First pictures from sealed-off Bakun dam zone reveal social and environmental disaster

BASEL, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has today disclosed a series of shocking pictures from the Bakun dam exclusion zone showing disturbing poverty and environmental destruction in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo. A BMF research team has managed to overcome the tight security measures preventing journalists or NGOs to travel […]

U.S. urban forests losing four million trees per year

WASHINGTON, DC, 23 February 2012 (ENS) – New Orleans, Houston, and Albuquerque are losing trees faster than any other U.S. cities, and across the country tree cover is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, finds new U.S. Forest Service research published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Researchers […]

Drought toll on urban forests in Texas: 5.6 million trees and counting

2010   2011 By Matt Dietrichson16 February 2012 About 5.6 million trees in cities and towns across Texas were killed by last year’s record-setting drought, the Texas Forest Service has estimated after studying before-and-after satellite imagery. This “dramatic” toll on the state’s urban forest is “a slow-moving disaster, not like a hurricane or ice storm,” […]

Hope fades for lone pine tree survivor of Japan tsunami

By Chris Meyers and Elaine Lies; Editing by Robert Birsel22 February 2012 RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) – Very little was left standing in the Japanese city of Rikuzentakata after a huge tsunami tore through nearly a year ago. Even the centuries-old pine forest by the sea that had long been a symbol of the city was […]

NASA maps height of Earth’s forests

Contact: Alan Buis, Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov, 818-354-0474      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.17 February 2012 PASADENA, California – A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth’s forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while […]

Pro-oil lobby urged feds to deliver climate-change solutions as Canada’s environmental reputation sinks

By Mike De Souza, mdesouza@postmedia.com, Postmedia News 12 February 2012 OTTAWA – A taxpayer-funded pro-oil lobbying retreat, involving Canada’s European diplomats and industry, has urged the federal government to deliver real climate change solutions to restore the country’s sagging environmental reputation. The two-day retreat, held 1-2 February 2011 in London, England, concluded that Canada’s foreign […]

Canada to kill thousands of wolves to reverse caribou decline caused by tar-sands development

By Dean Kuipers9 February 2012 Woodland caribou herds in Canada are declining, and tar sands development is a big part of the reason why. But Canada’s national and provincial governments know what do about that: Kill the wolves. That’s the crux of new posts by both Grist and the National Wildlife Federation, which are following […]

Graph of the Day: Yale Environmental Performance Index for 132 Countries, 2000-2010

The 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and Pilot Trend EPI (Trend EPI) rank 132 countries on 22 performance indicators in ten policy categories and two overarching objectives that reflect facets of Environmental Health and Ecosystem Vitality. These indicators provide a gauge of how close countries are to environmental policy goals. The EPI’s proximity-to-target methodology facilitates […]

Three years on, displaced Mau farmers remain in camps – Three billion shillings needed to resettle families

[Desdemona’s been following this story since the beginning: Mau forest evictees. It’s a true climate refugee tragedy and emblematic of the kinds of terrible decisions nations will be forced to make as large swaths of the planet become uninhabitable.] By Peter Kahare24 January 2012 RIFT VALLEY, Kenya (IPS) – Six-year-old Victor Muruga points to a […]

New pollution site: Dead Trees, Dying Forests

Prominent doom blogger Gail Zawacki, of Wit’s End fame, has succumbed to the demands of her high-school-aged kid and created a new website for her collection of photographs and scientific papers. Here’s how Gail describes the new site: I hadn’t paid much attention to climate change, even though I saw An Inconvenient Truth when it […]

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