsidize rainforest destruction.

That destruction seems even worse if you clothe the new raw data with a little imagination. At the new rate, about 28 sq miles of forest is being obliterated every day. How many trees in 28 square miles, an area seven miles long by four miles wide? A thousand? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand, more? Doesn’t matter. They’ll all be down by the end of today.

And what a forest it is, containing about 30 percent of all the world’s known plant and animal species, besides the uncatalogued insects, which may run into many millions. There are about 80,000 species of trees and flowering plants; in a single hectare of forest there may be as many as 300 tree species, more than 10 times that in the most diverse North American forest. There are more than 2,000 species of birds, almost a quarter of the world’s total; there are 2,000 species of freshwater fish and more than 3,000 species of mammals, reptiles and amphibians, ranging from the jaguar to the poison-arrow frog.

And now the chainsaws are slicing it down at a rate that could only be described as frenzied. It is the great green lung of the world, the Amazon rainforest, and the shadow on it is advancing unstoppably.

Source: Independent (UK)

Groups in three states rally simultaneously for coalfield justice

Compiled by David Pike

July 2 (AGR)— Mon. June 23, saw rallies of mountaintop removal mining opponents in Lexington, KY; Pittsburgh, PA; and Charleston, WV in a “Coalfield Justice Day of Action.”

Four people were arrested at the Lexington rally when they hung banners reading “Stop Mountaintop Removal” and “King Coal is Killing Kentucky” over one of the cities busiest streets. William Gorz and Kent Mettle of Western North Carolina along with Joshua Martin of Indiana were charged with disorderly conduct while allegedly assisting in hanging the banners. Corrie DeJong of Tennessee was himself extracted by the Fire Department off the walkway where the banners hung and charged with trespassing.

The approximately 100 rally attendees continued the protest using a solar-powered PA, drums, street theater, and by marching to the headquarters of Kentucky Utilities Co. Two of the arrestees were released later that evening while the other two refused to cooperate with the police retina scan in the booking process and were held overnight. Scanning arrestees’ eye’s retina for biometric identification purposes is apparently routine in some parts of Kentucky.

In Pittsburgh, the object of citizens’ anger was CONSOL Mining. Around 50 people joined Brandon Hudock who had been fasting outside CONSOL headquarters since the Friday before. And in Charleston another 100 people met in front of the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. Their rally was livened by music, street theater, poetry, and puppets as well as supported by a banner hanging team from the wider Appalachian region. This long banner was hung from the top deck of a nearby parking garage and read “Mountaintop Removal Destroys Our Heritage.” Protesters called further for the firing of OSM head Jeff Jarrett who is responsible for the agency’s reportedly highly lax enforcement of existing mining laws.

The history of mountaintop removal mining is heavy with preventable loss of life and health. It is a style of strip mining whereby the entire top of a mountain is clearcut, burned, and blasted apart to expose thin seams of coal. The huge amounts of debris are dumped into adjacent valleys burying the streams and all associated habitats. Large holding pools for the toxic slurry from the coal washing process are built with earthen dams — often directly uphill from neighboring towns. Remediation of an exhausted mine usually consists of leveling the remainder of the hill with the filled valley and seeding it all with grass, leaving a poor quality meadow or, in at least one case, a golf course.

Of negative effects from this mining, recent low points include: 14 deaths in the past two years associated with the huge, regularly overloaded, coal hauling trucks; the Martin County, Kentucky coal slurry spill of 2000 in which approx. 250 million gallons were released — called one of the worst environmental disasters in southeast US history; and the flooding in southern West Virginia July of 2001 found to have been strongly exacerbated by mountaintop removal which destroyed 1,500 homes and killed 6 people.

Moreover, mountaintop removal involves gradual degradations such as rising asthma rates from chemical pollution and massive amounts of dust alongside traumatic stress for those living near the blasting zones. Watersheds become contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins while property values in neighboring towns plummet. All these factors have pushed people en mass from their homes creating literal ghost towns amid blasted woodlands over and over again.

Some residents hold on tenaciously to family land and some of them become activists in this growing movement. Just a week before this Day of Action, citizens in Eastern Tennessee attended a public meeting in Campbell County to question and challenge officials on a proposed 2100 acre “cross ridge mining” operation, “cross ridge mining” being a new version of mountaintop removal. Companies want to use this method in new areas as, in power utility giant Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) words, “recent developments in the coal market have made the formerly proposed mining operation more economically attractive.” Public awareness of these plans is spreading as well. The tri-state Day of Action — drawing people from a wide section of Appalachia and sponsored by 19 different organizations — is evidence of this. One of these groups, Coal River Mountain Watch, has even received international attention this spring when their group’s director, a coalminer’s daughter, Julia Bond, won the Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. The Goldman Prize, dubbed the “Nobel Prize for the Environment,” is the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists given annually to individuals from each of six regions of the globe.

Carolyn Johnson, staff director of Citizens Coal Council, on Julia Bond: “[She] is lifting up a region of the US often forgotten by the rest of the country.” Julia Bond, like many others, had her life torn down by a coal company after six generations in her former town. She is rising back up with other coalfield natives and allies from beyond because, in her words, “When powerful people pursue profits at the expense of human rights and our environment, they have failed us as leaders. Responsible citizens must step forward, not just to point the way, but to lead the way to a better world.”

Sources: AP, Tennessee Indymedia, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition Bulletin, Lexington Herald-Leader

Endangered Species of the Southern US
A weekly column by Shawn Gaynor
Critical Habitat proposed for Braun’s Rock Crest

Braun’s Rock Cress
Arabis var. perstellata and Arabis var. Ampla
Status: Endangered, Federal Register, January 3, 1995
Range: Arabis p. var. perstellata, Franklin County (KY), Owen County (KY), and Henry County (KY). Arabis p. var. ampla, Rutherford (TN), Wilson (TN)

DESCRIPTION: Both varieties of Arabis perstellata E. L. Braun, (Arabis perstellata E. L. Braun var. ampla Rollins [large rock cress] and Arabis perstellata E. L. Braun var. perstellata Fernald [small rock cress]) are perennial members of the mustard family (Brassicaceae). Both varieties have round stems and alternate leaves. Their stems and foliage have a grayish coloration due to the large quantity of hairs. Their stems arise from horizontal bases and grow up to 80 centimeters (cm) (31.5 inches) long, often drooping from rock ledges. Each year a basal rosette of leaves is produced, and the new branches emerge from the old rosette of the previous season. Their lower leaves vary from 4 to 15 cm (1.6 to 6.0 inches) long and are obovate to oblanceolate with slightly toothed and pinnatifid margins. Their upper leaves are smaller - up to 3.5 cm (1.4 inches) long - and are elliptic to oblanceolate, with coarse teeth along the margin. Both surfaces of their leaves are stellate-pubescent. The inflorescence is an elongate raceme with numerous flowers. Their flowers have four petals that are 3 to 4 millimeters (mm) (0.12 to 0.16 inch) long, are white to lavender, and have four pale green sepals that are 2 to 3 mm (0.08 to 0.12 inch) long. There are six stamens, with two shorter than the other four. The ovary is elongated, two chambered, and develops into a silique. Fruiting stalks are about 1 cm (0.4 inch) long at maturity; siliques are up to 4 cm (1.6 inches) long and are covered with both simple and stellate hairs. Flowering is from late March to early May. Fruits mature from mid-May to early June. Their oblong seeds are reddish brown; somewhat flattened; about 1 mm (0.04 inch) long; and, in places, minutely hairy (Jones 1991).

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, in a response to a lawsuit filed by the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, has taken further steps to protect the rare and endangered Braun’s Rock Crest. This flowering plant is found in two varieties, and a general feeling is emerging in the scientific community that these flowers represent two fully different species.

The first variety, Arabis perstellata, was named by E. L. Braun from plants collected in the late 1930’s. It occurs in roughly 30 locations in Kentucky. The second variety was discovered later in Tennessee and is found only in four populations.

Both are part of the Mustard family, and flower in the early through mid spring.

Each plant grows in river bank areas on steep slopes. These riverside areas are historically the first to be impacted by development. Additionally, exotic invasive plant species that compete for space on the forest floor threaten to push out the rock cress. This concern over compatition with exotic envasive species may lead to hand weeding of invasive plants as a necessary management step to preserve this species.

Because of its small population levels, with some sites containing less the a hundred individual plants, inbreeding is also a concern for the plants survival. This is known as a biological bottleneck, when recessive genes, harmful to a species survival, exhibit themselves more frequently because of a reduction of biological diversity in a population. In a health gene pool, individual plants have varying resistance to specific disease and predication. While a disease can affect a large number of individuals, the likelihood of some being resistant to the disease and therefore continuing the biological linage of the species is high. When population levels become very low though, there is a species-wide drop in its ability to adapt to new factors such as a disease.

Rock cress also faces more simple threats. With many of the remaining populations representing a small number of individuals, simple trampling by foot traffic threatens some of the sites.

This flower is also sensitive to lighting condition, and cannot survive in full sun, making logging activies and other ecosystem alterations a threat to its survival as well.

The propsal to designate critical habitat to the rock cress still needs to be finalized, but would designate just over a thousand acres.

By being designated a Critical Habitat, the plant will enjoy the addition protection of it being illegal to alter the overall area in which the plant occurs.