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conservation news from around the world...
It's been an interesting week to watch the various news stories coming out of the media omnipresent Brazil. First out the blocks came the widely reported story (link to BBC version) of the government granting an environmental licence for the construction of a massive hydro-electric dam in the Amazon basin to try and relieve strain on electricity supplies in the state of Para.
Naturally there has been a backlash against these plans from environmental campaigners, who say it will cause mass devastation and threaten indigenous communities. This is despite the size of the project being reduced from 5,000 to 500 square kilometres.
Meanwhile it seemed even the Amazon isn't immune from the current climate skulduggery. Mongabay.com reported that the Sunday Times ran an article that criticised the IPCC about a "bogus rainforest claim" describing possible threats to forest, which was immediately jumped on by climate skeptics and dubbed "Amazongate". The newspaper may have got the analysis a bit wrong, but may have been right to question the IPCC citing a WWF report rather than peer reviewed science.
But the week finished a bit better with the news that Brazil will pledge a limit on greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and the main way the government hopes to achieve these cuts is through rainforest protection.
Sadly, Survival International reported the death of the last speaker of "Bo", one of the ten Great Andamese languages. Boa Sr was 85 and her passing marks the end of language that may have stretched back 65,000 years to the time of the first occupation of the Andaman Islands. There are now just 52 surviving Great Andamese who, according to Survival, depend largely on the Indian government for food and shelter. What botanical wisdom have we lost?
Latest news stories...
08.02.10
James Cameron's blockbuster 3D epic about a distant world being bulldozed by mineral prospectors has resonated around the environmental and social rights communities. This has not been lost on campaign groups who have seized the chance to get their story out to a primed global audience.
UK: World Land Trust bring conservation to Chelsea
04.02.10
The World Land Trust (WLT) are taking a conservation message to the world's most famous horticultural event, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Plant Profile: Impatiens gordonii
03.02.10
There are only about 120 individuals of Impatiens gordonii left on the islands of Mahe and Silhouette in the Seychelles. However, this critically endangered and threatened endemic of disturbed forest has become a poster-child for awareness-raising and conservation capacity building on these remote Indian Ocean islands.
Philippines: Geo-tagging reveals mining threats on the “Last frontier”
01.02.10
Plant Talk invited Dario Novellino from the Centre for Biocultural Diversity (CBCD), UK to speak out against the logging and mining in protected areas that is destroying the forests of Palawan.
Identification of British Plants
01.02.10
The course (download PDF) will introduce the field identification of the major groups of plants found in the UK. It will teach the field techniques necessary for the identification of the different plant groups and their recording (including voucher specimens and photography). 29th - 31st March 2010, Lyme Regis. Led by Fred Rumsey, Natural History Museum.
28.01.10
As part of the celebrations for International Year of Biodiversity IUCN bring us a wonderful new resource - Species of the Day. On each day of 2010 a threatened species is profiled from the Red List describing its habitat, population, current plight, and future hopes.
Ecuador: Yasuni - the most biodiverse place on Earth?
22.01.10
A study published in the open access journal Plos One has revealed extraordinary species richness in the western Amazon covering eastern Ecuador and northern Peru.
19.01.10
Greg Farrington, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, recently visited the vast island of Madagascar with some of his team of researchers. He was kind enough to share some of his beautiful images of the extraordinary landscapes, plants, and people (and in a break from tradition, some animals too!) with Plant Talk.
Reunion: Rare orchid pollinated by cricket
18.01.10
Scientists on the remote island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean found something they did not expect: an orchid that’s pollinated by a cricket.
UK: The Great Fen – last chance for endangered fen plants?
15.01.10
Alan Bowley from Natural England talks about this historic landscape and what the future looks like for its populations of special plants.
