Biodiversity // Current TV

Paraguayan farmers occupy Brazilian owned farms to block entry of genetically modified soy

Campesinos in the department of San Pedro occupied Brazilian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to block the entry of transgenic soy, and began planting other crops such as sesame and yucca on the plots.

Some 120 campesinos occupied two 600-hectare (1,480 acre) farms, according to local media reports.

Cristino Peralta, the San Pedro correspondent of the daily ABC Color, said that the farmers immediately began planting the sesame and yucca after occupying the plantations.

"There was no law enforcement intervention," he said. "The group's leader Florencio Martinez said that the occupation marked the start of the recovery of Paraguayan territorial sovereignty."

San Pedro is considered Paraguay's best farmland, but it is also the country's poorest department. President Fernando Lugo worked as a bishop there for a decade.

Land is concentrated in the fewest hands in Paraguay than in any other Latin American country. Only 351 landowners hold 9.7 million hectares (24 million acres), while, according to civil society organizations, there are more than 350,000 families with insufficient quantities of land or no land at all.

The demonstrators said that they took over the Brazilian-owned plantations in protest of what they called the government's failure to implement land reform. Paraguay has also seen other campesino protests against transgenic soy plantations and the indiscriminate use of farming chemicals.

Lugo had requested that the campesinos give his government 100 days starting Aug. 15 to seek financing for land reform. The period ends on Nov. 22.

According to campesino leader Elvio Benitez, the government "continues without finding a solution to the lack of land of thousands of our compatriots, while the Brazilian's presence is getting bigger and bigger. We can't do anything else but occupy the Brazilian-owned haciendas because the soy crops are causing deforestation, eliminating natural forests and contaminating people with its pesticides."
-Latinamerica Press
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People are standing up worldwide to the hoax that is GM food. We have enough conventional NATURAL food to feed the people of this planet. Good to see people standing up to the fake unnatural test tube food these mutli nationals are trying to shove down their throats for profit.Campesinos in the department of San Pedro occupied Brazilian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to... more

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Warmer water devastates Great Barrier Reef's seabirds

Global warming has been blamed for dramatic declines in seabird populations on the... more

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British seas face ecological disaster due to overfishing and pollution

The seas around Britain face an ecological disaster because of over fishing and... more

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USDA biotech regulations on "pharma" crops could allow drugs in food

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today denounced newly proposed U.S. Department... more

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Nature losses to far exceed losses due to 'bank crisis'

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through... more

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Researchers document world's mammals in crisis

From the report: From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis. One in four mammal species on Earth is being pushed to extinction, according to the Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive assessment of the world's mammals.

Writing in the October 10 issue of Science, ("The Status of the World's Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge") and unveiling a "Red List" of endangered mammal species (at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain), the researchers who worked on the exhaustive study say that from 25 percent to 36 percent of species may be in danger of extinction.

"It is frightening that after millions and millions of years of evolution that have given rise to the biodiversity of mammals we are perched on a crisis where 25 percent of species are threatened with being lost forever," said Andrew Smith, an Arizona State University professor who played a key role in the mammalian assessment. Smith and his research assistant, Charlotte Johnson, are two of the 103 authors of the Science paper.

The Global Mammal Assessment was conducted by more than 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries working under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It was made possible by the volunteer help of IUCN Species Survival Commission's specialist groups and collaborations between top institutions and universities, including Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, Conservation International, Sapienza Università di Roma and the Zoological Society of London.

The mammal assessment is the first comprehensive look at the health of terrestrial and marine mammals across the globe. It is a companion assessment to similar documentation of the world's amphibians, released four years ago by IUCN.

"Mammals are important because they play key roles in ecosystems and provide important benefits to humans," Smith explained. "If you lose a mammal, you often are in danger of losing many other species."

The assessment shows that at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction. At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500. The real situation could be much worse as 836 mammals are listed as "data deficient."

The culprits driving this precarious position include habitat loss and over exploitation for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, global warming and over exploitation for marine mammals, Smith said.

Follow link for full article.From the report: From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated... more

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Public Land Seizure for Military Bombing Range Threatens California Desert and Desert Tortoise

The Bureau of Land Management has issued a Notice of Proposed Legislative Withdrawal to enable the eventual transfer of 365,906 acres of fragile public land in the Mojave Desert to the U.S. Marine Corps for bombing, tank training and other live fire exercises.

The lands identified by the Marine Corps for its Air Ground Combat Center training grounds near Twentynine Palms include habitat critical for survival of the threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) and desert bighorn sheep. The Marine Corps says it needs the expansion for national security.

National security doesn't require seizing and bombing public lands and threatened species habitat, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. The public needs more explanation on the need for the proposed expansion under which deserts and wildlife that are already in decline will fall victim to tank treads, heavy artillery and other destructive military activity.

Today's proposal is the latest in a string of threats to the tortoise. Having survived more than a million years in California's deserts, desert tortoise numbers are now crashing, particularly in the West Mojave, where much of the expansion would occur. The population decline is due to numerous factors, including disease, habitat degradation, crushing by vehicles, military and suburban development, and predators. Because of its dwindling numbers, the desert tortoise, California's official state reptile, is now protected under both federal and state endangered species acts. The expansion could also lead to additional disastrous tortoise relocations. Nearly 2,000 tortoises are already being experimentally relocated for the expansion of Fort Irwin, an Army post about 25 miles north of the Marine Corps base. That effort so far has resulted in unexpectedly high tortoise mortality rates.

In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a new draft recovery plan that would weaken protections for the tortoise. The plan provides only vague descriptions of recovery actions actions that are not derived from the best available science. Recently, population genetics studies have identified the desert tortoise in the western portion of the Mojave Desert as distinctly different from its relatives to the northern, eastern, and southern portions. This finding sheds new light on why increased conservation and relocation success are more important than ever for the Fort Irwin effort.

The legacy of one million years of evolutionary history should not fall victim to our president's failed war, Anderson said. Endangered species remain the Bush administration's very lowest priority and in its final days, the administration appears to have set its sights on speeding the desert tortoise towards extinction.
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They say they need this space as it is a national security issue? Hasn't their war killed enough?The Bureau of Land Management has issued a Notice of Proposed Legislative Withdrawal... more

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Nobelity:Movie trailer

A stunning look at the world’s most pressing problems through the eyes of nine... more

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Biodiversity: Press for change: Stop the biofuels targets

Biofuels are a false solution to climate change and are doing much more harm than good.

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Mass amphibian extinction going on, say scientists

Devastating die-offs of amphibians are a sign that a “mass extinction” is underway on our planet—brought on by us, two scientists say.

“Many scientists argue that we are either entering or in the midst of [Earth’s] sixth great mass extinction,” wrote the researchers in a paper published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species support that claim, they added.

“There’s no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm,” said David Wake, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the study. “Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn’t. The fact that they’re cutting out now should be a lesson.”

New species arise and old species die off all the time, but sometimes the extinction numbers far outweigh the emergence of new species. Extreme cases of this are called mass extinctions. There have been five in our planet’s history before now.

The new one is different—it’s apparently caused by us, Wake said. The study is co-authored by Wake and biologist Vance Vredenburg of the university at Berkeley and San Francisco State University.

When the current extinction started is debatable, Wake said. It may have been 10,000 years ago, when humans first came from Asia to the Americas and hunted many of the large mammals to extinction. It may have started after the Industrial Revolution, when the human population exploded. Or, we might be seeing the start right now, Wake said. But no matter what the start date, extinction rates have undeniably dramatically increased over the last few decades, Wake declared.

The global amphibian extinction is a particularly bleak example, he added. In 2004, researchers found that nearly one-third of amphibian species are threatened, and many of the non-threatened species are on the wane. Wake studies amphibians in the Sierra Nevada in the United States. The picture is as grim there as elsewhere, he said. “We have these great national parks here that are about as close as you can get to absolute preserves, and there have been really startling drops in amphibian populations there, too,” Wake said.

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Global warming and habitat constriction are two other major killers of frogs around the world, Wake said. And the Sierra Nevada amphibians are also susceptible to poisonous winds carrying pesticides from Central Valley croplands. “The frogs have really been hit by a one-two punch,” Wake said, “although it’s more like a one-two-three-four punch.”

The frogs are not the only victims in this mass extinction, Wake added. Scientists studying other organisms have seen similarly dramatic effects. “Our work needs to be seen in the context of all this other work, and the news is very, very grim,” Wake said. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health helped support the study.

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Are we next?Devastating die-offs of amphibians are a sign that a... more

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Vietnam illegal wildlife trade eats away at biodiversity: reports

Vietnam's appetite for illegal wildlife meat and demand for traditional medicine... more

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Half of all primate species face extinction

A new study warns that 48% of the world's primates species face extinction.... more

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Japanese seaweed found in Scottish waters threatens native species

A Japanese seaweed has been found in Scottish waters and could threaten the diversity... more

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UNEP- Bidiversity art and environment

Get through the opening statements and listen to Ahmed Djoghlaf on Biodiversity

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YouTube - Ocean Observations Biodiversity Video

We should save the oceans.

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Species extinction underestimated: species could be wiped out 100 times faster

Endangered species could become extinct 100 times faster than estimated. According to... more

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Climate change threatens 4,000 species of fish, corals

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Caribbean monk seal confirmed extinct; Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals next?

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'Gorillas in the Mist' National Park victim of severe illegal forest clearing

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How Much Nature is Enough? // “Does the world need leatherback turtles?"

..the leatherback question is of course a cover for the real question you and others... more

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