TAKE ACTION!

Notorious Malaysian illegal loggers Rimbunan Hijau [search] have diversified into mining in primary rainforests, in East Sepik threatening unique nomadic cave-dwellers and their 20,000 year old ancient stenciled cave art. Support the local resistance and demand an end to indigenous genocide and rainforest ecocide in the name of false development that is little more than pillaging and plundering of cultural and biological diversity.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Terrorism is the act of inspiring terror in others by harming presumed innocents. For many, unjust postmodern life on a dying planet is full of PERVASIVE TERROR. The term terrorism has been usurped by the nanny military state to mean only politically motivated violence that targets the public. While such murder is never justified, in fact it occurs rarely and is not a high-profile threat to most. It is one of the manageable costs of being free.

Infrequent criminal acts, of the sort that recently occurred in Boston and occur much more frequently around the world, are tragic but best handled by the criminal justice system. America has become such a drama-queen nation that it continues to incautiously react to such dastardly acts with endless pundit pontificating, needlessly giving up hard-earned revolutionary civil liberties, and lashing out militarily in a counterproductive manner. Doing so breeds the next generation of criminal terrorists and ensures further blowback.

America is not special. In fact, many acts of terror occur around the ecologically and socially collapsing Earth for which America is responsible. The far greater threat issues from systematic targeting of the poor and of nature by America’s and other nations’ privileged elite. The rich and their corporations, police, and military routinely practice systematic terrorism that is much grander in scale, with devastating impact.

To name but a few: two billion people live on less than $2 a day, at least 3,000 kids die daily from bad water, and millions of innocents fear random drone attacks. Where are the outrage and the manhunts to bring those responsible for these preventable tragedies to justice? Their terror is no less heartfelt than that of the pampered elite.

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir

"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed -- chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got..." - John Muir

"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it." - John Muir

“By choosing to sell FSC-certified wood, The Home Depot is walking its talk.” - Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

John Muir was one of the greatest protectors of forests and nature who ever lived. He was connected to my hometown Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended college. He later went on to drive the creation of the National Park system and to found the Sierra Club.

Most important, Muir took an uncompromising position that old-growth forest wildernesses must be protected for their intrinsic values. He was bold and brash, and he waged verbal and written warfare with the likes of Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, over the fate of old-growth forest wildernesses. Their battle over the relative merits of preservation versus conservation of natural wildlands continues to rage today as Earth's last remaining naturally evolved primary forests are industrially cleared and diminished.

Given Muir's absolute commitment to not logging primary forests, I am certain he would be deeply troubled over the ascendency of old-growth logging greenwasher extraordinaire Michael Brune as the head of the Sierra Club. Mr. Brune spoke Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin, and was not expected to mention his years promoting old-growth forest logging.

Human growth in population and industry, at the expense of ecosystems is destroying the natural world, causing mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and economic as well as biosphere collapse. The challenge facing humanity, the greatest challenge of all time, is to foster a political, social, and economic transformation that realigns the human project with its ecosystem habitat.

The corporate-owned American two-party duopoly has proven to be corrupt, unethical, and profoundly ecologically unsustainable. It is time for a political agenda that values all species and ecosystems and plans for the long-term well-being of humanity and all life. It is time for global political Earth revolution to sustain land, water, and air and to achieve universal human rights and economic fairness.

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry
Personal essays from Earth's Newsdesk with Ecological Internet

ECOLOGY CENTRAL

Earth is collapsing and dying. Humanity is systematically destroying the biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, and biosphere upon which all life depends. Earth's ecosystems continue to be plundered for profit as if air, land, water and oceans have no intrinsic value. Climate change is an important yet singular part of a more widespread collapse of the global biosphere – the thin mantle of life arrayed in ecosystems surrounding the planet – as industrial growth destroys nature for stuff.

There remains only a short time to stop the industrial growth machine from irreparably destroying the biosphere. There is NO replacement, no backup biosphere. Either the human family comes together now to cut emissions and protect ecosystems, or being may well end – certainly well-being.

The central tenets of a Green Liberty political philosophy affirm that abrupt climate change, global ecosystem loss, and biosphere collapse threaten the well-being of the entire human family and of all life. This crisis is only survivable if we drastically cut emissions and move at once to protect natural ecosystems. Continued exponential human and industrial growth at the expense of life-giving ecosystems can only end in ecological and social collapse. We have met ecocide, and it is us. Yet not even this ecocidal state of affairs excuses loss of humanity's inherent rights, freedom, and duties.

TAKE ACTION!

The Areng Valley's rainforests in the Cardamom Mountains [search] of south-west Cambodia is threatened with flooding by a Chinese hydropower dam. This biodiversity gem - home of the Siamese crocodile and indigenous Khmer Daeum - is to be destroyed for a relatively small amount of electricity. Standing large, connected, and ecologically intact old-growth forests are required for local and global ecological sustainability and well-being.

Tiny Avon, New Jersey, is moving forward with plans to rebuild their ocean-front boardwalk - recently destroyed by Hurricane Sandy – for the second time in 20 years using ill-gotten old-growth rainforest timbers. Loss of primary rainforests is a primary cause of abrupt climate change [search], as well as mass extinction, social disintegration, and ecosystem decline. Unless we break the cycle of destroying ecosystems for luxury consumption, we can expect further climate weirding and biosphere collapse. Tell Avon to please follow New York Cities lead and use readily available alternatives.

TAKE ACTION!
http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/sendsm.aspx?id=rainforest_boardwalk

Essay by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia – the Earth System or biosphere – is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth's land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it "development."

Industrial growth's destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.

An important new report finds that while the Australian government has made pledges to protect Tasmania's priceless temperate rainforests [search], yet shockingly industrial clearcut logging of old-growth continues in what is to be a World Heritage Area. Important forest wildernesses covering some 170,000 hectares and including Butlers Gorge; and the Florentine, Weld and Styx valleys, have been nominated to be added to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and could finally be given protection after decades of protests. Alarmingly, however, industrial scale clear felling is still continuing within those forests, with timbers being sold as "eco ply" by the Malaysian timber mafia. From the top of the "Observer Tree" in the middle of this ancient forest, conservationist Miranda Gibson is calling for your help to protect these globally significant forests. Miranda's action is part of long running grassroots campaigns to protect Tasmania's forests, which Ecological Internet has successfully participated in for nearly 20 years, including leading international protests which helped get notorious Gunns logging to stop logging old-growth forests. We need your help again to call on the Australian government to honor their international obligations and protect these World Heritage nominated old-growth temperate rainforests from industrial destruction.

Abstract

Planetary boundary science defines key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that precede local or global ecosystem collapse and threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems enter into the nine originally defined planetary boundaries only indirectly, through boundaries such as biodiversity and land use. This observational study and literature review aggregate what is known regarding the quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems - particularly old-growth and primary forests - necessary to sustain the biosphere. The study seeks to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth System must remain as connected and intact core ecological areas and agroecological buffers to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons? Two preeminent considerations are connectivity of large ecosystem patches, enabling them to persist as the matrix for the landscape, and critical collapse of the dominant large habitat patch – or "percolating cluster" – into smaller, more isolated habitats, in a sea of human development. This transition, which has been found to occur at about 40% habitat loss in landscapes and bioregions, is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale. An example of the importance of connected ecosystems is illustrated by the effort to maintain Asian elephants as a viable umbrella species in the Western Ghats bioregion of India. Elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic examples of the myriad types of flows on a connected landscape that make life possible.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that across scales 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must remain, setting the boundary at 66% as a precaution. It is concluded that sustaining the biosphere requires that natural and semi-natural ecosystems, and their biogeochemical flows, must remain the context for human endeavors. This in turn requires large core ecological areas and geographically well-connected ecosystem processes and patterns as the majority of the global and fractal landscape matrix. Further, again based on ecology's percolation theory, two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems to be maintained must be protected as ecological core areas, for the ecological patterns and processes of the other third - composed of human managed ecosystems - to be sustained as buffer and transition zones. Thus strict protection is proposed for 44% of global land, 22% as agro-ecological buffers, and 33% as zones of sustainable human use. Because humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric; thus the biosphere may already have lost its global percolating cluster. If so, with diminished connectivity, the global ecosystem now exists as islands of nature within a sea of humanity, and it is urgent to protect large, relatively intact terrestrial ecosystems that remain, especially old-growth and primary forests. To ensure global ecological sustainability, it will be necessary to re-connect matrices of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of context to all life. Otherwise, it is hypothesized the global biosphere may collapse, and Earth System perish.

*Version 1.1 making edits to shorten for publication from paper presented at Kerala Eco-Conference.

TAKE ACTION!

Please support Ecuador's Kichwa villagers, who the Guardian newspaper reports vow to resist oil prospecting by state-backed company Petroamazonas at all costs. The Kichwa tribe has said they are ready to fight to the death to protect their rainforests which cover 70,000 hectares, adjacent and part of Yasuni [search] National Park, and huge additional Ecuadorean rainforests are threatened by new industrial oil auctions as well. Industrial development of rainforests for oil in the Amazon has a long history of destroying ecosystems including fouling water. Tell President Correa standing, intact old-growth forest ecosystems are a requirement for local advancement, and local and global ecological sustainability; and demand the invasion of indigenous nations' rainforests be halted.

Proposing a planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss

By Dr. Glen Barry, December 16, 2012

Paper presented at the Kerala Law Academy International Law Conference on Conservation of Forests, Wildlife and Ecology, December 15-17, 2012

Theme - The Legal Regime and Measures for Conservation of Bio Diversity and Protection of Ecological Balance of Western Ghats

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." – Anne Frank

*Version 1.0, not yet peer reviewed, or final edits for publication in conference proceedings. Here is the most recent version entitled "Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse" being readied for publication.

Review Paper Abstract

Planetary boundary science continues the study of requirements to avoid ecosystem collapse and to achieve global ecological sustainability, by defining key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems do not enter into the nine originally defined boundaries ranging from climate change to water availability, except peripherally through other boundaries such as land use and biodiversity. A rigorous research agenda is necessary to determine what quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems are required across landscapes so as to sustain the biosphere. This includes a spatially explicit way of indicating what extent of a landscape, bioregion, continent and global Earth System must remain in the form of connected and intact core ecological areas and semi-natural agroecological buffers, in order to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons. Connectivity of large ecosystem patches which remain the matrix for the landscape is a preeminent consideration. When ~60% of a natural ecosystem habitat remains, after just under 40% of the ecosystem has been destroyed, the landscape is said to percolate, and we see critical collapse of the "percolating cluster" – the dominant large habitat patch constituting the matrix of the landscape – into smaller, more distant habitat, in a sea of human development. This critical deterioration of habitat connectivity continues so that at or near 50% loss of a landscape or bioregon's natural vegetation, the natural habitat percolates from people within ecosystems, to natural islands surrounded by human works. This transition is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must be maintained across scales – with the boundary set at 66% as a precaution – as a safe space not only for humanity but for all life and to maintain the long-term viability of the biosphere. It is thought that loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems aggregates from the local and regional scale, yet disrupts planetary process with this global scale threshold. It is hypothesized that ensuring natural ecosystems and their biogeochemical flows remain the context for human endeavors is a requirement to sustain the biosphere for the long term, and that fundamentally this requires large core ecological areas, and the critical connectivity of ecosystem processes and patterns, as the global and fractal landscape matrix. It is further proposed on the basis of ecology's percolation theory that two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems must be protected as ecological core areas (in total 44% of the global land mass as intact ecological cores, 22% as agroecological, agroforestry and managed forest buffers, and transition zones), to ensure the ecological integrity of the semi-natural agroecological landscapes, to maintain critical ecosystem connectivity across scales, and encompass semi-natural landscapes and bioregions within a matrix of intact nature to ensure that their own ecological patterns and processes are sustainable. Up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric, so the biosphere is likely to have already lost its global percolating cluster. If indeed bioregional and global scaled landscapes are similar to landscape and bioregional pattern, terrestrial ecosystem connectivity is already critically lacking, and the global ecosystem now exists as patches of nature within a sea of humanity. It is urgent to protect most of what remains and to begin reconstructing connected ecological landscape matrixes of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of top-down context to human and all life.

To have meaning in guiding global ecological sustainability policy, these continental and global observations – and proposed 66% presence / 44% protected – planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss must be grounded in real-life landscape and bioregional conservation considerations. An example are efforts to achieve ecological sustainability, including maintaining continued viable populations of Asian elephants in the Western Ghats bioregion of India, particularly within Kerala state, as an umbrella species. The Asian elephant requires extensive and adequate natural habitat for its survival, and the Western monsoon depends upon forest-dependent pressure gradients – and thus the provision of both provides for water, clean air, soil, pollinators, and other ecosystem services for the region, nation, and biosphere. An initial expansive regional ecosystem mapping exercise that seeks to identify natural gradients in ecological importance has taken place in Kerala, but its largely top-down processes have faced organized socio-political resistance, it is not clear the scientifically valid mapping processes have enough understanding and support, and the legal structure is not in place to tie its requirements for local and regional sustainability to laws. As a real-world example, elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic and widely visible examples of the myriad types of flows that continue on a connected landscape, making life possible. It is suggested that as go the Western Ghats' and Kerala's Asian elephants and their habitat, so shall go the biosphere, and that it is crucial to build awareness that healthy ecosystems are essential to both local advancement and global sustainability. On the basis of taking such an ecosystem and landscape approach to the needs of Earth System sustainability, and given pernicious trends of ecosystem loss and decline, it is concluded that more attention is needed to prevent worst-case outcomes including biosphere collapse and a lifeless Earth, particularly because of abrupt climate change and ecosystem loss. A massive and global program to protect and restore natural ecosystems – funded by a carbon tax on fossil fuels – is presented as the sort of policy approach necessary at this time to avoid biosphere collapse. Humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, which, if current trends in ecological loss and diminishment continue, may collapse or die as a result.

By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI)
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

(Canada) – Today Greenpeace Canada announced it is withdrawing from the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement [search] which it secretly negotiated and endorsed in 2010, and which relegates 43 million hectares of Canada’s old growth Boreal forests to industrial logging, for a temporary moratorium and vague promises of future caribou habitat protection elsewhere. Not surprisingly, as Ecological Internet predicted at the time [1], these promises have been violated. Greenpeace itself now alleges the largest destroyer of Canada's boreal forests, Resolute Forest Products (formerly AbitibiBowater) has been cutting new logging roads into caribou habitat in five sites in the northern parts of the Saguenay Lac St-Jean region of Quebec [2].

Ecological Internet applauds Greenpeace for admitting its error, and demands that – in Canada and globally – they stop secretly negotiating deals with industrial loggers, stop greenwashing primary forest logging as being sustainable, and resign from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) effective immediately. Since 2008, Ecological Internet has been protesting Greenpeace's incautious support for FSC certified primary forest logging, and ill-conceived policies in the Canadian boreal in particular. Greenpeace is a long-time supporter of old-growth forest logging, claiming as a founder, past chairman of the Board, and long-time membership in the FSC that it is sustainable. FSC greenwashes old-growth logging across an area two times the size of Texas to meet growing demand for "green" timbers [3].

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Continuing to Protect India's Asian Elephant Habitat Together

Ecological Internet needs your help to continue protecting Asian elephants and to define cutting-edge science on protecting ecosystems and sustaining humanity's one shared biosphere. Please donate now: http://www.rainforestportal.com/shared/donate/ .

November 26, 2006

Dear colleagues,

Because of our success together protecting South India's Asian elephant habitat [search], I have been granted the honor of being the academic convener of a major ecological sustainability conference in Kerala, India, in mid-December. There I will be presenting a paper on the need to protect 50% of terrestrial ecosystems for the sustainability of the biosphere, highlighting the habitat needs of Kerala's Asian elephants, whose critical habitat we – you and I – have together protected on several occasions. To have the time and resources to carry out this biocentric ecological science, Ecological Internet needs your support now to bring this work to completion. Please donate what you can at http://www.rainforestportal.com/shared/donate/ .

In 2009 we together – you, local conservationists, and I - stopped a Neutrino Observatory (INO), a massive underground experimental physics project, being built in prime Indian elephant habitat in southern India. Later we stopped a road that would fragment this most important elephant migration corridor. Just this past March, with local partners, we prodded the Tamil Nadu state government to grant legal protections to vital elephant migration corridors. Without our global protests, the largest population of Asian elephants would be even more endangered, perhaps even gone. Yet hope remains for these magnificent creatures because of our work together.

TAKE ACTION!

Recent revelations of illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) rainforests [search] demonstrate yet again that globally logging of old growth forests remains irredeemably corrupt and inevitably devastating to rainforest ecology. After years of international assistance and a "moratorium" on new rainforest logging, it is revealed that local permits for individuals to clear rainforest are being abused by the government and industrial loggers, even as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and NGOs pressure for "sustainable" industrial destruction of Congo's primary rainforests. For DRC's local people and the biosphere, it is time to ban old growth logging in the DRC and globally. The DRC government must be convinced to abandon inherently corrupt industrial-scale rainforest clearance for log export – before the nation's rainforests, ecological sustainability, and future development potential are gone forever – and be justly compensated for doing so. Instead they must focus upon developing ways for local communities to benefit from standing old forests. Both local and global ecological sustainability depend upon doing so.

There exists near unanimous scientific consensus that abrupt climate change [search] is occurring, that it is caused by burning fossil fuels and clearing natural ecosystems, and that observable and escalating impacts indicate it may be worse than worst case predictions, threatening the habitability of our one shared biosphere. Almost certainly there is no way to stop entirely the warming and climate weirding; it is already too far progressed. Yet our immediate actions in the short term to cut – or fail to cut – carbon and greenhouse gas emissions will determine its severity, whether it will eventually stabilize or become runaway, and whether it is survivable. The single policy action that could occur most quickly, and significantly reduce emissions, is to place a price upon emitting carbon through a tax. The funds raised from a carbon tax [search] can replace other taxes, be returned to low-income earners, and be used for other laudable goals including paying down the deficit, developing low-emission energy systems, and protecting and restoring global ecosystems. Abrupt climate change will not be appeased, but it can be taxed, and thus reduced, through first a national and eventually a global carbon tax.

TAKE ACTION!
http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/sendsm.aspx?id=carbon_tax

** You will be forwarded to one further important alert to get CNN to stop greenwashing fossil fuels, and then asked to support our "End Abrupt Climate Change Campaign" at:
https://ecologicalinternet.cloverdonations.com/abrupt-climate-change/

CNN has jumped the shark and is no longer a reliable, independent news source, as it has become increasingly indebted to fossil fuel advertising, and greenwashes abrupt climate change. CNN coal funding in particular has resulted in infrequent and biased daily news coverage of ecological issues, and has abetted US Presidential candidates' silence on climate change. As currently funded, if CNN told the truth on abrupt climate change, global ecosystem collapse, and the role of fossil fuels in these crises; it is doubtful whether CNN would even exist after the coal and other fossil fuel industries pulled their advertising. CNN must indicate how they will change their business model to allow improved, propaganda free, and increased coverage of the huge amount of daily news regarding our fossil fuel addiction; North America's tar sands, coal and fracking ecocide; and the many looming global ecological emergencies.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell

Drones are love. Waiting is hope. Ecosystems are resources. Rhetoric is action. Justice is murder. Climate change is votes. Obama is god-like. War is peace. – Obama and Democrats

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Listening to the US Presidential election, you wouldn't know Earth faces ecological emergencies including abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse in water, forests, and food. The United States and world are less free, green and peaceful places – largely because human growth has met ecological limits. Ongoing rollbacks of human rights and civil liberties, as well as the state of perma-war waged by drones terrorizing entire populations, is a direct result of environmental decline caused by industrial growth and the resulting scramble for oil and other resources in a globalized world.

The human family faces its greatest planetary emergency ever as Earth, humanity and all life are poised upon the precipice of total ecological, social and economic collapse. Earth's biosphere – the thin mantle of life from underground, through terrestrial ecosystems, to the top of the atmosphere – is being destroyed. Fisheries, soils, the atmosphere, forests, wetlands, water, oceans, food and other ecosystems are uniformly in decline or simply gone. Global ecological crises are destroying conditions necessary for a habitable Earth, and our descent into resource anarchy has begun.

Global change and ecological science are clear that we are near or have surpassed planetary boundaries required to maintain a livable Earth. We know with certainty that endless growth on a finite planet is impossible. Humanity powers down, abandons growth for a steady state economy, learns to live more simply – but well – and share, or the existence of all life, including our own, is threatened.

TAKE ACTION!

New logging contracts have been issued across 40% of Liberia's primary rainforests [search] in only two years of resumed industrial logging. A full one quarter of Liberia’s total landmass – half of its best primary rainforests – were granted using secretive and illegal logging permits. Malaysian logging giant Samling, who has a long history of illegal logging from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea, is a major beneficiary. Such major corruption – after years of logging fueled war, $30 million in international subsidies for "sustainable" rainforest logging, and a resumption of logging only since 2010 – shows clearly that Liberia's rainforest logging remains irredeemably corrupt and inevitably ecologically devastating. What if the $30 million invested in resuming "sustainable logging" had been used instead to find ways for local communities to benefit from standing old forests? For local peoples and the biosphere, it is time to ban primary forest logging in Liberia and globally.

Dear forest protection colleagues,

I am pleased to announce a major international conference on conservation of India's forests, wild life, and ecology; and to issue a call for academic papers and attendance. The conference will occur in mid-December, 2012, in Kerala, India, located in the Western Ghats, which is known for its lush ecosystems, tremendous biodiversity - including viable Asian elephant populations - and high levels of human development, as well as human encroachment upon these vital ecosystems. Noted ecologist Dr. Madhav Gadgil, author of the important and controversial Kerala ecological land sensitivity designations, as well as Dr. V. S. Vijayan, Chairman of Salim Ali Foundation and Former Chairman of Kerala Bio-Diversity Board, have indicated they will be participating in the conference.

The Kerala Eco Conference will emphasize global aspects of Kerala's ecological sustainability issues, placing issues of Western Ghats' broad environmental challenges within the larger international perspective of climate change, mass extinction, loss of ecosystem services, international environment law, landscape planning, and land use laws and policy. It is desired that various countries' practices as to protection of their hills and mountains' terrestrial ecology, and protecting watershed functionality and wildlife corridors in their countries, can provide an essential global view to the proceedings. An emphasis will be upon biocentric planning and law for India's ecology, people, elephants and other biodiversity, and their future together.

TAKE ACTION to protect your seeds and thus healthy, natural food from Monsanto's GMOs

TAKE ACTION!

From seeds come all life, power, wealth and well-being. Control over seeds – and knowing whether our food products have been genetically modified [search] – means control over our lives, our food safety, and our freedom. Open pollinated, non-genetically modified seeds are a human right. We must not recognize any law that illegitimately makes seed the private property of corporations. And we must assert the right to know what we're eating, through labeling of all genetically engineered foods. It is time to reclaim Thoreau's faith in a seed from Monsanto. Please send and share this alert, and join the many initiatives globally to do so.