Deforestation. Environmental Threats. New study reveals scale of persistent illegal tiger trade. Bangkok, Thailand, 7th March 2013—Parts of more than 1400 Tigers have been seized across Asia in the past 13 years, according to TRAFFIC’s latest analysis of confiscations, which includes new data for 2010-2012.
Reduced to Skin and Bones Revisited finds that parts of at least 1425 Tigers had been seized across all but one of the 13 Tiger range countries between 2000 and 2012. For Cambodia alone, no seizures were recorded at all during the period. Although it is not yet possible to show a definite trend, the analysis provides clear evidence that illegal trade in Tigers, their parts and products, persists as a major conservation concern, says TRAFFIC.
A total of 654 seizures of Tiger parts ranging from skin to bones, to teeth, claws and skulls took place during this period, an average of 110 Tigers killed for trade per year or just over two per week. Under agreements made at earlier CITES meetings, Tiger range countries have to state what action they have taken to protect Asian big cats. Indonesia's Plague of Fire. Abdur drew deeply on a yellowish kretek, the Indonesian cigarette blended of tobacco and cloves.
The kretek gives off a spicy scent and a sweet taste that I've always associated with the romantic East I discovered as a fledgling foreign correspondent. But it's rough on the lungs. Unlike me, Abdur didn't seem to be giving any thought to his lungs. "Fire is good," he explained patiently during the course of a long and convoluted conversation through an interpreter. "Burning the land means we'll have enough food to fill our bellies for the year. Fire is also free. This time, taking advantage of a prolonged drought, Abdur had burned off much more than usual—the equivalent of five football fields. The 1997 drought, Indonesia's most severe in 50 years, was largely the result of El Niño. And more palm oil. Laying the bulk of the blame on those like Abdur Rani who burn to survive—which official propaganda and much of the resultant news coverage did—muddies the reality.
Climate Change Is Altering Rainfall Patterns Worldwide. Global precipitation patterns are being moved in new directions by climate change, a new study has found.
The research, published yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first study to find the signal of climate change in global precipitation shifts across land and ocean. "It's worth saying that this is another grain of sand on that vast pile of evidence that climate change is real and is occurring," said study co-author Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Climate models predict that the addition of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere will shift precipitation in two main ways. The first shift is in a strengthening of existing precipitation patterns. This is commonly called "wet get wetter, dry get drier. " Warmer air traps more water vapor, and scientists expect that additional water to fall in already wet parts of the Earth. "It's really hard to tease out that signal," Marvel said. Rain Forest. In Brazil, which houses 30 percent of the remaining tropical rain forest on Earth, more than 50,000 square miles of rain forest were lost to deforestation between 2000 and 2005.
Biologists worry about the long-term consequences. Drought may be one. Some rain forests, including the Amazon, began experiencing drought in the 1990s, possibly due to deforestation and global warming. Efforts to discourage deforestation, mainly through sustainable-logging initiatives, are underway on a very limited basis but have had a negligible impact so far. The rain forest is nearly self-watering. Plants in the rain forest grow very close together and contend with the constant threat of insect predators. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 70 percent of the anti-cancer plants identified so far are rain forest plants.
Many trees and plants, like orchids, have been removed from the rain forest and cultivated. The networked beauty of forests - Suzanne Simard.
Rainforests. Rainforest 2.