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A deforested area of rainforest along the border of the Xingu river in northern Brazil. Photo courtesy: Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images via guardian.co.uk
The Brazilian government is to launch a four-year tree census of the Amazon to improve understanding of the impacts of deforestation, climate change and conservation efforts.
The study will also help to assess the potential value of the biodiversity under the canopy and the growth of human settlements in the Amazon region, which is home to a number of fast-expanding cities, as well as uncontacted indigenous tribes.
The cataloguing operation will be the most detailed study for 40 years – a period in which the world's greatest forest has come under unprecedented pressure from farmers, loggers and drought.
The environment ministry said the inventory "will allow us to have a broad panorama of the quality and the conditions in the forest cover".
Improvements in satellite monitoring technology have already provided a wealth of data about the degradation of the Amazon.
Last week, Nasa released figures showing that an area twice the size of California continues to suffer from a mega-drought, which began eight years ago. Nasa said this may be the first sign that the Amazon is suffering major consequences from climate change.
The Brazilian government also uses a sophisticated satellite system to co-ordinate its actions against illegal forest clearance. The environment ministry says this has slowed deforestation and pushed Brazil halfway towards its Copenhagen commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36% by 2020.
However, there are limits to what can be analysed from above, particularly when it comes to the quality of the forest and the biodiversity below the canopy.
"We are going to come to know the rainforest from within," said forestry minister, Antonio Carlos Hummel.
With the results expected to be released year by year, the environment minister, Izabella Teixeira, said the government would have more information on which to base its future strategies of conservation and extraction of economic value.
It might seem strange to some, but honey farmer and homespun inventor Manuel Juraci is unashamed to call a jackass both a colleague and a friend.
Like many living in Brazil's sprawling semi-arid shrubland known as the Caatinga, Manuel turned to beekeeping as a means of subsistence in the largely arid and uncultivable region. But in a stroke of countryside genius, he's forged an unlikely animal partnership with what just might be the world's only beekeeping donkey [link is in Portugese] (that has the necessary garb to boot) -- and it's making all the difference.
In recent years, harvesting honey has grown signifcantly in Manuel's little rural town of Itatira, in the Brazilian state of Ceará -- in fact, the bees there are the biggest producers around. But of 120 or so beekeepers in Itatira, Manuel and his donkey Boneco are among the most successful, thanks in part to Manuel's invention: the donkey-sized beekeeper's suit that keeps his partner safe from stings.
Together the pair are capable of bringing more honey to market than most farmers can harvest alone. Not surprisingly, Manuel and Boneco have caught the attention of the Association of Honey Producers which hopes that he'll make custom suits for their animals as well.
While Manuel considers the offer, which would likely come as a pleasant boon, he's quick to note that it's not the custom beekeeping suit alone that has lead to his success in the honey business [link is in Portugese]:
"Not to discount the others," says Manuel, "but Boneco is a faithful friend."
Here's a news report on the beekeeping donkey (in Portuguese):
Among other forest mammals, giant anteaters were found to be virtually extinct. Photo courtesy: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Large vertebrates are rapidly going extinct in the small forest fragments remaining after mass deforestation in Brazil.
Led by England’s University of East Anglia (UEA), an international team of scientists assessed the long-term effects of hunting and forest fragmentation on tropical biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.
About 90 percent of the area has been deforested for agriculture, grazing, and development with most remnants smaller than a football pitch. On average, these patches contained only four of the 18 mammal species being surveyed.
“We uncovered a staggering process of local extinctions of mid-sized and large mammals,” said study co-author Gustavo Canale from the State University of Mato Grosso (UNEMAT) in a press release.
The study revealed that white-lipped peccaries were completely extinct, and other mammals like jaguars, woolly spider monkeys, and giant anteaters were nearly extinct.
“You might expect forest fragments with a relatively intact canopy structure to still support high levels of biodiversity,” said study senior author Carlos Peres from UEA in the release. “Our study demonstrates that this is rarely the case, unless these fragments are strictly protected from hunting pressure.”
The researchers found that fragments in protected areas had the most number of species in the region.
“We therefore recommend the implementation of new strictly protected areas, such as national parks and biological reserves, including forest fragments containing populations of endangered, rare, and endemic species, particularly those facing imminent extinctions,” Canale said.
However, many existing protected areas are under threat from degradation and being downsized or degazetted.
“Human populations are exploding and very few areas remain untouched by the expanding cornucopia of human impacts,” Peres said. “It is therefore essential to enforce protection in areas that are nominally protected ‘on paper.’ The future of tropical forest wildlife depends on it.”
Possibly one of the street lamps powered by convicts. Photo courtesy: b3d_/CC BY 2.0
Although prisons are ostensibly intended as places where convicted criminals can pay their debts to society, confinement behind bars rarely yields anything other than the punishment alone. But now, thanks to an innovative new initiative underway at a correctional facility in Brazil, prisoners are being given the chance to slash their sentences while bringing a bit of light into the world, literally -- by producing the electricity used to power street lamps.
According to Jornal Nacional, Brazil's Santa Rita do Sapucaí prison, following the suggestion of a local judge, recently installed electricity-generating stationary bikes as part of a plan to keep inmates active while letting them contribute to a greater good.
For every 16 hours spent pedaling to charge a battery connected to the bike, prisoners of good standing will shave a day off their sentences. The energy will then be used to power streetlights in the city that might otherwise be dark, making the community a safer place at night for everyone.
Using the bikes isn't mandatory, but when their benefits are as win-win, there's no reason it needs to be. "I was a little chubby," says one inmate. "I've lost about nine pounds [riding the bikes]."
Given the success of the program so far, the prison plans to add even more power-generating bikes which will go even further to reduce sentences, waistlines, electricity bills, and carbon emissions -- all while making the world a brighter place, in more ways than one.
How absolutely delightful to be able to sit in a living, breathing, piece of the forest in the middle of your own city. Imagine the air quality in the homes closest to the forest - not to mention, the overall good these trees are doing for the entire city. No one should ever be further than walking distance from a patch of nature.
“In no other country of this modernized world, the technology of reinforced concrete has been as predominant as it is in Brazil. It is the absolutely hegemonic structural material on constructions in Brazilian cities, whether they are formal or informal”. Those are the words of architect, doctor in Education and professor Roberto Eustaáquio dos Santos in a paper called The Culture of Reinforced Concrete in Brazil.
Although this construction technique spread worldwide, the before mentioned paper refers not only to its adoption but also its eager celebration by Brazilian constructions. The causes behind it are complex (the before mentioned paper has some interesting points on the subject), but its result can be seen in the work of architects like Oscar Niemeyer and Paulo Mendes da Rocha, who embraced the freedom of form it allowed and became world-famous creating audacious shapes with it (and exposing it).
If naked reinforced concrete is a symbol of Brazilian architecture and urbanism, in few places it can be seen as in Sao Paulo, the largest city in America at 11.3 million people. The Sao Paulo Museum of Art and Brazilian Museum of Sculpture are some of the landmarks, but you can feel the style of a movement which inspired the name “Brazilian Brutalism” just walking the Avenida Paulista, with its towering buildings more intimidating than New York City's skyscrapers.
There are words about concrete at the beginning of a piece about a park because it is important to understand this in order to understand why the Trianon, also known as Tenente Siqueira Campos, is such a unique space in a city like Sao Paulo. Knowing this and seeing the buildings and feeling the roughness of concrete, one can forgive people for using clichés such as “Peaceful oasis,” “A breath of fresh-air,” “Patch of green in the concrete jungle,” when referring to the park. One cannot, actually, find better words than those to describe it.
A flyer handled at the administration office inside the park holds the information that seems to have been used by every website which published something about Trianon Park: it was created in 1892 and projected by French landscape artist Paul Villon, it used to be larger and had a belvedere where the Sao Paulo Museum of Art now stands, it was created when the city was developing and the local aristocracy looked to XIX European Romanticism for influences, which gave the park the appearance of an English garden, some of its later changes were signed by Roberto Burle Marx, its area is 12 acres.
But what’s more important takes a lot less place than the history and the names, it appears in just one line: the Trianon is the only remaining piece of native Atlantic Forest in the area. Native is an important word here, significant when considering that world famous parks and urban forests such as the Central Park in New York and Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro are man-made.
This fact and the contrast of the lush, green patch that sprouts from the center of the concrete roughness of the city, make the small Trianon an incredible spot.
At the park, one can only confirm that all the benefits forests are said to provide are true: it is a fresh, clean air, microclimate on hot days and the trees buffer the noise of car-heavy Sao Paulo to the point that a few meters into it feel like a block or two away from the street.
Local species found there, according to information from Sao Paulo's City Hall, include araribá, canela-amarela, jequitibá, cedro-rosa, sapucaia, pau-ferro, sapopemba and tamboril, along with abiurana, tapiá-guaçu, palmito-jussara, andá-açu, guaraiúva and camboatá. There are also some introduced species such as seafórtia and palmeira-de-leque-da-china. The association Friends of the Trees of Sao Paulo says one can find fruits like the uvaia in the park.
But all those are names, data with little meaning. The lure of this urban park is found quietly sitting inside, feeling whatever it is that one feels inside of a forest. Only in this case, a few steps away from a metro station.
Photo courtesy: Photo: Katya Kroch / IBJ via TreeHugger.com
All too often, I find myself blogging about environmental issues that carry a great deal of worry and stress surrounding them. Finally, an uplifting issue that should lighten any "earth muffin's" mind. I know it inspires me to keep fighting in my tiny little corner of the world.
One morning in November 2000, a large humpback whale was found stranded on a beach near Ubatuba, Brazil, clinging to life in the crashing surf. It didn't take long before a team was assembled of nearly one hundred fishermen, firefighters, biologists, and locals who began working tirelessly to return the struggling animal back to sea -- and after twelve long hours, they were successful. Still, as that whale slipped beneath the waves and out of sight, those volunteers could only hope their efforts were not in vain, knowing full well that the whale's chances of survival were slim. But now, after ten years of guessing, rescuers are finally sure the whale is alive and well -- because they've seen it.Sadly, beached whales have become an all too common sight in Brazil; this year alone, 95 animals have been discovered, only one of which was returned to the sea alive. For the rescuers who inevitably arrive to give beached whales a fighting chance, the work is daunting and the outcomes uncertain at best -- but for the first time ever, it has been discovered that their efforts can pay off.
The beached humpback whale in 2000, before being rescued. (Photo: Hugo Gallo/Aquário de Ubatuba)via TreeHugger.com
In 2008, biologists doing researcher in the waters off Brazil spotted a large, healthy-looking humpback whale with coloring that was startlingly similar to the one they'd rescued from the beach eight years earlier. To confirm this unlikely reunion, skin samples were collected and compared to those taken from the stranded animal in 2000. Now, after genetic analysis, it has finally been confirmed to be the same whale.
Never before has a rescued whale been re-encountered after so long at sea -- and the news is giving hope to those who continue to devote their time to saving beached whales.
"The confirmation of the survival of this animal for a least eight years after its stranding shows that, despite the low chances of survival, it is worth every effort to save the whales," veterinarian Milton Marcondes told Brazilian media.
The odds that a whale will survive after beaching, however, are still quite slim. Of the hundreds of whales that have become stranded over the years, only three large humpbacks were returned to the ocean alive -- and even then, it isn't known whether they survive for long or not.
In the past, some have questioned if efforts to save beached whales were worth the trouble, believing that the animals were sick or injured and would likely die in either case. But for the biologists and volunteers who struggle in the surf to rescue those majestic creatures in desperate need of a helping hand, the slightest chance of success is always worth their sweat, and often, tears.
And with a fleeting glimpse of one such rescued whale, swimming alive and free against the current and against the odds -- they can carry on knowing that they do not toil in vain.
A dead penguin at Peruibe beach in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: AP Photo/Aquario Municipal de Peruibe) Photo courtesy: guardian
Hundreds of penguins that have apparently starved to death are washing up on the beaches of Brazil, worrying scientists who are investigating their exact cause of death.
Around 500 penguins have been found in the last 10 days on Peruibe, Praia Grande and Itanhaem beaches in São Paulo state, said Thiago do Nascimento, a biologist at the Peruibe aquarium.
Most were Magellan penguins migrating north from Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands in search of food in warmer waters.
Many are not finding it: autopsies done on several birds revealed their stomachs were entirely empty – indicating they likely starved to death, Nascimento said.
Scientists are investigating whether strong currents and colder-than-normal waters have hurt populations of the species that make up the penguins' diet, or whether human activity may be playing a role.
"Overfishing may have made the fish and squid scarcer," Nascimento said.
Nascimento said it was common for penguins to swim north this time of year. Inevitably, some get lost along the way or die from hunger or exhaustion, and end up on the Brazilian coast far from home.
But not in such numbers – Nascimento said about 100 to 150 live penguins show up on the beach in an average year, and only 10 or so are dead.
"What worries us this year," he said, "is the absurdly high number of penguins that have appeared dead in a short period of time."
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
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