Group items tagged

British shoppers could be unknowingly buying wooden furniture, flooring and even food items that are byproducts of destructive illegal logging in the Amazon, environmental campaigners are warning. Friends of the Earth is calling on ministers to make companies reveal the source of their products in order to stop the black market trade. Last week human rights watchdog Global Witness revealed that 185 environmental activists were killed in 2015, many of whom had been trying to stop illegal logging in the Amazon. An estimated 80% of Brazilian hardwood is illegally logged.

A hedge fund manager has downgraded Lumber Liquidators' stock over the company's alleged links to illegal logging in the Russian Far East Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1202-lumber-liquidators-stock-illegal-logging.html#0g9VRO8vX0tA1BP8.99

A businessman whose company kidnapped and violently assaulted environmentalists investigating illegal logging in a national park is set to earn millions of dollars from Thursday's initial public offering of Sawit Sumbermas Sarana, a palm oil company with holdings in Indonesian Borneo. Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1211-ssms-ipo.html#UUOhVkZxx6UTk8Rp.99

  (LUIS ACOSTA/Getty Images) Efforts to prevent illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon can reduce the impact of certain diseases, a study has found. Logging creates mosquito-friendly areas and subsequently increases malaria infections, while strict forestry regulations can reduce infection rates for several diseases by limiting the number of people passing through forested areas

Illegal logging in Brazil poses a serious problem for businesses producing legal wood products.

British Columbia will protect around 85% of the Great Bear Rainforest, which is "one of the world's largest temperate rainforests." The additional 15% will be available for logging under the "most stringent" standards in North America.

Much of timber exported from Peru to the U.S. in January 2015 was illegally sourced, according to a verification report released yesterday by the U.S. government. The findings have prompted U.S. officials to call on Peru to step up the fight against illegal logging and trade.

Bordering Myanmar on the southeast and the Indian states of Tripura on the north and Mizoram on the east, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is one of these areas. Characterized by semi-evergreen forest that is considered part of the highly endangered Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, CHT is a refuge for at least 26 globally threatened species, making it a critical conservation priority. But conservation efforts in the region have historically been challenged by the very remoteness and political instability that have helped protect it from deforestation seen in other parts of Bangladesh. That protection is now disappearing with the influx of settlers from other regions who are increasingly clearing forests for agriculture, logging trees for timber and firewood, and hunting wildlife. In other words, time is running out for Bangladesh's last rainforest and its traditional tribes.

Logging emissions is an important step in securing the transparency that China needs to solve its pollution problems, Mr. Ma argues. Among the harmful pollutants are air particles known as PM2.5, which can enter deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream. In an interview, he talked about the considerable progress he sees in the Chinese government's approach to air pollution, but also how concerns about social unrest continued to constrain discussion of pollution's damage to public health. Before 2013, levels of PM2.5 [the finest and deadliest particulate matter] were not monitored or made public in a single city. Now it's monitored and released in more than 400 cities. China has entered an era when air quality information is released. It's much more transparent. The 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans only referred to "emission reduction targets," so local governments could play games by claiming they had reduced emissions. Now, by saying by what year the PM2.5 must be below a certain amount, it's much harder to fake. The 13th Five-Year Plan is a progressive plan because it says that the public has the right to participate, to monitor, and that it's the public's right to know.

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) has updated the LEED green building rating system in an attempt to stop illegal logging.

The World Wildlife Fund will help protect 100,000 acres of former logging forest in Indonesia's Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, in partnership with Frankfurt Zoological Society, The Orangutan Project, and local communities. The World Wildlife Fund has established a commercial company to generate revenue within the project area to help finance forest protection initiatives.

European climate policies are creating new demand for biomass, which power plants now have an incentive to burn instead of coal. That's leading to dramatically increased logging along the eastern coast of the U.S., even as researchers question the eco-friendliness of biomass-based power generation

Through an ambitious project model combining innovative financing approaches with traditional conservation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and The Orangutan Project (TOP) will join forces with local communities to actively manage the 100,000 acres of former logging forest, known as Bukit Tigapuluh (known as Thirty Hills), to protect rather than exploit the land's natural resources.

While the usual culprits such as farming, ranching and logging are well known, gold mining is fast extending its destructive reach into some of the world's most untouched landscapes, according to research published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

According to the Brazilian NGO's analysis of satellite data, 1,373 square kilometers of rainforest was chopped down between August 2014 and December 2014, a 224 percent increase relative to the prior corresponding period a year before. Forest degradation from selective logging and fires is pacing 664 percent ahead of last year. Forest degradation typically precedes outright clearing.

3M has announced that it will stop relying on Sustainable Forestry Initiative certifications and will conduct its own screening and audits of paper suppliers across its whole supply chain. The move is seen as a victory for environmental activists, who have long argued that SFI is a greenwashing operation with ties to major logging companies. MinnPost.com (3/6)

A new study calculates that the island of Borneo lost nearly 150,000 orangutans in the period between 1999 and 2015, largely as a result of deforestation and killing. There were an estimated 104,700 of the critically endangered apes left as of 2012. The study also warns that another 45,000 orangutans are doomed by 2050 under the business-as-usual scenario, where forests are cleared for logging, palm oil, mining and pulpwood leases. Orangutans are also disappearing from intact forests, most likely being killed, the researchers say.

Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent. The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list. In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies' status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

An estimated 50 to 80 percent of southern wetland forest is now gone, and that which remains provides ecosystem services totaling $500 billion as well as important wildlife habitat. Logging is considered one of the biggest threats to the 35 million acres of remaining wetland forest in the southern U.S., and conservation organizations are saying this threat is coming largely from the wood pellet biomass industry.

Using forests to fuel power plants in Southeast US and Europe