Rainforest Protection Issues Archive

Main | February 2006 »

January 25, 2006

Gas Pipeline Through Heart of Amazon Proposed

Rainforest pipelineSouth American leaders have announced plans to build a massive natural gas pipeline through the Amazon rainforest. Thankfully the $20 billion dollar project is still in the early planning. But if built this may well sound the final death knell for the mighty Amazon. This grotesque ecological sacrilege will set the stage for the final destruction of the world's largest wilderness - creating roads that will draw ranchers and loggers, fragmenting a vital large and contiguous global ecosystem, and polluting water throughout the region. And the economics are dodgy as well as both Brazil and Argentina have ample domestic gas supplies.

January 23, 2006

Humans Push Orangutans to Brink of Extinction

OrangutanA study of orangutan genetics conducted in Malaysia has found strong evidence that humans have pushed orangutans to the brink of extinction. Orangutans found within fragmented rainforests are undergoing a major population collapse. Continued biological homogenization in rainforests is a precursor for broadbased biological decline and collapse worldwide, including human populations. The ape with the big brain is killing itself, all other life, and the Earth they share.

January 12, 2006

Poor Land Planning Destroys Rainforests

rainforest mapThe world's rainforests continue to disappear at an alarming rate despite attempts to 'zone' forests into areas for protection and management, a new report by the Rainforest Foundation reveals. The report, 'Divided Forests', shows that large-scale forest planning exercises in countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and Cameroon have been seriously flawed, resulting in vast areas being allocated to timber companies which then damaged or destroyed the forest. Large-scale 'forest zoning' exercises have also failed to involve people living in the forest and depending on it for their survival.

January 10, 2006

Madagascar to Triple Nature Reserves

lemurMadagascar is a biological treasure trove with at least 10,000 plant species, 316 reptiles, 109 bird species and dozens of species of lemurs. Its government seeks to triple its nature reserves by the end of 2008, and has already successfully protected a million extra hectares. These reserves still fall short of requirements for terrestrial ecosystem sustainability but are amazing in the social context. In Madagascar and throughout the tropics natural areas face a growing threat from poverty and population pressure. The tropical conservation conundrum is meeting local needs while maintaining large natural areas required for their long-term survival and well-being.

January 2, 2006

Panama Power Line Plan to Destroy Darien Gap Rainforest Wilderness

rfprint.jpgPanama and Colombia are planning to construct an electricity transmission line to link their power grids through the remote Darien Gap rainforest -- a 10,000-square-mile swath of impenetrable jungle on the border of Central and South America. This will require cutting a path at least 130 feet wide through virgin rainforest -- opening the area to explosive deforestation, loggers and rebel militias. Please take action now.

Paved Road to Pierce Heart of the Amazon

amazon_rainforest_road.jpgThe Brazilian environmental agency has granted a license to pave BR-163 - the 1,100 mile long north-south highway which cuts through the Amazon. This is certain to increase deforestation in the mighty Amazon rainforest, 17% of which has been deforested over the last four decades. Three-quarters of this deforestation has occurred within 30 miles of paved roads. This is the beginning of the end of the Amazon as a large unfragmented whole, and its ability to maintain its biodiversity and global planetary ecosystem services.

Ecological Internet Launches Rainforest Portal

Focus upon ending ancient rainforest logging and other ecologically sufficient policy responses

(Wisconsin, USA) - A new Rainforest Portal dedicated to protection of the world's remaining tropical rainforests and the rights of their inhabitants is launching today. The new site at http://www.rainforestportal.org/ is the latest is a long list of highly successful environmental portal offerings by Ecological Internet, Inc. The portal provides unprecedented rainforest action, news, search and analysis capabilities.

"Protecting and restoring the Earth's rainforests is a condition for both local and global ecological sustainability," explains Dr. Glen Barry, President of Ecological Internet. "Sadly, rainforest loss and diminishment remain unacceptably high, threatening biosphere function and the very biological fabric of being."

"Climate stabilization, species conservation, freshwater availability and development potential in tropical countries and the world all depend upon maintaining large rainforest ecosystems. The age of industrial rainforest development is over, and the Rainforest Portal will in particular target all parties continuing to carry out and justify first time commercial logging of ancient rainforests. The myth of sustainable ancient old-growth forest logging will be smashed."

As with Ecological Internet's other web sites (1), the Rainforest Portal is dedicated to the pursuit of truly adequate policy responses - in this case, achieving complete protection of the world's remaining rainforests. This sets the effort apart from many rainforest conservation efforts based upon what is easily marketable, making for good public relations and fund-raising, but with patchwork policies that are insufficient and often counter-productive.

"The Rainforest Portal will be different than other types of rainforest conservation organizations generally in existence: bloated bureaucracies, paper tigers and foundation fed compromise collaborationists. And the focus will be tightly upon rainforest conservation. The site will never advocate industrial logging of ancient rainforests as being acceptable in order to appear reasonable and raise money - stealthily selling out what we are sworn to protect."

Ecological Internet is already the home of the world's largest and most frequently used "Forest Conservation Portal" at http://forests.org/ -- which will continue with a world wide forest conservation focus. The Rainforest Portal will continue Forests.org's tradition of ecological science based rainforest conservation advocacy. The site features a modern, functional graphic interface of a type soon to be replicated on all Ecological Internet web sites.

"Working as a rainforest advocate for 17 years, it has long been my dream to build a web advocacy site dedicated to the protection of these ancient ecological and evolutionary masterpieces. This has been hobbled by a string of unreliable partners, but now because of the generosity of hundreds of individual small donors, the dream has become a reality."

Together the Rainforest Portal, Ecological Internet's international network of citizen activists and collaborating groups expect to be saving lots of rainforests in coming years - helping to usher in an era of global rainforest and ecological sustainability.

Contact:
Dr. Glen Barry
President
Ecological Internet, Inc.
P.O. Box 433
Denmark, WI 54208
USA
GlenBarry@EcologicalInternet.org
+1 920 776 1075 phone

###ENDS###

NOTES

1.) In addition to the new Rainforest Portal at < http://www.rainforestportal.org/ >, Ecological Internet's environmental portals include:

Eco Earth -- http://www.EcoEarth.Info/
ClimateArk -- http://www.climateark.org/
Forests.org -- http://forests.org/
WaterConserve -- http://www.waterconserve.info/
Ocean Conserve -- http://www.oceanconserve.info/