By TOM ALLARD, KALIMANTANDecember 14, 2009 A BOAT trip down the wide brown waters of the Kapuas River and the canals that flow off it, crisscrossing the hinterland of Central Kalimantan, makes for a depressing tour. What was once one of the world’s great swamp peat forests is a tangle of weeds and burnt trees. […]
www.wildmadagascar.org via MongabayJanuary 11, 2010 Madagascar has legalized the export of rosewood logs, possibly ushering in renewed logging of the country’s embattled rainforest parks. The transitional authority led by president Andry Rajoelina, who seized power during a military coup last March, today released a decree that allows the export of rosewood logs harvested from the […]
First it was colonists who put the Ogiek on reserves in Mau Forest. After freedom corrupt officials drove them out as they set up farms. Now a reforestation effort has forced them even farther away. By Robyn Dixon, January 4, 2010 Mau Forest, Kenya – For centuries, the little-known Ogiek people foraged wild honey and […]
Catabolic collapse described by the inimitable Archbishop of Doom, Dmitry Orlov. …The decade will be marked by many instances of autophagy, in business, government, and in the higher echelons of society, as players at all levels find that they are unable to control their appetites or alter their behavior in any meaningful way, even in […]
By Mohamed Ahmed, Reuters Published: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 HARADHEERE, Somalia — In Somalia’s main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate. Heavily armed pirates from the lawless Horn of Africa nation have terrorized shipping lanes in […]
By Altaf Qadri Bhopal, India — Associated Press Published on Thursday, Dec. 03, 2009 2:22AM EST Hundreds of people marched through Bhopal with torches before dawn Thursday to mark the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst industrial disaster and demand the cleanup of toxic chemicals they say still contaminate the Indian city’s soil and water. […]
From Calculated Risk: No one saw this coming … From Bloomberg: Dubai Debt Delay Rattles Confidence in Gulf Borrowers Dubai is shaking investor confidence across the Persian Gulf after its proposal to delay debt payments risked triggering the biggest sovereign default since Argentina in 2001. … Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s cut the […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 25, 2009 Rhino poaching has hit a fifteen-year high, and the rising price for black-market rhino horn is likely the reason why. For the first time in a decade rhino horn is worth more than gold: a kilo of rhino horn is worth approximately 60,000 US dollars while gold is […]
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2009) — A shocking decline in the Russian Federation’s wild tiger population highlights the importance of eliminating trade in and demand for tiger parts, the International Tiger Coalition (ITC) recently said. The alliance of 40 organizations worldwide issued the statement upon news that Siberian tigers may have suffered a serious drop in […]
Cambridge, UK, 10 November 2009—The illicit trade in ivory, which has been increasing in volume since 2004, moved sharply upward in 2009, according to the latest analysis of seizure data in the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS). ETIS, one of the two monitoring systems for elephants under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered […]
