1/40th of the World’s Rainforests Cleared in 5 Years

A satellite image shows where the dark green pristine forest areas in the Brazil rainforest are being encroached upon by the light green and brown deforested areas.

I am so sick of having to save the rainforest. Really, it boggles my mind that there are still people out there who think it’s okay to cut it down. It’s amazing that some people just don’t care. We’re screwing over the planet a few acres at a time. That’s why news like this is so very depressing.

From Seattlepi.com:

The remote-sensing work lead by Matthew Hansen of South Dakota State University says that from 2000 to 2005 alone, we managed to chop down 2.5 percent of the world’s rainforests. That’s 1/40th of the whole!

Hansen and his team used Landsat photography to measure the forest loss — meaning they didn’t have to reply on notoriously incomplete estimates from governments, which in some cases don’t even know the clearing is going on.

This new research shows that Brazil accounts for nearly half of global deforestation. Brazil alone! Since Brazil is a ‘developing country’, they’re exempt from the Kyoto treaty and thus have no motivation to protect the ‘lungs of the world’. They’re trying to build their economy through cutting down rainforest to plant fields for sugar cane and biofuels, as well as for logging.

It seems like well-off countries need to step in to help Brazil’s economy in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the rainforests. And, consumers need to stop buying Brazilian wood. There are plenty of alternatives out there.

The world without rainforests will not be a pleasant place to be.

Link [Seattlepi.com]
Photo credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Brazilian Wax: Really Drives Home the Point that Deforestation Is Painful

Mildly NSFW…

Deforestation hurts, like a bikini wax. From Green.tv:

/cringe at both.

Opportunists See Dollar Signs as Food Prices Spur Rainforest Destruction

What do you know, chaos and suffering is causing some folks in the position of power to take advantage of the situation. Will wonders never cease?

As people are starting to get worried about the future of our food sources, farmers in Brazil are getting excited about the prospect of making money by cutting down trees in the rainforest, burning the land and making way for pasture and crops.

Envirolink has it:

“At the very edge of the agricultural frontier, it’s very dynamic and that’s why you get statistics for deforestation that swing wildly from one year to the next,” said Roberto Cavalcanti of Conservation International.

“A small shift in food prices can have a big impact on whether it’s economical or not to move into the forest.”

The governor of Mato Grosso, one of Brazil’s biggest farming states, last week advocated more deforestation as a solution to the sharp rises in staples such as rice that are threatening to push millions of people into hunger.

“There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees,” Blairo Maggi, also Brazil’s largest soybean producer and widely known as the “King of Soy”, told the Folha news agency.

This seems like a really stupid move… at the first sign of a food crisis, we start moving in on the rainforests, which we’ve been trying to protect for decades? Isn’t there a better way, people? I’m no expert, but in the times of climate change and worries over the future of the entire planet, cutting down trees in the rainforest appears to be a very bad idea.

Link [Envirolink]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Harrison Ford ‘Deforests’ His Chest Hair for the Environment

Harrison Ford invited cameras along on an expedition, and it wasn’t the fun Indiana Jones kind: he was having his chest waxed. Considering that Harrison isn’t the type of guy you’d expect to see on television undergoing intensive man-grooming, naturally, there’s a good reason for all this. It’s all for the good of the environment!

Access Hollywood cameras taped Harrison as he endured the painful process, explaining that his aim was to “shock people into going green”. As vice chair of Conservation International, Harrison wants people to be more aware of the effects of deforestation.

From Conservation.org:

We believe that the Earth’s natural heritage must be maintained if future generations are to thrive spiritually, culturally, and economically. Our mission is to conserve the Earth’s living heritage - our global biodiversity - and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.

In a culture where dim airhead celebrities flash their no-no parts at cameras for attention, it’s refreshing that a shock-value stunt actually has a good purpose.

Link [Ecorazzi] + [Conservation.org]
Photo: Access Hollywood

Drop Those Cookies! Girl Scouts Want You to Pass on the Thin Mints

Next time you hear a box of delicious Girl Scout cookies calling your name, picture a sad monkey. Two girl scouts from Ann Arbor, Michigan want you to know that mass consumption of Thin Mints is putting endangered orangutans out of their homes.

Seattle Times has it:

Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, both 12, started doing research last fall on endangered orangutans in Indonesia as part of their Bronze Award project. They discovered the habitat of orangutans is being threatened by conversion of the land to the production of palm oil, an ingredient in Girl Scout Cookies.

Although the two have sold many boxes of cookies over the years, this year they sold magazines instead.

Evidently the Girl Scout higher-ups aren’t too pleased with this, considering that they depend upon cookie sales for funding. They’ve told the girls that ABC Bakers, who produce the cookies, have promised to avoid purchasing palm oil from areas deforested specifically for palm oil production, but this hasn’t satisfied the girls.

I used to be a Girl Scout, myself, in the 80s - pulling my little red wagon of cookies down the street. Had I caught wind of something like this, I most certainly would have taken the opportunity to yell things like ‘monkey killers’ at people to get out of selling cookies. Mostly because neighbor boys would chase me down the street on their bicycles making fun of my uniform, but also because, you know, I cared about monkeys and stuff.

Link [Seattle Times]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, in the spirit of Lolcats

Deforestation is Driving Snakes Out of the Jungle and into Rio Di Janeiro

Snakes!

Deforestation!

Deforestation and Snakes!

It sucks to suffer from Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)and live in Rio De Janeiro right now. The city is being invaded by snakes, driven from their forest home by logging. The AP has it:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Snakes are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon’s largest city, driven from the rain forest by loggers and ranchers who are destroying the reptiles’ natural habitat, the government’s environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

The agency, known as Ibama, has been called out to capture 21 snakes this year in Belem, a sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million people at the mouth of the Amazon River, Ibama press officer Luciana Almeida said by telephone.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo credit: Flickr user Chad Mill