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Read this article from Mongabay at http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1221-hance_goldguy.html

Read this article from The Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121902262.html?hpid=topnews

Read this article from CNN at http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/18/un.redd.program.rainforests/

Extinctions are currently outpacing the capacity for new species to evolve, according to Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Two Decades in the Making

It's hard to imagine with all the progress REDD has achieved, that it all started less than 20 years ago with the Rio Summit in '92, when the makings of a global sustainability architecture in the form of a climate treaty began to take shape. But a forestry treaty had yet to happen.

A research camp with environmental organization Save the Elephants (STE) in Samburu National Reserve in Kenya fell victim to a flash flood last week, after the Ewaso Ng’iro River broke its banks. Fortunately, none of the researchers or employees were hurt, but the camp lost most of the equipment—including tents, food, computers, and collars—and data in the flood.

Over a third of the greenhouse gas emissions related to the consumption of goods in wealthy nations actually occur in developing countries, according to a new analysis by researchers with the Carnegie Institution. Annually, each person if the United States outsources 2.5 tons of carbon due to consumption habits, most frequently in China. In Europe the figure of 'outsourced' emissions rises to 4 tons per person.

The United States and Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to slash greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation, one of the main drivers of global climate change. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Brasilia on Wednesday, marks the first time the two countries have formally agreed to work together on deforestation.

BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA — For decades, the vast jungle interior that blankets the northern Indonesian province of Aceh provided a haven for thousands of rebel foot soldiers fighting a war of independence.

Now, still marginalized and largely unemployed despite nearly five years of peace, many former separatists have fled back into the forest, this time to chop it down.

A new species of cuttlefish has been discovered on the Southern tip of India, according to The Hindu. Discovered in Tamil Nadu, along the coast of the town of Colachel, the species has been named sepia vecchioni.

Facing habitat loss, pollution, climate change, and the devastating chytrid fungus, there has been little positive news about amphibians recently. However, a story out of Australia brings a much needed respite from bad news. In 2008 Luke Pearce, a fisheries conservation officer, stumbled on a frog that had been thought to be extinct for over thirty years. Not recorded since the 1970s, Pearce rediscovered the yellow-spotted bell frog (Litoria castanea) on rural Australian farmland in the Southern Tableland of New South Wales.

Source: Mongabay.com -- Brazil and the United States have signed an agreement to work together to reduce deforestation as part of an effort to slow climate change. The memorandum of understanding signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brasilia last Wednesday comes as talks on REDD, a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism that would pay tropical countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, move forward despite the lack of a formal climate treaty.

There are few areas of research in tropical biology more exciting and more important than seed dispersal. Seed dispersal—the process by which seeds are spread from parent trees to new sprouting ground—underpins the ecology of forests worldwide. In temperate forests, seeds are often spread by wind and water, though sometimes by animals such as squirrels and birds. But in the tropics the emphasis is far heavier on the latter, as Dr. Pierre-Michel Forget explains to mongabay.com. "[In rainforests] a majority of plants, trees, lianas, epiphytes, and herbs, are dispersed by fruit-eating animals. […] As seed size varies from tiny seeds less than one millimetres to several centimetres in length or diameter, then, a variety of animals is required to disperse such a continuum and variety of seed size, the smaller being transported by ants and dung beetles, the larger swallowed by cassowary, tapir and elephant, for instance."

Brazil and the United States have signed an agreement to worth together to reduce deforestation as part of an effort to slow climate change.

Location

The main CIF programmes that will be reviewed during the partnership meeting are: the Clean Technology Fund; the Forest Investment Program; the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience; and the Program for Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Low Income Countries.

Also available online is a draft document titled ”Looking Ahead for Lessons in the Climate Investment Funds: Emerging Themes for Learning,” which is open for comments.

 

For the event website, click here.

Brasilia, Brazil — March 5, 2010 — A project in Brazil’s highly endangered coastal Atlantic Forest has become the first reforestation project in the country to be validated to the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards (CCBS) as a carbon project.

USDA Forest Service Training Underserved Youth for Today's Green Jobs

NAMPA, Idaho, March 5, 2010- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today unveiled a new direction for the USDA Forest Service Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers (CCCs) that will train underserved youth for jobs in the emerging green economy. The green curriculum announced today will expand opportunities and pathways out of poverty through the promotion of public service, sustainable lifestyles, and vocational skills that will enable young people to compete for green jobs.

 

Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found.

The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard.

 

For full article, click here.

Biodiesel and other "green" fuels that Europeans put in their cars can have unintended consequences for tropical forests and wetlands, European Union reports show — the first evidence of EU misgivings.

 

For full article, click here.

The Netherlands has agreed to provide Indonesia with capacity building programs to help deal with a new European Union directive on imports of crude palm oil (CPO).

The policy, believed not to lead to massive forest conversion, was part of Indonesia's attempt to comply with international standards in mitigating climate change and to "anticipate" the implementation of the scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).